Critics frequently attach the phrase “lock-in” to Apple’s iTunes Store – iTunes – iPod/iPhone combination. But, in the post-DRM age, what does that mean, exactly?

First, you have to recall that while for many of us the manual drag-and-drop music management is appealing, it isn’t so for many average consumers. They want sync. That means that music will be stored in iTunes and synced to Apple devices and nothing else. Apple is serious about locking you to their store and their devices, enough so that they frequently update their software with special keys that prevent the use of devices. iTunes is “free,” but Apple determines which mobile devices you can use and which you can’t. And Apple has gone after anyone who dares give you the ability to use your own music software or own devices, including efforts (ironically) to make their iPhone and iPod work with Linux and open source players.

These efforts don’t protect the music or prevent privacy – they protect users of Apple’s software and mobile devices from using anything but Apple’s tools. Yet Apple has used the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to take legal action over anyone who dares to even talk about how to use legally-purchased music and hardware:

OdioWorks v Apple

Perhaps suspecting their case was too thin to defend, Apple eventually backed off that particular claim — after, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “7 months of censorship and a lawsuit.”

Apple Withdraws Threats Against Wiki Site

But the software and hardware locks are unchanged. And Apple has won, in my view, an even more important battle: they have a monopoly over mindshare.

Here’s an example from a recent review by Gizmodo of the Android 2.0 mobile operating system from Google, as implemented on the Verizon-distributed Motorola Droid. They have some fair points about Android’s maturity and strong and weak points. But note what they say about music sync:

The only way to get your music and videos on the phone is to manually drag and drop the files. There is no syncing, no easy way to get your music library onto your phone. How are normal people supposed to figure this out? Verizon reps actually joked about how putting music on the Droid is sure to make for a lovely Saturday afternoon. What. The. Shit.

In fact, this is technically accurate, to my knowledge, only if you’re using iTunes. That incompatibility is engineered specifically by Apple. It’s a “feature”: other vendors could make other devices sync with iTunes, but Apple engineers regular updates to prevent them from doing so. In fact, while Apple was conceding defeat in its efforts to censor the Web over its iTunes lock, it was simultaneously busy blocking the Palm Pre from working with iTunes. This should be especially sad to long-time Mac watchers, who saw a Mac community railing against Microsoft’s effective office software and operating system monopolies in the 90s. Those Mac historians should also recall the early development of iTunes and shareware predecessor SoundJam, both of which worked with a variety of hardware. Now, some members of the same Mac community cheer market share numbers and anti-competitive practices by Apple.

But, engineering aside, it’s really the mindshare battle that’s most impressive. Gizmodo, in saying the Android “doesn’t sync,” really means that it “doesn’t sync with iTunes.” And given iTunes’ massive market share, Gizmodo is not alone – I’ve seen similar complaints from other press outlets and, anecdotally, many, many users.

In fact, Android sync is supported by a variety of applications. In my tests, it works with the open-source players Songbird (Mac, Windows, Linux), Banshee (Mac, Linux), Rhythmbox (Linux), Winamp (Windows), Media Monkey (Windows), and yes, even Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player. Microsoft may restrict the use of its Zune media player, but ironically its music playback software is far more open than Apple’s.

By “sync,” incidentally, I mean automatically – it’s no harder to use these applications with Google Android than Apple’s iTunes and iPhone/iPod. I personally find most of them more flexible and intuitive than iTunes. And I can show someone in a couple of minutes how to manage their device via the file system, too – even “normal people.” (I definitely don’t count as “normal,” so no argument there. But presumably “normal people” can learn to use the Mac Finder, right? Apple certainly argues they can – then locks users out of that tool when they connect an Apple mobile player.)

This is not a pro-Android argument, despite the screenshot. Any music player or phone that supports normal disk mounting will work the same way.

Why should all of this matter to musicians? The reasons monopolies are a concern in the first place has to do with pricing, and media monopolies add to that control of culture and speech. Even if your music isn’t distributed through iTunes, pricing and consumption patterns, and even the kinds of music people listen to and where they discover it are now being deeply impacted by Apple. Apple, in turn, by convincing users that there are no other options and engineering interoperability out of their products protect that control, just as digital music is growing by leaps and bounds. (For statistical evidence of the resulting trends, see today’s other story, linked below.)

I spoke to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann in April about the paper-thin (literally) arguments from Apple, when Apple was trying to prevent websites from talking about the database lock between iTunes and mobile devices:

All Apple has told us about this is in the letter they sent to us in December, as posted on the website as an exhibit to our complaint. Apple simply cites the fact that the iTunesDB page authors said that the obfuscation mechanisms used to create the iTunesDB has “may reside” in the FairPlay DRM code.

…The important thing here is that the iTunesDB pages were simply discussions about what might need to be done to reverse engineer the iTunesDB hashing. There was nothing to indicate that the efforts had succeeded. So even if understanding the iTunesDB hashing mechanism somehow magically unlocked all of FairPlay (which would seem to be far fetched), nothing on the pages suggests that the authors were anywhere near that goal.

Note that at the time, the EFF did not claim Apple lacked the right to make these kind of locks. The EFF told CDM at the time, “They have every right to do – to try to block it. Apple can certainly try to block it. What they can’t do is use inapplicable federal law to use legal threats to get them to stop.” And Apple backed off those claims.

The issue is whether you should invest in a product that limits your freedoms to use it. And the issue for musicians is whether this kind of a behavior from a company with an effective monopoly is limiting the potential power of digital music listeners in the future.

This is not to say that there aren’t reasons to choose to use an Apple device or its iTunes software. As reader “low resolution sunset” says in comments on the previous story:

This is pure conjecture: but I tend to think that slick interface design, trust, and loyalty for the Apple brand identity is what’s winning them the dominant market share of downloads.

Indeed. So, why not rely on that design, trust, and natural loyalty? Why force loyalty through engineering? And even given these qualities, isn’t there a danger when one company becomes so dominant that people don’t so much as consider alternatives? What’s to keep Apple competitive on good design if they have no competitors?

I certainly can’t answer those questions. And in the meantime, I’m looking to other alternatives, alternatives that have made me quite happy.

More on what this can actually mean:

Digital Sales Up, But is Apple Monopoly the Price? NPD, Mint Data, Editorial Analysis

The urgency of being way behind a single dominant player can make electronics makers do some odd stuff to promote their products. iPod, once an icon of digital cool, has achieved such ubiquity that it doesn’t even try to be hip any more. The thing is being promoted with American Idol, for crying out loud — not exactly indie cred. We saw Microsoft enlisting indie musicians and animators to sell Zune, of course.

