Mark Cuban: What am I missing Macrovision?

What am I missing Macrovision? - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _: "I could see if the stuff worked and it kept the bad guys from doing bad things. Then it would have to be a price consumers paid. Publishers have a right to protect their content. But, it obviously doesn’t work. If it did, there would be nothing to sue anyone over."

Mark writes a good article pointing out why DRM is such a waste of time and money.

You can ask Gwen... occassionally I'll let a DVD play through to the very end and when the Macrovision logo is displayed, sometimes I can't stop a few swears from coming out... and it's because all Macrovision has been able to do, is stop me from doing things that should be covered under fair use.

Here's some free advise to the MPAA:

Stop wasting your money with Macrovision, and spend it looking for those big internet warez sites that host your movies. Also, spend 9 months and create a full featured rip/burn/mix piece of software for DVDs. Give me the same flexibility that I have with my CDs for my DVDs and I'll buy more DVDs. Get it? Let me do more with them, and they'll become more valuable to me.

Branch out, get into the hardware market... build some mobile playback devices... build a piece of software to manage your library. Screw the DRM, just target the pirates directly. The DRM doesn't stop the pirates anyway. So stop wasting your time and money.

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says: "If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them."

I'm simply amazed at the arrogance displayed here. Jobs honestly thinks that no other person in the last 30 years would have ever thought to add good looking typography to the computer.

I have a prediction:

"When Jobs dies, Apple dies with him."

And here's why.

Steve is such an ego maniac and control freak that he's set his company up to rely on him completely. He craves acceptance so badly that he's created a company that is utterly dependent on his control. Now don't get me wrong. I have a 12" powerbook, and I love it. It's a great piece of engineering. But, it's only a great piece of engineering because Jobs has personally willed it into creation. He hasn't built a company that, when left alone, will create similarly well designed devices.

Think Different.... that is... Let Steve Jobs think for you.

WIL WHEATON dot NET: Where is my mind?: i am not a number! i am, rather, a series of numbers, painted across my fingernails

WIL WHEATON dot NET: Where is my mind?: i am not a number! i am, rather, a series of numbers, painted across my fingernails: "i am not a number! i am, rather, a series of numbers, painted across my fingernails"

If you look at a picture like this and think to yourself: "Is that US-ASCII or ISO Latin 1" that's a good indication that you've been emotionally scarred by internationalization.

If you don't understand what I just said, that's a good indication you haven't been scarred by internationalization. :-)

arstechnica: Can we deal on the Broadcast Flag?

Can we deal on the Broadcast Flag?

As usual, Ars does a good job of summing up what's going on with copyright. This is a good read for anybody that's heard me complaining about copyright restrictions but doesn't really know what's going on.

The EP is up

The EP is up for download at http://www.studiogomusic.com/letsgo. Feel free to check it out and email me at gary@studiogomusic.com if you like it enough to purchase a physical copy of the CD.

Music: Greg Matter : Weblog

Greg Matter : Weblog: "What's the answer? It's neither the perfection of DRM, nor the absolution of digital property rights. I am sure that there IS aneconomic system that solves the problem. I don't know what it is, but I can speculate about its properties."

Greg (I forget his last name, but he works at sun) has a great post that resonates a lot with the things I've been thinking about here.

The parts that don't work are pretty obvious. How is the subscription rate set for a person? Is it a government role? What if I choose to live my life digital-free: should I have to pay taxes at all? Finally, how do I possibly compare the consumption of a bit of software versus a bit of music or a bit of video? (It turns out that time spent consuming the content is an interesting measure.)

It's fun to find out I'm not the only person coming up with ideas like this... I think we're at a point in history where this idea is just sort of manifesting itself. The rating system that I envision for the music distribution system is the same as one that Greg talks about in this post. I've sort of glossed over some of the problems by setting a price and making it an opt in service (instead of a tax). My hope is that by making a system that is compelling and easy to use, people will want to subscribe. Basically, we move music and music consumption to a service model.

Blogging the EP: Mastering

Hmmm, seems I haven't had enough time to blog the EP much lately. We just passed a big milestone though. We now have the final master in hand. We got the CD mastered by Barry Corliss at Master Works.

The CD release party will be Friday the 13th at 7:30 at our house. It's an invite only type of event (since our house is not big enough to handle a huge party) but if you read my blog then you're automatically invited! Email me for directions if you don't know where we live.

Chain CDs

Hey people, but especially Gary!

Look what I just stumbled across: What's a chainCD?
I think this is an interesting idea. It's not like the most outrageously original, new idea I've ever heard of in my life (because I know other people who have done similar things- Bryan Free, for instance), but I think it's a pretty concise description of a fun, different way of doing things (for CD distribution).

What do you think? Maybe you (people, but especially Gary!) could comment about this.

The Doc Searls Weblog : Friday, April 8, 2005

The Doc Searls Weblog : Friday, April 8, 2005: " I did get some drive time on side roads in the red rental Mustang, and here's my final take on the car..."

It's not as bad as it originally sounded.

Music: If they don't like your music, they wont buy it

Just had a little blip of a brainstorm.

If you give your music to somebody and they don't like it. They wouldn't have bought it in the first place. So, by giving your music away to that person, you haven't really lost a sale. It doesn't hurt my ability to earn money off my music if everybody who hates it has a copy.

Now you might lose out on the "I bought this CD cause I thought I would like it but I don't" type of purchases, but who really wants to earn a lot of money off their music that way.

What is much more likely is that the inverse will be true. I find I'm less likely to buy music these days because I don't know if I will like it. Add to that, the fact that it's very hard for me to find out if I will like a band. The best way to find out is to listen to some music. Some of the best music I've found is because a friend played it for me, or recommended it to me.

So how does this translate into a business plan? Good question. I'm not sure I have it all figured out yet, but there's gotta be something that can be built on top of this. My original idea was subscription based, but maybe it doesn't need to be.

We'll see how things go with the EP release. Maybe there is a model closer to that that might be easier to implement.

The fact that the music is released under creative commons means we get to play around with technology.

What if we could extend the creative commons searching functionality that Yahoo has. Add the recommendation and rating system, build in a good way for people to pay the musicians to make more music or because of the enjoyment we've gotten out of the previous work and kablamo.

I love how podcasting can influence this. Podcasting is basically nothing more than a content delivery mechanism. One that I think is well suited to pushing new music at people. There just has to be a good business model surrounding it or else artists wont be able to afford to make cool music.

Pegasus News: A different angle

Pegasus News: A different angle: "In parallel words, kill the presses and the paper, and make room for more journalists. And watch the profits roll in."

More fallout from Mark Cuban's article.

This is from an update to an interesting brainstorm on restructuring another type of information delivery mechanism. The newspaper.

