on digital media…
January 27th, 2008 § Leave a Comment
Digital media is about mass adoption. One source, many outlets. Unlike our learned cable TV mentality, it is not about ‘exclusivity’. It is the opposite of a closed system, like your cable franchise. Its not about ‘scarcity’ or ‘DRM’. The web’s natural model resembles the early days of TV ‘syndication’ and content distribution. The web is about common paths, sharing and community. The the old media game is about ‘exclusivity’ and ‘scarcity’. Online is about being part of the conversation, the social community, the rankings and your favorites, monthly uniques, RSS, open source API’s, distribution (give it away) to everyone, openspace and a common human goal 
( klaatu barada nikto ) to interact and communicate by giving up and giving away content. Its all about mass adoption and distribution, and not a one-by-one subscription mentality.
— ~Observations over time – ~b.
25 million songs and they are all FREE to download beginning at 12 midnight EST tonight!
January 27th, 2008 § 1 Comment
No spyware, malware or adware included. There’s a new service in town beginning tonight, Sunday January 27th at 12 Midnight EST. You’ll be able to download their application (browser plug-in, not a desktop client) and then grab as many songs as you want, free of any charge. What’s the catch? None. Except, you’ll have to see or listen to an ad. Ads will be shown on musical devices as well. BUT, the songs are not portable to iPods (that won’t last as I’m sure someone will ‘jailbreak’ this). Its Windows only for the moment. Downloads should be relatively fast as it uses a peer-to-peer technology to get you the files. The ‘media player’ is browser based and is a plug-in or add on that you’ll grab from Mozilla/FireFox. The service is called Qtrax 
and according to Qtrax it has signed all 4 of the major music labels (although Warner Music has not confirmed this yet). iTunes has about 6 million songs and Amazon has about 3 million to put this in perspective for you. No doubt it has its drawbacks. Correction: it DOES have no DRM DRM restrictions and has a far larger body of music than anyone else (because its built upon the Gnutella P2P network). Someone will crack the portability issue soon I’m sure. But this is a website to watch. The legal subscription free/ad model applied to music is about to be tested. 25 million songs is a huge catalog. And on their site they scream for you to ‘come and get the music’. I’m sure that’s just what their advertisers are saying too. 
