Digital Noise: Music and Tech

I love covering music software because the pace of evolution is so fast. I guess everybody's looking for the next billion-dollar business (after iTunes) to help replace declining CD sales.

Last week, I blogged about Spotify, a free and legal music player that offers a massive library of music on demand. Unfortunately, Spotify's library has some big gaps because of legal disputes with rights-holders, and it's not available in the U.S.

A couple days later, software developer David Nelson contacted me about Muziic, a company he started with his dad--he's 15(!) and has gone from public high school to online private high school to pursue this project. After checking it out for a few days, I think it's got just as much of a chance of revolutionizing how we listen to music as Spotify does.

Great selection, but black-on-black doesn't get high marks in most usability tests.

Like Spotify, Muziic offers a free downloadable piece of client software with an iTunes-like interface and offers on-demand access to millions of streaming songs. Unlike Spotify, I had no problem finding huge catalogs from artists that are notoriously prickly about posting their music online, including Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, and Radiohead. It also did a great job with all of my more obscure test cases.

How did an unknown company run by a 15-year-old and his dad pull off this incredible licensing coup? Easy--they've basically built a customized front-end to YouTube. Any song that's been uploaded to YouTube is available in Muziic, including a lot of music that isn't available on most commercial services, like the full Pink Floyd's performance at Live 8 and Led Zeppelin's one-off performance in 2007.

Unfortunately, a dispute between Warner Music and YouTube earlier this year means that a lot of recordings owned by Warner are no longer available. But in a lot of cases, users have filled the gaps with (probably unauthorized) recordings from the artists--so while I can't get my favorite studio recordings from Neil Young or the Flaming Lips, there are dozens live nuggets from each of them.

With any luck, Warner and Google (YouTube's parent company) will resolve their dispute and these gaps will be filled. In the meantime, the Nelsons can work on some of the fit-and-finish problems I found with Muziic. The Web site doesn't render properly in Firefox 3.0. The high-quality audio option didn't work for me--I think it's supposed to render YouTube's default Flash audio into AAC on the fly, but the description doesn't make much sense so I can't really tell. (The default audio sounded fine anyway--at least no worse than MP3, which of course isn't so great.) They could use some professional design help--I couldn't maximize the player to fill the screen, there's a lot of unused space in the margins, and the black on black toolbar sliders are awfully hard to use for those of us who have no patience to download different skins.

Overall, though, this is a pretty interesting and impressive piece of work. Muziic also offers an encoder that apparently lets you upgrade your MP3s before uploading them to YouTube--I didn't test this as I'm more interested in listening than sharing, but I'll give it a look later this week and let you know what I think. More important, Muziic (and Spotify) are finally showing the world how compelling a free, legal, on-demand music service can be--nearly a decade after Napster introduced us to the concept.

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MySpace is essential for independent artists. Every band I've played with in the last five years has had a MySpace page, and it completely changed how we did things compared with the pre-Internet days. Getting gigs, maintaining mailing lists, fliering--all of those formerly labor-intensive tasks could be accomplished by sitting in front of a computer. One group I played with got 90 percent of our gigs through other bands on our friends list. Another had a couple dozen teenage fans who'd come to every all-ages show when they read about it on our MySpace page. (We were all in our late 30s and 40s and had no idea that ska would appeal to that demographic.)

A truly killer MySpace music service would let users buy downloads and merchandise from any act on the site.

(Credit: MySpace)

But there was always a major gap: if we wanted to sell downloads, CDs, or anything else, we had to guide fans to another site or service, such as our own home page with a PayPal account or CDBaby.

Today, MySpace announced a deal with three of the four majors (EMI is sitting out for now) to offer DRM-free MP3 downloads, ringtones, and merchandise through the artist pages on MySpace. This is long overdue: the music industry needs to go where their fans already are, and with 30 million people regularly listening to music on the site, it's a mystery why the labels haven't tried to reach these folks before now.

But major label acts are a small part of the MySpace experience. The only reason you ask The Police or Death Cab to be your "friend" is to show off your impeccable taste to your real friends, the individuals and small-time artists who you're actually connected with. These are the folks who leave individualized comments on your page and send you instant messages, and their gigs appear right alongside Radiohead's on your home page. MySpace is the ultimate long tail site for musicians, where bar bands and small-town heroes can appear in the same context as the biggest bands in the world.

