quinta-feira, maio 28, 2009
O futuro da indústria da música
"I love iPods, and by the same token their frequently less visually appealing, and un-fruit-branded, MP3-playing cousins. I think it’s brilliant that they’ve allowed musicians to drop musical examples easily into conversation and to share influences at the swap of an earbud. It’s also great that music download sites make it so easy to explore the breadth of music history, whether fashionable or not, and also provide retail exposure for less mainstream talent.
So why don’t I own an iPod, then? It’s certainly not the audio quality that holds me back — the sound’s fine for general browsing and listening purposes, much as cassette used to be. The real reason is that I think the iPod, revolutionary as it has been, is actually just a commercial stop-gap, because I don’t think most people actually care about owning music any more. They just want to listen to what they want, when they want. In short, they value access, not ownership.
Now I actually own loads of CDs (remember them?), because I am one of the minority willing to pay for higher-quality audio. But I acknowledge the fact that I’m rapidly becoming a dinosaur in this regard, missing out on the advantages currently enjoyed by those whose digital lifestyles are already fully hubbed. Nonetheless, because the iPod still requires you to own the tracks you listen to, I still don’t want to get involved, because of the pain of dealing with any music files I accumulate. Storing them. Deciding which ones to put on which size of iPod. Migrating them to updated hardware. Trying to remember to back them up. Hoovering up splinters of the iMac that I’ve just kicked to death because it’s corrupted the disk containing the library that I forgot to back up. You know the sort of thing.
What’s most recently woken me up to the demise of the ownership model is that I noticed that although I really like watching films, I own no DVD collection. I’m perfectly happy to pay a monthly subscription to a web-based library that allows me to access anything I might ever want to watch without having to buy, organise, house, insure or back up my own set of DVDs. And how much better if this service could stream roughly-TV-quality films to a portable handset to play on demand when and where I fancied? Although bandwidth restrictions put the kibosh on this daydream for films at the moment, I understand from friends of mine in the mobile phone industry that it’s already a much more viable prospect for MP3-quality audio.
Humour me while I imagine a time when you might pay a subscription to receive a certain number of MP3 track ‘plays’ (or time-limited downloads) selected from an iTunes-style database, via your existing mobile phone — the fee might even be bundled as a sweetener with your phone contract, like free call minutes. I think that any portable music library, iTunes or otherwise, I’d actually built up before that point would seem pretty much obsolete. (And after all that backing up, too...)
So I’m holding my breath for the subscription model of music consumption to come of age. And I have a feeling it may bring other benefits with it. For example, I think it might hold the key to dealing with the music industry’s copyright theft problems. As Paul Sellars argued back in SOS March 2009, DRM technology can currently make you feel as if actually owning music is less convenient than stealing it online. But if your music access were near instant, offered practically unlimited choice, and were bundled as part of your mobile phone package, I think that web-based file-sharing would seem a hell of a lot less convenient by comparison. And wouldn’t it be a lot easier to prosecute illegal music-streaming services or phone-phreakers than to rely on largely ineffectual legal sabre-rattling against thousands upon thousands of peer-to-peer MP3 rustlers? Finally, I think that ‘per-play’ royalty streams from establishment on-demand services might enable more widespread support for niche music from the mass-market. My Internet DVD subscription certainly made me more experimental in my choice of films, because I knew that it made no difference to the fee I’d already paid.
So, my slogan: Death to the iPod! It’s done great things, but the sooner we’re shot of it, the better." Mike Senior SOS
"Rubin has a bigger idea. To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. "You would subscribe to music," Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. "You'd pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you'd like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You'll say, 'Today I want to listen to ... Simon and Garfunkel,' and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now."
From Napster to the iPod, the music business has been wrong about how much it can dictate to its audience. "Steve Jobs understood Napster better than the record business did," David Geffen told me. "IPods made it easy for people to share music, and Apple took a big percentage of the business that once belonged to the record companies. The subscription model is the only way to save the music business. If music is easily available at a price of five or six dollars a month, then nobody will steal it." New York Times (entrevista ao GRANDE Rick Rubin)
Leram isto pela primeira vez aqui em directo no blog da Musgueira...não se esqueçam!
So why don’t I own an iPod, then? It’s certainly not the audio quality that holds me back — the sound’s fine for general browsing and listening purposes, much as cassette used to be. The real reason is that I think the iPod, revolutionary as it has been, is actually just a commercial stop-gap, because I don’t think most people actually care about owning music any more. They just want to listen to what they want, when they want. In short, they value access, not ownership.
Now I actually own loads of CDs (remember them?), because I am one of the minority willing to pay for higher-quality audio. But I acknowledge the fact that I’m rapidly becoming a dinosaur in this regard, missing out on the advantages currently enjoyed by those whose digital lifestyles are already fully hubbed. Nonetheless, because the iPod still requires you to own the tracks you listen to, I still don’t want to get involved, because of the pain of dealing with any music files I accumulate. Storing them. Deciding which ones to put on which size of iPod. Migrating them to updated hardware. Trying to remember to back them up. Hoovering up splinters of the iMac that I’ve just kicked to death because it’s corrupted the disk containing the library that I forgot to back up. You know the sort of thing.
