Importance of Audio

On an episode of Leo Laporte's "This Week in Google," Becky Worley said, "As a TV producer I can tell you that people will always forgive you bad video; they will never forgive you bad audio."

As an audience member, I agree, yet it still seems counterintuitive.  The latest advances in consumer electronics tout advances in video quality -- whether it's 3D or HD.  Often audio improvements go along with that, but they don't get nearly the headlines.  We are, by nature, highly visual critters.

While we might tolerate a fuzzy display, staticy audio, or audio that's too quiet, will put us over the edge. Is it odd that something so important is also so often overlooked?

It's an important reminder when making home videos or work related training content that I need to focus more on the audio.  If the video isn't perfect, people may shrug it off.  If the audio is bad, I'll just make them angry.

Becky's statement makes a lot of sense to me.  Are we right?

Free Music for Bloggers and Fans

I mentioned Jamendo on Twitter a couple weeks back.  It's a pretty neat site.

Jamendo is a site where musicians share their music for free.  You can download thousands of tracks and albums from new artists and explore wide range of genres.

By free, I mean the music is available under a Creative Commons copyright.  Unlike traditional copyright, which reserves all rights to the owner (except, of course, the right to fair use, despite what some holders might claim), a Creative Commons copyright grants explicit rights to reproduce and reuse the content in many ways.

For example, you may recall my w00tstock! videos. At most concerts, you will be kicked out for recording the performances.  At w00tstock! they encourage you to record and post it -- for noncommercial purposes.

Most of the videos I post to YouTube I release under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Most of the content on Jamendo is under a similar license.  That means you can download it for free, copy it for free, and share it with friends for free -- as long as you comply with the rather liberal copyright terms.

You can search by genre, country, license, and more.  When I was looking for some music from Japan for an upcoming blog post, I downloaded dozens of tracks from Jamendo until I found just the right one.  And I can use that in my projects without fear of a take down notice.  The other music I found will just go on my iPod.

If you are a blogger and looking for music for a post or project, check out the libraries on Jamendo.

If you are interested in the new wave of intellectual property and the social experiment of how new artists share their music with audiences around the world -- without a big music label making all the decisions, check out Jamendo.

If you just want to hear what is possible without a big studio, you guessed it, check out Jamendo.

Shampoo Commercial

Here's a touching shampoo commercial making its way around the 'net.  It's four minutes long and is pretty powerful.  The cinematography is beautiful and the directing is crisp. It looks gorgeous and crams quite a bit of story telling in there.  It may be a bit melodramatic, but I enjoy some good melodrama.

If we had more commercials like this in the US, maybe the ink wouldn't have worn off my Tivo fast forward button.


 Here is the link.

RIAA To Pursue Mixed Tapes

Ah, the Mix Tape.  It was an icon of 80s youth.

There were 2 kinds. The first kind we made off the radio.  I tried to keep a tape cued up, and the record function just a quick button away.  If I was paying attention, and the DJ didn't banter too much, I could collect all my favorite music without gambling on the invariably scratched 45 RPMs from the record store in the Green Acres Mall.

The second kind was the deliberate one. It was the one you made to collect your deep emotions.  You pulled it together from your radio dubs and your actual purchased tapes. It often involved cables strewn across the living room.  It could be the theme to a friendship or the overly flirtations, trying-to-hard, method of attempting to start a new relationship.

But as with all youthful indiscretions, these too, will come back to bite you. Old data doesn't go away.

Today (2010-04-01) I got my demand letter from the RIAA and I was served with a court order.

It seems that back in 1983 my mother bought me a pack of blank tapes with a credit card. Yes, the records apparently are still around from the THUNK-THUNK days of credit card processing.  From that receipt, they knew I had the tapes and tracked me down.  According to the letter:

You have or had blank audio tapes (Brand: Realistic; Length: 90 Minutes (45 minutes/side), Noise Reduction: Dolby B). 

Research shows that tape users such as yourself primarily use them to steal music from artists without paying for it.  Such users created "Party Mixes," "Road Tunes," "Mood Music," and "Mixed Tapes."

