Like most people who've had a chance to play with it, I've been impressed with Microsoft's Surface, the multitouch tabletop computer that the company began demonstrating about two years ago.
It drew some mockery compared with the svelte iPhone, which emerged around the same time, but it's meant for a completely different experience: collaborative public spaces rather than solo communications. Unfortunately, I haven't had much opportunity to share my excitement--apart from a handful of deployments in hotels and AT&T stores; there aren't many of these tables out in the wild yet.
Which is a shame, because Surface partners are starting to put together some interesting apps. Take, for example, this DJ application put together by design company Vectorform. It lets you string together samples and beats into a simple musical track. Vectorform demonstrated the first version last August, and now Microsoft and Vectorform have created a video demonstrating the alpha of version 2.0, which offers some new features like scratching.
The video gets shamelessly promotional in the second half, and I don't imagine this app will ever become a professional DJ's tool, but it could be fun as a diversion in a bar or lounge, especially if the same table had other musical applications on it.
So why aren't these things out there in bulk? Probably because each table costs more than $12,500 to start, with deployment and maintenance service extra. You'd have to sell a lot of extra drinks to justify that kind of expense.
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I'm not a lawyer, but I'm well-acquainted with legal filings from analyzing Microsoft's legal travails for the last nine years. I've seen a lot of aggressive lawsuits, but a copyright infringement suit filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for Middle Tennessee is one of the boldest--and, I'd argue, short-sighted--filings I've ever seen.
The suit appears to have been initiated by Music Copyright Solutions (MCS), which claims to administer copyrights for more than 45,000 compositions. MCS is named as the lead plaintiff, along with a number of songwriters including Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad fame. These folks allege that Microsoft, Yahoo, and RealNetworks improperly licensed the rights to more than 200 compositions that they offered as on-demand streams or limited downloads via the Zune Marketplace, Yahoo Music, and Rhapsody.
Surely these companies paid somebody for the rights to offer these songs. But there's a catch, which TechDirt pointed out earlier Tuesday: these companies may have licensed the rights to the recordings, but that doesn't mean they licensed the rights to the compositions (also known as publishing rights). As section 23 of the legal filing puts it:
In order to transmit, perform, reproduce and deliver any sound recording of any musical work via 'On-Demand Streams' or 'Limited Downloads,' Defendants must first obtain not only the rights for the sound recording itself, but also the rights for the underlying musical composition that is embodied on said musical recording.
Maybe, maybe not--that's up to the court to decide. But that's not the insane part. The insane part is that the plaintiffs are alleging that each time one of the defendants made any recording of a covered song available, that's a copyright violation, and they're seeking damages of $150,000 per violation (or the amount the defendants earned from streaming those songs, whichever is more). So, for example, the lawsuit claims that Yahoo Music offered Conway Twitty's recording of "Fifteen Years Ago" on six different greatest hits albums. The plaintiffs allege that constitutes six copyright violations, which would mean damages of $900,000. Overall, the lawsuit names more than 200 songs, and a far greater number of recordings, meaning that the potential liability for each defendant would be tens of billions of dollars--that's far greater than the total amount of revenues these companies ever earned from any of these services.
These types of cases are usually settled for a relative pittance--something much closer to what the defendant would have paid to license the songs properly in the first place. But imagine for a minute that this lawsuit actually goes to trial and the plaintiffs win damages amounting to 1 percent of what they asked for. No company would ever risk building an online music service again--the legal liability would simply be too high.
When it comes to online music, big legal music services like Zune, Yahoo Music, and Rhapsody are the copyright owners' friends--unlike file-trading networks or free on-demand streaming services, these companies actually collect money from users and disburse it to copyright owners. Perhaps the plaintiffs have a legitimate complaint. But by filing such an aggressive lawsuit to recover billions in supposed damages--I mean honestly, how many Grand Funk Railroad streams have been delivered via the Zune Marketplace?--these folks risk killing their allies and driving music back to the darknet where nobody in the value chain sees a dime.
CD Baby remains an essential part of any independent musician's toolbox, offering musicians an easy and relatively inexpensive way to sell CDs and MP3 downloads from a personalized Web page. It's not necessarily the cheapest way to sell music online, but its long track record and wide variety of services, including digital distribution through iTunes and other stores, and short-run CD manufacturing (provided by Discmakers, which bought the company last August), still make it my top recommendation for independent artists.
This July, the site will relaunch with several significant improvements, including more attractive artist pages, the ability to sell single-song downloads, and customizable download cards--great as a promotional tool, or as another way to sell your music at shows.
