Off Topic: My Latest "Lost" Theories

I love the show "Lost". I think it is by far the best show on TV and the only one that I actually look forward to every week. The first couple of seasons of the show I used to try to "figure it out". I gave up continually revising my theories last year, and just relaxed and let it wash over me. "Wow, that was crazy... I guess I'll just see what unwinds next week".

Well, yesterday was a big show. One with a lot of questions answered, and that got me going again on my theories. Below are the most recent thoughts, theories, questions and WTFs that are rattling around in my head since last night...

Parallel Lives

• OK, they are not dead and in purgatory (as I thought in Season 1)... but are living parallel lives, in different time periods, and different "speeds"

• Time moves slower on the island than in "real" life - that's why it takes so long (island time) for the helicopter to make a "40 minute" trip to the freighter

• Also some of the "others" haven't really aged since Ben was a little kid (per flashback)

• Desmond's parallel life is 8 years behind "island time"

• Per Daniel Faraday, people that are exposed to radiation or electromagnetic activity suffer "side effects" (time/space jumping)

• Jack (a doctor who deals with XRay machines and other like-equipment) sees his father

• Hurley sees his "invisible friend" from the looney bin.... was he exposed to radiation/electromagnetic fields at some point? I don't recall anything but who knows....

• The radio engineer on the freighter (works in highly electromagnetic environment). Is this the same "crazy" WW2 radio engineer (in his "real self") that Hurley gets the "numbers" from in the looney bin????

• Desmond was in the electromagnetic "blast" when the hatch blew up (and could then see the future regarding Charlie's pending demise)

• Daniel Faraday did all of those radioactive tests on the mouse. Remember when Faraday was shown watching the story of the plane crash and he starts crying? Someone asks "why are you crying?" and he doesn't know.... it's because he can almost make the connection to his parallel life on the island (and whatever ends up happening there)

• Rousseau's crew members were studying the electromagnetic properties of the island (?) and "went crazy" and she killed them all. Why not Rousseau herself? Well, she was pregnant so it would make sense that she stayed away from any radioactive/electromagnetic dangers

• By the way, Locke was in that hatch blast too.... so look for him to be next.
  

• Remember in season 1 or 2 when Desmond met Jack at the stadium (in Jack's flashback before he was on the island) and Desmond asked "do we know each other"? That's because Desmond can kind of remember from his parallel life in the future (on the island)

• Kids can't be conceived on the island because every life has to have a parallel life in the real-world (do the writers have a "life starts at conception" agenda?)

• Widmore (Penny's dad) learns about the secrets of the island from the journal of the First Mate of the Black Rock (he bought it at the auction) - he sends Desmond there on the race to see if it's true/works. How did the First Mate (or at least his journal full of secrets) make it off the island?

• Hmmm... could some of the "slow aging" others mentioned above actually have been the crew on the Black Rock???
  

Master of His Domain

• Ben knows how to control the mental jumping between the parallel lives/time - as well as physically leave - this is why the scientist team is looking for him... they want to learn how he does it. But, without his submarine is he now physically stuck on the island??

• Ben can also control other people's jumping between the parallel worlds... that's how he got Locke to see his dad locked in the closet

• Ben sends Sayid and other's into the parallel world (past) to do his bidding. Are Sayid and the others of Oceanic 6 are actually off the island, or he has just "mentally" sent them there (either by their choice or negotiation to keep the others safe in their alternative realities)?

• Jack and Kate had to "memorize" their (fake story) of how they escaped the island - the one Jack spouted out at Kate's trial. But how were their "real" bodies saved/recovered considering the reports were that *all* of the victims where found at the crash site????
  

My Brain Hurts

Now, here is the thing that currently has my head spinning the most...

• Since time runs slower on the island (the island is currently 8 years ahead of "real life" per Desmond) - at some point "real life" will pass "island time" and the parallel lives will move from being in the past to being in the future!

Then what happens?!!!

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

I realize I have been pretty sparse with my posts lately. I blame that on a couple of things...

1.) I have been using Twitter to more quickly (and granularly) express what I am thinking/doing.

2.) I've been very busy with work. We are starting to get close to with a new product, and that has been keeping me more than occupied. But, once we get closer I will probably get to the point where I won't shut up about it.

That being said, I'll be at the Digital Music Forum East conference tomorrow/Wednesday in New York. Let me know if any of you guys are going.

