David Battino and Kelli Richards

“Let’s suppose I wanted to invite almost every leading mind in the field of digital music over to my house for an evening dedicated to the exchange of new ideas. The list would include many of my friends, contemporaries, and professional heroes. I would make it very informal — cushy chairs, good food, great conversation. And I would be sure to have David Battino and Kelli Richards send out the invitations, for obviously no one can resist them.”   
-- Jack Douglas, producer (Aerosmith, Cheap Trick, John Lennon)

With an seductive introduction like that, I couldn't resist interviewing my old friends Kelli Richards and David Battino, the co-authors of the Art of Digital Music (Backbeat Books, 2005), about the future of music, technology and, most intriguingly, silence.

Listen to Keen, Richards and Battino

TEXT OF CONVERSATION

Andrew Keen:  Today I’m very fortunate to have two of the--the leading experts on digital music--Kelli Richards and David Battino, the authors of The Art of Digital Music, a great book of interviews, and both in their own rights experts in a number of  areas when it comes to the production and distribution of digital music. So welcome Kelli and David; thanks very much--

Kelli Richards:  Thanks Andrew.

Andrew Keen:  --for spending some time with me. Before we start, why don’t one of you, or perhaps both of you, define what digital music is?

Kelli Richards:  Want to start?

David Battino:  Yeah; I guess we’re--before the interview we were talking about different ways you can use digital music, so that’s probably where to begin. Kelli’s background is more in the business side and distribution side; mine is more in the production of digital music, so maybe start with the production--.

Andrew Keen:  Great, yes; start--start--start with the--the background and then move onto the business and distribution side with Kelli. So David you start.

David Battino:  The basic idea is that you’re taking something in the real world--analog changing quality and dividing it up into a bunch of snapshots; they can then be stored and duplicated perfectly and once you’ve got it in that form that’s the exciting thing for me about digital music--that you can just do anything with it; you can make perfect copies, you can transform it in amazing ways and you’re not limited anymore in the way that music existed in the--in the real world.

Andrew Keen:  I have a--a friend who will remain nameless, a Berkeley recording engineer who is an idealist who argues until he’s blue in the face that analog recording devices are better than digital and that digital has resulted in sort of impoverishing the quality of recording music. Well what--what do you say to people like that and I know that there are quite a lot of people in the recording industry who take that position.

Kelli Richards:  Hmm; uh-hm.

David Battino:  It’s--it’s been an ongoing debate; I mean digital music has been around since the early ‘70s and in the beginning even up until maybe the last--five years ago it was really bad sounding. It was mostly sold on convenience; when the CD came out you didn’t have to mess around with the tone arm anymore and you didn’t have to worry about your--your records degrading the way you did with--with vinyl. But it really didn’t sound that good; and I agree with that. I think in the last few years if you talk to most--certainly most of the people we talked to in the book who have real golden ears they’d come out and say that it’s--the differences are so close that they’re not really worth talking about anymore.

Kelli Richards:  And yet to Andrew’s point, there are some die-hards, who refuse to come into the realm of digital music, and they would not be in the book for that reason and those were people like Tom Scholz of Boston who in his own right is also a Producer and a Developer of different recording devices and such.

David Battino:  Hmm.

Kelli Richards:  He--he’s a die-hard analog guy; so some people will just hold to that.

David Battino:  Or Bob Moog for example.

Kelli Richards:  Yeah.

David Battino:  Yeah; I mean--

Kelli Richards:  The same thing; yeah.

David Battino:  --one of the points that came out of the book is that it--there’s a lot of attention being paid to the tools where what’s really important is the convenience and at the end of the day most of the top producers we talked with would have taken a great performance over a--a perfect sound.

Kelli Richards:  And the other thing of course is that they get to work from their homes now; many of them have built up studios in their homes and they don’t have to go outside or--like around the world to go record.

Andrew Keen:  David, maybe you can say something about the way in which digital music has democratized the recording business because I know there are a lot of visionaries who believe that we’re the digitalization of music. Now anyone with a guitar or a musical instrument and a voice can essentially become their own record label.

