Sandy McMurray is a long-time technology journalist whose work has appeared in Time, the Globe & Mail, the Toronto Sun, Report on Business, Profit, and other sources. Between 1995 - 2002, Sandy wrote a weekly column about technology for the Toronto Sun, and served as Technology Editor for five Sun Media newspapers. He has been publishing on the Web since 1996. Contact:readme@mac.com
The NBC deal expands Apple's TV offering to 300 episodes of 16 different series and Zucker said that number will expand quickly as NBC Uni fills the iTunes pipe with new shows.
"You are going to see a series of announcements in the coming weeks," he said.
Variety says NBC was motivated by the growth of illegal downloads -- the network estimates that there are 430,000 illegal downloads of "Battlestar Galactica" each week.
Apple said that net sales of iPods rose $3.2 billion, or 248 percent, during 2005 compared to 2004. The company said it sold 22.5 million iPods in fiscal 2005, an increase of 409 percent from the 4.4 million iPod sold in 2004. Apple has now shipped more than 30 million iPods since the device’s introduction four years ago.
This time, the trigger was this post by Joel Spolsky, who notes that prices send a signal to potential buyers. The very act of establishing "premium" songs (or "discount" songs) communicates the assumed value of the music.
People have come to believe that “you get what you pay for.” If you lowered the price of a movie, people would immediately infer from the low price that it's a crappy movie and they wouldn't go see it. If you had different prices for movies, the $4 movies would have a lot less customers than they get anyway. The entertainment industry has to maintain a straight face and tell you that Gigli or Battlefield Earth are every bit as valuable as Wedding Crashers or Star Wars or nobody will go see them.
Now, the reason the music recording industry wants different prices has nothing to do with making a premium on the best songs. What they really want is a system they can manipulate to send signals about what songs are worth, and thus what songs you should buy. I assure you that when really bad songs come out, as long as they're new and the recording industry wants to promote those songs, they'll charge the full $2.49 or whatever it is to send a fake signal that the songs are better than they really are. It's the same reason we've had to put up with crappy radio for the last few decades: the music industry promotes what they want to promote, whether it's good or bad, and the main reason they want to promote something is because that's a bargaining chip they can use in their negotiations with artists.
Imogen Heap's new CD, "Speak for Yourself," on RCA Victor (a BMG subsidiary), has an extra partition for "enhanced" content. Along with Windows files, there is a Mac file present called "Start.app."
Unlike the Windows version, the Mac malware is not hidden, and does not install itself automatically. You have to do it yourself.
When run, a EULA is first displayed (which does inform the user that software is going to be installed without saying exactly what that software will do).
The user then is prompted by the program for a user name and password. After that information is provided, the program seemingly quits. However, it actually installs two kernel extensions, PhoenixNub1.kext and PhoenixNub12.kext, in the OS X system files.
So. To infect your Mac, you must:
1. Trust Sony.
2. Be curious enough to install mystery software.
3. Locate the Mac software on the audio CD.
4. Manually start the installation process.
5. Override security with a user name/password.
Don't be so smug. This could happen. (Well, before this week, it could have happened. After this week, even people who lack common sense won't make it past #1.)
Loeb says the offending files appear to be part of a DRM solution sold by SunnComm.
Today EMI Group boss Alain Levy said at press conference today that he believed Jobs would introduce multiple price points for iTunes music within the next year.
The Forbes story doesn't add much to what we already know. It notes that executives from the big labels have been "pushing Jobs publicly and privately to move to a tiered pricing system." This public comment could simply be more of the same.
Has the success of the iPod given Apple too much control of the music business? I'm not sure how many consumers feel that way, but it certainly seems to be a problem for the recording industry.
Who will rescue the record labels? This article from Business 2.0 says we should keep an eye on Navio, a company "that wants to help shift the balance of power back to the media companies."
Imagine if you went to a music site to buy a single download for 99 cents, but instead you were offered the option to purchase the perpetual right to that song. With this right, you could download the song to your PC, your iPod, or your cell phone in whatever format was appropriate. And if you got a new computer, or if the digital-rights-management software protecting the file changed one day, you wouldn’t need to buy the song again. Your rights to the song would be stored online. Pay once, and it would be yours forever. If you lost it, you’d just download it again. Or you could share the song with a friend, or even resell it, depending on what rights you bought.
