Now Shipping: EPIC FAIL

Maybe it's just because I haven't been paying attention as closely as I used to, but I was just thinking the other day about how the Never-Ending Folly of the Major Label seems to have quieted down these past few months. Kinda like how when you're a kid and your dad takes you fishing for the first time and after a bunch of thrashing around, your catch lays still. And then you think it's dead so you reach out to touch it and then it's not dead and it scares the shit out of you. Anyway, today I got this breathless joint press release from SanDisk and all the majors, heralding the arrival of the slotMusic card. Flop flop floppity flop.

*This is a big deal.* Its the first time the major labels and retailers have unanimously embraced a new physical format in over 25 years. These cards play in 70 million phones in the US and a billion devices worldwide. Imagine if there were that many CD players in 1982.

...

The world’s four largest music companies and SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ:SNDK), a leading seller of MP3 players and flash memory cards in the United States, today unveiled the full list of artists joining the inaugural slotMusic line-up. Starting this week, music fans can purchase slotMusic cards—microSD™ cards with pre-loaded, high quality, DRM-free MP3 music—featuring new release albums from favorite artists like Coldplay, Katy Perry, Leona Lewis, Rihanna and Robin Thicke and catalog titles from Elvis, Abba and more.

Within days of shipping, slotMusic cards will arrive on the shelves of Best Buy and Wal-Mart in the United States, with a manufacturer’s suggested retail price of $14.99. slotMusic makes today’s hottest music available on interoperable microSD cards that let fans instantly plug and play albums into their microSD slot-enabled mobile phones, portable media players, computers, and an increasing number of car stereos.

It's too easy not to note that the boast of an "increasing number" means very little when you're starting at near zero, that's not what really rankles my shankles.

Look, I (clearly) have no insight into how this doodiebaby was sculpted, but the following images keep running through my head, and they're what I find especially bothersome:

• The amount of time wasted in meetings, executives working themselves into a lather about the rebirth of physical sales, and the fall of the mp3.
• The amount of money wasted on developing a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
• The vast number of real problems that could have been solved with a redirection of all that time and money.
  
• The laugably mistaken fantasy of Morris and Bronfman that this might end the hegemony of the hated iPod.
  
• The bewildered, reluctant yes-man, shaking his head as he walks out of the board room after one of these meetings about slotMusic, heading back to his desk to update his resume.

From the Useful Shit Department: Online calendars

I was over at the Bowery Presents website the other day (for those not in the area, they're the promoters of a vast majority of cool club shows in NYC) to check show times and I noticed something I hadn't before in the upper right hand corner of the page: iCal and Google Calendar links. So now, with a single click, I can superimpose every show they're putting on in the city over my Google Calendar (which is, in spite of my efforts to prevent it from becoming so, a now-indespensable life tool).

Granted, there's nothing life changing here, but it's just one more nice touch on a concert promoter's website full of nice touches, and some band sites could certainly learn from the simple utility therein. There's a Last.fm station playing soon-to-perform artists, a regular podcast promoting events, an email list, and the calendar links. The scramble not to be caught flat-footed by having no idea that your favorite band is in town just got a little less frustrating.

Reality check: nobody reads blogs

On one hand, it's not news to me that the traffic on most good blogs hovers just above embarrassing: the traffic of this blog has yet to poke its nose out from under atrocious. On the other hand, if you spend as much time as I do clicking around the Internet in search of everything in particular, you start to believe that you're not the only one in the world that actually reads shit and clicks on shit and consumes at least some of the information you stumble across on a daily basis. You begin to think that everyone else processes stimuli in the same way that you do.

Trent Reznor went and disclosed the numbers behind the great Niggy Tardust experiment. Aside from being a brilliant move to get people talking about the record again*, his screed shocked me not for its admissions that even the people in this business who know the most what they're doing still have no idea what they're doing, but for the underwhelming numbers contained within.

I agree with most of the Internet, including this guy, that Trent's reasoning is a bit specious as far as who those downloads represent, and I think even if his assumptions are correct, an 18.3% conversion rate isn't half bad. The number that shocked me was the total downloads.

