Minding the Planet

Hassleware -- A New Strategy To Make Users Not Close Your Software

This post is not to be taken too seriously. I'm not actually advocating for the strategy outlined below. Just pointing out that it is taking place already, at least in iTunes.

One thing I've noticed about iTunes on Windows XP is that it is a massive resource hog -- especially when starting the application, but even worse, when exiting it. It typically takes several minutes for iTunes to quit, and during this process there are several moments where my machine freezes up because all resources are being used by iTunes. I like iTunes as a product -- don't get me wrong -- but it is the most impolite app in my system. No other app freezes my computer just to shut down.

My computer has a 2.1 gigaherz processor and more than 2 gigs of RAM, and lots of availale disk space, so it's not due to scarce resources. It's simply iTunes. The hassle factor of starting and shutting iTunes is in fact such an annoyance that I have resorted to just leaving it running in the background most of the time. In thinking about this it occurred to me that -- perhaps unwittingly -- Apple has come up with a clever way to make me keep their software open all the time. It's just too painful to close iTunes, so I leave it running.

Glass CDs Promise Crystal Sound Quality

An invetor in Japan has created the world's first glass CD. Because of glass's exceptional clarity and durability it not only provides better sound quality than plastic, it lasts "forever." The catch: it costs a hefty amount yen to buy one since they are presently made by hand.

My New Tivo Series 3

I got the TiVo Series 3 box today and installed it. It takes 2 cable cards and can record simultaneously on two channels at once, in HDTV. It also connects to my wireless network instead of using regular phone lines. Nice. Unfortunately one of the cable card slots was defective -- this apparently is a pretty common defect with these boxes according to my cable guy who spent an hour trying to get it to work and has already encountered the same issue for 3 other customers of his recently. So TiVo is shipping me a replacement box. Anyway it looks like it will be worth the hassle. Prior to getting this new toy, I had a generic DVR from my cable provider and it sucked so bad by comparison I'm surprised they even bother. TiVo has a vastly superior menu system, and the recommendation features can't be beat. 

Pandora is Great But...

The online music recommendation service Pandora is really cool in all ways but one. Due to what they report as a requirement of their music license the user is only allowed to skip a small number of songs per hour. This can be a problem since the whole point of Pandora is that you give it feedback as it plays songs for you and it learns what you like. If you're like me and you rate a bunch of songs and quickly skip ahead to keep rating more of them (while avoiding the songs you don't like), then Pandora's present rule is a bit frustrating. (Note: a workaround was suggested by a reader below -- but it's still kind of a pain.) (Note 2: See the extensive and informative comments added by CTO of Pandora, below, as well).

After you hit your skip-limit you have no choice but to sit through the songs you don't like because you can't skip them. Eventually the count is reset and you can start skipping again. This is an odd limitation and I can't quite understand why it makes sense for Pandora or the music companies -- it would seem that the more music a user listens to and rates the greater the chance they will buy something, which is how both Pandora and the record companies make money. So they should be encouraging all forms of use -- including skipping songs to find other songs you like. At least when users skip songs they still stay in the site -- if they are forced to sit through songs they don't like they are more likely to leave.

If it weren't for this one frustrating limitation I would really use Pandora all the time to discover and buy new music. There is one more feature of Pandora that I would like -- a way to pop the client into a small floating window, or even a desktop client so I don't have to keep my browser sitting there all the time.

I've already used Pandora to discover and buy music -- and I would use it even more if the above issues were solved in later versions. However, even with these limitations it is still one of the best and most enjoyable ways to discover new music that matches your interests. I think the potential of this app (and the Music Genome Project, that it's based on) is huge, and I can't wait for future versions.

Driving Interface for Music

An experimental driving interface enables a user to control the performance of a composition by driving through a landscape using a game-controller. This system is similar in some respects to my idea for driving through soundscapes of last year.

More iPod Playlist Features I Wish I Had...