I would be delighted to get more rights with my purchase, but not if I have to buy a "bundle" with unwanted stuff (e.g. ringtones) to get it.
I'm skeptical of the article's claim that Navio-protected content will soon work with the iPod. Anything you can reverse-engineer, Apple can "fix" later with an iTunes or iPod update.
Finally, the idea that power should shift back to the labels strikes me as bizarre. Can we shift a bit more power to the artists and their audience please?
Sunday night's special live episode of The West Wing on NBC was produced twice -- once for the east coast and again for the west coast. Each version was slightly different. I watched both versions -- I wanted to see how much of the episode was scripted, and if any changes would be made to the second broadcast after the east coast version went to air.
I wasn't the only one. A surprising number of the fans on Television Without Pity admitted to watching both east and west coast versions of the live debate.
That got me thinking about iTunes and video sales and The Long Tail of television.
The free ride ended yesterday for beta testers of the Pandora music service. A friendly e-mail from the founder, Tim Westergren, encouraged me to subscribe.
I did. Pandora is really great. I can't remember when I've been so excited by a Web tool, or so willing to pay to keep it. I paid the $36 required for a year's subscription, and spent the afternoon listening to my personal radio channels.
I also saw my Dad today, and gave him a copy of 40 by Larry Sparks -- a CD I might never have discovered without the Pandora service.
I would love to see Apple license the Music Genome Project data and fold it into iTunes. The current "buy this song from iTunes" feature in Pandora is hit and miss -- it doesn't know whether Apple has the song, or if I can buy it from the Canadian store. A partnership with Apple could make this data available.
For now, though, I should probably be grateful that this doesn't work. Pandora's music discovery smarts plus iTunes one-click ordering would be very bad for my already smoking credit card.
"Subscription music services have the most theoretical value to music enthusiasts. However, the bigger one's music collection is, the less incremental value one will find in the service. The ideal customer for these services is a mythical musical virgin whore -- someone who has a limitless appetite for music, but who never buys it. Napster-to-Go competes with Napster Lite, the company's more "traditional" online music store. As more tracks are purchased, the subscription value decreases."
"The iPod nano is small. You just won't believe how precisely, minutely, mind-bogglingly small it is. I mean, you may think the iPod mini was small, but that's just peanuts compared to the nano. Listen..." And so on.
(with apologies to the late Douglas Adams)
Small has value. The amazing success of the iPod mini showed that people are willing to pay for portability and style. The iPod nano has both of those, in spades.
But small costs money. The full-size 20 GB iPod, which costs just $50 more than the iPod nano, has five times the storage capacity. And it can connect to a TV to display photos -- something the nano can't do.
iPod nano Pros:
- tiny size and weight
- color screen for photos and album art
- new features (clocks, stopwatch, screen lock)
- compatible with 30-pin dock connector (and related accessories)
- holds the line on price at $199 and $249
iPod nano Cons:
- less storage space than iPod mini
(2 GB / 4 GB nano vs. 4 GB / 6 GB mini)
- no video out for photo display on TV
- um, maybe impossibly small = easy to lose?
If you want an iPod that does double duty as a hard drive, or you want all the photo features, move on up to the 20 GB or 60 iPod.
Otherwise -- in the words of pretty much every review I've seen so far -- the iPod nano looks like a slam-dunk.
I spent some time playing with the Pandora music service this week, and was very impressed. It's one of the most fun and useful Web services I've seen.
Pandora starts with the name of a song or artist you provide and builds a personal radio "station" using similar music. On the surface, it's dead simple, but the system is built on years of music analysis and research (the Music Genome Project).
I think Pandora's imminent launch has enormous implications for Apple and for anyone else who wants to sell digital music. The player already has "Buy This" links to both Amazon and the iTunes store, but those appear to be informal, maybe affiliate links.
Check it out. The Pandora preview is invitation-only, but you can request an invite and they respond pretty quickly.
NBC President 
Sunday night's special live episode of 
The free ride ended yesterday for beta testers of the 