Music: Congress: one media format to rule them all

Congress: one media format to rule them all: "Of course, this entire circus has a ringmaster that needs no introduction: the DMCA. If it weren't for the anti-circumvention clause of 17 U.S.C. § 1201 and following, none of this would even matter. If individuals could circumvent DRM for any otherwise legal purpose, and if companies could be free to develop circumvention tools for legal uses, then it wouldn't make any difference what format this stuff was sold in. It's the kind of Catch-22 that could only be borne of special interests and fear mongering, but did anyone mentioned this at today's hearing?"

hmmm, DRM, my favorite :rolleyes:

The Doc Searls Weblog : Monday, April 4, 2005

The Doc Searls Weblog : Monday, April 4, 2005: "The bummer at hand was none other than the new Ford Mustang, which Budget rented me because they were out of Ford Focuses, which are the onlly cars I like to rent."

This is depressing to read because I really want one of those Mustangs. Oh well, I wont be able to get one anyways, so I'll just continue to covet ignoring anything negative said about the car.

Blogging the EP: Stats 'n Status

I don't know if I've talked much about what's actually going to be on the EP. So I'll give a quick run down.

It will be five songs, about 22 minutes in length. All the recording and programming done in Protools and Reason. The final mixing and mastering is being done at soul kitchen studios.

Release date should be sometime in mid April. Mark at soul kitchen is out of town this week and so we're taking a little break from mixing the CD until next week. But hopefully next monday I'll have a good feel for much is left to do.

The first CD run will be about 100 cds. We'll be using a CD duplicator that can print on the CDs and burn them. So we should be able to have color on the CD. We'll be using full jewel cases, and producing the inserts for them. Not sure what paper we'll use. All those materials will be factored into the Per CD cost. Once I know those numbers I'll feel pretty confident setting a price for the CD.

How much does a 5 track single usually go for these days anyway?

I haven't decided yet if we're going to put the CD up on the website before we have CDs ready, but probably not. Haven't decided how to handle online ordering yet. Maybe I need to get setup with paypal so I can take orders that way. Karen used that to setup the online order system for the COTA CD so I can ask her how well that has worked out.

Oh yeah, the website. I gotta at least get some static content up there.

Oh yeah, the name.

We are Let's Go and the EP will be titled on with life. (We reserve the right to change the title)

Music: The countdown for the extinction of CDs is about to begin - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _

The countdown for the extinction of CDs is about to begin - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _: "If Im an indie record store, Im making sure that all music from the labels you support is available for direct to player. Im offering every song as Ipod or MP3 player ready to anyone who walks in the door with their Ipod and wants to leave listening to the music."

Mark Cuban has his plan to save the music industry. Slightly different, yet I think complimentary to what I've been talking about here.

Music: SimpleBits | The Cheapening of Music

SimpleBits | The Cheapening of Music: "One of my favorite rituals has always been going to the record store and buying a CD or two. The physical act of purchasing something, taking it home, opening it up, lookng at the artwork, reading the lyrics, etc. Will that become something of the past?"

This author raises some good questions about music. I think in the future "the system" should be an avenue for artists to get their music out into peoples hands. Including producing and distributing physical media. It's more expensive to do, and might take a more critical mass of artists to get it done, but with connections to local music stores I bet we could do some very cool stuff.

I think the stores could like it because they'll get music that is already "proven" in that it already has a following online. It would also allow the artists on "the system" to brand out to the less tech saavy.

There's something to be said for "owning" a piece of music. But do you really "own" that piece of music today? Isn't there a big corporation telling you what you can and can't do with the music? I'm ok with that in principal actually. I think the copyright holder should have the right to do what they want with their music. Unfortunately for most of the CDs out there, the artist doesn't hold the copyright anymore, the music label does. That's why they're so interested in increasing the copyright holders rights. Not because they want artists to get their fair shake, but because they've gotten the artists to sign over their rights...

I think I may have gotten off topic here.

Blogging the EP: Creative Commons

So I think the music will be available on our website under this license.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Originally I was going to use Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License but if others are willing to share their remixes then I think I'm cool with it. Plus if somebody actually wants to remix our music that's neat.

Music: Non-profit

Had an idea the other day. What if the music distribution system was setup as a non-profit. Seems like that might change things a fair bit huh?

I think I like this idea because it puts the focus of the system back onto the artists. The goal isn't to become fabulously wealthy off of this "brilliant" business strategy (I suppose the brilliance is open to debate ;-) ), but to facilitate creative musical expression, something I think is cool and important.

I would get a kick out of making the system go, and by making it a non-profit, artists wont have to worry that someday the system will be sold to Microsoft of Sony or some other organization that doesn't have their best interests in mind.

So, who's interested in donating to the non-profit? :)

Paul Allen loves music doesn't he? Maybe he'd like to see a system put together that encourages creativity and independence in music. ;-)

Music: I gotta get a prototype together

Yeah, maybe when the EP is out I'll have some time to focus on slapping together a little prototype of the system. How about this for core functionality?

- A database of songs
- Artist Bios
- The ability to rate songs
- An RSS feed that pushes new unrated songs down to you

The second phase would probably

- Make the RSS feed smart enough to push songs you might like based on other people's ratings as well.

For the first couple phases I'll probably have to update the database, but that's ok cause there wont be much music up there yet. ;-)

Blogging the EP: Website

So I've registered http://www.studiogomusic.com. I don't have any content up there yet. I messed around with the demo of Radio, thinking that maybe I could just make that work, but so far I'm not happy with that.

I'm also checking out Geeklog to see if that might be a contender, but I'm not sure about it yet.

Music: ongoing · LimeWire & Chansonniers Perdus

ongoing · LimeWire & Chansonniers Perdus: "The conclusion is that the Record Companies’ business model, like General Franco, is still dead. If I were a teenager I’d be all over LimeWire and I’d be too stupid/oblivious to worry about the knock on my parents’ door, and there are just too many oblivious teenagers for the RIAA to sue out of existence. So I was right, the battle’s over; only I was wrong about who won."

Tim Bray coming to the same conclusion that I have.

EP: Status update

4 of the 5 tracks are now in the final stages. They're being worked over at soul kitchen studios.

Arstechnica: Grokster gains ally with deep pockets

Grokster gains ally with deep pockets: "For the most part, [the RIAA and MPAA] have chosen to respond by abandoning the principles of the free market and instead focus their attention litigating and legislating the market in line with their vision."

A good article on Arstechnica about the MGM vs. Grokster case.

Another good quote.

Are the stakes really that great? To say that this is the most important copyright case to make it to the SCOTUS since the original Betamax decision is not much of an exaggeration.

Google Prefetching

Google Blog: "When you do a search on these browsers, we instruct them to download your top search result in advance"

You know, this smells a little bit like Google doing what this post from Raymond Chen outlines.

Google is making everybody's website with a high google rank slower because somebody "might" click on it and we want that to be fast. It's nice that you can opt out on your end, but what if the website owner wants to opt out of this behavior because google searches are slamming their site with incoming requests that people aren't following through it.

I guess if the google search algorithm is perfect then there's no problem, because people will always choose the top link... but how often do you "feel lucky"?