Here are some more features that I wish the iPod offered:

Side-Trips From Current Playlist

When I'm playing through one of my playlists and I get to a song I really like, I wish I had the ability to take sidetrips to other related subjects, accessible from the trackwheel or menu button:

• After this song, side-trip to more songs by this artist (plays all songs on iPod by artist, starting with highest-rated, even if not in current playlist; when you end the side-trip it returns you back to the previous point in the playlist you were at when you started it.)
• After this song, side-trip to more albums by this artist (plays all albums on iPod by artist, starting with cumulatively highest-rated, even if not in current playlist; when you end the side-trip it returns you back to the previous point in the playlist you were at when you started it.)
• After this song, side-trip to a different playlist (plays that playlist; when you end the side-trip it returns you back to the previous point in the playlist you were at when you started it.)
• After this song, play related playlist. Since some songs are in multiple playlists, this fact can serve to implicitly relate playlists. (Gives you options to related playlists to segueway to).

Earmarks in Playlists

I wish there was a way to earmark at least one position in every playlist -- which by default would be the last song played during the last session playing the playlist. I have some very long playlists and this would help me so that I don't have to start from the beginning each time; instead I can just pick up playing where I left-off last time. This is also essential for audio books or recorded lecture series, so that you can pick up where you left-off each time you listen.


Playlist Display Features

When viewing a playlist on the iPod you can only see the song names, not the artist or album names. This is because the screen isn't wide enough to display more columns of data. But this could be solved by allowing the user to "toggle" through different columns by clicking one of the buttons. Better yet, how about just having longer lines per row, and letting the user select the order of data fields in each row (separated by commas). And as long as we're on the subject, how about having numbers prefixing each row of a playlist -- would be really helpful in order to quickly find your place in a playlist. All that would be needed is a way to scroll horizontally along the row data in playlist -- perhaps using the trackwheel with a "shift" function, such as by pressing the center button and turning the trackwheel simultaneously. Here are some row data fields that would make playlists much more useable:

- Index number; the number of the present song in the sequence of the playlist
- Song name
- Artist name
- Album name
- Rating
- Number of plays
- Date of last play
- Genre

Senate May Ram Ludicrous Copyright Bill

From the Truly-Ludicrous-Department, the Senate may attempt to ram through a horribly shortsighted and backwards copyright bill. This bill would, among other things, eliminate centuries of fair-use precedent, make skipping commercials on digital recording devices a crime, and would make many uses of p2p networks, digital music players, digital sampling, and other forms of fair-use, crimes. The effect of this bill, if it passes, will simply be to force even more of the US technology and online services industry offshore; it will reduce the size of the US Market for emerging media devices; it will reduce our international competitiveness as a technology-leading nation; it will stunt innovation in next-generation media and online services; and it won't stop anyone from filesharing anyway. What a waste of legislative energy.

Can someone please make a really good, free, open-source, cross-platform tool for making "darknets" for private, secure filesharing with trusted groups of friends? If such a tool were created (and designed to be really secure so that only invited parties can see into it), then that would pretty much end all these silly attempts to prevent filesharing.

The world has changed, but instead of accepting this fact and adapting laws and business models to fit it, the lawyers and legislators are trying to make even more restrictive laws in a futile attempt to turn back the tides of technological and social innovation. It's never worked in the past and it won't work this time either. In the age of information, information business models must evolve. You cannot limit information or control it effectively once it is digitized. Instead, business models should be developed that leverage the fact that "information wants to move freely" -- the fact that digital information tends to spread faster and more widely than printed or analogue data is a blessing, not a curse. The problems of marketing and distribution are no longer obstacles or cost-centers because people are empowered to transmit information they like to others who might like it too.

So where will the money be made? Instead of charging for information licenses content providers should start to focus on making money from the "halo" around each information object. For example, from related services and transactions around the information.

For example, instead of charging a license fee to download and own a musical recording, why not charge a fee for a service that supplies high-quality recommendations for music to listen to that you are likely to like; or a fee for a service that aggregates all the music and video you are likely to like and makes it available to you on-demand from anywhere via high-bandwidth streaming to your devices? Instead of paying per-item, users would simply pay for access to the library, and/or for use of bandwidth.

Superdistribution, which I have written about elsewhere, is another way to make money from filesharing. Contrary to preventing filesharing, it actually encourages it, because sometimes people downstream will end up buying things as a result. For example, suppose you could download and listen to any song for free, for the earlier of a certain number of times played or a certain number of days. After that date you either must pay or lose your license. However, the price you pay gets lower and lower as the number of further people you pass the music on to increases, and the number of people they pass it on to increases, and so on. And it gets even lower if some of them eventually pay to license the song. In other words, if you spend your labor to market a song you could get a discount or get it for free, or even make a profit. Now that is empowering customers to be product evangelists!

