tingilinde

i'm sure they know they're worth every penny

RIAA's top executives have nice salaries -- about $1.5M a year

snip

RIAA chairman and chief executive Mitch Bainwol pulled an annual salary of nearly $1.5 million in 2006, according to IRS documents obtained by Digital Music News. The filing covers the annual period ending March 31st, 2006, and specifically reveals a Bainwol salary of $1.46 million, plus $17,175 in benefits. The payout was easily rivaled by president Cary Sherman, who pulled a base salary of $974,231, plus benefits totaling $584,287.

The salaries represent a significant raise from 2005, according to an earlier filing. During that period, Bainwol was paid $1.23 million in base compensation, and $117,522 in benefits. Sherman received a similar bump from a base of $920,000, and benefits of $104,482.

it is difficult to offer a comment... one wonders what performance goals were met?

really old computer music

pre-Bell Labs ... very neat

snip

The first programmers of the CSIR Mk1 were Geoff Hill and Trevor Pearcey. Geoff Hill had perfect pitch and came from a very musical family. Hill was the first person to program the CSIR Mk1 to play a musical melody. It was played publicly for the first public exhibition of the computer on the 7th to 9th of August in 1951, at the inaugural Conference of Automatic Computing Machines in Sydney.

The sound production technique used on the CSIR Mk1 was as crude as is possible to imagine on a computer. Raw pulses of the computer's data words were sent to an audio amplifier with a speaker attached. However, this occurred when there were no digital-to-analog converters, there was no digital audio practice and little in the way of complete digital audio theories. In addition, the CSIR Mk1 produced music in real-time.

improvements in aac

Stan is a friend and old colleague who happens to be the aac lead at Apple

This thread has lots of info on changes in Leopard ... (skuo is Stan's id, so follow those)

among other things:

A new AAC-LC codec is available in the new Mac OS X 10.5 (code named as Leopard) which will be released in Oct. 26. It has some significant sound quality improvement and bitrate mode enhancement. Since iTunes and QT use the AAC codec built natively in the OS X, these enhancements will be reflected in these Apple applications as well (doesn't matter you have upgraded these individual applications or not). You can also use the following commandline tools available in the OS X 10.5 to access the codec:
$> afconvert - perform various audio file conversions, including AAC encoding and decoding.
$> afplay - play back an audio file (compressed or uncompressed).
$> afinfo - display information about an audio file.

and

The newly released Apple AAC encoder offers four encoding modes:
Constant Bit Rate (CBR)
-- Recommended for live streaming --
This mode achieves a constant target bit rate and is completely compliant to the CBR mode specified in the MPEG-4 standard. This mode is suitable for constant-bit-rate network transmission when decoding in real-time with a fixed end-to-end audio delay.

Average Bit Rate (ABR) - Default Mode
-- Recommended for controlling file size --
A target bit rate is achieved over a long term average (typically after the first few seconds of encoding). Unlike CBR mode, this mode does not provide constant delay when using constant bit rate transmission, but this mode provides almost best global quality while still being able to strictly control the resulting file size and with less complexity than the CBR mode.

Variable Bit Rate (VBR)
-- Recommended for controlling the audio quality --
The audio signal is encoded with constant (and settable) quality and virtually no bit rate constraints. This is the best mode to achieve consistent audio quality across many files with the smallest file size to achieve that quality. It also has the lowest complexity of all the encoding modes.

Variable Bit Rate But Constrained (VBR_Constrained)
-- Recommended as a compromise between VBR and ABR --
This mode is similar to VBR but limits the average bit rate variation. The lower limit is the user-selected bit rate. Higher bit rate is adapted for difficult tracks and can generate up to 10% larger files than the ABR mode.

Note that QuickTime and the commandline tools on Mac can access all these four encoding modes. However, iTunes can only access ABR and VBR_Constrained.

the amazing clueless music ceo

Wired on one of the power centers in the music industry.

I've had some contact with the music industry since the mid 90s and the level of cluelessness never ceases to amaze. It is clear why -- their main business was controlling a very elaborate distribution machine, the musicians and the taste of the consumer. When new mechanisms emerged to counter these business "strengths", they reacted without imagination.

ipod birthday

Today happens to be the sixth birthday of the iPod.

It turns out I have some experience in that area and had worked on portable players and social music schemes for a few years earlier (we used AAC, like Apple ultimately did). There were huge questions at the time, many companies were making large bets that collapsed largely due to greed and staggering social cluelessness.

When the iPod was announced most of the business experts scoffed. I was first in line to pick one up when they finally were available for purchase - several of the people who were working on similar projects from the technical and social ends were also buying them that day. It was clear to all of us that this was the first "good enough" player and was a signal to us to buy Apple stock (another move that I was told was clueless).

I still have the day one player and some of the Apple stock. Both are doing very well

Here is a youtube video of the Jobs announcement

competition

So Apple may reduce the price of its iTunes Plus tracks to 99 cents ...

excellent (if true)

amazon v apple

Amazon has had some awful internal attempts (by most accounts) figuring out digital music, but now we may have the first viable iTunes challenger (via Daring Fireball).

