exploremusic

Here’s the Deal with Facebook and Music

The connections between social networking and music keep getting deeper and stronger.  In fact, there was an event called Social Networking Week in Toronto and Friday afternoon I had a speaking gig on this very subject.

You would think by now that Facebook would be deeper into music than they are—and they have tried to work something out, including a free music service, but nothing much came of it.

Recently, though, some people noticed an application that popped up when you log on and check Facebook’s “Edit Applications” screen.  For a while, there was a music app right at the top of the list. It didn’t do anything, but it got some geeks wondering.

The app is gone now, but you have to wonder if Facebook is worried about MySpace and their purchase of iLike, which is a really popular music thing to use on Facebook.  Right now, it’s a small thing, but it could indicate the sorts of things Facebook is thinking about when it comes to music and social networking.

Here’s the Deal with Italy Attacking YouTube

Here’s a really dumb idea.  The government of Italy wants to pass some laws that would make sites like YouTube liable for copyright infringements made by users.  In other words, if a kid from Milan posts something that contains copyrighted material like a song—knowingly or unknowingly—the aggrieved party could sue YouTube. 

People do this all the time.  Every minute, 20 hours of new video is uploaded to YouTube.  Who can police all that?

But that’s just part one.  Italy also wants to make services like YouTube responsible in cases where someone uploads something libellous and slanderous.

Let’s deconstruct this a bit.  Who’s the prime minister of Italy?  Silvio Berlusconi.  Doesn’t he own a lot of Italian media properties?  Hasn’t he been the subject of all kinds of scandals that have a lot of Italians going crazy?  Everything from call girls to hair transplants, all tracked by both the mainstream media and everyday people using services like YouTube.  And the dude is making sure he has legal immunity against everything.

It gives you pause about this whole thing against services like YouTube, doesn’t it?

Here’s the Deal with Kurt Cobain’s ADHD

And finally, everyone knows about Kurt Cobain’s issues.  The dude was a major druggie and in the end, that’s what killed him.  When he was a kid, he was diagnosed as being hyperactive—ADHD—and, as was the treatment back then, they hopped him up on Ritalin.

Interesting new study out of Britain this week.  It suggests two things about people with ADHD.  One:  the same genes associated with ADHD are the ones that involve suppressing risk—taking behaviour.  That can lead to all kinds of self-destructive and reckless things. 

But they also allow people to hyper-focus on things that interest them, including creative pursuits.  It’s the ADHD that allows the genius hidden within to flourish.  According to this study, Thomas Edison and Mark Twain wouldn’t have been able to do what they did without their ADHD.  And according to Professor Michael Fitzgerald of Trinity College Dublin, there wouldn’t have been a Nirvana without Kurt’s ADHD.  It allowed him to hyper-focus on music—and we all remember how that turned out, right?