knofun

Days of Thunder is a great movie. That’s all.

entertainment

Yes, another study proving what people (smart, respected industry folks at that) have been screaming at the music industry for years now:

A new study in the Journal of Political Economy by Felix Oberholzer-Gee and Koleman Strumpf has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

Entitled “The Effect of File Sharing on Record Sales: An Empirical Analysis,” the study matched an extensive sample of music downloads to American music sales data in order to search for causality between illicit downloading and album sales. Analyzing data from the final four months of 2002, the researchers estimated that P2P affected no more than 0.7% of sales in that timeframe.

Yes, its true. Will this keep them from claiming under oath with a straight face that downloading a single song can cost them upwards of $10,000? No.

digital media, entertainment, file sharing / p2p

So I just read Steve Jobs’ open letter on DRM and the iTunes store and I was just beginning to craft a response to post here. Then I got my Michael’s Minute email and found that MR had beat me to most of the points I was going to make. Of course, when reading these posts one has to remember that Steve is trying to push Apple, iTunes, and the iPod, while MR is trying to push open standards – which is covered by his MP3Tunes.com offering. To his credit, Steve has done an amazing job opening up digital music to the masses. To HIS credit, MR had the epiphany the industry is heading towards in 2000.

Both of these guys are talking about opening up DRM and really getting to the heart of what consumers want. They are both technologists and it shows, the difference being MR jumped first with ideas that were WAY ahead of their time. Jobs played it a little safer (although in all fairness he was sitting on billions in the bank and a company with a solid revenue stream while Michael had investors money and wall street to answer to) by waiting for the dust to settle a little bit after Napster and then walking in to the record labels like some kind of savior. Clearly Jobs emerged the winner from that scenario, after a 400% increase in his stock price while MP3.com was sold for cents on the dollar to Vivendi then CNET. He may be smiling now, but Michael must get some small satisfaction from knowing the industry would love to have his my.mp3.com now instead of suing it into oblivion.

My favorite point to make in discussions with “industry people” is that although they make a big fuss about releasing digital music without a DRM system, they do it millions of times EVERY DAY. Nearly every CD you have ever bought is digital music with no DRM, and I am glad both of these guys make that point, although now I will have to come up with a new favorite point. Here is my favorite exceprt from Jobs’ rant:

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.

At any rate, I am sitting in a hotel in hollywood and really shouldnt be on my laptop, just had to comment on these industry heavyweights helping shed some light on a seemingly simple problem. Happy weekending!!

digital media, entertainment

From Reuters with my comments:

With global music sales down for a seventh straight year, the talk at an annual industry meeting in Cannes, France, has become heated over how to develop digital sales against competition from the dreaded F word — free.Global sales are expected to be down again for 2006 despite digital sales almost doubling to $2 billion and the popularity of music being as strong as ever.

Critics of the major players in the industry argue that they have been distracted by the fight against piracy and in doing so, hindered the growth of the legal business.

In response, the accused argue that they had little choice.

“Many people around the world tell me that we’ve handled our problems in an incorrect manner but no one tells me what we should have done,” John Kennedy, the head of the industry’s trade body IFPI, told Reuters in an interview.

“Free is just impossible to compete with”.

Sure we did. We gave you My.MP3.com in 1999-2000 and then you sued us out of existence along with Napster and collected a nice $250 million payday in the process. Cry me a river.

Much of the debate at the gathering on the French coast has centered around the concept of digital rights management or DRM which can restrict the use of music bought online and was introduced in a bid to contain piracy.Its supporters say DRM also offers alternative methods such as subscription or advertising-supported services as the music cannot then be offered onto peer-to-peer networks.

But one result of DRM is that tracks bought legally from Web sites such as Rhapsody cannot be used on the market-leading iPod as they are not compatible, potentially restricting the growth of legal sales.

“DRM is like polonium to some people,” Kennedy said. “Digital rights management is exactly that, it’s the management of digital rights and if we weren’t managing it the headlines would be ‘irresponsible music industry … creates anarchy.’”

Oh yeah, I can picture the headlines now “Music Industry Gives its Customers What They Want” What a nightmare. Is this guy for real? Does he really imagine that people would throw a fit if they didn’t use DRM? That newspapers would accuse them of creating some kind of musical anarchy? Must be nice over there in fantasy land where this guy lives… I’ll have what he’s smoking.

But not everyone agrees.David Pakman is chief executive of eMusic, the second biggest service after iTunes in the U.S. market, and an ardent critic of DRM.

His service is the only one on a large scale delivering tracks in the MP3 format, meaning they can be played on any portable music player, including the iPod.

That stance however has resulted in none of the four major labels, who are responsible for around two thirds of the world’s music, supplying to the service.