There are still some glitches, but 256kbps mp3 is good enough for most people (not as good as Apple's 256kbps aac, but both are at the limits of what most people can hear ... there are some bad artifacts in the mp3 that make me wish amazon offered aac). And DRM free is the big draw.

The ball is in your court Steve...

more tangible music

Reactable has been getting press with Björk playing around with their stuff. (pdf)

I really want to see this on an iPhone.

reasoning with copyright part ccxxvi

David Battino's always excellent Digital Media Insider focuses on Lucas Gonze's novel approach to deal with cover songs on his blog.

Navigating copyright is extremely non-trivial, and this gives you a sense. Highly recommended and subscribe to the podcast!

largest volume music store with selection.

Wal-Mart sells more music than any other store in the US by a good margin. Best Buy is next, but both of these giants have very limited selections.

Guess who is now third?

It turns out Apple's iTunes online store - beating Target and Amazon handily. Arguably Amazon has the largest selection, followed by iTunes...

very interesting..

I'm finding many young people whose concept of a stereo is a set of external speakers for their iPod.

itunes upgrades

iTunes now allows you to buy a selection of DRM-free, less compressed, tracks. You are given the opportunity to upgrade earlier tracks for thirty cents each - a big sixty cents in my case. But the servers are struggling with the load. I have been trying for hours and am only now getting 10 kbps download speeds. At least a few people are upgrading (although with accumulated tracks and the option to convert several at once, the potential load can be very high.

256kbps aac is more than "good enough" if you are comfortable with standard CDs.

Also of note is an iTunes U section in iTunes that links to lectures at several campuses.

the zen of um

We've noted David Battino's Digital Media Insider podcast on several occasions ... the current episode is a gem... found everyday sounds transformed. Via the podcast or listen here.

bushing your teeth ... the ums in our speech ... lots of possibilities.

recommended!!

btw -- how many of you think about theme songs for people you see when you're out walking? I mentioned this to a friend who notes she keeps tracks ready to go on her iPod for just that purpose.

penn state ditches napster

Penn State finally ditched the Napster jukebox service. More than a few students were upset with Napster as a fee was paid to Napster out of the school's IT fund. Since it only works with Windows, those who used Macs or linux ... or those who weren't interested in the service, were nicked anyway.

But they went with Ruckus .. at least fees aren't being charged to non-users, but the service doesn't map with current modes of music use.

ah - the smell of drm

music and ticking clocks

Over the past few days I've chatted with a few people who attended the LexisNexis/Variety conference on digital rights management.

There was much bitterness towards Apple. This community views the move from DRM with EMI and indies as a disingenuous publicity stunt. They are also upset with Apple for not moving towards an industry standard DRM scheme that is under development. (this is very much SDMI 2.0)

Listening to these people I see a desire to protect current business models and build new services that are really aren't very new. For this crowd there are three customers - (1) the rights holder, (2) the online store, (3) the player manufacturer. People making or listening to the music are afterthoughts.

Everyone sees music sales going south quickly and are see something very similar to Microsoft's old "Play for Sure" used by everyone including Apple as the solution. The blame is being placed on Apple for not going along with them rather than their own broken business models that don't recognize the sociology of music use.

Things are getting bad rather quickly. The largest culprit is CD retail shelf space rather than piracy. The major retailers are cutting back, choice is dropping and music is being produced to satisfy a smaller group of listeners. Expect this to accelerate as music becomes less profitable for the retailer.

It is frustrating watching an industry destroying itself by systematically ignoring its real customers. Hubris comes to mind.

john gruber on aac

John Gruber has a nice post on aac at daringfireball.

Mostly accurate - a quibble on the partners (most of the intellectual property was from AT&T Research and Fraunhofer) and the quality is better than implied, but basically he gets things right.

cluelessness in the corporate music industry

A piece from today's New York Times

excerpt

Meanwhile, the recording industry association continues to give the impression that it’s doing something by occasionally threatening to sue college students who share their record collections online. But apart from scaring the dickens out of a few dozen kids, that’s just an amusing sideshow. They’re not fighting a war any more than the folks who put on Civil War regalia and re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg are.

The major labels wanted to kill the single. Instead they killed the album. The association wanted to kill Napster. Instead it killed the compact disc. And today it’s not just record stores that are in trouble, but the labels themselves, now belatedly embracing the Internet revolution without having quite figured out how to make it pay.

At this point, it may be too late to win back disgruntled music lovers no matter what they do. As one music industry lawyer, Ken Hertz, said recently, “The consumer’s conscience, which is all we had left, that’s gone, too.”

emi/apple announcement

DRM free, but mp3 ... it is difficult to call mp3 "high quality". Still, drm-free is the important step

Update

scratch that ... the EMI guy was talking about mp3, Jobs is talking aac

256kbps aac for $1.29 for high quality on iTunes. 256k aac is *really* good. Much better than 320kbps mp3 and (by considerable double blind testing) as good as reference CDs.