Music: What's the core business model

The business model that I'm talking about here on this blog is the business model of music in the internet age. How do artists make money off of music in a way that embraces the realities and benefits of the internet.

I thought it was time to reiterate the core business model since I've done a lot of talking about how the features of the system might work. I think those are compelling pieces that will make the whole thing go, but I don't want to forget the core.

Premises:
-- File sharing is inevitable.
-- Artists wont make music without compensation (or at least as good of, or as much music).
-- People want music.

Business Model:
Users pay a subscription fee to support artists. They designate the artists they wish to continue making music by rating their music higher than others.

That's it, that's the core model. Subscription fees getting disbursed through the rating system.

Blogging the EP: Equipment costs

Here is the equipment we've used on the CD.

Protools Digi 002 - $2200
Custom PC for PT - $1500 (we spent a little more but I adjusted the price to today's market)
Reason 2.5 - $250
Drum Sound Library - $40
AT 3035 Mic - $200
Monster Cable Mic Cable - $40
Mic Stand - $50

Total equipment costs - $4280

We only used 1 channel on the 002, and so we could've used an mBox instead of the 002 and probably saved $1600.

Minimum equipment costs - $2680

Now that's money I spent a while ago and have used on other projects, so that cost could be amortized instead of lumped into this one project.

Music: Blogging the EP

So here's the latest and "greatest" idea.

I'm going to blog our EP release. I'll start out with the expenses, both the one time, and the recurring costs. We'll set a price for the CD and calculate how many we need to sell to break even on the project (excluding one time equipment costs, and maybe including one time equipment costs).

As we release the EP I'll be posting updates for how many downloads we've had vs. how many purchases and anything interesting that is happening on the marketing front and how that effects those two numbers.

Music: DRM-free iTunes: wash, rinse, repeat?

DRM-free iTunes: wash, rinse, repeat?: "Yesterday, Apple thought they had fixed the problem. The company said that they would require iTunes 4.7 for all interaction with the store, and apparently considered the case closed. In an almost Keystone Kops-esque turn of events, the same people behind PyMusique have done it again. Yes, in about a day's time, Apple's solution has been torn to shreds."

As an industry, how much are we going to spend on this problem before we recognize it's nothing more than a giant waste of time and money.

Music download prices could be going up

Music download prices could be going up: "According to industry sources, the current wholesale per-track price of around 65¢ was set at that 'low' price to stimulate demand."

Ah ha... now we have a price to work with. Apple's music store is making a profit (or breaking even) earning $.34 per download. That's fascinating. I wonder how that 34 cents per song gets spent.

Also.... the fact that the music industry is raising their prices is fascinating. What are they doing that worth so freaking much per song... oh yeah, they own the copyright...

The Globe and Mail: Would you pay 5 cents for a song?

The Globe and Mail: Would you pay 5 cents for a song?

They almost get it... almost.

You have to get rid of DRM completely though in order for it to work, and you can't charge per download. You could possibly charge for bandwidth, since that is a cost, but there are ways to solve the bandwidth problem technically (*cough* bittorrent).

EP coming out soon

Been a little quiet on the blog front lately... (I wonder what percentage of blog posts include a statement like the previous one)

Gwen and I have been busily working on an EP that we want to release by Easter. We're going to try something a little different with the release. We'll be releasing it online under some kind of creative commons license, and then sell the physical media at "above market value". (above market value is still to be determined)

This way you can check out our music online and decide if you want to purchase the CD. If you like the music and want to support it, then buy the CD. Even though you're paying more for it, you can know ahead of time whether it's going to be a waste of your money, or money well spent.

Kevin Schofield's Weblog

Kevin Schofield's Weblog: "There is clearly no correlation between command of the English language and higher thinking."

A choice quote from Kevin Schofield, made famous (at least to me) from his interviews on channel 9.

Music: Windows Media 10 cracked + Why the old way doesn't work

EXCLUSIVE: Windows Media DRM 10 Crack Updates. It Is Real!: "Windows Media DRM 10 has been cracked"

Some would say it's inevitable... I currently include myself in "some".

Zarkon said "how has the old business model hindered users?"

Well, the old system actually wasn't too bad. It's when the old system tries to change into the new system. As I see it, the old system hide a complex twist in intellectual property. In the old system, musicians were compensated because there was a piece of physical media tied to their work. That media clearly cost money to produce, and hence it was easy to add a hidden "tax" to the price of the media that went to compensating the artist.

So what's wrong with the old system? The internet. For 24 dollars a month I can buy a hosting plan from speakeasy that gives me 1 gig of storage online and unlimited throughput... which means, speakeasy will allow me to distribute unlimited copies of 200 of my songs for a flat fee of 24 dollars per month. What is $24 divided by infinity? That's my per cost distribution fee.

(There are caveats here of course, since large scale music distribution costs more in hardware and hosting fees than I have laid out, this is used as an example of how music distribution costs have dropped and are dropping)

So, since bits are easy to copy, where do you hide the artist tax? The old school thinkers out there are proposing to add the tax in by making it impossible for you to copy the song (using DRM or Digital Rights Management). If you can't copy it, then they can charge you for additional copies. Oh... about $0.99 per copy. It would be fascinating to look at Apple's budget for the iTunes music store. I bet you 70%-90% of their costs go to the record labels for licensing fees.

So... here's where my plan comes in.... instead of taking that 70%-90% and giving to the record labels (who now are not involved in the distribution, only marketing and production), find a way to give as much of it as possible to the artists. After all, they're the irreplacable ones.

So, returning to the question, how has it hindered users? It's the DRM. When you look into how DRM works, you'll discover that it's designed to control what you can do with the digital copy of the file. For example, in certain configurations, music ripped to your machine with Windows Media Player will not play on another computer. That sounds good right? Until you buy a new computer, move your files over, and then you can't play them. So you have to go looking around to try and find why you can't play your songs.

Why DRM is bad is a big topic. Here are a good link for your reading pleasure until I have time to address the issue more fully.

Cory Doctorow on DRM

Music: What makes this idea different

I was talking to Joel a little bit earlier about peercasting and podcasting because of an article he had read in wired. Podcasting is cool stuff. Anyways, we got talking about mp3.com and how they have features similar to what we've been brainstorming for the system. It helps to highlight that those sites are doing 70% of what is planned for the system. The thing that sets the system apart is the business model. No more 99 cent downloads... your money is not spent to limit what you can do with the music, it goes directly to supporting the aritsts (plus administration costs to keep the servers running). It's kind of a "cut out the middle man" model of music distribution. Let's not spend all that money on media giants, let's give it to the artists so they will keep making awesome music.

So yeah, the system will compete for usability with other online sites like itunes, or mp3.com, but it will compete with the music labels as a way for artists to get their music distributed. 2 different classes of competition. I'm hoping that we'll be best of breed in both classes. Best solution for artists in terms of contracts and music rights, best solution for users trying to get good music because we're not hinderd by the business model of days past.

