*michael parekh on IT*

ON GIVE A GARMIN CAMPAIGN

PITCH PERFECT

Don't know about you, but this 30-second Garmin commercial for the holidays hits just the right notes of the warm and fuzzies for me:

Here's a darker version of the ad with the same musical theme.  How many of us can't relate to this one:

Garmin's previous ads have not all been great (see this Superbowl ad as an example).

But this holiday season, they've found their stride.  Well done.

ON NEW VENUES FOR MUSIC DISCOVERY

LISTEN ANEW

"Forget MTV, Apple's iPod ads are the new music makers", proclaims this article in today's San Francisco Chronicle.  It elaborates:

"Since 2001, small, independent bands appearing in iPod commercials have sold thousands of records, been placed on numerous Billboard charts, and drawn the respect and admiration of music fans around the world.

Apple's promotional influence has grown so great that music industry insiders now compare it with Oprah Winfrey's ability to create best-sellers through her book club."

It certainly true in my case.  I've been buying iPod ad music for several years now, going even so far as to have a play-list on my iPod titled "iPod Ad Tunes".

Others have similar ideas.  If you search for "iPod commercials" in the iMix section of iTunes, where other users can put together "mix" play-lists of their favorite tracks from the service, you'll find dozens of iPod ad music there.

It's not just Apple commercials.  In general, TV shows and commercials for a wide range of products and services are now breaking new music for some time now.

They've become a primary source of new music discovery for both myself and for presumably many other viewers.

Starbucks has even turned this phenomenon into a boutique music label for itself.

Much of this trend has been ad hoc and organic. 

It seems to be driven by early adopters and/or music geeks.  It'll be interesting to see if we see either existing or new companies start to compile and better organize this music so that it becomes even more accessible to mainstream listeners.  This seems just to be the beginning.

ON NO MUSIC FOR MARATHONERS

RUN FREE

The 37th New York City Marathon, the largest in the world with over 37,000 runners last year, returns to my city this Sunday.  And the New York Times has a story on the use of music players by the runners.  Here's the situation:

"USA Track & Field, the national governing body for running, this year banned the use of headphones and portable audio players like iPods at its official races. The new rule was created to ensure safety and to prevent runners from having a competitive edge.

But trying to enforce such a rule on a 26.2-mile course filled with thousands of runners may be futile. The New York City Marathon, which strongly discourages the use of audio players, will not attempt to police its field on Sunday for lack of a surefire way to carry out the ban."

The piece has lots of quotes by many runners arguing why music players should be banned from the race, ranging from safety issues, to runners missing out on the pure experience of this arduous race (It's really about something as banal as insurance, as the article informs us almost in passing).  But this one argument against music players I think took the cake:

"Tucker Andersen, who has run in every New York City Marathon since 1976, scoffed at runners who rely on music to get them into a zone, and said it could create dangerous situations for other competitors...

Andersen also said wearing headphones robs runners of the complete marathon experience.

He remembered running alone across the Willis Avenue Bridge into the Bronx in his first marathon, about to hit the wall at the 20-mile point, when a teenager leaned out of a building’s window and played the theme song from “Rocky” on a boom box.

“If I was wearing an iPod, I never would have heard that,” Andersen said."

Priceless.

Music does touch us everywhere, as this latest iPod Ad* reminds us.

*  The catchy number  if you're wondering, is "My Hot, Hot Sex" by CSS.

ON MUSIC AND LARGE NUMBERS

DIMINISHING RETURNS

In the spirit of my post a few days ago, I've been trying to get my music organized online in recent days.

While ripping some new CDs into iTunes the other day, a tedious chore at any time, a recurring thought came to me...wouldn't it be great to have all the world's published music on an iPod? 

How much storage would that take?

A quick Google search brought up this great post by ZDNet's Robin Harris, who asked himself the same question a few days ago in a post titled "The Paradise of Infinite Music":

"Infinity is bigger than you think, padawan
How much music has been recorded by humanity? No one knows for sure, but here’s an approximation: a lot!

The iTunes music store reports they have over 6,000,000 songs, not including the Beatles. But let’s start there.

Coming in 2017 - the 24 terabyte iPod!
The largest current iPod is 160 gigabytes. According to Apple’s bonded and insured marketing it will hold “up to” 40,000 songs, presumably at Apple’s anemic 128 KB AAC encoding, or 4 MB per song. That equals 24,000,000,000,000 - 24 TB - of storage, today."

Yowza!  All the personal storage I own today in the form of various hard drives, USB sticks, Solid State Drives AND all my iPods don't add up to a quarter of that.  Maybe they will by 2017.