David Battino:  Well when I started out right after college, I--I got a job in a giant recording studio in LA and to get in there you have to spend thousands of dollars a day just to rent the room; before you could record you’d have to take a tiny green screwdriver and calibrate these tape decks for half an hour to get them lined up and able to record; and then you’d have to buy a--a two-inch reel of analog tape for--. My studio price since I was an employee was about $125 for 12 minutes of recording and now all that--I mean you’ve got right on the table here in front of us a device that’s recording at 24-bit, 96 kilohertz--.

Andrew Keen:  That by the way is the M Audio Micro-Track device that we’re actually using for all the Digital Vertigo broadcasts.

David Battino:  It’s the size of a cigarette pack; the equivalent technology we had when I was in the recording studio was $250,000; so right there you’ve got you know $250,000 down to--

Andrew Keen:  Three-fifty.

David Battino:  --three-fifty--whatever you paid for this.

Kelli Richards:  Exactly.

Andrew Keen:  And the thing that sort of comes out of that is--now I know your book is--is a series of interviews with leading proponents of the--of recording digital music. Is there always going to be a high-end; is there always going to be the need to have recording studios as--as you have more and more sophisticated technology in cigarette packet sizes for three--or three or four hundred dollars?

Kelli Richards:  I think--I think not; I think digital music is rendering traditional recording studios obsolete over the long-term because unless you have a need to bring in full-on orchestra or something it’s far more economical for a--a group, a band, or their producer or both to have studios in their homes, and it’s now doable physically and financially. That’s my two cents.

David Battino:  Acoustic still comes into though; I think the reason that a lot of people will go to a pro-studio is to record drums or record something that you can't easily do in a bedroom.

Andrew Keen:  Is it an art though--recording music and I mean is it a high art?

David Battino:  Absolutely.

Kelli Richards:  I believe it is; yes. I mean you have to have ears; you have to you know really know what you’re doing in a studio. You’ve got to know how to manage the equipment and the musicians and the instruments. It’s--it is most certainly an art.

Andrew Keen:  So if you give one of the guys in your book the three or four hundred dollar recording studio in a box they can actually produce something and probably acquire high quality?

David Battino:  Yeah.

Kelli Richards:  I use the Stewart example of the Garage Band.

David Battino:  Oh you can use--yeah; go ahead.

Kelli Richards:  Yeah; so Stewart Copeland wrote the forward to our book, Stewart—once of the Police and he’s now an Emmy award-winning film composer with his own setup in his home in you know Southern California. He--we gave him a laptop when he spoke at a Macintosh Conference a year or so ago and along with that Garage Band came with it and overnight he mastered the use of the Garage Band software and had a fabulous new tool as a composer at his disposal. I mean this is the kind of thing that someone like that with that talent can really take advantage of.

Andrew Keen:  And by the way, Stewart Copeland has a great plug for--for David and Kelli’s book on his website. What is that--at www.copeland.com?

David Battino:  I think it’s www.copeland.net.

Andrew Keen:  Oh okay.

Kelli Richards:  Yeah.

David Battino:  www.stewartcopeland.net.

Andrew Keen:  So Kelli, why don’t we talk then about the distribution of digital music.

Kelli Richards:  Right.

Andrew Keen:  And what--what does it mean to--why--why has the digitalization of music revolutionized and undermined the traditional music business?

Kelli Richards:  Well quite--quite frankly because as technology has developed it allows consumers to get the music they want on demand--anywhere, any time, on any device; that has become the new standard. So the only way to really do that vast distribution of music is digitally--online and in other resources and we’re seeing the whole industry take off, 10 years after we originally predicted that it would.

Andrew Keen:  So--so in very simple terms and I’m--I’m sure most of our listeners are aware of this but there still may be some people who are little bit confused with what it means--people can essentially download the--the digits over a computer--

Kelli Richards:  The one--

Andrew Keen:  --or even over a telephone--

Kelli Richards:  Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Keen:  --even a telephone device in--instead of going to a traditional record store.

Kelli Richards:  That’s correct; and they also have of course far greater access to what they want and far more titles of anything they want that would never be stocked in a record store.

Andrew Keen:  Very briefly, there have been a series of civil wars really within the record business between the labels and the various internet start-ups--Napster, Kazaa, and so on and so forth; how would you generalize in business and commercial terms about what has taken place over the last 10 years since--since really the birth of the internet in the mid-‘90s?

Kelli Richards:  Right; well since--since I was in the middle of it back then I think I can speak to it pretty straight on. And that is to say--and I come from a background of being at a major label and then at Apple Computer for--for--

Andrew Keen:  Right; which label were you at?

