When you search on Google for verichip, one of the AdWords placements is for Prophecy News Watch -- "Bible Prophecy News Headlines, Breaking Current Events & Prophecy." I first noticed this a couple of years ago, and it appears to be a successful enough placement that PNW is keeping it up.
An interesting spin on the whole AdWords/trademark thing...
With the attention that Starbucks has paid to music in recent years, I'm wondering if the Apple/Starbucks deal isn't largely a block: Apple prevents anyone else from partnering up with Starbucks on the digital music front in the immediate future...oh, and you can automagically download whatever's playing at Starbucks to your new iPod. Or not, whatever. Steve yawns.
As I noted elsewhere, Schultz teased this information as far back as January. While it hasn't exactly panned out for Microsoft, at that point the Zune had certainly proposed a discussion on the merits of opportunistic music downloads; firming up a deal that eliminated the possibility of MS working with Starbucks on the mobile download front might have seemed like a pretty worthwhile insurance policy.
Sure, there isn't a whole lot of there there in the announcement, but what there is has an Apple logo tastefully engraved on it, and that may be the point.
I'm a little less optimistic: while one possible reading of the Rubin quote could look a lot like the EFF proposal, I'd give better odds on Big Content going with a different reading:
"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."
The reading that I'm afraid of is that the "virtual library" is a centralized, DRM-encumbered repository, and that the "Walkman-like device" is a locked down player that can be plugged into headphones, home stereos, or what-have-you and only streams music from the repository, rather than downloading full, device-independent audio files.
It seems unlikely that the big labels would go--even now--for an approach like the EFF's, where you're selling customers something that I believe an exec actually called "a license to steal." The term "subscription" (rather than, say "license") suggests that the labels get to discontinue providing access to the library when the customer stops paying...and that, in turn, suggests to me that the mindset is still DRM-tastic.
The best explanation that I can come up with is that the plan looks something like this:
1. Undertake very short test of DRM-free online music distribution. a. Intentionally exclude the largest online music distributor, because we’re in a bit of a snit right now. b. Wait six months, then express disappointment with relatively small sales. c. Conclude that results indicate that only a small segment of consumers see DRM as a significantly motivating factor when purchasing music for download. d. Come up with bizarre and unwieldy “some music is sometimes available without DRM” scheme. 2. ??? 3. Profit!
The plan seems oddly familiar for some reason, but I just can't place it...
Unfortunately the paper doesn't appear to be available anywhere online, as I'm a tad curious about the data and methodology.
It's interesting that the study covers a five year period (1998-2003) following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which eliminated the national cap on radio station ownership, and dramatically increased the number of radio stations that a single company could own in a single market.
The Future of Music Coalition has put out a number of papers that look at radio station ownership and programming trends during this same period, and (among other things) found that the consolidation of radio station ownership has led to increased homogenization in programming.
While increased radio listening may correlate to decreased album purchasing, causality seems like its an open question. Does this correlation hold true if you segment out local/freeform radio stations from Clear Channel and friends? After all, it seems like it's a little unreasonable to expect broadcast radio to increase sales of music that isn't broadcast on radio, right?
Back in November of 2006 Reuters reported that Doug Morris (Universal Music Group CEO) was pretty confident that they would make a move in this direction in their 2007 negotiations:
## START REUTERS
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Universal Music Group Chief Executive Doug Morris said on Tuesday he may try to fashion an iPod royalty fee with Apple Computer Inc. in the next round of negotiations in early 2007.
Universal, the world's largest music company, owned by French media giant Vivendi, was the first major record label to strike an agreement with Microsoft Corp. to receive a fee for every Zune digital media player sold.
"It would be a nice idea. We have a negotiation coming up not too far. I don't see why we wouldn't do that... but maybe not in the same way," he told the Reuters Media Summit, when asked if Universal would negotiate a royalty fee for the iPod that would be similar to Microsoft's Zune.
"The Zune (deal) was an amazingly interesting exercise, to end up with a piece of technology," he added.
## END REUTERS
The McMenamin brothers have operated a small chain of brewpub/restaurants in the Portland, OR area since the early 1980s, and waaaay back in 1987 they opened their first theater/pub -- good food and drinks (I still miss their Black Rabbit Porter and Hammerhead ale), comfortable environment, and movies.
I left Portland about ten years ago, at which time the McMenamins had two or maybe three such theaters. Checking their Web site, I found that they have eight of them now...it appears that the idea has some merit.
Yeah, Godin's reaction was really interesting, and certainly came across as legitimate outrage. Though one would want the outrage to appear legit if it were a marketing tactic...hmmm...
