(Nearly) Live Blog - SF Music Tech 2008

Two things you learn early on at an event with over 50 panelists: first, you will have to make decisions about which events to attend (I'm still torn between the 10:30am presentations of "Artists, Copyrights & Technologies" and "Issues in Music - Tech Licensing"); and secondly, anyone who seems overly friendly at the reception breakfast is probably going to hand you a glossy pamphlet introducing their business after about 2 minutes of idle chatter (and will be off to the next target before the 5 minute mark). Click here for the Twitter feed.

Session 1: Recommendation and Discovery

The central topic of this first panel was the question of how to discover new music in an era of almost overwhelming choices, a discussion quickly framed as a battle of “man vs. machine.” On one side, there were the techies in search of that magical formula that would make the process of collaborative filtering on the internet more accurate and useful for the end user. On the other side were the humanists who lamented the digitization and automation of subjective musical tastes.

I have a friend who recommends good music to me almost weekly, and we joke that my responses to her selections will be entered into her algorithm for future picks. So far, so good. I’ve found myself exposed to an increasingly diverse and sometimes challenging palate of music, with only a few misses here and there.

The real issue of recommendation seems to be one of trust—regardless of whether you are inclined to listen to a computer or human algorithm for selecting “good” music, there must be a high level of credibility from the source. Personally, I’ve had enough off the wall recommendations from amazon.com that my policy is to never take advice from any machine that wants to sell me something. Besides, my human recommender burns me the songs I want for free. (Note for our friends out there at Sony BMG, EMI, Universal, Warner, ASCAP and BMI...I'm just kidding!! Sheesh...take a joke, will you?)

Session 2 – Licensing (or, "How To Slice the Royalty Pie Into 1000 Worthless Pieces")

Listening to representatives from Real Networks and Sony Computer Entertainment lament the difficulties of licensing and computing royalty payments for digital downloads, on-demand streams and internet radio did not immediately evoke my sympathies. After all, it’s supposed to be difficult. They’re applying 20th century business metrics to 21st century technologies.

In most cases, the copyright owners and distribution companies have tenuous agreements not to sue each other until the CRB finally makes a determination of the appropriate royalty rates for new technologies. Originally, the determination was set to come out in 2001, but has been delayed indefinitely as more and more special interests enter the discussion of who is to be paid what, and when. Of course, there is one group of people that has been cut out of the debate entirely: the artist.

Apparently, the best way to slice the royalty pie is by inviting too many cooks in the kitchen.

Session 3 - The History of Everything - John Perry Barlow

The highlight of my day so far was definitely shaking hands with John Perry Barlow and telling him that his discussion was a breath of fresh air. His response was too colorful for print, but here are some of the most quoteworthy highlights from his presentation:

On becoming a songwriter:

“You just have to find yourself in the middle of an argument at the right time.”

On the value of recorded music:

“If I have a diamond the size of a softball, it is no less valuable if nobody knows about it. But if I have a song that is the equivalent of a softball-sized diamond, it is valueless unless other people know about it.”

On bootleg taping of live shows:

“It’s bad for your karma to be mean to a Deadhead.”

On the value of art:

“The value lies in the relationship between the creator and the audience. Art for me is a verb, not a noun.”

On co-founding the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

“At this stage, I’m like John the Baptist. In the beginning Mitch and I didn’t think we needed an organization at all, but we didn’t realize that in cyberspace the first amendment was a local ordinance.“

On the value of copyright:

“The first thing that we have to get rid of is this idea that we own ideas.”

On change:

“Most of the people who feel the same way about these things are younger than me. Most of the people who disagree with me are about my age. And some day, the people my age will die. That’s pretty much how change happens.”

Well Said

From someecards.com, hat tip to my friend B.

I don't want to play Scrabulous with you.

Look, we’re friends, right? And not just on Facebook. I mean, we’re pretty tight in real life, you and I, aren’t we? So there’s something I’ve been meaning to say, and it’s kind of gotten to the point where we should talk it out. You see, I really don’t want to play Scrabulous with you. Not even a little bit.

And yet you keep inviting me to add the application to my profile in spite of the fact that I continually ignore your requests. At first I thought you might have forgotten you had already sent the invitation multiple times. But now I realize that you just really want to play Scrabulous with me, and I feel it’s my duty to tell you right here and now that it’s never going to happen. I hope this doesn’t affect our friendship.

Now, listen—don’t get all pouty on me. I’m not saying that I support Hasbro’s attempts to remove Scrabulous from Facebook. In my opinion, that’s just another example of big corporations trying to limit the definitions of “fair use” on the net in order to put more money in their pockets. And for the record, I did notice that you’ve already joined the Facebook petition to save Scrabulous, and I totally respect that. It’s your right to free speech and, really, it’s beside the point.

