Monthly Archive for November, 2005



281 views

RIAA Targets MashUp

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on November 29, 2005
in DRM Rant, I heard it on a podcast and New Marketing
. 1 Comment

As reported on Boing Boing by DRM actvist Cory Doctorow, RIAA has threatened MashUpTown.com. This is a site that songs that are remixed music fans. They are usually taken from two or more familiar songs. This is, of course, what makes them fun to listen to. It is fun to listen to a familiar song that has been remixed with another familiar song. Sometimes it is the music from one song and the vocals of another. Well, now mashups are contraband. But will that keep people from making them and hearing them? No way. My guess is that they are going to be relegated to P2P, FTP, and IRC. Maybe you will hear a DJ at a club play one. But you can no longer just got to a website and stream or download one.

As Adam Curry has mentioned on the Daily Source Code, whenever Adam would play a “Hit Test” by Jan Polet (a sort of name that tune game played on Adam Curry’s podcast), he would sell those songs through his iTunes Music Store affiliate link.

When will the RIAA get it? We will hear whatever we want on the net, and if we like it, we will buy it. This is the point I made in one of my first blog posts Using Content to Promote the Content. I guess someone like BMI is going to have to make a “Fair Use License” for not commercial use. This just goes to show that most people believe that copywriter content in pop culture belongs to the people. With the advent of tools that allow anyone to easily edit music (audio), video, text, and photos, the remix culture is here to stay, and there is nothing RIAA or anyone else can do to stop it.

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282 views

Tivo will soon allow content be transferred to the Video iPod, PSP

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on November 21, 2005
in Consumer Electronics and DRM Rant
. 1 Comment

Reported on Podcasting News.com, Tivo will soon include software that will allow content to be loaded to the Video iPod and the Sony Play Station Portable.

I had suggested in a post couple weeks ago that this would be a real boon to users. But it uses Apple’s own product to disrupt Apples business of selling TV content through the iTMS. This is going to get very interesting.

How will the TV industry respond? Some actors’ organizations are already up in arms about Apple selling TV content for the Video iPod. But what will happen now that Tivo is giving the content away? Will Apple make video a closed format? What will the FCC say? Will Sony have a way to lock out video since they are in the content business as well? Will Tivo cripple the technology to make it totally useless?

Tivo will also support downloading of podcasts. When this happens, and assuming Apple does not interfere with Tivo supporting Video iPod, the Tivo + Video iPod or Tivo + PSP combination will put video podcasting on the map in a huge, huge way. If Apple could just be complacent in being a manufacturer of iPods and not much more, the users are going to get what they want. If Apple objects since they sell TV content, and Sony would not want to enable their content to move freely with their own hardware and software, a portable video player that is not in the content business could come along and be the elusive “iPod Killer.” Creative comes to mind. They are hurting so bad right now due to the iPod’s dominance in the market, they will probably try anything.

However, Apple does allow you to rip CDs and put them on the iPod even though they sell music. They had to make this feature possible in order to get the iPod where it is today. I am sure they would prefer to eliminate this feature now that they have the iTIMS. It could be argued that if you buy a CD, you own it, and have the right to make a backup copy. But that argument can be maybe when you Tivo something, you don’t own it, so you can’t move it around. But if this is the case, the Tivo-to-Go feature would not be allowed to work. Maybe the concession Tivo could allow the content in the iPod or PSP to expire after a number of days.

UPDATED THROUGHTS:
TV shows purchased on iTMS are commercial free. TV shows that are Tivoed have commercials. So, the broadcasters should be glad there is another way for people to watch commercials, although you could fast-forward through them. So, Apple’s business model to sell TV shows will probably still be disrupted, but some customers may pay a premium to have no commercials and own the content.

UPDATE:
More info at PaidContent.org. The transfer takes two hours for a one hour shows, since the Tivo software will need to transfer the file to the computer over a local network, and then convert it to a video format that the iPod can play. This may make purchasing TV shows via iTunes more attractive (no commercial, shows downloads take 10-20 minutes, not two hours). What Tivo should do is put this software in the Tivo. The Tivo could be batch converting the TV shows overnight, and when finished, transfer the content to the iPod connected to the Tivo’s USB port.

