How to make music fun

I know - it looks like I'm just padding my posts count at this point. I'm on track to have as many posts this month as I have the entire rest of the year. Have to take advantage of it when the ambition is there.

Parts of the music industry (mostly the evil parts who hide behind a shell company known as the RIAA) are bemoaning the fact that people are not buying their music anymore, and that interest in their manufactured crap is on the decline. [completely wacky sidenote: I realized yesterday you can't say "Fiduciary Duty" without saying "douche"]. This zombified race of former humans can't figure out what they should do to get people to enjoy music again, so they err on the side of suing everyone and introducing painful and ugly DRM into their music.

Well, as I again realized over the past few days, that's completely the opposite direction to go. Music is a social creature. Just like the scorpion, that it's nature. Music is not really appreciated until it shared and experienced by many people. The RIAA is running scared and doing exactly the wrong approach.

I've enjoyed some fantastic musical sharing over the past few days, and I haven't even been to any concerts. My daughter loves all kinds of music, and I have been making CDs for her lately. There's not much more fun than doing that. It started with some bedtime music. Initially I started pretty mainstream, but more recently we ended up with a Marley (Bob and Ziggy) CD that she loves. Yesterday and today we created a "rock" CD for her. It turns out she has inherited her dad's wide range of musical taste - we have everything from pop, to 70's hard rock, to some modern and classic country.

The other sharing dropped in the form of a new 5 of the now from Ryan. Ryan came up with the 5 of the now a few years ago on his blog, and it's great both from the creating and listening perspective.

As his post and my previous post demonstrate, there is no lack of free music out there. Have no fear - music wants to be free and always will be in the end. Wise up RIAA.

Digital Battlefield

It's too bad other companies did not have the foresight and unique position of Apple to make their online music stores truly succeed. I say this not because I don't like iTunes, I've said before how it is pretty much my primary source if at all possible. However, some other companies are starting to do some good things and it is just a nearly insurmountable obstacle for them to overcome, which I think limits some progress that we should be seeing.

Okay - that was a long run-on way of getting to my real point. Amazon continues to improve and add to their excellent MP3 download service - yet I still basically forget about them entirely unless something pokes me to remind me. This is especially weird given that for almost all of my other online shopping, I prefer to use them first.

I received an email pointing out that Amazon has weekly album deals that are really good. We're talking $5 or $7 full album, non-DRM downloads of some really good artists. I assumed these would be pop radio schlock, but they actually have a good assortment of some good music.

Then, on top of that, I find out that Amazon has weekly free songs, just like iTunes, except again they are DRM-free of course. These songs change weekly (and possibly daily, some that I saw yesterday are no longer featured). Here is a link where you can find some, or signup for their weekly newsletter if you're like me and need a poke to look outside the iTunes garden and see the other music all around.

iTunes is still the simplest path around for me, without question. Nobody else can yet pull off having a single app where I can search their store, manage my music, and drop it on my device all in a well-designed interface. Amazon's downloader does a decent job, but I still consider it somewhat of a hack. However, low-priced DRM-free music is a good way to at least get me looking at them.

Adding on quick - here's another link to 30 free hip-hop/R&B songs courtesy of AllHipHop.com. A bit of a pain, you have to get your iTunes code via email - but some pretty good songs.

Ringtones

The introduction by Apple of ringtones to its arsenal has prompted some discussion, and made me actually think a bit about something I generally just find to be a nuisance.

The general consensus when the iPhone first came out was that the lack of custom ringtones was something Apple needed to remedy. This has been a staple of all of the other phones and providers for some time now. They did just that with their most recent announcement. However, I think many were expecting more/different since it was Apple doing it.

First, some things that I think they did right. Being able to pick which 30 seconds of the song to use is good. This is something I would have always considered a must, but it isn't available directly from any of the cell providers. Next, they don't force you to just buy an overpriced ringtone (anywhere from $2 to $5 from what I can tell most places); they allow you to make them from your own music that you already own. Yes, I know there is a catch, we'll get there in a minute. Finally, it can all be done from the safe haven of iTunes. Pick the song, pick the musical selection, and get it loaded on the device is all possible and very simple. The last one is the type of thing I have come to expect from Apple, and may be the single largest benefit. As usual, most people miss the benefit of simplicity.

Now, the things I think were not done the way I would have hoped or expected. I need to preface this by saying I don't think any of the current providers or ringtone offerings have done anything positive; they have been nothing short of horrendous. Overpriced, a pain in the ass to get or use, lack of choice, and a general annoyance is how I would summarize all previous offerings. I can't understand personally why people pay anything for a ringtone, let alone more than I am willing or need to pay to purchase a full song from the iTunes store.

Although the 99 cent price sounds about right, you can't actually purchase any ringtone for that amount. You have to already have bought the song or buy it at that time, which means there is an additional 99 cents to include. Thus, the minimum for a ringtone is actually $2. However, you do also get a full copy of the song for listening as well.
Not all songs are available for making ringtones though, even if you have purchased them from the store. This one seems confusing. You would think if you bought it from Apple, they would let you pay them another $1 to make it a ringtone no matter what.

Now, these few downsides seem to be far overwhelmed by the positives. However, I wondered immediately why Apple would put restrictions such as these on the songs. It doesn't fit with some of their past policies and my expectations of them. Coupled with the recent news that found many of these issues could be easily circumvented in iTunes 7.4 (although they have since been "patched") it made me start to wonder if Apple had nothing to do with these. Were they in fact mandated by some other entity?

I did a (very) little research on this, and came up with some additional conclusions and thoughts. Since this post is fairly long though, I'm going to make like Back to the Future 2 and leave you with this...


SEE THE EXCITING(POSSIBLY) CONCLUSION IN TOMORROW'S POST: "Idiocies of Licensing"

What is this number?

How DiD i come up with a Very Dumb blog post? And, Ask yourself Could Sending it to the junK foldEr be verY smart?

In either case, I have no idea why my typing was so bad on the previous sentence, or what this number means: 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0

Needle in the haystack (aka the ballad of strstr)

Slashdot over the years has degenerated to the point where I expect nearly no value any longer. However, I keep it around just for the rare times where it finds a gem. This is one of those cases.

Any readers of this blog should already have a pretty good idea what I think about Digital Rights Management (DRM). (sidenote - what a nice spin of words to try to make it sound like something non-evil, was Digital Handcuffs (DH) already taken?).

This blog post, courtesy of Slashdot, is just about perfect. Fantastic read. Macrovision sucks.