Out of the box, Akai’s APC40 has some lovely features for plug-and-play control of Ableton Live, with clip triggering, track control, device control, and dedicated buttons for command shortcuts. It also sends and receives standard MIDI messages for every last button and encoder. But what if you still want more? What if you need more controls to do multiple duties, or get bored with simple clip triggering and decide you want additional interaction? Enter the hackers. Already, using MIDI, clever APC40 users are squeezing more function out of this box. And while it isn’t solved yet, there are some clues to the infamous hardware handshake – a System Exclusive string exchanged between the APC and Live that locks certain Live software features to the APC and not to other hardware you might like to use.

Manual MIDI

Before we get too fancy, for power tricks, your first stop should be Akai’s own site:
Tips and Tricks June – APC40

Live allows you to manually override the APC’s dynamic control assignments using the standard MIDI Map. Let’s say you don’t use headphones for cueing. You can select the MIDI Map, pick a control to which you want the Cue Level encoder to be assigned, and you’ll manually assign just that control – the rest of the dynamic template remains in place. Akai has some tips for scrolling through scenes, selecting scenes with one of the two footswitch jacks on the back of the unit, scrubbing and nudging clips, fine-tuning tempo control, and more.

monome Emulation for APC40 and Korg padKONTROL

Our friend Michael Hatsis of trackteamaudio has been hard at work in Max/MSP patching an emulator for the creative patches for the open-source monome hardware. (Thanks on Twitter to ruaridhTVO, too.) By translating from the (and, cough, superior) OpenSoundControl messages the monome supports natively to MIDI, the emulator supports not only the APC but Korg’s padKONTROL, as well. This opens up the use of the APC for creative microsampling and other tasks.

Video demo at top (updated late Sunday night, so if you saw this over the weekend, here’s a tighter version).

Direct download:
http://www.warperparty.com/datter/Monomulator0.9.zip

Forum discussion:
http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=117307&start=0

And be sure to check out the Java- and Python-powered open-source library for the monome on which Michael’s work is based:
net.loadbang.shado

You’ll find plenty of documentation in Michael’s download, and the hope is that this is just the beginning — you Max patchers out there (and Pd, if we can port this) can keep hacking on it and try out some new ideas. One reason you might want to keep hacking on the padKONTROL is that you could find uses for velocity – unlike the monome and APC, Korg’s 4×4 drum pads are velocity sensitive.

APC40 Customization, Performance Tweaks

This is the best video I’ve seen yet with the APC40. The APC itself is strikingly limited for a MIDI device, without even basic abilities like preset switching or the ability to change default MIDI assignments. But because it’s connected to a computer, if you’ve got some MIDI programming skills and time on your hands, you don’t have to stop there. Stray411, the creator of the brilliant nativeKONTROL software for the padKONTROL, Korg nano series, and Akai MPD32 has turned his MIDI hacking superpowers to the APC.

First, he demos the manual remapping technique. But from 1:38 onward, he remaps and reroutes messages via Bome’s MIDI Translator, commercial Windows (and now Mac) software for more sophisticated mapping of MIDI messages. This allows him to create his own dynamic template for control that applies more functionality to the onboard hardware controls on the APC.

I’m not even sure you’ll want to do this – it can make for a more complex control scheme – but it’s impressive just seeing the ideas out there.

Note that this sort of thing should also be possible via any software that does MIDI input and output, including the free Pure Data (Pd) patching environment and Max for Live when it ships in the fall. (I’m not entirely sure how intercepting MIDI with Max for Live will work, though, especially with the hardware handshake to contend with… more on that in a moment.)

Korg fans (and Akai MPD owners), be sure to check out:
http://www.nativekontrol.com/
And see the nativeKONTROL videos:
nativeKONTROL YouTube Playlist

…and really, that deserves a separate post.

MIDI for Lights

Akai left out the MIDI Implementation that’s traditionally included with MIDI hardware (cough), but it does use standard MIDI messages both for outgoing control data (when you move an encoder or press a button) and incoming messages (like Live switching a light from off to amber to green).

