I’ve had an idea for an Internet service which would offer the possibility of commissioning recorded music online by interested groups. The composer, performers and recording engineers would be paid out of donations made to the project at the service’s website. Once the recording is finished then it could be made available for download for anyone who visits the website for free. Further distribution of the music by anyone using file-sharing services would be absolutely legit.

There wouldn’t be any profit in this for the people who donated money towards the commissioning of the music but I think they will enjoy having made the creation of something possible.

To illustrate with a hypothetical commission. The Internet service might contact Harrison Birtwistle and talk with him about possible things he might be thinking of creating at the moment. These would be smaller works, not an opera of course. Then at the website of the online service these possibilities would be displayed. People would be asked to vote on their favourite. Then the website would go on to ask for donations towards the creation of this music, its performance and recording as a complete package. There would be a minimum donation size I think, like €500 perhaps. It could be that the composer will start on the composition when 50% of the money has been gathered at the website. When it is finished then the recording would be made available at the website. Names of the donors would be listed at the download page.

Maybe this kind of thing is happening on the web already, I don’t know. Maybe there is nothing new about this idea.

I had this idea because I don’t think that there is any future in getting money by selling recordings. Although Peter Mandelson has announced forthcoming legislation in the UK to block persistent file-sharing offenders I don’t think this or other measures will make a great deal of difference. The problem for the music industry is that technology has made it easy for people to share music online and it is going to be very hard to stop them doing that.

People do want music and they want new music, so I think what is required is a new way of getting the musicians paid for their work. That’s why I’ve had my idea of group online commissioning.

Today I went to Halifax Online website with a view to checking I’m not overdrawn and moving some money from a small savings account to my current account to prevent me becoming overdrawn. This conscientious activity was prompted by the new Halifax charges on their overdraft “facility”. These charges are absolutely outrageous imho. Anyway at the “My Accounts” page of the Halifax website there is a menu to transfer money from one account to another and it isn’t there at the moment. I phoned Halifax customer services online help desk and the woman I spoke to told me that it should be there and it is very strange that it isn’t. I tried it in Safari and Internet Explorer 8 and emptied the cache and all, but it still isn’t there.

I know this is an example of extreme paranoia, but I couldn’t help but imagine that maybe it has gone to prevent people from transferring their cash. In truth it doesn’t make sense that because the new arrangements don’t start for a few weeks yet.

I’ve emailed Halifax about it and I am waiting for the reply. At the end of the email I put that I wanted to charge Halifax a £25 administration fee for my writing the email.

I’ve been reading some complaints that Apple are sneakily installing software into the Windows OS. The way it works is that you install, say QuickTime, and then the software upgrading software for that installs Safari when you only intended to upgrade QuickTime. A quick search of the web took me to this report on the issue.

I use a Mac, but I do have Windows XP which I run with Parallels Virtual Desktop. Yesterday I installed QuickTime in it, the QuickTime installer gave me this dialogue:

It looks like there is an option to Automatically update QuickTime and other Apple Software. However it doesn’t say install other Apple Software. Anyway I’m going to let nature take its course. When I am told I need a QuickTime update I will see what happens and report back.