Improving the Blog

As you may have noticed, I've spruced up the blog a bit. My HTML skills are extremely rusty, but I managed to get a few changes made:

• Dark gray background. Easier on the eyes than the straight black.
• Addition of some Rhapsody stuff - you can click on any of the album covers under "Hear Me" and get taken immediately to the Rhapsody stream. If you're not a Rhapsody subscriber, you can still play 25 tracks a month for free!
• Truncated the displayed bio and moved the rest of it to a post. Sort of a hacky solution, but it works.
• Added many new links and new link categories.
  

I'll be adding and modifying more in the future - adding more music and Rhapsody features as they become available and looking for other ways to keep the blog current.

If I had more than 3 readers, I might consider dropping the Google ads on the site, too.

Let me know what else you'd like to see/hear/experience! If you want linkage, drop me a line and let me know.

181!

I weighed myself today. 181!

More cardio to come.

Time and Life

Though it may seem as though I have been failing my New Year's resolution, rest assured I have been doing a lot.

My occupation has been keeping me, uh, occupied. Many good people left the company over the last 9 months - old friends and new. Several new companies came a-calling, wanting me to come and work for them. This resulted in a very long period of contemplating what the "right decision" would be -- which one of these fantastic jobs should I take?

I probably take too long to make up my mind, but I like to think things through. All of the jobs had good points and bad. I probably talked to almost everyone who might conceivably be reading this about my options (even if they didn't know it at the time!).

In the end, I decided to stay at RealNetworks. I received a promotion, more responsibility, and more work. I like a challenge. A few years from now I'll be able to decide whether or not I made the right choice. In the meantime, things are already getting better at work.

I also decided (and made a condition of staying at RealNetworks) to teach my music class at Duke TIP again this summer. This requires lots of preparation, especially since I haven't taught it in several years, and I try to make each year better than the last. I am compiling notes, reading some great new books, and working with my friend Adam Tober. That last bit is only slightly complicated by his living in Tokyo. But come July, I'll be flying to Durham for a month. I'll keep you posted from there.

I was lucky enough to see my brother a few times this year. He took a contract position with a video game company here in San Francisco, and was in town every other week. I really enjoyed seeing him so frequently - he is so very talented and smart. Unfortunately, his contract wasn't extended, so I probably won't see him in person for a while.

He's been doing a lot of music - a record he's been working on with his friend Tommy looks like it's getting picked up by a small, hip German label. In addition, my brother is almost finished with his own solo album, which I am dying to hear. What little of it I have heard was fantastic.

As for my own music, I've been doing some writing, too. CHILL finished a new collection in honor of the recent probe launch. We each chose a planet to compose music for. I did "Saturn" and "Jupiter". I wish I had more time to do more electronic music. Or even just get to know my tools better.

Also, Rich Trott (the artist formerly known as "Throb") has practically finished an album, most of which I recorded and engineered here at Blue Moscow. Looks like he's putting together a live band, and I think I am the designated bass player.

My friend Sid Luscious has written 5 new songs. I helped him out a bit with those, too.

The guy who used to be the bass player in my first band ever got in touch with me a few weeks ago. Turns out he's been living in San Francisco for years. It was great to see him and catch up. I hope to do some recording with him soon, too.

Wait, there's more.

2 weeks ago, I had my body fat measured. 22%. I need to lose 10 lbs. Like that's a surprise. The funny part was the gym guy said "all you need to do is 1 hour of cardio a day for...hmm, 2 months, and you'll hit your goal."

1 hour a day for 2 months. 60 hours. That's all. It sounded almost ridiculous, but given that my current workouts haven't been producing the results I wanted, I figured "can't hurt to try." So today was Day 10. Let's hope this works!

Anyhow, I will try to post more frequently. Next time: Adventures at Guitar Center!

Also it's been raining a lot. Boo!

The next music business

One of my New Year's resolutions is to create more. Among other things, that means more blog entries.

I recently put my last solo album up for sale on CDBaby.

CDBaby is a great site for musicians. For a nominal fee, they will act as a fulfillment center and billing processor - they'll sell your CDs for you and take a very modest cut while offering tons of great features. They provide streaming MP3 clips, a functional (if a bit ugly) page set for your product, and will even act as a digital distributor, getting your content into iTunes, Rhapsody, and the like.

CDBaby makes it much easier for people to sell their music online. I put up "Songs for the Last Man on Earth", which is nearly 10 years old. Within a week, someone bought a copy. I guess they liked it, because it looks like they proceeded to buy some other music I put up there.

I didn't promote "Songs for the Last Man on Earth" - all I did was upload it - and it sold. Theoretically, if word of mouth spread, I could keep selling it without doing anything else. The music would be effectively succeeding on whatever merits it may have. That is the closest thing to a musical Utopia we can hope for, and it is that dream that has driven much of my work over the last few years.

