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This my friends, is the new CD

Experience.

And what Apple is doing is pretty cool too.

I think the future of recorded music packaging is tantamount to the zip, dmg, rar, etc. It’s codes, logins, and most of all experiences.

The concept of a “drop date” is gone.

The concept of “in stores____” is done.

The whole notion of one day to experience what took a lifetime to create is also gone.

Isn’t it time the experience of an album was in parallel with the experience of making it?

I personally think that alternative platforms open this world up even more, especially when making these experiences on platforms like Drupal. When I was a kid, and I would get very excited about a new release (ie, Smashing Pumpkin’s “Siamese Dream” or Pearl Jam “Vs.” or R.E.M.’s “Automatic for the People,” all of which I obsessed over), to be able to get teasers, clips, videos, etc before release would have been killer.

As it was, I would clip magazines, hunt for clips online, tape the first single’s radio premiere, stay up to watch the video premiere on 120 minutes, etc.

What I miss with the ready-made-ready-action world is that there is no anticipation anymore. Half the gratification of owning something is the anticipation of owning it. The other half is either the purchase or the ownership, depending on your nature.

One of the challenges that faces our business now (actually extends to other businesses too, even blogging) is not only getting people to buy in the face of the abundance of morphologically similar “free,” but how to create experiences that transcend that which could be consumed from the firehose. How do you create that first moment of seeing the video for “Drive” on MTV? Or the first time Animal premiered in the epic Pearl Jam performance in 1993 on the VMA’s? How do you recreate the first spin of Achtung Baby, Nevermind, Surfer Rosa, Different Class…

What I love about music is the excitement of discovery, the anticipation, the visceral experience of listening, of feeling and loosing one’s self in it.

The best thing about technology is that everything at my finger tips, while I sit here on my sofa on a laptop is able to realize that again in abundance, its just a matter of turning the switches in the right way.

Will I ever feel the same sense of passion about music that I did between 1991 and 1993, when it seemed like there was a constant stream of brilliance coming out? I think so. I think Sigur Ros came close with their latest release. I think Radiohead did an amazing job with In Rainbows. I think Trent Reznor is smart. I admire Michael Stipe and the R.E.M, camp trusting us enough to do the same with Accelerate, as well as Metallica.

I see great things ahead. And in world where hacking XMPP and Spread and Flex in concert leads to music experiences….. Well that just makes a music geek smile.

Below: Ninetynights.com and Mission: Metallica, for R.E.M,’s “Accelerate” and Metallica’s “Death Magnetic” respectively.

Picture 1.jpg

Every day new content was put up to preview the record. Users bought into the “experience” and also receive a super-high quality digital package of the record on release day. Videos, tracks, “riffs,” in-studio documentary footage, etc. All appeared in here and on MetClub.com first.

Picture 2.jpg

Starting on January 1, and picking up where Michael Stipe’s futurepicenter.com left off, every night a clip shot by Vincent Moon was posted as a Flash stream and an HD quicktime file. The next day, the HD file changed, flash streams stayed up. Users were invited to remix and edit the footage and use as a part of Supernatural Superserious’ video site. Songs debuted in these clips, including a memorable week which unveiled a song that wasn’t on the record. February 29th (the “91st night”) featured R.E.M.’s only show played on a Leap Day as a full stream and download.

Posted 01 September 2008 § musing ‡ Comments (2) °

My thoughts on Chrome

Anything that kills the Internet Explorer hegemony is a good thing, and I think the default “window” into the Internet releasing a browser will go a long way toward that. The fact that it’s WebKit is a double good thing. And the fact that its probably a bit easier to use than Firefox is even more so.

As a guy who’s entire day and life and business life is spent making experiences for people to enjoy, millions of them, I want IE6 and even 7 OUT OF MY FUCKING LIFE.

More IE6 than anything.

Posted 01 September 2008 § observation ‡ Comments (3) °

(Still) Hiring a Director of Technology Development

Why Work at Warner Bros Records?


WBR is the top label in the US with some of the most respected acts in the business, including R.E.M, Neil Young, Muse, White Stripes and Green Day. We are currently celebrating our 50th anniversary. Besides that, we are the only label with a Technology Department entirely dedicated to doing great stuff online. We run the department as a startup, with all the benefits, toys, electronics, servers, Macs, conferences and geeking out. And free soda. And video games.

