Let the Music Play

When the music industry recently did an apparent about face and started embracing DRM free music on sites like Amazon and other locations, but NOT Apple's iTunes Store (in most cases), I think I saw a very different picture starting to forming from the one the industry may have wanted to paint.

From an industry that regularly sues children and grandparents thousands of dollars for each illegally downloaded song, to installing rootkit technology without user's knowledge or consent (and then lying about what that technology was doing), I no longer tend to trust anything they say. If they tell me the sky's blue, I'm still going outside to check for myself.

So from my viewpoint this whole move to DRM free music on other sites like Amazon seems less like they are trying to give music fans what they really want (truly portable and device agnostic music) and more like they are just trying to break the monopoly that iTunes has on the market. Once the monopoly is broken, expect those song prices to go up, and maybe even a lag between when full albums are available in digital format as opposed to CD format.

A few years ago when the music publishers wanted to raise the cost of songs on iTunes; the newest hit songs would be around $1.49, while "golden oldies" would be less than 99 cents. Apple fought back and as we can see today, the pricing hasn't changed... but the relationship between Apple and the record companies did.

While this recent article on the roadblocks record labels are erecting against new digital music initiatives doesn't confirm my doom and gloom scenario, it does seem like another brick in the wall, as Pink Floyd might say.

As the World (Wide Web) Turns...

As I'm following the ongoing story Microsoft and Yahoo, the whole thing is starting to feel like one big soap opera.

In one corner is Microsoft, a lumbering giant that seems to be crushing under it's own weight, who is still trying to prove it's still a major player in the Internet market (BTW, it's not, it missed that boat along time ago). Buying Yahoo is seen as a way of consolidating their market shares against "the new Big Blue", Google.

On the other side is Yahoo, who should have been Google before Google was even "Google", and keeps trying to tell it's shareholders and the world at large that they're just five years away from turning it all around... unfortunately, I think they've been in the middle of this five year plan for eight years now?

Now entering into this little drama is Fox News Corp, who in the last few years purchased The Wall Street Journal as well as MySpace. Talk about diversity! Seems Microsoft wants to team up with them so they can both go after Yahoo together. I just wouldn't want to be in the board meetings where these three diverse and philosophically different companies all try to get on the same page.

Last but not least, Yahoo recently announced plans to try to acquire AOL from Time Warner. They would get AOL, and presumable Platform A, the AOL advertising system that consolidates a number of recent acquisitions, as well as cash for 20% in the company.

Sadly this feels like just a play on Yahoo's part to keep Microsoft at bay. With the acquisition, are they hoping to be too large for Microsoft to afford, not to mention the cash that they can use to further fight off Microsoft. I would actually have liked to see Yahoo acquire AOL awhile ago when it wasn't against the wall. I think the merging of the two companies, with Yahoo's extensive email user base, along with AOL's IM client base could all be merged into one happily targeted audience, not to mention consolidating a lot of there content offerings between the two.

Maybe that'll be the sequel, but in the meantime, it doesn't seem like this show is running out of plotlines anytime soon.

A Quick Look at the Vista

Don't blink, you might miss it.

I just read a news report where Bill Gates comments on having a new version of Windows released "sometime in the next year or so."

What the !?!... you mean Windows Vista is doing so well that you're already starting to talk about a new version so soon?

I have two problems with this:

1) Who thinks MicroSoft can actually get a new OS out in such a short time frame? In order to do so, another OS team would have had to be working almost along side the Vista team for such a short gap between the two. For a number of reasons, I doubt that was the case.
On the other hand, if they just include some of those features they talked about for Vista that didn't make it in the final product (like WinFS and virtual folders) that alone might be enough to slap a new name on it for next year

b) Is anyone really going to buy it? So soon after the release of Vista? I don't think there is any real excitement over a new OS as there was a few years ago. With the maturity of Windows (and Mac OS), it feels like they are both trying to throw more bells and whistles at us in the hopes that we don't realize that their respective products are pretty mature, stable, and do 95% of what we need them to do.

Hey guys... take a well deserved coffee break, and spend a little more time figuring out the next new cool thing rather than rush through a new OS, just so we can have "chewy" buttons or some other such nonsense.

Tomorrow's News Today... Thanks Google!

Thanks to Google's new gDay with MATE technology we can all get tomorrow's content today...

Ok, so it's obviously their April Fools joke, but I really like the "one day in advance" radio button.

In an interesting coincidence, I read a legitimate article on Washington Post with the following line:

"...we now belong to a clickocracy -- one nation under Google, with video and e-mail for all."

Now there's "one to grow on".