Anyway, as far as I (and a quick Google search) can recall, this is the first example of a known, popular individual CC licensing something "incorrectly," and I think that there are a couple of issues in play here.
The first is Godin's (relatively reasonable) concern that a "new edition" of this book appearing kicks off a series of events, including the Amazon "something new from this author you're interested in" emails. Are people being "willfully misled" by the publisher or these emails, though? Debatable, in my view.
Amazon tacitly assumes a copyright-based model: new editions are produced by the copyright holders, and are therefore worth telling people about. Creative Commons commercial-ok licensed content, where any publisher can put out a totally legitimate edition of something for any reason or no reason at all? The system doesn't know how to handle those yet. Unfortunate in many ways, but I'm not prepared to call that misleading at this point.
The other issue that I see is that many people don't fully realize the implications of releasing content under a CC license. (Though that may or may not be the case here.)
While basking in the ideological beauty of a CC license it's easy to forget that one of the "rights" you're frequently giving up is the control granted by copyright. Visions of people doing things that you like (and approve of) with your creation dance in your head, making it easy to overlook that you're also permitting people to do things that you don't like or approve of with your creation.
It's amusing that the period being evaluated ends in 1996. Almost five years ago now, my friend George Scriban posted an interesting analysis proposing that "price fixing since 1996 caused CD sales slowdown".
Said George:
from 1992-96, a period that saw cut-throat price competiton from discount retailers like Best Buy and Target, sales of CDs grew 371 million units (from 400 million units to nearly 780 million units). once the labels started to enforce "minimum advertised pricing" (MAP) on the retailers, that sales growth started to slow. the RIAA reports that from 1996 to 2001, annual sales went from 780 million to 880 million units, an increase of only 100 million CDs in five years.
The 1996 price fixing did halt the, ah, "mysterious" downward pressure on CD pricing, but it had some other effects as well. Gee, who could have predicted that?
...and though while I don't draw horns and a tail on Microsoft, I do point my finger a little more in their direction: assuming this was a mistake (which I basically believe), it points to a huge disconnect between the parts of Microsoft that are doing R&D and the parts that are responsible for managing IP.
The researchers clearly knew (and were relatively open about) where they were pulling the ideas from, but that just didn't make it through to the folks that handle patent applications. There's some really, really essential communication that should be happening there, but apparently isn't.
MS published 3,308 other applications in 2005 and 2006; it scares me to wonder how many others were "mistakes," and how much it will cost to fix the situation if those "mistakes" are approved.
It is a really interesting idea: if we think of newspaper companies as "organizations that employ people who have talent and training for finding, analyzing, and presenting information" rather than "organizations that produce newspapers" this makes a great deal of sense.
If my (admittedly limited) experience is an indicator, newspapers direct a meaningful chunk of resources towards trimming down the content that they produce into "all the news that's fit to print," to coin a phrase. Taking some articles and analysis that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day and trying to turn them into a new revenue stream is a nice take on the situation.
As you note, it's most compelling for a subset of information that's likely to be of value to people with money (i.e. "interest groups" in the most abstract sense), but since that can encompass a lot of companies, action groups, and what-have-you, there's a potential large-ish niche audience for many different kinds of information.
Yeah, I'm still scratching my head about this one. I've already written about the gamble that Microsoft took in launching with the "welcome to the social" campaign, and it doesn't appear that they're looking in any better directions right now.
From my post:
I’m really surprised that Microsoft didn’t do more to prime the pump on this. Give Zunes away to every street-level music fiend they could find. Pay people to take Zunes to public places and share their little hearts out. Build a “Zunebox” (think jukebox) that allows Zune users to pull down songs and then install one in every Starbucks, Borders Music, and Best Buy in key markets.
Anything at all, really, to give Zunesters as many opportunities as possible to think “damn this is cool” while they grab a new track out of the ether…anything to minimize the number of times that people look for the social only to get: No nearby Zune devices found, or nearby devices have wireless turned off.
And I'm not even going to touch MS marketer Kingsley's "the Zune is about keepin' it real, man" quote. Too easy.
On the post: VeriChip Kept Quiet On Cancer Link... Yet Were Pretty Vocal On Fake FDA Approvals
Tangent: Verichip and AdWords
An interesting spin on the whole AdWords/trademark thing...
On the post: Apple Announces New iPods, Cue Fanboy Frenzy, Navel-Gazing
Apple/Starbucks a pre-emptive partnership?