Kelli Richards:  EMI.

Andrew Keen:  Right.

Kelli Richards:  And then was 10 years at Apple in charge of music; so my perspective from those years is that the labels really didn’t want to let go of their cash cow. For 50 years there was only one way music was distributed and was able to reach consumers and that was through the major labels. And they controlled it outright. When Napster and other--MP3.com and other online services become available starting you know five--six years ago, this was a real threat to the record labels; they tried to stuff the genie back into the bottle and they failed. And now it’s--it’s taken off like you know gangbusters. It’s--that’s how it is now; that’s the new standard and the labels have had no choice but to embrace it and find ways to work with it. And in fact embrace it as a new revenue stream even as their CDs are declining; their online sales are growing, so they’re really seeing that they’ve got no choice but to embrace and learn how to master it.

Andrew Keen:  So are you arguing that the music business now is more vibrant and more commercially hardy than it was five years ago?

Kelli Richards:  Well there’s--there’s the record business and then there’s the music business, and yes--

Andrew Keen:  Right; how would you distinguish between those two?

Kelli Richards:  Well the record business is simply the making and--and selling of CDs.

Andrew Keen:  Which is obviously in crisis?

Kelli Richards:  Indeed; whereas the music business includes everything artists are doing--online with concerts, live events, etcetera--touring.

Andrew Keen:  I--right; I know… Leonard is--is a good friend of yours--

Kelli Richards:  He’s a collaborator yeah.

Andrew Keen:  He--he sort of--he imagines the future of the music business in which artists package up their assets, the music and various other--

Kelli Richards:  And the brand--yes; I would totally agree. Artists have never had more freedom because of digital music; they now have a chance to--they have far more freedom; they can reach more people on a global basis; they can try new things online; they can take on more of their own revenue streams; they can extend their brand. It’s--it’s a golden opportunity for us.

Andrew Keen:  For--for artists who are not familiar with the digital terrain where would you suggest they begin? Where would you start doing your research in terms of figuring out how to build a brand?

David Battino:  Hmm.

Kelli Richards:  Well it starts by having a savvy manager in part because many artists are very talented musically but they’re not as savvy in--in some cases on the business side.

Andrew Keen:  But isn't that a sort of chicken and egg thing that sometimes you can only get a manager when you have sort of a marketing--?

Kelli Richards:  Not necessarily, no; I’ve--I’ve known artists that were just getting started find people that were willing to work with them. Look at the Beatles for example [Laughs]; you know.

Andrew Keen:  Right.

Kelli Richards:  And--and that’s just it; the manager has the gift of the business side to extend the artist brand and marketing opportunities. That’s their job.

Andrew Keen:  Right.

David Battino:  I was thinking of something that Albee Galuten said in the book. He was the renounced producer who had 18 number one hits.

Kelli Richards:  Including Saturday Night Fever; he was the Producer.

David Battino:  [Laughs] Yeah, all the way back to the Bee Gees.

Andrew Keen:  Why by the way is--he’s always seemed to me to be one of the--the most sort of hard-lined resistant--resistors to the digital music revolution.

Kelli Richards:  Hardly--hardly; he’s one of the pioneers. He developed the enhanced CD standard; he worked on the very first interactive music CDs; he was an Executive at Universal Music Group and now it’s Sony. So he’s quite a pioneer in this arena.

Andrew Keen:  Right; I guess it’s politically that really depends what--.

Kelli Richards:  Indeed--indeed; yes, in his case.

David Battino:  Well his comment was that before someone who is discovered on the internet they’ll be discovered locally; that you saw--there’s no short-cut to that--that side of that.

Kelli Richards:  That you’ve got to come up from a regional following before you can take off.

Andrew Keen:  So you’ve just got to play local cafes and clubs and bars.

Kelli Richards:  Got to play a lot; build a following, yeah--no short-cut to that.

Andrew Keen:  And you--you don’t get famous on the internet in other words?

Kelli Richards:  Not--no. No one’s broken an artist per se on the internet in a decade since we’ve had it at our disposal--not yet anyway.

David Battino:  And things like American Idol are still working to make stars but the--the new system of the internet is not quite reaching that yet.

Kelli Richards:  That’s right; no.

