top ten iphone apps.

And now, the broken gentleman's top 10 iPhone apps, based on usefulness, coolness, and how excited they make me.

1. Twitteriffic - I use this more than any other feature or element of my iPhone.  Twitter is a thousand times more useful, and I am a thousand times more obsessed with new information on people I barely know.
2. Evernote - Text, image, or voice notes, backed up online from my phone.  I use Tumblr as a scrapbook, but I use Evernote as a scratch pad for my half formed rambles.
3. VNC Mocha Lite - Stuck at an event, I opened my office email list, on my home computer, using only my iPhone.  I was then able to find my colleague's number, call him, and get access to the VIP area.  So yeah.  This is useful.
4. Simplify Media - Access to my entire music library, and that of my friends, streaming, no matter where I am.  Because sometimes the people around me just need to hear Skullcrusher Mountain.
5. Air Sharing - Dear USB Memory Stick.  You are now obsolete.  I'd pity you, but I'm not the type.  Now I can drag and drop files wirelessly to and from my iPhone.  Win.
6. Shazam - This is just actually magic.  I use this more to show people that it exists than to actually find out the names of random songs, based entirely on an 8 second audio sample plucked from the air.  The direct links to YouTube videos help, as well.
7. Palringo - Not perfect, but free, relatively consistent IM application, which lets me use MSN and gTalk from anywhere.  Quickly becoming habit forming.
8. Spore Origins - For the poor, sad last generation Macbook user who can't get the real deal.
9. Last.FM - Streaming music, spontaneously generated stations, bio info, and concert dates.  Easy, clean, fun.
10. Now Do This - Not actually an app, but a website that works perfectly on an iPhone.  Simple, minimal to-do lists.  Nowdothis.com.

I could also talk about Tumble, Facebook, Super Monkey Ball, etc, but I figured ten was more than enough.

standardized pricing is bad.

Yesterday I bought Dr. Horrible 'Season One' from the iTunes store.  All in all, it was a solid decision, as I love the mini-movie-musical, and am hoping desperately for further installments.  That, and I generally try to buy anything that combines good content with an innovative approach to the distribution problem.  In Canada, the total cost for all three acts of Dr. Horrible was $4.99.  Reasonable.

However, the soundtrack is also for sale on iTunes.  For $9.99.  Twice the cost of the actual short film.

I recognize that it's 14 tracks.  I understand that this is the set price iTunes has for albums, and getting out of the mold is impossible for the content creators, because Apple controls the channel.

But charging twice as much for the soundtrack to a musical, then for the musical itself, makes no sense to me at all.  Hopefully we'll reach a point where creators get to decide the price point for their work, the same way they should have control over album art, liner notes, etc.  Artists create a product that is often defined by it's package.  Let's stop pretending price has nothing to do with that.  And let's not keep making absurd choices - my first reaction to seeing the price for the soundtrack of a musical I loved should not be 'Well, that's moronic.'

perceived barriers and consumer behaviour.

The perception of a barrier is more important than the realities of that barrier.

This is equally true of whether or not you can get someone to pay for a product or service, whether they will pay twenty nine dollars but not thirty, whether they will change their behaviour around your product or service, or whether they will watch / eat / do what-have-you in a new location.

The issue isn’t simplifying the barrier, or even minimizing it.  The issue is the existence of that barrier.

The reason itunes is important is it carefully removed the perception of barrier from the music buying experience.  You use the same program to buy music that you use to play music.  Once your details are logged, you just click through.  In the same window you use to play your music.

Buying a song has the same fundamental user experience as playing a song you already have, or subscribing to a podcast.

So, to dispute a point I made earlier, it is still logical to attempt to make money selling music.  Assuming the manner in which you sell music is not too divergent from what your market would be doing anyway.  It’s not the price point that matters (25 cent MP3s are just as expensive in terms of time and effort as 99 cent ones).  It’s the perceived barrier.

music, albums, and metacontext.

I generally prefer a great EP to a great album. Mostly because 5-6 songs is perfect to make sure I get through it in one sitting.

As music has shifted from a separate experience, to an additive experience, albums are less likely to get listened to in one sitting. This is something that artists have flipped out over - and it makes sense; iTunes singles make the individual song the work of art, not the album. It removes metacontext. Metacontext is, in online terms, value.

Preserving metacontext is something that could be addressed by the idea floated by Jakob Lodwick, selling albums as an iPhone app.

Alternately, EPs could be sold in a one track format, with chapters (the way you can put chapter breaks in podcasts). I think this would be unwieldy in an LP format, but for 5 tracks, for 20 minutes, I think it would work perfectly. Maybe with a full-featured suite of album art and lyrics, similar to the PDF and mp3 package that went with the most recent Saul Williams release.

