Free the Elevator Music!

~;-)

OK, so this is half in jest.

I was reading slashdot this morning and came on this article:

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/22/2254228

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/mendelson_div_conq.html

and I thought, hold on... Hey! You other businessmen need to pay attention! This is how the businessmen taking the course are going to try and take your money from your businesses for the benefit of theirs. To reduce your bottom line in order to pad theirs.

And so I thought, what if we started a movement to provide businesses of the world with Free (and free, or Libre (and gratis) ) elevator music.

Would this make things clearer for the average businessman? Would they see how foolish it was to be worrying about Free music having a negative effect on their business? Would it be easier to see a course showing the elevator music making companies how to fight the Free Music for elevator folks for what it is?

I wonder...

all the best,

drew

Inter Discipline Synergy?

Specifically Novels and Music in respect to NaNoWriMo and Kompoz.

The idea in a nutshell.

NaNo novelists may write song lyrics as a part of their novel. They will license these (the lyrics, not necessarily their whole novel) as cc BY or cc BY-SA. There will be a place in the forums on kompoz or nano or better yet some shared forum where lyrics written each day may be posted.

Kompozers, for their part who wish to take part, will choose from the lyrics each day and try to have a song done around those lyrics by the next day. This song(s) will featured each day on the nano site.

Alternately, for the NaNo novelists who do not wish to write lyrics themselves, there can be daily suggestions on the kompoz site for BY and BY-SA songs whose lyrics may be included in their novels. (Special permission must be granted by the lyricists putting forward BY-SA licensed suggestions to include the lyrics in an all rights reserved (or other licensed) novel.)

Thoughts?

Kompoz post: http://www.kompoz.com/compose-collaborate/topicId-2041/messages.forum

NaNo post: http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/2015598">

drew

Lyrical Doings

Well, I keep on writing. Some are slowly turning into musical works.







Hopefully, more to come,

drew

Online Collaboration Meets Online Business

So here is something I want. We shall see if I will find it when I go looking or if I have to push for it to come into being.

What I have in mind is for online businesses to deal with online collaborators who deal in informal collaborations.

For example, I just made an albun in February 2008 with The Linux Audio Users Chillout Band:

Album Page

What might be nice is if we could put adsense elements on the pages we wish and tell adsense what profit sharing breakdown we want. Then they would pay us as individuals.

I would like something similar for CDBaby, iTunes, etc.

That way, on our side, we would not need some legal entity set up to get paid and then distribute the proceeds, or one of us would not have to deal with the tax implications of getting paid for all of us and then sending on the cuts.

It would make life much simpler for informal collaborations of collaborations with a high flux rate.

drew

Wild Idea - Opt In Income Tax For The Bahamas

OK, I had this wild idea the other day. I meant to write it up before now, but I am working on the RPM08 challenge with an online band.

http://www.rpmchallenge.com/component/option,com_comprofiler/task,userProfile/user,2958/Itemid,1/

So. What if we were to offer Opt In, flat rate income tax to those who would choose to pay it for their own reasons.

We could let them opt in.

We could let them choose from among a series of rates:

1%, 2%, 3%, 5%, 7%, 10%, 15%, 20%.

No deductions. No audits.

You tell us your income. You tell us the rate you want to pay. You pay the amount that comes to.

We give you a certificate indicating your claimed income, your tax rate, the amount you paid in taxes.

If we want, we could go further...

We could allow people who pay this optional income tax to determine where / how, their tax dollars get spent in a very direct manner. Either all of it or part of it. I need to think some more about that.

Say the government could set up categories:

Education, Police, Environment, Roads, Infrastructure. Whatever.

Then the tax payer could indicate what they want the tax to go to.

Or perhaps half can be sent to local government in the location of their choice directly and the other half to those categories.

Thoughts???

Now, before you call me crazy and ask me why in the world anyone would possibly choose to pay an optional income tax, think about how the world works and see if you can come up with any setups where a person/corporation might be able to benefit themselves by choosing to pay an income tax here...

all the best,

drew

eReaders and eBooks

Here is an idea for all of the companies trying to get this right.

You need a great reader at a great price. This $400 reader I just heard about from Amazon is not the great price by a long shot. $50 sounds ball park off the top of my head. $100 might be pushing it at today's dollar value for my part of the world.


eBooks should be way less than regular books people.

Have every regular book come with an eBook in a sleeve in the back or have a code printed in it that allows for a free download of the book.

Why this last bit? Best of both worlds for people who like physical books. You get the physical book with all of its advantages, plus you get the eBook with all of the searching, bookmarking, cross referencing possibilities.

Stop thinking about how to milk the people. We are not your cows and goats. Give the people a product that will make things better for them and settle for an honest, decent profit while doing so.

drew

Check my NaNoWriMo Novel in progress:
http://dangernovel.blogspot.com/
Danger - A Safe Bahamian Novel

NaNoWriMo around the corner...

Well,

I just got my ML email for this year's NaNoWriMo this morning. If I am going to make a good run at things this year, I feel like I will need to go into November with more of a plot and character plans than I have done so far.

Hey people from the Bahamas... why not take a shot at writing a novel of your won this November? Join the fun... join the pain...

all the best,

drew