Music + Technology + Random Nonsense from the Music Industry, by Ethan Kaplan

I’ve been teasing it out with Linked In, Facebook, my bio on Twitter, but it’s nice to officially be able to blog about my new job. As of February 1, I’m the Senior Vice President of Emerging Technology at WEA Corp., Warner Music Group’s US Sales and Retail Marketing company.

At Warner Bros. Records, the technology department started with the aim of not letting movements in other industries be predicates to movements in ours. The music industry, to a point always worked with technology. RCA and the phonograph, Phillips and the CD, and even dead formats (MiniDisc, DAT) were with music industry partnership. However all were predicated on a manner of control in the same vertical integration methodology that served us so well for so long. The music companies locked everything from talent recruitment to distribution, and formats included.

File formats don’t support this methodology, and while MP3 is far from a free and clear format, it was enough in the open to challenge the vertical integration strategies of the past. Let me be clear here: this is a good thing. Industries need a push from the outside, and that can usually be a positive if there are people to push back, work with it, and innovate. I was brought in to do that. Innovate, push back, work with technology in a very difficult time.

We did this from 2005 onwards and through our departments work we developed a Direct to Consumer platform based on open-source software, did some innovative marketing things with technology (Madonna’s Confess line, the R.E.M. campaign among many others) and in general, experimented, built a solid online business and had a lot of fun.

At a certain point, we started looking at all the data this fun was generating. It’s not enough to just put something out there unless you can recombine what you learn into more things you can push to market. It ended up that as the market turned, as things settled, data, and more importantly the experience it generated was emerging among all else as the strongest asset we could have. Experiences used as a means of enabling a tighter, more cohesive and unfettered relationship between the artist and their fan.

And building fan experiences through data is why I’m now at WEA.

In the last few years, WEA has transitioned from being about putting records on shelves to also helping the labels with merchandising, Direct to Consumer initiatives and now technology. The work we started at WBR is in a sense scaling upwards and outwards to help all the labels.

I lead up the Emerging Technology group within WEA, doing what I do best: finding new stuff, seeing if it works for us, vetting it out and slotting it into operations. I’m working with amazing people in our digital strategy and business development group and engineering and project teams, and in general doing what I did on a much broader scope.

We are at an interesting point where the externalization of human progress far exceeds our ability to process it. Really, a world of too much information, all at even disposal. Its as easy to get local as global. Big as small, small as big. One million for one, one for one million. The quantification of scale doesn’t exist, and indeed because of this fractal sensibility, the comprehension of a concrete artifact representing any one thing likewise doesn’t exist.

In this type of world, when the primacy of the artifact is diminished to such an extent, becoming nothing solid, but instead a Deleuzian rhizome leading further and further down the rabbit hole, it’s experience that drives the market over any intrinsic value of a concrete, reified “thing.”

With our business, the fan experience starts becoming that which contextualizes what was known prior as an artifact. It, in conjunction with the artifacts referent becomes the unit of measurement of product, property, tangible something to buy. And at the root of this is data. Data that helps contextualize the experience for the fan, data that helps us find the fan for an experience and conversely, helps find the experience for a fan.

Data and experiences as tools are powerful and demanding. Powerful because it can wield absolute power over human agency, and demanding for the same reason. It’s not enough to just wield data to make experiences, but to actually innovate with data, you must use the tools of innovation and participate in those tools’ ecosystem.

I posted in a post that data is our new asset base. I believe that holds true, but given the abstract nature of data, it is important for me to remember: I work in the music business. Our business is representing artists. The work that we represent for those artists is their life. It is our job to make sure we treat their life with the preciousness it deserves.

I’m happy, excited and inspired to be working in such an amazing business at such an amazing time. I worked in newspapers from 1995 – 2002, and saw some interesting things indeed. Most of what I saw was the collective myopia imposed by self administered horse blinders. It’s nice to work in a company, with people who not only are operating with perfect and clear vision, but burn the horse blinders at the door.

As I said:

“Data: our asset base. Artists: our core. That is the new music business. It’s an exciting time indeed.”

And that still holds, even more so now.

In the tech press this weekend have been yet another smartphone war, with someone flouncing from iPhone to Android and then others piping in that they love the iPhone.

I for one am sick of this conversation. Just as I’m sick of all the “World’s Best Android Phone” trend hopping from the tech press week after week. It’s worse than a classroom full of ADD 5 year olds and puppies parading in front of them. Everything that says “Android” isn’t immediately a new puppy, but for some reason that’s what happens, week after week.

Let me be clear here, I use iPhones. I also own, in no particular order: an EVO 4G, Palm Pre, Nexus One, Motorola Droid and Blackberry Bold.

As its my job to know what is happening in the mobile world, I give each device a weeks’ dedicated use, sans iPhone. And I really really want each and every one of them to succeed and make my life tangibly better.

Lets talk iPhone: It has made life tangiable different, and maybe better. The App Store has acted as a means of needed augmentation to day to day life getting filled through the innovations of others. Things that were gaps that were filled through other means (ie, whole house audio, lighting) get filled by other being innovative with a semi-open platform rather than me having to hack them together myself. The iPhone has since its release become as or more essential to day to day living as a wallet, keys and glasses.