[this is slightly adapted from a post on my tumblr account.]

the doug morris hypothesis.

By now, everyone has read the shockingly idiotic statements of Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group.

If you haven't, here's a fairly accurate and completely awesome summation.

This, for me, raises an interesting question. It's fairly clear that Doug Morris isn't qualified for his current position. What the Wired profile also makes clear, is that Morris is a very experienced and proven A&R guy. He knows about finding that thing that makes an artist salable, and he knows how to push them over the edge, to fame. He more or less directly states that he considers that his real job, and all of the technology related issues are considered an annoyance.

This would be cool, if he was still just an A&R guy. Or even heading artist development, although one would hope the focus would be on a grander scale than breaking individual acts. Morris is a CEO, however. Which, to me at least, seems a lot like hiring the world's greatest car salesman to run Toyota. Yes, it's an important skill set, but it's also woefully unsuited to the issues one would hope a CEO faces.

This leads me to a potential explanation for everything wrong with the current state of the music industry. What we're seeing is an army of content management experts who think they are also experts in content ownership.

The roots of this are pretty simple to see. By the time the major music industry players started demanding ownership of songs, they had created a near-perfect system for creating stars. If you wanted to make it, you had to play by their rules - so why only ask for a percentage of the revenue when they could ask for the back catalogue, which is more or less a license to print money. This was fine when the most important parts of the industry were content management roles, like arranging recording, arranging printing physical merch for sale, building a buzz, media relations, etc. Even the direct content ownership stuff, like royalties and sales, was relatively simple. There was a major approved method of delivery, it was the only viable one, and the legal product was inevitably and noticeably different than any knock offs.

The game has changed. Music is, for all intents and purposes, free. So, content ownership has gotten messy. While competition in music sales was traditionally a matter of attention, fighting with other artists and labels, now it's a matter of fighting pirated material which is 1) free, 2) often easier to use as desired than legal options, and 3) more or less interchangeable with the legal alternative, the inadequacy of the music industry machine to deal with these issues is becoming somewhat clear.

I've, for a while now, been advocating that if music labels want to survive, they should abandon content ownership as a means of making all of their money, and focus instead on content management. This would require negotiating a percentage of revenue with each artist, or a set yearly rate, and offering the ludicrous amount of experience in these companies to break artists, create public interest, manage tours and appearances, promote, etc, all the things that the music industry has always done, and considered essential but secondary to getting paid for the creative creations of others.

A company like universal, to me, doesn't actually sell a product so much as they do a service. That service, in short, is making bands into a marketable commodity, and turning that notoriety into money. What they don't seem to do well, however, is create new revenue streams, deal with the issues related to format and distribution, and adapt to the current digital media landscape.

Everyone is looking at guys like Doug Morris and expecting some bold new strategy that is going to keep the content ownership portion of record label business prominent and afloat. Doug Morris just wants all of that to go away so he can find the next big thing, and teach them how to fill stadiums and empty wallets. Why is anyone asking him to figure out big picture stuff that he considers a waste of time?

it begins.

NIN is apparently free from label interference.

This, following the radiohead announcement, seems to me like the floodgates are about to open.

Expect major acts to be going it on their own all through 2008. Expect change.

Expect shit to get a lot more complicated for Apple, and every other music retailer, once they don't have lumbering, massive corporations to blame things on / deal with, and instead need to deal directly with every major artist, each with different terms, each with no real need for the service.

These are the glory days, new media fans. Watch the skies.

radiohead gets it.

I should be sleeping. I have to wake up in a little over 6 hours. But, there are things afoot. Things that cause bliss.

Thom Yorke and Company UNDERSTAND.

I've been rambling for a little less than a year about the separation between object and content. In relation to the music business, the point is simple: somewhere along the way, everyone forgot that the business was based on selling music, and assumed it was based on selling plastic discs. This more or less made sense when the plastic disc was the only method of moving music. Insert one massive digital revolution, and voila, an industry that thinks selling music means selling slabs of plastic begins to fail horribly.

The two best ways to deal with the separation between object and content in the music business are fairly simple: 1) recognise that to be worth money, you better have a slab of plastic that offers value beyond just the music, and 2) acknowledge that the music is really just a promotional tool for selling other, related products (slabs of plastic, tshirts, concert tickets, dvds, ringtones, etc.)

So what does radiohead to, when not tied to any old-distribution label paradigm?

They offer the album for sale, on the web, in a glorious package. 2 discs, vinyl, attractive packaging that realises the product IS A SLAB OF PLASTIC, and makes it the sexiest plastic they can. At the same time, they make digital downloads available for free to anyone who buys the meatspace version of the record.