Granted, there wasn't a front page piece in the Times about the record, but when a guy like Trent Reznor gets behind a project by a great artist with a name like this one had, and it's released the way this one was, people pick up on the story. In case you never did, you can (but you won't) read about it here. For a while, this was the buzz of the blogs. Saul Williams enjoyed top billing on elbo.ws, and useless exposure on Technorati.

And after all that huffing and puffing, just over 150,000 people downloaded a record for FREE!? I guess I just thought there were more people like me on the Internet. People who read about something on a site they trust, and try it. Especially something very likely to be cool -- especially something entirely, legitimately, free.

But maybe not. Maybe nobody reads anything because they're too busy fighting over who commented first, and all the traffic that keeps your favorite blogs in business is just the result of great keywords hidden in mountains of back content, and irresistibly clickable ads.

When I was a boy, we had to ride our 14.4k modems uphill both ways to get to the Internet. These whippersnappers are taking the web to hell in a handbasket.

...

An anecdote to bring my point home: this particular site enjoys a small but consistent trickle of traffic from people Googling for "naked in the bath" and finding this post (even more from now on, I suppose). Unsurprisingly, they don't stick around very long. But once in a while, they click on an ad.


* I'm playing right into your hands, you clever bastard.

The new ringtones

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, recorded music was a consumer product. Sold by judgmental and hygienically-challenged clerks in dingy indie stores to be displayed on a shelf as a badge of honor, or repackaged into NOW! compilations and sold in brighter, cheerier places for the faint of taste*. Radio and MTV moved product. Movie soundtracks were sure-bet cash cows. Everyone in the music foodchain (even sometimes artists) made money.

Of course, all that's changed now, and you don't need me to tell you so. A solid decade after the mass adoption of the .mp3, the moneymen still standing remain tragically befuddled about the whole technology thing, and as a result, the music industry is in danger of losing its direct contact with the consumer marketplace completely.

Oh, the major labels will never go away. Not really. Unless copyright law dissolves completely, there'll always be a way to make money off old IP. But because of its baffling unwillingness to serve individuals in a way that's agreeable to the customer, the music industry continues to become less and less able to get its hands into consumer pockets without the help of a third party (movies, television, video games) that still knows what the f it's doing in the marketplace. Imagine a clothing retailer realizing it couldn't figure out how to deal directly with customers anymore, and going into the zipper business instead. Providing indirect, ancillary value to the same market to which it used to provide direct value.

This is why the ringtone business was once touted as the ailing business's savior. Cellular providers were willing to play by the rules that music customers had ceased to directly accept from the music business: polish turd, overcharge, repeat. For a while, anyone who wanted to hear "Who Can It Be Now?" whenever their phone rang had to pay for the privilege. Shareholders rejoiced.

But most people these days can find ways to get their ringtones for free. You know what they can't get for free (yet) though? New Rock Band tracks! Kaching! The business is saved!

So the new Metallica single might make its debut as a Rock Band track. Think for a minute about what that means for...I dunno...fans of Metallica. Unless they own a next-gen video game console and spent the cash to pick up the game, the first time they'll be able to hear the song is probably going to be on YouTube, sounding about as good as this. And if they want to (gasp) buy it? Well, they'll just have to wait.

Believe these two things: there are a lot more Metallica fans in the world than there are Rock Band owners. And a lot more of them than would usually do so are going to find a way to steal this song and not even feel bad if it's released this way. Metallica and their people are chasing a guaranteed paycheck and in the same breath hastening the demise of recorded music as a valuable, purchasable product in and of itself.

Yeah yeah, I know. It was going to happen anyway.


* Actually, this second part still happens. But (crosses fingers) that well has to dry up eventually.

AT&T censored Pearl Jam at Lollapalooza

When you hear people talking about Net Neutrality and how important it is, this is what they are talking about:


We don't need no thought control.

AT&T leave my tubes alone.

Eddie Vedder released a statement about this:

Most telecommunications companies oppose "net neutrality" and argue that the public can trust them not to censor..

Even the ex-head of AT&T, CEO Edward Whitacre, whose company sponsored our troubled webcast, stated just last March that fears his company and other big network providers would block traffic on their networks are overblown..