Further, interviews with other current and former New York residents known to be  associated with you have confirmed that you are a blatant large scale music pirate and at one point stole music such as:

1. The Russians are Liars (Z100 Morning Zoo parody)
2. Tarzan Boy (Baltimora)
3. When the Rain Begins to Fall (Jermain Jackson and Pia Zadora)
4. Hard Habit to Break (Chicago)
5. I Know You're Out There Somewhere (Moody Blues)
6. I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me (Rockwell)
7. Just a Gigalo (David Lee Roth)
8. Patience (Guns 'N' Roses) (Illegal back yard performance)
9. Elvira (Oak Ridge Boys)
10. Toy Soldiers (Martika)
11. The Rain (Oran "Juice" Jones)
12. A View to A Kill (Duran Duran)
13. Glory of Love (Pete Cetera)

There is no statute of limitations on this craven theft, and we are pursuing this case to the fullest extent of the law. You are hereby notified that this investigation is ongoing. The accompanying court order prohibits you from destroying or damaging any audio recordings or  documentation related to this matter.

Investigators with the appropriate search warrants will arrive within the week to seize the appropriate evidence.

Thank you for your cooperation in this manner.

And it was signed by the appropriate people.  The accompanying court order did just that.

Two hours later I got a phone call from the attorney representing the RIAA.  He was in a conference room with the Federal Prosecutor for Intellectual Property Crimes in the Pacific Northwest.

They laid out the situation for me.  Based on there assumptions of what I had (I, of course, said nothing), they explained the situation was particularly bad.  Not only had I recorded music off the radio, I kept that music for more than 20 years.  And I traveled out of state with it.  They were drafting an International Warrant in case I fled, and flagged my passport so I couldn't leave the country.

If convicted, I could face penalties of up to $150K per song, plus 5 years in prison for each song.  In other words, if I had everything in that list, and if those were the only songs I recorded off the radio as a kid in the 80s, and if they don't find more when they execute the warrant, I will have to pay $1.95 million  and serve 65 years in Federal Prison.

Or I could settle now.  For the low price of $10K I could pay all fines and avoid jail time.  Plus I would need to report everyone else I knew who had a made a mixed tape.

I said I would think about it.

I headed out for coffee, and thought about all this on my walk.  I got to the shop, and the soft tones of Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors" greeted my ears.

Great.  That's just what I wanted to hear now.

Then I made my next mistake.  I began singing under my breath

Show me a smile then
don't be unhappy, can't remember
when I last saw you laughing
if this world makes you crazy
and you've taken all you can bear
you call me up
because you know I'll be there 

BAM! My cell phone rings.  It's the RIAA lawyer again.  It seems they'd been following me.  The coffee shop had a license to play the music, but I didn't have a license to sing it -- to engage in a "Public Performance."  And they have it on surveillance.  Because I am such a recalcitrant thief, the settlement cost now jumps to $20K.

So right now, I'm dealing with all this.  I think I should probably get a lawyer, but I just can't bring myself to get that done yet.  What I really need now is to stop and get some fresh air.  Afterall, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

Oh, hang on a moment.  My phone's ringing.

It's the MPAA.



Related Posts: 
New times 
An Obituary 
New SeaTac Name 
Are you going to Scarbarough fare...

Book Review 43: Contagious

A little boy so afraid of the shadows under the bed that he couldn't move, couldn't look, sure that whatever was under there would grab him and pull him down forever and ever.

But now he wasn't afraid of the thing under the bed.

He was the thing under the bed.

Page 216

Note: Potential spoilers for the previous books in the series, "Infected."

Back in January, I picked up a copy of Soctt Sigler's "Contagious" when he did a reading at a local books store. You can read about that evening and Sigler's approach new media here.

"Contagious" is Scott Sigler's much anticipated follow up to the awesome sci-fi thriller "Infected." It picks up a couple weeks after "Infected" ends, and we follow the adventures of Perry Dawsey, Dew Phillips, Margaret Montoya, Amos, Clarence, and their CIA colleagues as they battle a secret alien invasion.

Sigler does a great job with "Contagious." The plot is strong and detailed. He fills it with surprise twists I did not see coming up to the end of the book.

This is a very different book from "Infected," however. Sure, it has the same high level of gore, and even more violence. But "Infected" was mainly about characters. We got deep inside Perry Dawsey's head and fought his internal battles with him as he surgically removed invaders from his body. We see the impact his father had on his childhood. And we get to know the deep, personal "Discipline."

During "Infected," we get to see Margaret grow from a young awkward researcher to be the powerful woman who commands CIA operatives. We get to know Dew Phillips as more than a 2 dimensional character who does the dirty work that needs to be done. We get to see his motivation, and the formative experiences that made him who he is today.