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Pandora is a great music-discovery service, so it's only natural that independent bands would hope to get their music placed on it. Unfortunately for them, Pandora just made that a little harder--and a little more expensive.
As I first saw on the Digital Audio Insider blog a couple weeks ago, Pandora recently changed its music submission process, and is now accepting solicitations only from bands who have a physical CD for sale through Amazon.com. That requires the artist to manufacture a CD with proper album art and bar code, which is much more expensive than creating a bunch of MP3s, and to pay Amazon $29.95 a year to participate in the Amazon Advantage program; Amazon then takes a 55 percent cut of the list price of the CD.
This shouldn't hurt too many artists--serious musicians want their CDs to turn up in a search on the world's largest retailer, and probably have a relationship with Amazon anyway. But you were planning on using CD Baby or another site exclusively, or hoping to save money with an online-only release, don't count on Pandora as a marketing mechanism for your music.
This is just a quick pointer to a hilarious post I ran across this morning: BBC Magazine invited 13-year-old Scott Campbell, to wear a vintage Sony Walkman for a day. He took the challenge seriously, and wrote up his impressions of the Walkman versus the modern equivalent.
Some choice excerpts:
"It took me three days to figure out that there was another side to the tape."
"I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down 'rewind' and releasing it randomly."
"I'm relieved that the majority of technological advancement happened before I was born, as I can't imagine having to use such basic equipment every day."
The only advantage Campbell found for the Walkman was the fact that it had two headphone jacks, allowing listeners to share their favorite tunes with a friend. He also noted that the battery life was terrible at about 3 hours, but neglected to point out the (perhaps obvious) fact that at least the Walkman lets you get to the batteries to replace them--you don't have to send it back to the manufacturer or risk voiding your warranty. Another point I'd make for Campbell or other intrepid explorers: some Walkmans had a "reverse" switch on them that let you change to the other side of the cassette--that could be another nifty way to create an equivalent to the iPod's shuffle feature.
Now wait until he discovers Minidisc!
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I'm not a big fan of pop music, so I must admit Michael Jackson wasn't on my iPod. (Although I do have a copy of "Thriller" on LP, which I bought for $0.99.) But as a bassist, I have fond memories of playing a 30-minute rendition of "Billie Jean" at an outdoor party a few summers ago. I'm not sure how it happened, but everybody kept dancing, and we didn't know how to end the song, so we just kept going around and around those same sixteen notes over and over again, broken occasionally by the singalong chorus.
According to Q Magazine, as quoted by Songfacts.com, that wondrous piece of bass music was written by the man himself, who spent more than three weeks perfecting it. Check out this early demo version from 1981. The slap-bass solo in the bridge was played by Louis Johnson, who has said at least once that he co-wrote the song. (And who, incidentally, plays a MusicMan StingRay, my bass of choice.) Listening to the instrumental remix of "Billie Jean" on Grooveshark, it sounds like it starts with bass, then is doubled or replaced with synth-bass after the strings come in.
It didn't make Stylus Magazine's top 50 basslines of all time, but it's got to be in my top five, along with Pink Floyd's "Money," Charlie Mingus' "Haitian Fight Song" (which kicks in after the intro-solo), Led Zeppelin's "Dazed and Confused," and the double-bass on Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side" (that's an electric and an upright, starting in unison, then trading parts for the rest of the song).
Or am I just being nostalgic? What are your faves?
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RealNetworks began public beta-testing version 12 of its venerable RealPlayer today. Like the last version, the free RealPlayer SP (which stands for "social and portable") lets you rip streaming Flash videos from the Web to your hard drive. What's new: you can also transcode them into appropriate formats for playback on portable devices. If you're using an iPod or iPhone, the RealPlayer will even generously insert the transcoded version directly into your iTunes library.
RealPlayer SP adds an unobtrusive "Download This Video" box whenever you encounter a Flash-based video in your Web browser.
Then I remembered that one of the best features of Microsoft's new Bing search engine, which launched earlier this month, is its video search. (The predecessor to Bing, Live Search, had most of the same video search features as well.) There's nothing wrong with Google's video search, but I personally prefer the Bing interface, and I like the way the video is previewed right in the search results.
Using them together was a breeze--once installed, the RealPlayer automatically adds a small pop-up message to any embedded video in your browser (I tested it with both Internet Explorer and Firefox), asking you if you want to download the video. Transcoding takes a few minutes, particularly for long videos, but in the last half-hour I've managed to rip the new Grizzly Bear video, the reunited Pink Floyd's entire Live 8 performance, and a live version of Ozzy's "Crazy Train" with Randy Rhoads into iTunes in both video (H.264) and audio-only (MP3) formats. All came from different original sources, but all were available through Bing.