The real brilliant move? The digital download by itself is available for a price of you-call-it. By you call it, I mean radiohead lets you add the album to your outbox from the exclusive retailer, and you get to decide how much it costs.

Not only is this invaluable research for a band in control of it's own pricing and sales, it provides a reasonable, DRM free option for sane consumers. As someone who actually downloads albums they already own, just for simplicity, this speaks volumes. Radiohead UNDERSTANDS, better than any other album release has ever indicated, that music cannot be sold as though it is still contained in plastic slabs.

This is the one record no one can justifiably download illegally. They are meeting you so far past half-way that you can't really bitch. At the very least, give the the data. Let them know you want it free, or for a cent, or what have you.

Several months ago, I was ecstatic when the iTunes music store began selling DRM free (sorta) downloads. That was premature, and I apologise. Assuming this isn't a hoax, radiohead have just (again) knocked the music industry on it's ass. It's so rare to see innovation even musically, but this group of consistent innovators are trying something legitimately new, and inarguably well-informed.

Shall we make it worth their while?

[this is ignoring the fact the album comes out in 10 days, and they have created nearly unlimited press just by setting a tight deadline, and doing something logical, but unheard of.]

i know, i know...

I am a terrible blogger. I've been working on a post on Helio's latest campaign for about 3 weeks, but I just haven't had the time what with renovations at home, and work, and upcoming crazy media event season type stuff.

But I have to make a simple comment on the new iPod touch - they are going to make a pile of money.

Things that sucked about the iPhone: U.S. only, AT&T only, no 3G, apparently unimpressive phone features.

Things that are still an issue on the iPod touch: no 3G, but it's a wi-fi iPod, not a goddamn phone, quit bitching.

Does it replace an iPod classic? Not in the least. First off, I can't imagine it'll be easy to use blind, and second, anyone with a 16 GB music / movie collection is not taking advantage of their hard drive space effectively. This is an additive product, and it speaks directly to the reptile brain of everyone who 1) really, really wanted an iPhone and 2) didn't care so much about the phone part.

I have a feeling this is a sector even larger than the people who were counting on Stevie J to save them from the tyrrany of Nokia, or whatever.

Time to start saving. Time to figure out what 16 GB of content is most essential for me to have at all times.

Time to swear to never, ever buy music at a Starbucks, just because it's the album or single of the month.

on the obvious.

Very, very often, and depressingly, I run into an article that sounds very interesting, but end up finishing it with the thought 'and...?'

This piece, though written well enough, left me with that feeling.

Maybe it's because I'm one of the 20-something university students the article deals with, but it can basically be summarised as 'new methods of distribution change the way people interact with content.' This is, to someone of my generation, similar to a news bulletin that reads 'eating found to reduce hunger', and I hope most people would get the same response.

The article does make the comparison to DVD content, and the difference of experience that comes with watching a story in succession, rather than parceled out by the creators or corporations. Technology is about control, and being able to determine when and how you watch a TV show is worth 1.99 an episode, or 25 bucks a season.

"What will be interesting to see is how the iTunes model will eventually affect these 20-somethings’ viewing habits as they get older. [...] Whether through the “low-tech”method of waiting for DVD box sets to be released, or the instant gratification of the iTunes Store, it looks like viewing habits are being molded."

What's actually interesting, in my opinion, is not just the changing of viewing habits, but the changing of the model of communication, and the alteration of the social experience. Television creates cultural moments because it creates a situation where a large number of people are watching the same thing at the same time. In the 20-somethings of today, you can rarely have a conversation about the episode of heroes that aired last night, because three people are still downloading it.

The article mentions convenience, and scheduling, but misses the larger point. The target audience of many television shows is now unwilling to be told how to watch, when to watch, and even less willing to watch only once. We're used to having control over our entertainment and information, and television is a blip on the otherwise consistent evolution of entertainment content; where, at least to a point, the user decided how and when things will be done. When you see a play or a movie, you pick which showing, fitting it into your life. With a book, you read how ever much you want, whenever you want.

Television networks and cable companies have created a system that works well for them, and that model doesn't shift well. Content on demand means that product placement can't be supplementary television advertising, it means that you won't get viewers for crap just by placing it before or after something of high quality.

It's not that viewing habits are being molded. The issue now is whether the television business model will continue to be adapted to the way people interact with TV shows now, or if they will fall into an embarrassing strategy of harassing consumers to ignore technologies they don't approve of, like another industry based on entertainment content.

[Short commentary on end link: Is this happening? This is beyond idiocy, and far past the border into self-parody. I'd post on it at length, but I don't think I could do it without my head hurting.]