I’ve wrapped up production on the new EP by The Color Truth after a trip to LA last week for mastering with the incomparable Gavin Lurssen, and I have to say that of all the artist projects I’ve been involved in, this set of songs made the greatest leap from expectation to final result.

To start with, we had no history together, and the guys in the band had no real experience in a recording studio working with a producer…

There’s a great post at New Music Strategies by Andrew Dubber about piracy in the music business (hat tip : Derek Sivers).

I share Dubber’s opinion that making copies of songs or records for friends, putting a copy on your hard drive, making your own mixtape-style recordable CDs for a road trip… these things are legally acknowledged as unauthorized duplication, but fall far short of actual piracy.

Quite an amazing time in the music business… those quaint yesteryears of ’selling out’ are but faint memories - not that I have a problem with Groove Armada making this deal. I say grab what you can, good for them.

As I’ve often said… it’s easy to say you’ll never sell out when no one’s making any offers (thanks, Mark!).

Brought up to speed, per usual, via Hypebot.

In between deadlines, paperwork, file conversion, and mix tweaks, we decided to spend Friday afternoon at Burst HQ making our own online mixtapes of our favorite music using the über-fun Web-Tool-Of-The-Moment, Muxtape.com.

Full post at the Burst Labs blog here, and here’s my personal Muxtape.

It’s a tough task to limit my favorite songs to 12 selections… oh well. I’d change my mind by next week anyway.

Too much fun, yet simplicity rules the day. So perfect. I wonder how long til they get hit with a cease-and-desist order…

I am left absolutely speechless.

This is mindblowing. No idea how this is even possible, but then the miracle of flight still amazes me.

There’s more by Matt at our Burst HQ recording studio site.

Thanks for the 16-year thrill ride, Brett. We cheeseheads have no idea how good we’ve had it for so long. My entire adult life has been spent cheering you on and watching you struggle, learn from your mistakes, try again, scrap and fight through hardship and heartbreak, and eventually celebrate as a true champion.

I am proud to be a Packer fan, and I even appreciate your moments of personal struggle that provided a chance to explain to my kids what being a Man meant. Respect, humility, commitment, leadership by example. Acknowledge your mistakes, grow, move on.

Bruce Wayne’s father in Batman Begins : “And why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.” You did that very thing, time and time again, and I am grateful.

In related news… a state-wide suicide watch in Wisconsin is in effect until October. We’ll need to see a solid first month of football from Mr. Aaron Rodgers before relief washes over us, I’m guessing.

I previously posted at Burst Labs about Seth Godin and the music business, but this new video of him speaking at Columbia Records is an absolute Must Watch for anybody in the biz (see vid below, or @ google).

EDIT 2/27 - apparently the video is unavailable until further notice via Seth’s site.

EDIT 3/3 - full transcript posted at Seth’s blog as a PDF

Seth says “the music business is in trouble” because all of the factors that made the industry the Perfect Business are completely changed, all of the old rules don’t apply - but more people are listening to music than ever before.

If you are an independent artist looking to build your career - your brand - he offers so many great ideas here it boggles the mind.

One thing the majors do have on us independents is the size of their bankroll. By virtue of their sheer size, they can create a new paradigm for sharing, or a new way of ‘identifying with your tribe,’ to use some Godin-speak. However, it definitely takes large ships a lot longer to change course, and the majors are the epitome of large ships. Independent artists who can direct their (relative) tugboats around the treacherous ocean that is the music business in 2008 will certainly be rewarded handsomely, and their fans should be stoked, as well.

Just back from seeing U2 3D, the new concert movie from National Geographic and 3eality Digital featuring my favorite band and some pretty breathtaking 3-dimensional visual technology.

Aside from wishing the theater audio system would have been cranked up another 10 or 12 db, I suppose I enjoyed the movie, though it was certainly not soul-shaking or emotionally engaging in a way that replicates the live concert experience.

I went with my brother and a friend of his, and we found ourselves surrounded by people ready for a movie. Popcorn. Soda. 3D glasses. And nary a peep of excitement… no clapping, no screaming, no singing along.

I wouldn’t have thought to expect that behavior, but I took a moment to think about it as the credits rolled and realized it made perfect sense… we were, after all, seeing a movie.

A concert movie, but just a movie.

Being separated from each other by the thick sides of the plastic glasses we were forced to wear (to perceive the effect of visual depth… though the picture without glasses was, oddly, not unwatchable) meant having to turn your head to see anything other than the picture. Maybe the hoped-for effect is more pronounced in the IMAX version - I saw it in a Dolby Digital cinema with a regular movie screen.

Without the benefit of standing through the entire show and singing along, smelling the air, feeling the sound system thundering the earth beneath us… it just felt more like a display of technology than an impactful concert. A really cool display of technology, but a display nonetheless.

The shots above the drumkit were most impressive - all of the different surfaces and depths available at a set of drums really made the 3D effect pop off the screen.

My favorite use of the movie’s 3D effects probably had the least to do with the band :

The first song of the encore features gobs and gobs of 3D text effects, layered over and behind the concert visuals. Having computer generated effects blended with live footage really made the front layers come to the fore, and navigating with the camera lens along a path through these graphics was nothing short of extraordinary. It seems to me this is the real applicable future of this particular 3D technology, and I can only imagine what a director such as Michel Gondry would be able to pull off given these new tools to work with.

If you love U2 and love technology, you’ll probably like U2 3D.

I do, and I did.

I don’t think I’d characterize any of my decisions in the past as regretful. Though some have meant considerable emotional pain and general discomfort, all have brought me to who I am today and I’m pretty damn happy, all things considered.

It is interesting to evaluate your own response, however, when asked “What you would tell your 15-year-old self if you had the opportunity?” as Gaper’s Block does. It was certainly worth a look, and a few minutes of my time today were spent examining the possibility of past regrets.

A great quote from Lucille Ball on the topic… “I would rather regret the things that I have done than the things that I have not.”

Yup yup… the new site design is here! Thanks to Cory Duncan for the fast WordPress implementation and for deciphering this particular amateur designer’s Photoshop files.

So expect some oddities around these parts for the next few days… not exactly sure how much time this will take, as we’re in the middle of some pretty major updates at Burst right now, too. If you run across a broken link or goofy image, feel free to drop me a line. Much appreciated!