I'm particularly impressed with the RealPlayer's video-to-audio transcoder--my 8GB iPhone is way too small to fit a lot of videos on it, and transcoding video to audio files has been a bit of a hassle in the past. Now I can do it on the fly, as I download them. Kudos to RealNetworks on a nice piece of software.
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My wife has been trying to convince me to get a protector for my iPhone ever since she bought hers, a silicone sleeve made by Belkin, at the Apple Store a few months ago. But I didn't like any of the designs they had at the Apple Store. I was looking for something more original, edgier.
Pretty is as pretty does.
I can't remember exactly what terms I entered into Google, but the Gelaskins Web site came up prominently in the search results. The designs were cool. The price seemed right at less than $15. The copy on the site emphasized both protection and customizability. So, I picked my design, paid my $18 ($15 plus $3 for standard shipping), and waited.
What I didn't do was read CNET's 2006 review. If I had seen the very apt phrase "artistic stickers that do double-duty as scratch protectors," I wouldn't have been so surprised that this thing is basically a decal. It's got a rubberized texture and special glue that makes it easy to peel off and on--it took me a couple tries to ensure that I didn't have any bubbles--but otherwise it's not much different from the free stickers you get at shows. I'm sure my three-year-old daughter would have been happy to decorate my phone with some of those.
I also made a mistake by ordering the iPhone version instead of the iPhone 3G version. As a result, I've got a quarter-inch of exposed space--the 3G versions wrap around the side on part of the phone, although they still leave the top bare. Even so, 18 bucks for a decal seems awfully steep. Lesson learned--even for impulse buys, read the review.
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Just days after the news broke that EMI is suing Grooveshark, another contestant popped into my in-box. Today, it's Fizy, which offers essentially the same features as Grooveshark, Meuzer, and JustHearIt: search for a song name, and Fizy will compile audio and video results from public sources around the Web. Today, Fizy relaunched with a handful of new features such as the ability to save playlists and the ability to post all played songs to your Friendfeed account. (Friendfeed? Where's the Facebook app?).
The new features are nothing special, but in a quick test, I did find that Fizy offers the best selection of rock songs of any on-demand streaming site I've tested. It offered me a fairly full complement of Roy Harper songs, including the lost classic "Nineteen Forty-Eightish" (with Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page on electric guitar)--and had no problem finding tracks from Pink Floyd, Animal Collective, and the lysergically inspired new "Two Weeks" video from Grizzly Bear.
Fizy delivered Roy Harper's dystopian classic from 1984, which I've never found online before.
It's not so good in other genres--its selection of Mingus tunes was weak compared with the full array offered by Grooveshark. Its search results could also be organized better--the not-exactly-obscure query "Stairway to Heaven" returned various instrumental and piano cover versions above the original Led Zeppelin classic.
But Fizy's a worthy competitor in an increasingly crowded space. More important, it shows that on-demand audio streaming sites are becoming like mushrooms--whenever the copyright owners shut one down, two new ones will pop up in its place.
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You know that old maxim about something being too good to be true? I wondered how my new favorite on-demand music-streaming service, Grooveshark, was able to avoid the record industry lawsuits that plagued its predecessors, such as Seeqpod and Imeem.
Is EMI's lawsuit just a negotiating tactic?
Turns out, it isn't immune. Grooveshark contacted me earlier this week to let me know that its negotiations with EMI were on the verge of breaking down. (You can read Grooveshark's official statement here.)
Yesterday evening, Peter Kafka at All Things Digital uncovered the fact that EMI had actually sued Grooveshark back in May--talk about tough negotiation tactics!
As much as I love Grooveshark's service, I have some sympathy for the labels. It seems that a lot of digital-music start-ups operate under the maxim that it's better to ask forgiveness than permission--they create the technology, launch the service, then count on the licensing details being worked out later.
Although I think that the labels have been incredibly short-sighted about the move to digital music, particularly on-demand streaming, they can't sit back and let every new digital-music start-up dictate its own terms--it's not fair to copyright owners, nor to online-music companies like Rhapsody, Pandora, and (now) Imeem, who are playing by the rules and probably paying higher royalties.
Hopefully, this lawsuit is just a negotiating tactic, and Grooveshark will emerge with the kind of business arrangement that Imeem was able to strike with Warner.
So far, EMI's threat doesn't appear to have had any effect on the service: I was still able to find songs from EMI artists like The Beatles, Radiohead, and--of course--the Sex Pistols.
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