2008 Digital Media/Music Predictions

I have been remiss in making my 2008 Digital Media/Music Predictions this year. Instead of putting it off until I could formulate some well-thought predictions, I figured I'd take the more lax approach this year and go stream-of-consciousness (and slightly tongue-in-cheek).

As a reference, here are my 2007 Predictions. Now, on to 2008!

• Apple launches a subscription music service (of one form or another). Dark Horse/Long Shot but I'm putting it out there.

• Rhapsody & Napster... "there can be only one!". Napster continues to run out of cash and sells subscriber base off to Rhapsody.

• Amazon siphons off all of eMusic's userbase - eMusic goes up for sale. Potentially to a major label - or a consortium of them?

• The Beatles *finally* make their digital debut - on iTunes. Apple sells millions virtually overnight. That's my "lock of the week".

• AmazonMP3's affiliate program takes off as their catalog of DRMless MP3's from all 4 major labels grow - virtually every site with music content moves to Amazon as primary affiliate partner (and away from iTunes) due to better terms from Amazon.

• Open Standards for music and taste portability finally start to make inroads (see www.openmediaweb.org).

• SoundExchange becomes successful in drastically increasing royalty rates for online radio (retroactively) - they put massive number of broadcasters our of business (and forcing companies like Pandora to change their product and/or business model or shut there doors), see a proliferation of "gray" services that don't pay royalties directly, and collect a fraction of royalty payments then they did before they raise the rates.

• Slacker is acquired - by Microsoft or Motorola. Their hardware/satellite delivery platform is integrated into a more holistic product line.
  

• The major labels (while tentatively supporting DRMless MP3s) will still screw around and not giving users what they want - by forcing users to jump through additional hoops to get the MP3 versions. I cheated on this one since Sony BMG just tipped their hand on this "plan".

• While 2007 saw explosion of new "media & music 2.0" companies hit the market, 2008 will be the year of the great shakeout. Smaller existing "music 2.0" companies are acquired - funding gets tougher to come by for new ones.

• AOL completes their "transformation" to become an ad network - they try to sell off their audience/portal business at bargain basement prices. There are no takers. On a related note, they sell off the AIM business to Facebook. What the hell, every once in a while you have to close your eyes and throw a dart.
  

I'm not going to make predictions on the work that I'm doing (it wouldn't be so much a prediction as a breach of confidentiality) but look for some very cool things out of MyStrands in 2008 too. :-)

What do you guys think? Anything to add? Anything that jumps out as you as "are you smoking crack?!".

AIM Tunes

A few months ago I told you guy about the Buddy Tunes plugin for AIM. This basically made people's iTunes libraries appear like they are on your local network - thereby enabling users to stream music from any of their friends' machines. Since then, Simplify Media has essentially launched a productized version of this (albeit not integrated into AIM). The other approach that was being worked on at AOL before I left is now public in the AIM 6.5 release. It is called "AIM Tunes" and it is a similar concept but ditches the deep iTunes integration for a more player-agnostic approach.

Basically, everyone on your Buddy List (that has the plug-in installed) appears on your AIM Tunes dashboard (in your browser). From there, you can browse their libraries and either stream them directly from your buddy's machines via an embedded flash player - or if you want - to "pop them out" and have your default media player handle them.


You can also create a playlist of songs from all across your network - although it is currently only a single/temporary playlist.

All-in-all, it is pretty slick. It still could benefit from deeper integration into the AIM client (see who is listening to my stuff and better facilitate communication about what's being shared), Mac support, an aggregated "buddy library" view (lets me search seamlessly across my entire network), multiple playlist support, publishing, etc. But, if you use AIM I recommend giving it a whirl. I may end up just running on a separate AIM instance on my home machine (under a separate screen name) and use it to stream to myself. Then again, there are a ton of other options there... Winamp Remote (also an AOL offering), Streampad (although Dan now works for AOL too), and many others.

I'd be interested to know what you guys think of it.