But here’s where things get surprisingly amazing: Sony is using weird and wonderful Japanese experimental music to promote Walkman.

Now we’re talking.

And whether or not Walkman is cool again, this is for sure: Japanese experimental musicians? Mind-blowingly cool. And, apparently, in love with using light as a controller for sound.

Atsuhiro Ito uses contact mics on a fluorescent bulb he dubs the Optron. Instead of just being stage eye candy, the bulbs are really making the sounds here; coupled with guitar effects, he can solo on the bulbs. It’s what the Knitting Factory will be like after the nuclear winter. I can’t wait.

Taeji Sawai uses a light pen to draw melodic lines and rhythmic onto a screen. The basic effect – track light from a single source – is old. Yet he’s clearly got a brilliant aesthetic mind that makes it all work; the elements are strikingly simple but never fail to be engaging. And there’s a strong connection to work by his fellow sonic inventor Toshio Iwai.

Thanks to our friend Donald Bell of cnet, aka very talented and (cool) musician Chachi Jones, who has a great write-up:

Sony Walkman promos are awesome, confusing

Confusing? No, I’d say Sony is confusing; the real question is why their Walkman can’t be more like these ads. Plus, since neither Don nor I can read Japanese, how do we know those characters don’t say something like “Hey, guys, sorry for that bit with the lousy boring electronics – we’re coming back from the dark side to make awesome things again”? Okay, maybe not. (Do let me know if the next one says “Fine, you damned snarky blogger, I’d like to see you run a giant multinational corporation.”)

Admittedly, the problem here is this makes me want to toss my iPod touch out the window and build my own open source MP3 player with Popsicle sticks and wire, or, at best, mod an original Walkman so I can play circuit-bent OGG files using power from a bicycle. At the very least, I’m ready to add to my Atsuhiro Ito and Taeji Sawai collection. And I don’t think their full body of work is on iTunes. That’s just as well.

So, Sony, thanks. Now, will you let us run homebrew music apps on your PSP? Please?

Last week, Apple rejected a podcast management app because, to paraphrase Apple’s own policy, they want iTunes handling all podcasts for you and not any third-party apps. (Officially, “Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.”)

Over the past few days, that’s generated plenty of chatter on the blogosphere, mostly centering around technical and philosophical discussions of the way Apple manages its developer relations and application approval.

But let’s cut right to the chase. This time, it’s not about Apple’s App Store or approval process. That’s Apple’s model, and it’s their choice to continue to defend its merits against its competitors. (That’s not to say it hasn’t introduced some limitations; see Gizmodo for a good overview of that.) This is really about iTunes. A discussion of the way Apple is using the dominance of iTunes to control how music and media is consumed is long overdue.

I can think of no better time to have just that conversation. In one week, Apple has sent a strong message. They shipped iTunes 8, which delivered mediocre knock-offs of functionality in other tools, all intended to keep you inside Apple’s ecosystem and away from what should be an increasingly-vibrant set of alternatives. They delivered another iPod touch/iPhone firmware update that still doesn’t deliver basic connectivity to your computer — and, as a result, was hacked within hours by users wanting that functionality. And they then blocked a third-party app that delivered something they hadn’t, in order to protect their own more limited solution — the opposite of what building a developer platform is supposed to be about.

What makes this all so frustrating is they still make the best mobile music and video player in the world. So why are they clamping that player into a chastity belt?

It’s About Distribution

Ever since the launch of Napster and file sharing services, digital distribution has been at the forefront of conversations about digital media — and rightfully so. Apple did provide the first successful business model that allowed digital distribution to make money for producers, and for that they should be congratulated. But part of the dream of digital distribution was decentralization — a level playing field, without major labels and retail outlets tilted to big hits while ignoring niche interests and independent artists. iTunes, meanwhile, rose to be the single dominant player and store, coupled with the dominant mobile hardware. That’s a situation that was always ripe for abuse.

It’s interesting to re-read Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts on Music” essay from February 2007. At the time, many held it up as a bold statement by Apple advocating an end to DRM. Now, it’s tough to read it that way. Most of the “essay” is spent defending Apple for its integration of iPod and iTunes, and saying Apple wasn’t really creating “lock-in” to its store. Here’s my favorite part:

“Some have argued that once a consumer purchases a body of music from one of the proprietary music stores, they are forever locked into only using music players from that one company… It’s hard to believe that just 3% of the music on the average iPod is enough to lock users into buying only iPods in the future. And since 97% of the music on the average iPod was not purchased from the iTunes store, iPod users are clearly not locked into the iTunes store to acquire their music.”

You’ll notice Jobs never answered the original question, which was interoperability. He just changed the subject — effectively, he argued, interoperability beyond the MP3 format wasn’t necessary, and specifically interoperability of DRM wasn’t necessary. He also didn’t cover the question of interoperability of video formats. That number is likely to be far higher than 3%, even assuming as Jobs does that customers use all their storage capacity.

Jobs did convince major labels to drop DRM — but not to please him. On the contrary, the aggressive policy of releasing DRM-free music by labels seems to be an admission that the labels themselves were (rightfully) concerned about the business implications of Apple becoming their only vendor. They had to remove DRM in order to make their music compatible with iTunes and iPod.

More telling is what Apple chose to do next.

“The labels made us do it” argument about FairPlay and DRM doesn’t make any sense, because the same technology has resurfaced in the App Store. You’ll find that apps downloaded via iTunes — remarkably, even free apps — require authorization from an iTunes account, just like DRM-encoded music once had. That’s to say nothing of the company’s apparent plans to add DRM to your clothes.

Those protections may well protect application developers from piracy, so to Apple’s credit, FairPlay could help protect developers. (That doesn’t explain why free apps are included, of course, nor does it address the lack of demo downloads, but I’ll give credit where it’s due.)

What’s more troubling is the other sets of restrictions Apple has placed on iTunes and iPod/iPhone media consumption and playback. Let’s call it the iTunes Lock-Down.

What iTunes and iPod-iPhone Do Right

Before looking at the chains Apple has imposed, it’s important to note that they’ve done some really important things for digital creators. And you can only understand the iPod touch and iPhone at their worst if you look at them at their best:

• iTunes is a vital distribution outlet: I have nothing against the iTunes store. It works well, it’s shown healthy growth, and its integration clearly provides a set of opportunities for getting your content out there.
• iPod/iPhone is a damned good media player: People don’t buy these things because they’re trend-following sheep. The success of Apple’s devices really is because they’re well designed — not only on their shiny outsides, but how well they navigate and play media, which is the point.
• Apps are awesome: Need a reason to buy the iPod touch over, say, a Microsoft Zune or Samsung or SanDisk or other media player? Fire up an app like Last.fm, which beautifully streams song recommendations. Note, of course, this is because they go outside what Apple themselves provide. That’s the whole point.

