Digital Leon`s World

Hilarious commentary from Jermaine Dupri.I’ll start with Mr. Durpri and his article “A good album is more than just a collection of singles“The gist of the article is that he’s happy that Jay-Z is refusing to allow his new album to be sold as individual tracks on online music services like Itunes and Amazon.com. He feels that they are losing sales because of this.He is of course correct since most albums are terrible and only have 1 or 2 good songs on them. The number of complete albums that I’ve purchased since digital distribution became available is certainly in the single digits.This was by far the best line:

Dupri writes, “Apple thinks that’s never gonna happen. They think that we as the record industry will never stick together. But Universal sells one out of every three records. All it’ll take is for Warner Music to say, ‘You know what, I’m with you,’ for us to shut ‘em down. No more iPods! They won’t have nothin’ to play on their players! We can take back the power if we’re willing to sacrifice some sales to make our point.”

Wow where to start – the problem is that by Apple’s own numbers only 3% of music on a digital music player comes from an online store. The rest come from ripped CDs.(Although I’ve stated before I’m sure the % of new music is higher than that) Further more in an age where music sales are declining he seeks to remove a revenue stream. People using online music stores are paying for their music. If you eliminate that outlet they will just steal it from the file sharing network Du Jour.It actually gets better. Dupris begins to comment on how the consumers desire to purchase single tracks is wrong. And what they want doesn’t matter. What needs to happen is the old business models of the music industry must be preserved at all cost.

Dupri asks, “Did consumers complain? Maybe so. But at what point does any business care when a consumer complains about the money? Why do people not care how we – the people who make music – eat? If they just want the single, they gotta get the album. That was how life was. Today we should at least have that option… Apple, why are you helping the consumer destroy our canvas? …Respect the craft!”

If you want us to buy more of your content then you need to make better content. When I hear a good song I usually buy it online fairly quickly. The problem is most albums are terrible and I refuse to pay for crap. The reality is that the internet offers new distribution mediums that can take the middle man (ie the music industry) out of the equation. Which is actually good for artists. This rant is nothing more than the death knell of a dying industry.If you listen to Doug Morris CEO of Universal Music and self professed technophobic -  you will get even more of a chuckle.He wants to displace the IPOD with a device from universal that only plays subscription content. – Good luck with that.  This guy is a real dinosaur. Rather than embrace the digital age he tried to fight it – calling ipods nothing more than ‘repositories for stolen music’. He admits to being ignorant about technology and is angry about the shifts in business that technology is creating.   What’s funny is that the ipod/itunes juggernaut is a monster of his own creating. His insistence on copy protection(DRM) for music sold in the Apple online store is exactly what gives Apple so much power. People with itunes content can not easily move to other players without going through a painful process of removing the DRM or repurchase their old content. Like I said the big problem here is that the artists are already starting to eliminate the middleman. Example – Radiohead now sells their content directly to the public.

Cnet released their battery comparison of the Zune to the Ipod classic today.

Microsoft rated the 80GB Zune as being able to go 30 hours with the wifi switched off. CNETs tests show that’s more like 22 hours. (18.5 with wifi switched on) Compared to the 80GB Ipod classic which gets 45 hours of playback time.

That said – 22 hours is a long time. The Zune would make it through even the most painful international travel. But I do find it dissappointing none the less. The problem is that 22 hours will be eaten up quickly if you try to use any of Zunes other features. Wireless syncing, “squirting music”, and playing video are going to eat up your battery power pretty fast.

I would be interested to know the circumstances of CNETS and Microsoft’s tests. 8 hours is a pretty large difference. Does the 30 hour note in the Zune documentation state that these tests were preformed at near absolute 0 with super conducting headphones?

I haven’t written in a while because I’ve been pretty busy working on my new photography website. I’m happy to say it’s finally done. You should pop over and check it out. http://www.pryorstudios.com

Today I purchased a laptop for a child in the developing world. The laptops were supposed to cost $100 each however they were only able to get it down to $200. However they have a program where you can buy a machine for $400 – they will send one to you and a second machine to a child in a developing country.  Critics of the program feel that it would be better to send food, water, and medicine. I don’t disagree with that position but if these computers can help educate people and give them a glimpse into a world they know nothing about – I find that a worthy goal.

The machines themselves are pretty cool. They use hand cranks so they don’t require an electrical infrastructure and have wifi built in. They run open source software in order to keep the price down. Funny enough this has Microsoft worried since this could potentially create entire communities of Linux users.  Although I think some people are being a bit harsh especially given the philanthrophic work of the Gates foundation in the developing world. Although the thought of some poor Microsoft engineer trying to cram Vista onto this box amuses me greatly.

But back to the issue at hand. Make your donation today – half of the purchase is tax deductible and after I check out the machine they send me I plan to donate it to a local school or needy family in the Seattle area.

http://www.laptopgiving.org

Tomorrow the new Zune player launches. So far the reviews have been pretty good. There is a nice summary on gizmodo.
Overall I think this is going to be an interesting battle. I wasn’t impressed with the first Zune. It was too large, the syncing software was absolutely terrible, and it’s killer feature was crippled by the music industry. (The Zune can wirelessly sync songs with other devices however the experience wasn’t very good and the songs would expire after 3 days or 3 plays) Overall I was pretty underwhelmed by it as a device. I think if Microsoft had released the Zune 3-4 years ago I would be singing a different tune. But otherwise it looked pretty poor compared to the current ipod offerings. The device had one redeeming quality and that was the large screen. Microsoft has been trying to make a play for mobile video for some time – the problem is video sucks batteries down like a hungry vampire. Despite it’s warts I considered getting one to use as a mobile photo album for my photography business. Then the Iphone came out and put that temptation to bed. That said the Zune 2 looks like a vastly improved product. Interestingly enough Microsoft marketing and PR has focused the inevitable comparisons to the Ipod classic instead of the Ipod touch. Pointing out that Zune sales are great for “Hard drive based digital music players.” Even though Apple’s clearly moving their products toward solid state memory instead of hard drives. But the question is – will Zune be successful?
Things working in Zune’s favor