Imeem Acquires Snocap

More moves by Imeem.... they are piecing together an interesting puzzle over there. I'm not sure how many people come with the Snocap acquisition, or how this will be integrated with both Imeem and Anywhere.fm (who they acquired a few weeks ago).

Imeem Acquires Snocap: "Digital music wholesaler Snocap, long searching for a buyer, is being acquired by music streaming site Imeem. The price will likely not be disclosed."

Song of the Day: "I Just Want The Girl In The Blue Dress To Keep On Dancing" by Mike Doughty

Man, I love Mike Doughty. Something about his music that just gets me bouncing. Ever since his Soul Coughing days I've been a big fan and after Doughty's Haughty Melodic album a couple of years ago I've been jonesing for what's next.

Well, the wait is just about over. The new album, Golden Delicious, comes out next week, and here is my new favorite song of the moment....

I Just Want The Girl In The Blue Dress To Keep On Dancing by Mike Doughty

Danger, Danger, Will Gates

News today that Microsoft has just bought Danger (creator of the Sidekick phone/PDA). I've never owned a Sidekick (apparently it is the only device I have not owned a version of) - but I know that there was a fairly large group of people that are/were big fans. I don't see them around as much as I used to though... I'm not sure if maybe I'm not the target demographic or whether their sales have tailed off due to increased competition.

Either way, it was Microsoft's Xbox/Zune/Windows Mobile group that drove this acquisition.... so you've got to figure this is the first step in a rush-to-market iPhone competitor. Besides the fact that it just seems like another reactionary "how do we keep up with the Joneses" move, it also once again directly pits Microsoft against their licensees. This is far from the first time they have done this... most recently, this was the shift taken by the same group when they realized that their PlaysForSure/Windows Media Player storefront strategy wasn't working. When none of their PlaysForSure partners (CinemaNow, Napster, Rhapsody, FYE, AOL MusicNow, etc.) could mount a truly competitive offering against Apple, they (MS) went back to the trenches and said.... "ok, let's do what Apple has done and see if we can beat them at their own game".

In mobile phones, the tack was to license Windows Mobile to be the de facto standard of mobile device operating systems. The good news... they managed to kill Palm. The bad news.... Apple and Nokia not so much. So, what about a Zune-phone? I'm skeptical, but I'll be interested to see how it unfolds.

Oh yeah, there is actually another device that I just thought of that I have never owned.... a Zune.

Google Doing Music Search... In China

This market gets more interesting every day...

Google planning China online music tie-up: report | Technology | Internet | Reuters: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc is planning to boost its presence in China by tying up with a Chinese online music company to provide free music downloads, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday."

If this works in China, how long before they cut the same deals in the US? Last May I waxed poetic about what Google could/should do in the music space. Are they dipping their toes in the Chinese water?

Last.fm's Subscription Details (or just speculation?)

Silicon Alley Insider says they have an inside tip on details of Last.fm's upcoming subscription tiers...

Last.fm's Subscription Service: Bite-sized And Super-Sized? - Silicon Alley Insider:

• "A mini-subscription, priced at $4 a month. This would let users stream more music than they can for free -- Last.fm's current deal limits users to 3 plays per song, per month -- but would be capped at some number. We've heard 100 songs a month, but that seems too tiny to entice many users.
• An all-you-can-eat, unlimited subscription, priced at $10 a month."

SAI closes saying they are skeptical of the validity of these rumors... what do you guys think?

To me it says Rhapsody better get going and (re)introduce some of the community features that they briefly showed up last year but have subsequently disappeared.

FoxyTunes/Yahoo Deal Consumated

Congrats to Alex and the gang at FoxyTunes (and to Lucas et al at Yahoo)...

FoxyTunes Blog: "The FoxyTunes team will become a part of Yahoo! Music and will continue working on FoxyTunes, adding many great things to our products - you’ll see support for additional media players, integration with many additional music sites and services and much more! Our product roadmap and wishlist are quite long and very exciting, and being a part of Yahoo! will really allow us to make many of the things we’ve been planning a reality. Most importantly, Yahoo! are as committed as we are to preserving the Open spirit of FoxyTunes and embracing all the great music products and services out there."

Let's hope Microsoft doesn't screw the whole thing up....

