Jazz Odyssey

Taste Sharing is increasingly driving the music business according to a new study released by the Harvard’s Berkman Center:
Drawing from an early-adopter survey conducted through Gartner, report co-authors Derek Slater, a Harvard senior and Berkman student fellow, and Mike McGuire, a Gartner Research Director, find that consumer-to-consumer recommendation tools, like playlists, enable consumers to actively [...]

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The Sony rootkit fiasco continues to make the news. This one is really interesting….a post at the Freedom to Tinker blog states that hidden code in the XCP copy protection can actually add Apple’s DRM and provide iPod/iTunes compatibility, and furthermore the hidden code was itself infringed from an open source project! So [...]

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I’ve complained frequently and loudly about how the lack of interoperability in digital music is negatively impacting the entire digital music business, and preventing the essential restructuring of a flawed industry. Business Week adds their two cents in this article, saying:
Apple, which launched the digital music revolution, may now be holding it back. [...]

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Details are pending, but look for MTV and Microsoft to launch a digital music service next year called URGE. According to the press release, “URGE will offer rich entertainment programming and innovative tools designed to guide musical discovery and connect fans to the artists and music they love. Offering more than 2 million songs [...]

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Here’s a short but significant article in todays Digital Music News about a research project coming out of the University of Leicester. The study examines listening habits of a focus group and revealed that widespread access to enormous volumes of music has eroded the value of music as a commodity, and has also [...]

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Jason Fry over at the Wall Street Journal takes a stab at answering the question in this article. Jason tackles issues such as how networks will promote shows and how advertising will change to try and reach those who fast-forward through commericals.
If you read the business section of the newspaper, the future of TiVo [...]

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Here are a few articles worth noting as you head into the weekend:
Wired continues their series on digital music formats with A Music File by Any Other Name, an article comparing the most common lossy formats, and discussing which ones are the most future proof. As I mentioned in yesterday’s posting, the only truly [...]

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More details on this later (I’m blogging from a mobile phone which makes typing a chore), but this is an important development in the evolution of social networking. MySpace has replaced Friendster as the social networking hub du jour, but Yahoo is putting together a framework that goes beyond Myspace with their recent acquisition [...]

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The MP3 format celebrates its 10th birthday this year (it was actually invented a couple of years before that but 1995 was its first real public appearance with available software players…those interested in the history of the MP3 should read the wikipedia entry) and it continues to be the most widely used digital music format. [...]

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Here’s an article from Reuters summarizing some of the recent challenges and criticism leveled at the radio end of the music industry. Technology, consumer mindset and a sense of stagnation in both advertising and programming are cited as the primary thorns in radios side, with satellite radio and iPods posing additional challenges. Read [...]

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Damian Kulash Jr. who fronts OK Go had an op-ed piece published in yesterday’s New York Times in which he weighed in on the issues of copy protection and DRM. Read the full article here. Inspirational quotes:
…copy protection is guaranteed to fail because it’s a house of cards. No matter how sophisticated the [...]

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NBC and Apple have struck a deal to distribute NBC television programming through iTunes as a la carte downloads. This is more good news for consumers in terms of a low-cost way to timeshift and consume their entertainment at their leisure, and $1.99 seems like a reasonable price that is less time consuming than [...]

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I read this article last week when the new issue of Wired arrived and have been eagerly awaiting it to be published to Wired’s website as it can and should be read and shared.
When Steven Soderbergh releases his next film on January 27, it will have not only the critics squawking, but [...]

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Good article in today’s New York Times that is an interesting read for those in the music business. The crux of the biscuit:
For five decades or so, the television industry’s main mission has been to come up with hit programs, get them on screens, and hope people will stop and watch. Now, that is [...]

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Real Networks today announced the launch of a web-based version of its Rhapsody subscription service. This version of the service does not require the installation of the Rhapsody software, and can be accessed from any web browser. This makes Rhapsody platform independent, though at the moment the use of the service is restricted [...]

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I’ve tried a lot of jukeboxes and music mangement software, but I find myself returning to iTunes which just can’t be beat with its elegant simplicity. That said, iTunes still has a number of truly irritating quirks that are bothersome enough to get me to try a new jukebox every couple of months or [...]

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