Tag Archives: music

An industry out of control?

Through one of the feeds I watch I came across a story of a woman who sings to herself while working in a supermarket.

How could this make the news you ask? Well the Performing Right Society in the UK, the group who collects royalties, decided to contact her and threaten so sue her if she didn’t get a performance licence. She laughed thinking it was a joke. Funnily apparently it wasn’t. They were actually serious about wanting to sue her.

Where they see the gain is beyond me? Sue her for what exactly? She doesn’t make money from it. It isn’t even her job. But yet they tried…and then relented to public pressure once it became public knowledge.

Really you have to wonder what is going on in the music industry. Monopolies are a bad thing and I completely understand why even artists don’t like supporting the man!

Full article available here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/tayside_and_central/8317952.stm

Why I(we) wear headphones while working

I’m not ignorant and I do like talking to you, honest. But getting into the flow takes time and noise interrupts in. Music in the background has always seemed to help block out the annoying thing. Its why in the early morning or late evening, so much more work is done. Sure you know yourself, you may be in work from 9-6, but you really only get about 2 hours of good work done. And now here is why.

http://softwarenation.blogspot.com/2009/01/importance-of.html provided a pretty good but basic enough explanation of the brain and how it works in sections. Combine this with what I knew previously, and it makes a lot of sense.

While programming part A, the voice in your head part,  is running away with itself, swapping variables and the like, part B, the thinking part, is looking ahead and coming up with that creative code block you are about to write. Part C, the hearing part, is being kept nice and busy by the music coming in stopping other noise coming in and ending up in the thinking part. Because when it gets to the thinking part, it is like a big freight train hitting a mountain, it derails and looses all its cargo. You start down the hill on another track, what it was you heard and the further you go, the more you’ve left behind. And just like that big freight train, it takes a long time to get back up to speed on the hill, and you have to pick up all those information bits that you lost before.