Or another example of a business model: why not start simply asking for optional "tips," payable in micropayment denominations from people when they listen to music they like -- people are not averse to supporting bands they really enjoy, just look at how they put money in the cup when listening to a good street musician -- as long as they know the money actually goes at least in part to the bands!

Or for example, instead of forcing TV viewers to watch commercials they don't want to see, why not provide optional commercials that target different types of interests and enable users to opt-in to get them during a TV show, or after it. For example, when watching a sitcom, perhaps a viewer might want to know where to get the clothing, music, furniture, or gadgets featured in the episode. These are just a few ideas for "next business models" that are based on empowering content consumers and allowing information to be unconstrained.

Idea: Driving Through Virtual Soundscapes

This is an idea for a new way to navigate interactively through large audio sets, such as collections of thousands of music tracks, and to automatically or interactively learn and evolve interesting trajectories through such spaces.

Superdistribution is the Solution to Digital Piracy and Marketing -- and a Venture Opportunity too!

Forget about DRM and legal action to prevent piracy -- there is a better way: Superdistribution harnesses basic human drives to save money and make money. It's more powerful than copy protection, more powerful than ethical arguments, and more powerful even than fear of legal prosecution.

A recent article points out that in 2003 around one third of all installed software on PC's was pirated. Probably an even higher percentage of digital music was pirated.

Piracy comes about because people like to get things as cheaply as possible. When calculating the "cost" of getting something, we need to consider not just the pricetag but also the rest of the transaction-cost -- for example the cost in time to locate something, download it, potentially pirate and crack it, etc. To combat piracy, we need to bring the total cost (including all transaction costs) of paying for digital products down to roughly equal or less than than the total cost of pirating those same items. One way to accomplish this is too keep lowering prices of goods. But there are price-points below which sellers lose their margins and thus cannot pass. The problem arises when the total transaction cost of piracy is still less than the lowest commercially-viable total transaction cost to purchase a digital product legitimately. In such a situation piracy flourishes because sellers simply cannot compete by lowering prices any further. So what is a seller to do in that case?

Fortunately there is a solution: Sellers can effectively lower the total transaction cost of purchasing versus pirating by using superdistribution. Superdistribution enables "peer-to-peer" marketing and selling. The concept is simple. I buy a product from Seller X and pay price Y for it. But I can then promote it to my friends and if one of them buys it, I get a commission that reduces my price Y for my copy. If they then further distribute the product to their friends and so on down the line to some number of levels, I get further comissions (fractional by social distance of each purchaser from me). This is sometimes called "network marketing" and is fully legal in the USA so long as no up-front fees are charged to parties before they can become resellers and start earning commissions (at least this was the law last time I checked -- but do your own research to be safe if you are planning to go into business doing this!). In other words, you don't have to buy a product before you can resell it to others and earn commissions -- you can resell it and earn commissions even if you yourself don't own it.

In any case, legal subtleties aside, the concept is what matters here. Superdistribution reduces the buyer's total transaction cost, and even enables them to potentially get their product for free or even make a profit if enough downline sales result from their referrals. The catch is that it only works in cases where the product is easily superdistributable, and the customer has good enough connections to easily find downline buyers. Finally, it only makes sense in cases where the market is not already saturated -- where there are still lots of potential buyers who haven't bought the product yet.

Superdistribution, if done properly, will virtually eliminate piracy. The reason is simple. If you buy a product wouldn't you rather get a lower price or get it free or even make money, if you could? Because superdistributing a product has this potential, but giving it away for free does not, parties who buy products are more likely to then superdistribute them than they are to simply give them away for free to their friends. Now what about the case where a party does not buy a product? Superdistribution wins there too because even non-buyers can act as resellers -- in other words, they can make even greater profits than buyers because they didn't even spend anything. So in short, if a suitable superdistribution mechanism is provided, people will use it to resell digital products they download and/or buy rather than giving them away to others for free. This is really the solution to the music industry's woes -- it is far more effective than any form of digital rights management or legal action. By enabling non-pirates to benefit financially compared to pirates, non-piracy can naturally be brought about for the majority of cases.