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327 views

Definitions of music ownership and music discovery

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on November 17, 2005
in DRM Rant
. 0 Comments

RIAA’s definition of music ownership: buy the CD/DVD/DVDAudio, buy a downloaded file with DRM, download a file through P2P, hear it in a podcast over and over as if it is a “clean” copy, rip it from a podcast, rip it from internet radio stream, tape record it from the radio, get/share a copy on a CDR, rip a friends CD

RIAA’s definition preference of music discovery: FM radio, Satellite Radio, MTV, Apple sanctioned podcasts (New Music Tuesdays).

Music fans definition music ownership: buy the CD/DVD/DVDAudio/record(vinyl), buy a download file with DRM(questionable)

Music fans definition of music discovery: download a file through P2P, hear it in a podcast, hear it on internet radio stream, get/share a copy on a CDR, rip a friends CD, hear it on MTV (maybe), hear it on FM radio (maybe), hear satellite radio



209 views

Why the RIAA should blame Clear Channel and not P2P

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on November 17, 2005
in DRM Rant and I heard it on a podcast
. 0 Comments

I was listening to The Future Of Music Book podcast this morning, and they mentioned something interesting. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act that was passed back in 1996 allows companies to own more than one media station in a single market. Over these years, (mostly) Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting (to a lesser degree) bought a ton of radio stations. Now, programming of multiple radio stations take place from on central decision maker. Over the years, all of radio programming had become homogenized.

My hypotheses is that with fewer programming choices, (less diversity), and the repetition of playlists, two things happened. People stopped discovering music they liked because there were fewer choices (so they are not buying music that like), and since a song on the radio one might like could be heard at least once an hour, why buy it? This is what caused sales to decline. MTV not playing as much music videos (or playing the same thin roster of songs) didn’t help the situation either.

At the same time, and not by coincidence, people needed a way to find new music since the radio conglomerates provided less exposure. That is when Napster happened. Next, the RIAA blamed P2P/Napter for the decline in music sales.

People’s thirst for new music never went away, but their mode of discovery changed (radio got lame), and then their mode of consumption had to change (P2P). Now, free music is available under Creative Commons licensing distributed via podcasting, and commercial free, automatically-generated-playlist-to-my-taste internet streams of licensed music like Last.fm and Pandora are available.

RIAA, you can blame Clear Channel’s crappy programming of 1200 radio stations thanks to the DMCA for your crappy sales in the last 10 years, not P2P. People who really like music will discover, and then will buy it.

UPDATE 12/18/2005:
No surprise here: Listeners 12-24 Prefer MP3 Players to Radio via Podcasting News.com

UPDATE 1/7/2007:
My new theory: Around the same time P2P happened to come about, other forms of media that people discovered through the Long Tail (becuase of the internet’s ubiquity) such as video games, movies, books and non-mainstream music took people’s attention form the mainstream music offerings. Music sales declined and P2P was the scapegoat.



234 views

I`m going to the Podcast Expo, and new service at Deep Signal Studios

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on November 12, 2005
in My Projects
. 0 Comments

I’ll be at the Podcast Expo tomorrow. I hope to meet some cool people to do business with in the future. I may help John Furrier of the Podtech.net podcast manage ID3 tags on an ongoing basis. I meet with him tomorrow.

I have a new idea that I am going to launch on Deep Signal Studios. It is the Audio Archive-to-Podcast Converter Service. I will record the audio from a legacy format (1/4 tape reels, cassette, viynil) where the organization submitting the audio owns the copyright, and host it as a podcast for a fee. Another service I am rolling out is to take an old dat tape of your band, record it, and post it on the Podsafe Music Network at music.podshow.com for a fee.

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437 views

Why Amazon should help Google with Google Library

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on November 12, 2005
in DRM Rant and I heard it on a podcast
. 1 Comment

Google Print is the service Google is working on where they are scanning the text of books that are in the public domain, and then converting it to searchable text with optical character recognition, and then allowing the text to be indexed and searchable just like any website on Google. The full text of the book cannot be read from Google. It will only display a couple lines from the book’s text that were relevant to the search, and a link to more information on the book. Besides out-of-print, public domain books, authors and publishers can opt in to have their books as part of the program.