You can read about some of our technology initiatives here:

http://tinyurl.com/3wpzj3
 http://blackrimglasses.com

We are not the IT department.

Competitive salary, benefits, bonus, perks

We pay competitively, with generous bonuses and very good perks including 401k, full benefits, CD’s, concerts, software/research tools and more. The aim of our department is to have geeky fun, with music, technology and everything in between. No idea is too crazy or dismissed out of hand and no “what if we….” is ever not pondered.

Work with artists, cool tech people, creative types and more

Far from just a technology company, WBR has publicity, marketing, business affairs, video, A&R, promotions and more. Technology is the backbone to each and every department, which ensures instead of just programming, everyone has the opportunity to work with a variety of different areas, from A&R to business development.

A love for music is a BIG plus. Passion and drive for the interesting, the new and the cool in technology, culture and music is necessary for a rewarding experience at WBRTECH.

The Position

Director, Technology Development

Key Areas of Responsibility

  • Specing, development and engineering of technology infrastructure and applications for the WBR Platform
  • Working with outside developers on features and engineering
  • Help with server configurations and settings
  • Monitor service stability and performance
  • Troubleshoot implementations of technology and programs
  • Work independently and collaboratively in equal measure with the members of the technology team
  • Document current and future configurations, process, techniques and procedures
  • Take the extra 10% of the work on one task to decrease the work by 50% on the next: AUTOMATE
  • Participate in on-call support when necessary


Qualifications

  • BS in computer science or equivalent experience
  • 4 years minimum experience with LAMP infrastructures
  • Expert level familiarity with PHP, bash scripting, python, C, C++
  • Expert level familiarity with MySQL and relational databases
  • SVN experience
  • Expert level familiarity with XHTML, AJAX, Javascript, CSS, including CSS2 and XHTML strict/transitional
  • Web production workflow knowledge (ie, cross-browser optimization)
  • A strong desire to learn the new and interesting in the technology space


Bonus skills

  • Experience with the Drupal content management system
  • Experience with emerging technologies (iPhone, Facebook Platform, OpenSocial)
  • Flash expertise (CS3/AS3)

If interested, please e-mail wbrtech [at] gmail.com with resume, link to your site, examples of work, etc. Please pass this on to whomever you think would be a good fit.

Posted 29 August 2008 § life ‡ Comments (2) °

The Frustration of Wanting Something You Can’t Buy

To set the stage: I was up in Marin County for the day to meet with a company and give them some advice. Anyhow, on the way to Marin from Oakland, I was listening to KFOG (which I do love) and they played back to back: Golden Paliminos “Boy (GO)” with guest vocals from Stipe, and a song I hadn’t heard in a while that Shazam on my iPhone confirmed was “Forgotten Years” by Midnight Oil, from Blue Sky Mine, which was a record I really like when I was younger.

The song is immensely catchy with great minor keyed jangle and some awesome lyrics. I had it in my head all day.

When I got home, I wanted nothing more than to buy the song, or find it on Rhapsody and play it on my good stereo system.

And so the Odyssey began:

iTunes, didn’t have Blue Sky Mine, nor the track.

Amazon Mp3 Store, didn’t have Blue Sky Mine, nor the track. They only have it covered by a Gangsta Rabbi. No shitting.

The band’s website: no dice.

Columbia or Sony Catalog? Nope.

The band’s site had the video, that was it.

I hunted the Internet up and down, back to front for this song in a format I could get legally. I can’t find it. I refuse to pirate it because you know, I do believe in the value of music and all that.

So in the end, I think I’m going to have to donate money to Peter Garrett’s next political campaign and hope he sends me the CD as a thank you or something. Either that or nag Rick Rubin to get Columbia to rerelease the record in some sort of “Legacy Box Set” or what not on Amazon MP3 Store.

I think its sad that the space between desire and actualization is so frustrating sometimes, especially with music, but lately equally with television, movies and books and even news. We are so used to an “instant on” media-scape, that when something has even a 30 second latency between the thought of “want” and the actualization of “have,” our tendency is to find the shortest path to fulfillment regardless of what that means.