The "Songs for the Last Man on Earth" sale phenomenon isn't isolated, either. Back during MP3.com's heyday, I uploaded the whole Bastard Science Records catalog to MP3.com.

Among other things, the Bastard Science Records catalog included an ambient album I made as Captain Kirk ("The Shape of the Universe") to MP3.com. For about 6 months, I had half of the top 10 slots in the experimental genre and sold several hundred dollars' worth of CDs. Again, this was without any promotion whatsoever.

I received fan mail from around the world - Japan, German, New Jersey - places I would have never been able to reach.

Most people would call the acts on CDBaby and MP3.com "aspiring musicians" or "wannabe musicians" or "amateur musicians", but I think that both belittles their work and continues the lie that there's something very special about the major label artists.

There isn't.

Yeah, there's a lot of crap music up on all these sites. But there's also a lot of really good music, too. It's the finding it that's hard. Working on improving the mechanism for finding good music is my next professional challenge.

Today there are a variety of MP3 blogs, but the more successful these blogs become, the closer they edge to returning to what is effectively "major label content."

Word of mouth is still king - nothing beats someone you know telling you about a great new band. Your friends don't care whether something is signed or not, and if they make you a solid recommendation, you don't care either.

CDBaby and its ilk epitomize the next music business. Artists will be more able to focus on making music and have to worry less about distribution. Even marketing can be lower effort and more targeted.

William Gibson famously stated that "the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed". The future is here in the form of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - a band that topped many critic's lists this year and is doing very well on iTunes and Rhapsody. And they have no label. They are completely self-released, and arguably the first true Internet rock stars.

They'll probably parlay all this attention into a fat major label deal. But perhaps the next band won't.

Gazing into the abyss, or "The Digital Music Diaspora"

My friend Nick Sincaglia recently wrote a great blog entry about his company's acquisition and how it made him look back on the last few years.

At one point, he notes that 6 years ago, we were all punks trying to break into the music business and now, we are the music business. At least the exciting future part, or the place where some innovation happens and lots of media attention is focused. It seems like every week there's some sort of story about the music business - a level of attention and press "the biz" would have killed for pre-Napster. Odd they can't seem to take advantage of it. But I digress.

My point is that my friends and I kicked in a basement window and sneaked into the music business' house. From the start-up TuneTo.com and later, Listen.com, my colleagues are now highly placed at companies including Liquid Digital Media/Wal-Mart, Real Networks, Sony/BMG, Time Warner, and Apple. There's probably more.

I have known Nick for almost 10 years. Another colleague of mine, Tim Bratton, recently left Real Networks. I've been working with Tim since 1993. A compelling argument could be made that I owe my entire professional career to Tim. He provided me tremendous opportunities. He taught many things. How to create a costed bill of materials, how to write good specifications, how to be graceful under pressure. How to persist and never give up.

I am sad to see Tim go, though I completely understand his reasons. Were I in his shoes, those shoes would probably have walked out the door a long time ago. I will miss his optimism, patience, and perspective, and I wish him the best in his future endeavors.

In 1999, I taught my first class at Duke University's Talent Identification Program. I remember quite dramatically holding up a Diamond Rio PMP 300 and telling the kids that it would "change the world", and that in a few years, they'd all have something like that. It has come to pass.

Why all this reminiscing? I refer back to Nick's statement: "Now we are the music business".

I think of Nietzche - "Battle with monsters and beware, lest you become a monster. And as you gaze into the abyss, so the abyss gazes into you."

The High End

I've been working on a screenplay for the last several years about audiophiles. It's called "The High End", and it's a comedy.

People ask me "what's funny about audiophiles?"

Here's the answer.

The Definitive Guide to Evolver

I wrote this user guide for the Dave Smith Instruments Evolver.

Big Red

Melinda Moore, also known as Big Red, was one of the first people I met when I moved to San Francisco.

She's gone now and I find it hard to stop thinking about it. It appears to be suicide. While I've had several friends and acquaintances come close to this in the past, this is the first time it's touched me directly.

A new job

Today I start work at Real Networks as Senior Product Manager. This has been in the works for a long time (2-3 months).

I am very excited about working on Rhapsody (again).

I could write a book about the reasons why I left Liquid Digital Media and Wal-Mart (indeed, I started one about a year ago and had to stop). There are lots of talented people at both companies, and I wish them all the best. The team at Liquid, in particular, was the finest group of individuals I have ever had the good fortune to call colleagues.

Busy as a B student

I know I've been kinda quiet lately. In fact, I started a draft of this post almost a month ago and just haven't found the time to finish.

Most of my musical energy has been going into, uh, ghostwriting for a failed 80s pop star.