Google Library is a similar program where Google is scanning any book they want to, but no text from the book is show on Google. The Authors’ Guild is sewing Google because the works are being used without permission. Google’s defense is that it is fair use, and this is what allows them to cache every page on the internet.

Google has already indexed a couple books. According to Search Engine Watch podcast at in this link, Amazon.com is getting this free traffic from Google Library and Google Print search result. Now, who can understand the benefits of this more than Amazon? Who already has a relationship with authors and publishers? Amazon! Amazon, come to Google’s defense already and explain to these misinformed authors and publishers that it will help them sell more books through Amazon! It is only for your own benefit! We know that you know this is a good thing for authors and publishers (selling more books!?!?).

Lawrence Lessig has commented on his blog about the Google Library vs Authors Guild public debate to be held in NYC on November 17. I wish I could go, should be exciting.



269 views

Apple should buy Tivo…NOW!

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on November 7, 2005
in Consumer Electronics, DRM Rant and New Marketing
. 0 Comments

Now that Apple is going to sell videos (music videos, TV shows, and probably movies in the future), mainly for the new Video iPod, now is the time to buy Tivo. They released their media center software FrontRow with their new iMac G5. What if they were to buy Tivo, and then make it possible to replace the Tivo OS with a hybrid of Front Row/Tivo/iTunes/iTMS along with the ability to connect an iPod to the USB port on a Series 2 Tivo to transfer Tivo recorded video to the Video iPod, and allow music to be purchased through the Tivo and transfer to the iPod? There are already tons of Tivos out there. And most Tivo owners are probably also iPod owners. I don’t really think that Apple expects people to replace their TVs with the new iMac G5, partly because the screen size is fixed.

One argument why this might not happen is because Apple thinks of themselves first as hardware manufactures, and the media distribution (iTMS) was set up to make their hardware (iPod) stronger in the marketplace. So, they would need to change their thinking, to think of themselves as a media distribution company as one of their core business units, along with manufacturing of Mac, iPod, and OSX.

Oh, I just realized something. If people could transfer Tivoed video to their Video iPod, Apple will sell less video content through iTMS. This would be a great experience for the customer, not such a great deal for Apple. Never mind.

If anything, Tivo should realize that they should partner with a portable video player manufacturer that will allow the transfer of Tivo recorded video content to the portable unit, just to disrupt Apple, and then cause Apple and its content partners to be even more innovative.



302 views

MySpace.com starts a label: MySpace Records

Published
by
Nick Dynice
on November 3, 2005
in DRM Rant, New Marketing and Web 2.0
. 1 Comment

Here is further proof that MySpace users will never be charged for the service I spoke about here. One feature of MySpace is that they hosts band profile pages. Now, News Corp can can pick from the best bands that they already have a relationship with to start a record label. They are launching MySpace Records with the help of Interscope. Here is what News Corp has really purchased:

*A pool of music that they can pluck the best songs and artist from
*a built in fan base for each band
*a means to push advertising about music that can be purchased to millions of people

Now that MySpace is under different management, they are simply leveraging their assets (artists and fans) into new profit centers. Why would they charge users and thus loose the most valuable asset: the millions of users? It is simply not going to happen. It will be exciting to see what other ways News Corp will come up with to make more money with MySpace. But trust me, they will never do anything that will make them lose users.

One flaw I see with the new label idea is that the first compilation from MySpace Record sis going to be sold through retails stores. Don’t you think most MySpace users prefer to download their music by purchasing them on iTunes or by downloading music illegally? It seems they should put a lot more money into promoting the artist first to create a buzz that is as big as what the majors are able to create, then try to market such a compilation. How about creating a buzz by allowing free downloads from MySpace, and then promoting the hell out of the bands and their tour, and then News Corp can take a cut of the touring profits? Not the best deal for the artist, but it is aligned with the “music like water” theory being presented by The Future of Music.

Source: PaidContent.org