Posts filed under: Music
More Steve Jobs coverage
Here’s the best take of Steve Jobs open letter, courtesy of Daring Fireball:
“In other words, the music industry wants a magical DRM format that gives them — not Apple, not Microsoft — complete control over all digital music. And a unicorn and a rainbow.”
Steve Jobs on DRM free music
Steve Jobs said today that he would “embrace it (DRM free music on iTunes) in a heartbeat” if he could. I think this is the beginning of corporate shift away from DRM, echoing the consumer shift that has been ongoing for quite some time. DRM is a bad idea that has run it’s course and I’m looking forward to seeing how fast it can crumble.
last.fm and Warner Music join up
Last.fm can now stream the entire library of Warner Music, and there was much rejoicing.
“Warner Music Group has signed a deal to allow its entire catalogue to be played over the fast-growing social networking music service Last.fm
The deal with Warner, the world’s fourth-largest music company, is the first with one of the major labels and the network’s co-founder Martin Stiksel said they were in talks with the other three major labels and content holders.”
All together now…
When many voices join together, they usually get louder so it’s nice to see Independent musicians and labels join together to form Merlin.
“The world’s independent record sector, responsible for artists including The White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, Tom Waits, Pixies, De La Soul and Cat Power, today launched Merlin, the world’s first global music new media licensing agency, with the message:
“Equitable deals for ALL independents”
A one-stop licensing shop, Merlin will leverage the sector’s 30% world share … and will make it easy to license up to 80% of the world’s new releases through a single point of contact - potentially replacing the need to negotiate thousands of individual deals.”
Come together
Apple and the Beatles have made up at last. Looks like one might be able to get Beatles songs through iTunes in the very near future. I’m still not clear if this means Michael Jackson will get a few cents every time a song is downloaded though.
After the death of the CD comes…
I’ve enjoyed the posts over the last few weeks posts announcing the demise of the CD business (something I agree will happen sooner then later), but I got to thinking,”What’s next?”…
Sales for online music stores continue to climb sharply, and DRM free marketplaces like eMusic are gaining support. But still, commercial offerings are a just a small part of the overall pile in digital music downloads. Bittorrent and other P2P technologies are still king. I guess it’s hard to compete with a price point of zero, coupled with the largest digital library ever created… The fact that in 2006 around 60 million Americans (a number often cited in news stories; no link to an official survey or study though) ‘broke the law’ by downloading music illegally leads me to believe that at some point, compulsory licensing schemes will have to be implemented. There’s been much talk on this idea, but one thing that I haven’t seen explored in much depth is the consequences of a compulsory license scheme on the growing ‘legitimate’ (ie. commercial) digital music download services.
What would a compulsory license do to the iTunes business model. Or that of eMusic? Would bittorrent and other p2p networks gain even more prominence?
Here’s what I think would happen:
- New music services will blossom, focusing on interface, ease of use and features like recommendations and music sharing.
- Existing pay per download services (like iTunes) will struggle, but ultimately still have a place by focusing on the above points.
- The celestial juke box will become be a reality
It’s a bit old but I found this great post from Cory Doctorow that examines how a compulsory license for P2P music sharing could work and talks a bit about how iTunes would fare in such a world. As iTunes, Rhapsody, eMusic and others continue to expand, they will undoubtedly be against such changes though.
Here’s a breakdown of the winners and losers in a post compulsory license world.
- The winners
- You, me, and all our friends
- The Songbrird music player
- Artists
- The losers
- labels (They’ll actually be winners in the end, but they’ll feel like losers for having to give up control)
- iTunes
- rhapsody
- eMusic
- etc.
Podbop: Find cool music
In a comment on another post, D. Keith Robinson reminded me of the cool Podbop site.
In a nutshell, Podbop grabs concert data from Eventful, and mixes in (legal) mp3’s with this concert date. So for example, I can search for San Francisco, and be presented a page that not only shows me all the concerts that are coming up, but will also let me listen mp3’s from those bands. Great idea, and great implementation as well. The site looks gorgeous. As an optimist, I also dig the wiki-like editing of artist information.
Of course, I have a few suggestions…
For what’s it’s worth, one thing that I would love to see is the sites XSPF feeds publicized on the ‘listings’ page (perhaps stuck under “Subscribe as a Podcast”). I am a huge fan of XSPF, and it’s certainly ‘mashup’ friendly… By publicizing the XSPF feeds, others could use podbop as a foundation for further mashups. I can see the feeds are there (http://podbop.org/cities/us/ca/san_francisco/xspf), so why not make them more public?
It would also be great to get listings for individual venues. For example, I’d love to do a search for upcoming shows at my new favorite venue The Bottom of The Hill, and get a podcast of those artists.
This site kind of fits in to the same (rapidly expanding) category as Tour Filter, Tour Bus, and Sonic Living.
All in all though, a very cool idea.
Reload @ DNA lounge
The kind of event that makes me glad I live in SF is coming right up this week. Make sure you’re there!
“With so many events in November and the Holidays approaching….”reload” at the DNA Lounge for a night to celebrate the convergence of community and independent music.
Bringing together real-world performances and digitally-originating beats, “web2.0″ technology creates a revolutionary way for bands and fans to interact. Reload is an exploration of new models for live music and digital content.”
Snapp Radio - last.fm/flickr mashup
From Paul Lamere, check out Snapp Radio, a cool mashup that draws photos from flickr that match the mood and theme of what you’re listening to on last.fm. Some surprising photo choices sometimes come up, but on the whole, very cool to see. I’d love to find out more about how song ‘mood’ is determined though.
Be fun to play with something similar on the desktop that could more easily sync to BPM and actual changes in the music. Maybe some cool color effects, swirls and photos fades, etc… This could probably be done as a Snappradio iTunes plugin.
Fun times!