I really wanted to buy, for 99 cents, a track by a band today. I could not do that. I couldn’t even give that band the sync-license fee by playing it on iMeem, LastFM or Rhapsody.

I believe that the ultimate challenge for media providers is to make systems of actualization which narrow the gap from desire to the fulfillment of said desire. The only true way to fight one form of ubiquity is with another form of ubiquity. Unfortunately that concept in theory is easier than in practice, but with the pace of adoption of ultra-highspeed broadband on both home and mobile increases, and the ubiquity of connectivity likewise increases, people are going to find anything less than instant intolerable.

The space between instant and annoying will also narrow, and when it narrows to near 0, those that impose artificial barriers because of poor engineering, bad contracts, in-fighting, politics, stupidity or arrogance will find themselves bypassed in a cliff-effect pattern.

Will you suffer through an experience on an airline site, with slow pages, bad Javascript and what not, or will you go to a more “web++” era site that operates cleanly? Or MLS sites for that matter?

Will you tolerate the awful, heavy-weight, advertisement saturation experience of a newspaper site, or go to Google News?

Will you install Silverlight or go to bittorrent for Olympics clips?

And who will hunt for 6 hours for a track from 1988 and in the end be content with just the video?


Posted 23 August 2008 § observation ‡ Comments (10) °

Predictions for Apple September Thingy

They usually do one. Lets get predictions:

  • iTunes 8.0 - very much needed. I can imagine it will fill a different niche “the hub of your information” kind of promise? More than just media?
  • iPhone 2.1 firmware - obvious, as well …. its on my iPhone right now
  • New laptops - obvious
  • More details on Snow Leopard - not just going to be under the surface improvements
  • Apple TV Take 2 Improvements - SDK for BackRow, Bluetooth support for Apple keyboard/mouse combo, more and better content deals. That USB port will suddenly matter.
  • New displays
  • Apologies and a mea culpa for some shoddy launches this summer
  • A fitter, healthier Steve Jobs

Just my guesses.

Posted 22 August 2008 § musing ‡ Comments (0) °

The Bottom 1.5%, up from 0%

I periodically will take a dive into our statistics to check out trends I see. This doesn’t happen as often as I’d like, as we have 100+ sites and its time I don’t necessarily have. This week though I did and found something interesting. Typically I take a look at browser stats to find trends in the growth of “alternative” browsers.

As you know, IE6 is deprecated, a piece of shit and a pain in the ass. It costs us a lot of money to support it, and in general I wish for its speedy death. Every few weeks I take a look at browser stats in the hope that we’ve passed 50% in the IE7, Firefox and Safari realm. Good news is, IE7 has overtaken IE6 by a considerable margin. But I digress.

One of the more interesting things I’ve found is what is happening in the bottom 1.5 to .5% of the browsers that are hitting our sites. I’m starting to see devices appear en masse which are not PC’s.

  • Playstation 3 - 0.03- 0.15%
  • iPhone /iPod Touch- 0.52% - 1%
  • SymbianOS - 0.02- 0.05%
  • Playstation Portable - 0.02% - 0.02%
  • Nintendo Wii - 0.01% - 0.06%
  • Danger Hiptop - 0.05%

The specific percentages vary a lot toward what the demographic of the artist is, except in the case of the iPod/iPhone, where its pretty consistent. Bands with higher “gamer” audience types (18-24 yr old males) have more video game usage, while brands like Nonesuch Records are mostly entirely iPhone and iPod. Interestingly enough, Nonesuch is also 35% Mac usage. Artists like Michael Buble have mostly iPhone based smartphones and nearly zero video game consoles. Nashville audiences show PalmOS usage, almost entirely Windows PC based browsers and some iPhone. Tween girls? PC users, but lots of Firefox.

Interestingly enough, very few Blackberry’s.

Other devices which are starting to see emergence as “non-traditional” browsing methods:

  • HTC devices, including P3700, P4350, P5000 and S730
  • Samsung Blackjack

All told, its fascinating to see how quickly nascent browsing experiences are creeping up there in terms of adoption and usage. A year and a half ago, we never saw an iPhone or iPod on our charts, and the PS3 was non existent as a browser platform. The Wii as well.

