Music on line without DRM ?

Flashback : Remember the old Napster time where everyone could download illegal music without any protection. Some years after, iTunes Music Store signaled their intention to capture the online music market by selling DRM songs. And they did just that, having secured more than 70 per cent of the market share.

Let's remember that DRM did not originate from Apple but was a request by music record companies, who are reluctant to release their music catalogue for free distribution online.

Progressively, the Pandora's Box was opened.

EMI shot first and offered a 'more expensive’ free song with a better quality on iTMS. Now, Universal has joined the fray by allowing Walmart, the biggest retailer in US, to sell music without any protection, albeit at a lower quality of 256kbps.

From a consumer’s point of view, it means that music purchased online is no different from what they’ll get from a music compact disc. There is no restriction on copying, sharing or distributing the content.

The question is: what is the repercussion on businesses?

We can expect a major shift in the industry in the months ahead. There is no reason why other studios will not follow suit. This will probably impact the sales performance of the iTunes Music Store as well.

There are several options:

- All online retailer will drop their DRM
This will include Apple, which could translate into an increased in the potential sales for iPods capable of reading music without protection. It also points to a complete rethinking of the iTunes Music Store that is currently tied up exclusively with iPod. In such a case, all MP3 players will be able to download music from iTunes.

- Market will be segmented
Some stores and record companies will continue to sell DRM songs. Among these, some DRM songs will be released, while others will be marketed as part of dedicated packages. These packages could promise higher quality encoding for more value, or offer different price alternatives. I sincerely hope it will not happen. This will create confusion for the consumer and affect sales. The only winner will be the illegal music pirates who continue to peddle free downloads.

- DRM will be dropped, BUT
Under the pressure of music studios, some players like Apple might drop the DRM system. But it is likely to strength tie-ups between iPod and the iTunes Music Store. Microsoft is expected to do same with Zune and Sony with its own player. This is not the best of outcomes. Unfortunately, history speaks for itself and the consumer will find themselves back to square one.

So, what do we want?

We want to be able to download good quality songs to our music system or portable player. We agree to pay, much like the way we pay for a CD or a DVD, but YOU, the industry, have to ensure we can play it on all our devices.

Please, make it happen.

Tell me honestly….how many iPods do you need ?

Apple is close to proclaiming that an amazing 100,000,000 iPods sold.

That’s why I bring up that question “how many iPods do you own?”. You probably say they are mad….but I know some people with more than 5 iPods..

Well, if you are not a techno freak, chances are you will be contended with one iPod most probably selected on your needs based on form factor and capacity storage.

If you like to watch movies (lucky Americans can even purchase movies through iTunes Music Store) or require large capacity storage for insane amounts of music, you will go for the iPod Video.

Most probably, you own less than 100 CDs , and therefore do not require a large capacity storage. Chances are that you may purchase the sleek iPod Nano should you have fewer songs to keep it mobile.

Finally, if you are looking for a 'Press and Play' MP3 player, you will probably go for the iPod Shuffle. Hang it it to your jean, your jacket, shuffle your library randomly, this is the easiest way to tune your life.

Evaluating Consumer needs only give you part of the total picture. It is interesting to understand Consumer's usage behavior to complete the picture.

Some people like to have music at Home, in different rooms. There are currently several way to do it. The Old School method would be to get multiple HiFi systems in each room. For the advanced users, they might stream from a central location like iTV, or a Mac/Pc using Airport or any other streaming device. Finaly, some other people will plug multiple iPods in multiple rooms to stand alone speaker sets. In such a case, there is an high chance you run for multiple iPods, one especially in the bedroom to wake up to the sweet crisp music from iPod.

Should you have a car and carry your favorite tunes, you can plug and unplug your iPod to dedicated car stereo system or even stream it through radio waves (which I will not recommend unless you do not care about music quality). The easiest would be to have a fixed iPod in the car. This saves the hassles of commuting your iPod back and forth from home and forget it sometimes in one or the other location while you need it in the other one.

Should you jog or go to gym , you can definitively use the iPod Video or Nano.However, you wont probably take the risk to damage the hard disk of the video iPod and avoid to get sweat on the sleek designed Nano. For such a reason, you might be tempted to go for your cute little iPod shuffle and even have a matching colored one carrier to hang it on your tee shirt or short.