But you won't find as much of that in "Contagious." While "Infected" is a character driven novel, "Contagious" is a plot driven novel. A lot more happens in this book than happened in the previous one. The trade off to allow for more action, and a more complex story, is that the characters are thinner.

One of my biggest problems with "Infected" was the last chapter. It was a completely different tone than the rest of the book and felt out of place. "Contagious" is like that last chapter. It has the same tone and style. Since it's an entirely different book it works better than it did as part of the first book.

The scale of "Contagious" is much bigger than "Infected." The book opens in the Oval Office as the CIA briefs the new President on the alien invasion and everyone agrees the best thing to do is keep quiet. We spend time with the President throughout the book, which further demonstrates just how big this book is, as compared the personal battles in the previous book.

The President has two goals -- fight the invasion and keep people from learning about it and panicking. And they have good success with keeping the story and deaths quiet, even when deploying significant military assets in the US.

This was America. People got killed. Such is life. What time is the game on?

Page 101

We soon leave the Oval Office and join the field team. Perry Dawsey survived his infection and Margaret, the doctor, helped remove the last traces of the invaders from Perry's body. Yet he is still connected to the aliens somehow. He can hear them, and he can locate other infected hosts.

Whatever the science behind it, Perry's homing instinct had been the only thing keeping them in the game. Unfortunately when he found infected hosts, he killed them. First Kevin Mest, who had butchered three friends with a fireplace poker. Perry claimed self-defense for that one, and everyone bought it. His self-defense claim for burning three eighty-yearold women alive? Well, that was a little harder to swallow.

Page 28

Unfortunately, Perry sees other hosts as weak and pathetic. Perry fought his invaders and has the scars to show for it. Others lack the "discipline" Perry's father taught him. Despite the protestations of Dew Peterson, Margaret, and the others, Perry can't let them live.

What the fuck was Dew's problem, anyway? Pretending to get all pissed about that family. Why didn't Dew and the others understand? Those people weren't human anymore. They were weak. They didn't have discipline. That meant they needed to die. If one of them, any of them, was even trying to cut out the triangles, then Perry would let them live. Maybe. But it didn't matter, because so far no one had fought.

Page 64

Dew Peterson isn't happy about working with Perry, but it's his duty and he does it. They fight and argue throughout the early part of the book, and Perry keeps trying to kill hosts.

Thank God we've got Dawsey. Imagine that. The kid was twelve doughnuts shy of a baker's dozen, and he was their ace in the hole. What would ol' Charlie have thought if he knew that Dew had almost shot Dawsey in the mouth with the .45? Sorry, Charlie, our ace in the hole has a hole in his head.

Page 52

Eventually, they came to an uneasy understanding.

She did want him asleep, but she also didn't want to risk a second round of fighting. Perry acted different, defeated, but Dew probably hadn't calmed down yet, and any number of insignificant words might set the two men off again.

The only reason Perry Dawsey was still alive was that Dew Phillips wanted him to be.

Margaret needed to make sure Dew didn't change his mind.

Page 110

Some authors might be content to leave children out of the story. Not Sigler. In this book children are affected in a significant way and behave with a shocking violence. Some die in horrific ways. If that makes you uncomfortable, this may not be the right book for you.

Sigler brings some interesting references into the book. He has a Cain and Abel story in there.

That was a lie, of course. Beck wasn't dangerous, but Chauncey might have loved Beck more than her. Chauncey was Chelsea's special friend. With Beck gone it would stay that way forever and ever.

Page 221

And even early 70s TV shows get a sly reference.

Ridder put the cruiser in park and grabbed the radio handset. "This is Adam-Twelve, responding to reports of bodies on Orleans Street," he said. "We have two men down. Send ambulance and backup immediately. We're examining the scene."

Page 315

Sigler masterfully jumps into the heads of different characters. There is little third person omniscience in this book. Sigler tells the story in the third person but it's always through the different characters eyes. We see the story unfold from all these perspectives -- both the good and the bad. The attackers and the defenders. The balance works well and moves the story forward. Additionally, even though we know what most of the characters are planning to do -- because Sigler tells us -- there is still plenty of suspense in this book.