But its hard to think that we shouldn’t have seen this coming. 1080P television sets run at a resolution that makes them usable at 10 feet as a computer platform. I run my MacMini through our 52″ LCD as much as I run DirectTV through it, and on the weekends I use it as my second screen via the Synergy keyboard/mouse sharing program. With living rooms, dorm suites, apartments and lofts more and more coming standard with huge LCD’s hanging on walls, its no wonder that people don’t see them as an extension of the computing experience.

Like it or not, television has become an interactive experience, but not because the broadcasters did anything to curate that. If anything, broadcasters have been sitting on their hands in terms of the possibilities of the bandwidth and platforms they helped put in our homes!

The interactive experience on Tivo, Moxi’s, DirectTV’s and Cisco set-tops is terrible. Its non-intuitive, input methods are difficult, and the interfaces are super slow. The DirectTV is a joke. You’d think they’d at least optimize graphics! Its a small computer they have in there, with the heat dissipation of one too.

People make their own interactive experiences via the use of laptops, iPhones and handhelds. Amy and I spend half the time we are watching television looking up information on what we’re looking at on our iPhones or MacBook pro’s. Is it any wonder that television based sites we have like Nashville Star see significant spikes during the broadcast, but not after or between?

With the settop boxes not providing meaningful interactive experiences, people are turning to PS3’s and even Wii’s, which at their most basic core have the capability of connecting to and showing content via web browsers. To date, they are not as tied to the gaming platforms as they should be, but I can see that changing.

The question is now not whether or not the 10 foot viewing experience, and the 4 inch (iPhone) is viable for the Internet, but whether or not those that are synergistically tied to the television and handheld will adopt, capitalize and make experiences tailored for both the 10 foot and the 4 inch experiences. And more importantly, how will the traditional monetization platforms (Adsense, CPM based display ads) adapt to a landscape where spectatorship is so skewed to the onus of the viewer rather than the onus of those driving the content?

The use of the television, handheld and other devices as Internet platforms subverts the devices purposes to such a degree that the economic platforms that govern their respective ecosystems are equally subverted and rendered nearly irrelevant. Display advertising, temporal advertising (commercials), usage based charges and other economic systems aren’t in tune with nascent usage and thus we have not only an uncapitalized usage system, but also a rather anarchic one.

I for one welcome the anarchy.

Right now I sit in my living room with a laptop on my lap, my 52″ LCD displaying a dashboard of traffic on all WBR sites, my iPhone next to me with a browser view of my houses lighting system, RSS feeds running on the television and the Sonos streaming audio through the house from Rhapsody.

12 years ago I wished for the day when the Internet followed me rather than me having to seek it out. That day is here. And the thing is: there is no better time to be making content than the present. 10 years ago, or even 5, people had to invent the platforms of transmission for every new idea of content representation. VHS begot DVD begot BluRay, etc. Quality necessitated different modalities. Even artistic expression as dictated by platform adoption (see the current debate about Neil Young’s archives and BluRay).

We’re now entering into a system where the modality of representation is not dependent on format, but connectivity. Super exciting times.

The real question is though: how will the producers of content adapt? And how will the relationship between producer/consumer change and adapt?

Posted 16 August 2008 § musing ‡ Comments (3) ° Tagged: ,

Holy Jesus - power of attorney?

For purposes of this Agreement and solely to provide the Account Information to you as part of the Service, you grant Mint a limited power of attorney, and appoint Mint as your attorney-in-fact and agent, to access third party sites, retrieve and use your information with the full power and authority to do and perform each thing necessary in connection with such activities, as you could do in person.

[From How Mint Online Budget Software Keeps You Safe - Privacy and Security Terms - Mint.com]

Yeah, not happening. When’s the new Quicken being released?

You authorize Pageonce to legally represent you to your service providers through this interface. You are granting us the legal power of attorney to access your accounts and take whatever actions necessary to provide services under this Agreement.

[From PageOnce]

Not happening either.

Thanks to R.Greenhood for the find.

Posted 15 August 2008 § random ‡ Comments (2) °