This doesn’t mean its perfect. The device is super locked down, and often times with it I remember with fondness the Linux foundations present in my Sharp Zaurus that I had back in 2002. With that device, I could SSH in, install Apache, do a few things with PHP on it, etc. It was a mobile computer in the full sense and while limited showed potential.

When Android phones came out, I was enthusiastic for this reason: a Linux based kernel, an open SDK that used Java (which sucks, but oh well). I bought every series of phone that has come out: G1 to EVO 4G, each time hoping that there would be something magical.

To be sure each device has had something going for it, but the overall experience left me going back to my iPhone.

Instead of outlining why I’m switching to Android or why I’m staying with iPhone, I’m going to instead go over what Android needs to improve to even make me want to use one of these devices for over a week.

And keep in mind, I’m not a casual user. I consider myself expert. But I’m also impatient and demanding of perfection in the things i use day to day.

Animation is not frivolous

Maybe it’s the PIxar connection, but Apple understands that animation when done correctly (ie, following the 12 rules), not only makes the experience of using a phone more enjoyable visually, but because of the nature of the interview (touch), makes it tactile and haptic as well. Apple uses cues like bouncing, flipping, etc to indicate state changes, bounds and activity not only to hide background tasks (ie, network activity), but also using the follow through and anticipation to ease a user into situations (top or bottom of a list) instead of the abrubt brick wall feeling Android has.

Same too goes to frame rates. Android phones are just as hardware capable as an iPhone, and yet an original 2G iPhone out performs a lot of them in the animation department. Smooth motion makes a smooth experience.

The Cloud is Complicated

This might be related to Google more than anything, but here it goes. I have three different Google accounts. None of them tie to the others. I add all three as email providers on an EVO 4G. Which takes precedence in terms of the device’s cloud identity? Google is all about the cloud, but they have made the cloud so convoluted that I almost wish they wouldn’t be.

Interface consistency and simplicity matters

If you count how many different interface tropes appear in the Android OS you could go insane. While it is true that individual apps in iOS break consistency to a degree, Apple’s adherence to the Human Interface Guidelines keeps the iPhone pretty consistent. People lament that you can’t replace the iPhone built in soft keyboard, but really I don’t want to have different keyboards per app.

One handed operation is important

The iPhone is optimized for one handed operation, both in form factor and in the OS. This is critical and necessary for a device to become an essential adjunct to every day living. The EVO 4G is impossible to use one handed. As well, Android is not optimized for one handed usage. There are too many layers of contextual menus to make it simple.

Curate your app store

Seriously. Editorial is important. I’m too busy to make choices on my own most of the time, especially with things like casual apps. As well, wandering the Android app store is Canal St to iPhone’s Prince. Not exactly the most fun time.

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I could go on. What it amounts to is thus: a phone for me should be thoughtless, meaning I don’t have to think about using it. It’s predictive, consistent, easy to use at a glance, easy to empower to do more things and integrates with my life. Android comes close, and is a very powerful system indeed given the former alternatives. To think of how far it’s come in such a short time is amazing. I do think that Android has also pushed Apple into making iOS something more than it was, and re-prioritizing their feature rollouts to compete. And this isn’t to say that iOS needs some work. It certainly does. File handling, notifications and application federation all need substantial work.

But for me, an iPhone is a transparent device, while Android takes thought. This I think is fundamental to the dividing lines. Maybe five years ago I’d want a device that took thought. I had a Windows Mobile device for this very reason. I enjoyed working around the limitations to make it do things it wasn’t designed to. But as my life’s priorities have changed, so to is how I use technology. My home office setup has gone from two monitors and a tower at home to just a laptop on the couch. My speakers are getting smaller and more integrated into the house, and my phone likewise needs to fit better with living rather than tinkering and hacking.

I think Android will improve and I think iOS will as well, but I think they are on divergent paths and I have chosen the iOS one.

Last year, I posted a reference to a tragic event in our family.

Now I’m happy to report that we had a great event. My uncle and my aunt are proud parents to a little girl, born via surrogate on Wednesday. Leah James.

I have my first first cousin, and now with Leah and her cousin Eli being a year and a week apart, we continue the rather screwed up generational divides in my family (my uncle, my mom’s little brother is five years older than I, 18 years younger than my mom).

I said a little over a year ago: “In the end we’re only as strong as our will to keep living forward.”

Collective strength and love brought us to this day and it is a happy one indeed.

Yeah, me to. When Sim City 2000 came out, I stayed up until 3:00AM on a school night making my metropolis. This isn’t it, but you get my drift. It extended into a 3D space something that I had done since I was a kid. I used to draw cities on graph paper, inventing streets, geographies, metropolis’ and more. Then I’d draw the macro view of a country naming geographic features after those that I had studied.

Sim City 2000 was a singular experience in isometric beauty. It showed a commitment to vision by a brilliant designer (Will Wright) and focus as a company (Maxis, at that time independent).

Sim City has stagnated since Sim City 4. At some point before Sim City 3000, screen shots were floating around that had an entirely modeled 3D city scape. None of that came to be. It’s sad that Sim City, something that could benefit entirely from the massive parallel processing today’s computers have, not to mention the video capabilities, is doing nothing of the sort.

I stumbled upon the DVD for Sim City 4. I might just have to install it.