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A Successor to MP3s?
March 5th, 2010Let me start by saying I am not predicting the end of the MP3 here. Back in the early nineties, as we were growing our first successful endeavor in the Royalty Free Music sector, we were the first (and possibly ONLY) online music library to offer AAC (also known as m4a). This is the file format iTunes delivers their music in. It’s a great format. It sounds good and takes up less space than an MP3. We were certain that this was the wave of the future and would eventually surpass the MP3 in terms of customer downloads. And WE were on the leading edge. Guess what? Nobody wanted it.
Technology comes and goes. Some sticks and some doesn’t. But this is pretty interesting:
BACH Technology, based in Norway, Germany and China, is set to launch a new digital music file format which can be embedded with additional content such as lyrics, news updates, and images. The new technology, which they are calling MusicDNA and has the backing of the original inventor of the MP3 format, would allow music labels, bands, or retailers to send updates to the music file every time they have something to share such as tour dates, interviews, etc.
The user would receive as much or as little of the information as they want each time they are online. These updates would only be available to those who obtained the music legally. Anyone downloading files illegally would receive only a static file without the MusicDNA benefits.
Chief Executive Stefan Kohlmeyer says the service would hark back to the time when music fans enjoyed looking at the lyrics and artwork on an album. Anyone who was a music buyuer in the days of vinyl knows this was a legitimate part of the experience of enjoying music. This got lost a bit with CDs, and nearly forgotten with the emergence of digital music files.
So are we ready to jump in head first and be the first music library to add MusicDNA files to the our website? Not just yet. But I love the innovation and will continue to monitor it’s success.
The Cost of Information
March 2nd, 2010Nicholas Carr has written an interesting article on the high price we are willing to pay for information. Check it out here.
Fun Music Quotes Part 3
March 1st, 2010“Beware the lollipop of mediocrity; lick it once and you’ll suck forever.” - Brian Wilson
“There’s people making babies to my music. That’s nice.” - Barry White
“You have Van Gogh’s ear for music.” - Artemus Ward
“I’d love to see Christ come back to crush the spirit of hate and make men put down their guns. I’d also like just one more hit single.” - Tiny Tim
“I only know two tunes. One is ‘Yankee Doodle’, and the other isn’t.” - Ulysses S. Grant
“When an instrument fails on stage, it mocks you and must be destroyed.” - Trent Reznor
“They should be shot.” (on the Backstreet Boys) - Noel Gallagher
“In order to compose, all you need to do is remember a tune that nobody else has thought of.” - Robert Schumann
“I may not be a first-rate composer, buy I am a first-class second-rate composer.” - Richard Strauss
“I’d rather be dead than singing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m forty-five.” - Mick Jagger
Fun Music Quotes Part 2
February 25th, 2010“If you wanted to torture me, you’d tie me down and force me to watch our first five videos.” -John Bon Jovi
“I like to think of us as Clearasil on the face of the nation. Jim Morrison would have said that if he was smart, but he’s dead.” - Lou Reed
“I don’t deserve a Songwriters Hall of Fame Award. But fifteen years ago, I had a brain operation and I didn’t deserve that either. So I’ll keep it.” - Quincy Jones
“Listen Edith, I know you’re singing, you know you’re singing, but the neighbors may think I’m torturing you.” - Archie Bunker
“I love to sing, and I love to drink scotch. Most people would rather hear me drink scotch.” - George Burns
“All music is folk music. I ain’t never heard no horse sing a song.” - Louis Armstrong
“I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know.” - James Brown
“The only thing better than singing is more singing.” - Ella Fitzgerald
“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” - Steve Martin
“If your lifegaurd duties were as good as your singing, a lot of people would be drowning.” - Simon Cowell
Fun Music Quotes Part 1
February 24th, 2010“Wagner’s music is better than it sounds.” - Mark Twain
“I don’t know anything about music. In my line you don’t have to.” - Elvis Presley
“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.” - Voltaire
“Do I listen to pop music because I’m miserable or am I miserable because I listen to pop music?” - John Cusack
I don’t like country music, but I don’t mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means ‘put down’.” - Bob Newhart
“Give me a laundry list and I’ll set it to music.” Gioacchino Antononio Rossini
“I want to do a musical movie. Like Evita, but with good music.” - Elton John
“No opera plot can be sensible, for in sensible situations people do not sing.” - W.H. Auden
“Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding, sings.” - Ed Gardner
“I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man made sound never equalled the purity of the sound achieved by the pig.” - Alfred Hitchcock
Apple, Music, and the Cloud
February 23rd, 2010Apple recently acquired Lala. Early predictions were that they would place iTunes in the cloud and jump head first into on-demand streams.
