Many, many years had passed since I last went into a music store. My back-catalogue of CDs together with a subscription to the Rhapsody streaming music service had sufficed for my needs. But Rhapsody has many gaps. So I went in to see if my updated “long tail” musical tastes could be catered for.

I recently got totally hooked onto modern dance and trance music. I’ve always had a taste for electronica, particularly tip-top downtempo and trip-hop delights. House music struck me as sugary mind candy, and dance music seemed, well, boring and repetetive.

Digging into the genre in retrospect, after the wheat and chaff are pre-sorted, brings up some tasty bites.

Scanning the stacks in the store, I found two things.

Firstly, none of the albums I was interested in were there. Oh, there might have been a divider with the artist name, but not the album I wanted.

Secondly, it’s totally impossible to know what Digital Rights Management (DRM) crapware might be applied to any CD you’re buying. There are some vague allusions in small print on the back of some CDs to the existence of DRM. But you can’t buy with any confidence. No labelling scheme of any merit.

So I did a bit of searching online, and found I can download the ones I’m interested in DRM-free in high-quality audio formats from Audio Lunchbox. (Usability hint to them: a question mark may be a valid character in an album name, but it isn’t for a Windows directory name. Fix it.) I’m very happy with my purchase, than you very much.

But I still wasted a pile of time looking. And I mean wasted. Dead time, not recoverable. The cost of any goods comes from two parts. The money cost, and the non-money cost. (I think I’m on firm ground, here, logic-wise.) To the extent that the non-money cost represents search or time costs, it’s a total waste. Don’t believe me? Just look here.

No wonder CD sales are drooping. If you’re interested in DRM-free music, or even just music that will be compatible with your devices, you’ve got high search costs. The retailers have done nothing to mitigate them.

Now we get to the telecom bit. The cellcos are lining up to flog you overpriced tunes to play on your phone that you’ve probably already paid for via other means.

With Apple and iTunes, you don’t need to look at the Ts&Cs to know two things in advance, based on every product Apple have ever made:

• Everything will work together as seamlessly as possible.
• It’ll be more closed than the swimming pool in Gitmo.

Unfortunately for cellcos trying to retail content, their brands tend to stand for two things:

• It’ll be really expensive.
• Nothing will interoperate without great pain and labour.

These brand values will collide in an unpleasant explosion of user distress. Users will start to have to face the cost of inquiring what content will work where. Even the Apple brand won’t be able to overcome the cellco stupidity. Whether or not the iPhone lets you play iTunes you already bought doesn’t matter; because it’s tainted with a “we’re stupid and voraciously greedy” brand, you’re going to have to check it out first.

In other words, DRM and lack of format interoperability will make non-money costs of purchase skyrocket. This reduces the pool of money left in the user’s budget. The market will shrink as a result.

Ironically, guides to DRM issued by the EFF with pointers to DRM-free suppliers will partially offset the search costs of comparing DRM systems. As such, they make DRM more, not less, atractive.

The industry faces a prisoner’s dilemma, where collectively the players are unable to co-ordinate themselves to the optimal level of openness. I suspect the only way out is regulation. Just like we have “fit for the purpose” rules for normal consumer purchases, we may have to set minimum levels of impediment for DRM and lower search costs by imposing labelling rules.

3:18:43 PM    comment   

In 2004, the industry recorded a 69% year-on-year growth to 48 million subscribers and posted revenue of $ 4.8 billion. For 2005, the firm has forecasted ... [Mobile Pundit]
3:03:37 PM    comment   

We're getting close to electronic paper here, people. Get your panties in a bunch. Come on. We're waiting. OK. Good.

Polymer Vision, a subsidiary of Philips, reports that they will present a portable consumer device with a "rollable display" at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) in Berlin, Germany, September 2-7. The prototype, called Readius, has a monochrome 5-inch QVGA display with four grey levels that can show maximum two images per second; colour screens with quick move images aren't possible yet.

Looks like more proof-of-concept, but if they've got something moving on that screen, we're entering the diamond age.

Philips presents rollable display prototype [GadgetFlash]

2:34:20 PM    comment