Any digital player maker can license aac - it is an ISO standard. I believe the Microsoft has an aac codec and the Zune as do a few of the others Sony, iRiver). Not a big thing...

___

But - most people won't note appreciable audio differences from 128 kbps aac - and most headphones/speakers aren't very good. You are really paying for the drm-free feature. Of course you may need a larger capacity player.

Beyond EMI... The other music majors have been very negative on drm-free music, but many independents and small labels support the idea. It is likely there will be a major change in the next few months (at least at the iTunes store). Note that it offers a difference between subscription music and download music.

We stay tuned to see if Microsoft and others support this.

___

the press release:

Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store
DRM-Free Songs from EMI Available on iTunes for $1.29 in May

CUPERTINO, California—April 2, 2007—Apple® today announced that EMI Music’s entire digital catalog of music will be available for purchase DRM-free (without digital rights management) from the iTunes® Store (www.itunes.com) worldwide in May. DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song. In addition, iTunes customers will be able to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free versions for just 30 cents a song. 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 DRM-free higher quality versions when available.

“We are going to give iTunes customers a choice—the current versions of our songs for the same 99 cent price, or new DRM-free versions of the same songs with even higher audio quality and the security of interoperability for just 30 cents more,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think our customers are going to love this, and we expect to offer more than half of the songs on iTunes in DRM-free versions by the end of this year.”

“EMI and iTunes are once again teaming up to move the digital music industry forward by giving music fans higher quality audio that is virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings, with no usage restrictions on the music they love from their favorite artists,” said Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group.

With DRM-free music from the EMI catalog, iTunes customers will have the ability to download tracks from their favorite EMI artists without any usage restrictions that limit the types of devices or number of computers that purchased songs can be played on. DRM-free songs purchased from the iTunes Store will be encoded in AAC at 256 kbps, twice the current bit rate of 128 kbps, and will play on all iPods, Mac® or Windows computers, Apple TVs and soon iPhones, as well as many other digital music players.

iTunes will also offer customers a simple, one-click option to easily upgrade their entire library of all previously purchased EMI content to the higher quality DRM-free format for 30 cents a song. All EMI music videos will also be available in DRM-free format with no change in price.

The iTunes Store features the world’s largest catalog with over five million songs, 350 television shows and over 400 movies. The iTunes Store has sold over two billion songs, 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies, making it the world’s most popular online music, TV and movie store.

With Apple’s legendary ease of use, pioneering features such as integrated podcasting support, iMix playlist sharing, seamless integration with iPod® and the ability to turn previously purchased songs into completed albums at a reduced price, the iTunes Store is the best way for PC and Mac users to legally discover, purchase and download music and video online.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and will enter the mobile phone market this year with its revolutionary iPhone.

wii loops

Geoff recommends trying this if you have the right hardware.

music and pandora

I'm not a huge fan of Pandora, but many people are and this interview of it founder is interesting.

Sadly the new streaming rates may kill the service...

npr and the proposed internet radio royalty

NPR is not happy.

This is a stunning, damaging decision for public radio and its commitment to music discovery and education, which has been part of our tradition for more than half a century. Public radio’s agreements on royalties with all such organizations, including the RIAA, have always taken into account our public service mission and non-profit status. These new rates, at least 20 times more than what stations have paid in the past, treat us as if we were commercial radio – although by its nature, public radio cannot increase revenue from more listeners or more content, the factors that set this new rate. Also, we are being required to pay an internet royalty fee that is vastly more expensive than what we pay for over-the-air use of music, although for a fraction of the over-the-air audience.

This decision penalizes public radio stations for fulfilling their mandate, it penalizes emerging and non-mainstream musical artists who have always relied on public radio for visibility and ultimately it penalizes the American public, whose local station memberships and taxes will be necessary to cover the millions of dollars that will now be required as payment. On behalf of the public radio system, NPR will pursue all possible action to reverse this decision, which threatens to severely reduce local stations’ public service and limit the reach of the entire music community. NPR will begin on Friday, March 16 by filing a petition for reconsideration with the CRB panel, the first step in this process. We ask that the online royalties be returned to their historic arrangement and that public radio can continue to provide its vital service to music discovery.

Perhaps it would be reasonable for the Internet radio stations to charge a promotion fee to the recording industry for each track-listener reached. The music industry must realize regular radio is becoming less relevant and this constitutes free promotion.

picking earphones

I'm surprised how often I get asked for earphone recommendations. Although I do have some audio in my background and have some earphones I like, my hearing isn't fantastic and I haven't auditioned many devices.

iLounge is in the middle of a four part series that looks like it will be useful to anyone looking to move beyond the transducers that came with their mp3 player.

the end of pandora, last.fm, live365 and internet radio?

perhaps...

Some of these places will manage to come up with support (advertising and otherwise), but others will probably fail. The important thing to realize is Internet "radio" is now a major point of discovery for people who end up buying music. The industry may end up killing one of their most important marketing channels with major damage to non-"top 100" music.