What’s most recently woken me up to the demise of the ownership model is that I noticed that although I really like watching films, I own no DVD collection. I’m perfectly happy to pay a monthly subscription to a web-based library that allows me to access anything I might ever want to watch without having to buy, organise, house, insure or back up my own set of DVDs. And how much better if this service could stream roughly-TV-quality films to a portable handset to play on demand when and where I fancied? Although bandwidth restrictions put the kibosh on this daydream for films at the moment, I understand from friends of mine in the mobile phone industry that it’s already a much more viable prospect for MP3-quality audio.
Humour me while I imagine a time when you might pay a subscription to receive a certain number of MP3 track ‘plays’ (or time-limited downloads) selected from an iTunes-style database, via your existing mobile phone — the fee might even be bundled as a sweetener with your phone contract, like free call minutes. I think that any portable music library, iTunes or otherwise, I’d actually built up before that point would seem pretty much obsolete. (And after all that backing up, too...)
So I’m holding my breath for the subscription model of music consumption to come of age. And I have a feeling it may bring other benefits with it. For example, I think it might hold the key to dealing with the music industry’s copyright theft problems. As Paul Sellars argued back in SOS March 2009, DRM technology can currently make you feel as if actually owning music is less convenient than stealing it online. But if your music access were near instant, offered practically unlimited choice, and were bundled as part of your mobile phone package, I think that web-based file-sharing would seem a hell of a lot less convenient by comparison. And wouldn’t it be a lot easier to prosecute illegal music-streaming services or phone-phreakers than to rely on largely ineffectual legal sabre-rattling against thousands upon thousands of peer-to-peer MP3 rustlers? Finally, I think that ‘per-play’ royalty streams from establishment on-demand services might enable more widespread support for niche music from the mass-market. My Internet DVD subscription certainly made me more experimental in my choice of films, because I knew that it made no difference to the fee I’d already paid.
So, my slogan: Death to the iPod! It’s done great things, but the sooner we’re shot of it, the better." Mike Senior SOS
"Rubin has a bigger idea. To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. "You would subscribe to music," Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. "You'd pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you'd like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You'll say, 'Today I want to listen to ... Simon and Garfunkel,' and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now."
From Napster to the iPod, the music business has been wrong about how much it can dictate to its audience. "Steve Jobs understood Napster better than the record business did," David Geffen told me. "IPods made it easy for people to share music, and Apple took a big percentage of the business that once belonged to the record companies. The subscription model is the only way to save the music business. If music is easily available at a price of five or six dollars a month, then nobody will steal it." New York Times (entrevista ao GRANDE Rick Rubin)
Leram isto pela primeira vez aqui em directo no blog da Musgueira...não se esqueçam!
terça-feira, maio 26, 2009
Jorge Colombo desenha capa da 'New Yorker' no iPhone
O artista português que rumou aos EUA há 25 anos, depois de ter estado em 'O Independente', aderiu àquilo que no meio muitos já chamaram de "iPhone art", ainda por cima numa revista de referência, a 'The New Yorker'.
Jorge Colombo é o autor da ilustração da capa da revista The New Yorker desta semana, mas a sua maior originalidade é que foi pintada num iPhone.
Colombo é um artista português, radicado nos Estados Unidos, onde tem ilustrado diversas publicações. As primeiras colaborações com a The New Yorker datam de 1994.
Para o desenho "Finger Painting", o autor gastou uma hora em frente ao Museu de Cera de Madame Tussaud, na Times Square, em Nova Iorque, para desenhar pessoas junto de uma banca de venda de comida.
O iPhone tem a enorme vantagem de lhe permitir desenhar em locais com reduzida iluminação ou com muitas pessoas em redor que simplesmente julgam que ele está a mexer no telemóvel.
"A experiência que trazia de desenhar anos e anos com lápis, com pincel, com aguarela", "além de imensas explorações fotográficas", permitiram-lhe evoluir facilmente para o pequeno iPhone. "No fundo a arte é a mesma, a ferramenta é que muda ligeiramente", explicou por email, ao DN.
Colombo colocou as imagens à venda num site que foram descobertas por Françoise Mouly, editora de arte da revista. "Reconheceu nelas uma tradição de imagens 'observadas', que existia nas capas da New Yorker desde 1925" e, no futuro, os desenhos "vão passar a ter lugar regular no website".
