Feb 14, 2007 | blog
Of course, he misses the point, and does not follow the blogoshpere. I’ve been preaching and predicting DRM-free music for almost 9 months now. The reality for the record companies is that they have missed their opportunity to really control the digital market because they were to intent on leaching every penny from every music sale.
Jobs is only a recent convert to the DRM-free movement. Many people have been pointing out the inability of the recording industry to get their head around not suing their customers for using their product. A few kids and parents copying music is not the same as real pirates that produce cut-rate copies of the various artists, and trying to recover those lost sales is akin to slitting their own throats.
Via: CNET News.com – Parsing Steve Jobs’ alternative views of the future
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DRM+Free+MusicJan 23, 2007 | blog
It could happen as early as this year according to this article in the NYT. While it would certainly take some time for the entire recording industry to come around to the idea, it sounds like at least one record company will try marketing tunes in unrestricted MP3 format in the next few months.
Again, I echo what I said in The Inevitable Death of DRM post, that DRM is doomed to fail. Give the users what they want – don’t keep trying to rape them on price and keep control of how they can use the product. Give your customers control and you will win accolades on usability and working with customers.
Set the user free and see how it pays you back in return.
Via: The New York Times – Record Labels Contemplate Unrestricted Digital Music
Jan 19, 2007 | blog
More and more lately I’m finding that I work better without distraction. I know that’s kind of a Doh! idea, but I’ve been working for so many years allowing myself to be distracted and interrupted multiple times hourly (forget daily), to the point where its difficult to get back into the “groove” where your focus and attention is solely on what you are working on.
To combat this, I’ve started to listen to music while working on something at my desk. I know there are many who do this already for the exact same purpose, and it seems to really help get a person back into their most productive working mode.
This past week, I have noticed how much more actual work I’ve gotten done when adding this to my work practices. It also has brought home exactly how often I’m interrupted in my tasks. There is a constant stream of people who are stopping by to ask questions – some that they should already know the answers too, but that’s another post – right?
I’ve found listening to tunes is most effective when working on scripts and documentation. There is something about it that helps stimulate the brain to stream the ideas in a more logical, orderly sequence. Strangely, it doesn’t seem to distract me from what I’m doing as I have long believed it would
So I’m really interested, how do you “drown out” the rest of the office to focus on your tasks? What do you do to help foster creativity?
Jan 13, 2007 | blog
On this topic, TechCrunch is right on the money. The music industry is not looking far enough down the road to see the big picture about DRM and its impact on their reduced sales.
Artists as well are too wrapped up in the ability of their work to be easily copied. I understand this concern, and share it as well. After all, who want’s their hard work and creativity stolen?
But that belies the deeper desires of the consumer of both the artist and the recording industry. Their customer is not their enemy, the customer does not want to steal the work, or see either entity getting shortchanged for their work. What the customer wants is to be able to enjoy the music – its that simple.
In addition, giving the consumer the ability to move the music from device to device or onto CD offering DRM-free music removes the criticism, the negativity that is created by DRM. Wouldn’t a given artist rather have their fans (customers) raving about their latest release than complaining that they can’t get it onto their Rio, Zune, iPod, or other device simply because it is offered on a different format, or that the DRM mechanism failed, or worse, that the support departments of whatever online service can’t solve the DRM issue?
DRM was a great idea – but there are too many variables that need to be accommodated for it to work. Instead, companies should sell the music tracks DRM-free. Offer cheap versions for cell-phones that are encoded at lower bitrates, so the user can store more in less space. Sell the lossless versions as a “Premium” where the user can burn to CD, or re-encode for any device they own at their preference. Moreover, offer the music in a non-proprietary format that every player in the world can work with (MP3), that way, the music is available to everyone who wants it, and the players can compete on features & usability rather than what labels or online stores it works with.
Via: TechCrunch – The Inevitable Death of DRM
Dec 20, 2006 | blog
Here is a great new service that I found – FLV Online Converter! The trick it does is convert a YouTube (or similar service) video into a downloadable file in the format of your choice! A screen cap of the conversion process is at right.
Although I’m a strong believer in online services, this is one neat tool that I’ll recommend to people who need an offline version of a YouTube video.
Of course, a prudent person would observe the rights of copyrighted material – right?