Computer Says No: iTunes Lock-Out

Let’s forget the philosophy or the politics here for a second. Those are interesting discussions, but most people buy an iPod or iPhone to use the thing. And we can avoid deeper, more abstract issues by looking solely at what the device does.

In this case, it’s about what you can’t do — not for technical reasons, but because Apple has decided to block certain functionality. An iPod touch, in particular, is basically a tiny computer, a flash drive, a screen, and a headphone jack. It’s a USB flash drive — something that, since the very creation of USB, normally allowed connecting to a computer. Then it’s got an Internet Wi-Fi connection, which under normal circumstances should let you connect to the Internet and do things. iTunes is a software player that manages media files on your hard drive. The files you’re playing, from audio to video to RSS-delivered audio and video (podcasts) should be playable anywhere.

Here’s where stuff starts to go wrong.

• You can’t manage your iPod or iPhone using anything other than iTunes. This is a big deal, and I think it’s clear why when you try to use iTunes 8. Other players have continued to grow and develop while iTunes has not. Look at the open-source, Firefox-based, tri-platform Songbird, which integrates web browsing for music and other unique features. Look at Media Monkey, foobar2000, and Winamp on Windows. Look at Rhythmbox, Amorak, and Banshee on Linux. Any of these players ought to be able to use the iPod/iPhone as a normal storage device; up until firmware 2.x, many could. But the 2.x firmware devices are the most locked-down Apple has ever made. That means you’ve got a drive plugged into your computer that you can’t actually use without approved software.
• You can’t manage files. Happily, some third-party apps have stepped in here, with over-the-air tools for file sync, transfer, viewing, and navigation. On the other hand, it’s unclear why Apple doesn’t use existing built-in mechanisms for connecting drives via USB tethering, or why you have to get an app to do this in the first place. And most importantly, these tools generally won’t work with music files (though I have been researching options for that and will report back — even if it isn’t Apple-sanctioned).
• You can’t install apps outside iTunes. Enough has been said about this. But I’ll make one comparison: the only major equivalent here is the restrictions on running software on game consoles. Even on my Blackberry, I can choose what to install. I’ve never created a freak black hole by doing so.
• Real Genius: The reliance on iTunes ignores the innovation happening on the Web. Apple’s Genius Playlist feature is an embarrassment. Smart recommendation engines have been around for years. They’re a joy to use, and they hook into real communities. The Genius Playlist suggests music extremely poorly, and cynically tries to make you buy more music from iTunes. Web alternatives, ironically, are probably better at that, too, because their recommendations actually work. There’s basic Last.fm compatibility for iTunes, but other computer players have open plug-in architectures iTunes lacks. iTunes, by contrast, seems like an app built before Web communities were popular, perhaps because it was. And to get real Last.fm scrobbling on my iPod touch, I had to jailbreak the iPod. (Highly recommended, by the way, but that only proves my point.)
• The only choice for podcast management is iTunes. This brings us full circle. Now, Apple has done amazing work on their software and hardware. I don’t expect them to do everything I want. But that’s why I love development platforms. Apple did a brilliant job on Mac OS. Sure, installing an app might cause a crash. The UI might not be up to par. But that should be my choice. And by having that choice, third party developers can take things Apple missed and do a better job.

About Those Podcasts…

The podcast issue is especially important, because it impacts distribution, and as a result those who create and consume content (read: us). When done well, when the format is open and flexible, creators and consumers win. If it’s done poorly, we lose.

The iPod touch and iPhone ought to be causing a revolution in podcasting, particularly the consumption of videos. I think some of this potential is stunted by being forced to go through iTunes. Think about it. You’ve got a beautiful device with a beautiful screen that’s completely portable and connects via Wi-Fi and (for the iPhone) mobile networks. Yet to put a podcast on it, you have to:

1. Load iTunes.
2. Get your Apple-proprietary cable.
3. Connect your device by cable to a computer running a copy of iTunes configured for that device.
4. Configure the podcasts you want to hear.
5. Download the podcasts on your computer.
6. Sync — an often painfully-slow process that often involves connecting to the App Store and molasses-like backups.
7. After you’re done listening again, sync again to refresh — and deal with iTunes’ poorly-conceived settings for storing and retaining files.

The whole point of podcast distribution is that it’s done online. It’s bad enough that Apple would miss the boat on this; it’s worse that they’d keep others from doing better.

And Podcaster is just one example. What other Web innovation will be stymied by Apple having a closed platform? Fortunately, I’m not waiting around to find out — for the time being, I’m taking advantage of the superior work being done on hacked and jailbroken platforms. I’ll be talking about how you can do the same on CDM in the coming weeks, as well as watching to see if competitors can get their act together and offer a strong alternative.

Why This Matters

As content creators and publishers, we should be especially concerned. We’re living in an age that promises to be unparalleled in exploring new ways for people to discover and consume the things we make. We need to be able to get that content to people easily, so whether or not something like a podcast works the way it should is important. We also need to have access to tools as they evolve, which means openness matters, too. I’ve discovered all kinds of artists through Last.fm and other new services. If Apple alone had access to my music library for tagging, management, listening, and discovery, that experience would be far less interesting.

And I expect the dimensions of this need will only grow in time. The alternative is stagnation. We’ve already seen what happens when one vendor dominates a business: think Microsoft Office in the 1990s. It’s no accident that people have started calling iTunes the “Outlook” of media. iTunes 8 isn’t a bad release, necessarily, and I’m sure a lot of effort when into it. But when you have a major release that Apple flew press cross-country to demonstrate, you’d expect new features, not poor copies (Genius Sidebar, Album Cover view) of features already in competitive products for years. Most of the slicker changes in iTunes (Cover Flow, the new visualizer) have been acquisitions. But then, Apple shouldn’t have to give us everything — that’s why software choice is so important. I think some people would be more likely to buy a new iPod touch if they knew it wouldn’t refuse to talk to their copy of Winamp.

What Can Be Done?

I do really care about Apple’s devices and the work they’ve done. Microsoft once had to backpedal when they went too far with their platform. I hope it wouldn’t take a legal crisis to get Apple to do the same. After all, Apple has already reversed position on development in general, from saying that applications destroy quality and threaten to bring down mobile networks, to saying web pages count as application development, to finally advocating development as a major selling point of the platform.