I have rediscovered the joys of pop songwriting and have been banging out tunes as fast as I can think of them, on the order of 1 every 2 weeks. The wonders and joys of home studio technology. My only limitations are time and creativity.

The best part of being in a rock band lately has been getting to know all the players better. Each of the guys in the current project is a quality human being. Where were they all 10 years ago?

Steve, for example, is someone I'd only known electronically for about 7 years. But now I consider him a close friend. He's made my life much richer than he knows (he's probably embarassed now. Ha!) He's also a sickeningly talented musician. Check out his latest album. The dude has got no mercy.

Naturally, I have a big itch to get back to doing more "challenging" or interesting work that isn't some variation of "intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus/chorus". I still haven't figured out how exactly I'm going to find time or creative energy for this yet, but I am getting a little bit anxious to do something more modern than 80s-influenced pop songs for a 6-piece band.

Steve actually helped me re-discover David Sylvian, who's been doing some very interesting things with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Christian Fennesz (who are also working together!), among others. I just read an interesting interview with him in "Guitar Player".

Being married is still the best thing in the world.

The long and expensive process of renovating the front of the house is all but finished. Paint is up. We're just waiting for final inspection and some finishing touches.

I bought myself a new motorcycle (Ducati Multistrada 620) for my 36th birthday. Perhaps a bit extravagant, but business has been good. And it gets 50 miles per gallon of gas.

I wish Chill would do a full-on disc release.

The "best" choices for encoding your music

[UPDATED: After 10 years, storage, science, and codecs have changed conclusions here. See strikethroughs...]

I have been working in the digital music business for a long time. As a result, people ask me certain questions all the time. One that I get a lot these days is

"What bit rate and format should I use for encoding my music?"

Most of these folks are using iTunes. I think iTunes is good, but far from perfect. The best technical solution is probably the latest version of Rhapsody, which supports tons of devices (including the iPod) and every format (including AAC), but right now it's not as simple or easy to use for many people as iTunes.

So here's what I usually tell people...

The Short Answer:

• If you have an iPod and plan on sticking with the iPod family, use AAC at 320 kbps either 192 kbps or 160 kbps. Use 192 kbps if you value quality over number of tracks, and vice versa.
  
• If you don't have an iPod (or may consider switching away from one in the future), use MP3 or AAC at 320 kbps. If you use MP3, make sure "high quality" options are turned on, "True Stereo" (rather than "Joint Stereo") is active. VBR is optional. at 192 kbps with "high quality" selected.
• If you only listen on your PC/Mac and want the absolute best sound quality, use Apple Lossless Encoding or FLAC.
• Rhapsody and iTunes both encode in MP3 and AAC. If you have an iPod, use iTunes. If you don't have an iPod, use Rhapsody or whatever came with your portable player.

The Long Answer:
There are two ways to describe "best" audio quality:

• What's "absolutely" the best ("objective best")
• What's best for you ("subjective best")

For absolute audio quality, there are 2 approaches to take: mathematically lossless and perceptually lossless.

"Mathematically lossless" means the bits stored on your computer are numerically identical to the bits on your CD when played back. You could do this by ripping directly to WAV file - this effectively copies the audio data from the CD to your hard drive without changing anything. The main drawback to doing this file size - 10 MB per minute of CD-quality stereo, equivalent to 1411 kbps.

However, Apple includes an "Apple Lossless Encoding" option which is like a Stuffit or ZIP for audio files. This will produce files that are around half the size of WAV files (5 MB per minute or about 705 kbps), but when played back, the bits output are absolutely identical to the original CD data.

If you want the absolute best quality audio, this is the format in which you should rip. Note that the iPod Shuffle cannot play back these kinds of files, nor can any other portable devices other than the iPod. It's best as an archival format. Apple does include a way to "convert" (transcode) these files during transfer, but currently limits it to 128 kbps, and only for the Shuffle.

"Perceptually lossless" means that you can't hear the difference between the original CD audio and the audio that is reproduced. MP3, AAC, and WMA are all examples of "perceptual" coding systems. If you crank either of them up to a high enough bit rate, you should not be able to hear a difference (in theory, more on this in a bit).

In my experience, WMA doesn't get truly perceptually lossless on most material even if you crank it way up - it's best for low bit rates. Doesn't matter, because iTunes won't encode in WMA and the iPod won't play it back natively.

MP3 is an older codec, but if you crank it up to 256 kbps and use "high quality" options, most people can't tell the difference. However, at that point, you're creating files that are "only" 1/5 the size of the originals - I would say you might as well go to lossless at that point. 192 kbps is a good trade-off. AAC and MP3 are now supported by almost every single portable player and computer-based player.

AAC is a newer, better codec. For most people, AAC is "transparent" (another way of saying perceptually lossless) at 192 kbps, and does well on a lot of material down at 160 kbps.