Finally, the best companion for a daily usage is still the iPod nano. Take it with you, carry it in your pocket, bring it at work and it will supply you with enough music for the day.

Well, If you are anything like people who focus on usage, yes there is a chance you would carry multiple iPods and at same time contribute to the Apple Stock raise.

Oh, I forgot to add one important point. You need to have an iPhone as well....

Meebo weds iPhone

Couple of the year, wedding of year…look at it any way you want. It is a match made in heaven.

One of the best applications is now available on the best phones in the market. More specifically, Meebo with iPhone. In my earlier contribution, I talked about Netvibes. Meebo is successful in the same area – aggregation of content.

iPhone is already regarded as the ultimate revolutionary phone. Meebo, on the other hand, is just as revolutionary. It allows you centrally manage all your various messaging applications such as Yahoo, MSN, AOL, etc. The takes away the pain of not only keeping track of difference chat windows but also multiple applications loading each time you start your computer. Not only that, you can even post it as a widget on your website. This will allow you to have live chats with people who visit your site. That’s the fantastic Meebo for you

You can read more about Meebo on iPhone on many other sites. You can try :

webware,  ekday.

Digital Home war goes mobile. Review of the actors.

Microsoft just announced that it will be making Live Messenger available through the xBox 360 game console. This move is a reflection of the long ongoing battle which started more than 10 years ago to control the Digital Home market.


This announcement indicates that though the battle for the Digital Home continues, it has moved from the living room to the mobility sector and new weapons introduced.

In previous time, similar industries, for example PC or Consumer Electronics, would be fighting a ‘war’ among themselves. Then a decade ago, people started talking about convergence. This was essentially a declaration of war by the PC manufacturers who decided to invade the living room territory controlled by CE manufacturers.

10 years on, there are still no winners. However, two companies Apple and Sony have clearly taken the lead even though they hail from opposing sides. One from the computer industry whilst the other from the Consumer Electronic industry.

Apple is promoting itself from the ‘Digital Hub’ angle. For Apple, the lifestyle centers around the computer and all your digital peripherals are connected through it. The computer is used as a central storage location. Progressively, Apple is adding components to its digital hub and moving towards the Multimedia entertainment.
It has made numerous announcements over the years but there are 6 very important ones:
1st : Easy connection through all your digital peripherals.
2nd : Release of the iPod, to manage your digital music collection on the go.
3rd : Release of iLife, to manage your digital life (pictures, movies, DVDs) easily.
4th , : Release of the iPod new generation with Pictures, Movies support.
5th : Release of the iTV, to centrally control your digital life from your TV set.
6th : Announcement of the iPhone, to allow interoperability between communication and mobility

Sony is coming from the consumer electronic universe. Computerized technologies are integrated in order to contain the consumer in the Sony Ecosystem.
1st : Integration of a unique interface (iLink) with HiFi components
2nd : Creation of new media to facilitate easy to share between devices. The DAT and MD failed. The UMD and Blue Ray Disc are their new bets.
3rd : Creation of the Memorystick, a uniformed media storage for digital elements across Sony products
4th : Release of the first Playstation, that revolutionized the gaming industry (from both a technology and business point of view)
5th : Release of the PSP, the ultimate technological portable entertainment system.
6th : Release of the PlayStation 3, bonding video games with HD / Home Cinema.
7th : Announcement of Sony Home, a central storage place where you can share all your digital life through the Playstation 3.

Companies continue tofight this battle but none are emerging as a clear winner yet. Most of them lag behind Sony and Apple. However, some of them are extremely strong in technologies (Philips for example) and some of them have good products (Samsung for example). Nevertheless, they fail to share the same success as Sony and Apple. Sony and Apple managed to find that extra ‘little something’ which made the difference. They understood how consumers needs and how they interacted. Other companies either attempted to copy this success or flooded the market with product imitations to gain market shares.

What about Microsoft? In this battle field, Microsoft has the most powerful army but at times failed to launch a coordinated and timeline attack.

The Windows Media Center seemed to be the right move to try to convince the consumers to setup a computer in the living room. However, the complexity and the lack of services at that time contributed to its failure. WMC is now embedded in Windows Vista OS and will hopefully be more successful.It is also surprising to see Microsoft late arrival to the digital music battle.