"Any provider that blocks access to content is inviting customers to find another provider." (Marguerite Reardon, Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: March 21, 2006, 2:23 PM PST).

But what if there is only one provider from which to choose?

If a company that is controlling a webcast is cutting out bits of our performance -not based on laws, but on their own preferences and interpretations - fans have little choice but to watch the censored version.

What happened to us this weekend was a wake up call, and it's about something much bigger than the censorship of a rock band.

[Save The Internet]

Amie Street gets funding from Amazon

It's been announced today that music-store-slash-social-network Amie Street has closed its Series A funding with Amazon leading the investing.

As it's been explained to me, this has nothing to do with Amazon's own eventual entry into the digital music retail space. The belief is that there will be more than one winner in the digital music future, Amie Street and Amazon hit different demographics, and Amie Street's unique model positions them well for success.

There are some social networking aspects to the service (befriend other users, etc.) but at its heart Amie Street really hinges on two concepts:

1. The users of the site determine the price of a song by purchasing it. Each song begins at $.00 and inches up towards $.98 as more people purchase and "REC" it. Artists get 70% of the revenue after Amie Street recoups $5/song.
2. After a user has RECed a song, they can cash out their REC at any time for a credit equal to the difference between the current price and the price they RECed it at. So if I like a song and REC it at $.08 and it goes up to $.50, I can earn myself $.42 of credit to buy more music. Users get a limited number of RECs when they purchase credit.

As far as what's on there, a lot of it is music uploaded by artists themselves, so some of it's great (The Seedy Seeds) and some of it isn't. Some forward-thinking labels (Nettwerk, notably) have been playing ball as well, so marquis names like The Format are starting to pop up.

AND THERE IS NO DRM.

I've thought it's a cool idea since I started using the site last year, but nobody really cares what I think. Amazon's endorsement, however, that's a pretty big deal. Things are looking up for the fledgling service.

[amiestreet.com]

Disclosure: I've recently been doing a bit of work for Amie Street...mostly writing reviews.

eMusic makes reasonable mobile deal

From a recent eMusic mail blast:

Announcing eMusic Mobile from eMusic and AT&T!

If you’re thinking about getting a new mobile phone, now’s the perfect time. As of today, eMusic and AT&T are offering "over the air" access to eMusic’s catalogue of over 2.5 million tracks. Owners of select AT&T mobile phones can now sign up for a monthly eMusic Mobile subscription plan. Subscribers will also have access to free MP3 versions of all mobile downloads on the eMusic web site.

A feature of eMusic I've always thought was neat but never had a need for is that once you've bought a track you can download it as many times as you like*. This announcement from eMusic marks the first time (that I'm aware of) that not only are mobile music prices matching those of their more convenient pc-based counterparts, but that the purchases are approaching no-hassle, as your eMusic purchases, whether they take place on your computer or your phone, are one in the same.

I'm teetering on the edge of turning this post into a commercial, but I think this is a fairly big deal. This is the closest I've seen to a mobile music offering that makes sense. For as long as I've heard people in the music business drone on and on about how mobile devices are the future, I have never known a single person that's shown any interest in paying to stream poor-quality music video snippets to their RAZR. I can imagine some people I know actually liking the idea of buying a song once and having it on both their desktop and their cell without sideloading.

[Boring info like compatible phones at eMusic]

* Note: Amie Street also does this.

Internet radio goes silent tomorrow...for the day.

Save Net Radio's National Day of Silence, after having been postponed from its original date because of some perceived legislative progress, will happen tomorrow. Your favorite web radio station (if it's participating*) will either shut off access to its stream completely, broadcast ocean sounds or static, or broadcast silence interspersed with PSA's.

"The arbitrary and drastic rate increases set by the Copyright Royalty Board on March 2nd threaten the very livelihood of thousands of webcasters and their millions of listeners throughout the country," said Jake Ward, a spokesperson for the SaveNetRadio Coalition. "The campaign to save Internet radio - a genuine grassroots movement comprised of hundreds of thousands of webcasters, artists and independent labels, and Net radio listeners - has quickly brought this issue to the national forefront and the halls of Congress, but there is still more to be done before the approaching deadline of July 15th. On Tuesday, thousands of webcasters will call on their millions of listeners to join the fight to save Internet radio and contact their Congressional representatives to ask for their support of the Internet Radio Equality Act." (Day of Silence (pdf))

5 years ago on May 1, 2002, Internet Broadcasters staged another Day of Silence when faced with an eerily similar ruling from the Copyright Arbitration Royalty Panel. That protest led (either directly or indirectly) to a last-minute reprieve from the Librarian of Congress and the passage of the Small Webcaster Settlement Act for 1998-2005.