Rhapsody Snags Yahoo Music Subscribers Before Microsoft

Further consolidation in the music market....

Yahoo selling music service to Rhapsody America - USATODAY.com: "Yahoo is selling its digital music subscription service to Rhapsody America — a partnership of Real Networks and MTV Networks — as it revamps its music strategy.

Yahoo Music will continue to offer music videos, Internet radio and music downloads. But customers of its monthly Yahoo Music Unlimited service will be migrated to Rhapsody. No firm timetable has been set. Yahoo, which expects the deal to close by the middle of year, did not disclose terms."

Now all that is left if for Rhapsody to buy Napster, and the subscription market has been weened down to Rhapsody vs. The World (save Last.fm's upcoming streaming subscription service).

This story talks about Yahoo keeping their Music destination (music.yahoo.com) and ... I definitely believe the former, but I still think the latter could be up on the blocks at some point.

I think this is a good play for Rhapsody, and sooner or later people *will* understand the value of subscription. When the do, they'll be the only game in town...

MicroHoo - Part 2

Yeah, this would be huge from the search and advertising perspective... but what about from the music angle?

MediaPost Publications - Microsoft/Yahoo Would Dominate Online Display, Rival Google In Search - 02/01/2008: "IN A DEAL THAT WOULD consolidate the Internet's No. 1 destination, Yahoo, and its fifth largest, MSN, Microsoft this morning made a bid to acquire Yahoo for a record-setting $44.6 billion. The deal, if completed, would mark the largest yet in the ongoing consolidation among the Internet's big bodied players, and would once again reset the playing field for online advertising industry. Regulatory considerations aside, the deal would seem to be a good 'take out' offer to Yahoo's shareholders. At $31 per share, Microsoft's bid represents a 62% premium over Yahoo's current stock value. Based on Thursday's closing price of $19.18 a share, Yahoo's market capitalization was $25.63 billion, according to Yahoo Finance."

I talked a bit about this last May when rumors first surfaced that a deal like this could be in the works. How would Yahoo's evolving music strategy fit with Microsoft's Zune/Xbox tact tactics?

Anywhere.FM Acquired by Imeem

I just got this in my inbox this morning...

We are very excited to announce that Anywhere.FM has been acquired by imeem (http://www.imeem.com), the leading social media network.

Since our launch last August, Anywhere.FM has been dedicated to making it easy to upload, play, and share your music wherever you go. We have listened to our users and worked hard to provide them with the best music playback experience available on the Internet. The millions of tracks that our users have uploaded to Anywhere.FM over the last 6 months prove to us that we have been successful in achieving this goal.

Today's announcement broadens the scope of Anywhere.FM's ambitions, bringing us together with imeem, a social networking site with a media-centric approach to connecting consumers. With imeem, users can enjoy, recommend and discover not only music, but film, video, TV programming and art, and connect with people who share similar tastes.

Anywhere.FM will continue to exist as a standalone site for our users to enjoy. At the same time, we will bring many of the innovations of Anywhere.FM to the imeem community as well as the broader internet community in the near future. We'll also keep on innovating on the Anywhere.FM website. We have some interesting ideas on how to best leverage imeem's audience and media content to further enrich the Anywhere.FM experience.

We hope you are as excited as we are about this acquisition. We have lots in store for you - we'll be sure to keep you posted in the coming months as we unveil our exciting plans.

Feel free to share your ideas and feedback with us at feedback@anywhere.fm.

Sincerely,

Anson, Lux, and Sachin
The Anywhere.FM Team

http://www.anywhere.fm

I haven't thought much about this yet, but obviously Imeem is looking to simplify the process by which people upload and share their content.

Amazon's Kindle

I've never paid much attention to the talk of Amazon's Kindle eBook device, but I came across it today on their site and finally learned more about it.



I'm not much of a book reader myself, so I don't envision getting one for myself (although it could be a good gift for my wife). Actually, the thing I find most interesting about it is Amazon's "Whispernet" delivery network. It's build on top of Sprint's EVDO network, but I'm not sure what is different about it from what Sprint already has.

Of course, my first question is.... I wonder if they are planning on utilizing it to deliver music and movies to another Kindle-like device they may have in the works?

Seeqpod Next Target for the Major's Legal Machine?