Andrew Keen:  So--so talk a little bit about the book. I personally found it a--a fascinating window into the art of digital recording. It’s made up of a series of interviews with--with notable figures in the field. Tell me about what readers can expect to find in the book.

Kelli Richards:  Well it’s rather a treasure trove. I’ll start and David can chime in; it’s rather a treasure trove of interviews of say 56 top artists, producers and insiders on the business side of the music industry, especially focused on digital music of course, and it really is insights that they want to share about their views and visions and what’s worked for them and how technology has made an impact on their work. You want to add to that?

David Battino:  Yeah; it’s really--I like to describe it as a remix actually. We--we did--

Andrew Keen:  Hmm; I like that idea.

David Battino:  --these 56 interviews and then chopped them up and threw it up in the air like George Martin with the--the Beatles tapes and you know spliced it together into something that approaches cocktail party conversation, so it--when you look at the book initially you’ll see there appear to be only two pages for each of the 56 people, but actually the--the themes are woven throughout into this--the second half of the book is this giant cocktail party conversation.

Kelli Richards:  And then of course there’s a fabulous DVD with tons of excerpts and out-takes and all kinds of good stuff.

Andrew Keen:  And they’re fascinating I think interviews with people you wouldn’t--one, me personally wouldn’t--wouldn’t necessarily expect to see in a book like this, guys like Steve Reich, the post-modern composer; Ray Kurzweil, the visionary. Talk a little bit about the--the high points intellectually for you in the book and what are the most memorable sort of anecdotes about what people said or didn’t say.

David Battino:  The thing that--that really struck me was how much a lot of these people have in common. When--when we were talking to Alan Parsons he mentioned that he had just been working with the Crystal Method which is another group that we had interviewed a few weeks earlier and I had no idea they had that connection. But Parsons is actually learning something from the Crystal Method and he had this great anecdote about how the computer mouse is not--is designed for only one hand but the Crystal Method is a group with two people who are very much involved and the way they make music is by tag-teaming. So--and Alan was producing their album--I guess they’re doing a track on his new album; he was watching them work and one guy, Scott would come in and work on the piece for a bit and then he would go and get a cup of tea, as Alan described and then the other guy, Ken would come over and he would work on the piece. So they’re having this tag-team collaboration.

Andrew Keen:  Wow.

Kelli Richards:  So it’s really--it really highlights the creative process from all these different people’s perspective.

Andrew Keen:  Alan Parsons, I interviewed for Digital Vertigo; he’s become I mean--openly fairly cynical about the future of the music business.

Kelli Richards:  Yeah; well you know these people have different personalities and perspectives of course--

Andrew Keen:  And probably when you talk to them it depends on what side of the--?

Kelli Richards:  Well indeed and that’s the part of it; but you know the other fascinating part to David’s point, the flipside of what he’s saying is that what we find is when we get them together, the people that we interviewed in the book for different book signings or events or what have you, they have a blast connecting with each other either because they’ve never met and they’ve admired each other’s work or because they have known each other and they’re learning something from one another.

Andrew Keen:  Where are the real--where are the real controversies in the book? Where do you expect people to react and say I don’t agree with that or I--?

Kelli Richards:  You know often in the business model side of things for sure in terms of where things are headed on the business front.

Andrew Keen:  Well give--could you give me some--?

Kelli Richards:  Well you know--

David Battino:  Subscription versus--?

Kelli Richards:  That’s always going to be going on--subscription versus single download sales and how much control the labels when all said and done versus artists having more on their own and you know the same controversies that are going on in the real world are--are mirrored in the book itself.

Andrew Keen:  Right, right.

David Battino:  There’s one instance I remember where one of the interviewees was actually screaming at me and that was--

Andrew Keen:  Who was that?

David Battino:  That was Marc Geiger when we--you had mentioned this before when we were talking about the value of silence and when--

Kelli Richards:  Kind of ironically. [Laughs]

David Battino:  Yeah; [Laughs] one of my favorite questions that I got to ask people was in the future do you think we’ll be paying for silence the way we now pay for music? Will that become more valued as--as the world starts to close in on us?

Andrew Keen:  Right.