As we get towards the end of the book, the plot gets more complicated with multiple pieces moving simultaneously. The surprise plot twists that come quickly also make sense. The events are unfolding in real time, and when the characters take surprising actions, it's clear that is exactly what the would do.

As for the scale of what happens in the last third of the book, all I can say is, "Wow." And I would have preferred not be sitting on a Northwest Airlines Airbus A319 while I read it.

"Contagious" is a great book, and an excellent follow up to "Infected." It's a different book -- one that's more plot driven and less character driven, and in this book it works. It have moments of extreme grotesqery -- both physically and conceptually -- and it is violent. If you are squeamish or uncomfortable with things like that, you may want to skip it.

But if you are okay with that, pick up "Contagious." It's well worth the time. And I can't wait to see what Sigler does with next with this series.

If you would rather listen to Sigler read the book for free, or download it as a series of PDFs, you can do so at Sigler's website.

You can find more of my book reviews here.

Dr. Horrible is profitable

The Dr. Horrible DVD is now available for pre-order on Amazon.Com. Previously, I commented on the awesomeness of Dr. Horrible and on Jon's application for the Evil League of Evil.

To recap, Dr. Horrible is Joss Whedon's what-I-did-over-writer-strike-vacation project. It's a web based musical about super villains and super heroes. You can watch it here.

The DVD has extras, inlcuding fans applications for the League.

So how has this experiment in new media done financially? Joss Whedon included this comment on his blog, Whedonesque

Finally, I just want to say "thank you" to everybody who has supported this venture. We've been able to pay our crew and all our bills, which means a lot. What means more is proving that completely independent ventures can muscle their way through the blizzard of big-budget behemoths. (A blizzard of behemoths? Back to writing school, alliteration-junkie!) All that rhetoric about the future of entertainment that flew about during the Strike is still entirely true. We need to find our own way of producing entertainment. A lot of people are watching Dr. Horrible to see if it's any kind of model -- way more people than I expected -- and it means everything to me to help pave the way for artists to start working and making a living from the ground up. There are a couple of real pioneers in this that I know personally: Felicia Day, I'm thrilled to say, and choreographer Chris Elam are both looking far ahead in terms of monetization and interactivity. Me, I'm more like Jimmy Stewart in "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance", but at least I'm out there. Thanks, he finally summed up, to you.

You can find his comment, and others, here.

The TV, music, and movie industries are facing incredible challenges from web resources (both legal and illegal). As the cost of production and distribution have plummeted, creating new content is within the realm of the average web user. The Lonely Island made its transition to SNL this way, and one day, perhaps Play Cole will experience something similar.

At the same time, cheap tools and easy distribution are no substitute for talent. Joss Whedon's project suceeds because it brings together a number of key elements, including Whedon's talent, Whedon's name, talented actors, great choreography, impressive musicians, low production costs, and a solid fan base.

In 15 years the landscape of personal entertainment will be radically different from what we've gotten used to over the past years. We are starting to see the new directions now. Dr. Horrible is one example of it.

Congratulations to Whedon and crew. You've done great work with this project, and I look forward to whatever comes next -- both from Whedon, and in the rest of the new media frontier.

For additional updates, you can follow Dr. Horrible on Twitter, which is how I first found Whedon's comment.

Momentum Missile Mayhem -- awesome flash game

Continuing in the fine trend of time wasters, Momentum Missile Mayhem is the latest I've found to vie for your precious time. It combines the traditional tower defense game with the concepts behind pool. It's a lot of fun and you can watch the hours drain away.

I stumbled across this game on Fazed.net.

Book Review 26: An important idea

The theory of the Long Tail can be boiled down to this: Our culture and economy are increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of hits (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve, and moving toward a huge number of niches in the tail. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space, and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

Page 52

How does a store's business change when it has unlimited shelf space?

Chris Anderson answers that questions in "The Long Tail: Why the Future Is Selling Less of More." This is one of the hottest business books of the past couple years and its title has moved into the main stream.

In this book, he discusses the impact of the internet not just how people by products, but on what it means for content producers.

In recent history, the most successful products are the big hits. If you chart product sales from most popular to least popular, you get a chart that's tall on the left and tapers off towards nothing on the right. That section of the chart to the right is what is meant by the long tail.

Hits have dominated music, movies, TV shows, and books for decades, simply because stores had limited space to show stuff, and as a result, they carried only the products likely to generate significant sales. With the advent of ecommerce now, that changes. Amazon does not have a limit to their shelf space. They can offer all products.

