- I need a new name for this Blog
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I didn't put much thought into the name of this blog. Apparently there already is a company using the name Media Mechanics and they publish stuff about the media industry. So, I need a new name. Any suggestions?
- Scoring with Zune, Part 3 – Sampling Music
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In my previous post I talked about the many steps I go through to find new music and whether the new Zune and Zune marketplace would simplify it at all. It turns out that Zune does have some nice features for finding music through their Zune.net community but, like all the other services, it's still woefully lacking in many respects. In this section I'll see there are any advantages to using Zune to browse and sample music.
You can look at all the recommendations and favorite lists you want. Skim all the top 10 charts and suss out who's generating interest but, as we all know, the only thing that matters is if *you* like what you hear. Obviously, how do you know if you like it unless you listen to it? In the digital age of music it's expected that we're able to sample before we "buy." For the consumer this is a huge benefit. It wasn't long ago that we all paid $12.00, $15.00 sometimes $20.00 for a song because you had to buy it along with the 10 or 12 other songs that came on the album. You had no ability to either, buy the song individually (no one ever bought singles did they?) or, sample the other tracks before you bought it. We all wished at some point that we could have listened to the other songs because, in a lot of cases, we probably wouldn't have bought the whole album. Now, it is an expected part of the buying process. But along with the benefit comes the burden. Now we literally have to sift through millions of songs.
This is such a fundamental part of the digital music experience that I can't believe how poorly the market handles it. It's critical (at least for me) to have access to an artist's body of work and listen to tracks in their entirety. A typical song is about 3-4 minutes. The dynamics of a song can change dramatically over that time. What good is a 30 second clip of the beginning of a song when 20 seconds of it is an intro? For this reason it's almost a nonstarter if the product doesn't offer some sort of subscription service. Now I know there are a lot of people out there that, for some reason, think that a music subscription is somehow like leasing. And, for some reason, are totally repulsed by the idea of not "owning" their music. For those that feel that way – good on yah. You might want to check out the economics of it before you get too comfortable with the position. As for me, I look at it as a license to try any car on the lot, for as long as I want, whenever I want. If I find that I just can't live without it and that it's worth the additional cost of maintenance and storage then I can just put down the money and buy it out right. A subscription service isn't a lease, it's an all access pass.
Up till now the only real choice was Rhapsody. First, because they were the only subscription service on the block and second, because they offer more music than any other service (I believe I-Tunes may have closed the gap but it's only been recently). For some reason (I'm guessing a combination of licensing rights and idiocy) iTunes still doesn't have any sort of subscription service. However, Zune does. Of all the things that people may choose to cite as a short coming of the product, this is clearly, and without question not one of them. It is the single reason why, as much as I may dislike the overall product, I will give up my iPod and use the new Zune.
I have had a Realone/Rhapsody account since 1999 and don't see how or why I would ever part with it. I have always been content with doing the majority of my listening in front of my computer because this is where I spend the majority of my time. If I needed to take it with me, I'd find ways to make that happen. Apple actually owes a lot of my purchases to Real. Limewire and WinMX also owe a lot of activity to Rhapsody as well because iTunes didn't carry the full catalog that Real did. The device option that Rhapsody offered was never that appealing for some reason, don't ask me why. But the Zune experience is actually really good in this regard.
The Zune Pass, Marketplace and Device integration is actually great. It's a totally seamless experience. If you buy a new device and sign up for Zune Pass within about an hour you'd be able to download all of your favorite albums. Even without the device sync capabilities just the ability to skim though music on my own terms is so much better than what iTunes offers. Unfortunately, the only shortcoming at this point is that you only have access to about 2 million songs, far less than Rhapsody and iTunes. So, although in my opinion this makes the product my default choice, I still rely on other services to sample other works.
