The More Things Change, The More They're Different

Point 01: Metallica still doesn't get it
Point 02: Vinyl is coming back (no, thankfully not in fashion)
Point 03: The back to the future of RAM

Usually I am not one to beat a dead horse, but when one is passionate about something or when a particular story touches on a personal note, one must check their equine sympathy at the door and give that bleeding beast at least one more, good whack. After my last post about Metallica's leap into new media I thought the band is finally turning the corner on the Napster brouhaha, but this week a strange feeling of déjà vu swept over me as the boys from SF again managed to get themselves into the news after their management got into an unnecessary and ill-advised battle with the music blogosphere.

Coming off what must have been an amazing high after nearly completing a long-awaited follow-up to... let's say ...And Justice for All, the band's representatives hosted a listening party in London for a selected group of music journalists. The bloggers were not specifically told not to write about what they heard, and they were not asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement. Following that, much to the chagrin of Metallica's wranglers, these online journalists happily did what they normally do, that is, they wrote a review (mostly positive) of the new album. This touched off a storm of calls and emails from Metallica's management demanding that the reviews be taken down. The bloggers complied, although not without some tongue-in-cheekiness.

As painful as it may be, Metallica needs to finally learn this lesson: don't piss off your audience; especially when they are in fact saying good things about your music. I sincerely hope that these unfortunate missteps were done without the guys' involvement, but instead were the brainchild of some 3rd-rate marketing ape. At a time when people have less and less attention to devote to any individual band, Metallica needs to generate some interest in their upcoming release. Having these bloggers share their thoughts on the new album would have done just that, but unfortunately the situation was completely mishandled and the Metallica name is once again tarnished as a result. Here's waiting for an apology, or at least an explanation.

Keeping with the theme of what once was old is new again, it appears that vinyl sales are on the rise. Shipments of LPs increased by 36% during the 2006-2007 period, while during the same period CD shipments decreased by 17%. It is hard to come up with a good explanation for this trend. It may very well be that the audiophile population is multiplying faster than previously predicted, however I tend to think that as music moves closer to an all-electronic format and delivery, some people yearn to get back to the days of cool album art and interesting liner notes, things that you just cannot get off of iTunes. While vinyl sales will likely never overtake those of newer formats (450 million CDs vs less than 1 million LPs in 2007) it may force publishers and distributors to provide more options and therefore value with digital music. These may include exclusive online content or the option to buy the CD jacket and liner notes separately from the music itself.

Finally, those who know their computer history (not many of you, I suspect) should recall that the second generation of RAM used a ferrite (magnetic) core to store 1s and 0s. Then integrated circuits came along and SRAM and DRAM came with them in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Magnetic cores were replaced by millions of transistors embedded in silicone chips. It seems now that things have come full-circle as Toshiba is close to perfecting a new type of RAM called MRAM. This RAM uses tiny magnetic elements to store bits. Because it uses magnets instead of transistors, MRAM is non-volatile. This means that like conventional, magnetic hard drives, it does not require a power source to hold on to the information that it stores. This yields some tremendous benefits such as a 90% reduction in power consumption and the ability to instantly boot an operating system. Toshiba estimates that MRAM will make conventional DRAM and SRAM obsolete around the year 2015.

There you have it, the cyclical nature of our universe reveals itself to us in all manners and forms.

"Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature's inexorable imperative."
- H. G. Wells

UPDATE: Here's what the man on the street thinks about the recent rise in LP sales.