Caples says I jinxed cloud music service, Lala...

Well, maybe I did…In my original post, from almost exactly one year ago, and which is basically a visceral reaction to a phone conversation I had w/Caples’ and his stubborn arrogance about the service’s superiority, I make the following points (I’m paraphrasing myself here):

• The idea of the .10c offer w/an upsell opportunity is flawed, a micro micro payment…lame.
• No iPhone app, and why would I pay to stream a collection I already own? Ah…Pandora anyone?
• As my pal Tim Wilson used to say when we were at Boris, this is about the integration story…which Lala didn’t really have.

So I’m sorry to have jixed the service Caples…But wait!

Lest we not forget that Apple acquired Lala…And at the time of the announced shut down, Wired speculated about the reasoning behind it…

While Apple’s hardware has embraced the cloud since .mac (now Mobile Me), its iTunes software lags far behind. Today’s news, while unfortunate for Lala users, represents good news for iTunes users, because it’s a sign that iTunes too could be headed for the cloud, obviating their need to manage music collections manually between multiple devices.

Yah, I guess…I can already manage music collections locally on my network via Home Sharing…And that feature doesn’t make music in the cloud a killer app.

Lala’s interface was pretty bitchin’…And it was clear they understood the consumption model…Particularly with regard to their relating owned songs to songs or artists of potential interest to their users…So perhaps the purchase was just Jobs following up to a fan-boys comment about owning all the engineering talent in the Valley…

In a follow up email, Caples threw out his reasoning for liking the service, again dissin’ the cloud as not that important:

For me, the cloud stuff on Lala wasn’t that important…I liked the cheaper download prices and the higher bitrates, the social media capability (sharing playable album or song widgets on facebook), and the possibility to buy CDs through them if you were so inclined.

Matt Rosoff over at Digital Noise posted his thoughts, making the point that the music industry hates “digital lockers” and that not letting users stream the stuff is bad mojo:

If you persistently refuse to let customers use your product in the way they want to use it, they’ll stop buying it. Ten years of stiff revenue declines in the recorded music business should have made that lesson clear.

Yah, again, I don’t think this is about streaming for Apple…Or for the consumer…How long as Rhapsody been pushing a subscription model from the cloud? Like 12 years? Ah…still not catching on…No, IMHO, this was about the acquisition of talent by Apple, and using that talent to improve their existing products…And perhaps their existing streaming content line…Certainly work to be done…

Anyway…Sorry Caples…While I only embedded one album into one post…I do kinda miss having the option. C’est la Apple.

1. The Week has a nice time line from 2002 – 2010 covering a good selection of hearsay and third-party conjecture

2. Down in Oz, Garry Barker has some astute thoughts…comes close to discussing analog of music to publishing

and finally:

3. MacWorld’s Jason Snell offering a solid parsing of potential Apple thinking re: digital content delivery on a tablet

Let me offer this to the collective speculation; I believe the splashy color on the Apple event invite is a sort of shot over the Amazon Kindle bow…meant to at the very least poke fun at the device’s limited display. That said, I fear the iTablet may simply be a content consumption device…with a price-point just below Kindle…and a fairly limited hardware/software feature set a la the iPod Touch…could be?

Nah…w/the amount of time and consideration that Apple has put into the device, the content it may serve and the existing market dynamics…I’m going to predict a much more powerful and empowering 10″ monolith. And I wouldn’t be surprised to hear “Thus Spoke Zoroaster” from Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” as SJ has the drape lifted off, both arms tracking horizontally…wait for it…I give you, The “Jesus Tablet”…What? Too much?

Frankly, I haven’t given a lot of thought to the actual hardware and software feature set…I’ve been thinking more about the content…and as I mentioned above, several folks have noted the analog between the music and publishing industries…how engines like Napster and the MP3 removed the optical key, namely the Compact Disc, from “The Man’s” distribution equation…and how the slow the music business has been to realize Pandora has left the box…

And around the same time, 1997 or so, I recall thinking to myself…”Wow, I can read the New York Times for free online? OH and better yet, I can filter the content I want from their stream and have it emailed to myself every day at no additional charge?” Well, why would I bust my chops scouring my collegiate burg to find a copy so I can buy and then read the damn thing? I never liked reading the physical paper anyway…always needing a windless room w/a 6′ round to lay the paper on, never properly folding the rag…and getting filthy with newsprint…I was much happier searching and forwarding articles and links…with an input device like a keyboard…yes, Bouv is a geek…you just noticed?

