The Steve Jobs Media Playbook

Information wants to be free. Steve Jobs is not usually associated with setting information free, however he set music free and may well be on the way to set more media free. Here is the playbook that he used to set music free, and an examination of whether he can set other media free.

Back at the turn of the millennium digital music was starting to make waves and Apple introduced their first iPod in 2001. At the beginning, it was not a great seller. Next year the second generation iPod that worked with Microsoft Windows came out and sales started to take off. The next problem with promoting sales of the iPod was to let people buy music directly. In those days, to buy music you had to buy a CD, rip it onto a computer and then sync the music onto the iPod.

The record companies did not like digital music. It was in the process of destroying their business model of selling physical goods, that is CDs, which had been plenty profitable until the internet and file sharing had come along. Thus the record companies knew that if they were going to allow anyone to sell digital music, the music content had to be protected by a strong Digital Rights Management (DRM) system. Basically DRM encrypts digital content so that it can only be accessed by a legitimate user on a accredited device.

Now there is one important thing about any encryption, it depends upon a secret key to unlock the content. If too many people know a secret, it is no longer a secret. So it made perfect sense for Apple to have their own DRM system and be responsible for keeping their secret safe. The only problem was that Apple effectively controlled the music distribution channel because of the DRM system and its secret. By providing exactly what the music business had asked for, Apple managed to wrest control of the distribution channel from them.

In the past I have joked about the music business controlling the industry by controlling the means of production. In fact they controlled the business by controlling the distribution channel between the artists and the record stores who sold the music. When the iTunes store became the prime music distribution channel it was game over for the recording industry. They had to climb down and offer their music without DRM to escape from its deadly embrace. DRM free music has not stopped iTunes but it does open up other sales channels.

The remaining question is what will happen with other media? Apple will not dominate the tablet market as it has the music player market so it will not be able to exert the same influence. On the other hand, other media is not a collectible as music. We collect music because we want to listen to it over and over again. With most other media, we are happy to consume it once and then move on. Thus we do not feel the need to own the media in the same way. I have some more thoughts that will have to wait for another time.

Musician versus Recording Industry

I just happened to notice this quote in an interview with The Reverend Horton Heat in the San Jose Mercury News:

"To me, being a recording artist is barely a valid art form," Heath says by telephone from a tour stop in Fort Collins, Colo. "It's almost like being in the advertising business, because in the long, storied history of music, only a small percentage of that history involves recording technology.

"Music was always a live event. It's a linear art form. You play some notes, they go out and they're gone forever. To try to reduce that to a static art form is wrong."

I agree with this entirely for many reasons. Firstly, it fits in well with the new reality of zero cost replication of recorded music. As many people have said, myself included, the new business of music is to give away recorded music to promote live performance.

Secondly, while listening to recorded music is OK, nothing beats a good live musical performance. I could give many examples of memorable musical performances that I have witnessed in person. A good recording of a good live performance beats a sterile studio performance any day. For example, many, many years ago I happened to tape Ian Dury and the Blockheads performing live for the BBC. That performance was so much more alive than any of their studio albums. When I buy music these days, I prefer to buy a live performance.

Finally, as the good "Reverend" says, in the history of music, the recording is but a blip. The recording industry came to power in just the last 50 years by controlling the means of production and now that they no longer have that control they will surely fade.

More DRM Nonsense

I have just run into another piece of DRM nonsense. As I mentioned before, we made the transition to HDTV far too early and are now stuck with all the annoying outrages that any early adopter has to deal with. Some years ago we bought a new TV/Monitor with a 16:9 aspect ratio and component video input at 1080i. So, for years every TV actress that crossed our screen has had an unnaturally broad bottom, and every late night TV host, an unnaturally broad smile.

This Christmas I was thinking of upgrading our DVD player to one that would up-convert the signal sent to the TV to 1080i. Then I started reading the specs. Apparently, although all recent DVD players tout the ability to up-convert their signal, the movie Nabobs have decreed that DVD players cannot up-convert or otherwise enhance encrypted content if it is sent out en plein as component video. As all commercial DVDs are encrypted, an "up-converting" DVD players would not up-convert any of the DVD content that we watch.

We live in perilous times and I know that it is my duty as a good citizen to go out and consume. But if I cannot buy a new DVD player that does something more that the one I already have what is the point of buying it? This Christmas my wallet has remains firmly closed for A/V upgrades.