[RAIN: Radio and Internet Newsletter]
[SaveNetRadio]

* Notable non-participants include Last.fm, and a whole bunch of terrestrial stations that simulcast to the web, including Clear Channel owned stations. Cox owned terrestrial stations are participating. For a more complete (but still not complete) list of participating stations, click here.

DisCONNECTed

Reports are coming in from every which way that Sony's Connect music store is soon to be no more. Hamstrung by unwieldy software, proprietary formats, and infighting between Connect and other Sony divisions, Connect was probably doomed from the get-go in its bid to topple (or even distract) iTunes. Engadget reports that interestingly, the eBook business will stay alive in some form to support the relatively successful Sony Reader. Resources (including human resources) are being shifted into the PlayStation group. About 20 employees have been given notice that they will be let go.

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, mp3 blogs. It tolls for thee.

There's an interesting flame war debate brewing over at Stereogum about the posting of un-downloadable streams instead of mp3s, if all that a song's "people" will allow is a stream. The gummers want to know: would their readers rather have a stream that they can't download, or nothing at all? Predictably, there are some "teh RIAA sux" comments scattered about in there, but I was pleasantly surprised to see so much reasoned dialog taking place. "Dan" said it best (with the perfect tinge of combativeness and condescension) when he said:

If you said no to streams, you are, plain and simple, not an intelligent person.

Also, if you treated the question as "Streams Vs. MP3s," you're potentially not an intelligent person. Of course it's nicer to have something you can "take" with you.

You're here because you like music. If you won't listen to new music because of some childish irrational preference, don't, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be posted. It just means you're spoiled and entirely too picky about the way you listen to something for free.

Idolator is concurrently tackling a similar issue:

From now on, we will not host "leaked" pre-release tracks that have not been sanctioned for posting by record labels. However, because a leak is newsworthy, we'll continue to link to sites that carry them when we come across them in our websurfing, and we'll maintain our "Leak Of The Day" feature, albeit in a new format.

When tracks from the new White Stripes record leaked, I was amazed to see how quickly the blogs Hype Machine was linking back to were being shut down -- Not "track removed at label's request"-ed. Shut down. Cool new music blog community Mog allows users to upload songs they blog about for streaming (and embedding anywhere!) via flash player, simultaneously covering their ass and making users question whether it's worth the effort to create a new ^zShare account. Is it too soon to claim that the pendulum is beginning its slow, deliberate swing back towards piracy-as-unfashionable?

Don't get me wrong. Piracy is never going away. Never ever ever. And until the purveyors of the content get their heads on straight, it will remain fairly rampant. But I think we're seeing the beginning of the end for those who unabashedly wave the flag of piracy as a badge of honor. Blogs are a big enough deal now to have to play by the rules. And that's okay.

More on Lala

The New York Times is picking up on the Lala.com on demand streaming story, revealing a little more about the dynamics of the deal with respect to licensing. Unsurprisingly, it's shaping up pretty much how I figured it would. In other words, the labels (just Warner at this point) get paid no matter what, and it's incumbent on Lala to pull a gigantic rabbit out of a Lego man's hat (my bolding):

For Warner, the deal with Lala.com has limited risk, because the label will make money from streaming royalties. But its priority is increasing sales of music, which have declined further this year. “The evidence we’ve seen is that a lot of people want to own music,” said Alex Zubillaga, Warner’s executive vice president for digital strategy and business development. “And their mandate is to sell music.”

Mr. Zubillaga added that Lala.com was giving Warner Music a good deal of flexibility in determining how to price and bundle music. Apple, the dominant player in the market with its iTunes music store, does not give music labels those options, much to their chagrin. Unlike iTunes, Lala.com will concentrate on selling albums, which it will offer for a variety of prices based on the behavior of individual consumers.