The now painfully obvious answer to the newspaper industry is that I wouldn’t hunt a copy of the newspaper down to pay for it…and never would again, in fact, I might not even read the free version of the paper handed to me by the concierge…and while yes…there is advertising revenue to be made in the free content model, The Times Companies couldn’t and I guess can’t figure out a way on its own to earn the $300,000,000 + to keep the global news room profitable…so onto the basic lines of the analog for Apple between music and newspapers…which Christopher Breen over at MacWorld has also briefly noted…

The Compact Disc is to the MP3 file as the newspaper is to the free online news website*…yah?

A valuable but ailing commodity (music) is broken into reasonably priced bits (songs or albums)…given a free and reasonably easy to use organizational desktop model and pricing structure (iTunes)…Despite a wide range of competing free piracy solutions available to this day, Apple makes the end user experience more consistent, guilt and persecution free, oh and dare I say fun to integrate with the Apple created ultimate music toy e.g. KEY…We give you the iPod! Cue the music…

Fast forward 8 years…So where does Apple fit in to the newspaper solution? In news, we have a similar revenue from content problem:

A valuable but ailing commodity (books, magazines, news items) can be broken into reasonably priced bits (stories, sections, e-books, e-magazines or a whole paper)…provided it’s given a free and reasonably easy to use organizational desktop model and pricing structure (iTunes – now w/Bookstore)…where Amazon’s Kindle, NYT Online, or any other priced/free solution fall short at providing the complete ecosystem…Apple comes to the rescue by making the end user experience more consistent, easy to organize, and fun to integrate with the Apple created ultimate reading toy e.g. KEY…We give you the iTablet…cue the music…purchased of course from the ITMS…

A stretch? Perhaps…maybe Apple will simply offer us an e-Ink “in color” tablet that only displays books/newspapers and then tries to charge us $999…Barely a mini-woot…More a “ho-hum”. Yah, ah…I don’t think so…SJ isn’t going to come out, waste his (now very valuable) time and throw a color Kindle at us…

The most interesting thing about the potential iTablet to me isn’t the tablet…it’s how content will be culled, created and distributed via the device…to make it a true tool…giving publishers a way to get that content into the stream as fast as any other will be key…

Will it have global wi-fi? Will there be a content development template or SDK for an App store-like bookstore model? What ramifications are there for the iPhone/iPod touch community? Does this device now make all 100,000,000 + owners sigh a collective…”Shit…” when this thing is announced?

I doubt it…more likely, many of the reading tools will hopefully be available for those devices as well…Certainly a nice pitch to content owners/producers eh? “We have a rapidly growing install base of folks with these tools and 100,000,000 live credit card accounts…I think we can help move some of your product…” not to mention potential ad revenues from the Quattro Wireless deal…again, a point made my the good chaps at MacWorld…it’s an interesting time to be a consumer for sure…anyway…looking forward to seeing SJ out there…If the start of 2010 is any indication, my gut tells me he still has at least one more trick up his mock-nerk sleeve… – Bouv.

*Don’t forget the fact that the NYT and the lot, save Murdoch’s WSJ and a few others have been giving the content away for 12+ years…and previous attempts to put Pandora back in her box have failed…anyone remember NY Times Select?

Bouv's 2009 Holiday Mix.

It’s been a long year, filled with turbulence and challenge…and, as always, music. I’m very happy to present to all, the 2009 Holiday Mix…

You can download the mix here:
www.jcbouvier.com/Holiday_2009.zip

This is ~ 130MB .ZIP file download.

Many thanks to all those who offered some influences this year…you may or may not know who you are…Hannah, Maxine, Oskar, Roo and I wish you all the best for the coming year…it’s already off to a fast and focused start!

Warmest regards,

Bouv.

Bouv’s Holiday 2009 track listing:

*iTunes users, once you have downloaded and unzipped the folder, you should be able to simply drag it onto your playlist column and iTunes should import the files and create the playlist.

