This morning, Bryan Jay Miller from WOXY.com testified before Congress about the Copyright Royalty Board’s recent rate hikes. Check out his testimony:

Read more about this morning’s proceedings here, and watch the rest of the testimony here.

There are a few bands I could probably give this label to (My Morning Jacket, The Figgs, Guided By Voices before they broke up, etc.), but I think I’m pretty comfortable saying that Wilco may be my favorite live band in America right now. (Caveat - the best live band in the world, hands down, is Ireland’s The Frames.)

I was lucky enough to catch Wilco three times over the last couple of weeks, first in Cincinnati, then in New Jersey, and then last night here in New York. If you’ve never seen them before, be sure to catch them when they’re in your town.

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Today’s Internet Radio Day of Silence has taken WOXY away from me for the first time since the station’s temporary demise last Fall.

Being without WOXY got me thinking about all of the bands that I’ve been introduced to by the station over the years, and that I might never have heard otherwise. Given that I’ve listened to WOXY since the late 80’s (I grew up in outside of Cincinnati, near where the station use to transmit its radio signal), that’s a LOT of bands.

To give you an idea how important WOXY, and all Internet radio, is to me and other music fans, I figured I’d post some of my favorite songs that WOXY has introduced me to over the years. (I’ve also labeled each song by the approximate year I first heard it on WOXY.) Enjoy.

Note: Links expired.

1992 - Dada, “Dim” [BUY]
2005 - Devin Davis, “Canons At The Courthouse” [BUY]
2006 - The Dears, “Ticket to Immortality” [BUY]
1990 - Ride, “Vapour Trail” [BUY]
2005 - Wussy, “Motorcycle” [BUY]

In case you hadn’t heard, hundreds of Internet-based broadcasters are going silent tomorrow to draw attention to the controversy surrounding new royalty rates put in place by the United States Copyright Royalty Board.

I wrote about this situation on my other blog a few months ago. In short, the Copyright Board has decided that Internet-based broadcasters - which includes everyone from Pandora to WOXY to the teenage kid who creates a streaming radio station on his home computer - will be required to pay sound recording royalties that (a) are higher than those paid by satellite radio, and (b) even more egregiously, are not paid at all by regular terrestrial radio stations.

These new royalties threaten to put many webcasters, even larger established players, completely out of business. Pandora has estimated that the new rates, which are retroactive to 2006, will force it to pay more than $2 billion. No matter how you look at it (and, personally, I see the Copyright Board’s decision as being influenced by Clear Channel and other large broadcasters who want to price out the growing competition from Internet broadcasting), it is clear that the future of Internet radio is at stake.

In an effort to bring attention to this situation before it’s too late, webcasters, including Pandora, WOXY, Radio Paradise, MTV Online and Yahoo! Launch, among many others, are all going silent tomorrow. Sadly, one large online player, Last.fm (recently purchased by CBS), does not appear to be participating.

Here’s hoping that tomorrow’s day of silence is the last time that any of these stations go silent for a long, long time.

Learn more about the royalty situation here.

As Steve mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I was down in Argentina at the beginning of the month working with our developers on the Rogomo product.

Between Rogomo and the fact that my wife is originally from Buenos Aires, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Argentina over the last couple of years. Buenos Aires has quickly become one of my favorite cities, and I figured it would be a good idea to share some of my favorite aspects of the city with you. For today, we’ll focus on food.

Steak. No trip to Argentina is complete without steak. My favorite parilla (i.e., steakhouse) is Cabana Las Lilas (located at Alicia Moreau de Justo 516 in Puerto Madero). I can’t recommend the “lomo” (tenderloin) enough.

[Edited by Steve: This is where Neil and I differ. I thought Cabana Las Lilas was very good, but not great, and a little too "mass produced" feeling for my taste. My favorite steak restaurant, whose name I completely forget, was just around the corner from the Park Tower Hotel where I stayed on Avenida Leandro N. Alem. Without exaggeration, the steak I had there was the best steak I've ever had in my life. Oh, and regardless of what steak restaurant you go to, be sure to order one of their fresh mozzarella provoleta appetizers. Unbelievably good.]

Italian cuisine. Due to its history of immigration from Italy, Buenos Aires has become known for excellent Italian cuisine. My favorite Italian restaurant, just down the block from Cabana Las Lilas, is La Parolaccia (located at Alicia Moreau de Justo 1160). The pasta there is so good that it’s almost worth the overnight flight by itself.

Sushi. If you’re looking for sushi in Buenos Aires, head to the Jardin Japones (located at Casares and Adolfo Berro). The Jardin Japones is actually a beautiful Japanese-style garden right in downtown Buenos Aires, and it has a sushi restaurant that is considered by locals to be the best in town. I also had incredible sushi at Dashi (located at Fitz Roy and Gorriti). Both of these restaurants are fairly expensive, especially by Buenos Aires standards, but the quality of their fish compares favorably with the top sushi restaurants in the U.S.

[Edited by Steve: Two more things -- whatever you do don't forget to eat some empanadas while you're in Argentina, they're wonderful just about anywhere you get them. And drink Quilmes. Quilmes and I became very good friends during my time in Argentina.]

While we were having one of our daily iChat video sessions about the business today, Neil asked me what the word “WOXY” meant.  He kept seeing it pop up next to my name on iChat and had no idea what it meant.

If you haven’t heard of it, WOXY.com is one of the best radio stations around. WOXY used to be known as 97X, a terrestrial radio station based out of Oxford, Ohio (northwest of Cincinnati) that played “alternative” rock before “alternative” became cool. You may remember that, in the movie Rain Man, Dustin Hoffman’s character kept repeating the phrase “97X. Bam! The future of rock and roll.” That was 97X he was talking about.

