I've always preferred prognostication to nostalgia, so rather than replay the best of 2007, I'll use these late December doldrums to make 10 predictions for the coming year. Some editors will warn you that this kind of list is suicide--it's too easy for everybody to look back a year later and see where you were wrong--but it hasn't hurt Cringely, so here goes. In no particular order.
DRM will die. The trendline is clear--Apple's been selling DRM-free tunes on iTunes since May, Amazon's DRM-free MP3 store has three of the four majors signed up, and eMusic has become the second-most-popular music download service (after iTunes) thanks in part to its longstanding insistence on selling DRM-free MP3s. A year from now, DRM will be irrelevant and hardly used in digital music. All four labels will agree sell their songs without DRM on Amazon. Nearly every iTunes audio (but not video) file will be DRM-free, and Apple will get rid of the "Plus" designation. Some music subscription services like Rhapsody and Microsoft's Zune Pass might retain DRM so that users can't cancel their subscriptions and keep the songs they've downloaded, but they'll be the last holdouts--and some of them might try eMusic's approach of limiting monthly downloads rather than limiting compatibility and usage with DRM.
3G iPhone and iTunes. A 3G iPhone is a fairly safe prediction, given that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson already let it slip, but I think there'll still be a small surprise embedded in the announcement: iTunes 3G, a service that will come with the phone and give users anytime-anywhere downloads of any audio content in the iTunes Music Store. Impulse buying will go through the roof.
No Zune phone. Microsoft won't release an iPhone competitor this year--at least not one with hardware designed by Microsoft. The company might release some sort of software update or client application that allows Windows Mobile users to play songs from the Zune Marketplace and transfer them from the Zune PC client software to their phones, but even that probably won't happen until 2009. And it'll sink like a lead balloon against v3 of the iPhone, at which point Microsoft will bend to the inevitable and start building its own phone from scratch.
GarageBand will win a Grammy. Not the program itself, but somebody will make a record using Apple's Garage Band--which comes included with every Macintosh sold--as their primary recording and mixing tool, and that record will win a Grammy award. There's already been a critically acclaimed movie, Tarnation, made exclusively with iMovie, so now it's time for all those bedroom musicians to get into the do-it-yourself spotlight.
Mashups will go mainstream. Have mashups already jumped the shark? The controversy about The Grey Album, in which DJ Danger Mouse combined lyrics from Jay-Z's Black Album and The Beatles' untitled white album, is almost four years old. There was a burst of experimentation from big-time artists like David Bowie and Beck around the same time, but not much since 2005. Nonetheless, I predict that artists and even some labels will begin re-releasing their back catalogs as standalone instrumental and vocal tracks, and fans will recombine like crazy using programs like Garage Band and Splice. At least one mashup will get significant radio play, with the complete approval of the original artists. (Although you might say that Puff Daddy accomplished this 10 years ago.) They might even be incorporated into video games like Rock Band--imagine the challenge of having to sing Abba while the rest of the band plays Judas Priest. By the end of 2008, putting a mere song on your social-networking profile will seem hopelessly old-fashioned.
The campaign--don't call it "marketing"--that preceded Nine Inch Nails' Year Zero release will become the gold standard for building audience engagement for tours, albums, or new artists.
Year Zero will become the precedent. On the plane trip home from visiting family over Christmas, I read Eric Davis's analysis of Led Zeppelin's fourth album, part of the 33 1/3 book series. While a lot of it seemed like a stretch--as is the case with any highly intellectualized deconstruction of rock music--it did remind me of a certain sensation created by certain artists and albums, a sense that the listener is more than a mere consumer, but is in fact an active member in a secret club that only other members fully understand, a sort of musical Masonic society. Think of that Zeppelin album, the Grateful Dead, the Residents, or Secret Chiefs 3. In 2007, Trent Reznor, working with 42 Entertainment, took this kind of mystical clubbishness and updated it for the digital era. USB drives with leaked tracks from the upcoming Year Zero record were surreptitiously placed in bathroom stalls at concert venues. Phone numbers with frightening secret messages were encoded in bursts of static or out-of-phase audio signals. Cell phones were distributed to fans who figured out some of the clues; a phone call placed to those phones summoned them to a secret concert. In 2008, we'll see more of these kinds of musical events that use digital technology to break down the wall between audience and artist.