But then I thought about the question from another angle.

What good is it having all the world's music, or even just iTunes' 6 million tracks, if one doesn't have the time to listen to them?

At 3 minutes a track, 6 million tracks add up to 34 years of listening, without any coffee-breaks.

I don't know about you, but it takes me a little while just finding the tracks I want to listen to;  assume it takes a minute to find the track one wants.  So that's over 11 years of SEARCHING for the music one wants JUST in the iTunes library...today.

Which all comes down the obvious...in a world of practically infinite choices in music, the biggest problem will be finding the time to listen to the music you want.

The second biggest problem will be finding the music you want.

Technology can't do much about the first problem, but the second problem sure looks like an opportunity for existing and future search engines, aggregation sites, and distributed social network services.

And one doesn't live just on music alone of course.

We haven't even started discussing how much storage and time it'd take to view all recorded TV shows, movies, and other recorded material.

Oyvay!  I think I'll just go read a book.

ON APPLE GIVETH IN...FINALLY

PRAISE BE TO JOBS

Well, a lot of recently wound-up Apple geeks and fans should breath easier today. 

Apple is inching back from the Dark Side and opening up it's blessed iPhone AND iPod Touch to developers with an SDK in February. 

Techmeme's front page runneth over with all the giddy celebration (image source).

And Apple announced this with a missive from Steve Jobs no less, on it's "Hot News" page. 

Furthermore Steve, or should I say "Real Steve Jobs" (aka RSJ), almost seemed to be channeling Fake Steve Jobs (aka FSJ) in his quasi-blog entry:

"Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February.

We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users.

With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers."

Even his "blog entries" have an implicit "One more thing" in them:

"P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]"

Once a show man, always a show man.

Of course we still don't know if this is something Apple had been planning all along, or is it something in reaction to all the "closed iPhone" backlash from geeks and fans in recent weeks.  It's kind of like the last-minute rebate to early iPhone buyers, following the backlash to the very quick price cuts the iPhone recently.

We'll have to wait for the answers to both questions in the fullness of time.

One has to admit that Apple's been pretty "generous" lately, what with them also announcing price cuts on their DRM-free tracks, along with an expansion of that part of it's inventory on iTunes yesterday.

Now my only major wish on the iPod/iPhone front is a hard-drive based iPod Touch and an iPhone by the end of the year, to go with all the other goodness.

RSJ, you listening? FSJ?

ON MUSIC AND OUR HEALTH

UNEXPECTED DIVIDENDS

An TV commercial for AIG while watching CNBC today caught my eye.  It made the claim that singing helps reduce stress and can add up to fifteen years to one's life.  I hadn't seen that before and got me wondering what the source of that claim might be.  A cursory Google search didn't turn anything up, so will have to dig around some more.

In the meantime, the Wall Street Journal had this interview on it's Health Blog with renowned literary neurologist Oliver Sacks that highlighted the following:

"Music has a deep connection to the workings of the brain. In his new book Musicophilia, literary neurologist Oliver Sacks writes about how rhythm and melody can trigger symptoms of neurological disease in some patients and help ease the conditions of others...

He describes how music helped him heal from a serious injury. He also connects the role of music in his own recovery with its role for patients stuck in a trance-like state decades after a sleeping-sickness epidemic. Their miraculous but temporary recoveries (prompted by a drug, not by music) were described in his book Awakenings, which was later made into a movie.

And Sacks explains how listening to music activates the region of the brain associated with motion–suggesting deep biological roots of dancing, or tapping our feet to music. Even when we imagine music, the brain’s motor cortex is activated. Imagining music, Sacks says, “is very real.”

Guess I need to spend more time with my iPod and iTunes.  Especially since Apple reduced prices for DRM-free music tracks on the service today. 

Also, can anyone recommend a good Karaoke machine?

ON LIVING THROUGH A MUSIC REVOLUTION (Part II)

CHOICES, CHOICES

Reader Dave had a detailed response in a comment to my post yesterday on the complexities of discovering, buying, maintaining and enjoying music in the midst of the music distribution revolution.  He has some good advice:

"First off, quit buying anything with DRM and consider that you've learned a foolish expensive lesson on previous purchases. Something not available without DRM you say; hogwash, buy the CD and rip it! You are using the LAME encoder, right!?!?

Second, put all of your CDs together in large plastic bins, then put them in the garage or somewhere out of the weather, but not in living areas. You need that Billy Joel CD, you know where the CD bins are and can have the song ripped in a minute or two (once you find the correct bin). I have way over a thousand CDs, but I know where all the bins are in the loft if I'm missing anything.

