Archive - January 2007
The iPod problem
2007-01-28 10:19
In the past, I have written about some of the problems with DRM, and I’ve stated that when I replace my dying iPod I couldn’t care less whether the player supports any particular DRM scheme, because I will not be using any DRMed media.
Seen from the content owner’s perspective, DRM should also be considered a massive failure. In 2004, BitTorrent allegedly accounted 35% of Internet traffic - the vast majority likely being pirated content (As much as I’d like to think that Linux distributions being insanely popular, I don’t really think that’s the case). This number is likely even higher now, but I couldn’t find a reliable source for it.
Herein lies the main problem for the media industry: P2P networks, BitTorrent search sites and the piracy industry has offered what the media industry has so far been unable to offer: High availability of unrestricted content. Not unrestricted as in “I’ll massively pirate this content”, but rather as in “I can transport this content between any of my computers and media players”, or “I can bring this file to my friends, and be guaranteed hassle-free playback”, or “I can give my friend a copy of this, because I really want to introduce him/her to [Some artist]”.
Don’t take my word for it. In a piece on the Swedish site Ny Teknik about record label Bonnier Amigo Bonnier Amigo caves, and are going to release all of their recordings as MP3 (Swedish only, I’m afraid). There’s one very interesting quote from Thomas Persson, VP of InProdicon — Scandinavia’s leading distributor of digital media content (translated/transliterated for your reading pleasure):
The DRM that the big labels insist on is pure crap, because it causes problems for the end-users.
The article goes on to point to what I would like to dub the iPod problem, or the Apple problem: Music bought on iTunes only works in Apple’s own players. Because, while Apple certainly has a fair chunk of the high-end portable MP3 player market, they in no way own digital music playback. According to this story the iPod has a 12.9% market share. Not 60, 70 or 80 as claimed by other sources that don’t count MP3 capable phones. (Incidentally, this is probably also explains the entire existence-to-come for the iPhone. This is a huge, untapped market for iTunes, that Apple has had no entry into).
With iTunes being the dominant force in download music distribution, it in practice means that the availability of user-compatible legal music downloads also hovers around the 13% market. Compare this to the near 100% availability of pirated digital media content, and you understand why people turn to piracy. People turn to piracy, because, in reality, they’re never given a real choice. It’s to pirate the content, or suffer the inconvenience of buying physical media, like CDs and DVDs, or suffer the inconvenience of not being able to reliably play back your content.
Can the media industry compete with the pirate bays of the world? Certainly:
- Reliability. While you can get some of the music some of the time on pirate sites and p2p networks, availability is spotty once you want something not in the mainstream. You might end up with 88.7% of a file, leaving the rest unusable.
- Trust. When getting a file from a commercial entity, you won’t be catching any malware infection, or get files that are something else than purported. No, I haven’t forgotten the Sony rootkit incident. I’m saying that when you no longer need DRM, you no longer need rootkits.
- Quality. The quality of pirated files ranges from bad to horrible:
- Rotten, missing or irrelevant metadata
- Rotten data. Audio data might be normalized to near usability, EQ applied. The bitrate might be bad, or a bad encoder might have been chosen for the job. Video data likewise: Poor quality, TV rips or badly compressed xvid/DIvX content.
- Choice. The Philadelphia orchestra does it right by offering the files in formats suited for different purposes. The mainstream movie and music industries could do this as well, offering content available for different purposes. Done right (read: Using a sane pricing model), they could even offer resales value: Buy a movie or TV show for portable player use, and later buy it for playing at home. Or buy unlimited access at a different price.
- One of the problems the media industries has had with the Pirate Bay is that the metadata distribution that TPB has been doing is (or hasn’t been) technically illegal in Sweden. By offering BitTorrent downloads, the media industry will also be the legitimate copyright holders of the interesting torrent files themselves. Which gives them legal clout to get the pirates prosecuted under almost any jurisdiction.
- I for one don’t think price is enough of a reason for regular Joes to keep pirating content. In the industrialized world, price is not prohibitive. We bought vast amounts of 8-track, records, tapes and CDs (heck, I still buy droves of CDs and DVDs, because I like to keep control of the quality myself) before the downloadable industry emerged. We will continue to do so with downloadable content, once the quality of legal content can compete with pirated content.
So, given that companies follow the lead of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Bonnier Amigo and independent labels who have been offering MP3 for some time, the media industry can still get on board. But they need to do this before the piracy industry is so deeply entrenched in Average Joe’s mind that Average Joe will think of pirate sites first, and the legitimate distributors second.
(Bonus question: Which will be the last company to abandon DRM as a scheme? No prizes for the answer, but I’d like to hear your thoughts)
Opera on a Chip
2007-01-17 08:03
Link: Opera on a Chip
3DLabs are running Opera 9 for devices on the multimedia-oriented SoC device named DMS-02.
My iPod is dying
2007-01-11 11:18
My iPod Nano is dying. The battery lasts something like the walk home from work, which is about two songs or so, so I’m planning on getting a replacement soon, as most of the time I need it to work longer than that.
Requirements:
- Needs to be smallish. I want to be able to carry it in some pocket
- I don’t need video playback. Watching TV shows or movies on screens < 12” just does not appeal to me.
- Due to size and battery constraints, I’d rather not go with a HDD-based player, but rather have a Flash based one. 4GB of storage space is mostly enough, but 8GB or an extension option is a plus.
- FM Radio is a huge plus. I fairly frequently go on longish bus-rides, and being able to listen to something beside music is a welcome addition to the capabilities.
- While MP3 is the most important format, having decent multi-format support is a huge plus, as I have the occasional Ogg and WMA file lying around.
- Battery life. Both in terms of how long the player is usable without recharging, and how long the battery can be expected to last before dying permanently.
- Sound quality should be better than the iPod. I don’t need anything in terms of EQ or other adjustment capabilities, as I would rather have the sound quality be good out of the box. Note that I don’t care about the sound quality from any bundled earbuds, as I will be using better headphones anyway.
- It absolutely must work as a regular mass storage device. I don’t want any player that requires special software to sync. I regularily use my current Nano for moving/copying music between the computers I work on, and I want to be able to move all of my music without having metadata destroyed.
- It absolutely must not lock me to any particular platform on a PC. I use Linux, but I want to be able to have it plug in to a computer running any other OS. See the previous requirement.
- I would prefer a device with upgradable firmware, and upgrading of said firmware must not require any special software. Having to locate a Windows machine, boot it, install software on the machine, and like the case is with my Sony Ericsson phone, having to install Flash and set my default browser to MSIE to be able to install the firmware updates, is not acceptable.
And before anyone suggests it: No. I’m not waiting for the iPhone. I’m not buying the iPhone when it’s out. I’m not buying Apple again. The iPod was a compromise because it was the only Flash-based player that met my storage requirements. Before discovering Rockbox I had to spend lots of time copying all of the music back over because of syncing issues, and I had pretty much stopped using it. I don’t expect the iPhone to be anything less than a bad version of the iPod. Bad with respect to being restricted to hell and back, but without the option to replace my firmware as I see fit, so I have freedom with my device. Kidnapping my data is not acceptable.
So: Any suggestions for a player that offers me freedom, and fulfils my requirements? (I have deliberately not listed any of the candidate devices I’ve been researching, as I want people to just hint me at devices for further research).