Drunken Blog, Convergence Kills:
At the end of the day it’s not going to be about who is selling what end-play device, it’s going to be about who is sitting in the middle. And Apple wants to be that benevolent dictator, parsing DRM-protected content to whatever device you’re using at the time.
This is a very lengthy but very fascinating look at Apple’s long term strategy. The best digital media article/post I’ve read in a long time.
…And if you don’t think video on demand is here. It is. Recently we used Cinema Now to watch a video on demand. Yes, there were problems, but within a short time of selecting a movie and paying we were able to watch it. I believe the technology for VOD is around today. The barriers to adoption are one, the user interface, and two, the pricing model.
NY Times Magazine: Who’s That Girl? is an in-depth article of the making of yet another teen (though she’s my age) star (it’s reminiscent of the WSJ story about Carly Hennessy):
To break even on Latona’s record, J must sell 500,000 copies; last year, of the 6,455 albums distributed by major labels, only 112 sold that many.
To complement this article the Globe and Mail had an article on Saturday answering the question of why radio was so homogeneous (of course the article isn’t available online). The answer is of course advertising dollars. Without homogeneous radio big business wouldn’t have large audiences to sell it’s homogeneous products to.
So how do we break the vicious downward spiral of our culture?
Is it to make it profitable for them to take chances on the indies?
USA Today: Kazaa, Verizon propose to pay artists directly (via Jenny)
“An unlikely alliance of swap-service Kazaa and telephone and Internet giant Verizon is floating a proposal to break the logjam of lawsuits: Computer manufacturers, blank CD makers, ISPs and software firms such as Kazaa will pool funds and pay artists directly.
‘Historically, there’s been a clash between the content community and new technology, back to the player piano,’ says Verizon vice president Sarah Deutsch. ‘We’re proposing the idea of a copyright compulsory license for the Internet, so peer-to-peer distribution would be legitimate and the copyright community would get compensation. It’s hard to get the genie back in the bottle.’
Kazaa lobbyist Phil Corwin says a $1-a-month fee per user on Internet providers alone (it’s unclear whether costs would be passed along to subscribers) would generate $2 billion yearly: “We’re talking about a modest fee on all the parties who benefit from the availability of this content.”
Recording Industry Association of America president Hilary Rosen calls the proposal ‘the most disingenuous thing I’ve ever heard. It’s ridiculous.’ ”
Pay the artists directly!? Where have I heard that before! 
I contend that it makes more sense to not pay artists at the time of download. My main reason for this is that I won’t know till after repeated listenings if the song is worth paying for. This is backed up by the many studies that show music downloaders delete x% of what they download so why should they have to pay for it?
It was this belief that lead us to develop a Winamp plugin (which of course doesn’t work anymore) which allowed you to pay the artists directly from Winamp. There was even a feature which tracked (locally) what music you listened to the most so you knew who to pay.
In hindsight it makes more sense to couple payment with downloading because the concept of paying after you’ve partialled consumed is a little too abstract for your every day downloader.
Re-reading the article I believe it was poorly written/reported since the RIAA would be completely in favor of a tariff on Internet usage. Of course they oppose a tariff that would be paid to musicians directly since through their legal wranglings artists no longer own the copyright to their own work. The real owners of the vast majorirty of our ‘music culture’ are a handful of companies. But of course the story reads better if the RIAA is the bad guy.
Rumor has it Fairtunes aka Musiclink might go back online tomorrow after months of outage. (Remember: John and Matt are no longer involved with Fairtunes). Of course I’ll believe it when I can send money to all the artists I’ve had to hold off sending money to. And we’ll mark the occasion by publishing a little digest I’ve being compiling over the period of the outage.
Today, as we sat contemplating living room killer apps, one of my Media Center designer friends pointed me to the webzine (?), CBC Radio 3, and we marvelled at the beauty of their design and their excellent choice of content. With a little bit of work it could easily be transformed into a very nice 10′ application. In fact it is one of the first 2′ sites that I’ve seen that should absolutely have a 10′ version. Why? The photography with music with writing just blends so nicely together and is just suited for consuming on a Sunday afternoon from the couch.
If Dave links to it, it must be a good quote :).
I said: “We’d love record labels to just go away. They’re great for a Britney Spears, but I don’t see them providing a lot of benefits for smaller acts.” (from The Time article). If you disagree I’d love to hear why.
Needless to say the article did not run in the Canadian edition of Time. Do they not realize that *I AM* Canadian content? Hopefully Gary can pick me up a copy or 5 to see if the results of that 5 hour photo shot made it in.
Without my permission I’ve been added to a ‘Media Levy Objectors’ mailing list; you won’t find me complaining about this!
This coincides with the official notice that the copyright board received my formal objection to the proposed tariffs on media.
WSJ: Napster CEO quits
Napster CEO Konrad Hilbers is stepping down. Also, the online music
start-up is considering a bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter.
I recently got an email asking for a recommendation for a Canadian digital music service.
It is my understanding Canadians have only two options. Puretracks and Napster. Is that correct? Anyone have any positive or negative experiences with either?