Apple could:

1. Ship their own over-the-air podcast management tool in a firmware update, and allow users to subscribe to podcasts from within Safari. After all, these are the technologies Apple championed and has traditionally implemented better than anyone else. There’s no reason Apple can’t again lead on podcasts. (The cynical part of me fears that they’re more interested in selling you entertainment from the iTunes store, but Apple, feel free to prove me wrong.)

2. Provide database access. What’s the point of apps for a media player if the apps can’t adequately complement the media player?

3. Stop blocking third parties just because they interface with the music playback parts of the device or compete with iTunes. These ought to be the best apps available for the platform, as they get to the heart of why people buy Apple mobile devices in the first place (particularly iPod). It’s clear that something like a podcast app isn’t a security or quality threat. And from a business perspective, keeping the media playback experience rich will reward Apple with still more loyal users.

3. Work with Adobe to deliver Flash support. The other major content distribution stream is the Web, and Flash remains important. Now that Flash supports MP4, there’s no reason we shouldn’t see services like Vimeo on the device and not just YouTube.

4. Give us normal drive access. This could let us use innovative new media players and make our iDevices more useful by storing our files on them, out of the box.

Of course, I’m not optimistic about any of these things. So, assuming Apple continues down this path, that leaves the solution to other groups. Developers are doing what they always do: they’re building solutions. Some are likely to turn to the open-source, hacked development chain. Others will look to competitive devices. Desktop computer player makers I hope will work really hard to hack Apple’s devices so they can sync with them. But we’re most dependent on competitors learning from what Apple does well (rich capabilities, well-designed UIs and hardware) while choosing different paths than Apple on lock-in (open development and interoperability instead of the closed Apple path).

Unfortunately, Apple’s best bet for a rival recently, Microsoft, chose to replicate the closed iTunes model with their Zune. Given that even big Zune advocates were quickly blogging about how to get around Microsoft’s restrictions on device access, my guess is that that helped contribute to the Zune’s unpopularity.

Other alternatives lie ahead, though, particularly with Linux and Google Android on the horizon.

What we can do as creators and consumers, though, is easier. For starters, we can stop taking no for an answer. Via Gizmodo, The Joy of Tech comic fought back brilliantly with humor. Bloggers have been vigorously calling Apple on their error on Podcaster. The underground iPhone development crews have done an incredible job of keeping up with hacks, and you can support their efforts by helping the develop and test or by contributing donations. We need advocates for useful tools (OGG codecs and Last.fm scrobbling) and not just pirating Nintendo game ROMs. Obviously, the latter makes a poor argument for the platform.

Certainly, I will continue to discuss alternatives to iTunes for listening to, managing, sharing, and discovering music. Stay tuned.

Further Reading

Apple’s Capricious Rules for iPhone Apps [New York Times]

Things That Podcaster’s Rejection From the App Store Is Not About [Daring Fireball]

And for a laugh, see Gizmodo on Joy Of Tech’s How Apple Picks Which Apps Make It to the App Store

Assuming you’ve survived hours of waiting on line or weathered various technical problems, Apple’s app store is online. Anyone with iTunes can have a look; it’s right inside the iTunes Store (formerly the iTunes Music Store). But while Apple’s development platform is impressive, early in the game a lot of the actual music apps seem to me to be, frankly, underwhelming. (Some of the non-musical apps look far better, like the lovely free client for awesome note-taking service Evernote.)

Click through to App Store > Music, and you may feel like you’ve entered a time warp to simplistic handheld music apps from the Palm and Windows Mobile platforms, only dressed up with shiny new eye candy – and $5 and $10 prices. You’ve got your choice of several guitar tuners and metronomes, and various sound toys that mimic instruments. Also, I find the iTunes interface rather annoying. You get a bunch of shiny icons but it’s hard to find specific tools. So, after all these years, are we still struggling to catch up to late 90s Palm apps? Really?

There is one potential standout: Karajan is a polished-looking handheld music theory tool for quizzes on intervals, chords, scales, and pitch. Then again, Karajan will cost you US$15. For free, you could head to Ricci Adams’ musictheory.net and get more detailed lessons and trainers in your browser. (It’s even Creative Commons-licensed, so if Flash ever runs on iPhone, we could see a port.)

Don’t get me wrong. The platform’s new, and I expect we’ll see better offerings over time. In fact, I think it’s natural that early offerings would be on the simple side. The problem is, the hype from the iPhone loving crowd is amped up so high, you begin to feel like we’ve left reality entirely. I wonder if the press will overlook real handheld music apps, like the powerful offerings available for PSP and Nintendo DS. And I feel obligated to point out that, bizarrely, you can get a heck of a lot more power for handheld music by hacking a game system and download free games than you can by paying hundreds of dollars on hardware, potentially many hundreds on service, and (in many cases) spending money on apps for Apple’s official mobile platform. (Maybe some of the talented developers are more drawn to the hacked platforms, anyway, contrary to conventional wisdom – partly because so many interesting mobile apps are labors of love, done outside their day job.)

To have a really good time, I’d be tempted to fire up a used Palm or PocketPC for the wealth of music apps available on those platforms – real sequencers, notation software, and unusual instruments. And that’s to say nothing of the PSP and DS. Sure, the iPhone may have powerful hardware, but as we’ve seen with Nintendo (ahem) that doesn’t necessarily yield great game design. I’m not crazy, right? Doesn’t this look like more fun to you, too? And without the hassle of a big mobile carrier. (The iPod Touch, at least, fares better, and it’s not as though there are many cool apps for the Zune.)

Then again, maybe all of this is a good thing. Old hardware is notoriously hard to recycle, hard on the environment, and loses its value quickly. Musicians, after all, form affectionate relationships with old instruments. Maybe it’s best to leave the disposable gadget culture to the tech freaks, and go find tools that’ll really give us a musical experience. Someone’s got to pick up those cheap eBay PDAs.

Updated: See comments for some insight from Chad, who’s written some awesome PalmOS apps at minimusic.com. He talks a bit about some of the specific hurdles facing developers for writing mature music apps — which, by definition, are tougher to develop and more demanding of the platform.

Given the iPhone/iPod Touch OS’ audio features and horsepower, there are clearly some interesting apps down the road. But then, that’s part of why I point out that this generation is a bit lacking — it’s because I think it’s a shadow of what’s possible and what we should see. We’ll be watching.

For those of you who are interested, Apple’s WWDC keynote has focused today on the iPhone 3G and the iPhone SDK. Macworld has a nice live blow-by-blow.

