Michael Farrie - entertainment, news & fun.

Why are the big copyright agencies for the record industry dead set against smaller broadcasters playing more than 2 or 3 songs by a single artist in a row or within an hour? and does this really achieve anything? (even looking at it from their point of view), I argue that it does not and look into the restriction here. Mixcloud which for years didn't seem to have this restriction at all has now hit uploaders with it as well. Want to play copyrighted songs over the interweb? you've got to ask these guys first, mmmkay! Internet radio and copyrighted music has been a bit of a contentious issue for the 2 decades or so since it became a thing, at first back in the Noughties the rights organisations both sides of the Atlantic who gatekeep copyrighted pop music etc were almost trying to suppress the whole concept entirely, and then the licences they did come up for "webcasters" came with a whole bunch of restrictions, that seemed to suck the fun and joy out of it  And ther...

Adverts are shite! And that's actually not because we're forced to have them in exchange for commercial TV channels and the programmes on them to exist at all, most of us kind of accept that, although adverts will always get in the way, the reason we hate them is simply because they ARE shite in the first place, if adverts were better they'd almost be as entertaining as watching the TV for the programmes in the first place! So why are nearly all TV adverts actually badverts or my favourite word to describe them, sadverts?  Let's take a look at Sky, who for years have provided more channels than you could get free with just a boring old TV aerial via a satellite in the Sky and made you pay to have your TV being able to look up at it and get the programmes and channels, then later you could record everything so you would never have to miss any TV, because that would be an absolute disaster if you ever missed anything. Now in the streaming age, the good folks at Sky TV are...