Another interesting note is that this service is not, as I previously thought, simply going to drive Lala's aftermarket CD trades. This is meant to drive direct-to-iPod downloads, without the use of iTunes software, and direct CD sales. Lala wants a piece of the retail pie (again, my bolding):

Lala.com, which is now a site where music fans can trade used CDs for a fee, is hoping to make money by selling music, both in CD format and as digital files that it will send to iPods without using Apple’s iTunes software.

Of course it's too early to predict how all of this will play out, but that's never stopped me before. Mr. Nguyen and Lala are going to take a bath on this. Even if they see initial success selling discs and files (doubtful), drowning labels like Warner will get greedy. Lala will be charged more and more for the streaming rights, and the unfixed prices will rise until sales flatten.

Something is rotten in the state of iTunes

"CUPERTINO, California—May 30, 2007—Apple® today launched iTunes® Plus—DRM-free music tracks featuring high quality 256 kbps AAC encoding for audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings—for just $1.29 per song. iTunes Plus is launching with EMI’s digital catalog of outstanding recordings, including singles and albums from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd, John Coltrane and more than a dozen of Paul McCartney’s classic albums available on iTunes for the first time.

iTunes will continue to offer its entire catalog, currently over five million songs, in the same versions as today—128 kbps AAC encoding with DRM—at the same price of 99 cents per song, alongside the higher quality iTunes Plus versions when available. In addition, iTunes customers can now easily upgrade their library of previously purchased EMI content to iTunes Plus tracks for just 30 cents a song and $3.00 for most albums."

Some initial reactions are starting to appear online, and they are shedding light on at least one disconcerting detail about iTunes Plus. It appears that in its current incarnation, the DRM-free tracks aren't quite "alongside" their cheaper counterparts, as the press release states. Instead, they exist behind a switch to turn iTunes Plus on or off; a switch that appears to users upgrading to the new iTunes when they search for the beefed up tracks, but that requires some snooping and password recall to undo. And once you've opted to view iTunes Plus tracks, the 99 cent ones are obscured. They're still there, but you have to know how to find them.

Some might consider this a backdoor price-hike, which is exactly the way I worried this whole deal would pan out. Not everybody is going to be able to figure out how to turn iTunes Plus off once they've agreed to flip it on.

With sufficient customer uproar, history teaches us we can expect a mea culpa from Steve Jobs and a quick fix. But for now, take a look at Lefsetz's play by play and decide for yourself if iTunes Plus is good for music retail, or just one more nail in the coffin.

Here are a few more stories:
[ars technica]
[Engadget]

CBS buys Last.fm for $280 million

In a surprisingly forward-thinking move that will surely spark a firestorm of similar acquisitions by CBS's competition, CBS has announced today that they will purchase Last.fm for $280 million dollars. Similar to News Corp's MySpace deal, the Last.fm management team will remain intact and continue to run the service without day-to-day oversight.

The take-home from this is that CBS sees the writing on the wall, which is that plain-old terrestrial radio (and really, old media in general) is treading water in a shark tank. The value of old media without complimentary online offerings is shrinking by the day, and it's not going to grow again.

Additionally, you can bet your ass that CBS will throw its full force behind reversing the Sound Exchange/CRB decision now.

I really want to get cynical about this and cry that the sky is falling because one of my absolute favorite services has been bought by a corporate behemoth, but I really think this is a good day for radio; old and new school.

[Last.fm Blog]
[The Wall Street Journal]
[RAIN: Radio And Internet Newsletter]

lala.com to give free on demand streaming a shot

TechCrunch reports that lala.com, WOXY's knight in shining armor and the hapless object of Bob Lefsetz's bitterest ire, will offer free, on demand streaming music to its members. TC breaks down the numbers and they don't look to be goldmine-ish at first glance. Basically, it's going to cost about $.01 per song to do this legally, and the labels will sign short term deals to reserve their right to renegotiate for higher rates if Mr. Nguyen is able to pull a rabbit out of his hat.