Zune was Microsoft’s response to Apple’s iPod. It is even more surprising to witness their inability to create sustainable technology. Last year, Urge, supported by PlayForSure technology, was created with the support of famous artists (i.e. Justin Timberlake) and MTV. MTV was supposed to be the ‘cool’ version of iTunes and create a new way to download and share digital music. PlaysForSure technology was intended to be shared among all manufacturers and music stores to allow interoperability among consumers. It failed to materialize. One can probably attribute it to a lack of communication and marketing support from Microsoft. PlaysForSure was promoted through retail stores in USA and manufactures who tried to create a new label similar to ‘Intel inside’. There was also a lack of direct communication from Microsoft to consumers, convincing them to go in the stores and ask for a ‘PlaysForSure’ product. Ironically, Zune does not support PlayForSure.

So, what should we think about the latest announcement from Microsoft on Live Messenger?

This is a clever strategic move that may propel its future success in the digital home battle.Most major companies are now linking mobility to entertainment and digital home. PSP can be hooked up to PS3 and ‘Sony Home’ to allow digital gaming transfer and upload of content. Nintendo DS is linked to Nintendo Wii and can share mini games. So far, these moves do not have strategic or financial impact but will help cement its position as a leader in the digital home battle.

By linking xBox users to windows live messenger, Microsoft is moving in the right direction :
- Connecting users from various databases
- Providing mobility at home in order to increase the consumer experience
- linking games with chat

This is a right move and consistent with its other major initiatives. One was to allow consumer to connect its iPod to xBox 360 and play his own music while playing video games. The second was to create a new label Game for windows and allow consumer to interact between video games and PC.In this digital home battle, the various actors are fighting for the control of the Digital Home and the mobility. Any initiatives to merge technologies and bind consumer is a good move and Microsoft proved they can overcome internal challenges to create future winning platforms.

Let’s see how consumers will react .

Digital Video for free, not for now.

Steve Jobs commented yesterday that 'he would not hold a parallel at all between the video industry and the music industry'. It is not surprising that there is no rush to open DRM for video.

In our earlier article, we mentioned that the music revolution phase II has started .
It is true we can question what will happen about the video. Let's now be realistic and reasonable.

We can always debate on the illusion and wish to live in a society where products such as videos and audio are free. Will such a debate be of any consequence? We are living in a world driven by rules, economics, constraints, both financial and technical. It is amazing to see so much debate arising as a result of internet and the new digital revolution.

Regardless of whether the audio or video is produced on tape, DVD, broadcasted on radio or made available online, the content remains the same. The only difference is the medium that is used to allow the consumer to access it. In the past, (the hardware time versus the internet time), you needed to go to a shop and buy a movie. If you decided to give a free copy to your friend, you would have to find a way copy it. Most were aware that making copies for reasons other personal backup, was illegal . These restrictions make sense, as the artists and the record companies need to protect themselves against free distribution.

In my opinion, Steve Jobs is absolutely right in his statement that the concept of DRM-free audio cannot be completely applied to video. There are just too many differences from technology to business, including from consumers’ point of view that videos can now be freely distributed.

New distribution systems are now being introduced. Various factors will influence the type of system developed to deliver audio and video. Some factors may include the type of content (e.g. movie, music video, audio book, etc), and length (e.g. trailer vs full length). Another important consideration is how the content will be consumed. For example, will it be used primarily at home through devices such as the home theater system, computer, etc or if it is mean to be used while mobile ? Consumption while being mobile may also vary, as it depends on how and where will be used.

Video on Demand (VOD) is already available to consumers and newer ways to distribute content are being explored. What is the ultimate goal ? Definitely to generate additional revenue for companies and also to satisfy the consumers’ need mobility and virtualization. This goal is not necessarily by choice, because traditional channels of content distributions are suffering.

Consumers needs will only increase.They want more and faster access to unrestricted content.Providers will want to cash in on these needs.The bottom line is that everything comes at a cost and requires time for technology to be developed. We can either continue to live in a dream world or face the reality we need to accommodate current standards.The industry and professional are working on answering ‘our’ needs. In the meantime, let's be patient and take one step at a time.

I am sure that in time, the lines between that dream world and reality will be blurred.