An alternative may be for these outlets to only play non-RIAA represented music. Another may be for the online stations to charge the music industry for each performance.

Throwing away free advertising is really stupid, but one expects stupid from the music industry these days.

next generation audio formats..

There are a few issues here

George sent this link

DRM is, at best neutral, but generally subtracts value for consumer digital media. A person expects to purchase a piece and play it on family devices over the years. DRM tends to get in the way of this basic expectation (some forms are worse than others). There are many issues involved and many of us have talked about them, but a bottom line is that DRM is consumer unfriendly.

The second issue is quality. I've been involved in attempts to create higher quality musical experiences. Better compression standards, higher fidelity recording techniques and sound field reconstruction. Some of these are easier to get in consumers hands than others (higher fidelity audio would not be difficult compared to workable sound field reconstruction for example), but an interesting bottom line is most people (well over 95%) are unwilling to pay for post CD audio quality. If it exists for the same price and works on their system, they strongly prefer it, but the need to upgrade the system or pay a bit more for media just doesn't work (we were involved in several tests and others have noted similar results).

TV is not "good enough" and people will migrate to HDTV... audio has reached the "good enough" level for most people.

on card games

I won't go deeply into the card game that Steve Jobs is playing (after all, it is only idle speculation on my part), but he may be able to make some companies take unfortunate sides that will disturb parts of their user bases. If, for example, Microsoft leverages some pieces of Vista and takes a much stricter DRM enforcement approach, they risk alienating their collage age users. For many this could become the largest differentiator between operating systems.

The short term downside for Apple would be small. The iTunes store is the most successful of the online stores (arguably the only one that is turning a profit), but the margins are tiny and the existence of the store is not a first order reason why people buy iPods (this may change as brick and mortar music points of sale disappear). Microsoft, on the other hand, is pushing DRM as a feature.

One has to remember who their customer is.... Is it the end user - or is it the rights holder and distribution chains?

(Of course Apple is taking a walled garden approach to the iPhone and no announcements have been made on video - it wouldn't be the first time Jobs was inconsistent)

steve jobs on drm

A letter by Steve Jobs posted on the Apple site today ...

He is correct - the decision is not in the hands of Microsoft or Apple. Only the music rights owners are responsible and only they can turn off DRM.

While there was some buzz about DRM free adoption of mp3s by some of the majors a few months ago, my contact with some of the players suggested that was nothing more than a bit of PR smoke. I doubt Jobs sees the majors moving from their current position either (this is a nice way for him to deal with some EU concerns about "fairplay").

looking at some numbers

Yesterday a friend in the US wireless industry was claiming the future of music distribution was going to be the wireless phone. He cited a number that 57 percent of music sold in Korea is via download (subscription and pay per track plans combined) and about half of that is to phone handsets.

I've seen those numbers, but there are some issues. People, to first order, don't buy music in South Korea. The 50 million citizens of Korea spent about $80 million on all forms of music last year - about $1.60 per person. Last year music spending in the US amounted to $40 per person and digital downloads alone (which people argue is small) ran about $1.90 per person. Five years ago Koreans spent nearly as much on music as Americans, but the market imploded.

The Korean wired and wireless infrastructure is vastly superior to what we have in the US, but it hasn'ted increased "legal" music consumption.

classical music metadata

Online music metadata is sparse ... Gracenote announced improvements (thanks to George for the link)

online file conversion

Media convert

many file conversions ... online and minimal fuss (mentioned before, but very useful and worth noting)

training for holiday stuff

The MacWorld Superguides are basic, but may be just the thing for people with new Macs, digital cameras and iPods. PDF downloads are about $13, but there is a 20% off coupon at macsanta

more music discovery

Lots of eyecandy here ... you specify aspects you would like to hear in a sample track and navigate around.

I haven't been terribly impressed by any of these schemes - randomly sampling areas of interest seems to be as useful and getting recommendations from people who know me is much better.

still - they can be cute

ifill your ipod

Most of my iPod listening consists of podcasts and music from our CD collection. A bit comes from Interest streaming stations using Audio HiJack (great product). Those of you who are mostly interested in time/location displaced listening of Internet streamed radio should look at iFill - a few people have recommended it recently.

portable recorders

Speaking of O'Reilly - the prompt for the tethered photography note came from wandering around on the O'Reilly site after looking for a link to a piece I heard on their Digital Media Insider podcast on today's walk...

a Mark Nelson interview that may prove useful to anyone looking for a digital audio recorder ...

flac and other audio formats

I've been having an email discussion with someone about the benefits of FLAC and other lossless encoders. One issue with FLAC is it won't play on an iPod. Apple Lossless (another lossless format) will - it turns out there are ways to convert between formats. Going lossless to lossless is "safe" ... OS X users should look at Max.

That said, I don't feel a personal need to use lossless files. aac at 160 kbps or higher fools most people and is certainly more than adequate for ears on someone my age. There are a few compression artifacts that I can pick up, but I spent way too much time with encoders and am sensitized to problem areas. These are far less common and much less objectionable that recording mistakes on the CD itself.