Music: Money

So yeah. I'm sitting here in the living room listening to snowdrift after Team November's set and thinking about music. (blogging from shows seems to be a good way to go for me).

I think demonstrating to artist that we're committed to getting them money will help get people signed up. I'm almost thinking that would be a good place to spent startup money. Basically approach a number of groups and give them a guarantee on revenue. Sort of a profit sharing plus guarantee package. This would be targeted at the early adopters... kind of a bonus for signing up early. And we would only approach bands we thought had a chance of becoming popular and raising the esteem of the system.

Maybe carrying it beyond the early adopters is a good plan as well, as an incentive to sign up bigger acts into the system.

Come to my show tonight! or "how not to be a loser on a friday night"

So, I bought this key-tar, right? And it's this Roland AX-7, right? And it's like the coolest thing ever and I'm gonna play it at my show tonight, right?

Team November (my band)
@ living:room (4301 Fremont Ave. N, Seattle, WA)
8pm
$3, all-ages, beer/wine for 21+
also on the bill: Snowdrift

Check it out if you get a chance! Gary will be there, so it's bound to be cool.

Love and gumdrops,
Gwen

Back from San Diego

Gwen and I got back from our trip to San Diego yesterday. It was a fun trip down to the emergent convention, which is a convention for those interested in emerging churches.

I don't go back to work until monday, so I've got a little time to ease back into things. I haven't thought of anything interesting over the last week. Which has been kind of nice.

Music: Recommendations

So here's an idea.... If an artist uploads their music into the system and they have recommendations, their songs should get into the list of "pushed" songs of others that like the same kind of music.... that's a way to get songs that haven't been listened too, connected to people that might like them.

The logic being... if you as an artist, like certain bands... then your music might appeal to others that listen to those bands...

Music: Where to start reading

If you're new... here are a few links to read on my blog to get started on what this whole music system is.

Music = Loud
Music = The Internet
Artist compensation
User Experience
Podcasting

Those are some of the highlights....

More Bryan Free

So yeah, Gwen took me over and introduced me to Bryan (my brother's name is spelled Brian so it's really hard for me to remember to spell his name with a Y). We only talked for a minute and now he's up on stage. He sounded interested and I'm looking forward to talking more with him.

Most of these ideas seem good to me, but I don't earn my living off music, so my perspective isn't the best. I need feedback from people that would place their livelihood in the hands of a label. Established record labels have the benefit of history. All I have are some crazy half baked ideas that might or might not work out. :-)

Well, but that's the point of this blog... to separate out the ideas that can't work from the ones that can.

Bryan Free

Gwen and I and a bunch of folks from COTA are about to hear Bryan Free play.

Gwen likes his music, and I think his ideas about honest in music are interesting.... I wonder if I"ll have a chance to talk to him about them.

Music: Recording

Maybe I should spend some time talking with local artists about doing recording for the system. I have a protools digi 002, and could probably produce some pretty reasonable quality recordings....

Recent Slow Down

I haven't slowed down too much I guess, but it sure feels like it. Work has been really busy these last few weeks.

I'm going on vacation next tuesday though, so hopefully I'll have some more time to get my head around this stuff then.

SmartShuffle: Refreshing Your Music Without Wires

IOD: SmartShuffle: Refreshing Your Music Without Wires: "Each day my phone would call up my home computer on its own and replace the 5-10 oldest songs on my phone with 5-10 new 'recommendations'."

Sounds like Josh would be interested in something like "the system".

Reactions to the Pew Study on Search Engine Users (by Jeremy Zawodny)

Reactions to the Pew Study on Search Engine Users (by Jeremy Zawodny): "If you find what you're looking for, does it really matter if it's a sponsored result or not?"

The only reason I think it would matter is that without indicating they are sponsored links, you would lead your users to believe that their ranking was as a result of your searching algorithm, instead of their rank because a result of their money.

If the links are relevent like Jeremy indicates, then I don't think I need to care as much where they come from. But when money gets involved, things get sticky.

Why we need an iPod competitor | Doc Searls' IT Garage

Why we need an iPod competitor | Doc Searls' IT Garage: "It's a closed system."

Yup. I would love to see a really strong ipod competitor as well. Especially since I'm still brainstorming ways to integrate the system with players.

Music: BBC NEWS | Technology | Napster offers rented music to go

BBC NEWS | Technology | Napster offers rented music to go: "'Music fans are moving away from buying the traditional bundled package of a dozen or more songs that we used to call an album to newer ways that fit their lifestyle; either single tracks or subscriptions services,' said Paul Myers, chief executive of Wippit, a UK-based music download service."

Interesting no? I think there are 2 things that will set the system apart.

1) Licensing
2) Implementation

I think the licensing will help make the implementation easier. Hopefully the licensing and the implementation will attract the critical component.

Artists

Music: Gizmodo : Gates Interview Part Four: Communists and DRM

Gizmodo : Gates Interview Part Four: Communists and DRM

There are some very good quotes to look at from this interview. I think those most interesting to look at right now is.

And in the case that the authors decided it's rights managed, you can decide to stay away from it or to use it. That, again, is your choice.

We're still at a point where digital rights management can't really work. Every DRM system to date has been compromised by determined hackers. Soon though, the hardware and the software will start to come together, and things will start to get rough. I think that's when people will start to wake up and realize that DRM does not help them (the consumers) at all.

Take a song you bought off iTunes Music Store and put it on a linux machine. You bought the music right, you should be able to listen to it on another computer right? Well you can't, not without breaking the DRM.

That's part of the goal of the system. To provide an alternative to DRM. An alternative that artists will need to evaluate when looking at ways to distribute their music in the internet age.

Music: Creative Commons

What do y'all think of this creative commons license

Music in the system will need to be licensed in such a way that people can legally download and share it. I like the terms of this license, except that I'm concerned about the non-commercial part. It will probably be beneficial for users of the system to be able to download the music for use in DJing or radio play.

Perhaps that could be a different kind of subscription to the service...

FeedBurner's XSLT and CSS Feed Views (by Jeremy Zawodny)

FeedBurner's XSLT and CSS Feed Views (by Jeremy Zawodny): "Related to Dan's complaint, I see the FeedBurner, like a few other services, does a good job of using XSLT and CSS to render human readable views of RSS feeds."


Like I mentioned before, blogger does a pretty good job of providing human readable atom feeds. So readable that I didn't think they were XML at first.

my atom feed

Music: Wired 13.01: The Zen of Jeff Bezos

Wired 13.01: The Zen of Jeff Bezos: "Well, it's difficult to see how physical stores participate in the digital distribution of music. Today most music is sold by multi-category retailers who are cutting back on the square footage they deploy to music."

A couple of interesting tidbits from this article. The most interesting I think is this quote.

WIRED: Does Amazon actually create demand for hard-to-find products?
BEZOS: Absolutely. We not only help readers find books, we also help books find readers, with personalized recommendations based on the patterns we see.