Apesar da cobertura mediática nos Estados Unidos desde que foi revelada a imagem do ilustrador lisboeta (além da New Yorker e de publicações online dedicadas à tecnologia ou arte, o New York Times ou a ABC News escreveram ontem sobre o assunto), Colombo já tinha sido detectado em Março nas páginas de arte do The Guardian. O jornal britânico denominava as imagens de "delicadas e vívidos", enquanto o site Craziest Gadgets as apelidava de "fantásticos desenhos". Outros chegaram a sugerir tratar-se de fotografias.
Colombo adquiriu o iPhone em Fevereiro e, pouco depois, a aplicação Brushes. Já a conhecia: "os primeiros desenhos que vi foram de um artista francês chamado Stephane Kardos, bastante anteriores aos meus e muito bonitos", explica. Kardos é director de arte na Walt Disney.
O software custa quase cinco dólares e permite desenhar como se o dedo fosse o pincel (há outra aplicação semelhante, o Colors). Desde o seu lançamento em Agosto passado, já foi adquirido por mais de 40 mil pessoas, assegura o seu criador Steve Sprang.
Uma aplicação paralela, a Brushes Viewer, permite registar todos os passos dados na concretização de um desenho e exportá-lo como vídeo. A New Yorker tem precisamente um pequeno filme com a concepção da capa de Colombo, onde é notória a sua técnica para as imagens surgirem, em diversas camadas. "Tem de se desenhar o palco antes das personagens", explicou à ABC News.
Colombo é mais um dos artistas a aderir à já denominada "iPhone art". "O David Hockney, por exemplo - um dos meus pintores favoritos de sempre - também anda a fazer desenhos no iPhone", lembra Colombo. "Aos 72 anos!"
domingo, maio 24, 2009
sábado, maio 23, 2009
Obama!
“It was once said that pigs would fly before Americans would elect a black president.
“Indeed, we’re 100 days into the Obama presidency… and SWINE FLU!!“
“Indeed, we’re 100 days into the Obama presidency… and SWINE FLU!!“
quarta-feira, maio 20, 2009
quarta-feira, maio 13, 2009
Last.fm Launches Visual Radio to Entertain Listeners, Woo Advertisers
Last.fm, the social music site acquired by CBS two years ago, unveiled a major redesign to its interactive radio service on Wednesday in an attempt to keep users where its advertisers can reach them.
Visual Radio — now Last.fm’s default radio listening option — launches a full web page with an image and video viewer surrounded by advertising. Last.fm and CBS realized that adding a visual component to their interactive artist and genre stations would make users more likely to stick around, rather than tabbing over to another browser window.
The problem with many interactive radio services, from an advertiser perspective, is that people tend to listen to stations while otherwise occupied. For instance, I listened to Last.fm’s Boards of Canada channel in another browser window as I wrote this post.
CBS and Last.fm hope Visual Radio will solve that problem. If you keep looking at your Last.fm browser window in order to see images and videos associated with the currently-playing band, you’ll also be exposed to the advertisement surrounding the player. It appears to be a win for both sides: fans get relevant visuals — if they want them — while advertisers reap more of their attention, and therefore pay CBS higher ad rates.
Enter an artist or genre into the search box on the front of Last.fm, you’ll be directed to the new Visual Radio player (or see the expandable screenshot). You can still listen to these channels while using other browser windows, it’s just that now there’s more of an incentive to stay, in the form of photos and videos of the band, some of which come from Last.fm users.
(One nitpick, while we’re on the topic: There’s no pause button on the player, as there is on Pandora, so if you stop a station you have to reload the station completely with a new song and lose your spot.)
On Tuesday, CBS announced that Last.fm would fall under a newly-formed division called the CBS Interactive Music Group, headed by David Goodman, a CBS Radio veteran. This is Last.fm’s first move following that announcement, indicating that CBS reorganized in this way in attempt to further monetize Last.fm.
Wired.com asked Last.fm co-founder Martin Stiksel how he and the other co-founders felt about the move. He didn’t have a comment on that, although he did offer a vote of confidence about this new, visually-oriented approach to radio.
“Personalized Visual Music shows what’s possible with Last.fm’s unparalleled music database and the innovative vision of our team,” stated Stiksel. “We were the first website to offer personalized streaming music, and this marks the next evolution of that service. Passionate music fans come to Last.fm for more than just the songs, and Visual Radio provides them with the enriching, full-featured music experience they demand. And the bold new music player allows brands and sponsors the opportunity to directly reach these users in a visually exciting way.”
As part of the Visual Radio rollout, Last.fm also added the ability to create multi-artist and -tag stations:
But the meat of the announcement is that Last.fm is trying to keep listeners looking at its player page by offering visuals associated with bands it knows they like, and are interested in at that moment.
In our brief period of testing today, we’ve found that the images are indeed correctly associated with currently-playing bands, so the system appears to be working. Now, CBS will find out whether it’s enough to keep people glued to their Last.fm browser window long enough for its advertisers’ messages to sink in.From Wired...
terça-feira, maio 12, 2009
terça-feira, maio 05, 2009
Subscrever:
Mensagens (Atom)