Rhapsody is still far and above the best subscription product from a pure streaming perspective. They have the best interface, more content and better placement of artists than any other service. They also have an editorial staff that is much more in touch with current trends and directions in music than most mainstream sources I've seen (AOL Music is surprisingly good as well). You can see this in how their radio stations are programmed and the content in their main sections. Although most of the music I'll get from them I'll only listen to when at home, many times it leads me to an artist's website or MySpace page where I can download a few tracks and sync up with my device. From a purely selfish perspective my dream is that Microsoft would buy Real. I wouldn't want to speculate on any particular aspects of the business value for fear of a thousand things but… think of what kind of product Zune would be if you had Real's library and experience combined with Microsoft's money and influence. And that's all I have to say about that…
As for other sources, I mentioned Pandora, Last.fm, AOL Radio and others in my previous post about finding music. Clearly, these are all great ways of sampling except with limited control on your part. Again though, none of the services today integrate any of the more advanced analytical playlist generators into the product. However, Real does do a great job building artist radio streams that typically do give a good view of the artist's sub-genre. It would be great to see Microsoft incorporate some sort of equivalent of either of the two features in the next version of Zune marketplace.
An increasingly effective way of sampling without control is also through podcasts, also mentioned in the previous post and Zune does now support this (Real does not). Podcasts are a great way of finding and sampling niche music. It may be surprising that I'll mention terrestrial radio in this regard as well. Radio is generally regarded as mainstream but something that has come on the seen recently called Low Power FM stations changes this. These would have been "pirate radio" in the past but now the FCC has developed a program for individuals to create community broadcast stations that operate in a narrow set of frequencies. I mention this because much of our musical tastes are very much regionalized. Country, Urban, Rock, etc. are all associated with certain places as much as they are with certain styles and communities. Many times the best music is local music and these new LPFM stations are becoming great avenues for discovering that because they are targeted specifically at the community. Take a look to see if any of come online in your area. Or better yet, maybe start your own.
In all sampling, in this case the process of listening to as much as you can before you commit, is about ease of access and number of choices. From a pure digital perspective subscription services offer the best combination of the two. For this reason, I think Zune offers the best value because, although the selection may be less, the device integration is great and at least they give you the option unlike iTunes. As I mentioned, for this reason alone I'm going to switch to using the new Zune. Now the question is what happens if Apple offers a subscription service?
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- Library of Congress, Virtual tour using Silverlight
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Something cool from the Federal side –
"Microsoft will provide the technology that allows visitors to the U.S. Library of Congress (LOC) to first take a virtual tour of historic documents and map out what exhibits they want to see, the two organizations announced Thursday.
The project will include the Myloc.gov Web site, to be launched in April, linked to information kiosks at the LOC's Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington, D.C. Interactive galleries will allow visitors to the Myloc.gov site to view and sometimes interact with items such as a rough draft of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the Gutenberg Bible, and a 1507 map that first used the word "America."
The new technology is designed to assist people who want to visit the library in person, said John Sampson, director of federal government affairs at Microsoft. Visitors to the Web site will be able to bookmark areas of interest, then use a bar code at the LOC's information kiosks that will point them to more information in person, he said. Visitors both online and on-site can also engage in a game called Knowledge Quest that sends them searching for clues in the LOC's art and artifacts, Microsoft said. "
More at - http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/01/10/Microsoft-to-provide-virtual-access-to-Library-of-Congress_1.html.
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- UVNTV – More Details
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USATODAY has a feature on Ice Cube's new web site UVNTV. The videos are Windows Media with Silvelright as the player technology. Check it out.
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- The best part of the CES Keynote was this video
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I was lucky enough to get into the Bill G keynote at CES. This was the best part –
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- Make your own music CD ripper with WPF and WMP 11.
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My colleague Jit Ghosh just posted some samples of a project he is working on. It's a nice overview and starter kit for using WPF and Windows Media Player to create your own customer music player/ripper. Hopefully we'll get to post some code on how to do this without having to rely on WMP, which is much more complicated, but way more elegant.
Thanks Jit! - http://blogs.msdn.com/jitghosh/archive/2008/01/02/wpf-based-music-cd-ripper.aspx
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- Scoring with Zune Part2 - Finding Music.
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As promised, here's part two of the seven part series – "Can a Junkie Score with Zune." where I'll see if Zune, and Zune alone, can help me satisfy my music habit. As I broke it down in the first post, for me, listening to music is just about a full time obsession and I go through a lot of effort to satisfy that need. The most time consuming part of my habit is finding *good* music not necessarily *new* music.
I rely on a number of sources to help me discover what next to listen to. Most of it I consider editorial. This is information in the form of reviews (whether professional or user created), recommendations, community pages and favorites. Some of the sources I use as analytical engines where I pick a starting point and the recommendation engine guide me through the selections. The rest comes from shows, performances and the industry. Here's a breakdown of each of those functions and how Zune helps or doesn't.