David Battino:  And the majority of people agreed with me and they--even Brian Eno said that he would really like to see a collection of old records like they had back in jukeboxes where you’d put in your dime and you’d get a minute of silence and he’d like to you know catalog and collect all those different flavors of silence and--and put them together. But then Geiger just started screaming and saying that my problem was that I was just being overwhelmed by all the choices and that choice is a good thing but that my reaction was to cower and--and run away and what I really needed was a filter and not--not for things to step back. So that--that was--

Andrew Keen:  I think David’s idea on silence is fascinating. I remember I--I gave an interview when I was doing Audio Café to one of the local Bay Area newspapers and at one point I was sort of a rather self-promoting internet entrepreneur and I was doing Audio Café and I told this person in the future music would emerge from every--every orifice and I have unfortunately been quoted on that.

David Battino:  [Laughs]

Andrew Keen:  But I think your point is a very serious one in the sense that--on--on the one hand music is in crisis--the traditional industry; on the other hand music now is everywhere.

Kelli Richards:  That’s it; it’s been freed to go where it wants to go and be where it wants to be.

Andrew Keen:  Right; so everyone is trying to figure out how to make money but at the same time you know that--that box has been opened.

Kelli Richards:  Indeed.

Andrew Keen:  But David’s point about silence I think--it’s not only silence from music but silence--I guess silence from visual imagery will become perhaps a--a commodity, a thing of value in the future.

David Battino:  Or ring tones--that’s the most intrusive thing you can imagine.

Kelli Richards:  And yet it’s becoming such--you know it’s a billion dollar industry at this point--multi-billion dollar.

David Battino:  People love to annoy people I think.

Kelli Richards:  Well they love it because it’s you know--ring tones have become a factor of people’s lifestyles and their identities.

Andrew Keen:  What did Reich say on this because I’ve always loved Reich’s work and you know he really tries to integrate everyday sounds into his work?

Kelli Richards:  Right.

Andrew Keen:  What was his comment about that?

David Battino:  Well ask him about his piece City Life--

Andrew Keen:  Yeah, which is a fantastic piece.

David Battino:  He was walking around New York City where he lives with a DAT recorder and he said it was his way of kind of taming these sounds that always annoy him that--the screech of brakes or the hiss of the airbrakes on a truck and just the kind of retarded sounding speech [Yo--Yo--Yo--Yo] kind of--stuff like that, so he took these things and captured them and put them in his computer and then used a variety of programs he downloaded off the internet to transform them into musical tones and then you would mate them with oboes and he said--what’s the--the Porsche Horn had a very nice--it blended well with some other orchestral instrument, so he--he was using digital technology to shape his environment and make it say what he wanted.

Andrew Keen:  Yeah; I was--

Kelli Richards:  It’s a fantastic example of the creativity that came through in the people.

Andrew Keen:  I was doing an interview this week with Roger Linn, the inventor of the Linn Drum--of course in your book.

Kelli Richards:   Of course he’s in the book.

Andrew Keen:  And he was talking about the future of music in which you know instruments would have intelligence but what would distinguish the quality of music was the intellect behind them. And when you think of someone like Reich well everyone can get a DAT Recorder but not everyone has Reich’s ability--sort of the intellectual vision to carry it around New York and then put it together in a musical work.

Kelli Richards:  Right; that’s what’s so fascinating about what we found in the main is exactly the creativity that you would never know about that came out of the discussions that we had--that these people are deploying because of technology.

Andrew Keen:  What about Kurzweil because he’s--he’s quite a character.

Kelli Richards:  Yeah; he certainly is.

Andrew Keen:  He’s about the most radical--

Kelli Richards:  With the robotic stuff--

Andrew Keen:  --optimist of--of the future; what was his take on things?

David Battino:  Well he was--he was very confident. He said you know in 2029 we are going to reach the point when computers take over and you know artificial intelligence exceeds human intelligence and he had it all mapped out. But I think my favorite quote--

Andrew Keen:  Was he credible do you think?

David Battino:  Yeah; I mean he’s obviously studied it quite a lot.

Andrew Keen:  He didn’t talk about his vitamin pills or staying alive to--?

David Battino:  [Laughs] Yeah; I guess he--he did allow some of that in any visionary--

Andrew Keen:  And Eno because he’s--Eno seems to be perhaps of everybody the most--the most creative of the--of the sort of--the--the creative artists in this space.

Kelli Richards:  I’m not sure I’d put that label on him. I mean we--he was in good company you  know--certainly with Todd Rundgren and--and Alan Parsons and others you know; these guys have gone way out on the limb in many cases.