So I'm not sure that MySpace Music will be a game-changer. Fans of big bands already know where to buy merchandise--the band's Web site, or Amazon's CD section, or iTunes, or their local retail store. Sure, big fans who count major-label acts among their "friends" might now stay within MySpace to buy new songs from these bands, and some MySpace users might discover (and buy music from) new acts via friends of friends. But a lot of fans don't know (or care much about) the difference between major and independent artists, and might wonder why only some acts make their wares available for purchase. The inconsistency will be confusing, and drive users back to the traditional music-buying sites (or free file-trading services, which aren't going away).

The real game-changer comes when MySpace offers a full e-commerce store--downloads, CD sales, the works--to every artist with a musician's page on the site. That way, users would never have to leave the site to buy any music they heard on the site. The challenge would be building the infrastructure, but once things like billing and provisioning downloads are in place for the majors, it might not be much harder to set up a CDBaby-like system for everybody else.

Sony BMG and Warner are both reported to be considering subscription-based music services.

The major labels are finally said to be consdering building "celestial jukeboxes," but lack of cooperation could make these services play like a broken record.

(Credit: Frederic Pasteleurs, Wikimedia Commons)

Earlier this week, the AP quoted Sony BMG CEO Rolf Schmidt-Holtz discussing a subscription-based service that would offer unlimited downloads of all songs in the Sony BMG catalog for 6 to 8 euro. The downloads would be transferrable to all portable devices, including Apple's iPod. DRM would presumably play a part, so that content would be disabled on a device if you stopped paying the subscription.

Warner is taking a different approach, proposing that consumers be charged a monthly fee by their ISP--maybe five bucks--for the right to download as much music as they want from a massive industry-run database. As Conde Nast Portfolio reported yesterday, Warner has given former Geffen Digital head Jim Griffin a three-year contract to develop this strategy. Not mentioned in the article: since Time Warner owns the number-three and number-five U.S. ISPs, AOL and Road Runner, the company has a built-in audience of more than 17 million users to jumpstart any such service.

It's nice to see the major labels thinking about "celestial jukebox" models of distribution more than 8 years after they were first proposed, but as usual, the labels still don't seem to be able to acknowledge their competition--unlimited free downloads from file-trading networks and random Web sites.

If the Sony BMG service contains only music from Sony BMG, as is suggested in the AP report, it's dead on arrival. Nobody is going to pay a dime for a catalog containing 1/4th of the major labels' output and nothing from independent artists.

I personally think Warner's hit upon the only reasonable compromise between copyright-owners and end-users: bundle a very low monthly fee into some other product and allow--or better yet, encourage--anybody who buys that product to download all the music they want. A mandatory fee would inspire an outcry, but ISPs could solve that by making the "unlimited music" option part of their higher-priced packages--bundle it with more bandwidth, for example. But this can't be a balkanized plan with only Warner content, or it'll fail just as badly as the Sony BMG service.

If the labels each want to build their own celestial jukeboxes, at least they could have a partnership that lets membership in one service transfer to the other services--like ATM cards today.

I picked this book up while traveling yesterday, read a few pages in the bookstore, bought it, and have blazed through the first 150 pages in little more than a day. It's one of the funniest and most entertaining books about music, culture, and business that I've ever read.

The only book in the world with a street team.

(Credit: rockonthebook.com)

Like a lot of suburban white boys of a certain age, Dan Kennedy dreamed about being a rock star in his youth, but reality eventually intervened and he got a corporate gig. Only in this case, the corporation was Atlantic Records--Led Zeppelin's record label, as he points out. Or rather, the corporation was AOL Time Warner (this was 2002, before they dropped the "AOL").

What follows is a hilarious and often scathing look at big money rock and roll. For example, if Jewel sings a song about not selling out, then sells it to Schick to promote a new razor, is she a clever ironist or a sellout? Under what circumstances is it acceptable for a hip-hop artist to smoke pot in a conference room? Does the ability to make eye contact in a meaningful way with everybody in a room really guarantee you a seven-figure salary, or is it merely your hair and the fact that you haven't cut it since you discovered Rush?

The best sequence, though, is where Kennedy discovers Limewire and comes up with an idea to help Warner capitalize on the digital era: digital-only contracts for recording artists, with lower up-front payments and first right of refusal for other types of recordings, such as CDs. His boss thinks his idea's good enough that he's called to present it to various corporate heads in New York and--via teleconference--Los Angeles.