Third, standardize on the mp3 format; it's the defacto standard, don't fight it. MP3 formatted files play on all devices worth using. Add all devices that can't play mp3s into the same e-waste bins that your Sony MD players went into.

Fix your network server disk format or get a proper one that can talk to Macs and PCs. Most SOHO NAS devices can do this and are O/S agnostic. Centrally store your music collection; hard drives very cheap and managing a large distributed collection is too painful.

Don't ever use iTunes for a music server with a large music collection. It's designed for a casual music listener with a meager music collection. You have the right idea with the Sonos system (I prefer SlimDevices, but 6 to 1, half dozen to another). Sonos (and Slim) do not need iTunes. The only purpose for iTunes is to change the content on an iPod!"

He goes on with additional advice on maintaining the collection, including the all-important backup.

The thing is I've followed most of his advice for some time now.  The difficulties arise in the trade-offs that arise between pragmatism and convenience.  Allow me to explain.

I do prefer buying CDs as my first option.  The problem arises when you want just a track or two and don't want to pay the $10-15 for the whole CD.   This is increasingly an issue as one can pick and choose just the track that catches one's fancy off a post on a music blog, or in a TV commercial or a show.

After all, that's one of the primary benefits of the digital download revolution.  You can buy just the song you want, not the collection of songs the artist and/or the label wants to package for you.

Then one faces a series of searches to make the optimal choice in buying that one track. 

Buying the track in MP3 format is always the first choice here, as Dave aptly suggests.  So one searches for the track on eMusic, and recently on Amazon's MP3 download service.  If it's a relatively popular tune, it's likely not available on most of these services as an MP3 download.

So one searches next on iTunes, or any number of other services that offer digital downloads of single tracks with DRM protection.

iTunes will charge $1.29 instead of the traditional $0.99 for a DRM-free track, IF available, but it's worth it of course to get a non-DRM track.

More often than not, the only digital download available is in a DRM protected format.

Notice that for each track, one needs to search for the best deal as it were, in format and price, on multiple online music retailers.  This can often take 5-10 minutes per track, with multiple tabs open in a browser.

Gets pretty tedious when trying to buy a handful of tracks.

As yet, there's no meta-search engine that I'm aware of, which searches for the best deal on a track across various online retailers.  So it's a hunt and peck process on every track.

The other issue one runs into in choosing to buy a CD or a single track, is the convenience of immediate gratification.  Often, one wants the music without waiting for Amazon to deliver the CD, or without the hassle of driving out to the local Walmart or Target.

Dave's advice on using iTunes for just changing the content on an iPod is also on the mark.

Again, the complications arise when one has to manage a handful of iPods for several users in a household.

Why not just use one iPod or other MP3 music player?

Because we now have different iPods for different types of activities.  One may want a specific set of music and TV shows for one's iPhone, a different set of workout tunes for the iPod Shuffle or Nano, and yet another one for the voluminous iPod Classic or large-screen iPod Touch.

Music players are getting specialized for different applications, just like our cars, our computers, our watches and other daily tools.

It gets even more complicated when you start getting into managing play-lists.  For now, the playlists are best created and managed on the PC or Mac synced with a particular iPod or MP3 player.  It's pretty complicated trying to copy playlists from one iTunes on one PC to another.  You quickly start to drown in managing .itl and .xml files.  I'm pretty resigned to re-creating the same play-lists on different versions of iTunes around the house, and hope for the best.

Dave and other commenters to yesterday's post have suggested using a centralized library off a NAS server that's connected to both the Windows and Mac computers on the network.  I tried that for a while, but it got pretty complicated getting the iTunes clients on two of the main computers to sync properly with the centralized NAS server file folder. 

It had to do with the FAT32 file format off a Windows-administered NAS server not being compatible with the Mac file folder system.  An Apple Genius no less told me there wasn't a clean work-around this problem.  If anyone has a suggestion here, I'd as always be most appreciative.

One saving grace in all this is that Sonos is great about copying over your play-ists from iTunes onto the various Sonos controllers.  Although if you sync various libraries from various computers onto the Sonos index, you can quickly get many copies of the same play-list like "Recently Added".

iTunes is not yet set up to manage multiple music collections and play-lists across multiple iPods for multiple users.  It can be done, but it requires a disciplined set of procedures and rules, not to mention turning off the automatic iPod syncing and management that iTunes offers for users with just one iPod on one computer.  And it all gets tediously geeky in a hurry once you start manually managing multiple iPods for multiple people.