Editorial and Community Features –
The editorial and community sources I use range from mainstream social networking sites and periodicals to niche websites and blogs. The best method is to find other people who share a common interest in a band/artist and discover what they are listening to. I use a combination of sites for this but I almost always go to MySpace during a search regardless of where I start and end.
MySpace is by far the best source for community based discovery. It has an advantage in this regard for a few reasons. First, every profile lists a favorite music section and almost everyone completes it. Second, it's very easy to browse and search everyone's profile. Third, the users on MySpace are typically younger and/or more connected with a scene involving music. Fourth, MySpace itself is now the predominant method for new artists to make announcements.
It's such a powerful recommendation engine that I am surprised that no one has struck a deal with them. Microsoft is the only one that's even trying to replicate that capability. I have to commend the team for this. I think people missed the point with the whole "join the social" concept. Or rather we played up and released the wrong aspect of it when we launched. The power of the social concept isn't about beaming songs to people who don't have a Zune(which is always the joke) rather it's connecting with people who have similar taste. That's why the best new feature in Zune is the Zune Social Network.
It is actually very helpful for discovering new music. What's cool is that is keeps a running total of what you are actually playing and displays that along with your favorites to the community. If you elect to make your play history public everyone can see exactly what you are listening to and it's very similar to Last.FM in that regard. The concept might scare some people, and it would be nice to be able to edit out those embarrassing songs, but there are a fair amount of people who want to share (show off?) and will embrace this. However, until there are more people on the site and there are better searching tools it's still not going to replace MySpace (or Last.FM) for me.
As for other editorial sources, I frequently skim through the major music mags – Rolling Stone, Spin, Billboard, etc. but I don't ever rely on them for a major find. By the time something makes it into one of these you probably already know about it. However, it's great for knowing how your favorites are fairing, if they've made it into the mainstream or not, so I do look at the charts and note the headlines and look for major tour dates.
This is another opportunity missed in my opinion. Why do none of the services integrate editorial content into their products? Why not have syndication deals in place so that when I download an album or song I can also get articles, pictures, TOUR DATES!?, latest news, etc. Zune and the other major services have bio sections but that's it. So looks like I'll still need to go to Blender, Brooklyn Vegan and others for that type of stuff.
Podcasts and blogs are increasingly more important as part of my discovery. It is amazing to me (and just about everyone else) that the rev one Zune's didn't support podcasting. This is the biggest reason I've stuck with i-Tunes and i-Pod . I am so happy that with the latest upgrade even my soviet-era styled rev one Zune supports downloading podcasts. Too bad the catalog still lacks any good sources for new music , but that's a minor issue considering I can just add my own at will like I did with NoisePop.
Analytical Features–
What I call "analysis" most would call "listening to the radio." The great thing about internet radio is that you can "tune" into sub genres so specific that it's essentially only a handful of artists. When I want to go on cruise control I'll listen to a couple different radio sites. AOL, I-Tunes, Yahoo and such are all good for main stream listening. Shoutcast, via either i-Tunes or WinAmp offers the most variety. Given the fact that the Zune is one of the few devices that has an actual radio receiver built into it, it's a bit odd that it has no support for any Internet radio stations.
There is a second class of radio stations that are more like analytical engines. Pandora and Last.fm (some may consider last.fm more a social toll but…) are probably the best known but Pandora, I think, does the best job. The magic comes from an amazing effort called the Music Genome project. The project is an incredibly manually intensive endeavor where music experts actually break down each song along a number of dimensions giving each song a type of signature (Genome). If you tell it you like a certain type of artist, it averages those signatures and finds other artists with similar averages.
I use regular radio stations and Pandora together. First I go on cruise control and pick a genre. While I'm listening if something catches my ear I switch over to Pandora and plug in that band. I then listen for more songs by that artist and others that are similar. If I'm still interested I'll switch over to Rhapsody (for reasons you'll understand later) and check out a few of their albums. If it's all good, I then switch to Zune and download a few songs.
It's a lot of work. If Zune had the ability to play internet radio and used Pandora's engine (like we do with MSN) I wouldn't have to go through all this trouble. (as long as I had a Zune pass, which we'll also talk about in the next post).