Here’s the bottom line for me. First, Apple has done an incredible job of demonstrating the potential of rich media apps in general, mobile and otherwise. They’ve showed off a powerful set of third-party applications that go beyond what most people think of on phones, including rich 3D, positional 3D audio (via OpenAL), and music apps. And it’s nice to see those rich media apps alongside things like push messaging. We’re seeing phones as mobile creative devices and not just as phones or even game systems. Music apps in particular prove to be massive hits with mainstream audiences, not just “pro audio” audiences. See our round-up of iPhone/iPod Touch music apps for a glimpse of what this can look like. Band, a set of software instruments, made an officially-sanctioned appearance right in the keynote to widespread cheers from a non-musician audience. And the fact that it’s official means you’ll get great new apps even without hacking your iPhone in the near future, as we hoped.

And this is, of course, what musicians and live visualists have been saying since the iPhone’s release: third-party software development, far beyond what Apple alone can imagine, is what really makes mobile devices interesting. Here on CDM, we’ve seen novel applications like VJs running live visuals in clubs and Pro Tools controllers, among other things, and now a lot of that is likely to become official. And given music apps for Nintendo portable game consoles and Palm and Windows Mobile PDAs, this should be no surprise. But what is a surprise, perhaps, is that mainstream audiences are excited about these things as we are.

We also now know the iPhone 3G will be US$199 and available in more countries, which means volume is likely to increase fast.

I don’t need to hype up the iPhone, though — I expect you’ve got the whole blogosphere for that. But platforms are about tradeoffs; there’s no such thing as a perfect platform. And with all the iPhone lust, we seem to be missing some of the downsides of Apple’s approach:

• You have to wade through Apple’s reality distortion field to get at what’s really unique. 3G? GPS? A conventional headphone jack? Live maps? Push contact information? Online uploading? Let’s just be clear — some of this isn’t really news so much as Apple plugging obvious downsides of its version 1.0. And hyping up these features distracts from things that Apple is doing first (like shipping a real, rich media-savvy SDK).
• Apple squeeze? Aside from another $100 subscription fee for data services, I think what’s silly is iPod Touch users having to cough up yet another ten bucks for a firmware update. Does $10 really make a difference? Of course not. That’s why it’s especially annoying. It’s like American Airlines’ new $15 bag fee. It’s just not something customers will feel good about. I’ve never had to pay for firmware for any device, let alone for a firmware update whose main feature is the ability to buy more stuff. (How about a $10 rebate for software purchases, at least?) Update: Commenter sqook points to an Engadget report in which the upgrade fee is an accounting requirement. Perhaps someone can explain why competing media players like the Zune and Archos seem to get firmware updates that add new features free. Updated again: Some of you have spoken up, and …well, let’s just leave it at this boils down to some legal issues I don’t fully understand. Let’s just swallow the ten bucks and go back to complaining about the MobileMe subscription fee. Unless that’s an accounting thing, too … sigh.
• The developer tools aren’t free, and that means a lot. Sure, $100 isn’t much to pay for a development kit with which you can test on the device. (The free download is currently a beta and doesn’t include a license for testing or distribution.) But that’s just the beginning — think "free and open source." Compare NetBeans and Eclipse, open-source tools for mobile development. The open source tools run on any OS (Solaris, for crying out loud), whereas Xcode is Mac-only, Leopard-only, and even Intel-only. The open source tools tend to have (arguably) richer feature sets and wider communities. If they don’t do everything you want, you can easily customize them and extend them. That’s not to say some people aren’t happy with Xcode, but the free apps can offer more value to developers – and they’re getting better at a breakneck speed.
• Apple’s platform tools don’t work elsewhere. Past mobile frameworks like JavaME/MIDP have certainly had their problems, but they allow developers to write apps that work in more places. Now, Apple may make a value proposition to developers that says its own platform is worth being on. (See also: Mac, Apple II.) But by definition, someone’s left out of the party – meaning there are other opportunities elsewhere.
• Apple controls functionality and distribution. This one’s a little trickier, as it’s a glass half-empty/half-full situation. On the half-full side, Apple’s new developer store could make it easier for developers to sell software. On the half-empty side, the developer keeps only 70% of the revenue and remains at Apple’s whim. By contrast, I could write a Java app right now for Blackberry and various phones, put it on my website, and give it to anyone, which in the age of Google is a very valid way to sell software.
• Sometimes Apple seems to have a one-track mind: I’m also disappointed that we still don’t have a hard disk iPod with the iPhone/Touch software interface. Keep in mind that the iPod is still Apple’s number one-selling device. And speaking of Apple’s bread and butter, while WWDC thankfully has three tracks (iPhone, Mac, IT) and plenty of Mac focus, the Mac seemed noticeably absent from the keynote today.

But my point isn’t really to criticize the iPhone — I think it’s a fantastic piece of work. Smart design and smart technology are about making trade-offs. Many of these downsides (Apple’s control over the development tools, APIs, and store) are upsides for some. But that means for each of these points there’s an opportunity for someone else.

Beyond Cupertino: The Multi-Platform Ecosystem

The point is, Apple’s solution isn’t the only solution out there. And I think competition is what will make this whole area interesting — and more interesting still for iPhone lovers, too, because competition will keep the whole area moving. It’s important to note that, while Apple rightfully deserves credit for shipping something great and shipping it first, the enabling technologies aren’t necessarily from Apple.

The soul of the iPhone is, in generic terms:

• New mobile processing technology with more brains and less power consumption
• Increasingly-affordable display and touch technology
• Desktop-class rich media capabilities: video, 3D, and sound. 
• OpenGL ES mobile graphics, a new mobile standard for rich 3D
• OpenAL positional audio, also an open standard
• Desktop-class OS frameworks to put it all together

Apple’s implementation is indeed something special and something Apple owns. Their patent portfolio for multi-touch and gestures, for instance, is deep, and it’s stuff that isn’t easy to develop. And the way you develop on iPhone is dependent on their self-sufficient ecosystem of the Mac, Cocoa, Quartz (the display framework), and Xcode. And it’d be a mistake to underestimate the work they’ve done in hardware and UI design. But it’s also just one gadget, and part of what it demonstrates is the untapped potential of these technologies.

There are cross-platform, sometimes open-source ecosystems evolving, too, which could bear fruit in the long run:

• Java, which is about to get a major kick in the pants from JavaFX (which includes new development tools, new media codec support, and the ability to work with other Java tools)
• Linux, which arguably has a leg up on modularity and customization to different hardware configurations, and could wind up on quite a few devices
• An open source development toolchain (likely to include development tools like NetBeans and Eclipse)
• Google’s Android platform
• Adobe’s Flash/Flex, which finally is getting more mobile-savvy and more open (at least in parts of the development chain and player)

That’s not to say this set of tools is superior to the iPhone/iPod Touch — on the contrary, so far, while there are some "smart" Linux devices out there, there’s not much shipping in quantity and the rich media toolset integration has a long way to go.

