“Free” Pandora Has Hidden Limits

A funny thing happened the other day.  We were listening to Pandora online, as usual, and the music stopped.  We were not asked if we were “still listening” nor had we skipped too many songs.

Instead, we found out that the “free” Pandora that already hits you with both ads and a need to keep telling it you are still, in fact, listening, has a 40-hour-per-month listening limit.  Once you reach 40 hours in a month you have to upgrade to a premium account to keep listening.

While 40 hours of music seems like a lot, that wouldn’t cover more than one full work-week a month.  I can’t imagine this problem strikes many users but, considering all the other limitations already imposed on their “free” account, this new limitation is disheartening.

It also led to us moving on to use Slacker.com and Last.FM as an alternative.  Now that a new month is upon us we are reluctant to return to Pandora.

Not sound business, Pandora.

Can Print Be the Next Vinyl?

One of the more interesting trends in the music world is the “return” of the vinyl LP.  While sales of CD’s continue to fall in the face of digital downloads, vinyl LP sales continue to rise:

Consumers purchased 1.88 million new vinyl LPs in 2008, an 89 percent increase over 2007 and the highest sales volume recorded in the 17-year history of Nielsen SoundScan. Further, in good news for some physical retailers, two out of three vinyls LPs were purchased at independent record stores.    LINK

There are a number of reasons for this, but the most obvious is that the LP is a tangible object that can’t be easily reproduced and can only be shared through a physical, real-world exchange.  For true fans, the LP is a sort of badge of fandom, proof of just how much you love the band.  Compared to a digital download or a CD, the LP is a crafted thing, complete with large-scale artwork and often other inserts.

While it isn’t likely that LP sales will eclipse digital downloads anytime soon, it is also highly unlikely that the LP market will be undercut by piracy.

Could these same factors be a forecaster for the future of printed books and newspapers?  It is hard to imagine that these items, so easily digitized, will be able to maintain their current position on top of the mountain and we are already seeing the rapid decline of the newspaper business.

In the cases of both newspapers and books, it might be that their only hope in surviving over the long-term is to invest in elements that can truly not be pirated.  As David Eggars points out in a recent Salon interview:

I think newspapers shouldn’t try to compete directly with the Web, and should do what they can do better, which may be long-form journalism and using photos and art, and making connections with large-form graphics and really enhancing the tactile experience of paper. You know, including a full-color comic section, for example, which of course was standard in newspapers years ago, when you’d have a full broadsheet Winsor McCay comic. So we’ll have a big, full-color comic section, and we’re also trying to emphasize what younger readers are looking for, what directly appeals to them.     LINK

Now, I am not saying that comics section will save newspapers, but the point is to make the object something desirable to possess in physical form.

For the moment, we are going to see traditional publishers fight futilely to maintain the status quo but the ground is quickly falling away beneath them and it is going to take some innovative thinking about the value of printed matter to keep them in the game.

Judge Indefinitely Bans “Coming Through The Rye”

If there is one thing I learned during almost ten years developing feature film scripts, is that there is no such thing as a completely original idea.

Every script I read (well into the thousands) could be seen as being derivative of a pre-existing work.  In fact, if one eliminated every script from Hollywood that was derivative of a pre-existing work there wouldn’t be any screenplays left.

The same can be said for the world of novels.

Unfortunately, one Judge Betts disagrees and has indefinitely banned the wholly original novel “60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye” which imagines what  Holden Caufield would be like at the age of 76.  While clearly building from the foundations of “A Catcher in the Rye” there is nothing in the new work that is a direct quote or paraphrase from the original.

Judge Betts has rejected the defenses’ argument that the new novel…

…did not violate copyright laws because it amounted to a critical parody that had the effect of transforming the original work.

This is one of the major elements of the “fair use” defense and one that did not strike me as even a bit far-fetched.  Instead, Judge Betts claimed:

“Both narratives are told from the first-person point of view of a sarcastic, often uncouth protagonist who relies heavily on slang, euphemisms and colloquialisms, makes constant digression and asides, refers to readers in the second person, constantly assures the reader that he is being honest and that he is giving them the truth.”    LINK

If that’s enough to ban a this book, I’m sure there is an endless stream of young adult fiction that should certainly be given the same treatment.

Seeing judges ban books is never a good thing.  Seeing a judge ban a book for such flimsy reasons as this is downright frightening.  If her ruling stands, expect to see a long line of similar suits in the near future.

Michael Jackson Dead. Britney Spears Not Dead – the Reporting Power of Social Media

One of the major arguments put forth by the big newspaper companies is that if we stop paying them huge sums of money then we will no longer get trusted, vetted and researched news – that so-called “citizen jouralists” just can’t be trusted since we aren’t paying them for their work.

