[Consortium] Made in Linux Vol.2

[Ken Restivo]

On Thu, Feb 14, 2008 at 09:24:03AM -0500, Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
> > Hi Ico,
> > 
> > > 3) recruit a jury who will judge submissions
> > 
> > Sometimes it's better to have a benevolent dictator approach in matters
> > of taste :-) If there are lots of people who'd like to have a go at
> > this, maybe we could have a series, where each disc has a personal
> > selection on it.
> 
> Perhaps. But in order to gain credibility of the series as a resource of
> good quality art (even though ironically, such selection process is
> unavoidably subjective), there has to be a selection process. Otherwise, the
> end product could be seen as self-serving and as such worthless to our
> mission. Basically, I am hoping to see people exploring the series not
> because of its "geek potential" but rather as an important contribution to
> the arts that happens to be coming from the Linux community. Again, I am
> aware that selection process of art by jury is inherently subjective and as
> such biased, but having the process in and of itself will help tip the
> scales in terms of how the series are valued and/or perceived.
> 

If this CD is a fundraiser, I'd strongly suggest having it judged primarily by those who know what sells and what does not. For example: established, successful producers and label owners, successful commercial film composers, etc.

I don't mean to discourage soliciting at least some judges from the academic and fine arts community, but I'd love to see this CD sell well enough to fund the development of a half-dozen critical Linux Audio projects for a year. So I've got my business hat on, not my artist hat on, at the moment.

If the laws of physics and economics could be suspended, then perhaps Brian Eno, Thom Yorke, Thomas Dolby, and David Byrne might make ideal judges. Back here on planet Earth, it might be more realistic to solicit the owners of small, established indie and internet labels as judges, or perhaps producers who have top-selling music on well-known, CC-friendly internet labels.

If you're interested in pursuing that, then I can think of three such acquaintances whom I could approach and ask to participate (I can call them and/or send you their contact info off-list).

> > 
> > > 4) oversee the judging process, and inform the participants of their
> > > submission's acceptance and/or rejection
> > 
> > Maybe the tracks which don't make the disc should be available on the
> > website. Popularity isn't everything, but they could be rated up or down
> > by listeners, and then the highest rated tracks be added to an Icecast
> > playlist. Vorbis high bitrate stream, of course :-)
> 
> You are absolutely right. There is a radio.linuxaudio.org project we are
> hoping to start but it like many other facets of lao is missing manpower...

That'd be helpful feedback.

Right now I'm trying to pull together a CD for submitting to Magnatune, and it's really hard to cull 7 hours of material down to 50 minutes. So I used the popularity statistics from PodPress on my own website as a coarse filter. I'm still not done (I'm at 1 hour 22 minutes... auugh!), but the statistics helped a lot.

> 
> That being said, the CD project is not about popularity, rather credibility
> (see above). Besides, just like conference calls, pieces that may not make
> it this year just may be picked by the next year's jury whose composition
> and consequently aesthetic taste will undoubtedly be different.
> 
> > 
> > > 5) ensure that the licensing of the works is taken care of with selected
> > > artists
> > 
> > I found there was really no consensus on this issue. We had the full
> > range from 'public domain' to 'all rights reserved' on the first disc.
> > If we insist on certain licences, then we'll exclude a great number of
> > artists.
> 
> Please pardon my lack of clarity. What I meant is making sure that we gather
> accurate licensing data from each artist in order to provide this important
> bit of information to protect their rights and consequently cover our
> behinds in terms of legal matters.
> 

That helps. For example, CC-SAMPLE material requires passing through the credit for the samples along with any republishing of the material. It's not always easy to figure out how to do that.

-ken