Looks like WMG (or their legal department at least) is now targeting Seeqpod. Who wants to bet the next announcement we see is that Seeqpod is moving to an ad rev-share model with the major labels.

Warner Music Lawyers Roll Again, Seeqpod Latest Target — Digital Music News: "Warner Music Lawyers Roll Again, Seeqpod Latest Target

Warner Music Group is now directing its legal guns at Seeqpod (seeqpod.com), a media-focused search service. The Seeqpod engine resembles larger and more established players like Google, though it focuses on playable media results. That includes a heavy amount of music, and Seeqpod allows users to access and stream millions of songs on-demand through an integrated player.

That eventually grabbed the attention of Warner, which first filed against the engine last week. The label claims that Seeqpod is illegally allowing access to its music by accessing servers worldwide. But Seeqpod notes that it hosts none of the content in question, and therefore enjoys protection under Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Elsewhere, Google also indexes web-hosted MP3s, and search engines represent a growing method for music acquisition."

It was my understanding that search engines were protected (per the story above), but for a little company like Seeqpod it's probably a lot less painful to cut a deal than fight. Thoughts?

Last.fm Rolls Out Freeplays and Subscription

And another shoe drops...

Last.fm – the Blog · Free the Music: "As of today, you can play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Last.fm website.

Something we’ve wanted for years—for people who visit Last.fm to be able to play any track for free—is now possible. With the support of the folks behind EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner—and the artists they work with—plus thousands of independent artists and labels, we’ve made the biggest legal collection of music available to play online for free, the way we believe it should be.

Full-length tracks are now available in the US, UK, and Germany, and we’re hard at work broadening our coverage into other countries. During this initial public beta period, each track can be played up to 3 times for free before a notice appears telling you about our upcoming subscription service. The soon-to-be announced subscription service will give you unlimited plays and some other useful things. We’re also working on bringing full-length tracks to the desktop client and beyond."

What's unclear is whether their subscription service will be streaming only or have some download component. My guess is the former - unlimited on-demand streaming - with continued affiliate relationships with Amazon for iPod compatible downloads.

Now the big question is, just how much advertising are they going to have to put in front of everyone to cover the costs of the on-demand licenses with the labels? I've done some modeling of this in the past, and it's most likely going to need to include some piece of video advertising (see prior post about Truveo/AOL deal). And just how much will consumer put up with before they move on to the next ad-free, business model-free, offering?

Radio Adios

There is lots of talk about Yahoo's upcoming layoffs with many predicting that their Yahoo Music Unlimited subscription service going the way of the Dodo (perhaps selling off their subscriber base to Rhapsody). I agree with this speculation, particularly in light of their new strategy and their focus on "context" over "content". The other thing I think that may get hit in the downsizing is their radio product, LAUNCHcast.

Given the strategic shift taking place over there (particularly with their music products), as well as the ongoing SoundExchange negotiation debacle, I think they will cut-and-run on radio too. Radio is generally a loss-leader for the big portals and with the (unknown) future royalty rates the "loss" is going to get too much to stomach for most.

On a related note, look for AOL to dump their AOL Radio product as well (along with XM partnership) and replace it with a third party player/product. Probably from a larger terrestrial radio network... most likely related to the recent video advertising deal announced between CBS (owner of Last.fm) and Truveo (part of AOL). This would get AOL out of a money-losing content endeavor and more focused on being a cross-platform advertising network. Great for everyone. Well, except the consumers....

Off Topic: Funny Video - AOL's New Extra Senior Vice President for Special Excellence

I'm a big fan of 30 Rock, and when some of my friends still at AOL mentioned that they got Alec Baldwin to be in a little promotional skit for the company I went to check it out.

I'm not sure it is as funny to people who haven't been part of that company's environment (or catch some of the people references), but I got a kick out of it. And my friend Ivy scored a speaking part with Alec... nice! :-)

It looks like (CEO) Randy Falco's NBC connections finally paid off for something...

Rhapsody's 50 Free Plays

Rhapsody has had a long established trial model where you get 25 free plays (streaming only) a month just by registering at their site.

Well, Rhapsody also introduced a Facebook widget the extends that experience into the popular social network (with whom my love affair is starting to fade... but that's another story). What I noticed today, is that the two accounts have no knowledge of each other. I used up about 15 of my 25 free plays this month at Rhapsody.com today checking out the soon-to-be-released Cat Power album "Jukebox" and some tracks from the critically-acclaim Athens, GA band The Whigs.