“It’s the same model that was used for the CD and DVD, universal compatibility, and we think it’s the principal thing holding back the growth of digital today,” he told Reuters.

Chris Anderson, the editor in chief of Wired magazine, argues that some form of piracy should simply be accepted.

“You cannot have zero piracy and if you try to get to zero piracy you will make the experience of consuming music so painful you’ll have zero industry.”

Now these guys are making some sense. Chris Anderson always has valuable insights, maybe they should hire him for some of these panels in Fance??

Among the many music executives discussing the alternatives at Cannes was Terry McBride, the chief executive of Canada’s Nettwerk Music Group which manages such acts as Avril Lavigne.Among McBride’s many ideas was the plan to tap into the peer to peer market where fans could recommend a track, and receive a small percentage of the sales if the track was purchased.

“We are now entering the era where the socialization of the internet is happening,” he told Reuters. “Why not truly harness the power of peer to peer.”

But despite the many issues created by digital, the industry is united and excited by its potential.

Barney Wragg, the head of digital for EMI Music, told Reuters that digital was revolutionizing the way they work.

“I was just talking to (British singer) Joss Stone who is very excited about the opportunities this offers,” he said. “We’re not constrained to the plastic CD box any more. It offers the possibility to do things that could never be done before.”

Warner is also looking at new ways to develop.

“As an industry we really need to innovate, and bring new products and services to the market,” head of digital strategy Alex Zubillaga told reporters in London last week.

“We at Warner have put out a series of premium products and … we immediately doubled the amount of digital albums that we were selling by just attaching a video, attaching some special lyrics or a photo gallery.

And this is why EMI is on the brink of bankruptcy and Warner should be thankful it has the Cable / Movie / AOL arm to bolster their sagging music division. Hopefully soon a major artist will break the payola-fm radio barrier and become hugely successful on their own through internet promotion. Imagine a world where each artist was their own music store and you could purchase and download their album unrestricted right from their site. Or like we did at My.MP3.com with instant listening, you buy the CD and can access it immediately digitally, plus the physical product gets shipped to you. Then you have a database of loyal customers to market to.*yawn* Not my problem anymore. I leave you with a snippet of Major Label Music’s future:

EMI Fires Top Two Executives

2007-01-15 12:42:11.837

Story by: Dave Ruigh

On Friday, EMI announced the firings of its two top recorded music executives, chief executive Alain Levy and vice-chairman David Munns. The world’s third-largest music company also announced a dramatic cost-cutting plan and issued a profit warning to shareholders, citing sluggish CD sales and the incursion of digital music as causes of its recent struggles. Eric Nicoli, the current executive chairman, will become EMI Music group’s new chief executive.

digital media, entertainment

From the NYTimes:

In the world of hip-hop few music executives have more influence than DJ Drama. His “Gangsta Grillz” compilations have helped define this decade’s Southern rap explosion. He has been instrumental in the careers of rappers like Young Jeezy and Lil Wayne. He appears on the cover of the March issue of the hip-hop magazine XXL, alongside his friend and business partner T.I., the top-selling rapper of 2006. And later this year DJ Drama is scheduled to make his Atlantic Records debut with “Gangsta Grillz: The Album.”

Now DJ Drama is yet another symbol of the music industry’s turmoil and confusion.

On Tuesday night he was arrested with Don Cannon, a protégé. The police, working with the Recording Industry Association of America, raided his office, at 147 Walker Street in Atlanta. The association makes no distinction between counterfeit CDs and unlicensed compilations like those that DJ Drama is known for. So the police confiscated 81,000 discs, four vehicles, recording gear, and “other assets that are proceeds of a pattern of illegal activity,” said Chief Jeffrey C. Baker, from the Morrow, Ga., police department, which participated in the raid.

DJ Drama (whose real name is Tyree Simmons) and Mr. Cannon were each charged with a felony violation of Georgia’s Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization law(known as RICO) and held on $100,000 bond.

RICO Statute???? Come one people. It’s bad enough you sue your own customers, now you are ARRESTING the artists that customers actually want to listen to?? This is seriously fucked up, and people are not going to take it. I know you think they will, you think you are doing the right thing by protecting the “control” over your interests, but you’re not. You’re slowly (or not so slowly) KILLING your business, and I am going to watch and laugh.

digital media, entertainment, rant

The tower records by my house is going out of business… To me it’s shocking that it still even exists anywhere. You can duplicate the entire Tower Records store in a kiosk at this point. Have digital catalogs that people can access through touch screens, and have production facilities inside the kiosk that burns on the fly and prints the album notes. This actually does Tower’s job better than them, because you can include live data like tour info, discounts on merchandise and tickets, subscribe to the fan club etc.