According to Michael Robertson, founder of MP3.com, Apple is more likely to enhance it’s existing download collections with cloud access rather than a wholesale conversion to the cloud. According to Robertson, an upcoming major revision of iTunes will copy each user’s catalog to the cloud making it available from any browser or net-connected iPod, iPhone, or iPad.
So for now, forget about a subscription based system from Apple. Rather than replacing the download with the cloud, Apple is going to complement the download with the cloud. It’s still your collection of music. It will just be easier to access, backup, an synchronize.
Why is this good news? After the installation, your music will be sitting safely on your hard drive AND backed up onto an Apple-supplied cloud. This sounds like a much better solution than having your entire collection in the hands of an unstable startup like Imeem which could be unrecoverable if anything goes wrong.
The Year of the App
February 19th, 2010Three years ago none of us had ever heard of a Mobile App. Now, according to the research firm Gartner, mobile application stores are expected to generate revenues of nearly seven billion dollars during 2010. Yes, that was a B.
This figure is a combination of the $6.2 billion spent on the applications themselves and $.6 billion generated through in-app advertising.
Analysts also predict that mobile application stores revenue will grow to nearly $30 billion by the end of 2013. This can only mean good things for Apple, who currently dominates the mobile phone industry with the iPhone and has the most robust app store in the world.
Justice Department Upholds File Sharing Penalty
February 18th, 2010The Obama Justice Department has submitted a filing defending a large damages award for copyright infringement on a file sharing case. Joel Tenenbaum was found guilty of sharing a large number of songs on Kazaa and ordered to pay the record labels damages in excess of $22,000 per song. Tenenbaum has asked the court to either reduce the damages or grant him a new trial, arguing that the damages amount is unconstitutional.
According to the Department of Justice filing, “In establishing the range (of damage amounts: $750 to $150,000 per infringement), Congress took into account the need to deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights in an environment where many violators believe they will go unnoticed.”
As we continue to see over and over again, copyright infringement is serious business. The next time you want a song from your favorite artist, go ahead and whip out a buck and get the song properly. If you are synchronizing music with any type of audio and/or visual production, make sure you’ve properly secured a synchronization license from a reputable production music library. Not only is the penalty for not doing things the right way very high, it’s noble to do the right thing.
Should Pants on the Ground Guy be Paid?
February 17th, 2010By now we have all seen it and most of us are probably already sick of it. I’m talking about Pants On the Ground, the song made famous on American Idol by “General” Larry Platt. The song has been parodied, remixed, performed, and made even more famous by the likes of Brett Favre and Jimmy Fallon. Shirts are being manufactured and sold with his likeness printed on them. The number of google searches for Pants on the Ground reached astronomical heights.
Now Larry feels like because he wrote the song he should be getting paid. And he’s right. Unfortunately Larry never copyrighted or made a commercial recording of the song so now he is looking for an attorney who can help him grab a few bucks from his creation.
He seems like a pretty lovable guy. Here’s hoping Larry can catch a bit of a paycheck for his entertaining tune.
Is the Customer Always Right?
February 12th, 2010Two years ago Inc. Magazine polled CEOs across the country and asked them to comment on the old customer service mantra “the customer is always right”. At the time, a slight majority agreed with the rule. The rest believed there were exceptions. As we all know, customers can make unreasonable demands and behave in outrageous ways.
According to the February 2010 issue of Inc. Magazine, the downturn in the economy and the rise in unemployment has caused many to rethink their views. In other words, the customer now seems to be “righter” in the face of a soured economy.
My question is this: Should our views on customer service and customer satisfaction adjust based on the current success of our business? The simple answer at Royalty Free Music Library is a resounding NO.
I recognize that the occasional customer can make outrageous demands and have an unrealistic sense of entitlement, but my experience is that most people simply want to do good business. In that light, our approach to fanatical customer service remains the same whether we are having a banner month, or if revenue is slipping. We want to do good business and we want to do business well. That means the customer may not always be right, but they can always be treated as though they are.