Unfortunately for him, but fortunately for us readers, his idea is eviscerated by a woman he calls Angry New Media Chick and her sidekick, Loud Man. As Kennedy puts it, "They both make great money, and it seems like anytime they think they're going to have to do more than maintain the company Web site they start screaming dot-com words that the senior vice president co-people don't understand." (Example: "Impossible! Back-end architecture! Cookies and lasers! Server-side technology!") He continues, "And they've got an awesome corner on things, since we're talking about a place where anybody above middle management has to yell to their assistants for help with something as technical as, say, an e-mail attachment."

I would have thought he was exaggerating before I read the Wired interview with Doug Morris in November.

At any rate, if you want to know why EMI is laying off 2,000 people this month and have a laugh at the same time, Rock On has just come out in paperback.

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.

Universal Music Group, the largest of the four big music labels, has become the second major to offer DRM-free MP3 downloads.

EMI was first to take the plunge, selling DRM-free files first on Apple's iTunes (in the AAC audio format) and later offering MP3s through a variety of other services via a deal with MediaNet.

Unlike EMI, the Universal deal is only a five-month trial, and the company hasn't announced any such deal with Apple--not surprising, given the two companies' recent history. In fact, nobody should see this as an act of kindness on Universal's part. Rather, it's part of an effort to create more competition in the download market, since having one company (Apple) dominate digital distribution is bad for content owners. Most consumers don't know or care about DRM, but they do want to play the music they've paid for on any device they own. This deal lets Universal sell songs for the most popular digital player in the world, the iPod, without being bound to iTunes.

With two big labels abandoning DRM for downloads, can Sony/BMG and Warner be far behind? Sony in particular has a long history of consumer-unfriendliness when it comes to music and technology, but offering its full catalog as DRM-free downloads would be a nice step toward repairing any lingering bad trust. And Warner Music looks like it could use a bit of help--selling unrestricted MP3 files as broadly as possible might help them out of the doldrums.

An interesting sidenote: the AP reports that the Universal announcement gave some unexpected publicity to a forthcoming digital music service called gBox. I'm not sure how gBox expects to compete with all the other music stores out there (not to mention iTunes), but apparently Universal is buying some search advertising on Google that will direct users toward the service. One unique angle: users will be able to post wishlists of songs for others to buy them as gifts. It sounds similar to Amazon's Wish List feature today, which will almost certainly be extended to Amazon's forthcoming music download store. If you've got Windows and use Internet Explorer, you can check out the beta.

Online community Imeem launched in August 2005, and although I wasn't familiar with the service at the time, it sounds like a blend of several popular features: social networking, instant messaging, blogging and photo sharing. At some point, the company added a feature that would let users create playlists from their personal music collections, then stream these playlists to other users. By spring 2007, the service claimed 16 million active users.

The concept was a bit like MySpace.com, and like that site, Imeem eventually drew a copyright infringement lawsuit from a major record label--Warner Music Group, in this case.

Imeem quickly responded by licensing more than 3 million tracks from various independent labels and publishers, and signing a deal with Snocap to help run a new ad-funded service.

Created by original Napster founder Shawn Fanning, Snocap provides a technology platform to track usage of particular songs so that the owners of those songs can be fairly compensated. It's a nuts-and-bolts kind of business, which is a good place to be in the music industry today: nobody knows exactly how the next-generation music business is going to look, but most agree that it'll involve digital files being exchanged over some kind of network, and somebody needs to track all those exchanges if there's going to be any music industry, rather than a billion independent artists all trying to chase their own narrow slice of action.

A couple of days ago, Warner agreed to drop its lawsuit against Imeem and offer its catalog in exchange for a cut of advertising revenues.

Could this be the model that finally causes legal content-sharing sites to take off? It's not enough for the record industry to build yet another file-sharing network, then wait for customers to show up.

To compete with the "darknet," new services have to offer something singularly interesting, such as ease of use, attractive social-networking features, or integration with existing products and services (which seems to be an approach that's working for iLike). If that's the case, these services will build an userbase until they finally cross the threshold where one or more major content owners recognize them, at which point they'll have to take the necessary steps to get legal. Sort of a completion-backward principle for online music.