When that happens, people start buying the less successful products. They're not choosing inferior ones, but they are choosing products that only appeal to a small niche.

For the content producer, that means it's not as important to make hits -- they can appeal to the niche. There are millions of dollars and livelihoods now being made in the niche markets in a way that simply wasn't possible with ecommerce.

That’s the root of the calculus of the Long Tail: The lower the costs for selling, the more you can sell.

Page 88

Chris Anderson explores these issues in depth in his book, and does a better job describing the phenomenon than I do.

There is great content in the book and it is an important read for anyone interested in how ecommerce and the internet are transforming traditional retail.

I'm not thrilled with the execution of the book, however. There seems to be a lot of stuffing. It's only 230 pages long, but Anderson could have made his point just as effectively, if not more so, in 50%-60% of the pages. I'm not sure how well a shorter book would have sold though. More pages makes people think they are getting more for their money.

I'm also not thrilled with how he structured the book. It comes across as inefficient. He introduces concepts in different ways and then talks about some examples , whether it's Amazon, Google, or Rhapsody, then seems to throw in more concepts.

I would have preferred it if he introduced all the major concepts up front, and then dedicated each chapter to analyzing a different company in detail, while explaining how it demonstrates each of the concepts he discussed earlier.

The company stories he tells are the best parts of the book, but they don't get the focus they deserve.

There are some fascinating stories in here. Early on, he talks about the rise of catalog shopping, by telling us how Sears got started.

Railway cars delivered this new variety on a network of iron tracks that were transforming the country's economy and culture.

The man who first showed the American consumer just what all this could mean was a railway agent in North Redwood, Minnesota. His name was Richard Sears. In 1886, a box of watches was mistakenly sent from a chicago jeweler to a local dealer in North Redwood who didn't want them. Buying them up for himself, Sears sold the watches for a nice profit to other railway agents up and down the line. He then bought more and started a watch distribution company.

Page 42

When people could easily shop by catalog, you could have the rise of a mass consumer culture. People were no longer limited to local products. Thousands of people around the country could have the exact same product.

Over the decades this evolved into the modern retail business model -- it's all about efficiency.

Today's retail display shelf is the human interface to a highly evolved supply chain designed to make the most of time and space. Standing as much as seven feet high and four feet wide and extending up to two feet deep, the average supermarket shelf module has the cubic capacity of a minivan.

Page 151

Again, it's ironic, this paradox of plenty: Walk into a Wal-Mart and you're overwhelmed by the abundance and choice. Yet look closer and the utter thinness of this cornucopia is revealed. Wal-Mart's shelves are a display case that may look like everything , but in a world that's actually a mile wide and a mile deep, a veneer of variety just isn't enough.

Page 156

This wasn't just the case with physical goods. As radio consolidated throughout the nineties, the record companies cracked the formula for creating a hit.

The industry had cracked the commercial code. They had found the elusive formula to the hit, and in retrospect it was so obvious: Sell virile young men to young women. What worked fro Elvis could now be replicated on an industrial scale. It was all about looks and scripted personalities. The music itself, which was outsourced to a small army of professionals (there are fifty two people credited with creating No Strings Attached), hardly mattered.

Page 31

The industry is facing challenges today in that their core demographic is changing.

Every year network TV loses more of its audience to hundreds of niche cable channels. Males age eighteen to thirty-four, the most desireable audience for advertisers, are starting to turn off the TV altogether, shifting more and more of their screen time to the Internet and video games. The ratings of top TV shows have been falling for decades, and the number one show today wouldn't have made the top ten in 1970.

Page 2

It's more than just not watching TV though. It's using the Internet to both find niche products and to create them.

My favorite story from this book is that of The Lonely Island. They are a group of guys who made sketch videos, uploaded them to the Internet, and then got discovered by Saturday Night live.

The Lonely Island really is relevant to these cultural transitions in multiple ways. First, they couldn't get hired as writers because that was a highly competitive field, which left them out in the niche space, apart from the hit makers.

Second, the took the new technology of the Internet and inexpensive video production and editing software to create content that would have cost thousands of dollars to do a decade earlier.

Third, by setting up their own website the bypassed the restrictive nature of the retail shelves (or network TV time slots) and made their content available to whomever wanted to see it. They didn't have to compete with anyone for space.

