Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 15, Google's annual I/O conference kicks off at the Moscone Center here in San Francisco. And according to tech site the Verge, the Internet giant will use the occasion to announce a new streaming music service designed to compete with Spotify and Rdio.

Why a music subscription service? Because Spotify, Rdio, Rhapsody, Pandora, and whatever Beats/MOG is working on apparently aren't enough. Hey, Apple is developing one, too. It's the fashion these days.

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East Bay Ray

The always-tense discussion of how musicians make money -- and ought to make money -- in the era of YouTube, streaming services, and easy piracy turned into a fiery debate between a diehard punk rocker and a major rock band manager at the SF Music Tech Summit yesterday.

In a packed mid-morning conference room at the Kabuki Hotel, Dead Kennedys guitarist East Bay Ray insisted that "society needs to demand" an end to rogue piracy sites, and punish Google and other advertising networks that do business with them. Ray, whose real name is Raymond John Pepperell, held up a screenshot from the site MP3Skull.com showing links to free downloads of the Bay Area punk icons' music and, next to them, ads for companies like Alaska Airlines and 1-800 Flowers.

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via Mager/Instagram

Ulrich and Parker hugging, now that they can make money together.

Nearly 13 years after suing Napster, the filesharing site that started it all, the grouchy old men of Metallica have had a come-to-Jesus of sorts with the power of the Interwebz: Today, drummer Lars Ulrich announced that Metallica's music will be coming to Spotify.

He even gave Napster co-founder and Spotify investor Sean Parker a hug. Onstage. In public.

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Beats By Dre: The NASCAR of headphones.

The holiday shopping season has a long history with the audio-video sector, but mostly as a time to shave a few dollars off second-tier home theater equipment. There remain plenty of opportunities to trample someone for a $25 Blu-ray player, but looking through this year's Black Friday circulars and Cyber Monday email blasts revealed a new lure being dangled prominently: Beats By Dr. Dre headphones.

Let's give credit where credit is due: There likely wouldn't be as many consumer-friendly headphone options these days without Beats. Previously, headphones occupied a much smaller, older-skewing market of enthusiasts. Then came the iDevice revolution, and, in its wake, Beats, which offered a glossy fashion accessory that put style back in compressed audio. Hip-hop icons, video vixens and extreme athletes -- and therefore younger demographics -- adopted them without hesitation. And in the period leading up to Christmas, various retailers are promoting and even discounting Beats.

But before pulling the trigger, consider that this isn't a case of more for less; it's definitely less for more. Beats By Dr. Dre are the NASCAR of headphones. And not just because of their garish colors and exaggerated branding. Beats are all about rumble: Eventually you'll come to realize that, despite the excitement, constantly turning left can only get you so far.

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Here's something we can get behind: A cheeky new site that lets those who shoot endless smartphone video at concerts see just how thoroughly they're ruining them for themselves and everyone else.

Called OMGig, the minisite lets you turn any live YouTube clip into a chiding demonstration of the idiocy of shooting smartphone video at concerts. It's simple: Pick a video on YouTube and replace the "youtube.com" part of the URL with "omgig.com." Then you'll see two hands holding up a white iPhone while the tiny video plays inside. Behind the phone you'll see a blurry full-sized video of the show -- mostly obscured by the phone and the hands, just like at a real concert.

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Christopher Victorio

Neil Young and Crazy Horse rocking out at Outside Lands

Got a question you've been burning to ask Neil Young? Like, perhaps, what made him want to write "Cortez the Killer," or what he was thinking when he made Trans? (Which really isn't as bad as it's cracked up to be?)

Well polish those inquiries down to 140-character length, Young fans, because tomorrow (Oct. 24) is your day. The great Young himself will take to his brand-new Twitter account (@neilyoung/ only 13 Tweets so far!) to answer your questions starting at noon PST.

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East Bay Ray doesn't get YouTube's math

It's supposed to work like this: Artists put their music up for streaming on YouTube, the site sells (annoying) ads around the content, and then splits the revenue with the artist according to some predetermined formula.

So how much does YouTube owe artists? The site says it pays tens of millions of dollars to the music industry each month. But for some, like classic Bay Area punk band the Dead Kennedys, that math seems a little fuzzy.

Deep in a recent NPR story about YouTube's popularity as a music-streaming site is this nugget: The Kennedys' guitarist, East Bay Ray, says the band's video's have been streamed more than 14 million times on YouTube -- with ads. But, he says, the band has only seen "a few hundred dollars" in payment on that.

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Prediction: In 10 years, no one's going to care about owning music as long as they have access to it.

Prediction: No one except for .1 percent of music listeners and Neil Young will pay for Neil Young's high-quality digital audio service.

Prediction: In 3030, mashups will finally be legal.

So it went yesterday in Japantown, as another edition of the twice-annual S.F. MusicTech Summit drew hundreds to conference rooms at the Kabuki Hotel for a day of schmoozing 'n' boozing, panel discussions, jargon-duels, public cussing, and more schmoozing 'n' boozing.

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The CD: still looking thin at age 30

Thirty years ago today, Sony unveiled the first commercially available compact disc, Billie Joel's 52nd Street, designed for the Sony CD-101P, the first commercially available CD player. Since then, compact discs have grown from audiophile specialty to world-ruling music format to anachronistic punchline. And in 2011, sales of digital music eclipsed compact discs for the first time ever, even though more than 300 million CDs were sold.

NPR has an in-depth look at the rise and legacy of the CD, while Tech Hive recounts the development of the technology. Both pieces take a sort of goodbye-to-all-that view of the CD, which had 25 or 30 years as the favored format and now is fading into obsolescence. From Tech Hive:

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Glenn Gould was born 80 years ago today. To listeners of classical music, Gould was an iconoclastic pianist, most famous for the interpretations of Bach that, in his day, stirred controversy for their relative strangeness. To everyone else, Gould was a broadcaster and essayist. He called himself "the last puritan," and his thinking was often organized around a sort of radical humanism that often put him at odds with his own personality cult. Gould thought often about the relationship between art and life. And when push came to shove, Gould usually came out in defense of life. He lived his own days monastically, and in the last decade before his death in 1982 had become as famous for the severity of his lifestyle as he was for his records.

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