Me, Myself & iPhone

Yeah, I broke down and got an iPhone. There are a couple of minor things that are a bit annoying - but that is to be expected. And yes... as everyone else has already reported, I too, would love it if it used the 3G network and that it supported Flash content. But in short I think it's great. I wasn't going to get one - I was going to sit on the fence until the second generation then decide. I didn't want to be the Apple fanboy that thinks any/everything that comes out of Cupertino is the best thing ever created. I even posted that I hoped the iPhone would be a total piece of crap and that it would fail. But alas... it is not. When I went back and looked at my old posts about what I have always wanted in the ultimate phone (wifi, MP3, video, large storage capacity, *relatively* fast data network) - I realized that I was in denial that the iPhone met all of these criteria. The one it didn't meet was that It doesn't support subscription music services - but see my post from yesterday as to why this criteria no mattered for me. But in lieu of support for Windows Media DRM, it even threw a spectacular UI and a qwerty keyboard that works pretty well even though it is virtual. Not as good as my old Blackberry's hardware keyboard but it works good enough for me.

As *many* people have posted about the overall usability and UI - I will share a personal experience that I think is very illuminating. If you hand the iPhone to an adult (particularly someone from my parent's generation) - the initial response is "wow"! This is because they have been trained and beaten down over years that technology (particularly cutting-edge tech) shouldn't be this easy.

On the flipside, when I handed the iPhone to my 3 year old daughter for the first time I got *no* reaction. That's because she didn't know any better - to her it worked like it was supposed to... completely intuitive.

So, after a few weeks with it - I've compiled the list of apps and websites that I have found to be the most indispensable for you other iPhoney's.

1. Handbrake - rip a DVD then transfer it to your iPhone. Note: In Handbrake select the iPod settings but make sure that the output size is no larger than 640x480 (I had to go in and manually change this one parameter of the iPod setting). If you don't do that then the file won't sync.
2. iPhone Remote (aka Telekinesis) - Not only can you use your iPhone as a remote control for you Mac (opening applications, etc.) but you can also stream content off of your Mac to your iPhone (music, videos, snapshots from your webcam). Works great over my LAN, but not sure if/how it will work outside the house since I don't have a static IP address. Still playing with it, but has *lots* of potential. Another option is Signal, but it does less and costs more ($29 vs. free).
   
3. Facebook Mobile - If you love Facebook, then the iPhone optimized version of the site is a must-bookmark.
4. Seeqpod for iPhone - MP3 search engine optimized for iPhone. Search for a free range MP3, and stream directly to your phone. Obviously better to try when on WiFi. Another great option is Grabb.it's iPhone interface.
   
5. TinyBuddy IM - A web-based AIM application (built by folks at AOL) using the "standard" iPhone UI. The other option is Meebo which also works well.
6. Netvibes - I actually just went through the pain of migrating all of my feeds from Pageflakes to Netvibes just so I could get the same content on my iPhone. It takes a long time to load over EDGE, but when on WiFi it works very well.

What are you guys using?



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Now playing: Weezer & Soul Coughing - American Girl
via FoxyTunes

AIM Buddy Tunes Plug-In

It's been a quiet week or so, and my apologies. But, I'm back and have something exceedingly cool to share with you guys. Some of the AIM client guys are quietly cranking out some new media sharing plug-ins. Here is one of the first for you to enjoy..

AOL Greenhouse Product Info for AIM Buddy Tunes: "Stream your iTunes music library to your buddies with AIM Buddy Tunes. This plugin for AIM 6 extends iTunes network streaming to your friends on your buddy list, so they can hear what great musical taste you have. Browse songs and playlists and just click play to listen."

I only use iTunes on my Mac (which this plug-in doesn't work for), but I know most of the rest of the world uses iTunes on their Windows machines. To get started make sure you turn on your sharing preference in iTunes. You can do that via the Edit menu in iTunes and choosing Preferences. Select the Sharing tab and make sure "Look for Shared Music" and "Share my library on my local network" are both checked. Download the plugin and run AIM 6.1 or AIM Lite. In the shared list you will see other buddies music libraries who have the plugin installed.