Touring and Industry Info -
The last major source of discovery for me is by way of live performances and industry sites. Unless you live in a major city and are connected with a scene it's really hard to suss out good music this way. The chances of stumbling into your next band crush at a bar are pretty slim. However, it still happens, and opening acts are highly likely to be interesting to you. Just knowing which artists are opening for who can help you find new music. Ever hear of the band Annuals? Sound interesting? If you knew that they opened for Band of Horses would that seem more interesting? My guess is that if you are a Band of Horses fan it would.
Tour dates and information are scattered all over the Internet. I usually go to the MySpace pages of the band because they seem the most accurate. I also subscribe to Ticketmaster alerts and a few venue email lists. Given the shift in focus from record sales to touring and merchandising I'm surprised that the record industry hasn't done a better job allowing integration of this information into any of the major services. If I'm listening to American Steel I should know, as part of the track info, where and when they are playing next. Zune, nor any other service does this.
Speaking of the industry, one of the best, and overlooked sources for new music are the labels themselves. Outside of MySpace some of the best info I get is by going directly to sites like lookoutrecords.com, downtownrecordings.com or emirecords.co.uk and such. The labels have done such a poor job of developing and/or maintaining brand affinity that these names have no meaning to the consumer. Some hold value, mostly in the hip-hop space – Jive, Def Jam, etc perhaps Sub Pop and Epitaph in the alt/indie/punk rock space, but most mean absolutely nothing to people. For instance, did you know who Lookout Records or Downtown Recordings where? How about Green Day and Gnarls Barkley? who are on each on those labels respectively.
The fact is that most of these sub-labels are owned by one of the big four(Warner, EMI, Universal, Sony-BMG) anyway. It's like Gap Inc owning Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy. The labels divide up their inventory into groups of similar products and market those groups toward specific consumers (or so the process should go). In this way labels act as the uber expert in that they are not only recommending but they are bundling the products into one mass marketable product.
This is rarely good for music lovers because of this mass market "problem" but if you are looking to tap into a vein of a certain type of music than the labels do provide a great discovery mechanism for this. Back in the day Rhapsody had sections dedicated to the labels. I'm not sure which version this dropped out of but I think that was a mistake. Zune of course does not have any label sections or groupings, I'm not even sure if you can search by label. If the music labels would like to be relevant to the average consumer this would be a good way to develop some brand awareness. It would be great to see the Zune Marketplace have more label information and groupings.
Conclusion –
Bottom-line is that none of the pay download services do a good job of helping you find the music you want. Discovering what other people are listening to is a big part of this and Zune goes further than the others in making this happen. However, although it's moving in the right direction, the capabilities are limited today. Quite frankly, they all are, so I'm going to have to keep my list of tools longer than I wanted to. But I also have to look at it this way- if it was that easy, it probably wouldn't be as interesting to me. Knowing that I took the extra time to find something that others overlooked is part of the attraction I suppose.
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- Can a junkie score with Zune? - Part 1.
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I'm like a coke fiend when it comes to music. I'll go on weeklong benders where I blow through piles of music to score a new song, my next favorite album, my latest (and short lived) aural obsession. Once I find a fix I'll run it dry and then move on to the next score. Like an addict, the longer you do this, the more intense the need. I'm a music junkie.
I'll venture to guess that I'll go through more music in a month than most do in a year. I know that I'm not the only one with this problem. There are a lot of music junkies out there. It's a life-long habit we've grown (or are growing) into. We were the kids at the record store every day, at the shows every weekend, walkman never off, all day Sunday matinee making mix tapes at night. There's a movie, High Fidelity, that's (mostly) about this, about growing up to be an adult having a music obsession. Either you love the movie or you hate it. If you love it you know why – you are a junkie too..
Because I am a music junkie, I have hard time feeling satisfied with the music services that are available today. There's no one package that delivers what you need to find, sample, "buy", organize and port music. After years of trying just about every service and combination of devices, apps and sites, I've resigned myself to having to use more than one service to get everything I need. There are actually quite a few that I use and I've even been pairing this down recently. I've narrowed my quiver to the following – Rhapsody, Zune + Zune Pass, i-Pod + ITunes, Pandora (via MSN Radio), MySpace, WinAmp + Shoutcast and an assortment of Podcasts.