The world's best offline record store will go online. There's nothing else like Amoeba Records. Its three locations in Berkeley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles offer unsurpassed selection--including cellophane-packaged vinyl I've never seen anywhere else--and seem to be curated by music fans with amazing depth and breadth of knowledge. In 2007, Amoeba took its first tentative steps into digital distribution, releasing exclusive recordings from Gram Parsons and Brandi Shearer in both MP3 and CD formats. In 2008, I predict Amoeba will finally go online in a huge way, offering an unsurpassed quantity of MP3 downloads from every imaginable source: major labels (like Amazon MP3 and the other high-profile stores), independent labels (like eMusic), and do-it-yourselfers (like CDBaby). Look for the nascent Amoeba label to offer distribution on terms never before seen in the recording industry--more of a non-exclusive commission model like CD Baby than a typical all-inclusive marketing-recording-publishing-distribution deal like most labels have favored--and for several high-profile artists who've recently quit their labels to sign on.
The loudness wars will end. It's been repeated so many times, it's become a cliche: today's recordings are mastered too loud, eliminating dynamic range and making it hard to listen to a complete album. In 2008, artists and producers will finally begin to demand a return to proper mastering, and radio stations and record execs will be in no position to contradict them.
The concert business will follow the recorded music business down. It's a bad time to be a big rock concert promoter like Live Nation. According to a recent story in Pollstar, the concert business actually declined in 2007, despite high-profile reunion tours by The Police and Van Halen and David Lee Roth--two acts with so much internal strife that nobody expected to see them on stage again. I say the 15 percent drop in ticket revenues from 2006 to 2007 will be followed by the same or greater drop next year. Music fans are fed up with exorbitant ticket prices, false scarcity, and quasi-legal scalpers, and there are only so many more nostalgia acts to trot out. Where are the young bands that can sell out 20,000-seat arenas for the next 5, 10, 20 years? (And before you call me out on the Arctic Monkeys, let me just counter with Oasis. Huge in the U.K., briefly popular in the U.S., and irrelevant to all but the die-hardest of fans 10 years later.) In other words, the concert business is about to suffer from the main problem that's hurting the recording industry--not MP3s, not piracy, but lack of interest and investment in artists with long-term (as opposed to instant) commercial potential.
Led Zeppelin will play again, but not tour. Speaking of nostalgia, it won't be 1973, but the reunited Led Zeppelin will play a handful of shows in the U.S., focusing on a multi-night stand at New York's Madison Square Garden timed around Robert Plant's 60th birthday on August 20.
So Warner Music isn't as petty as I thought it was. According to this story in Billboard, Warner didn't ask for YouTube to remove videos of the recent Led Zeppelin show from YouTube. Rather, it was a company called GrayZone, which has been authorized to issue takedown notices on behalf of Warner. In this case, GrayZone acted on presumption, and YouTube's automated system inaccurately attributed the notices to Warner.
This makes an interesting point: under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the copyright owner is responsible for policing each violation and requesting its takedown. (I'm not a lawyer, but the relevant section in the act seems to be: "The burden of providing written notice of design protection shall be on the owner of the design.") So it's not enough for Warner to say "remove all videos of any band signed to Warner" or even "remove all videos of Led Zeppelin's December 10 concert." Rather, they have to point out each copyrighted work individually. That's a lot of work, which is why they've apparently outsourced the job to GrayZone.
No word on whether YouTube will automatically restore the videos, but I think not--users probably will have to repost them. And of course it's still possible that another party--the show's promoters, the owner of the venue, the band, or its management, even Warner (for real this time)--might ask for them to be taken down. In the meantime, LiveLeak has a few videos (thanks to Wired's Listening Post and Salon's Machinist blogs for the tip).