But is it a wide open playing field? Absolutely. And while the window of opportunity could close quickly, Linux and Java platforms have an opportunity to play for mobile development that they didn’t really get on the desktop. The ability to have an open alternative is likely to motivate both sides and create a more mature environment overall.

"Mobile" isn’t limited to phones, either — see the fun, LEGO modular-like do-everything, open-source BUG gadget. We hope to have some features on developing for it on CDM Labs soon. And there’s the GamePark Linux-based game console, as well; there are various reasons to think game-specific features may still have some appeal. (The DS isn’t losing any steam soon.)

The desktop could be transformed by these changes, too. Lower power consumption, richer media support, more affordable computing and display technologies, and easier cross-platform development all matter to music and visual software on laptops and desktop machines as much as handheld gadgets.

New Creativity, Hopefully Including the iPhone

Back to what this means for musicians and visualists, I think we’re about to see mobile devices that get some powerful and wonderful features alongside our computers. Think mobile apps with powerful recording, synthesis, music making, and effects capabilities, or VJs with mobile devices triggering videos right off their player or controlling computer visuals by remote multi-touch. (In other words, think about what we’ve been seeing — but just imagine more of it.)

The important thing is, the iPhone is just a part of this larger puzzle. Eventually, I think we’ll see Apple’s mobile devices benefit, as well, not only from Apple’s toolchain but multi-platform software as well — provided Apple doesn’t squash that kind of innovation by keeping it out of their store.

I’m not deluded. I know that crazy drum machines or VJ apps won’t exactly determine the fate of the mobile computing business. On the contrary, I think our role as artists is to show what can happen at the bleeding edge when we push these devices to be expressive. And I think people enjoy that it’s weird and not just business as usual. The technologies that will allow us to do that, though, are intimately tied to those that drive mainstream applications for sound and visuals.

Apple has raised the bar, no question. If its competitors are really listening, they’ll learn from what Apple is doing right — and see opportunities to do things differently, rather than just ape the iPhone blindly, to take advantage of what is on the flipside.

Being as this is CDM, I bring up this rant in part to tease out what I hope we’ll cover on the site, which is how to develop for some of the multi-platform tools; we’ll definitely be tracking that and the open-source development that happens as well as the proprietary goodies.

And if you all start reading this on your mobile device, I’d better start being less … verbose. (I know: I’ll type on my phone. That’ll fix it quick.)

Part of what was strange about flat fee advocate Jim Griffin’s new proposal for an ISP monthly fee for music is that subscription-based music lives already, from digital radio to music services. Amidst rumors that Apple might add subscriptions, the Zune, Rhapsody, and Napster all have flat-fee subscriptions right now, thank you very much. (I’m even told there are music players aside from iPod, though I don’t know if I believe this.)

I was a big fan of YottaMusic, a friendly Web front-end that connected to Rhapsody, and mourned its passing at the beginning of this year. But here’s good news: you can restore Yotta’s best feature, which was keeping track of music played in a Web browser for the superb Last.FM music community service.

Rhobbler

Rhapsody is clever enough not only to work in Web browsers on multiple platforms (even Linux), but generates an RSS feed of music you’ve been playing. Rhobbler hooks into that RSS feed and uploads to Last.FM. It’s a kludge, certainly — I’d love to see this built into the Rhapsody interface, along with other improvements. But it works: sign up once, and you’re done.

As some commenters noted in regards to the Griffin story, there’s a lot of music out there to keep track of — and a lot of us are listening to more than ever before. But that’s why it’s so nice to have tools like Last.FM. I also find, curiously, that subscription music for me feels like on-demand radio; instead of reducing how much music I buy outright, I just buy music I’m even more excited about.

If you’re not already a member, be sure to join our CDM group on Last.FM:

CreateDigitalMusic @ Last.FM

… and yes, promoting your own music there is encouraged! (Albums at right represent albums heard last week by CDM members. And, uh, dude … the group is all guys at the moment. I know ladies reading the site, and Last.FM has plenty of women, so join in and share your listening tastes!)

Now, some of this makes some sense. Yottamusic itself was a creation of Rhapsody. In fact, the logical next step would be to ditch Rhapsody’s clunky, obnoxious interface with animated album covers and whatnot, and learn from Yottamusic’s cooler social features and sleeker interface. Let’s see, did th– nope. Why kill bad ideas and maintain the good ones when you can do the reverse?

It’s hard not to feel like subscription-based music in general is not long for this world. MTV’s Urge, ironically the service that had been touted for having the best interface, was folded into Rhapsody last year. With the loss of Yottamusic, choices in general are poor. Yahoo Music has poor editorial content and selection and a painfully-clunky music player. Microsoft’s Zune subscription service is tied to that player; you can’t even download the software without a Zune of your own. And even Microsoft is pushing DRM-free downloads for Zune more than subscriptions these days. Rhapsody has Web compatibility, TiVo integration, better editorial, and better selection. But its Web interface is painful and sometimes unstable, and its music player has an overdesigned UI coupled with only bare-bones features. (It’s also still unsupported on Vista.) Napster, like Rhapsody, works in a Web browser, but has some interface and selection issues of its own. I’ve used these off and on, but to be honest, Yottamusic was the only site that really gave me a reason to keep up a Rhapsody subscription, the interfaces on these tools is so bad.

At least the good news is, DRM-free music is rolling along. Amazon.com’s MP3 store now has a whopping 2.9 million tracks, and niche stores like Beatport, Dance Tracks Digital, and the new Deutsche Grammaphon store will give you still more selection within a genre. (Apple has also been adding DRM content, but I can’t recommend the iTunes Music Store because it’s so hard to find that content.)

But I have to say, I’m at least a little sad to see subscription music services in such poor shape. Yes, the native players have worked only on Windows, and yes, people have complained about the DRM portable files from these sites employ. But I think when these services worked, it was as a self-programmed “radio station”, or as a way of sampling tracks and albums before buying without having to listen to short samples or downgraded audio. In either of those cases, you don’t really care about DRM because you don’t need to move the file, or even download it at all — streaming and Web interfaces have plenty of potential. The big difference, and the reason these services require the fee, is that they offered true, on-demand music. I still buy lots of music, but supplementing that with unlimited on-demand tunes is a good thing. Yottamusic proved that it was the implementation, not the concept, that needed to be revisited. For that, I’m sorry to see it go — and I really hope someone aside from me noticed how good it was.