Andrew Keen:  Right.

Kelli Richards:  There’s no shortage of creativity in the people in this book.

Andrew Keen:  So moving on from the book and I would strong suggest that everyone gets hold of it; how would they buy the book?

Kelli Richards:  The best way is on Amazon.

David Battino:  Or www.artofdigitalmusic.com.

Kelli Richards:  Yeah.

Andrew Keen:  Tremendous book--particularly for any aspiring artist or anyone interested in becoming a recording engineer. It costs--whatever it costs is an infinite amount compared to what it would cost you to get--to go to--to--to do a course in digital recording.

Kelli Richards:  Yeah; it’s reasonably priced and as I say a great discount on Amazon.

David Battino:  Thank you.

Andrew Keen:  So I’d like to make--take this as a segway into also the--the future of the artists in the modern world. I know Kelli you’re--you’re putting on a very interesting event with Bob Geldof and Bono in the future. And I’m interested in you--in talking about the event and also talking about how the place of artists in the if you like, the digital world, will change as--as this--

Kelli Richards:  Right.

Andrew Keen:  --entertainment economy evolves?

Kelli Richards:  Well so to clarify the point about you know the Geldof-Bono thing, there’s a venture I’m putting together called Music in Action and it’s designed to be a bridge between the music industry, major artists, and humanitarian causes year-round. So it’s kind of like what Bob did with--Bob Geldof did with Live Aid--except year-round, going where the cameras don’t go or staying there when the cameras are gone, etcetera to impact the many tragedies and disasters that are going on constantly around our--our globe. The goal is--with regard to Geldof and Bono that they will be Book-End Ambassadors and this will be something that’s done in conjunction with the UN and the Red Cross. It’s in the very earliest stages; so that’s about all I can tell you at this point but it’s definitely that I think artists will want to be a part of because when artists have reached a certain level of success they want to give back to humanitarian causes, and when they did--witness Live Aid’s results--we have massive effect that can happen.

Andrew Keen:  And it--it seems like artists now successfully--successfully branded artists really have the ability to crossover from culture into politics. If anything they have more power.

Kelli Richards:  And you see that in Bono. Yeah.

Andrew Keen:  You know Bono can you know--he can be friendly with Clinton, with Gorbachev, with Bush, and manage to get you know--manage to make things happen in a very big way internationally.

Kelli Richards:  Indeed; yes, yeah, so that’s the whole effort with that--that project. What was the other half of your question?

Andrew Keen:  Well I’m interested in sort of Bono as a--as a paradigm for--for the way in which you know the artists of the 21st Century are going to live their lives and deploy their power and influence.

Kelli Richards:  Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Keen:  I mean do you see Bono as one of these people who sort of--establishing a new paradigm for the artists?

Kelli Richards:  No.

Andrew Keen:  I mean in a sense he’s like John Lennon but--

Kelli Richards:  Indeed, very much so.

David Battino:  Hmm.

Andrew Keen:  But--but he’s actually making things happen. I know Lennon is one of his big heroes.

Kelli Richards:  Yes; and Lennon made a lot happen and would have made a lot more happen had he been around, so I would use that as a very good analogy and high praise. I do think that many artists are looking to him as sort of a light bearer of--sort of a role model of where they want to heads in terms of philanthropy and I think a lot more are moving in that direction in addition to starting their fashion lines or whatever else it is they’re doing to extend their brands. [Laughs]

Andrew Keen:  Well it--it just seems to me that especially with this digitalization of culture that artists have more and more power if--if they choose to have it. I mean--

Kelli Richards:  Uh-hm; they certainly do. It’s--it’s leveled the playing field--technology has in terms of them being able to take what they do and extend it in new ways.

Andrew Keen:  So David, I know you’ve also recently written an interesting article about the flow of digital music which is--where is it published?

