Om Malik writes about the Universal Fee that Microsoft agreed to stick onto Zunes… at least $1 per player(?!). To me, it smells like sheer idiocy to do this, and does not bode well for Microsoft’s chances with its other media ventures… but Malik is more articulate than I could hope to be:
If music industry cannot sell one additional song to consumers (and has to blackmail for more money) then, you as a business, have lost grip over your core competency.
Indeed. I myself can’t sell this bag of marbles in my closet. Can I blackmail backpack manufacturers into giving me a portion of their profits, rather than doing my own legwork?
Update: Further info at valleywag.com.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m getting an insane number of junk messages lately with a subject like “It’s Tim 
” or “It’s Jen ”
So much so that I wrote an extra-special rule to nuke them and any of the sending addresses immediately upon receipt. All was going well until I discovered a friend’s emails weren’t getting through to me either. I went through a lot of searching and asked for re-sends of all missing mail, until I finally caught the culprit in my webmail…
“It’s Casey ” was the message from the friend almost a week ago. Filter triggered, name blacklisted, all further mail nuked. I revised the rule to re-allow Casey and all is well.
I think this is a big vote in favour of Bayesian filtering. Or a big vote against me.
I blame Casey.
Afterthought: Casey, you aren’t a spambot posing as a person, are you?
The Street.com has a piece this morning about Microsoft’s quality victory over Apple, which I was hoping someone would cover to some degree. It answers some of the questions I have about the service, but there are still others I think will better-decide the victor in this living room war.
First, price. Microsoft having lotsa shows and lotsa movies will only turn into lotsa users if the price is reasonable. Call me crazy, but I already think $1.99 for an episode of Lost is a bit much… I can’t imagine the studios are going to sell HD quality episodes months before the DVDs for anything close to $1.99. They don’t seem to be the types to willingly create a good value proposition for their customers. And if an episode (HD or not) of Lost sells for $2.99 or $3.99, would YOU buy it? I could go to the video store and rent a brand-new two hour movie for that. And since Apple’s now selling standard low-def TV resolutions for the same $1.99, I don’t know that the quality difference will seem big enough to convert users, if the price is too high.
Second, DRM. This one is pure speculation, but I’d say there’s a decent chance that Microsoft will wrap their content with special license terms to make it harder to watch what you download. The Apple model has (thus far) been a short leash that keeps your music and video tied to your computer and your iPod. Logic suggests it’d extend to the iTV as well, which means you can continue to buy movies on the iTunes Store and watch half on your iPod and half on your TV. Microsoft has a bad reputation of bowing too much to the studios’ demands in this space, which could mean you will be able to watch your $1.99 version of Lost only 3 times, and then have to pay more to keep it. Or watch it on your XBox and nothing else. Having the studios onboard for movies makes me think they’ve got some DRM ace up their sleeves which will make the suits happy, but make the end-user cringe.
All this is not to say that Microsoft will sputter and die in this battle, and it’s not to say Apple will win. But I think basing the outcome on XBox penetration or quality-of-video is missing a big part of the puzzle… the user experience. But where Apple can’t afford to ship these iTVs with a flimsy service, Microsoft can afford to bomb with theirs, because people won’t really be buying XBoxes to watch downloaded TV anyway.
If anyone has any info on pricing or DRM on this Microsoft idea, please let me know.
Update: From MacNN, about the Zune. See, Microsoft makes deals with labels and studios that I would suggest don’t always make good strategic sense, especially insofar as their customers are concerned. Universal doesn’t deserve a chunk of Zune sales unless they stick something on the Zune. It’s like saying Yamaha deserves profit participation in album sales because the artists use their keyboards. Anyone who willingly makes this kind of deal is probably not going to make a good video download service.
This is the kind of post I generally avoid doing because American politics aren’t my business, and it tends to unnecessarily polarize an audience. So with that in mind, my honest question for y’all:
Why didn’t Bush can Rumsfeld last week? I mean, I know everyone would be saying it was a dirty election trick, but does it really matter if it was or not? I’m sure that would’ve placated a good many anti-Iraq right-of-centre folks who switched sides yesterday. The Republicans could have squeaked past with a tiny victory, but a victory all the same. It just seems like fantastically stupid (and uncharacteristic) political thinking on the part of Bush’s team to wait till after they were whipped.
That said, I have absolutely no problems with the results of the election. But from a non-partisan viewpoint, I think Bush and Rove blew a great chance.
Oh, and I just saw this, posted to Boing Boing… the Rumsfeld situation in an Apple motif. Beauty.
I will aspire to not mention American politics again. Unless they invade Canada.
A fantastic TV show model that thrives in Japan is “get a bunch of stars together in one room and make them talk about random news for an hour or two”. It’s chaotic, silly, and usually terribly funny as each personality tries to become the most entertaining one in the room. It makes actors, comedians and musicians into real people for their fans, and gives semi-discovered talent a chance to impress a new audience.
Here in Hollywood-land-world, we’ve moved away from that motif, because stars have carefully-crafted auras they want to protect at all costs… and besides, no one’s able to get that many big names together anyway. A key prerequisite for this kind of entertainment is that the cost of engaging the participants has to be low enough that you can afford to have a room full of celebs in the first place. In a world with $20M+ pay days for ho-hum actors, it becomes less and less viable.
Vidcast stars are ideal for this model. They’re already humble, they’re already a bit unstable, and by and large they’re not paid enough to reasonably demand a lot of cash to appear. What they need is exposure, a chance to impress, and (bluntly put) another easy outlet they might turn into a second (or third, or fourth) hit show.
Right now these stars are working alone or in pairs, designing a unique look and feel that best showcases their talents, and doing the true Internet schtick by not deferring to some controlling entity. There is not, as of yet, an NBC of the web world. Every vidcaster is an island, and they like it that way. But perhaps the desire to build and maintain so many unique little stages has blinded people to the value of ALSO getting together on a common stage for a time. It’s not a question of replacing the independent streak, it’s a question of complementing it. Enhancing it.
Andrew Baron, producer of Rocketboom, likes to imagine that the objective of this New Media world should be to do one thing, charge a lot for it, and live a life of luxury… basically emulate Hollywood until you are Hollywood. But Hollywood’s current business model is in grave danger, and a smarter direction would be to embrace a sustainable plan that keeps everyone gainfully employed while doing things they enjoy. Otherwise you’re desperately scrambling to get aboard a sinking luxury cruise-ship. The pretty chandelier won’t look quite as glamourous at the bottom of the ocean.
The current stars of the vidcast world need to work together more often, in different combinations, with different themes, to create a viable alternative to TV. I currently watch over 3 hours of vidcasts a week, and that’s only because there isn’t much else that interests me right now. Stick Ze Frank, Alex Albrecht, the Ninja and others in a room with beer, and have Amanda Congdon as host… you’d make hours of great comedy with ease, and have a massive audience to boot.
The key to success in the New Media world is not simply to develop new styles that Hollywood hasn’t imagined yet… it’s to re-examine the styles they discarded as they became as bloated as they are today.
