The New Flatness

This subject is getting so much talk lately but I have to say one more thing about it. What MySpace should have done that would really put them ahead of the pack would have been to pioneer the mobile distribution of music downloads. This would have been huge and it would have put them far far ahead of anyone else in this market, even Apple. Apple is going to come along and do mobile distribution better than anyone else and it will be difficult for anyone else to catch up. However, MySpace does cater to the “unsigned and independent” niche and that is what separates them from Apple. This could prove to be how MySpace will win music customer market share over Apple. The bottom line is that there are more unsigned and independent bands than there are signed bands; MySpace and Apple respectively. MySpace is deeper in search when compared to the Apple store and is user generated where the Apple Store’s content is distributed like old media. These are growth stages that we’re seeing right now. Step one was the iTunes store, step two is the MySpace store, step three will probably be by Apple in the form of extensive mobile distribution. The next nine months will be interesting to see who makes big strides in mobile.

photo credit: me

Universal backs Spiral Frog.

Some are disagreeing with this because of its DRM usage. DRM isn’t the way to go.  However, it will fade out over time.  Who knows how long it will take though.  Look how long it took a major label to get hip to ad based revenue.
We’re out of the age of the rock star.  We’re in the age of quality production by anyone who is smart enough to make it.  No longer does it take a lot of money…the technology is available to everyone to produce quality material.

Eric joins the club. Just because its apple I included this link.

Apple has created some deals with American and foreign car companies to allow for full connectivity of iPods in the cars and trucks. I read about what Bob Lefsetz thinks about how this will affect the satellite radio industry.

I lean towards agreeing with him.

Bob mentions in his post that he thinks all music that people have on their iPods is not from the iTunes store but ripped CDs. This is probably true but someone needs to hack together an app that can monitor anonymously what percentage of iTunes purchased music people have on their iPods. It would be interesting to see what the real numbers are since its impossible to estimate that number.

Bob also brings up the point that satellite radio is about music discovery where the iPod is not. What does it take to make the iPod a discovery device? …connectivity.

France is making some headway on the law to end DRM usage.

Their disagreement with DRM is a very valid point. In the physical world its the same as having proprietary CD players.

It is going to take time for creators and consumers to figure out how digital rights management is going to work best and most effeciently simply because it is totally different than the way things work in the physical world.
When the industry moved from tapes to CDs everyone had to reinvest in their collection and buy their music catalog again. This is what is still happening with DRM. Michael Roberts has good post that got me thinking. Material that is sold with a DRM is not what it seems.

Technology sped things up so much that formats can change so fast. So really what is happening is that the music player is changing again and again with every new DRM technology that comes out. What this is is the industry trying to incorporate old media practices into this new media environment. Even Apple, a unusually forward thinking company, is stuck in this old ideal. I think they are actually smarter than that…they are more concerned with selling the iPod music player than selling music. Selling music doesn’t make Apple any money but selling iPods sure does. So while Apple is being hailed as the saviour of the business it is only indirectly this.

The big picture issue is this…how to monetize, track, and retrieve digital files on the internet without being trapped in the old model where something physical, (CDs) is sold to be used on another physical something (CD player). We’ve become so accustomed to buying CDs and playing them in our CD players that that is how we expect it to work with digital files. The internet is open. Those proprietary walls don’t have to exist on the internet. By using DRM on music a wall is being put up between the creator and the consumer. These are the things that innovators need to be aware of.