Fourth, once they were discovered and hired on to Saturday Night Live, it was fans on the Internet posting their favorite Lonely Island bits on YouTube at no cost. Once the Chronicles of Narnia hit, through the Internet, SNL was suddenly relevant again.

It isn't easy for an individual comic to make it in TV -- even as a writer -- but it's even harder for a preassembled team. Sure enough, the threesome quickly ran up against all the usual barriers in their hunt for work in Hollywood. However, rather than subject them selves to endless rejection, the three took their act -- now named after their home -- online. Borrowing some video gear, the Lonely Island Crew started producing short-form comedy videos and songs. Schaffer's kid brother Micah -- a tech consultant and Internet agitpropster -- threw together their website, thelonelyisland.com, in 2001.

Page 79

Jeff Jarvis, a media commentator, described the impact like this: "I haven't heard anyone buzz aobut, recommend, or admit to watching SNL in, oh, a generation. But suddenly, I hear lots of buzz about the show. And it's not because millions happened to be watching when the show happened to actually be funny again. No the buzz is born because folks started distributing the Narnia bit, which, indeed, is funny, on the Internet, and people are linking to it. NBC is learning the power of the network that no one owns." And sure enough, links to the SNL site increased more than 200-fold in the two weeks after the video started circulating.

Page 80-81

The Lonely Island tale has come full circle. Misfits rejected by the entertainment industry go online and get popular. Entertainment industry wakes up to this phenomenon in the hard to reach demographic of influential twenty-somethings and hires the misfits. The kids do the same thing on broadcast TV, but since the influential demographic doesn't actually watch much TV, it isn't until the skit goes back online (now amplified by the net-kids-make-it-big appeal) that the skit gets really popular. Thus SNL , previously scorned by the online generation, suddenly gets cool again by tapping into the authentic underground spirit blossoming online. Once upon a time, the show used to handpick its talent pool from obscure regional theaters and improv troupes. Now they also find it online.

Page 81

What I find interesting, and which Anderson doesn’t go into much detail on is that by empowering the niches, and empowering people to create content, we are not creating and entirely new paradigm of cultural existence. In fact, we are simply reembracing the Professional/Amateur ethic of the 19th century.

Astronomical discoveries are not just the province of professionals. With access to data, the Internet, and high power amateur equipment, people who don't make a living in astronomy can contribute to break throughs.

This is how one of the greatest astronomical discoveries of the twentieth century unfolded. A key theory explaining how the universe works was confirmed thanks to amateurs in New Zealand and Australia, a former amateur trying to turn professional in Chile, and professional physicists in the United States and Japan. When a scientific paper finally announced the discovery to the world, all of them shared authorship.

Demos, a British think tank, described this in a 2004 report as a key moment in the arrival of a "Pro-Am" era, a time when professionals and amateurs work side by side: "Astronomy used to be done in 'big science' research institutes. Now it is also being done in Pro-Am collaboratives. Many amateurs continued to work on their own and many professionals were still ensconced in their academic institutions. But global research networks sprang up, linking professionals and amateurs with shared interests in flare stars, comets, and asteroids

Page 60

The 20th century saw the demise of the amateur scientist doing significant research. Invention, science, research, etc, became the realm of professionals. Silicon Valley, with the now cliché garage based company may seem to buck this trend, but the fact that people are astonished that large companies grew from such small enterprises further emphasizes how rare this has become.

All that is changing now. Astronomy can be worked by both amateurs and professionals. In recent years, writing for the public required a newspaper. Blogging changes that. Advanced photography required and expensive and big dark room. Photoshop and digital cameras changed that. Creating music required a full studio and advanced sound board. Audio software changed that. Broadcasting movies required a cable channel. YouTube changed that.

To do these things before you had to be a professional. You had to specialize. In the modern ear, that's simply not necessary. People can pursue and explore a variety of interest.

We are witnessing the rebirth of the Renaissance Man.

It's possible the 100% dominance of the hit over the niche was simply a historical aberration. It's like when take a giant bowl of water and dump more water into it. It ripples and splashes and sloshes. But eventually it all settles down at a higher level.

I think that's what we're seeing now. The growing success of the Long Tail is the settling of the water.

Chris Anderson's book covers a lot of these things in detail. It's an important book. I just wish it was a little shorter and organized differently.