This is part of what I see the system doing. Since I perceive that in the future, the challenge of music isn't going to be media distribution or product, but marketing. Connecting musicians and fans.

iTunes restrictions

Miguel de Icaza: "Today a friend of mine asked me if I bought music from the Apple iTunes Store and whether she should. I explained to her that the music she purchases will be locked into the iPod and iTunes and she wont be able to play it on other MP3 players unless she hacks her music."

It's unfortunate that apple appears to be one of the most open of the online music distributors.

DRM Troubleshooting Info in Windows XP (WMP, MCE, Etc)

DRM Troubleshooting Info in Windows XP (WMP, MCE, Etc)

The fact that somebody needed to produce a FAQ like this is ridiculous.

Music: DJs and Playlists

So I'm listening to this Japanese Peercast right... and I have no idea if a person is behind it or not. And do I really care?

If the music selection is "good"...

I should be careful with this... my wife was a college radio DJ, and she reads the blog. :-)

Maybe the system can be your own personal DJ through the recommendation system.

I remember Brian Mansell (he used to livejournal, but I've lost track of him, does he have another blog up?) working on creating a system that would allow people to post requests to an automated playlist system. I bet he would have some interesting ideas about this.

Music: Recommendation Configuration

Recommendations should be configurable. Sometimes I'm in the mood for music that I haven't heard before. So I would want a list of music that is of a genre I don't typically listen too, but is highly rated. Also, I may want to check out music that is new to the system, or music that is highly rated, but not by many people (undiscovered).

Off the top of my head, here are some types of recommendations

1) More of what I like: Uses genre/style + ratings, plus people who rate like you
2) More of the genre I like: Uses genre/style + ratings, ignores others
3) Stuff I don't listen to but others like: Other's ratings - your ratings
4) Stuff I might like, but others haven't found: Genre + ratings, low rate count
5) New Stuff I might like: Genre + date added + ratings

We will probably want to end up producing multiple "feeds" of recommendations so that you can check out your recommendations under multiple categories.

Music: Artist Compensation

Artist compensation is something that is important to get right. Artists have to think they will get paid using the system, or else they wont want to use it. If I were putting my music up on the system, my main concern would be that people could circumvent the system and get my music without me getting paid for it.

Maybe we need 2 steps here. Artist need to begin to understand the disconnect between distribution and compensation. We aren't paying them based on how many copies of the song were created... If somebody emails somebody else a copy of the song, that doesn't cost me anything, and it doesn't really cost the artist anything either except lost opportunity.

So what are we really compensating the artists based on. I think song ratings is the way to go. The more favorably your song is rated and by more people, the more you get paid. I think this model makes sense as well, because the higher your song is rated, the more likely it is to be recommended to somebody, and the more value it has to the system (better recommendations for songs create more value for the user).

So the song has value to the system primarily in it's ability to both 1) bring more users into the system and 2) keep more users happy with the system (and subscribed). So the artist compensation model should be based on how successful a song (and the artist) is at doing those things.

Quantity of music doesn't matter either... if you only put one song up, but everybody loves it, it's just as valuable as somebody with 50 songs that some people like.

So practically what does this mean? Do we count positive recommendations and breakout the cash based on those recommendations?

The thing I like about that model is that it encourages the arist to throw the curve, by bringing their fans/family into the system. We should consider that when putting the payment structure together. If Bill creates four songs and puts them up in the system (at no cost to him) and gets 10 members of his family to sign up and rate his music highly, it seems like he should get some cash money out of that. It might not be much money, but it would be nice if we could put him on the map. Those positive recommendations would also potentially push his music out to others... and depending on how they rate the music, it will move up or down in the ratings (average rating).

Music: More on Peercasting

So I downloaded the client and am currently listening to some japanese radio station.

Unfortunately this technology will probably end up being abandoned once the record labels find out about it. They'll do their best to sue everybody out of business. Course it's an open source project so it can't really die... I'm interested in watching this one play out.

The problem with broadcasting of any kind is that you're always beholden to the copyright owners. And since most people want to listen to music owned by the record labels, they have to play by the labels rules.

Bittorrent and Peercasting are great pieces of technology for the system though, because they solve even more of the technical hurtles involved in distributing large (although they get relatively smaller every day) media files. And since we are creating a business model independent from distribution restrictions, we want to encourage this kind of development.

It's all about the artists though... enough artists have to be convinced to see the value of this kind of business model for it to take off.

Music: PeerCast P2P Radio

PeerCast P2P Radio

Ok, this peercasting sounds really cool. I wonder if we can integate this into the system somehow. I'm thinking that we're going to want some kind of thick client component to handle stuff like managed downloads, pushing recommendations, integration into common media players, etc... Perhaps peercasting could be part of the equation.

I'm going to have to get a couple of people together to try this thing out.

I bet the crew at mixaddicts would be good test subjects.

simultaneous releases

Does the film industry need simultaneous releases?: "While that results in fewer CD sales, the costs to the record companies to sell music online are negligible compared to making, packaging, and shipping CDs around the world. "

Yeah, cause they're not doing anything once the music has been produced.

The article is talking about releasing DVDs and online at the same time, but I this quote stuck out to me.

Another interesting quote from the article.


This begs the question of how much such activities actually hurt the movie industry. The actual economic impact is arguably negligible — studies have shown that those who download movies are no less likely to go to the theater or rent and buy DVDs.

I gots to read them studies.

Music: UI Prototype

Tonight I began working on some simple UI pages to illustrate some of the feature I've been talking about. They're not ready to be shown yet, and they wont be very pretty when I do show them off, but they will help those who are more visual learners to understand what kind of user interface to expect from the system.

It's taking a little while because I'm coding the XHTML up by hand so that it's symatically correct and can be marked up using CSS. It will make skinning and changing the prototype UI much easier, which is good because I don't expect the first version to look very good.

Hyperlinks are blue and underlined because they are hyperlinks

I just removed the styling for hyperlinks from the CSS because hyperlinks are blue and underlined because they are hyperlinks.

I don't buy into this whole, "links should be almost indistinguishable from regular content" thing. Blue underlines fit into this minimalist color scheme and so by gosh, you're gonna be able to see those links.

The only think I might change are the hyperlinks in the right side menu. Those lists do a pretty good job of letting you know visually that they can be selected, but for links I insert in my posts, I want them to stand out as you're reading. They are there to encourage you to clicky clicky.

Music: Song Meta-Data or Tracks vs. Albums

So I've been thinking about song meta-data (I think dictionary.com has popups, but I wouldn't know because I use firefox).

Meta-data is going to be important to the song searching/recommendation process. In order to know whether we should recommend a song to someone, we'll need to know enough about it to classify it in relationship to other songs.

I spent some time looking at the list of fields in theCDDB

It seems like their database is designed for albums primarily, while I'm inclined to make tracks the primary piece of data in the system. Albums can definitely be defined on the system, however they are used as a device of the artist to build a collection of songs. Since the system isn't tied to the typical album model, it seems like we should take advantage of that. And along with throwing out the baby, we can throw out some bathwater... for example: Artists will no longer be encouraged to produce "filler" tracks to bring their "album" up to 50 minutes. If you have 3 really good songs, put them up on the system. Group them up as an EP if you like, but those three popular songs could bring you as much income as 4 full albums worth of material that isn't as appealing.