I would rather have audio that is good enough - storage still isn't free and it certainly isn't robust. The CDs are my references and backups.

I do wish Apple would use 160kbps aac in the iTunes store...

tuning itunes

iTunes is one of those programs that is semi-intuitive. Good enough to get you going, but having interesting features that you don't bump into with normal use.

Reading manuals is generally the way around this, but none of us do things like that.

MacWorld has a short description of features you may not know about - some may even be useful to you. Clearly worth the read for any iTunes user.

learn how to record audio

Mike Schulze is a very good recording engineer - technically and musically.

He is putting together a page with tips for amateurs. The article on microphone selection is very good as is time alignment.

freeing up ringtones

PhoneZoo, by a few accounts, is a free ringtone service that actually works.

How the service handles copyright is interesting... public domain files can be downloaded by anyone. Copyrighted material can't be downloaded until you upload a full copy of the track yourself -- it will be interesting to see if that passes legal muster..

earphone alert

I have a pair of Etymotic 6is and love them.

This is far and away the best price I've seen. They take a bit of getting used to (they really isolate), but the sound is probably better than your home hifi speakers (unless those speakers cost over $5,000 a pair)

There are better earphones in the $200+ range - $80 is a steal. I think I paid about $170 for mine a few years ago. If you need a pro recommendation, I note these are used by the person with the best ears I've encountered (a sound engineer with a symphony orchestra)

I strongly recommend ripping your CDs at 160kbps aac. 128kbps isn't quite transparent enough ...especially with good earphones.

one buck usb cable for ipod shuffle g2

Apple's new $79 iPod Shuffle comes with a non-standard charging/data connection. It apparently works, but may not be convenient to carry around.

Twenty buck cables will probably show up quickly, but the Apple connection isn't completely non-standard. A four pin mini jack (about a buck at Radio Shack) can be connected to a USB cable using this pinout (apparently from a German source). So if you know how to use a soldering iron (you can verify the pinout with a VOM and the charging stand that comes with the iPod)

ilounge buyers guide

The current iLounge buyer's guide...

Much of it is advertising, but the same is true for most magazines and this one is free and tends to have credible reviews.

it is amazing to note the size of the iPod ecosystem.

thoughts on the ipod

Five years ago today Apple introduced the iPod. Quite a bit of bandwidth is being used to talk about that, but I'll offer a slightly different perspective as someone who had been involved in the area long before Apple and also as a user.

We had built a few internal players - simple things to show the concept of MPEG-2 AAC on a small device as well as a few home network machines. The research perspective was to worry about interface and user experience and learn from early users. The other focus was working props to make points to executives.

We had been working with Apple to sell them on the idea of AAC as a music codec - mostly the Quicktime group. There was real interest and even more when Apple introduced the iTunes player (which was a repackaging of SoundJam - Apple bought the program and the developer). I was disappointed when the original iPod only supported mp3, but that eventually changed.

It turned out the industry focus in the industry was on the control aspects of SDMI - something those of us in the trenches thought foolish, but it was supported by about 200 companies (essentially everyone but Apple). Apple did work out a "workable" drm scheme, but that came much later - everyone else saw it as a necessary starting point. Is is impossible to stress enough how screwed up the industry was at the time, but that is a different story.

Prior to the iPod many people realized a hard drive player was possible, but most people were focusing on expensive 300 MB and 1GB microdrives. No one had solved the interface problem. A dozen players were on the market and all of them were awful. None were selling well. Most companies felt that jukeboxes in the sky connected to home stereos and satellite radio were the future.

___

The iPod was astonishing to anyone who had built a portable audio device to that point. The scroll wheel was the obvious solution and the navigation, although not perfect, had been rendered simple. The new 1.8" five GB hard disks were perfectly suited to the task and Apple had made the process of transferring mp3s workable (auto transfer over a fast firewire connection).

I had to have one.

I showed up at the Apple Store (an 80 mile drive) early and they opened their doors well before the published time. I was the first person to buy one at that store.

I still have it. The mechanical scroll wheel is a thing of beauty and is much better than the touch wheels. The battery died a few years ago, but $40 and 10 minutes fixed that.

It has added quality to my life. I walk quite a bit and much of the walk is through an uninteresting region where any sort of diversion is good. The iPod gives me that. At first it was music, but increasingly I've been time shifting radio and podcasts to my walk and freeing up TV and radio time at home for other pursuits.

The iPod has replaced the radio/CD player in the car using a wire from the iPod to the car stereo and the iTunes library spread across our three Macs has replaced the CD pile. Much of the music has been digitized and we simply stream it to one of the home stereos (you can select which stereo you want) using AirPort Express.

All of this mostly just works and represents a significant improvement in how we consume music and the spoken word. By making regular exercise easy, it has positively impacted my health and quality of life.