It was interesting to see, last week, that the very first place I saw word of Michael Jackson’s death was on Twitter.  I immediately went over to CNN.com to see what they were saying but they were still talking about Michael Jackson being in a coma.  In fact, it was literally more than two hours after I’d seen multiple confirmations of his death on Twitter, that any of the major news organizations would report the information.  I think that TMZ.com is actually being credited as the first “official” confirmation.  Now , if that isn’t a smack in the face to the so-called professionals…

Meanwhile. this sad death, and that of Farrah Fawcette, led to a slew of fake death reports.  What I found fascinating here was that the same loose network of minds that had confirmed Michael Jackson’s death worked just as quickly to confirm that, in fact, Britney Spears, was still alive even though someone hacked her Twitter stream and annoucned “Britney Spears has died.”  Twitter users also speedily debunked the fake deaths of Harrison Ford and Jeff Goldbloom.

Now, all that is left for the pro’s is to endless rehash all of this while those of us on the bleeding edge are on to the next breaking story.

The Myth of Cable’s “TV Everywhere” Plan

A bunch of news about Time Warner and Comcast beginning to roll out a service being called “TV Everywhere.”

TV Everywhere aims to put full-length cable programming online, but require viewers to prove that they have a cable subscription before they’re able to watch. Currently most full-length episodes from cable networks aren’t available on the web.    LINK

Of course, by everywhere, they mean on this one firewalled site.  Forget about downloading an episode and watching in your iPhone or saving it for offline viewing.

While it’s nice to see the cable companies trying to get more programming online, I’m not sure this is the solution that will save them from obsolesence in the coming years.

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Mos Def Gets in On the Musical T-Shirt Trend

Last week, I mentioned that by good friend and awesome musician, Waz, was being featured on a new album that could be obtained only with a special t-shirt.

It looks like Mos Def thinks this could be a cool new way to bring his music to the people and still make some money while doing it:

Now Mos Def is one of the first artists to release his new album, “The Ecstatic,” in a t-shirt format. Combining digital music with t-shirt design, The Mos Def Music Tee features the cover art on the front, tracklist on the back and a unique download code on the hang tag.     LINK

At $40 each, it seems possible for both the t-shirt maker and the artist to make money on a deal like this and it provides the fan with a tangible relic of the transaction, something downloading an album alone will never replace.

Even if people buy the shirt and then share the tracks they download, it is still a better result for the artist than just giving away the music.  In fact, this is the best of both worlds.

Of course, this only works if the artist can sell enough t-shirts but that basic equation is true for any business.

You can get a Mos Def shirt here.

Augmented Reality is Sci-Fi Happening Now

One of the best thing about having grown up reading books like Gibson’s “Neuromancer” and Stephenson’s “Snow Crash” is that I am not getting to see almost all the fantastical technological fantasies in those books become a reality.  It’s well known that Second Life was largely based on the work in “Snow Crash” and the whole world of hackers that permeates Gibson’s early books is thriving.

One idea Gibson wrote a lot about in his last book, “Spook Country,” is augmented reality.  In his book, this meant wearing a special helmet and visor that overlayed the real world with images and information beamed in from the net.

Below, however, is a real-world example of Layar’s Augmented Reality software in action.  While it’s just a start, the applications are overwhelmingly cool.

Check it out:

Dunkin’ Donuts Hires Shaggy Buskers in New York City

Walking to work today I came across a rather unusual site.  On the corner of 8th Ave and 50th St., just outside the C/E subway stop, there were two scruffy guys playing guitar and singing.  In front of them, they had a guitar case open in hopes of donations.

Now the weird, part.  As I drew closer I saw a professionally printed poster inset into the inside of the guitar case cover:

Yup.  It appears that Dunkin’ Donuts is not only using these guys to advertise their watery coffee and artery-clogging pastries but they are also discouraging anyone from donating to the arts.

Way to go, Dunkin’ Donuts.  That’s the spirit!

Ripe Digital’s Downfall Had Obvious Cause

I was just reading about Ripe Digital, one of a slew of original digital content creators founded in recent years, filing for bankruptcy.  They follow in the footsteps of 60Frames and ManiaTV.

While I am sure their founders are blaming the economy I think the answer is far less obtuse.  According to NewTeeVee, Ripe Digital raised over $45 million in financing.

Ripe Digital was focused on creating entertainment for dudes with the online networks RipeTV, OctaneTV and FlowTV, featuring such shows as Sexy Road Test, Funk Flex TV and Pauly Shore’s America.  LINK

And there it is – one cannot hope to recoup $45 million on a slate where the biggest draw is Paul Shore.  It’s not that there isn’t money to be made in this space, it’s just that it is wildly unrealistic to think in terms of tens of millions of dollars.  Those who succeed in original online video will do so by radically reducing overhead, staffing and all the other acoutremonts of the old media world.

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Pre-Roll Ads Can Be An Effective Compromise

I just went to check out the weather for today and ended up, of course, at Weather.com.  There I decided to watch the actual video weathercast for NYC.  After clicking the link I was made to watch a 15-second ad for Pedigree dog food. And you know what, it wasn’t that big a deal.  In fact, it seemed like a perfectly fair trade-off since I was getting the video for free.

Now, had it been a longer ad, that would have been a different story.  I am always dismayed when a video provider tries to slap a 30-second spot in front of a 90-second video.  That is not a fair exchange.

Where people are eager to fast-forward through 2-minute TV ad breaks, it doesn’t seem worth the effort when it is just a 15-second spot.  There is a good lesson in here for all the advertisers out there.