It’s taken a lot longer than I had initially hoped, but today I was finally able to launch ccmlyrics.com, with an initial article looking at the lyrics to “What if His people prayed?” by the Casting Crowns.
Originally, CCMLyrics had been planned as a lyrics search engine and a friend and I actually spent a lot of time developing a rather sophisticated search technology that worked really well. That was about four years ago… we then realized that there was no way for us to legally make these lyrics available from our site and as Christians we felt that we should be setting an example and not breaking the law. So the domain(s) lay dormant for a long time, until earlier this year I decided to transform it into a blog on lyrics instead. It’s still loosely based on the original design, but updated to work with modern blogging software (running WordPress like this site). I’m very happy that it’s finally online and so I hope that many of the regular visitors here will also visit ccmlyrics.com frequently – maybe add it to your RSS feeds now.
I guess this means that in the future, you will find christian music reviews over on the new site, although I may still link to them from here as well for your convenience.
Technorati : ccm, christian, launch, lyrics, music, search
July 26th, 2006
It looks like some larger companies are starting to see the light and realizing that DRM is more of a burden than it has benefit to both consumers and content providers. In a symbolic move, Yahoo are now offering a DRM-free personalized MP3 download – you may think about the artist and the song what you want, but at least it’s a step in the right direction and the reasons that Yahoo gives for this initiative show that they are in fact serious about this.
“The only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform.” – that’s a strong statement, especially coming from a technology company that could easily jump on the DRM bandwagon and do the exact same thing. But it looks like Yahoo have realized that DRM comes at a cost that is much higher than the potential benefit and so this recent move is a warning shot in the direction of the record labels that still seem to think of DRM as the best thing since sliced bread. Instead, Yahoo suggests that offering better features, personalization etc. and the option to play the music on whatever platform they want to their customers is what they would like to do to add value to music downloads. I couldn’t agree more. As Yahoo put it so nicely, “Un-DRM’d content is implicitly more valuable to a consumer”.
Of course the success of Indie-music sites like Emusic, which have been selling un-DRM’d MP3s with increasing success, is also starting to threaten a DRM based business model, so it only makes sense for Yahoo to put some pressure on the labels to be allowed to start doing the same thing. But regardless of their motives, the move for more DRM-free downloads is a step in the right direction and should ultimately provide consumers with more freedom of choice. And maybe our cultural heritage will in the end be a bit less threatened than it seems to be at the moment. And that’s good news indeed.
Technorati : DRM, MP3, Yahoo, freedom, record labels
July 21st, 2006
Alive again and relatively well rested after two crazy nights spent on the road to and from Berlin, I’m finally ready to report on this weekend’s event of the year in the Olympic Stadium in Berlin. No, not the football finals, that was last week. I’m talking about “Calling all Nations“, a worship gathering initiated by Noel Richards that, after years of planning, finally took place last Saturday, a mere 6 days after the idols of sports had been worshipped in the same place.
Where should I begin? It’s so difficult after an event like this. There are a lot of superlatives that lend themselsves to being used, but I’ll try to restrain myself. There are also a whole lot of negative things that could be said and again, I will try to restrain myself, although a few things need to be said. But let’s start with an overview of what this day was.
We arrived way too early at around 6am, when gates opened at 9, so some of our group went off into Berlin to see some of the sights, while others (like me) spent some time sleeping (or trying to) on the bus. Anyway, at 9 we were let into the stadium, which I must say is an impressive sight, although it looks different without any grass in it. We had seats in the east curve, which is about as far away from the main stage as it gets, but then there were no seats that were really close to the main stage anyway. A smaller second stage was right in front of us, though and throughout the day performaces would alternate between those two stages. A little earlier than scheduled, the “Psalm Drummers” started the program at about 10.45 and from then on there was a steady rotation of worship leaders with some of them playing just one song and others a couple of songs, up to about a maximum playing time of half an hour. There were worship leaders from around 20 different countries (and visitors from 30 countries) and although the start was a bit slow, as the stadium filled up with what must have been more than 20.000 people (no official numbers I’ve heard, sorry) there was a growing sense of unity and enjoyment of worshipping God together.
There were only two short breaks the whole day and there were a few talks by different people and times to pray together afterwards, but the main focus was pretty much on worshipping God through songs. I enjoyed most of the music and I’m sure God enjoyed all of it. Of course, everyone has his favorites, so I will name a few worship leaders that I particularly liked. First off, there was YFriday, which I hadn’t seen live before and who did a great job right at the beginning of the day. Claas P. Jambor is always a treat, he only played one song (Open Skies), but it was great. Reuben Morgan (Hillsong) was fantastic. Delirious? as always played a solid set, but never really got out of “concert mode” – so it was good that the last time slot belonged to Matt Redman, who did a good job in wrapping up the day’s events and bringing us all together in worship once more.
The large variety of worship “artists” (I’m a bit reluctant to use that word…) was also one of the problems of the whole thing. At times it got quite hectic when there was a string of musicians just leading one song (which in many cases people didn’t know and couldn’t sing along to right away) and then handing over to the next person, who would play something in a completely different style. You’d have a band getting the audience fired up and celebrating, only to be followed by another artist starting a slow, quiet song that just didn’t seem to capture the atmosphere. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t the entire day that was like that, but it did happen more than once.
And then there’s the big question: what’s the point? Worshipping God together is great and something we are called to, yes. And we did that a lot. But the feeling remains that maybe (and especially with several years of planning) there should have been more. Somehow it feels to me like a tremendous chance was missed to use this event as a catalyst for… something. I don’t know what it is. Maybe I’m wrong and it wasn’t missed and I just didn’t get it. Right now it feels like we had a great day, certainly prayer and worship together and proclaiming the glory of God in this country will change things. But it doesn’t feel like something we’ll be telling our grandkids about one day… let’s hope that it’s just my faith that is too small.
Technorati : Berlin, Calling all Nations, Hillsong, Matt Redman, christian, event, music, worship
July 16th, 2006