With the attention that Starbucks has paid to music in recent years, I'm wondering if the Apple/Starbucks deal isn't largely a block: Apple prevents anyone else from partnering up with Starbucks on the digital music front in the immediate future...oh, and you can automagically download whatever's playing at Starbucks to your new iPod. Or not, whatever. Steve yawns.
As I noted elsewhere, Schultz teased this information as far back as January. While it hasn't exactly panned out for Microsoft, at that point the Zune had certainly proposed a discussion on the merits of opportunistic music downloads; firming up a deal that eliminated the possibility of MS working with Starbucks on the mobile download front might have seemed like a pretty worthwhile insurance policy.
Sure, there isn't a whole lot of there there in the announcement, but what there is has an Apple logo tastefully engraved on it, and that may be the point.
On the post: How The Record Labels Are Only Ten Years Behind In Their Thinking About Business Models
The devil is in the details...
I'm a little less optimistic: while one possible reading of the Rubin quote could look a lot like the EFF proposal, I'd give better odds on Big Content going with a different reading:
The reading that I'm afraid of is that the "virtual library" is a centralized, DRM-encumbered repository, and that the "Walkman-like device" is a locked down player that can be plugged into headphones, home stereos, or what-have-you and only streams music from the repository, rather than downloading full, device-independent audio files.
It seems unlikely that the big labels would go--even now--for an approach like the EFF's, where you're selling customers something that I believe an exec actually called "a license to steal." The term "subscription" (rather than, say "license") suggests that the labels get to discontinue providing access to the library when the customer stops paying...and that, in turn, suggests to me that the mindset is still DRM-tastic.
On the post: Universal Music To Test DRM-Free Sales, But Perhaps For The Wrong Reasons
Doesn't really make sense to me, either...
The best explanation that I can come up with is that the plan looks something like this:
1. Undertake very short test of DRM-free online music distribution.
a. Intentionally exclude the largest online music distributor, because we’re in a bit of a snit right now.
b. Wait six months, then express disappointment with relatively small sales.
c. Conclude that results indicate that only a small segment of consumers see DRM as a significantly motivating factor when purchasing music for download.
d. Come up with bizarre and unwieldy “some music is sometimes available without DRM” scheme.
2. ???
3. Profit!
The plan seems oddly familiar for some reason, but I just can't place it...
On the post: Is Radio Bad For Music? Not Really, But The RIAA Will Say So
Re: Re: Correlation and Causality
A Vincent Clement looked harder than I did and provided a link to the paper in the comments on my original post: http://som.utdallas.edu/capri/stan-radio.pdf.
I haven't yet taken a look, but very much appreciate the link and wanted to pass it along.
On the post: Is Radio Bad For Music? Not Really, But The RIAA Will Say So
Correlation and Causality
It's interesting that the study covers a five year period (1998-2003) following the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which eliminated the national cap on radio station ownership, and dramatically increased the number of radio stations that a single company could own in a single market.
The Future of Music Coalition has put out a number of papers that look at radio station ownership and programming trends during this same period, and (among other things) found that the consolidation of radio station ownership has led to increased homogenization in programming.
While increased radio listening may correlate to decreased album purchasing, causality seems like its an open question. Does this correlation hold true if you segment out local/freeform radio stations from Clear Channel and friends? After all, it seems like it's a little unreasonable to expect broadcast radio to increase sales of music that isn't broadcast on radio, right?
On the post: Is Universal Angling For A Piece Of Every iPod Sold?
Re: Doug Morris said as much last year
[...]
Jobs: But I have a better idea.
Jobs leans forward, and arches his eyebrows.
Morris: OK, sure.
Jobs: How about you take one of those white Zunes and you turn it into a brown one, Doug.
Jobs beams the full Steve Jobs smile.
Morris: Pardon?
Apple Attorney: Mr. Jobs is suggesting that you take a white Microsoft Zune 30 gigabyte digital music player and insert it into your rectum.
Jobs: In fact, how about one for each of you? (Gestures to Universal attorneys.) Seven Zunes – that should double their sales for the week.
Morris: –
Jobs: And Universal Music will get seven dollars.
Jobs sits back in his chair, beaming proudly.
Morris has broken out in a bit of a sweat. He wipes his forehead.
Morris: Steve, I don’t think this…
Jobs: Doug, it’s not a problem at all. The Zunes are on me.
[...]
On the post: Is Universal Angling For A Piece Of Every iPod Sold?
Doug Morris said as much last year
## START REUTERS
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Universal Music Group Chief Executive Doug Morris said on Tuesday he may try to fashion an iPod royalty fee with Apple Computer Inc. in the next round of negotiations in early 2007.