This on demand service (and WOXY, for that matter) are meant to drive lala's CD trading business. For $1, users arrange with each other to trade discs through the mail. It's important to note that not a penny of this goes to record labels, music publishers, or artists*. Much like the secondary concert ticket market, the secondary disc market is something these folks are just dying to get a piece of. You'd better believe that if the labels can't swallow some pride and make nice with Bill Gates**, they're sure as hell not going to give Bill Nguyen and lala a break with the rates.

Argue all day long about the level of exposure and sales this may or may not drive. Labels couldn't care less about Internet Radio's potential to do the same, and they certainly aren't going to be any more favorable to lala, especially when the sales this service aims to drive sidestep them altogether.

As cool and useful as this service might be for lala's members, it has some seemingly insurmountable hurdles from a business standpoint. I'll be surprised if it lasts.


* If you're also a gamer and you ever wonder why the clerks at EB Games try to push the used disc on you instead of the new one, this is why. It's pure profit.

**I'm talking here about Universal insisting on a cut from every Zune sold. But mostly I used Bill Gates instead of the more obvious Steve Jobs because his name was Bill.

Well, that sucked

tickets.com is on my shit-list.

If you're in the vicinity of New York City and a beating heart resides inside your chest, you probably know that Arcade Fire tickets went on sale at 9am this morning for their 5 consecutive shows at Judson Memorial Church. As can be expected, there were many more losers than winners. I know only one person personally who got tickets.

Me? I got past the "virtual waiting room" (really just an automatic refresh page that saves neither your place in line, nor your dignity) but then found that, to my dismay, the number verification image wouldn't load. And then, even though I was under the impression that once you've selected tickets for yourself and finally gotten past the verification that you are not a robot your tickets are guaranteed for a certain timeframe, it's not the case. Because when I finally managed to load that image, the tickets that I thought were set aside for me were, in fact, not.

Now, I'm no genius when it comes to the internet, but I have to think that for all the incredible money that I imagine is in ticket retail sites, they should be able to afford a programming staff with some chops. I'm not the only one who's beside myself about this. The comments over at brooklynvegan do wonders to make me feel less alone.

There has to be a better way to do this. Of course, with shows of this magnitude people are always going to be disappointed and there're are always going to be voices crying "foul." But can we request at least not to be jerked around like rag-dolls on the road to disgruntlement*?

As for me, I'm just pointing out a problem. No solutions here. Just because I won the Nobel Prize for Lovemaking doesn't mean I have all the answers.



*It's a word, look it up.

Internet Radio in your car?

Holy crap I want to believe it'll work. Hypebot reports that an in-car hotspot solution will be announced at CES next week. The awesomeness of this cannot be questioned, if it works.

Whether it'll be seamless enough to stream internet radio at 60 mph on the BQE (hah...like anyone ever gets above 20 mph on the BQE...) remains to be seen. And in my opinion, $50 a month is too high for the average this guy to pay for vehicular connectivity. But it's sure a step in a cool direction.

Nobody likes anything

Here are some less-than-stellar reviews of the big techy product launches from this weekend. Personally, I'm not surprised about any of it. Pat yourself on the back that you didn't spend 72 hours outside of a Best Buy or slam your face into a pole or anything.

NY Times on the PS3.

"If there is one thing one would expect Sony to get perfect, though, it would be music. Wrong. Sure, you can plug in your digital music player and the PS3 will play the tunes. But as soon as you go into a game, the music stops. By contrast, one of the things I’ve always enjoyed most on the Xbox 360 is being able to listen to my own music while playing Pebble Beach or driving my virtual Ferrari. Doesn’t seem too complicated, but the PS3 can’t do it."

Washington Post on the Zune.

"This is a breathtaking display of corporate faithlessness, cluelessness or both."

CNET on the Wii.

"The bottom line: It lacks the graphical prowess and rich media features of the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but the Nintendo Wii's combination of unique motion-sensitive controllers and emphasis on fun gameplay make the ultra-affordable console hard to resist."

The Wii seems to come out smelling like roses in all of this, but not because it bowled anybody over. Just because it didn't let anyone down too badly. Red Steel, the game that had me ALMOST buying a Wii, got completely shat on. The lesson to be gleaned from all this is not to believe the hype about anything anymore. Most of it is dreck.