And they get unruly when most of the users (aka civilians) in the household don't care for all the rules in order to keep the collection organized and well-maintained.

Again, the usually self-appointed CTO of the household, the Chief Tunes Officer, has to deal with managing the complexity of managing all these disparate pieces.

And we're a ways away from this stuff really being as easy as it should be.

ON LIVING THROUGH A MUSIC REVOLUTION

PAINFULLY FUN

Anecdotally, it has all the makings of a major trend.  First Radiohead decided to forgo a major recording contract for their new album In Rainbows, and distribute it directly via their website (see Fred Wilson's take on the album).  Then, some other established Acts announced that they'll try something similar.

And today of course, the major papers and sites are covering Madonna's nine-figure deal with a concert promoter for her next major albums, in lieu of re-upping her recording contract. 

Echoes of Howard Stern and Sirius not so long ago.

Anecdotally, music discovery and consumption has been changing for me too. 

So many of the artists and songs I've discovered, sampled, and then bought for my iPods and Sonos networks have been through watching TV shows and commercials.  They've somehow become the new radio in recent times.

The rest have been through music blogs like the Hype Machine.

There are so many of them, and it's hard to keep on top of it all.

Revolutions can be good things when they're over, but they're hell when you're living through them.

Ironically, buying music has become so much more hard work, even though albums can be downloaded in the blink of an eye.

If more acts go the way of Radiohead, you'll have to remember which sites to go for which music.  As it is, I'm still having difficulty buying the Radiohead album due to what seems to be high traffic loads on the site.

Once you get the tracks/albums you want, you then have to worry about which tracks will play on which devices, both in the home, on the road.  Which MP3 player will play which tracks?  Are the tracks compatiable with the player in your car?

Then it's the question of managing all the digital downloads.

Did you buy them through iTunes, Amazon, Yahoo!, eMusic, Rhapsody, or Microsoft?  Each one stores stuff in different folders by default.

Are they MP-3 tracks with no DRM or if they have DRM, which tracks have which DRM system?

Which PCs hold the various libraries?  Are they all constantly synced and backed up?

Oh, and did I remember to rip that new pile of CDs from Amazon into both Windows Media and iTunes formats (don't ask).

Of course, none of the music libraries can be managed easily from one network drive. 

Even Apple expects their rabid users to jump through all kinds of hoops to make sure the music in the iTunes library on the Mac or PC is synced with the iTunes library that's the back up on the network server.   "It can be done, but it's not an officially supported feature", intoned the Mac Genius at the local Apple store.

And don't forget about the iTunes library on the PC, since the wife uses a Windows laptop instead of a Mac.

And of course iTunes libraries on a network server won't talk easily to iTunes on BOTH Windows and Mac PCs, due to different hard drive storage formats (needed a two-hour trip to a Mac Genius at the local Apple store to figure that out).

And then even when you do discover new music on sites like the Hype Machine, you realize that many of them are "covers" by new bands (bands doing their versions of old, classic standbys), that you can't buy legally yet at any store online or off...of course, you spend 15 minutes just checking to see if you can find that track on half a dozen online stores.  Talking about chasing needles in a bunch of haystacks.

Of course, you can always enjoy live performances of the tracks on YouTube, like this cover of Cupid by Amy Winehouse, or this version of Careless Whispers by The Gossip (top-ranked on the Hype Machine today after the Radiohead In Rainbow tracks).

So you have to make sure to write them down the tracks on a To-do list with a tickler to remind yourself to check if they're for sale in a month or so, when you're next in the mood to buy some music.

Of course you can always download SOME of the tracks from some web-site found through a music blog.  But then you're worried about the music industry gun slingers slapping you with a law-suit and/or infecting your computer with a virus attached to that tempting little MP3 file.

If you do find a track you CAN buy and download legally, you then have to remember to make sure it's copied over to all the various online libraries that you have to maintain (see above).

And before you tell me that I'm making all of this way too complicated, as my wife has already suggested several times, do let me state that there is some well-thought out method to this madness. 

The civilians in the household don't appreciate the complexity entailed in the simplest request, as when my wife requested I play Billy Joel's Piano Man via the Sonos in the upstairs living room.   Of course it happened to be the ONE CD I must have missed ripping when I was methodically trying to rip several hundred CDs into the network server a few months ago.

So rather than say "No, honey, I can't find the track in our library", of course I buy it for a buck on iTunes, even though I know we have at least two copies of the CD somewhere in the house.  It plays instantly making the wife happy, but of course it rankles having to pay yet again for the same song again, and again.

