Tag Archives: music

Six strikes

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The major ISPs have agreed with media companies to implement a “six strikes” program. Under the agreement, when content companies report to an ISP that they believe an ISP customer is accessing illegal content, the ISPs will implement a series of notices intended to get the customer to stop. Ultimately, the customer could be terminated by the ISP if they cease the activity.

The problem with this approach is that it is based merely on claims made by private companies, with no judicial oversight whatsoever. In effect, the ISPs become cops for the media industry and the media industry has the unilateral power to block (or severely degrade) service for those accused.  Imagine if a private company could go to the phone company and accuse a customer of using his phone to commit a crime and demand that the phone company take action, including disconnecting the phone. Would we agree to that approach? Since when do private companies engage in law enforcement?

The Center for Democracy & Technology, along with Public Knowledge, said in a joint statement they were concerned about the accord. “We believe it would be wrong for any ISP to cut off subscribers, even temporarily, based on allegations that have not been tested in court,” the groups said.

Corynne McSherry, the intellectual property director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also had concerns. She added, in a telephone interview, that the EFF was “pretty disappointed that ISPs have agreed to serve as a propaganda agent for big media.”

If a media company believes that a person has illegally stolen their content, the law provides existing remedies.

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Pop music now

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Three women run the pop world right now. Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” Beyoncé’s “4,” and Adele’s “21” split the market into neat thirds without too much conceptual jostling. Adele’s impeccably sung collection of unperturbing soul, “21,” released in February, will almost certainly be the year’s biggest-selling album. Her career is likely to be long, because she is selling to the demographic that decides American elections: middle-aged moms who don’t know how to pirate music and will drive to Starbucks when they need to buy it. The rest of the population has Gaga and Beyoncé.

– Sasha Frere-Jones, writing in the current issue of The New Yorker. Its hard to argue with that.

iCloud

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Business Week claims to have some interesting details about Apple’s long-rumored music/cloud service that will likely launch sometime in June.

Armed with licenses from the music labels and publishers, Apple will be able to scan customers’ digital music libraries in iTunes and quickly mirror their collections on its own servers, say three people briefed on the talks. If the sound quality of a particular song on a user’s hard drive isn’t good enough, Apple will be able to replace it with a higher-quality version. Users of the service will then be able to stream, whenever they want, their songs and albums directly to PCs, iPhones, iPads, and perhaps one day even cars. And the music industry gets a chance at the next best thing after selling shrink-wrapped CDs: monthly subscription fees, à la Netflix (NFLX) and the cable companies. “We will come to a point in the not-so-distant future when we’ll look back on the 99¢ download as anachronistic as cassette tapes or 8-tracks,” says Ross Crupnick, a music analyst at NPD Group.

Lady GaGa + Amazon = Fail

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So, if you act today, you can buy Lady GaGa’s new album, Born This Way [+digital booklet], for only $.99. Great deal.

But the crush of purchasers could not be handled successfully by Amazon. Many people have actually received less than the entire album. A huge backlash has followed and Amazon has not yet offered an explanation. Amazon, it is assumed, will [eventually] make good on the offer.

This was an effort on the part of Amazon to introduce users to its new cloud-based music service in advance of the expected launch of a new music/cloud service from Apple sometime in the next month or so. And the top selling album right now on iTunes is the GaGa album, even though the price is $11.99. Try again Amazon. You sold a huge number of albums at a presumably huge loss to generate great PR and you failed. Keep in mind that Amazon had a huge data center collapse only weeks ago.

And Lady Gaga is not untainted herself.

Unfortunately for Lady Gaga, the technical problems have resulted in an average rating of only 3 stars for her album as customers use the review section to vent their frustrations. As one customer complained: “I’m not disappointed that something went wrong, stuff happens. I’m REALLY disappointed that Amazon makes it VERY hard to find out where to complain or contact them.” True: it is hard as hell to find a phone number to call.

Another customer griped: “I’ve been waiting nearly two hours, and have not even been able to download one single song. Every download attempt fails and when I retry, it ‘waits’ forever and fails again…too bad for Lady Gaga that she ends up with lousy ratings because you have rotten tech help…the rating I gave WOULD have been a five, but the aggravation lowered it by half.”

Lady Gaga’s marketing team must be frothing at the mouth right now. It’s likely that Amazon is taking the $13 loss in the first place, but add to that potential legal problems with Lady Gaga’s representatives, who are surely unhappy about the fact that Gaga’s new album has been essentially labeled a dud, and Amazon could have a big headache up ahead.

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Derek Jarman’s film for Marianne Faithful’s “Broken English”

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Perfect paring of Derek Jarman and Marianne Faithful.  ”Broken English,” “Witch’s Song” and “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan.” Powerful.

Marianne Faithfull “Broken English” from Ivan Blatny on Vimeo.

via Dangerous Minds


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Apple to launch cloud TV service

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This is a rumor, but according to Jefferies analyst Peter Misek,  Apple is on the cusp of launching a “new far reaching cloud-based service” focused on video.  Among other predictions, Misek claims that:

In terms of content we think some sort of subscription model also makes sense … We believe Apple has learned much from having Netflix on the Apple TV and we cannot help but feel Apple will try to improve on this model somehow. So how does Apple convince Hollywood and other content creators to license it? In our view, the best way to do that would be the model they use for App developers: let them take the vast majority of the revenue while you use the content to drive device sales and monetize it that way. We are huge fans of iTunes, but that cannot be it from Apple. There is another level coming here and we see this as one of the most fruitful potential uses of Apple’s enormous cash hoard.

Disclosure: I own Apple stock.

More Will Ferrell

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Speaking about Will Ferrell and over-exposure, check out this video promo for the upcoming Beastie Boys album Hot Sauce Committee Part Two, released in early May. This some excerpt from a 30 minute video to be released with the album.

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