David Battino:  That’s on my Blog on www.o’reilly.com. This grew out of a volunteer project I was doing where I was going into a third grade classroom and teaching the kids how to do computer music and computer video. It’s really interesting because almost all of the schools I’ve seen have computers but none of the teachers know how to use them and they’re still--they still feel intimidated by them. So what I did was I was showing the kids how to make a--a digital slideshow and I couldn’t even call it a slideshow because the kids had never seen analog film before, so we called it the digital photo show and I had--after they picked out their photos which they brought in I had them bring in a personal piece of music and most of them because they’re still so young, they’re maybe eight years old, were still picking things that their parents recommended, so you’d get a lot of Beach Boys and things like that--that--the Beatles that--didn’t really seem to speak with them. But one--one boy brought in this mixed CD that his older brother had made and he didn’t know what the songs were but we were able to take one off the CD and put it on, and I found it really catchy and he didn’t know what the names were, so when I went home that day I looked up the--one of the lyrics on Google and that led me through a long chase to this site for victims of horrible diseases and there I--I found the name of the song. It was Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day.

Andrew Keen:  Right.

David Battino:  And there was a note up on the website that within the--the song lyrics there was the “F” word, so the guy was not printing it on the page. And I thought uh-oh; this is not going to work for a third-grade class.

Andrew Keen:  We can use--we can say the “F” word on afterTV

David Battino:  Okay; well the interesting thing was it was used more adjectively; it wasn’t used as an epithet.

Andrew Keen:  Right.

David Battino:  But I thought since this is a school project the parents probably wouldn’t appreciate it you know them coming home.

Andrew Keen:  Right; I see.

David Battino:  So what I did was I--I searched again and I found an MP3 of a song on some Russian site and went through some contortions, downloaded that, loaded it into my Audio Editor and I was able to snip out just the--the one bar where that word occurred and the--the tools now are so nice that it just automatically cross-faded on either side of the snip so it was indistinguishable. It wasn’t like the typical FM radio edit.

Andrew Keen:  So you really are--

Kelli Richards:  Yeah; I mean try--try to do something like that 10 years ago.

David Battino:  So from the lyric I was able to find the actual recorded song and then transform it into something I wanted. But the problem was on this Russian site the quality of the MP3 was really, really bad.

Kelli Richards:  Questionable?

Andrew Keen:  Right.

David Battino:  So I went to the iTunes Music Store, downloaded the song with the one click; that was actually the only time I’ve ever bought something from them [Laughs], and but that’s protected and you can't do anything with it. So I used another freeware program to extract the audio from that--

Kelli Richards:  Yeah; you can--you can work around that.

David Battino:  And there I had it again; I had--I was able to use the music in the educational way and it just--it kind of highlighted to me the flow of music. It flowed from a CD to a lyric to a series of websites until finally this presentation that all the kids could enjoy.

Andrew Keen:  Well what I’ve always liked about talking to you guys is--you really, I think more than almost anyone I know, appreciate the power of music. It brings to mind the story in 1992 in Sarajevo during the Civil War in Yugoslavia and Bosnia when after one particularly horrific event when--I think a market was bombed. The next day a member of the Sarajevo Orchestra walked down to the place where the--the bomb happened and sat down with his--his--his violin and played an adagio--a very emotional adagio sort of making a statement about how music is so sort of quintessentially human. As a--as an end to this I think excellent interview, do you want to just give any sort of anecdote which to you epitomizes the power of music, whether it’s digital or analog or something else that we can't even imagine?

Kelli Richards:  Oh boy; I--I think that’s just it. I mean you’ve hit on it, Andrew. Music is the universal healer. It’s the thing that bridges cultures and connects everybody and is, always has been, always will be; that’s why it’s so powerful.

David Battino:  I think one of the transformative experiences I had was going to a Rolling Stones concert in Japan and I looked around and there were 50,000 people with black hair. This is before everyone dyed their hair brown in Japan but--and they were singing along with foreign words in their own accent of course, but something had touched an alien culture and motivated them on the mass to sing out at once. And that just really showed me how a-music can transcend boundaries.

Kelli Richards:  Yeah; they probably didn’t even understand what they were singing but it didn’t matter.

Andrew Keen:  Probably the same as the Rolling Stones, right?

David Battino:  [Laughs]

Kelli Richards:  [Laughs]

Andrew Keen:  On that note thanks very much and I look forward to having you guys on the show again. And again, I strongly suggest everyone go out and get David’s and Kelli’s book. Thanks very much.

Comments

[David Battino]

Thanks, Andrew. I enjoyed reliving our discussion. By the way, here's the story about chasing a hit song all over the Net and then breaking the copy protection so I could use it in an educational setting: "When a 9-year-old handed me an F'd-up CD to fix, the astonishing malleability of digital music really hit home."

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/7015

--David