So what would I like to see...? I'm not particularly interested in a video iPod. What I want is a retro iPod with "modern" functionality and a beautiful mechanical scroll wheel.

simple audio editing

Rogue Amoeba has a new audio file editing tool called Fission.

I tried the demo - a nice quick and simple tool for trimming, splitting and fading with a very simple interface. Perhaps spendy at $32, but much cheaper than a real audio tool that may have more than you need and may be difficult to use.

napster for sale?

hmmm..

Buying Napster strikes me as a very bad deal. They may have $100M in revenues, but we are talking very small margins. Name recognition is now small among the college demographic, the subscription model isn't taking off, they have no viable total system that links with the only (like it or not) important portable player, Microsoft is going to axe "Playsforsure" and Microsoft is entering as a direct competitor.

Anyone with a great idea of how to play in this space and save Napster is probably better off building something a bit more legacy-free.

But there are crazy companies out there and they might find one dumb enough to bite. I've seen stranger things.

itunes 7 ui tip

Some people have been having problems with iTunes 7. I haven't, but that doesn't mean you won't. It probably makes sense to wait for 7.01 if you haven't upgraded yet

that said...

You can change the order of downloads (music, videos, podcasts...) by clicking or dragging in the download window. Very handy if you subscribe to a large number of podcasts.

yummm

pretty iTunes 7 eye candy...

Perhaps not useful, but pretty:-) They have also scattered some new useful functionality, but the eye candy is cute. The UI is different - Aqua seems to be gone for good. Is this a hint of what Leopard will be like?

Someone sent an email that they are buying a dozen of the new iPod shuffles for appreciation gifts at the office (large law firm)

up or down?

Which direction will SpiralFrog take?

A variety of experiments have been tried in an attempt to make people pay for music and some, like subscriptions and ad supported services, sound great on paper. It is easy to point to instances successful models in other areas of entertainment (magazines, tv, radio), but existing expectations, along with execution, can kill a new service.

Although most digital music is not from an online store, it is wrong to say most of it is exchanged via Internet file sharing. It appears that sneakernet using small hard drives (and usb thumb drives) and campus intranets are more important in the college age group. As you move to the older crowd the majority of music can be traced to CDs owned by the user or a close family member or friend (the music companies need to understand the sociology of music use - it is clear they don't).

For an ad supported service to be popular it must minimally have enough "good" content, offer targeted and interesting ads, allow for movement of the music to a variety of devices in the user's friends and family group, and be playable on an iPod (if you want any traction in the next year or two). There are clearly many other requirements, but these are basic.

novel music controllers

I've been having a discussion with someone at Oberlin about novel music controllers ... what do you plug into your synthesizer...

One of my favorites is Eric Singer's Sonic Banana (quicktime) ... but then again I like theremins.

The banana consists of a string of four bend sensors that run the length of a flexible rubber tube. There is a switch at one end and the data goes off to an analog to midi converter and then to a computer running some music software. In this example the bending and switches control parameters tempo, chord selection,, tempo. volume, etc. Everything is highly programmable.

Eric is very clever and has done dozen's of interesting instruments - many of them actually musical (which can be a problem:-)

If you really want to build one. here is a paper (pdf)

I'm sure this would annoy ferrets as much as a theremin does

chase of the snow wolves

a good candidate for a ringtone (mp3 by Corkey Burger using a Moog synthesizer)

It is very unlikely someone else's mobile will have it.

lots of ipod information

The folks at ilounge publish a free iPod magazine a few times a year. Lots of information on using iTunes and the iPod as well as tests of stuff in the ecosystem. It is filled with ads, but that keeps it free...

the current version (2.2) is here (zip file with a pdf inside)

the death of the ipod part 47

Engadget claims that Microsoft will offer free (to the user) replacements of an iPod user's purchased iTMS music if the user moves to the upcominig Microsoft player/device/store.

It isn't impossibly expensive for Microsoft, but it will be difficult to shift huge groups unless you are offering real magic. There may be possibilities for abuse by user.

I'm guessing this is a rumor gone amuck.

on deaf ears

Ars Technia writes about quality and digital music.

Without weighing into this I'll make a few observations based on over a decade's worth of work in the field.

• Many people will tell you quality is important to them

• Most people don't buy hardware that can reproduce music at "high quality"

• Double blind testing shows even trained ears have difficulty sorting out music from a good codec (like Apple's implementation of AAC at 160kbps) and that of an original CD

• Poorly implemented codecs can sound awful and people can tell -- more than a few mp3 files are awful.

• Self described audiophiles generally are old enough (to have the money to buy toys) that their ears are poor. The best 45 year old ears I've measured are no match for average 20 year old ears. After the age of 35, unless you have remarkable ears that haven't been in noisy environments, a very modest stereo is fine.

• A CD isn't that good, but a market never developed for superior recorded sounds

• The sound field associated with recorded music is very different from that associated with live music in most cases.