I then got a song sent to me in Facebook from their application, clicked play and noticed it said that I had 24 free plays left. Nice, without doing any work I just doubled the number of free plays I get a month. ;-)


Now you can use up a couple of your 50 too.....

Like A Vibration - The Whigs

Metal Heart - Cat Power


By the way Rhapsody, your "RhapLink Generator" (used to generate the links above) is a bit of a mess. It spit out bad HTML that I had to tweak by hand to work (as well as manually adding the artist name to the link)....

Yahoo to Snare Foxytunes?

Given what Yahoo has shown what they are up to with their new plans around music and their new web layer, this actually doesn't come as a surprise to me.

Yahoo May Be Looking To Buy Israel’s FoxyTunes: "Rumors popped up here in Silicon Valley that Yahoo is in negotiations to buy Israel-based FoxyTunes."

I mentioned in my previous post about Yahoo's new strategy reminded me a lot of Foxytunes' approach. Perhaps I was more right than I knew at the time...

For Those About To Rock Club, We Salute You

Great story in the Washington Post this past Sunday about 4 guys (very much like me) that have sworn to re-invent the notion of the "book club" for those of us that would rather go check out a local concert...

For Those About To Rock Club, We Salute You - washingtonpost.com: "Getting four ultra-busy guys together every week doesn't happen easily. After his initial plea for regular rock-and-roll meet-ups was welcomed with open arms, Andelman fleshed out his plan, suggesting that each week, one member would research and select a band. But the concept that sounded great in an e-mail could very well have failed. (How often do people plan to get together regularly, only to meet sporadically, if at all?)"

The weeks rolled by and the guys went out, wrote reviews and went out again. Amazingly, the whole thing worked. The secret to Rock Club's success? 'We see a wide range of bands,' says Fintel, a consultant. 'And we've gone to all kinds of venues: the Black Cat, 9:30 club, Rock and Roll Hotel, Velvet Lounge, Verizon Center, DAR, Wonderland. And we even braved a snowstorm to see [New York band] the Mooney Suzuki.'"

Amusingly enough, it turns out that one of the guys (follow the link in the blockquote above to read the whole story) actually has a kid in the same class as one of my music-loving buddies. So, sure enough we are now trying to figure out how we get our asses off the couch and out to more shows. I'm not going to fool myself into thinking I'd be up for this once a week, but maybe once a quarter to start.... if it goes well (and as the kids get older) maybe we can crank it up to once a month.

Here are some tips for setting up your own Rock Club, and don't forget the "rules"...

"The Rules of Rock Club were drafted and ratified: Shows were to cost no more than $20; the person who picked a concert would write a review on the blog; no wives or girlfriends allowed."

Who's in?! :-)

Note to eMusic... Round Up

I, like most eMusic "subscribers", anxiously await the date our monthly download credits refresh so we can scoop up the tracks and albums that we've bookmarked over the previous month. I actually never knew my exact date of refresh, although I knew it was sometime around the 2nd week of the month. Well, after I realized (or were told by a few people) that I had sort of slept on the Spoon and Of Montreal albums last year (made *lots* of people's top 10 lists, but for some reason I never got around to listening to them) - I decided I would scoop them both up on eMusic.

So, on January 9th I checked my refresh date and luckily it said my monthly refresh was scheduled to happen on on January 10th. Nice, so I went to bed with the intention that I'd grab them first thing in the morning. But, to my dismay, when I woke up it still said I had 0 credits. I checked back a couple hours later... 0 credits. Another couple of hours later.... 0 credits. Rechecked my refresh date... yep, it was the right day... Jan. 10. There should have been 30 credits in my account, but still 0.

By this time I was really annoyed. I contacted eMusic's customer service to be told that my credits would refresh "at some point throughout the day". Would it kill you to give me the benefit of a a half a day to give me a better experience? Hell, I'd even prefer to give up 12 hours and you can round up.... tell me my account refreshes on the 11th (instead of the 10th) and I would have been a much happier customer. Whatever happened to underpromise and overdeliver?

And while you are at it... can you add a "remember me" checkbox on the login so I don't have to re-enter my credentials every time I want to browse the catalog?

Or perhaps you are just getting back at me for my mention of you in my 2008 predictions?