But at the same time, we need to make sure to support artists that already have an "albums" worth of material put together that they want to classify as a "unit".

What do y'all think. In an idea world, with no legacy system to support, how should your music be organized?

Music: PodCasting defined

I'm starting a new protocol. I'm going to preface any post titles relating to the music system with "Music:" Since I can't setup categories in blogger, this will be the next best thing. If you are only interested in the system, you can ignore anything not prefaced with Music:

Here is a wikipedia link to podcasting for those that have heard me use the term but aren't familiar with it.

Podcasting is the concept I think we could use for music delivery in the system. The system would have a set of heuristics it would use to determine what songs a user of the system would find interesting. And then setup a custom podcast for that user that would deliver music to that users inbox. Podcasting is a good fit from a technology perspective because it gives distribution control to both the user and the producer. Since we populate the RSS feed, we can effectively "push" new music to the client, but at the same time, users could simply disable the client if they didn't want to get new music.

CSS Tweaks

I tweaked on the CSS just a little bit to get a slightly different style. The minimalist template was a little too minimal for me.

Style modifications

I'm changing to a simpler style. This one seems to have better organized CSS. Should be easier to make modifications.

You should read this blog using an RSS aggregator anyways. ;-)

Bloggers Atom Feed

If you're following the system you can safely ignore this post, unless you're interested in CSS.

Check out the atom feed for this blog. First notice that it's an XML feed. If you view source on the document, you can see the atom xml format. Second, notice that it's a pretty darn good looking XML feed. Here's another example of an xml feed. See how this one isn't as nice looking.

I haven't figured out what part of the XML/HTML specs allow you to markup XML using CSS the way these blogger guys have, but it sure is nice. If they included a link to the comments in the atom XML feed I would almost rather use that as my blog style.

Producers and Studios

I've identified another area that music labels help out artists. They help connect producers with artists, as well as having access to networks of recording studios and mastering houses.

Recording is being pushed "down" in terms of the initial investment required to start a studio, but the skills are still a pre-requisite.

The system will probably need a way for producers to enter in and offer up their services to those in the system.

I can think of 2 ways to arrange that.

1) Artists use the system to search for producers that could help them with a project. They arrange to pay for the producers service outside of the system.

Or the more interesting one

2) Producers become associated with a song in the same way that an artist is associated with a song. That way, a producer can be paid through the system, using a similar system (with different percentages probably) to how artists are compensated.

Recording studios are a different beast though, because they are typically paid by the hour, regardless of how popular the song becomes. I don't see the system having a huge impact on recording studios, except that it would give them a good networking tool. We will need to figure out whether they should pay for access to the system, or inversely, somehow encourage them to take on projects originating from the system.

That's an interesting viral technique... when somebody from the system records a song in a recording studio, that studio gets listed through the artist.

Just an idea... I think having access to those resources will be a service of the system, and as the system hosts we'll probably have to put some time into finding recording studios.

Media player integration

I'm stuck here at work for a few extra minutes waiting for Gwen so I thought I'd blog a little.

One idea I had about the system was that to get real value, we need to integrate with the popular media players. iTunes seems like a no-brainer in terms of support. Integrating with iTunes would give us tight integration with the iPod as well. Similar to how iPodder or the other podcasting tools integrate with iTunes and hence the iPod.

What are some other candidates.

Is music match jukebox still a popular one?
I'm thinking that integrate into Windows Media Center Edition would be cool. The market is probably kind of small for it today, but there's potential there.

I wonder what Winamp's latest version looks like?

I've mostly been using iTunes on the mac lately because of the iPod.

Tired tonight

I worked late tonight so I'm kind of fried. Brain storming is now a drizzle... a brain drizzle...

Not enough bits in this byte: User experience

Not enough bits in this byte: User experience"I want them to be smart enough to know (pretty much) what I want to listen to when I switch them on."

Fred has done some brainstorming on his ideal user experience. It's definitely an interesting read.

I have no idea how to build that kind of solution. But I have a feeling it could be built on top of the system. There are so many details to put something like that together.

Let's call that kind of experience "the system 10.0" :) My favorite part is the telepathic interface. ;)

Cats help write blogs

Radish is sitting with me again. She's my blogging partner.

Artist community

Here's another quick thought.

Part of the value add of the labels is connecting artists and producers so that the producers can help the artists produce music. Similarly, they help connect recording studios and mastering facilities.

I think the system could be used to connect these people together as well. In addition to providing a direct feedback loop between the subscribers and the artists.

We would need to do some leg work to come up with studios and mastering houses to recommend, but that's just part of the whole relationship building we'll need to do.

More Genres

Jon posted in a comment here talking about how one system does more advanced genre work for music.

I really like that idea. I'm thinking of how we could get the benefits of something like that.

Maybe it's not a genre so much as a description of the music. And a piece of music should have multiple descriptions associated with it. Some examples of descriptions could be: contemplative, intense, melancholy. While a piece of music might only have one genre or subgenre, another level of description would be helpful in classifying the music.

Meta-data is going to be one of the more critical pieces of the system, so doing some brain storming on how to extend the "standard" musical meta-data is good.

User experience

Let's brainstorm user experience some...

The community interaction aspect of the system points towards a web based interface. But the iTunes like seamless interaction would probably require a thick client for the desktop.

Perhaps a combination of the two... a thick client that manages your downloaded music and schedules new downloads....

ooohhhhhh.... maybe the desktop client could be a podcast tool. oh oh oh, I like that idea. Part of the service could be to subscribe to "podcasts" of recommended music. Every night your desktop app automatically downloads the latest songs that are recommended for you.

With all the podcasting hubub, I'm actually a little concerned about making that idea public... but oh well.

Ok, so let's describe the user experience for that.

You browse around the site, and download some songs you think you'll like (based on comments and reviews). You like some of the songs, and add them to your personal genre. After enough time you've built up a big enough list of rated music that the system can begin guessing at your tastes.

At this point you install the desktop app that watches the service for songs to downloaded based on recommendations.

If Adam Curry has taught us anything though, it's that podcasts use a ton of bandwidth. Perhaps the thick client can use an implementation of bittorrent to distribute the files.

This actually ties into keeping subscribers around. Imagine if after rating enough netflix movies, extra movies just ended up in your mailbox because netflix thought you would like it. And if you don't, then you can just send it back, at no extra cost to you.

Keeping subscribers

ok, so... if you're earning money to make music, and then you stop making money, you will probably have to either cut back on the music, or quit it all together (Cause of that whole day job thing).

So, to sustain artists over the long term, subscribers will need to stay in the system. If subscribers and artists stay, then we get a nice big positive feedback loop. Subscribers pay artists, artists make music, subscribers get music, etc...