The Apple Invite for today's iPod event.

9 to 5 Mac is reporting that Apple will finally offer The Beatles catalog through the iTunes music store.

The Rock and Roll event scheduled for later this afternoon EST (1PM I think)…may also bring a new set of iPods, modifications to iTunes and AppleTV along with a possible appearance by Steve Jobs…but no confirmations yet…my fav site MacSurfer will have all the places for updates…but for now, the Apple Online store is closed for business…always a good sign new items are about to arrive in inventory…

Major Lazer “Pon De Floor” from Eric Wareheim on Vimeo.

Ok, so I’m not a big Tim & Eric fan, but clearly someone is thinking about their material…and w/this video, we get a huge hint as to which of these guys is “the mind”…

So I’m using this new service, that MC Caples turned me onto called LaLa…which to my mind, upon initial inspection…is deeply flawed…meaning…while elegant, I don’t see the business model as usurping the iTunes Music Store (ITMS) anytime soon. Here’s why.

I can stream any of their 7 million songs once. Then I can choose to pay .10¢to “add” this song to my permanent online collection…but I can’t download it…so it’s a “cloud” collection of songs…” and then there’s the MP3 download option…compatible w/the iPod or Zunes of the world…for more or less the same pricing as the ITMS. So apart from my ability to listen wherever I am should I have forgotten my iPhone or MacBook Pro (not likely)…I’m still going to need to download the tracks and manually add them to my ITMS library. Strike one.

No iPhone app as best as I can tell…now if they had one…I’d be a lot more inclined to use this regularly…but still, am I going to eat up battery life to stream a collection I would prefer to own? Maybe to check out new music…oh but wait…I’m already using Pandora…which to date, is a far superior intelligent agent when it comes to suggesting music. And yes, you guessed it…they have an iPhone app for streaming. Strike two.

Ok, the silver bullet I’m sure for some people (Hellweg I’m talking to you…) is the price. Here’s the thing here…If I’m willing to pay .10¢ to “add” this song to my permanent online collection, I’m probably willing to ante up the remaining .69¢…and I’m sure that’s the idea…however by confusing the pricing structure w/this option…they loose momentum…I know Arrington and co over at TechCrunch are excited by the technology…and again as elegant at as the LaLa player is…beating the iTunes store purchase integration, preview functionality, music management, encoding and playback will be LaLa’s biggest difficulty…and one I think many others have tried w/similar models only to find themselves wandering in the digital music forest. Strike three.

Anyway, the coolest thing about the tool, and don’t get me wrong…it is cool…may be the ability to embed a preview of an album into your blog or Facebook profile. Will certainly help drive interest in new music…and I’m sure membership for LaLa, whether it results in increased revenue for LaLa remains to be seen…hopefull it will benefit artists…

UPDATE: Ok, I stand corrected…LaLa does have an iPhone App…but it’s not out yet…once it ships…I’ll try it and get back to you.

John Caples fowarded over this link to The Homosexuals latest track…called “3am (Pink Pony). Pretty good stuff for a 60 year old…apparently the original act were contemporaries of bands like The Clash & The Sex Pistols…their label, Serious Business Records, does a nice job w/their site.

Man...how quickly 26 years go by eh?

Hard to believe that Metallica, is still out there…kicking and screaming…and that Lars…“F&$k you…pay me” has survied well into the 21st century…they’re almost 50. Damn…so much for burning out and fading away…I know…I know…chill out Def Leopard fans…your team is still out there too!

Here’s the link to the NYT article…Lions of Metal…

Would You Pay an Artists Tax?

An interesting article in the NYT today…talking about various efforts by hardware/service vendors to pass along the cost of rights licensing via the cost of the hardware or services. The author points to the idea of being unable to put the pirate genie back in the bottle…and so suggests that by trying to cloak the purchase of the rights to steal…this might prove to be a solution for rights holders.

Personally, I think while interesting…the idea needs a change of venue…and should be asked of societies at large…and their citizenry. I would be willing to pay an art tax…say $2-4 a paycheck…or $60 a year…into a fund that provided money to artists to support their work…if we can’t get the governments to fund the arts…let’s find a way to cut out the middle man and fund them ourselves.