I just don’t want to play Scrabulous with you. Period.

If you must know, my objections are twofold. First, I already have enough internet-based addictions, and I see no need to stoke the fires with yet another Facebook app. But the deeper issue for me is that it just doesn’t look very fun. No offense, but I’ve played a little Scrabble in my day, and the only thing that made that any fun was the competition derived from having to come up with good words under extreme time constraints without the use of a dictionary. I mean, what’s the point of wondering if “quixotry” is a word if you can simply google it on your lunch break? Where’s the sport in that?

Anyway, not to belabor the point, but I just want to say that I really am firm on this. I know that Scrabulous is all the rage these days, and that it has even spawned music videos touting its penetration into popular culture. Fair enough. But sometimes, you’ve just got to sit one out.

I’m glad we had this talk. There was this other friend of mine once who always wanted to post Super Poke messages to me. I didn’t say anything at first, until sometime around Halloween when this person started throwing vampires, ghosts and goblins at me like every day. I knew then that it would never end until I said something, but I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t handle it very well. We still keep in touch, but somehow I feel that things will never be quite the same.

So I hope you know it’s only because I value our friendship so much that I tell you, once again, that I will never play Scrabulous with you. Ever. But don’t worry, we can still test our movie knowledge together sometimes, and maybe even write on each other’s Super Walls from time to time. But unfortunately, that’s where I’m going to have to draw the line. I hope you understand.

Scents and Subtle Sounds

Much fuss has been made of the seriousness or frivolty or inadequacy of Facebook relationship status changes.

Commentators ignore, however, other more subtle signs of the intertwining of two people that fall short of status changes. Examples:

1. Wall writing. Writing on someone's Wall is probably the simplest way to publicly flirt. One can even quietly mark one's territory, such as by referring to time spent together ("The show last night was awesome, it was fun hanging out").

2. Friending the Friends. Spending time with someone leads to the inevitable intermixing of social groups in RL. Eventually, you become FB Friends with his/her Friends. This can even lead to friending the boyfriend/girlfriend of the Friends, in addition to writing on the Walls of Friends, often with references to the targeted person that s/he is bound to see.

3. Friending the family. Becoming Friends with siblings is a high indicator of a budding relationship, especially if those siblings live out of town.

4. Status removal. Changing one's status to "In a relationship" and linking to another person requires approval by the other person. As many have noted, going Facebook Official is a big and often intimidating step. A more subtle move is simply removing your status from your profile, so that nothing appears. Facebook needs to work on the News Feed for removal of the field. Currently your Feed will broadcast "Jane D. is no longer listed as single," (with the full heart icon!) when it would more properly read "Jane D. is no longer listing her relationship status." Facebook robs status removal of some of its subtlety, but perhaps it also forces more honesty?

Nevertheless, it should be noted that removing one's status can also be a polite and elegant way of avoiding unwanted advances from other Facebook Friends.

On Paper

I recently attended at a show at a small San Francisco venue. After purchasing the tickets online, I received this confirmation email:

You have bought ticket(s) to an event at Rickshaw Stop. There are no physical tickets; your name will simply be on the prepaid list. If you are the sort of person who likes to print things out, you may print this confirmation. But it is not necessary.

YouAreYou commented that this was kindness on the part of a Type B person for the needs of a Type A person.
On further thought, however, I think it's actually kindness on the part of a digital person for the needs of a hardcopy person...


The band, Bedouin Soundclash, from Canada:
 

Continental Drift

Follow me here:

Plate tectonics is based on the notion that the Earth is composed of seven or so large masses of crust floating atop layers of magma. Over time, the various points of tension between the land masses change due to the degree of volatility in the layers below, until at last the tension is released through a kind of awkward sputtering forward of the plates (better known as earthquakes). Then the process of gradual accumulation and release begins anew. We refer to this process politely as "continental drift" because, frankly, we don't know where or when or how it's going to happen next. In spite of all our knowledge and understanding, we're just drifting.

Now, by analogy:

The business world has its own version of "continental drift," specifically among large, multinational, public companies. To illustrate this, we could look at companies such as...hmm, let's say...Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and News Corp. The magma in this scenario is the volatility of market forces, and the tension is created by the need for these companies to not only "stay afloat" amid changing conditions, but also to deliver reliable, recurring profits to shareholders every quarter of every year into supposed perpetuity. Mergers and acquisitions tend to be one way that large public companies sustain this growth, often with unfortunate results. But every so often, the "continental drift" focuses into a highly acute tension that is intricate, fascinating and totally unpredictable. Consider our four case studies.