When the station’s owners decided to retire in 2004, they sold the terrestrial signal, and the station closed down. Soon thereafter, a few secretive angel investors showed up and helped the station come back as an internet-only station, and after a second brush with disaster a year and a half later, the station was purchased saved by Lala.com. WOXY’s been going strong ever since. Neil keeps seeing it in my iChat profile because I listen to WOXY constantly (and I have iChat set to display whatever music I’m listening to).

Anyway, if you like any of the music I’ve been posting here, be sure to take a listen to WOXY. You won’t be sorry. In addition to their incredible library of music, they also host a ton of live in-studio performances. In fact, they have several great shows coming up that you should be sure to check out:

Mon., 6/25, 3pm: The Eames Era
Wed., 6/27, 3pm: Palomar
Fri., 7/20, 1:30pm: Dirty on Purpose
Wed., 7/25, 4pm: Ra Ra Riot
Fri., 8/3, 3pm: Wussy (highly recommended)
Fri., 8/17, 12:30pm: The Rentals

And don’t worry if you happen to miss one or more performances. WOXY archives most of them (as long as the artist consents) for downloading as MP3 or podcast.

Marc Andreessen’s post on “Why Not to Do a Startup” inspired me to comment on why, for me, startups are far superior to well established companies.

Mark’s reasons “why not to do a startup” provide some compelling reasons why not to work for a modern large public company (lets call all modern large public companies Initech for purposes of this post).

1. The Rollercoaster Ride — Both the startup and Initech will put you on an emotional rollercoaster, and the ride isn’t very scary at either place if it’s successful. The differences appear when your car is offtrack and racing quickly down the slope. In a startup, you have a chance to put the car back on track. At Initech, the consultants, reorgs, shifts in strategy, layoffs, etc, will burn the car and the tracks before you have a chance to help save the children.
2. Nothing Happens Unless You Make it Happen — At a startup, nothing gets done unless you do it but you also have the ability to make anything happen. At Initech, you won’t be able to make anything happen no matter how hard you try.
3. Getting Told No. At a a startup, partners, investors, etc. may tell you no. At Initech, you will also be told no, but this time by your boss, and probably only after your team has worked nights and weekends on the project and was ready to launch.
4. Hiring. It’s a pain in the ass at any size company unless you have something valuable to offer. But at Initech, after you pick the perfect candidate and at precisely the moment your ready to make that offer, HR will close all open headcount on you.

I could go on and on, but I’ll leave that for another time . . .

Marc Andreessen, the co-founder of Netscape, launched his own blog this month and I have to admit that I really enjoy reading it. I especially enjoyed one of his posts, The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity.

In my opinion, the biggest problem facing most people (or maybe just me) is that they have too many things to do and not enough time to do it (in other words, they aren’t productive enough to accomplish their goals on a daily basis). It’s not because they don’t try hard enough, but because they’re overwhelmed, don’t know where to start first or can’t focus for long enough to get things done. Technology, which has kept us “always on,” has greatly exacerbated the problem because it’s too easy to get interrupted, the biggest offenders being IM, e-Mail and cell phones.

My advice, and Marc echoed this in his post, is that what works for me will probably not work for you. In fact, I can almost guarantee that if you try to adopt somebody else’s “system,” it won’t work for you. Then why read about Marc’s secrets or attend a “Seven Habits” class? The answer is that you can get some ideas from others that might work for you as you create your own system.In my opinion, Marc’s ideas ranged from impractical to excellent.

I just can’t see how, for example, you can function in a business environment without keeping a schedule.

But if you do want to be more productive, stop trying to read email while you are working on something else. You do not save time by multitasking. Sure, you can do 10 things at once, but at any given second you are only actually doing one of those 10 things because the human mind is not capable of multitasking. All you’re doing by dividing your attention is assuring yourself that each of the things that you are working on will take more time than they should. This lesson applies to anybody who texts while driving a car — it’s dangerous for all of us.

Also, I thought that his suggestion to prepare an index card each night with tomorrow’s “to do” list is an excellent idea. Like Marc, I frequently have “busy” days where I can’t really point to what I actually accomplished. Also, I waste time thinking about what I need to do next — if I can set goals the night before when my mind is clear I think I’ll accomplish much more.

Let me know if you have any good productivity suggestions — I’m always happy to hear how other people deal with these types of issues. Oh, and you can check out Marc’s blog here.

You may have noticed that Neil hasn’t posted on the blog in a little while. That’s because he’s been down in Argentina for the last week working with our developers on the Rogomo website. While we still can’t say a whole lot about the product — we should be filing our patent applications soon, and can reveal all then — Neil tells me that things are going very well. We’re on target with the original development timeline, and we hope to have a beta up and running in early September.

What’s amazing about this process is that it really did not feel during the last week that Neil was halfway around the world. We’ve used Apple’s iChat quite a bit, and have been able to communicate just as easily as if he were here in the States. Even better, Neil set up his Mac during a presentation yesterday by our lead developer, turned on iChat, and I was able to watch the entire presentation from my living room in New York (and even ask questions).

The world truly is getting smaller, and it’s really exciting.

Interpol played a small show here in New York tonight as a “warm up” for what is sure to be a lengthy tour this summer and fall in support of their new album, Our Love to Admire [Pre-order].

While most of the new songs the band played seemed just ok - although, to be fair, it’s hard to judge a song hearing it for the first time live - I really enjoyed the band’s performance of its new song “The Heinrich Maneuver”.

Note: Link expired.

Interpol, “The Heinrich Maneuver”