As a longtime Led Zeppelin fan, I was excited to tune into last night's reunion show in London. Strangely, the show wasn't broadcast anywhere--not even on LedZeppelin.com. Surely somebody could have sold some advertising for such a popular event, and if the promoters objected, they could have donated the proceeds to the Ahmet Ertegun Educational Fund (where funds from ticket sales went).
Screenshot from a YouTube video of last night's Led Zeppelin reunion show. How long before it's taken down?
(Credit: YouTube)Fortunately, that's what YouTube is for. Unfortunately, as quickly as fans post their videos (taken on cellphones?) on YouTube, Warner Music Group asks for them to be taken down.
This is completely incomprehensible to me. The YouTube videos aren't competing against anything--there's no DVD or recording to satisfy the approximately 24.98 million of us who applied for tickets and didn't get them. And even if there were an official recording, these amateur YouTube clips would serve to whet our appetite for the real thing. And it's not like the band sucked--every review I've read so far has been surprisingly positive, with a few naysayers racing to point out the obvious. (Zeppelin? Playing long, downbeat blues rock songs? No way! I wonder if Johnny Rotten's heard.) So if there's actually going to be a tour, why not build excitement further by giving fans a few glimpses of what might be in store?
Zeppelin fans and curiosity seekers: head over to The Daily Swarm and check out the 2nd video on this page quickly, before Warner asks for it to be taken down. (I'd insert it myself, but if it's in fact a copyright infringement, I'm sure CNET won't approve.) If it's already gone when you get there, here's what you wanted to know: it's a suprisingly half-decent recording of "Stairway to Heaven," Jimmy Page is playing it like the original (he's dropped those annoying extra riffs you can hear on official live Zeppelin recordings like The Song Remains The Same), and Robert Plant did not ask "does anyone remember laughter?" Presumably, he figured out the answer on his own.
Relatedly, I enjoy reading Bob Lefsetz, even when I disagree with him, but today's post just seems like sour grapes. I was eight years old the last time Zeppelin came to town, yet they were just as much a part of my life in high school as they were in yours. So why shouldn't I get a chance to see them? If you don't like it, stay home. Please. That'll be one less guy yelling "down in front" through the whole show.
When old rockers go digital, they go all the way. Led Zeppelin was one of the longtime holdouts from iTunes and other digital music stores, but in 2007 they relented and released a greatest-hits collection, Mothership, simultaneously online and on CD. (A good business move: the physical album charted charted at #7, but the digital album came in at #2.) Since the album's Nov. 13 release, the band has also launched a new Web site, the coolest feature of which is a timeline with the setlist of every single Zeppelin concert. This Seattle show looks particularly astounding, with about twice as many songs as their typical concert.
Giants Causeway, located on the northern coast of Ireland, was the setting for Led Zeppelin's Houses of the Holy album cover.
(Credit: Screenshot)Now, fans who always wondered where the cover to Houses of the Holy was shot can find out. Somebody--presumably with the band, or perhaps just a huge fan--has posted a custom list of Led Zeppelin landmarks on Google Maps. Seattle once again makes the list, in this case for an incident that reportedly took place at the Edgewater hotel, which is still there and much swankier than when the band stayed there in the early 1970s.
Last week, George Harrison--who created the best post-Beatles solo album, the gorgeous All Things Must Pass--became the fourth of the Fab Four to go online. His full solo catalog is available on iTunes and other music stores now. Today, Led Zeppelin confirmed that its entire catalog will be released online Nov. 13, not just the songs on the new greatest hits compilation, Mothership. Zeppelin will also follow AC/DC and sell its songs as ringtones on Verizon Wireless.
Surely, the full Beatles must be next?
Like many other suburban American males who grew up in a certain era, I [hearted] Led Zeppelin. And while my ardor's diminished considerably since adolescence, they're one of very few bands I discovered decades ago that I still enjoy today. (In contrast, I can't believe I actually own a half dozen Doors LPs.)
