I personally prefer the model put forth by Reznor and Williams, you have two options:

• Pay nothing and get the album on 192kps mp3′s.
• Pay 5 bucks and get it in lossless (flac), or mp3′s at 320kps or 192kps.

I of course payed the 5 bucks, and got it in lossless. Those were the best spent 5 bucks in my life.Until I saw Trent Reznor post on Saul Williams, I had never heard of him, that does not mean he’s not a establish artist, I think he is, and if not he should, he is really good.

I believe all bands whether starting out or not (specially starting out) should embrace this model. For starters it’s a lot cheaper, than making a couple of thousands or hundred thousands copies of an album to sell on shows. You will also be available to a wider audience, and if you do a bit of research you can do marketing for your album for free. Now I do think you should charge for your album, and if you are inclined, you can give the album for free in 192kps, and charge for lossless quality.

But how much to charge? Well traditionally bands would, calculate to break even on the cost of making the album we would need to sell x amount of albums at y price, and hopefully get a benefit margin of z. Now this is a different medium. For starters you will never run out, or need to reprint CD’s they are always available, so you can still make money of an album, even if you have four more out. If you get your own domain, and host, your website + music + other info, you reduce cost. If you use services like lastfm you can market yourself as stated above, sending new/press clips to sites like boingboing and others you can effectively reach a bigger audience, than just old fashioned news paper, and word of mouth. By this I don’t mean you shouldn’t use the traditional mediums, by all means use everything and all at your disposal. So taking the above into account, I would recommend charging $US5.00, the highest I would go is $US10.00. I think a good margin of difference between the prices of CD’s and online media is needed to make this a success. Most CD’s are way overpriced.

This a brave new world for musicians, and instead of fearing it, you should embrace it and make it your own. The level of control in all ways and forms you can attain with this model, will only empower you to make a better living, and making better music for your fans.

By the way this is a must read, and yet another reason, why the stated above is a good idea.

Right now if you Google programmer vs. developer, you will get articles on how developers:

• Design the application from the ground up.
• Write specs, and documentation.
• Write test cases.
• Write unit tests.
• Write code.

Instead a programmer:

• Write codes.
• Fix bugs; if you are lucky.

Well I don’t know about you but that does not seems like a real picture to me. People can call themselves whatever they want, you can call yourself a programmer, developer, engineer etcetera. Hell there was guy at my former employer that referred to me as “Engineer”, let me tell you I’m not an Engineer don’t have the degree, don’t have the know how. The point is that the word developer to my knowledge is a relative new term, while programmer is a much older term. Maybe the reasons of such distinction is to differentiate the real programmers, from the posers? I don’t know.

The truth is that when I hear the world programmer I think of people like:

• Dennis Ritchie
• Ken Thompson
• Bjarne Stroustrup
• Bill Joy
• James Gosling
• Linus Torvalds
• Keith Bostic
• Alfred Aho
• Brian Kernighan
• Rob Pike
• Jamie Zawinski (jwz)
• Theo de Raadt
• Paul Graham
• John McCarthy
• Guy L. Steele Jr.
• Larry Wall
• Eric S. Raymond

For a more complete list please go here.

If you take the time to visit each of the links above, you will see some are referred to as:

• Computer Scientist
• Software Engineer
• Computer Programmers

Those who know me, might be perplexed I left out from the list, who to me is a great programmer and someone that I admire, that is Donald Knuth. Dr. Knuth is to me is a master, any other title in my opinion falls short of his achievements.

Now I’m sure you are asking yourself, what is my position, if I failed to make my position clear from the statements above let me just say, I don’t believe in labeling, that said I don’t consider myself to be one or the other, but if you push me I have to go with Programmer.

I know a lot of people that ware the title “developer or programmer” and are neither. Programming is a lot more than writing code in your favorite language, and to me there are only: good programmers or bad programmers –of course the posers, but those are easier to spot.

I leave you with this little snippet from Donald Knuth:

Languages come and go much faster than I can write books. That’s why I chose to explain algorithms in English, not in the language of the moment. Readers learn a lot by converting from English to their favorite language; The Art of Computer Programming emphasizes things that are independent of languages. No matter what programming language is hot, you need good ideas to express in those languages. If you want your algorithms to be prepackaged, fine, but then my books aren’t written for you.
Actually I’m extremely glad to see the continuing development of languages, not only because programming languages are getting better and better in important ways, but also because such work soaks up a lot of people’s energy-therefore computer scientists don’t write papers that I would otherwise have to read, and I can get my books finished a lot sooner.

I’ve been listening, and studying Chopin scores for many years now, as part of the courses I teach: Analysis and Composition. On a more personal level, listening to Sonata No.2 in Bb minor, Op. 35 my brain started digesting the music, I couldn’t but feel compell to think of my life, and what I have done up to now, and what I still need or wish to do.

Listening to Chopin’s music is very comforting –that is correct, I don’t relate his music to tragedy– there is none the less, hints of sadness, and frustration.

Leading the life he did, in the circumstances in which he had to; it just has to come through the music. I admire that Chopin is genuine, his soul, his being is in every note, and with every phrase you get closer to his emotions, his life.

I understand that we are very fragile beings, and death is our shadow on every step we take. It is said, that you pass on when God decides that it’s time for you to move on; I do not know. I just know that most of us are not ready to face it, and when something happens that makes you realize how close you are to it, one tends to panic.

It so happens that such realization came to me a few months ago, and I’ve been living with it in silence for a while now –more so because I still don’t know how close I’m to it but I do know this. I want to go with very nothing left to do, no regrets, nothing unsaid.