Note: Any Fairplay (DRM) protected content cannot be played unless the remote machine is authorized.

If you like it, hop on over to the developer's blog and let him know what you think.

Foxytunes Planet (Beta)

I like Foxytunes. It is basically a little universal player shell - it embeds controls for one of virtually any media player client of your choice (Winamp, WMP, iTunes, Rhapsody, Yahoo Music Engine, etc.) into your browser. It started off as a pure Firefox extension (hence the name), but the have recently introduced a version for IE too.

It's nice in that it gives you quick access to your controls from the application most people have open all day... their browser. The Foxytunes guys then started pulling together some cool mashups based on what you are listening too (one click to Lyrics Search, Amazon, and others).

Well, yesterday I got invited into the beta for Foxytunes Planet - which basically pulls all of this information into a single destination - and positions itself as a music search platform.

You search for an artist, and you get a page that surfaces:

• Photos from Flickr


• Videos from YouTube


• Artist Radio from Pandora


• Similar Artist and Fan Radio from Last.fm


• Related Artist info from Last.fm


• MP3s as aggregated by The Hype Machine


• Albums from Amazon


• Search Results from Google


• Catalog on Rhapsody.com

Optionally, you can add other widgets to each Artist page including

• iTunes Links


• Yahoo Image & Music Links


• eMusic Links

So, while you are listening to a song, you click the "Planet" icon in the Foxytunes browser tool bar and it will spawn a window with all of this info about the artist you are listening to.

In that way, it is similar to Sleevenotez, but unlike that application - it doesn't suffer the lag time introduced by waiting on a data roundtrip to/from Last.fm's servers. Give it a shot and let me know what you guys think.

Note to Foxytunes guys: Any way to create an AIM plug-in and provide the controls in my instant messaging client? Unlike my browser, my Buddy List is one of my few applications that are actually maximized all day long.

More on All Crazy Style - Show Alerts

I posted a few days ago about the mashup of Last.fm and Upcoming.org, called AllCrazyStyle. As mentioned in that post, I then took the resulting feed and input it into my AOL Alerts so that when a band that I like was playing in my area, I would get an alert via IM, Email and/or SMS. Well, I just got my first one...



If I still went to a lot of shows (ah... the good ole days), this would be an indespensible tool. If I didn't have this set up, I'm guessing that I would have never known about this show until it was too late. There is another service called Track50 that does similar alerts, but it requires you to manually enter the bands you are interested in - something that changes far too frequently for me to make that service useful (and it continually thinks I'm in New York City... which I'm not).

Now, if I could only motivate myself to start going to shows again....

Mugshot.org: Another Personal Feed Aggregator

Check out Mugshot (from the folks at Red Hat). It is very similar in function to what the AIM folks are doing with AIM Buddy Updates (and others like Suprglu). It's got a nice interface, is easy to use, and for us music freaks - it even includes some nice embeddable "now playing" widgets (pulling from Audioscrobbler/Last.fm). I had some trouble getting the live widget to work, so here's a screenshot of one of the many themes...

Mashapalooza - All Crazy Style

Ah, the beauty of the open web... Last.fm has benefited as much as anyone in the proliferation of sites that leverage their APIs. Yesterday I talked about Last.tv, and today I added another one to my sidebar. AllCrazyStyle.com is simple, but useful for live music fans. It looks at who you listen to (from Last.fm) and which of those artists are playing in your area (from Upcoming.org) and returns a feed of matches. Yeah, Last.fm has added events recently too, but it doesn't yet appear to be exposed as a feed. So until that time, AllCrazyStyle seems to fit my bill.

I've then taken that feed an added it to my AOL Alerts - now any change to the feed will send an alert to my both via AIM and SMS.

More on Buddy Feed/Updates

I was showing some people the other day how you can leverage some of the new features of AIM 6.0, in conjuction with a bunch of other personal feeds, to do some cool things. So, I figured I'm memorialize it so other could do the same.