So when Led Zeppelin announced a one-show reunion (with their original drummer's son on drums) to celebrate the life of Ahmet Ertegun, the Atlantic Records cofounder who signed them, I expected it'd be popular. But apparently the registration site for tickets got so much traffic, they've extended the deadline a week. 25 million individual registrations have been reported. For 18,000 tickets.
Of course, as a friend pointed out this morning, some of these requests are probably automated programs sent out by scalpers and other opportunists--the registration site does not have any CAPTCHA system to weed out robots from humans. (CAPTCHA systems display an image file with letters and ask you to type the letters. The acronym stands for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart.")
Even so, with that kind of demand, I think the odds of a full tour are pretty good. Registration's here. Good luck.
Among last week's digital music news was the item that seminal hard rock band AC/DC has taken a tentative step on the information highway (as opposed to that other highway). AC/DC's deal with Verizon was notable because the band chose to bypass industry leader iTunes, and because the band is selling only complete albums (for $12 apiece--higher than the current price of their CDs on Amazon!) rather than individual singles. Another oddity: most of AC/DC's catalog will be not be downloadable over-the-air to Verizon phones; instead, users will have to download the albums to their PC first, then transfer them. (The sole exception is the song "You Shook Me All Night Long," which is probably the one track that most non-AC/DC fans have heard and might be willing to download.)
Something about this story sounded familiar, so I did some digging. Sure enough, AC/DC helped Microsoft launch its MSN Music download service by offering a similar exclusive nearly three years ago. That deal was also for albums only. But the MSN Music download service was a casualty of the company's Zune initiative. Instead of making Zune compatible with the PlaysForSure program, which allowed multiple online stores to work with multiple devices, Microsoft followed Apple's model of tying the Zune to a dedicated store, the Zune Marketplace. Microsoft didn't want the cost and complexity of licensing music for two stores, so MSN Music got the axe. Apparently, the AC/DC exclusive went with it.
More exciting was the still-unconfirmed report that Led Zeppelin will be offering a new greatest hits collection, Mothership via iTunes. The Zep has never approved its music for digital download, although you could always find it via unapproved sites like MP3Sparks (the replacement for AllofMP3.com, which was shut down by the Russian government earlier this year).
Even more interesting, however, was the revelation of a new official band site, LedZeppelin.com. (The old familiar Led-Zeppelin.com is still up.) There's nothing there today except for the four logos from the band's fourth album, the release date of Mothership...and a link to sign up for updates. What sort of updates could they possibly deem important enough to create an e-mail list? Most fans already ahve all their albums or one of their earlier hits collections, and if we (yes, I'm a fan) really want this one, we know when it's coming out. Could the band be planning that long-rumored reunion tour with their original drummer's son? I can just imagine their reaction to the recent Police tour: "Those guys got $225 a ticket?"
The Russian government has agreed to shut down Web site AllofMP3, which offers downloadable MP3 songs for a significant discount--20 cents per song or less--compared with stores such as Apple's iTunes.
The site was controversial because it paid royalties to a Russian organization that was not recognized by the record industry. In 2005, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) filed suit in Russian court to shut the site down, but its request was denied by Russian prosecutors. Now, apparently under pressure from U.S. trade representatives, who are pressing for stricter copyright enforcement before agreeing to admit Russia to the World Trade Organization, the Russian government has stepped in.
According to the TorrentFreak blog, AllofMP3 had 6 million customers before the shutdown. A couple years ago, I considered downloading some music from the site--mainly Led Zeppelin songs that I was too lazy to digitize from my record collection, and which aren't available in most online music stores--but I balked at sending my credit card number to a Russian organization that I wasn't completely familiar with.
The shutdown appears to have taken effect--the site is timing out as of 10 a.m. (Pacific) on July 3. Or maybe that's just everybody rushing to get a last few downloads in. Regardless, fans will simply migrate to one of the other discount MP3 sites, or just continue using file-sharing networks or Google to download free files.
Once again, everybody: audio CDs aren't copy-protected. That root problem is not going away.
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