I predict in 3 yearts there won’t be any record stores save some holdout mom and pops, and you will be able to buy your music in any format you want from kiosks all over the place. Why arent there iTunes kiosks now? Dock your ipod and cop some tunes. Anywho, sad to see a local landmark go but lets face it the dinosaurs are long dead and record stores will be soon.

digital media, entertainment, rant

This one is hilarious… famous UK guerilla artist Banksy has pranked Paris, and good. Apparently he replaced hundreds of her albums in UK stores with his own version, complete with topless photos and his own remixes of her songs including Why am I famous?, What have I done?, and What am I for?

He has also changed pictures of her on the CD sleeve to show the US socialite topless and with a dog’s head.

A spokeswoman for Banksy said he had doctored 500 copies of her debut album Paris in 48 record shops across the UK.

She told the BBC News website: “He switched the CDs in store, so he took the old ones out and put his version in.”

But he left the original barcode so people could buy the CD without realising it had been interfered with.

Banksy is notorious for his secretive and subversive stunts such as sneaking doctored versions of classic paintings into major art galleries.

His spokeswoman said he had tampered with the CDs in branches of HMV and Virgin as well as independent record stores.

He visited cities including Bristol, Brighton, Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and London, she added.

A spokesman for HMV said the chain had recovered seven CDs from two Brighton shops but was unaware that other locations were affected.

Artistic leeway

No customers had complained or returned a doctored version, he said.

“It’s not the type of behaviour you’d want to see happening very often,” he said.

“I guess you can give an individual such as Banksy a little bit of leeway for his own particular brand of artistic engagement.

“Often people might have a view on something but feel they can’t always express it, but it’s down to the likes of Banksy to say often what people think about things.

“And it might be that there will be some people who agree with his views on the Paris Hilton album.”

A spokesman for Virgin Megastores said staff were searching for affected CDs but it was proving hard to find them all.

“I have to take my hat off – it’s a very good stunt,” he added.

entertainment

Woke up this morning to my datacenter calling me telling me they were watching my power circuit melting. Cool. So I had to go to the datacenter (my favorite place), power down 5 customers boxes (some 15), switch to a different circuit, and bring the machines back up. Of course, Murphy being the bitch he is, the one box that won’t power on is the zeropaid web server. Sweet. Finally got it to go, no idea whats wrong. Super. Had a few lingering issues but nothing serious.

Did an interview yesterday with Rick from P2P Revolution. Grab the torrent here. To use that link, grab a bittorrent client here. Long interview, I sound like a dork. Go figure.

Speaking of BitTorrent, they had a BUSY news week. They released trackerless torrents, teased a new search engine, released said search engine, and caused a huge scene. In case you have been living under a rock, EliteTorrents.org was taken down by the FBI, Dept of Homeland Security, and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) under the prodding of the MPAA. Seems they thought bittorrent was biting into Star Wars. (side note: at least someone thinks this was a waste of government resources. Or at least maybe have the agencies do SOMETHING related to the name of the agency in question)

Now I haven’t downloaded star wars III: revenge of the sith from the internet. I have, however, gone to see it in theaters. And I am going to see it again. I think anyone who wants to see this movie and doesn’t go see it in the theater is cheating themselves, not George Lucas. That movie is awesome. Here’s hoping it gets out in HD DVD.

Oh yeah, and the Padres are .5 games back in the NL West, and playing #1 AZ Diamondbacks tonight. Let’s go pads!!!

digital media, entertainment, file sharing / p2p, rant

We co-sponsored the seedleSs 420 party, it was a blast. We hung a huge 8′x11′ banner off the front of the building, there was about 1100 people there going crazy, Junior Reid tore it up, basically a great night and a great event all over. Big ups and respect to Rez Khan, Carlos of Bredren, and Gerald Burdell. Couldn’t have done it without everyone pouring their heart and soul into it, thanks and I will see you all next year. Bigger and better!

PS. Big shoutout to DJ Nickel who saved the day. Thanks bro!

entertainment, play

Just caught Ian Clarke’s new project, Indy. In his words,

“We are just about to go live with another project I have been working on called “Indy”. Indy is designed to provide both a new way for artists to find new fans, and a new way for fans to find new music and artists that they like.”

Indy is a really thin app, with a simple but effective interface. You open it for the first time, it prompts you to push play, then starts queueing music when you do. It starts playing and expects you to start rating songs right away, then is supposed to give you what you want to hear after a while. Don’t expect to hear any 50 cent, this is independent music that is freely available on the web. Cool toy Ian, thanks for keeping us entertained with the products off your to do list.

digital media, entertainment, geek stuff