So the question is raised, how to keep subscribers in the system. Some services use long contracts to accomplish this goal, I would prefer to come up with a service so compelling that no-one would ever want to leave.

Netflix has a good example of positive lock-in with their rating system. Since I've started using netflix I get really good recommendations based on movies I've reviewed in the past. If the system is constantly pointing subscribers towards good music, then perhaps there is enough there to keep them interested and using the system after they got what they originally came in for (presuming they only came into the system to get accesss to one or two artists).

How much is music worth?

How much is your music worth to you? At what point would you stop making music if you weren't being paid enough?

Conversly,

How much are you willing to pay for access to people's music?

These are some fundamental business model type questions that will end up determining if the system can sustain itself. If people are only willing to pay $1 per month, and artists require that users pay $10 per month, then the system is not sustainable. But if users are willing to pay $5 per month, and the artists can be supported for $5 per month, then all is well.

Before this exercise is over we'll have to do some math. Subscribers times fee minus overhead divided by tier 2 artists = success or failure.

File sharing = lost opportunities

Why is file sharing "bad". From the record labels perspective it seems bad because it replaces their business model (which is primarily based on distribution). But I think the "bad" is slightly different for the artists.

File sharing isn't directly analagous to stealing, because stealing implies exclusive ownership of some property. I'm stealing from you if I take your CD because you no longer have the CD. If I copy a file from your computer, it's not quite stealing because you still have your copy. You are no worse off because I copied the file from you. I think this is primarily why file sharing was so popular. It cost people very little to contribute "their" files to the system. The problem was, their files were really their's, they belong to the record labels.

Those traded files didn't cost record labels in the same tangible sense that me stealing CDs from a warehouse would(no I don't steal from warehouses)... they represent a lost opportunity. Back when I didn't have a song, there was the opporunity for a sale because I wanted to own it. If I procure the song using a file sharing utility, the "lost" from the label or artists perspective is that there is no longer an opportunity to sell me a CD.

So, part of the goal of the system will be to allow for file sharing, without the pain of losing that opportunity.

More compensation thoughts

I kind of like a tiered profit sharing system because it blurs the line between popular artists and undiscovered artists. If you're music is of quality and people like it, then it can quickly become popular, and as the artist, there aren't any more contracts to sign, or deals to cut to "get yo money".

I think there will end up being a lot of tiers, but for now we'll refer to two kinds of artists, tier 1 and tier 2. Tier 1 is out of the money, and tier 2 is in the money. Like I mentioned before, this idea could be revised to include tier 1 in the money, but I think the two groups will have slightly different focuses. The primary benefits that tier 1's will be interested in "how can I get people to listen to my music", where as tier 2's will be more interested in "sustaining and growing my popularity".

Once you reach tier 2, you will have a slightly different set of motivations as tier 1's, and I think the system should be designed to appeal to both sets of users. The undiscovered bands vs. the established artists.

Artist Compensation

Artist compensation will be pretty important to the system. I'm not quite sure what the best model will be, but hey, let's think about it.

In the distribution model, artists are compensated based on how popular their music is. Popularity is pretty straightforward to measure in that model. But it should be replacable.

Artists could be compensated based on the concensus of the system's users.

The exact ratios are going to be tricky to figure out. Maybe a profit sharing model would work. The top rated artists are awared percentages of the profits. The percentages would need to be tweaked as the system grows, in the beginning a limited number of the top rated artists would share in the profits, but as the profits grew, the percentage of artists "in the money" could be tweaked.

I think in order to build the community, there will need to be a tier that is not compensated, but depending on the quanity vs. quality of contributors, it may be possible to reward all the artists monetarily. Perhaps at the lowest tier the value to the artists is in the relationships and marketing potential.

hmmm, I kind of like that idea.

Tier 1: Access to the system's core features to help promote the artists contributions.
Tier 2: Fixed monetary contribution.
Tier 3: Profit sharing

Tier 2 might actually simply be a very wide area of profit sharing... with everyone in that tier getting .1% or something (depending on how high the profits are this could be a lot of money), and then increasing in percentages once you get to a certain popularity "level".

More Cats

Our cat Radish is helping mme out with this postp. She has planted her hean firmly on my right hand, making it difficult to delete anything I've written.

it's very cute though

The Nuggery: LOTR's Aragorn - Is He "What Women Want"?

The Nuggery: LOTR's Aragorn - Is He "What Women Want"?

Paul D commented that he also did a full day extended LOTRs-athon. And directed me to this interesting article he wrote.

See and I always though that Orlando, err... Legolas was considered "the hot one". Maybe when the teenage girls get a little older they're ready to settle down with Aragorn.... cause he's king and all....

Viggo Mortensen is definitely awesome though. Watching the documentaries I was impressed to hear how quickly he was able to come up to speed for the movies, and how generally likeable he seemed in the interviews and to other cast members.

yeah yeah yeah, LOTRs is good and all that jazz. I'm a geek. Next topic: how Lucas totally messed up Star Wars. ;-)

Rating songs

ahh... I can't believe I haven't spent much time thinking about this before.

Ratings and reviews should be on the song level as well as the artist level. I might like a completely different half of an album from somebody else, which would mean we have drastically different musical tastes. If we have drastically different musical tastes then I wont find their list of ratings helpful in finding new music.

Existing (non system) Artists

In order to make the meta-data in the system work, we would probably need to allow for reviews and ratings for music not in the system. The fact that I really like radiohead and basement jaxx is probably important to somebody who wants to know whether they would like the same music as me.

I don't think there are any legal reasons that wouldn't work. We could simply define artists and music that is "outside" the system, but allow users to rate it and use it in creating genres.

Music Genres

Ok here's an idea.

Who defines music genres? It seems like we all pretty much agree on genres... but who said that if it sounds like X then it's country, or if it sounds like Y then it's electro.

That genre classification only gets you one piece of information. What if we defined genres based on our personal preferences, and the preferences of those we agreed with. Who would be interested in checking out music in the Gary genre, or the Gwen genre.

If we cross-index across those genres we could probably come up with some pretty interesting results.

Music Reviews

How do people find new music today? I mostly find music through my friends, but how did they find their music. Gwen found a lot of music when she was working at the college radio station. It sounds like that was primarily because she had access to tons of music. So she could just listen to thinks until she found stuff she liked. On top of that, she was communicating with others that had the same kind of access and interest.

I'm thinking of how music reviews might be part of the value add of the system. Similar to how netflix/amazon has user reviews and "critic" or editor reviews, perhaps the system needs a mechanism for authoritative opinions on the music. Since the system gives access to everyone, anybody who writes well and has good opinions would qualify as an authoritative writer. I'm thinking of two ideas.

1) Scout for music reviewers that would be willing to contribute to the system for a fee.
2) Reward artists and fans that write good reviews.

I'm thinking in practice it would take a combination of the two. But imagine, if you're a good writer, and can write good reviews, you could get your access to the system paid for by the reviews that you write. What exactly makes a good review is subjective, but perhaps a mechanism can be put in place. Sort of a download the song and see if you agree with the review, if so, the reviewer gets points.