If any of you can relate with EVERYTHING I'm touching on in this post, AND still have a suggestion or two to ease the pain, then I'm all eyes and ears.

Until then, or until this stuff gets easier over time, I'll continue to maintain that it's tough staying on top of it all as a music fan, in the middle of a revolution.

And forget it if you're just a mainstream, casual music fan.

Almost makes one miss the simpler days of Casey Kasem and the weekly Top Forty on the radio, and Tower Records.

And I haven't even mentioned keeping on top of favorite TV shows and movies yet in the midst of their respective revolutions.

ON THE APPLE "CELLPHONE'S DEAD" STRATEGY

JUST THE BEGINNING

Back in June, after the release of the iPhone, I asked the following question:

"Wonder how long Apple will wait before unveiling new video iPod models with the screen and touch features of the iPhone sans the phone features. 

I'll start the pool with a guess of three months, with a new line-up in time for the holiday season.  Any other takers?"

Apple didn't disappoint, despite some doubts in July, judging from their total refresh of the iPod line today, including the iPod Touch, which is an iPhone without the phone.  If you missed all the hub-bub, you can read all about it on Techmeme, and see Steve Jobs' keynote here.

The most striking moment in the keynote for me, was this slide from Steve's presentation, captured at the right moment by Gizmodo. 

While demonstrating the new iPod Touch, Steve chose to play a music video by Beck, titled "Cellphone's Dead" (click for larger image...You can watch the full music video here on YouTube).

Given that nothing in a Steve Jobs happens by accident, the choice of this video is telling. 

It subtly reminds everyone that the days of thinking of phones, be they wired or wireless, are almost over. 

Sure, Apple is committed to the iPhone and it's multi-year partnership with AT&T in the U.S., and the carriers they partner with in Europe on the iPhone next month, and Asia next year.

But in the long-term, Steve is reminding us that the iPhone is the transitional device.  He keeps reminding us that the iPhone at it's core is "the best iPod ever".

And if you think long and hard about the rich internet capabilities of the iPod Touch with it's Wifi, built-in Safari browser, and cool internet applications like the iTunes Wifi Music store, YouTube, and the Starbucks music download application, the iPod itself is transitioning into the true usable computer in a hand-held device, that's been attempted for so long over the last few decades.

As Fake Steve jobs (aka FSJ) put it eloquently earlier today, what's really going on here is,

"Multitouch coupled to disk drive coupled to WiFi coupled to Safari coupled to OS X."

Never mind that the first iPod Touch doesn't have a disk drive, but 8 to 16 GB of flash memory.  It will soon have hard disk versions of 160 GB and more, like the iPod Classic announced today.

And it's really a mini-Mac.  With mini-versions of all the favorite, core applications from the Mac like iPhoto, iTunes, Safari, etc.

It's one end-t0-end distribution channel for all types of digital content.  And it'll fuse and integrate with all types of physical environments, like thousands of Starbucks stores over the next few years.

Despite all the criticism by many of this being a closed system, companies large and small need to start to think about having a version of their application that works on the mobile Safari browser.  Just like they've been focused for the past few months on having a version of their application and/or service for the "Facebook Platform", another relatively closed system. 

Apple has an installed base of 110 million iPods around the world, which will transition into internet-enabled devices over the next few years.  Compare that to 30 million Facebook members who will also presumably transition into using a host of third-party applications (mostly widgets today), over the next few years.  And both installed bases will presumably grow from today's levels.

The iPod, and the iPhone, are both trojan horses.  It's really about a pretty unique, long-term computing platform with a number of tough to execute links.

No one else is assembling all the hardware, software and online pieces in quite the same way.  Including Google.  Even with it's rumored and anticipated GPhone.

Much of the promise of the GPhone is already here, at your nearby Apple store.  For now it's called the iPod Touch and the iPhone.

ON SONY ADDING ANOTHER APPLE STORE FEATURE

BEG, BORROW,...

I had a chance to check out Sony's newest feature at their SonyStyle store here in southern California this weekend.  It's a desk manned by some Sony "experts" that help customers optimize their Sony hardware, software and services (sound familiar?). 

Yes, they are "borrowing" Apple's "Genius Bar" feature, available in Apple Stores everywhere for a while. 

They call it "BackStage", and while they announced this back in June, it's just now being rolled out to their stores around the country.  As I mentioned last year, Sony had started borrowing features from the Apple Stores like providing free Wi-fi in the stores.

Not sure what they're calling the personnel at the BackStage counter.  My suggestion would be to call them "Rock Stars", Sony being a media company and all.

It's good to see the industry emulate good practices pioneered by Apple...again.