A tale of two futures:

The tech economy was rocked by Microsoft's announcement of an unsolicited (a.k.a. "hostile") bid to acquire Yahoo on February 1. As Google's shares fell, the company released this statement to argue (not unreasonably) that the Microsoft/Yahoo merger would raise "troubling questions" about the openness of internet search engines and the ability of users to make a choice. Rumors began to circulate that Google would make its own bid just to raise the stakes on Microsoft. Amid this tension, Yahoo watched its stock price appreciate dramatically, making the February 1 bid by Microsoft (which was locked into the end-of-day trading price on January 31) seem less and less attractive.

Enter News Corp. We now have a situation in which Yahoo's future could go either way, and each of the potential alternatives (though radically different) would make a lot of sense. On the one hand, a strong bid by News Corp may simply encourage Microsoft to make a more charitable offer to Yahoo in pushing the deal forward. Assuming that the regulators allowed the deal to pass, we would see the first real competitor to Google, and competition tends to spur innovation. On the other hand, it might make a lot of sense for Rupert Murdoch to merge his Myspace assets with Yahoo's search and infrastructure assets to form a truly dynamic information and content distribution portal. You can bet that something big is brewing beneath the surface. Behind the closed doors of boardrooms, there are numbers being crunched, scenarios gamed, meetings scheduled, announcements leaked to the press. These geysers serve as the prelude to a big finish.

So what does it all mean?

I know that I'm not qualified to know, and that's enough. But the bigger question is, Who cares? To me, this is the kind of drama that makes business fascinating. Ultimately, it will come down to a simple number, but that number will represent the dueling of ideologies about what the future of the internet will look like. So, as the WGA writers finally put down their picket signs and dust off their pencils, this real world drama is a safe alternative to reality TV. For my money, I'd take "continental drift" over Celebrity Apprentice anytime.

Warrantless wiretapping? What warrantless wiretapping?

We don't got no stinking warrantless wiretapping!

iReuse

A friend of mine gutted his second gen iPod and turned it into a cigarette case:

 

If you see me wearing this shirt...

...please don't take my picture. And if you do take my picture, please don't post it on Facebook.

September 16, 2007

I currently have 36 pictures in my profile, and I am wearing this shirt in no less than 20 of them. I kid you not. I mean, it's not like I only wear this shirt when I go out. I've got lots of shirts, and I also have a rotation method that has served me very well over the years, thank you very much. But somehow I've gotten into this weird spin cycle where all my friends post pictures of me on nights when I happened to wear this particular shirt.

Sometime in October, 2007

I wonder, is it proper netiquette to request photo removal on the grounds of creating the false impression that I only wear one shirt when I go out? Or, if I simply remove my name from the tags, will that remove the offending photos from my profile? But which ones to remove? This could get political.

November 17, 2007

Look--I mean, seriously--it's not my fault it's a comfortable shirt. It's 100% polyester, form fitting, and an actual vintage store find that's not one of those semi-replicated trying to be vintage sorts of things.

January 26, 2008

Please...I'm begging you. The only conclusion that a reasonable person can draw from my profile is that a) I went on one hell of a bender one night, or b) I don't change and/or wash my clothes all that often. So if you see me wearing this shirt--and especially if you see me wearing this shirt and the brown jacket--do not, I repeat, do not take my picture. And if you do, for godsakes keep it off of Facebook, okay?

Inherent Ettiquette

I had a strange experience with a robot the other day. I called UPS to have them hold a package for me instead of trying to deliver it. Like most large corporations these days, they have an automated voice-recognition system when you call. (Eg., "If you would like to check the location of your package, say, 'Location.'") I obediently spoke my tracking number for the female robot, but I was pleasantly surprised when she didn't repeat it back to me for confirmation.

In fact, during the entire transaction, she understood my words perfectly at every stage, never repeated anything, and was unfailingly polite. She flawlessly guided me through setting up my will-call pick up. The process went so smoothly ("Is there anything else I can help you with?"), and her personality and (dare I say?) etiquette were so well-designed that, when the conversation completed, I actually had to suppress the urge to thank her!

But to the designers and engineers of voice-recognition software, I don't need to suppress it: Thanks!

Post-Symposium Q&A

During the Net Neutrality Symposium, I had a lot of questions in mind for the panelists just in case there was a lull in the action. Well, there wasn't. In fact, the Q&A sessions were full of fireworks that were frankly more fun to watch than participate in, but since then I've had one question in particular running through my head.

So here goes:

The debate about net neutrality is largely framed around the limitations of bandwidth in distributing large files such as video. But instead of dreaming about bigger pipelines, why is the discussion not framed around providing greater levels of compression for these files, such as the H.264 video codec which provides near high definition quality at a fraction of the file size?

I have a bit of experience working with this method of compression, and I've been very impressed with the results. It seems to me that if Sony or Apple (or Google or Microsoft, for that matter) were to develop a codec that takes this high quality compression to a new level, they could not only bundle it with their proprietary software at a nice profit, but also make much of the debate about bandwidth restrictions an academic exercise.