• The quality of a live music performance is much more important than the recording technology used to capture it (I can put up with a fairly low-fi recording of something wonderful rather than an awful performance of something captured to a high quality playback mechanism)

If you really care about sound the trick is to take care of your ears, learn to listen, and spend your money on live music.

an interesting change at sony

Sony announced a change to their digital music players and jukebox software - the ability to play aac format.

This is a necessary step if they want to take any market share from Apple. Most of the profitable customers for Sony products already have iPods. If they rip their own CDs (believe it or not, this is very common - not everyone exclusively downloads all of their music illegally), the default setting in iTunes is aac and some surveys I've done show a very large amount of music in that format on iPods and traded physically between friends in face to face meetings.

We are at the point where no serious challenge can be made to Apple (at least in the US at the $100 and up player level) without aac compatibility. The fact that Sony recognizes this and is making a move shows they are (finally) serious. It appears that Tim Schaaff (who is now running their software development) actually seems to have some authority.

It should be pointed out that Sony is part of the consortium that licenses aac (the so-called FADS consortium) and as such probably licenses it for free (or at least less than Apple pays). Apple's implementation of the standard is current the best of all aac codecs. Sony can buy one (from Fraunhofer) or implement their own.

mobile carriers and downloaded music

More on the mobile carriers vs iTunes...

If you have ever tried the experience (and paid for it), a comparison is humorous. Even more humorous is the main target market, to first order, doesn't buy downloaded music in the first place ... not from the carriers, not from iTunes, not from anyone. Add to that iPod penetration in the target market and you begin to realize that, until dramatic changes are made, downloaded music on cellphones is just a phony experience.

Mix a few greedy players (the music industry and the mobile operators), inappropriate hardware, nearly useless software, a high transport cost, users who happen to have a much better device and a lack of a social understanding of the market and you have to wonder.

___

About a month ago I spoke with a wireless exec - he couldn't understand why their music offering wasn't taking off ... it was something like ten percent of their internal projections. He muttered something about this not making sense as ringtones were doing so well ... sigh ... he didn't understand that ringtones are really a subset of personal fashion rather than music.

digital tunes from amazon

It will be interesting to see Amazon get involved in the digital music game but initially they will find the sledding tough ... No one has made a convincing case for the rental music model despite over $50 million in marketing in the last year. Even on campuses where it is heavily subsidized, reaction is mixed to negative.

There is no consumer problem being solved ... there may be problems for retailers and the music companies, but it is the consumers who ultimately buy or not buy.

Amazon also has the problem of building an übercool player, jukebox and server. You don't farm this stuff out - it needs to be designed carefully from the beginning. They don't have the depth to design consumer electronics on their own and a bolt-on won't work.

The player is central to the consumer as most players are filled with music that is ripped from CDs rather than downloaded from stores and the shift will take some time. At this point a successful player would have to play cleartext aac that is converted from iTunes if they want any penetration. Clearly possible, but not likely.

Add to this that they will be competing against others (forget about Apple for now - Yahoo, Napster and possibly Sony will be very hungry) and it looks like a long shot.

I really want to see some serious competition, but competitors to date don't understand systems and user experience design.

yet another ipod killer

Sony is apparently discontinuing their "bean" portable music player in April (heard on the BBC this morning).

This company seems to have lost the ability to design. I tried one a few months ago and found it (a) toy-like and (b) frustrating to use (even forgetting their awful jukebox software). Even the anti iPod sites were negative.

Chatting with people younger than 25 you find that the Sony brand doesn't mean very much - unless you are a playstation gamer.

dell exits part of the mp3 market

I just heard a news report that Dell is exiting the hard drive mp3 player market to concentrate on flash based players.

They clearly failed with the DJ. A "me-to" player that said "cheap", competing in a market where people justify expenses as affordable luxuries. Dell understands the world at the device level and a portable music player is part of a system. I am going to predict Dell will continue to lose until they become brilliant system designers. It is much more likely that Microsoft will panic and make their own portable music player, putting all of their partners out of business.

At this point there is the issue of compatibility. All of the players will play mp3 files. If you are going to sell to people who have iPods or who are in circles where people have iPods, you need to support cleartext AAC. This is easy enough to license, but none of Apple's competitors have figured that out yet. They seem to be focused on the promise (and it is little more than that when one considers scale) of online "plays anywhere" music sales. Bad strategy...

The concept of a digital living room is very nebulous, but many PC manufacturers are salivating. Dell is a company that is capable of multi billion dollar mistakes here.

It would be great seeing some worthy competition develop. Unfortunately there aren't many places with the competencies in place to do clueful hardware/software systems design work. Most companies think it is buying into a Taiwanese reference design and hiring someone like Frog or IDEO for a month.

interesting midi controller

not quite an air guitar or cello, but interesting

(thanks for the link Thom)

napster and doing the math

In the past year Napster has added about 280,000 new subscribers. They also spent something like $30 million in the first quarter of last year promoting the service (and more during the remainder of the year).

a spendy way to acquire subscribers.