Must-read, as far as the history of this stuff:

Interview with Yottamusic’s Luke Matkins [Getcha Info!]

Universal CEO Doug Morris makes an easy target for the blogosphere. This is the old-school record industry executive who called iPod owners thieves and wanted broad legal enforcement against piracy — enforcement that, in the end, seems to pale in comparison to the revenue generated by actually offering online sales. So, now that Morris has gone up against Wired, the blogosphere can easily see him as a dinosaur.

Universal’s CEO Once Called iPod Users Thieves. Now He’s Giving Songs Away. [Wired News]

But as artists, all of us face a fundamental problem: how do you put value on something that’s ephemeral? It’s an age-old issue that has faced musicians explaining to their parents why they don’t want a real job, and artists to their patrons when affixing a price tag. (And as we’ve seen from veteran software developers and the BanPiracy debate, software “artists” face the same challenge.) Sure, people love to talk piracy, because it’s easier to talk in those terms. Piracy is theft, theft is crime, and crime is bad — including making a mix tape for a friend. Or all music should be free, and never mind that artists need health insurance and rent money. They’re black and white extremes, entirely couched in moral/philosophical terms, neither of which contend with how to solve the actual real-world problem (at least, not if you stop there).

And then I came across this quote from Morris in the interview:

“Really, an album that someone worked on for two years — is that worth only $9, $10, when people pay two bucks for coffee in Starbucks?” Morris sighs. “People never really understand what’s happening to the artists … If you had Coca-Cola coming through the faucet in your kitchen, how much would you be willing to pay for Coca-Cola? There you go,” he says. “That’s what happened to the record business.”

Wait a minute… a liquid that comes out of your faucet for free, but is also sold, in bottles, at retail. How much would you be willing to pay? Hmmm… this sounds familiar.

It’s called water.

And how much are people willing to pay for the privilege of packaging, control over subtle variations of taste, and mobility? Quite a lot, as it happens. More than Coke. It’s not uncommon to see Coke for $1.50 at a grocery, and $2.00 or even $3.00 for water. In fact, Coke might have gone for the running water through the tap idea, as additional revenue and a way to increase consumers’ taste for the stuff.

Oh, yeah, and that tap that runs water music into your home for free … the radio? Not a new invention. None of these things is easy to monetize, mind you (ask your local public radio station during their pledge week), but it’s clear there are ways to make people see value.

If this isn’t a lesson for the music industry in the digital age, I don’t know what is. Find a way to increase consumer perception of value, even if the thing supposedly can be gotten readily. Find a way to sell the packaging, and find a way to make that purchase part of people’s daily routine. (And music, in case you haven’t noticed, is ubiquitous these days whether you touch a torrent server or not.) And maybe the bottled water people could teach us a thing or two.

As it happens, Universal’s digital music schemes seem to be a decent start strategically. They have two prongs: one, distribute music, DRM-free, in multiple stores, breaking up the Apple iTunes/iPod monopoly with music that can be bought and played everywhere. Two, provide subscription music, with DRM, for free, subsidized by hardware manufacturers. Now, if the subsidy makes business sense for manufacturers, I honestly don’t see anything wrong with that. Universal ransomed Microsoft over the Zune, which I personally found ridiculous, but now at least the hardware makers get something in return. And while DRM on music you’ve paid for, on subscription services it actually makes some sense. In fact, usually if you really grow attached to music and want to make it mobile, you’d then buy non-DRMed music. Problem solved.

The only really strange twist: a new breed of Apple iPod fanboys, who get their panties in a bunch over the idea of music being bought anywhere other than iTunes and played on anything other than iPod. (I miss the Mac fanboys who fought for you when IT wanted to install a Dell with Windows ‘98 and Novell. Those were the days.)

Personally, I don’t see the problem. With DRM-free MP3s, any device can be a playback device — iPod included. And as far as subscriptions, if you don’t want them, ignore them and buy the MP3s. If you do want them, you can already play Rhapsody over the Web with a Mac and Linux. Firefox + Rhapsody + Linux works quite nicely, in fact. You can’t use them on mobile devices yet beyond Windows, but that seems like a fixable problem — a technological problem, particularly since these devices should in future connect directly to wifi or phone networks, not your computer.

But artists don’t have to worry about such things: you want your music everywhere. And if, in fact, Universal is a dinosaur, then the question is, can you find someone else who does know how make water thicker than Coke?

Just two weeks after Amazon launched their own DRM-free music store, Microsoft is jumping on the bandwagon. DRM won’t be gone completely from the Zune store, but there will be hundreds of thousands of DRM-free tracks going live, apparently in November with the release of a new store and new players. That’s a major departure, given that Microsoft built its Zune and PlaysForSure platforms around DRM, and introduced significant new DRM features in Vista. Normally, I don’t like to quote press releases, but I’ll give my friends at the Digital Freedom Campaign a chance for some deserved gloating:

“The industry standard has shifted in the past six months and the tide has turned in favor of consumers,” Maura Corbett, a spokesperson for the Digital Freedom Campaign said. “The number of digital music retailers offering DRM-free music will soon out number those that do not, and consumers will soon live in a world where they can listen to legally purchased music when, how, and where they want. We congratulate Microsoft for joining the growing number of retailers and labels that have realized the best way to increase the sales of digital music, is to listen to their customers.”

Actually, I’ll argue one point. The number of digital music retailers offering DRM-free music already outnumbers those that don’t. There’s iTunes (via Universal and iTunes Plus), eMusic, Wal-Mart (though with IE Windows-only downloads, for no very good reason), Amazon (which even has a Mac downloader and automatic iTunes integration), and handfuls of downloads on all the major music websites and services.

And then there are the “indie”/niche music stores: Other Music, Beatport, Dance Tracks Digital, Bleep, yoosic, finetunes, 3 beat digital, Thrill music, etc., etc. (See a whole bunch of other examples in Where Do You Get Your DRM-Free Music?)

Also this week: Radiohead dumped their label, announced they’d self-release as a DRM-free download, and let people pay what they want. I’ve been meaning to write that up — thanks for everyone who wrote in — but am sort of rendered speechless by the sensation of the online music world finally turning into what it should have been at the beginning. Clearly, Radiohead’s path works for them and may not work for everyone — if anything, this emphasizes the real significance of labels for promotion, and not so much for the broken distribution model that ultimately punished so many artists in the past. But the trend is early toward heterogeneous music sources, and choices for artists to do what makes sense for them.