Universal, the world's largest music company, owned by French media giant Vivendi, was the first major record label to strike an agreement with Microsoft Corp. to receive a fee for every Zune digital media player sold.
"It would be a nice idea. We have a negotiation coming up not too far. I don't see why we wouldn't do that... but maybe not in the same way," he told the Reuters Media Summit, when asked if Universal would negotiate a royalty fee for the iPod that would be similar to Microsoft's Zune.
"The Zune (deal) was an amazingly interesting exercise, to end up with a piece of technology," he added.
## END REUTERS
http://www.topix.net/content/reuters/1126863025273698548728102347541812106732
On the post: What A Concept: Make It Enjoyable To Go To The Movie Theater
McMenamins' Brewpub/Theaters
I left Portland about ten years ago, at which time the McMenamins had two or maybe three such theaters. Checking their Web site, I found that they have eight of them now...it appears that the idea has some merit.
On the post: E-Book Author Complains About Unauthorized Physical Copies
Question of control?
Anyway, as far as I (and a quick Google search) can recall, this is the first example of a known, popular individual CC licensing something "incorrectly," and I think that there are a couple of issues in play here.
The first is Godin's (relatively reasonable) concern that a "new edition" of this book appearing kicks off a series of events, including the Amazon "something new from this author you're interested in" emails. Are people being "willfully misled" by the publisher or these emails, though? Debatable, in my view.
Amazon tacitly assumes a copyright-based model: new editions are produced by the copyright holders, and are therefore worth telling people about. Creative Commons commercial-ok licensed content, where any publisher can put out a totally legitimate edition of something for any reason or no reason at all? The system doesn't know how to handle those yet. Unfortunate in many ways, but I'm not prepared to call that misleading at this point.
The other issue that I see is that many people don't fully realize the implications of releasing content under a CC license. (Though that may or may not be the case here.)
While basking in the ideological beauty of a CC license it's easy to forget that one of the "rights" you're frequently giving up is the control granted by copyright. Visions of people doing things that you like (and approve of) with your creation dance in your head, making it easy to overlook that you're also permitting people to do things that you don't like or approve of with your creation.
On the post: Now The RIAA Wants You To Believe That You Should Be Paying Much, Much More For CDs
Irony Watch: CD pricing *after* 1996...
It's amusing that the period being evaluated ends in 1996. Almost five years ago now, my friend George Scriban posted an interesting analysis proposing that "price fixing since 1996 caused CD sales slowdown".
Said George:
The 1996 price fixing did halt the, ah, "mysterious" downward pressure on CD pricing, but it had some other effects as well. Gee, who could have predicted that?
On the post: Microsoft Caught Trying To Patent Software Concept It Already Admitted It Had Copied
I just wrote pretty much the same post...
...and though while I don't draw horns and a tail on Microsoft, I do point my finger a little more in their direction: assuming this was a mistake (which I basically believe), it points to a huge disconnect between the parts of Microsoft that are doing R&D and the parts that are responsible for managing IP.
The researchers clearly knew (and were relatively open about) where they were pulling the ideas from, but that just didn't make it through to the folks that handle patent applications. There's some really, really essential communication that should be happening there, but apparently isn't.
MS published 3,308 other applications in 2005 and 2006; it scares me to wonder how many others were "mistakes," and how much it will cost to fix the situation if those "mistakes" are approved.
My post here.
On the post: Newspaper Experiments With New Paid Content Model
Even in the absence of a
It is a really interesting idea: if we think of newspaper companies as "organizations that employ people who have talent and training for finding, analyzing, and presenting information" rather than "organizations that produce newspapers" this makes a great deal of sense.
If my (admittedly limited) experience is an indicator, newspapers direct a meaningful chunk of resources towards trimming down the content that they produce into "all the news that's fit to print," to coin a phrase. Taking some articles and analysis that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day and trying to turn them into a new revenue stream is a nice take on the situation.
As you note, it's most compelling for a subset of information that's likely to be of value to people with money (i.e. "interest groups" in the most abstract sense), but since that can encompass a lot of companies, action groups, and what-have-you, there's a potential large-ish niche audience for many different kinds of information.
On the post: Microsoft's Answer To Sluggish Zune Sales: Advertise The Crippled WiFi Functionality
From my post:
And I'm not even going to touch MS marketer Kingsley's "the Zune is about keepin' it real, man" quote. Too easy.
On the post: Our Advice To Yahoo: First, Avoid Bad Advice
You made Alan Meckler cranky...
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