They also added several colleges, but the numbers aren't up dramatically in that market (I've spoken with students on one of the Napster campuses - their use and non-use patterns are interesting)

The digital music industry is abuzz with rumors of a financial disaster there - although the Napster folks deny it.

motorola iradio

Mot's announcement

It will be interesting to see, but Griffin's iFill for the iPod will do part of what they are talking about and it is only $20 and works with a piece of hardware you probably have already. (iFill is a great tool btw ... Audio Hijack is another fine piece of software -- a bit different, but highly recommended)

Of course the ability to purchase music when you hear it is another thing ... although I've seen tags in some podcasts to artist sites and even iTMS tracks.

A big question is how many programs will go to podcast form rather than streaming over the Internet. Most of the streaming is low quality - nominally 32 kbps class codecs. Asynchronous file transfer is more efficient and cheaper - and it makes the use of higher quality audio more practical. Many podcasts are 128kbps mp3 or aac.

Now if we had a public repository of schedules for the streaming stations and timestamps for the podcasts it would be easy for links to be made to music stores -- if that is a useful business.

searching music

enter an artist or track and see what you get. Misspellings aren't tolerated, but it does search music blogs. (thanks for the link Sara)

I wonder how long it will live?

ipod deathwatch number 143

David Pogue moderated a panel on the Ipod Dynasty at CES last week.

It would be nice to hear the whole event, but in many ways it is not necessary. I wish these panels would include people who were really looking at what is taking place in the user world ... ethnographers rather than the standard electronic music industry types who miss the critical points.

Design and user experience are actually important and are becoming more important. Watching and listening to users is also important. I wonder how many of these guys will still be at panels like this five years from now.

A very interesting exercise is to look at stereo magazines in the late 70s through the mid 80s when dozens of companies were trying to dethrone Sony from its Walkman dynasty. None of them were successful. Sony, at the time, actually worried about design and user experience (CEOs of Morita's quality are few and far between).

I recently learned about the software work going on at one of Apple's competitors. They hired a firm to come in and create a "great user experience" on an existing player and music store. Somehow they viewed this as something that can be bolted or painted on at the end of the project. Four of five firms they approached (correctly) told them they were out of their minds. I'm going to guess the fifth firm will not create a miracle.

There are clearly ways to go after iTunes and the iPod, but engineers and mbas are not equipped to discover and implement them. I suspect that Apple will continue to be more successful at going after the iPod for the time being.

new ipod and confused?

iLounge has tutorials...

The number of people we know who gave or got iPods this year is amazing. One of the reasons teens are demanding them at this point is that they will play cleartext music encoded from CDs on other players ... music sharing is making aac a requirement for a portable digital player. All of the folks who worked on the codec over the years are undoubtedly amazed.

oh - and a note for those with new players looking for content. The number of podcasts pointed to by iTunes (and undoubtedly other sources) has greatly expanded in the past few weeks. Nearly 50 devoted to science programming for example.

snowballs and hell

C|net reports on the Verizon wireless music offering

A few points:

• the music industry has become very greedy and feels the iTunes price point is too low - expect to see more than $2 a track and more likely $2.50 from the rumblings I hear

• the wireless industry, the Far Eastern experience in many activities is different from North American and Europe

• ringtones are closer to fashion than music - the success of wireless downloaded tracks and that of ringtones are not closely coupled

• downloaded music purchases in the mobile digital native segment Verizon is probably targeting are insignificant (gift cards are about 90% and the total percentage is vanishingly small - I measure less than 2 percent of music on this segment's ipods to be from a online music store)

• iTunes music store isn't that successful - people buy iPods rather than iTunes Music Store tracks

• the Verizon phone is not compatible with current iTunes libraries people have for their iPods. We are moving to a world where cleartext aac compatibility is important - none of the competing players seem to have figured that out.

• the UI will probably suck

• a similar service from Sprint uses 32kbps aacPlus for the phone with an accompanying 128kbps WMA file for the PC. I've been involved in aacPlus tests at this low bitrate and it is pretty bad - lets talk about FM radio quality.

• the wireless companies and their telco brothers believe in walled gardens. the iPod is successful because, to first order, it isn't a walled garden (I'm talking about how people use iPods, not iTMS). rip, mix, burn still rules...

Based on my work with digital natives, I believe this has real dotbomb potential. It is amazing how some of the telecom execs size up a market. Last Fall I spent some time with a wireless guy who was absolutely convinced that the average 15-18 yr old would buy at least 3 tracks at week at $3 per track. His reasoning included some witchcraft about ringtones and the fact that his 17 year old daughter works 10 hrs a week for $8.00 an hour. I'm sure all of this was verified by consultants:-)
____

While on the subject of snowballs and hell, I heard a report that Sony has hired the Apple Quicktime manager to guide them on their quest for usability. Bringing in one person rarely changes a culture.

field audio recording links

David Battino has a few links ...

Getting good audio is non-trivial, but new hardware is forcing the price down (the new MicroTrack is very desirable even though it has some flaws).

Not all of us can collect nature sounds or be the next Ira Glass, but I'd love to see more content.