Both AAC and MP3 use something called "joint stereo" at bit rates below 192 kbps. For best stereo reproduction, you want to stay at 192 kbps or higher.

320 kbps is indistinguishable from original source material. Use that.

So all that is the "objective best".

The "subjective best" really depends on what you want to do with these files and what your personal requirements may be.

Remember when I mentioned that AAC, MP3, and WMA are perceptually lossless "in theory"? This has to do with the nature of perceptual coding. Aside from bit rate, there are 2 other factors: the material being encoded, and your particular set of ears.

Due to the way all these encoding systems work, the material being encoded affects how well it is encoded. Hypothetically, some content will sound better (at the same bit rate) as MP3, some better as AAC, and some better as WMA. They each compress audio in different fashions, and work better on different types of things. The clearest example I've encountered is that WMA is not particularly good for music with lots of transients (percussive sounds) but works very nicely on things with long, sustained sounds (like string quartets).

The other aspect is your ears. These encoding systems are all based on generalized models of how people hear. But like "one size fits all" clothing, you are unlikely to match this generalized model perfectly. This means that some content and encoding systems are going to sound better and worse to you relative to other people.

Subjective recommendations:

• Listening only on your PC and need the best audio quality? Use Apple Lossless, but make sure you have good speakers or headphones, or it's a waste of space. Those Labtecs won't cut it.
  
• Use an iPod and plan on using iPods forever? Use AAC. Choose your bit rate based on how much music you want to put on your device. I'd recommend 320 192. 160 is also fine if you value track quantity over track quality.
• Use some other MP3 player, or considering switching from iPod in the future? Use MP3 at 320 192 kbps with HQ option turned on. This is the "safest" choice and what most people should be doing. Right now, there are very few portable players that support AAC, but everyone supports MP3. If you rip everything at 192 kbps/MP3, you will have decent sound quality, reasonable file size, and the ability to put your collection on any device.

Conclusion:
Since you're listening to the music, trust your own ears. The best thing you can do is run some tests yourself - take 1 or 2 tracks and encode them at different bit rates and using the different codecs. Play them back in random order without looking at them and see if you can hear a difference. Throw in a lossless file or a WAV as well. Choose the lowest bit rate you can stand.

Me? I have most of my collection at 320 160 kbps AAC, though newer things or things I really like I am encoding at 192 kbps AAC. I've re-encoded my entire collection more than once, and probably will have to do so again.

Bonus for Audio Nerds:
Yeah, there's OGG. Not enough portable players support it, so it's not worth using for the average consumer.

Yeah, there's other lossless codecs like FLAC. Again, not enough PC/Mac players support it, and no portable devices that I'm aware of. Even if there's one that does, it's still not worth using for the average customer.

I will post about "which portable device should I use?" at a later date.

Security is truly Something Awful

What does it say about American security procedures when a website like Something Awful is able to poke holes in things?

About Me

Anu Kirk cannot escape music, no matter how hard he tries.

Starting in 4th grade as a (bad) drummer, he became a (slightly less awful) classical oboe player in junior high school before he succumbed to the siren song of rock n'roll and synthesizers during his teenage years.

He attended Dartmouth College, studying music under Jon Appleton and Christian Wolff. Naturally, he graduated with a degree in economics.

Nearly a decade in Los Angeles came next: performing in bands, producing/engineering/recording, dabbling in film and TV scoring, and designing professional audio products. One (Spatializer Retro) was awarded Musician Magazine's "Editor's Pick" and another (Spatializer PT3D) was nominated for Mix Magazine's TEC award.

Anu has been involved with the Internet music business since its inception. He was one of the primary architects of Rhapsody, the world's first music subscription service, and the driving force behind its iOS app. He also designed and built music services at Liquid Digital Media (formerly Liquid Audio) for Wal-Mart.

He was responsible for the development of MOG's award-winning mobile apps, and contributed significantly to the product design and strategy that led to a successful acquisition by Beats and subsequently, Apple.

As Director of Music Services for Sony PlayStation, he was the business owner for PlayStation Music Unlimited before helping the company pivot to a Spotify-based music platform.

Most recently, he served as Director and General Manager for Virtual Reality Platforms at PlayStation, helping to launch PlayStation VR, the world's most successful virtual reality headset.

He has also designed marketplaces for virtual goods, worked on several video games, and integrated digital media platforms into virtual worlds.

One of the first to participate in the Duke University Talent Identification Program (TIP) when it launched in the early 1980s, Anu returned as an instructor in the early 2000s. His popular class “A History of 20th Century Music” (now known as "Bach to Rock") was later adapted to an educational CD-ROM, "Switched-On Sound".

A member of noted Internet music collective Chill since 1998, Anu also held the number one position in experimental music on MP3.com for 6 months.

Anu continues to write, record, perform and release music.