• There’s still money on the table. Apple has sold quite a few Ipods but there’s still room for growth.
• The screen is large compared to the Ipod classic, but smaller than the Ipod touch and Iphone. The resolution is also equal to that of the ipod classic but lower than the Touch and the Iphone. Some people may be excited about the video capabilities – this is only a plus if the battery life is decent.
• The form factor is smaller and is closer to the current batch of ipods – eliminating the largest (no pun intended) barrier to Zune.
• The record companies are moving away from DRM. Amazon.com now sells DRM free music, Itunes sells DRM free music(well some of it) and so will the new Zune store. This levels the playing field quite a bit and is good for everyone.

Problems from my perspective

• Microsoft is too focused with competing with the Ipod classic when they should be focusing on the Ipod touch and the Iphone. The ipod classic is clearly a transitional product – apple’s moving to solid state in a big way. With 64GB solid state hard drives on the market it’s only a matter of time before we see ipod touches with high capacity drives.
• Apple has momentum and great marketing and incredible brand recognition with the ipod. Also Microsoft marketing is usually terrible and the company rarely commits resources to marketing like other companies do. [update] – The first Zune television ads are terrible.
• Zune doesn’t offer improvements that leapfrog the Ipod in terms of capabilities. If you compare the Iphone to other cell phones – Apple blew away the competition in terms of experience. With Zune 2 the improvements aren’t nearly as compelling. There is potential but it’s unrealized at this point.
• Can’t sync on the Mac – I don’t blame Microsoft here at all. While Apple’s market share is increasing at a rapid clip it’s still less than 10% of the total industry. Owners of new Macs can install virtualization software which is expensive. ($100 for parallels and $400 for vista ultimate if they don’t have a copy of xp – or they can buy XP for $200) Rebooting the machine into windows to sync isn’t practical. I still think Microsoft should have given an intern the project of porting the Zune software.
• I have a ton of Itunes DRM’d Music – This is totally my fault – and in the early days of the Itunes store I was diligent about removing the DRM but I have long since fallen behind. 90% of the new music that I have purchased in the past few years has been through Itunes.
• Wireless syncing is cool – but is it that useful? – My current music collection is less than 20GB and doesn’t change very often. I wouldn’t get a lot of use out of this feature. Now maybe college kids downloading a constant stream of music will get better mileage.
• Still no Wireless purchasing of content – oddly enough I’ve purchased a lot of music on my Iphone in the local Star bucks getting my daily fix.
• Sharing music is still crippled by DRM. And as i understand it if I’ve received a song I can’t share it with someone else. There was a nice viral marketing potential here that’s unfortunately lost.
• Complete lack of interesting services that could take advantage of Microsoft’s unique ecosystem of products. Windows, Xbox, Windows Mobile, and Zune are all wireless devices that could in theory work together to create an amazing experience. Unfortunately Microsoft is not an experience/scenario driven company and those are 4 separate divisions that sit in 4 separate campuses.
• No video content on the Zune store. Adding video content to your Zune is a manual process. If you already have content in a Zune friendly format then you’re probably fine. However quite a bit of content on the internet is in the Divx codec which is unsupported. (and to be clear the ipod doesn’t support it either) so the only way to get video on the device is to transcode other material from another format. This is a time consuming process. So if you want to watch a DVD on your Zune – prepare to spend hours transcoding it into a Zune friendly format beforehand. note – You can buy and rent videos on the Xbox but there’s no way to share the content. Again speaking to my point about a lack of consistent service offerings.

That said having more people come to the table is a good thing. As a consumer I benefit greatly when companies vigorously compete for my dollar. As far as media players go – Zune is the only competent competition to the Ipod. And with the record companies backing away from DRM that will make it easier for avoid vendor locking and allow users to change players at will. I do hope that the Zune syncing software is a lot better than the 1.0 release though.

Lack of Mac support will keep me from buying one of these devices – but I’ll definitely check it out in the store. The big question is can Microsoft evolve their service offerings in a way that will allow Zune to be a big success? Interesting integration with the Xbox 360? Cloud based services that allow me to access content anywhere on any Microsoft enabled device – phone, smart watch, web browser, etc. Before leaving Microsoft I asked these questions and I unfortunately never got a good answer.

So the other day I was showing a friend of mine Apple’s newest operating system. I was visiting his house and on his home network. While showing him the new finder I noticed that I could see the network shares of his 4 windows computers. I looked more closely at the icons and this is what I saw.

Now I love the Macs in our house. I do in fact think that the Mac is superior to Windows. (but that’s for another post) But this is just a little too smug for even my tastes. Not only do we have what must be a 10 year old computer monitor – we have a windows 95 era “Blue Screen of Death.”

So I’m going to have to blow my whistle and call flag on the play on this one.

I was walking my dog in the morning when a photographer for the local newspaper took this photo.  From www.issaquahpress.com

From the paper:

“Bill Frisinger, husband of Mayor Ava Frisinger, takes a cell phone call as he waves a city councilman’s election campaign sign to motorists on Front Street during the Nov. 5 morning commute, as Issaquah resident Leon Pryor walks his dog Cookie before work. Any of the fruits of Frisinger’s labor have since been tallied, as Election Day was Nov. 6.Photo by Greg Farrar.”

I guess there’s my 15 minutes of fame. At least I can say I made the front page.  Note how I am oblivious and cookie is smiling for the camera.