Posts filed under: Technology
Rhapsody web services
Rhapsody has announced their new web services and a contest for the best rhapsody mashup. A contest is certainly an ingenious way to get developers to look at API documentation. Looking forward to seeing what people come up with…
UPDATE: Great post on Read/WriteWeb about Rhapsody.
DRM battles…
The issues surrounding DRM seem to be heating up, especially in Scandinavia. Public protests and flash mobbings like those put on by DRM activist group Defective By Design are adding pressure as well. I’d like to see more economists and politicians stepping up to the plate, and maybe these recent events will serve as a catalyst. The roar from the crowd is getting louder, but still, most of my non-tech friends (yes, I have a few) have never even heard of DRM…
Playlist/music links
Some interesting links that I’ve come across recently:
AOL Music Now Web Services
http://aol.musicnow.com/media/developer/index.htm
(Courtesy of Zac) All Media Guide also has some cool playlist stuff going on:
http://www.allmediaguide.com/tapestry/
Be sure to check out the demo of Tapestry here:
http://tapestry.allmusic.com/
I really enjoyed wasting time playing with the “Build Descriptors” function. (in the right panel, click the little “Down Arrow” next to where it says “Descriptors”) This brings you to a tabbed interface that allows you to explore different types of music. I’d love to see these descriptors be influenced by (if not entirely based on) a community driven folksonomy. Or maybe have the descriptors be personalized somehow. As in: “These are my descriptors”…
Pretty neat though!
The future of music: Big hooks up front
Technology and music have always had an interesting duality. Throughout history, it seems that most popular music is "designed" (perhaps unwittengly) to exploit the technology used to deliver and consume itself. What do I mean exactly?
My favorite example is that of Louie Armstrong’s horn. The early phonograph had a very narrow acoustic range, and had difficulty picking up certain frequencies. Louie’s trumpet, with it’s warbling pitch, and high treble, was able to pierce the audio haze of early recording devices. It wasn’t just that the trumpet was more popular an instrument then the flute for example; it was that the Trumpet was the perfect vehicle to exploit the medium it was to be delivered on. Other examples include Mark Katz’s hypothesis that violin vibrato was introduced to help early recording devices better pick up the sound, in a similar fashion to Louie’s trumpet.
Moving ahead in time, consider Pink Floyds album, “The Wall”. The Wall was designed to capitalize on the two, long-playing and uninterrupted sides of a piece of vinyl. Other attributes of the media are exploited as well, such as the high fidelity nature of most stereo system at the time, and even the dimensions of the album cover in order to display art work. Could “The Wall” have been as successful in today’s world of downloaded singles and iPod shuffle’s? Perhaps, but unlikely…
When I was at SXSW a few months ago, I found myself in an interesting discussion with Matt May (and others), that I kept on thinking about. We were talking about how current technologies were going to affect the type of music being produced.
Our best guess?
Most online stores or music websites offer you a 30 sec (or so) listen of the track before you purchase, so we figured that future music would be designed to exploit this. Who cares about song structure or melodic development! All that will matter in the future is to have the first 30 seconds of your tune “optimized” for a public bent on quick scanning. All of a sudden, leading off your track with that huge punchy chorus seems like a good idea. The future of music is “big hooks up front”.
Quarter of a million dollars
I read a good post at this fantastic blog today:
Analyst Gene Munster predicts that in 5 years Apple will be shipping 1 terabyte iPods for $500 each. That means I’ll be able to carry around a quarter-million songs in my pocket. At the current iTunes rate of $.99 per song thats about a quarter million dollars worth of music.
Something tells me that business models will have to change before this happens! Either that, or wages will have to undergo a serious increase. Hilarious!
The recording industry is not the music industry.
Recently, I’ve been doing some thinking about how our relationship with music might change in the coming years. After reading the book “The Future of Music” (which any self respecting music geek should read), one thing has become clear. While the mainstream ‘recording industry’ is looking like it’s pretty screwed, the ‘music industry’ has never been better.
This is a very different story then the major labels would have you believe, but at no time in history has there been such a large and active community of music listeners. I think the fact that a large amount of music that is listened to is acquired for free (through bittorrent or other means) is largely irrelevant. New business models will emerge. Artists will make money. Music, as always, will be created.
Making a distinction between the ‘recording industry’, and the more general ‘music industry’ is a crucial when looking at the hype and statistics floating around.
The real story of Sony DRM
There has been much discussion about how Sony’s DRM (digital rights management) software installs a rootkit/malware/virus on your computer in order to enforce their copyright. While the mainstream media has pickup this story up, renowned computer security guru Bruce Schneier fills in the technical gaps and offers some poignant insight into this debacle.
Of particular note here, is that Sony’s piece of malicious code has infected over 500,000 computers, putting this ‘epidemic’ on par with virus like Blaster, Slammer, Code Red and Nimda. Somehow I don’t think the feds will come knocking on Sony’s door though. Where is the justice!
Roundcube email client
Wow! You must check out Roundcube. An open source project that doesn’t look like garbage, and is really usable. What’s next, cat’s and dogs living together?
This project looks like it is going to kick some serious ass. A useable, easy to install, configurable PHP/MySQL email client with lots of AJAX goodies. What’s not to like?…
ROKR review
“We all want an iPod phone that will play any song, anytime, anywhere. Just four little problems: the cell carriers, the record labels, the handset makers and Apple itself.”
A great quote from a pretty good article about problems with the motorola ROKR.
—update—
The nokia N91 looks like the answer. This seems like it’s everything the ROKR should have been. But how long until it ships in Canada!