Ultimately, this trend should be fantastic for diversity of music and stores alike. Just because big stores like iTunes and the Zune store are going DRM-free doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll crush smaller stores. On the contrary, the pressure is now on labels to embrace digital distribution and DRM-free downloads, which could be a real boon to smaller stores building their catalogs.

Meanwhile, video DRM is very much alive, unfortunately; TV, for instance, seems to actually be trending toward more DRM. But that’s another story, and maybe music will eventually lead video in the same direction once the video business model is more secure. (Why is it we can’t watch streaming TV with ads, for instance?)

But, years after the Napster legal implosion, it seems online music is finally coming around to access and choice, with a business model to support it.

Previously:
Free: Find DRM-Free Music, Make Glitchy Sounds, Built in Max
As Other Music, Others Embrace Downloads, is Big, DRM-Laden Online Music Out? (Okay, answer = yes.)
Where Do You Get Your DRM-Free Music?

Act now, fellow musicians — before Sound Recorder destroys music!

It’s amazing how complete and total crazies can suddenly wind up with the backing of organizations powerful enough to dictate the law. Witness the strange story of the “stream-ripping” scare, and how it somehow led to a push for mandatory, proprietary DRM on all Internet radio.

Gasp as the experience of bringing back Mark Twain’s ghost somehow inspires a company you’ve never heard of to build their own DRM for streams!

Recoil in horror at the evil pirating capabilities of Windows Vista and its Sound Recorder, as Microsoft earns billions — billions! — of dollars by encouraging people to steal music from radio streams!

Sigh with satisfaction at the realization that we can put a stop to these unprotected broadcasts of music forever, saving music itself in the process!

What? None of this sounds familiar? Bizarre, absurd, even illogical and out of touch with any recognizable reality, you say? You’re right, but alas …read on.

(See previous: Internet Radio Wins Temporary Delay, Possible Minimum Rate Break. You knew it wasn’t really going to be that easy, right? Apparently some of you missed my sense of irony. I was on vacation, so I wasn’t trying as hard to make my sarcasm apparent.)

Our story begins at the end of April, when a company no one had ever heard of (Media Rights Technologies) suddenly issued a press release claiming Congress had to act now to stop the scourge of “stream ripping” — recording Internet radio streams. The bad news: the idiotic ideas inside have now become negotiating demands from the record industry. Among the peculiar talking points at the time:

1. Apparently choosing to bury the lead, the press release started out with a historical non sequitur about how the company was “the first to create virtual interactive exhibitions like The Private Life of Mark Twain where you could actually see and hear Mark Twain’s 1835 Martin guitar playing Old Susannah for Noah Adams on NPR’s All Things Considered.” Um … good for .. them?
2. Slapped with an equally bizarre lawsuit by the RIAA, the company went on to — blame the RIAA for frivolous cease-and-desist orders? Start a rumble with Mark Twain’s … uh … management and legal team? Nope. They concluded they should blame Microsoft and develop their own, special DRM technologies, because Windows Media Player didn’t have enough DRM on its own. (In fairness, this was an early version of WMP.)
3. Then, the mysterious MRT claims the record industry is losing US$50 billion on the “stream ripping industry.” (The … what now? And the record industry would have been selling nearly a billion CDs that it couldn’t because of this industry?)
4. Finally, the real evil: Microsoft’s Windows Vista is a success because of evil stream-ripping capabilities Why, just look — while the record industry sales were slumping, Vista sales were increasing! That has to be connected!
5. There’s only one solution! Quick! Pay MRT for stream-ripping protection, using their specialized streaming DRM! No, wait — force Congress to force webcasters to use MRT’s DRM!

Yes, you heard that right. The real danger to the music industry: unprotected streaming content in Real, Adobe, Microsoft, and Apple formats (in other words, everything) that must immediately be replaced with MRT’s proprietary solution. Just how real is this danger? Why look no further than an evil piece of software, built for pirating music. It’s called (cue the scary piano music) Windows SOUND RECORDER. Yes, you read that right:

Microsoft has even built into the Vista OS a native ripper, called Sound Recorder, which will deaggregate performance-based streams of unlimited duration and convert them into unprotected WMA downloads, easily uploaded onto Zune players. This year, Microsoft’s Q1 profit surged 65 percent to $4.93 billion, boosted by sales of Vista, while the Recording Industry’s profits have plummeted.

Let’s translate: deaggregate performance based streams? Convert them into unprotected WMA downloads? Yes, that’s right: Sound Recorder records. Sounds. Those sounds can be stored as files. You can do things with those files. And supposedly, Microsoft has just made billions of dollars off Vista thanks to the lame, crummy sound-editing application no one uses — erm, sorry, the malicious, pirate-aiding Great Satan that is Sound Recorder.

I’m glad they pointed this out, because otherwise I might have assumed that the many other features in Vista were the reason people bought the upgrade, not using Sound Recorder to illegally record songs.

Total insanity. What a relief that no one would take this idea seriously.

Scratch that: it turns out that SoundExchange’s negotiations with webcasters are now calling for protections against stream-ripping that apparently involve mandatory DRM on all streams. That explains SoundExchange’s sudden willingness to agree to caps — but they’ve pulled this issue out at the last minute, without being upfront with either Congress or webcasters, just as the new rate rules take into affect. Apparently they thought this could strong-arm webcasters into DRM they wanted all along.

And it gets worse. These “technology mandates” appear to be causing negotiations to break down between the record industry and webcasters. Read the details here (caution: this may hurt your head):
DiMA/SX negotiations falling apart once again

The “technology mandates” are a serious business. The implication by SoundExchange is that they won’t even sit at the negotiating table unless webcasters agree to put protections in place to stop stream ripping. Never mind that a miniscule fraction of listeners rip streams, let alone do it in such a way that would diminish the value of purchased songs and albums. Never mind that DRM isn’t the only way to stop ripping (see RAIN for a few suggestions).

Just how nasty is the DRM proposed by companies like MRT? Have a look at BlueBeat:

BlueBeat Software Download

A proprietary format, in a proprietary player app that’s Windows-only (in this case, ironically, built on Windows Media Player 9 — even though MRT regularly threatens Microsoft with legal action and encourages legal action against them by others). That’s obviously not good for anyone, Microsoft included. And, in fact, MRT points to the fact that even the RIAA has acknowledged they’re a likely choice of technologies to make this happen.

Scary stuff. What’s badly needed now is some mediation to bring negotiations back into line. So much music is tied up in commercial labels, this issue isn’t just going to go away. A solution really is needed. This is hardly the way to approach it.