By Tamara Harris

By now you have probably heard the buzz that is Pandora.  The newest addition to automated music recommendation and internet radio stations that have been popping up on the internet these last few years.  Pandora (created in January 2000 by the Music Genome Project headed by Will Glaser, Jon Kraft, and Tim Westergren), had an ultimate goal of ì[capturing] the  essence of music at the fundamental levelî using nearly 400 attributes to describe songs and complex mathematical algorithm to organize them.  Users of this service enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service then responds by playing selections that are similar to the song chosen by the user.  Each song that is entered is represented by a list of attributes containing approximately 150 ìgenesî.  Each gene corresponds to a characteristic of music.  Rock and pop songs are said to have approximately 150 genes, while rap songs have approximately 300 and jazz, 450.  Classical music generally have between 300 to 500 genes.
Pandora, and other automated music recommendation and internet radio stations have given rise to many complex legal issues in the field of copyright laws.  Because of this, web based radio stations generally pay double the amount in royalties to music companies than say satellite radio (traditional AM and FM radios air music for free).  Additionally, because Pandora and other stations like it would have to register songs in every country because of copyright laws, users outside of the United States are unable to use this service for it would be far to time consuming and costly to register each song in every country.  In July 2008 Pandora launched a mobile version of its services for the Apple iPhone and the Apple iPod Touch application.  Other carriers offer phones that enable use of Pandora as well (i.e. some BlackBerry Platforms).  Use of Pandora was free when it was first launched, now users may enjoy forty hours of free music play a month, and then once the forty hours have been used, the user must then pay .99 cents to continue to listen to music for the rest of that month.  Users may not repeat a song, and oneís ability to skip a song is limited to seven times per hour per station.
They actually do a good job of playing songs I like. If you do not like a song, you can give it thumbs down and they will never play it on your station again. Being a person who basically stopped buying music in 2001, and have been basically stuck in my grungy, 80s new wave, pop, boy band, oldies, classic rock, alternative, old school hip hop, new school rap phase for a while, Pandora has opened a new world of appreciation for music for me that I seemed to have lost in high school.  Pandora has renewed my lust for finding new music. Life is good again.  Everyone should try it out. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

By Tamara Cobain Harris

Those of us that were touched by Michael Jackson’s music will forever recall where we were at the moment we heard of his death, like many generations before us have remembered the deaths their legends or heroes. I, a Michael Jackson fan since birth, vividly remember my reaction to the news that he had passed away. Like millions of people around the world, I was in shock and denial. Ever since I was five years old, I had this strange belief that Michael Jackson was somehow immortal and would never die a human death, or I believed he would somehow use his money to possibly cryogenically freeze himself, and thus come back to earth later when scientist learned how to human soul and reconnect it with a human body…crazy, I know. But so was the life of Michael Jackson. Michael was larger than life. For some, Michael Jackson surpassed reality. Michael Jackson’s death left me devastated for weeks. I mainly cried because I imagined that Michael Jackson died sad, and alone and on the eve of his comeback.

Escaping the Michael Jackson drama has been nearly impossible. Michael Jackson proved to be even more of a popular subject of the media posthumously with concerns regarding the handling the distribution and maintenance of his massive estate. Despite the rumors that Michael Jackson is deeply in debt, his estate continues to make millions of dollars off of his own record sales and merchandise. But it turns out the estate also has an interest in another cornerstone of pop history. How will the sales from the new Beatles game effect Michael Jackson estate? Will sales from this game finally get Michael Jackson out of his supposed debt? What do the Beatles have to do with Michael Jackson? All good questions.

Many do not know about the relationship between the Jackson estate and the Beatles catalogue so

I will break down the story in a short but sweet manner. Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney, both at the height of their solo careers were really good palls. They were often seen together, shared many of the same interests, and even recorded the songs “Say Say Say” and “The Girl is Mine” together in the early eighties. However, it said that the duo’s relationship soured in 1984/85 when both decided to purchase the Beatle catalogue and ended up head to head in a bidding war for the rights to the Beatles song-copyright catalog. Michael won the war, paying approximately 47.5 million dollars for ownership to more than 200 songs. Negotiations for the bidding war lasted ten months. In later years, probably due in part to Jackson’s legal and financial woes, Jackson sold fifty percent of his ownership to the more than two hundred songs in the Beatles catalogue to Sony, giving them fifty percent of the ownership rights.

This brings us to the hugely successful video game series Rockband’s newest endeavor, The Beatles: Rockband. For those of you who have not had the pleasure of playing Rockband, it is a game where players can play songs on gamelike instruments connected to their television through a variety of game consoles, i.e. Nintendo Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox 360. These gamelike instruments include the bass, guitar, drums, and vocals along with popular songs ranging from the sixties to recently popular songs mainly from the “rock” genre and its various other formulations (classic, alternative, emo, etc). Rockband released its Beatles version of the game which consists of forty five Beatles songs (that would amount to nearly ¼ of the Jackson’s and Sony’s Beatles collection) on September 9, 2009 at fifty nine dollars a pop and have already seen sales of this game skyrocket.

Rockband decided that to “[keep] in the spirit of our first downloadable song, all proceeds for “All You Need is Love” will go to Doctors Without Borders, which provides aid in more than 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe. This humanitarian organization was personally selected by Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono Lennon, and Olivia Harrison.” So the question I pose to the world, did Michael Jackson himself have a say regarding the creation of this game? Did he agree to donate part of the funds to humanitarian organizations, and will his estate properly reap the benefits of this new iconic game?