Music Business Models

So little time and so many things to write about. My February copy of Wired arrived before I had time to remark on the article in the January edition by Davis Byrne of Talking Heads on "The Fall and Rise of Music". In the article, Byrne describes 6 different business models for musicians in the new world on digital music. They range from the sell your soul to the record company at one end of the spectrum through to eschew any other organization so that you can create sell and distribute your music yourself. Moreover, Byrne gave examples of musicians who are using each of the business models to show that they are valid models that are used.

From his experience of record deals with big record companies, Byrne advises any young artist to avoid selling your soul to the man, or even taking the the standard record company deal where they just own everything that you do. Surprisingly, there many who hold the opposite position. In December Tech Crunch published their list of the 20 most popular posts of 2007. One of them was by Michael Arrington on "The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free". It is interesting to read the comments in response, particularly the many comments from people who live to sell their soul to the big record companies and their anger that the big record companies are becoming not so big.

I have laid out my opinion on the future of music in several previous posts. It is great to see Byrne explain the alternatives in such a dispassionate way. It is also great to know that there are forward looking people who are building next generation music businesses, for example RCRD LBL.

DRM Discordance

Read this article from someone who bought a new high definition monitor for their Windows Vista Media Center PC and found out that they could no longer use the Netflix Watch Now streaming video facility. In the past I have argued that if we have to put up with DRM, it is better system engineering to put the DRM decoding in a separate box rather than try to bundle it into a general purpose PC as Microsoft is trying to do with Windows Vista Media Center.

By coincidence the article appears on the same day that Netflix and LG announced their partnership to integrate Netflix Watch Now streaming video into a future LG device. The TechCrunch take on the Netflix set top box is that it will be a hard sell, but if the alternative is the flaky behavior that we see in Microsoft Vista, maybe the masses will buy the box.

The Future of Music Revisited

Michael Arrington has a great post in TechCrunch on "The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free". Most interesting is both the large response and the highly negative nature of some of the responses. I wrote about this subject under the title of "The Future of Music" a couple of years ago, partly inspired by an article in Wired about MySpace.

I completely agree with Michael Arrington, and I am surprised at the reaction of some performers. I expect that a performer would want to escape the clutches of their record company, who seems to feel that it is their right to keep 90% of their artists earnings. The fact that groups like Radiohead are escaping from their contract and planned to go free shows the way forward.

It is worth remembering that the Recording business is relatively recent. Big recording companies have only existed for 60 to 70 years. They came into their position of power by controlling the means of production, first records and then CDs. Now that they are no longer needed to reproduce music, they are irrelevant and should just fade away.

Vista DRM and Performance

Six months ago there was a fuss when Peter Guttman published his article on the Microsoft's new operating system Vista and how its DRM implementation could disrupt computer system performance when DRMed media is being played. Now the crows are coming home to roost.

In the last week there have been reports that Vista networking performance drops to 5% of maximum when the music player is active and 10% of maximum when any visual media player is active. This appears to happen even although the media player is paused, and even on multi-core systems where you might expect other cores to pick up the load. For example:

I have a Q6600, and while experiencing this crappy network performance, all 4 cores are practically idle.

So what will be the conclusion of all this? Microsoft has had many products that have knocked it out of the ball park, but every company produces a duff product now and again. It looks like Windows Vista could become the Windows ME of the 21st century.

The Times, They Are a-Changing

"Apple’s Steve Jobs, perhaps the most important person in the music industry today, ..."

Well, it is a quote from Michael Arrington who is after all a Valley booster, however it does show how far the music business has come on its strange journey. Gone are the simple days of find and rip-off some gullible kids, now we are at the medium is the message.

Music and the Limits to Consumption

Time and money are limits on the consumption of media. If I am playing a video game, or watching a video, I will not be listening to music. If I listen to less music, I will want to buy less music. Anyway, my budget is not unlimited, so if I spend money on a movie, TV Show or video games, I will not spend that money on buying music. I got to thinking this after reading a piece in the New York Times where a pair of record store owners complain that it is actions of the recording industry and RIAA that have lead to the recent decline in the sales of music.

There was a time when music was the choice media to purchase, but that was when the main alternative was books or magazines. Now we live in a much richer environment where that are many more media choices to entertain us. Music has lost its monopoly on our attention, however the music industry still behaves like it has that monopoly. Rather than market music to us, the RIAA goes out and sues the most ardent music collectors.

There are plenty of things that the recording industry could do to improve their position. For example, they should be marketing music to us as the more entertaining and lasting of the media alternatives. After all, we listen to the same music over and over again, while we usually watch an movie or TV show only once. I have never once heard a compelling argument for buying music being made by the music industry, whereas I have heard interesting arguments being made on forums like SlashDot.