Below, I'm showing what the Buddy Updates feature does (see post below). Basically, users enter all of their personal feeds into their Buddy Update Settings. All of the feeds then get aggreatated and spliced. AIM goes out an polls these feeds every 30 minutes or so. If something new has been added, it lights up the "i" icon next to your name as it appears on the buddy list.

When you friends click on that icon, it launches the Buddy Profile window (below) - that displays all of the recent updates.

Now, the coolest part for music lovers is bringing in the combination of my Last.fm "Just Played" feed and leveraging the AIM Gadgets plug-in bundle. The most useful of which is the "myPlaylist" plug-in - which will screen scrape the Now Playing information out of iTunes and/or Winamp and display it in your Buddy Profile window. So, the AIM plug-in handles what you are listening to in real-time, and the Last.fm feed provides a historical reference of what I listened to prior (since it doesn't Last.fm's feed isn't updated until the song is over).

Try it out. Personally, I think it is one of the best features of the new AIM client.

Another option is Sigamp. They have plug-ins for many popular media players - and they basically do something similar to the "myPlaylist" plug-in. They pull now playing info, then feed it into an image that can be easily be put into email signatures, blogs, etc.



A nice touch is that Sigamp links this metadata back to Rhapsody. So if you want to listen to what I'm listening to, just click it. Then leverage Rhapsody's 25 free tracks/month feature to see what you think.

My problem with Sigamp is that they don't have an image that will fit into my sidebar, and they charge a monthly fee for any other/better image design. Personally, I'd rather have a small text ad as an option.

I love having music related information in my email signature. But I opt to burn a feed of my Top Artists (I get mine from Music Now, but you could get them from Last.fm, MyStrands or a host of others) with FeedBurner, then use their "Headline Animator" to create an animated GIF of that feed. Whenever you get an email from me, you will see a scrolling image of my most listened to artists of late.



I didn't mean for this to be such a novel, but hopefully some of you will find it interesting and useful. Any other ideas? I'd love to hear them.

GigaOM » Price Hikes For Yahoo Music

GigaOM » Price Hikes For Yahoo Music: "On November 14, 2006, the cost of a new Yahoo! Music Unlimited subscription will increase from $6.99 to $8.99 per month. Despite this price increase, Yahoo! Music Unlimited will still offer the lowest price of any major subscription music service — now with a catalog of more than 2 million songs!"

Hmmm... Yahoo Music is struggling and Napster is rumored to be up for sale. The winds of change....

Pop-Up Test

Click here to listen to a good Stereophonics tune.

iDon't

iDon't

Join the anti-ipod revolution! I'm not sure how well Sansa's guerilla marketing tactic will work, but I applaude the effort and the wish them the best. Don't get me wrong... I own an iPod. But found that it was like owning a CD player that would only play new CD's purchased from Circuit City (and I often like to shop at Best Buy too). So, now I have a nice portable hard-drive that I use to carry large files and backup data on.

New Playlist Alerts via AIM!

Now that I've got Immedi.at working, let the fun begin. Want to get an IM whenever I create a new playlist? Click here!

Perhaps more interesting is the mash-up I created between Music Now, Wists and Immedi.at, where you can subscribe to my album recommendations (see the sidebar to see what they are). Conceptually, every time I add an album recommendation, you would get an AIM with a link to the album within the Music Now catalog. To subscribe to this one, click here.

So far, the IMs seem to take there time getting to you, but I'm guessing the folks at Immedi.at are getting slammed right now with traffic.

immedi.at: It's like RSS crack!

I haven't gotten this to work yet, but once I do you can bet I will talk more about it. The concept is... subscribe to be notified via AIM whenever a feed is updated and/or a post is made to someones blog. This tied into some of the music service feeds that I use could be REALLY powerful. Stay tuned, I'll keep trying.

UPDATE: I've now got it working... click here to try it out.

AIM Presence

AIM Presence: "Now, visitors to your Web site can see when you are online with AIM through this simple cut-and-paste code. AIM Presence uses the familiar Running Man icon to let your visitors easily see when others are online and available to chat in real time. "

Just updated my blog to support this "official" API. Before it was kind of a hack....

AIM Fight!