Artist Rights

Ok, so when a musician puts their music up for download through "the system" (I'm not going to give this thing a name until it deserves one), there are some legal issues that will need to be addressed. I'm not a lawyer, but there are some fundamental issues I know will need to be addressed

The first is of music rights. I don't want to require the artists to release their music under creative commons, because they might want to pull the music off the system at some point. Perhaps there is a part of creative commons that could be used. That will take more research.

I would like for the system to be a good platforms for those musicians that want to get signed to a traditional label at some point. Since this is a grass-roots campaign, it will be important to not try and lock artists in like the major labels do. Perhaps when the system is big enough to guarantee revenues to artists we could require some kind of non-commercial creative license, but until then we would need to leave room in the licensing for artists to take their music elsewhere, and not limit or put the rights of the system users at risk.

The artists will need to grant users of the system access to all the music made available on the system for non-commercial use (or maybe commercial use as well... would make for a good DJ resource). My concern is that in the future if the artists want to pull their music from the system to sell it to a label, that would leave the existing users at risk for lawsuits... unless the wording included use of, but not sharing of music that has been pulled off the system. It may be enough to track what music has been pulled, and make the users of the system aware that they still have a license to use that music, but are putting themselves at risk for lawsuits if they share the music outside of the system.

I think a goal of the system should be to allow the artists to retain as many rights to their music as possible. Some will need to be given to the users obviously, but the system shouldn't need rights to the music to make money. Since the systems revenue is not driven off of distribution, there is no need to own the copyright of the music.

Another model

The more I think about this music idea tonight, the less it seems possible to me. I'm not sure what it is, but there's something about it that just doesn't gel.

Maybe it's my own resistance to online subscription services. I'm usually not very interested in subscription style services. I would much rather purchase a CD and "own" the music than subscribe to a service that gives me music. But maybe that's just the old-skool part of me that isn't ready to jump into new technology.

My concern is that too many people share the same feelings as I do. But the success of iTunes argues against that... At least some people are willing to purchase their music online.

I wonder if maybe in all this value add brain-storming I'm losing sight of the original core benefit, which is helping people find good music. The system should be, at it's core, about connecting artists with fans. The core value of the system is music lovers, finding music.

So what is the core, and what is the fluff?

Artist blogs seem like fluff, so do discussion boards. Even file hosting could be done elsewhere (although practically that probably wouldn't work). The core technology is tying music to other music.

Artists communicating with music fans is the next level of value add. But the primary focus should be on how to link music up.

I bet Joel would have some good insight on how those relationships should be defined. Where is he anyways. :)

mp3.com

I guess they still exist... who knew? :)

Music = Community

So I've been thinking some more about community type ideas. It kind of tough to articulate, but here we go.

Start out creating a community of artists. Provide services such as blogs, web hosting, file distribution, message boards, etc... for free as a way to build up a community of contributing artists. It sort of reminds me of MP3.com. I need to do some post-mortem research into how MP3.com failed.

So, contributors get free access to these utilities, and consumers, pay for access to the utilities. We use the revenue from the consumers, to compensate the contributors.

This would incentivise the contributors to bring in consumers, which improves the consumer's ability to take home money, and improve the size and quality of the system.

I'm not convinced this will work, but it's interesting to think about.

Design Notebook

I just picked up a notebook at Bartel's in which I hope to draw out some high level designs for this system from a technology perspective.

It was recently pointed out in a comment that users don't care about underlying technology, they care about how easy the system is to use. iTunes was cited as an example of something that "just works" whether you understand the underlying tecnology or not. This is a good point, and I think one of the reasons that so many open source projects are not as successful (measured in popularity) as they could be. Many are very solid technical implementations of a feature set, but are so difficult to install and configure, that only the hardcore end up using them. That's not the kind of software I would like to create.

Scooblog on Corporate Transparency

Scooblog on Corporate Transparency: "In this series, I explored the creation of a transparency guide that would help people ask good questions about the costs and values when deciding whether or not to open up an aspect of your business for customer involvement."

A pretty good collection of ideas about company transparency compiled by a microsoft employee. The last section isn't as valuable as the first three in my opinion, but the rest seems pretty well balanced.

A good place to start for an overview of this whole thing known as transparency.

Joel

I recently linked to Joel's livejournal instead of his actual blog...

Joel Hartse

According to Joel livejournal is 'SO 2 years ago'

Sorry Joel :)

Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters: Virtual PC - App Compat Story of the Future?

Proudly Serving My Corporate Masters: Virtual PC - App Compat Story of the Future?: "Anyway, this got me thinking that Virtual PC could really become the application compatibility story for Microsoft in the future. "

I've used Virtual PC for this in the past, and it works well so long as you don't need any advanced video capabilities. I used it to play Full Throttle, which has got to be one of my all time favorite games.

Media costs money

Another idea for "the system" would be to sell physical media of any of the CDs for a "nominal" fee. Producing and shipping CDs is a pretty cheap operation. (are you listening record labels...)

Music = Premises + Implementation

Talked to Shawn a little bit today about the music ideas. I think I've boiled the fundamentals down to two things.

1) Musicians need to be paid to keep making music.
2) File sharing can't be stopped.

So, the design of the system has to accomodate these two premises.

If you remove either of those two premises, you end up at either side of the two issues that I've remained on the fence about for so many years. Removing premise number one and you get original napster file sharing. Remove number 2, and you get companies that sue thousands of their customers.

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger: "The system that Savage Beast has built is quite interesting -- it's an all-Internet Explorer application (doesn't look like one, though). They've been paying musicians to come in and categorize thousands of songs. "

That's the quote that stuck out to me. This system sounds like what I've been kicking around, except it's used more as a tool of the established record labels.

I think it's fascinating that they are paying people to create these associations. With the right system setup, I think people will do all that work for free. Not to mention it will end up being a more accurate representation.

Denial and Television 2.0: Quotes from The BitTorrent Effect (by Jeremy Zawodny)

Denial and Television 2.0: Quotes from The BitTorrent Effect (by Jeremy Zawodny): "Not enough people have been thinking about Television 2.0."

Jeremy is hitting on the issues I've been thinking about for a while. What is music, television, and movies 2.0 going to look like.

Hopefully the brain storming that I'm doing on this blog will make some progress towards what the might look like.

Cats are Nice

yup... nobody can argue with that.... except for those people that have... cat.... phobia... or just don't like cats, and maybe are catallergic.

Maybe it's just the sleepiness 'n Gandalf and also Frodo talking... but man are I tired.

ATHF

Aqua Teen Hunger Force in the hizouse. Number 1 in the hood G.

LOTR

Just got done with an all day super extended lord of the rings super event.

All three extended editions back to back. We started at 10:30, took a one hour break at 3:30, and ended at 11:00pm. Gwen and I just finished up the dishes and cleaning so the house will not look horrible in the morning.

A good time was had by all...