In a new article by Steve Jobs (Link to Apple – Thoughts on Music) he indicates he would happily say goodbye to DRM, but explains why he believes FairPlay shouldn’t be made licenable.  It is a well written article, but deliberately misses several points.

On the subject of lock in to a particular store, he points out on average each iPod has only 22 songs from iTunes – or 3%, and given that proportion it is hardly lock in.  Well, it is unless you’re willing to throw away £17.38 and spend the same to purchase those songs again from a different store. Not to mention that this is averaged over the owning population.  How many first generation iPods are in circulation now; how many people like me who refuse to get suckered by DRM wont load any iTunes material?  When you consider these points, then those who have purchased from iTunes probably do have a lot more to lose.

Further more with lock in, the problem also manifests itself in the situation of not all record companies have licensed to iTunes, particularly the smaller indie players and they may only work through a Microsoft DRM’d store, so can’t simply download you favourite obscure artist’s tracks to you iPod, or vice versa.

I don’t believe that Steve Jobs’ position is altruistic, but a case of it means he no longer has to carry the encoding burden, the DRM maintenance cost – which from his article is implied has the potential to be rather significant. Not to mention DRM free downloads means he has the potential to capture more download business.

Steve suggests the effort being spent on EU interoperability cases that have been going on in France, Belgium and other countries would better spent pressing the record companies. Yes, I’d agree with that; but as the boss of one of the biggest online stores, you’ve not been the most vocal proponent of removing DRM. Not to mention that as the biggest online vendor of music at the moment you probably have as much or more influence than many governments to persuade the ‘big four’ to try a new approach.

Tags: Apple iPod DRM Music MP3

As an blog entry on Idolator points out with charts taking into account downloads, the task of capturing the data has become a lot more problematic.

The article (here) also highlights the fact that particularly for America, radio playlists change slow thus slowing any changes to the chart – so they’ve offered another interesting one – Top 50 Music torrents – here.

The BBC and Digital Music News (and I’m sure others as well) have articles about the results of some research by Jupiter Research.  The research shows how little iTunes use gets, compared to the number of iPods incirculation and the alternative sources of music to load onto them. The report indicates that people draw the bulk of their music on their iPods from CDs that they own and to an extent P2P file sharing.

The most interesting point that the BeeB highlights is the fact that people who tend to have these devices also tend to purchase more CDs.  So, despite the integration of iTunes and iPods – people at the end of the date like to have something real that they can touch and feel.

Well, another hectic weekend, which means I’m a bit behind on the news.  But an number of articles have been popping up about Universal licensing their music catalogue to a company (Spiralfrog) who will provide a legal download service.  The download service then make money from advertising, sadly the service is only available to US and Canada. 

It leaves me asking the question, can website advertising generate enough revenue to pay for a download – i.e. 99c??  Or, is this a implicit consession that 99c is a bit expensive?

Blogging a medium to keep people informed of events etc is now well established. But off the back of this there seems to be a trend of collective blogging on a common theme. This seems to be happening where multiple people can author on a blog for example Behind The Sofa site (and BlogCritics.com), or a site which aggregates multiple blogs on a common theme for example at Sun.

The interesting thing is that podcasting like blogging uses the same basic technologies (i.e. RSS/Atom) but doesn’t appear to have developed the trend of collectives providing podcasts. This is a little surprising in many respects as podcasting requires more commitment and effort to produce, so sharing the work to keep a steady series of podcasts going seems an obvious approach. If you’re interested in exploring this idea – then please let me know.

On the subject of podcasting; in terms of music podcasts outside of the corporate entities it strikes me that the podcasts are the 21st Century equivelent to the mix tape. Both podcasts and mix tapes are usually a collection of songs that the caster considers worthy of sharing put on to a medium by which the experience can be transfered easily. With your good old mix tape you’d write down on the cassette case the track information and maybe some words as to the significance of the song – this is now simply done by recording a bit of speech or adding an blog entry to go with the cast.

The only serious difference is mix tapes take time to make multiple copies for each of your friends the time a lot more time.

The politics of the podcast against the mix tape I believe simply boil down to the fact that the RIAA/ARIA and associated can more easily track the movement of the podcast over the net where as the mix tape passing from hand to hand or through the post can’t.  The interesting thing is that the RIAA don’t appear to have really gone for podcasters in the same way as people sharing files despite the fact that both break the same laws.  Perhaps they have quietly recognised the free artist promotional effects of podcasts?  Time for some clarity of position here I think, as my speculation on the RIAA is true there is certainly a little incosistency; so what if I shared my podcast as share of mixed tracks?