For most who are just content with i-Tunes this probably seems unnecessary. But, if you are serious about music, about finding new music and sharing it, about consuming mass quantities of widely diverse music, about satisfying a music habit, i-Tunes doesn't really cut it. So I keep looking for the best way to handle this. My ultimate goal is to get this down to one, which (in the spirit of being a supportive employee at MSFT) I hope will be Zune. Since I know most people can't sit through a 10 page blog post I'm going to break this up into a 7-part series where I'll go through the five main functions of "the habit" – finding, sampling, "buying", organizing and porting and contrast Zune with the other services I use. I'll wrap it up with a final section on how it all stacks up. I'm looking forward to some comments
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- Something Different for Xmas - Instructables
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Okay, so something a little different for the holidays. It's Xmas eve, I've exhausted all the usual places for presents. I've bought the gadgets, clothes and home decor. I'm still a few gifts short and I'm down to... making things.
I haven't found a new site in a while that I thought was cool enough to show other people but today I wandered into this - http://www.instructables.com/home. Not sure if I'm the last to know about this site or not, something makes me think I am, but if you haven't seen it, and you're into geeky projects, you'll love it.
Check it out. Make me something good :)
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- IPTV, MediaRoom and HD-DVD Now One Big (Happy?) Family at Microsoft
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From News.com -
"Microsoft has quietly folded its Internet Protocol television, Media Center, and HD DVD efforts into a single organization, known as the Connected TV business group.
The unit, which is part of Robbie Bach's Entertainment and Devices division, is headed by Enrique Rodriguez, the VP (and former WebTV developer) who has been heading the IPTV effort. Peter Barrett, who was CTO of the IPTV unit, takes on that role for the unit.
The move, which took place in October, paves the way for the different technologies, all centered around the television, to work more closely together.
On the IPTV front, Microsoft is moving ahead with its effort to allow additional programs to run on set-top boxes using its software. Microsoft said it now has more than two dozen companies working on software for its Mediaroom platform, including ES3 and Emuse Technologies.
In October, the company had a conference in Boston for such developers, an event the company plans to make a yearly gathering. Expect to hear more on the IPTV front at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
Microsoft has spent years and invested billions of dollars in the TV business, changing approaches several times along the way. "
This is a step in the right direction as long as we also begin to consolidate the underlying platforms and developer technologies. Today, if you want to build a media experiences that spans devices, you are forced to use a hodgepodge of languages, tools and standards. Until we (Microsoft) realize that we need to deliver one unified platform for multimedia development and consumption, these types of changes are not going to matter much to the general consumer or customer.
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- Developing Applications for HD-DVD.
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Amy Dullard, a program manager at Microsoft, provides one of the best resources I've found for HDi development. Her Blog has great examples of what can be done in HDi, complete with sample code. One thing often overlooked in the format war is the next wave of interactive discs that are being published and which technology provides an easier platform to develop on. Most agree that HDi/HD-DVD has the edge over Blu-Ray in that regard. More on the Resources Page.
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- Don't Forget to Register for Mix!
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Now in its third year, MIX is an intimate opportunity for cutting-edge technical, creative and business strategists to engage Microsoft in a conversation about the future of the web. Come explore the latest wave of opportunities and help redefine the boundaries between: content and commerce, PC and TV, Windows and the Web.
March 5 - 7, 2008
The Venetian
Resort Hotel Casino
Las Vegas, Nevada
http://visitmix.com/2008/index.html
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- Jackass 2.5 - Online Distro with Windows Media and Silverlight
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From MSNBC.com -
"Paramount is to become the first Hollywood studio to make one of its new releases available free on the internet before it has been released on DVD in a move set to shake up established distribution models for film content.
The studio and MTV, which are both owned by Viacom, have done a deal with Blockbuster, the DVD rental chain, to stream the third installment in the Jackass franchise free on the web, supported by advertising."
Interesting to note that this will be done using Windows Media and Silverlight. Citing cost and quality of delivering for delivering long form content.
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- CBS/ETOnline Launch the Year in Review with Silverlight
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Check out the latest mini-site on ETOnline.com It's their latest release using Silverlight. Golden Globes and Academy Awards to follow...
http://www.etonline.com/yir2007/
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- Moonlight - Silverlight on Linux
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This is an older announcement but worth repeating. There is a project underway to enable Silverlight on Linux. This has come up in several conversations I've had with customers, especially those that are mandated by charter to reach the widest possible audience (public broadcasting entities for example).
Details can be found on Scott Gu's blog as well as the Open Source at Microsoft blog.
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