Here are a few other passages I enjoyed:

"For many years American Airlines made more money from its Sabre electronic reservations system (essentially the travel industry's shared navigation layer for the bewildering world of routes and airfares in the seventies and eighties) than the entire airline industry made collectively from charging people money to ride on planes. From time to time, certain Baby Bells were bringing in more profits from their yellow pages -- essentially the navigation layer of all local business before the web came along -- than form their inherited monopolies. And at its peak, TV Guide famously rivaled the actual networks in profitability.

In a world on infinite choice context -- not content -- is king.

Page 109

When you look at a widely diverse three-dimensional market place through a one-dimensional lens, you get nonsense. It's a list, but it's a list without meaning. What matters is the rankings within a genre (or sub-genre), not across genres.

Page 114

What the Long Tail offers, however, is the encouragement to not be dominated by the [80/20] Rule. Even if 20% of the products account for 80% of the revenue, that's no reason not to carry the other 80%. In Long Tail markets, where the carrying costs of inventory are low, the incentive is there to carry everything, regardless of the volume of sales. Who knows -- with good search and recommendations, a bottom 80% product could turn into a top 20% product.

Page 132

Both hits and niches see their sales slow over time; hits may start higher, but they all end up down the tail eventually.

Page 142

This huge expansion in selection was accompanied by a major shift in movie access pricing. Where before, the standard was one person, one ticket, now there was one small price for as many people as you could cram into your house. This transition was loathed and resisted long before it was grudginly accepted and finally embraced by Holywood interests. (Recall the early attempts to sell movies at retail for $70 to $80 -- a price that was calculated based on the amount of money a typical family would pay at the box office to see their favorite movie two or three times.)

Page 199

The value of music

My GF is a huge Radiohead fan, so I've been hearing about their latest album for ages. The band made news last year when they decided to make it available on line, and people could choose to pay whatever they wanted for it.

It looks like the band made more money on this model than if they went through a traditional record label.

In last month's Wired, David Byrne interviewed Thom Yorke (Radiohead's lead singer) about this new model.

It turns out the gambit was a savvy business move. In the first month, about a million fans downloaded In Rainbows. Roughly 40 percent of them paid for it, according to comScore, at an average of $6 each, netting the band nearly $3 million. Plus, since it owns the master recording (a first for the band), Radiohead was also able to license the album for a record label to distribute the old-fashioned way — on CD. In the US, it goes on sale January 1 through TBD Records/ATO Records Group.

...More

It's an intriguing business model.

As for my GF, well, she skipped the name your own price download and bought the limited edition collectors' set.

Legal Music Downloads Huge

Last month, Wired (15.12) published an article about Doug Morris, the CEO of Universal Music Group. Universal is on the of the largest record companies in the world. They focused on the challenges Universal faced in adapting to the digital world.

The focus was that Morris doesn't get it. While Universal works on new methods of distributing music on line, Morris still approaches the whole business with an Us against Them mentality. This may be the only industry where customer are viewed not only with derision, but as the enemy.

It's an interesting, if disjointed article, that you can read here.

Here's what I found most interesting:

This year, 22 percent of all music sold in the US will move through iTunes. "If iTunes gets up to 40 or 50 percent, they'll have too much power for anyone else to enter the business," says James McQuivey, who analyzes the digital music industry for Forrester Research. If the labels want out, they have two choices: Find a way to unseat the iPod or allow iTunes' competitors to sell unprotected files that can play on Apple's ubiquitous device.

I knew iTunes was big, but I had no clue that more than 1/5 of all music sold this year went through iTunes. More than 1/5 of music sold was electronic -- no CD to burn, no label to print, and no jewel case to crack.

I buy some TV shows though iTunes, but I still prefer to get my music on CDs. I do rip my CDs to MP3, but I like having the original media.

But apparently, there are more people who are willing to forgo physical ownership than I expected.

While this is terribly frightening for the record companies, it does bode well for on demand movies and TVs.

For several years, we've been hearing about the potential of on demand movies that download to your cable box. While most digital cable companies offer the technology, it seems very few people take advantage of it. Meanwhile, people are still buying DVDs in record numbers.

I expected that true on demand entertainment would still be several decades off, because people like owning DVDs. They like to physically put them on the shelf and have the library content right there.

But with more than 22% of music being sold without physical media, I may need to reconsider that position.