AIM Fight!

Not necessarily useful for much, but still kind of fun in a time-wasting sort of way. Interesting to see just how networked you are in the AIM world....

Yahoo MusicMatch on Media Center

Just when I was thinking that Yahoo was moving everyone away from their MusicMatch products (which they paid upwards of $160 million for), they go and launch a Radio and Music service branded with the old moniker within Media Center's "Online Spotlight". In addition to the fact that it requires you to install yet another media player (MusicMatch) on top of all the others, it had the nerve to crash my machine while doing it.

While a solid radio offering is a welcome addition to MCE, this seems to be a little bit of a contrivance.. Yahoo is pushing you to their new Yahoo Music Unlimited / Yahoo Radio (aka Launch) on your 2' PC UI, but a separate UI and infrastructure when you want to manage your music from the comfort of your sofa. That's just odd.

I work in this industry, and the current state of the market and messaging is confusing enough to me. How is the average Joe Schmo supposed to make heads or tails of which service to use on which device?!

Yahoo Music - First Look (UPDATED)

UPDATED: Yahoo and/or MusicNet obviously realized their false start this morning and have subsequently fixed many of the issues that I reported.

Conceptually, I like where they are *trying* to go. I've made no secret of my belief that community, IM integration and passive recommendations/playlisting as being the key to creating a compelling and differentiated music service. Yahoo seems to have all the pieces to make it work, particularly with the pending Yahoo! 360 service (see previous posts). But as of now, my list of issues with the service is that it simply doesn't work (yet):

* Requires a 30+MB client download that seems to effectively be just a skinned version of Windows Media Player.

* Requires a reboot after installation... I hate that.

* While I like that fact that it will import (and play) content downloaded from other subscription services (e.g. Napster to Go), there is no visual indication to help identify which content was downloaded from which service. This will be a user migration issue for those coming from Napster or Rhapsody since I don't believe the licenses for those files will get renewed once they stop the competitive subscription. Update: I take it back, they do have a field that identifies "subscription" versus "imported" music.

* Syncing doesn't work with my Audiovox SMT5600 ("Plays for Sure" smartphone) with any content that I downloaded from Yahoo. Interestingly, the YME (Yahoo Music Engine) software will transfer content that I downloaded with the Napster to Go service. Update: Fixed.

* Streaming (either from Yahoo or from my buddies' playlists) does not work. Update: Streaming seems to be working now.

* Playlist creation doesn't seem to be supported yet. Update: Now seems to be working.

* Downloading/playing content worked fine for me although others I know have reported license acquisition errors when trying to do so.

* I did have the application freeze on me a couple of times that required a forced application close to escape from.

The funny (or sad) thing is that most of these issues seem to be with their Musicnet backend system. As I dig further into it I will post again...

Yahoo strikes at Apple's core / Internet giant will offer bargain online music subscriptions, 79-cent downloads

Yahoo strikes at Apple's core / Internet giant will offer bargain online music subscriptions, 79-cent downloads - Also, this is THE front page story of the San Francisco Chronicle today. While Rhapsody reintroduction seemed to get a collective yawn, all of the editorial I've seen today say that Yahoo is now instantly the biggest threat to Apple. Interestingly enough the Chronicle article seems to carefully state Yahoo's "introductory" subscription fee of $60/year. Perhaps Yahoo feels that once you've downloaded a year's worth of songs, you are essentially locked in to their service. To churn off to a competitor would require the users to re-download all of their content. At $200 million profit/quarter they can probably afford to take a short term hit in order to secure their position long term. As an added bonus, they can use this to get more (formerly) free service users to pony up their credit card info and subsquently lower the hurdle for Yahoo to upsell them on other premium services in the future.

eHomeUpgrade | Yahoo! Premieres Yahoo! Music Unlimited

eHomeUpgrade | Yahoo! Premieres Yahoo! Music Unlimited - There it is, the other shoe drops. I'm just now digging into this and it appears to be a skinned Windows Media Player with a MusicNet backend handling the subscription, downloads, licensing, etc. More to come as I get further into it...