I’m going to publish the Missing MIDI Implementation later this week here on CDM, but to get you started, Danny P on the Cycling ‘74 forum has deciphered the toughest part – the messages that light up the clips:

Midi confusion with APC40

And even better, CerebralNektar (of the nativeKONTROL) project has already built a full-blown Max/MSP template for the clip grid:

OK, let’s hack the APC

The Hardware Handshake: First Clues

Ableton has worked with Akai to add a specialized MIDI implementation to Ableton Live, using a set of System Exclusive messages to prevent the hacker community from emulating certain APC features in other hardware. Specifically, this includes several abilities:

• Using bank buttons to trigger different sets of clips in a larger set, without running out of MIDI messages to do so
• Providing a red rectangle overlay to show which 8×5 (40 clip) array is selected in Live
• Sending MIDI messages for clip status back to the hardware (thus lighting up the lights)

Now, granted, as implemented this functionality may be of limited to use to hardware that isn’t the APC40 – particularly because it’s hard coded for an 8×5 grid of buttons, which is a non-standard size. But having talked even to some passionate fans of the APC, I know it’s bothering a lot of people. I think there are several reasons why.

In short, it’s the first time I know of that standard MIDI messages were used not for the purpose of interoperability, but to actually prevent you from using your own hardware. The APC itself won’t work properly with Live if this string is interrupted (and you’ll see complaints on the user forum in which people are having related problems). Also, while the functionality here is hard-coded to the 8×5 array on the APC, that raises another question – why not make a generic implementation for other hardware? Why not a rectangle that shows a 4 x 4 grid for hardware like the Akai MPD series, Native Instruments’ Maschine controller, and the popular Korg padKONTROL and M-Audio Trigger Finger?

In the meantime, cracking the handshake could be useful for owners of the monome or upcoming Ohm64, even with their 8×8 grid – you can use the last three rows for shortcuts.

Michael Hatsis writes (consistent with what I saw running MIDI through MIDI-OX):

from what I can see both the APC’s 2nd string and Live’s 3rd string have 24 bytes, both with bytes 8-23 different each time
- There’s your handshake…

I have set up two max patches that parse and output the SYSEX sent by both the APC and Live. the one called handshake only outputs the unique bytes for both the APC and Live to the Max window. There are more details inside.

Have a download, folks – this gives you some of the MIDI to look at even if you don’t have an APC40:
http://warperparty.com/data/handshooken.zip

I couldn’t figure out what the algorithm was, but then, I’m not terribly good at that sort of thing. So we’ll be interested to see if anyone else can sort it out.

By the way, this is sent in the clear as MIDI messages. There’s no real reverse engineering here. It’d be like printing the secret password for your speakeasy on a billboard at a rush-hour bottleneck on the 101 highway. Nor is there any kind of theft involved. These are capabilities built into Ableton Live, which Ableton has effectively blocked from use with this System Exclusive communication.

In a matter of days since the hardware shipped, the APC40 user community has already done some incredible work. This to me makes a powerful argument for openness – and it says that the same community could do even more if hardware and software used more intelligent communication schemes like OpenSoundControl instead of being locked to the limitations of MIDI.

A Video to Close us Out

To close, here’s a reminder that part of why we expend this much energy on controllers is to make them personal instruments for ourselves. Here’s a YouTube demo that shows people can make the APC, well … shake.

CNET has a terrific interview with Rio Caraeff of Universal Music Group’s eLabs. Caraeff is a new breed of record exec – the kind of people we’d actually want running the industry. He’s a software guy and a mobile guy.

UMG digital chief on iTunes, DRM, and Android [CNET Digital Media]

The record industry has clearly seen the light on DRM, so that’s not really news, except that now you can see them saying it in public (and I imagine there has been long-running internal lobbying from those in the industry who got it long ago).

The news for me really what he has to say about the mobile space – his expertise. On iPod, he says what we don’t need is more proprietary alternatives: “I don’t think having more devices and more proprietary software or hardware in the market is the right answer.”

But most encouraging to me is how bullish he is on Google’s Android platform – and the fact that the proof is already available in the numbers available now. It seems the Web world is attracted to whatever is shiny, new, and not-ready-for-primetime, so bloggers last week forgot about Android and moved on to Palm’s (not-shipping) WebOS and Palm pre. That’s all fine and good, and WebOS certainly follows some of the same trends Android does, but let’s not lose focus just yet, right?

Universal worked with Amazon on their integrated Android store, and the results sound very impressive.

…now Amazon will tell you that Android is their single largest source of downloads from any third-party partnership that they’ve ever done. It’s a tremendous amount of consumption that we’re seeing once you integrate it seamlessly into a user experience that’s elegant and easy to use. It’s not 10 clicks. It’s very elegant and easy. We’re starting to see consumption increase significantly.

It’s early days on Android. There’s not that many out there on T-Mobile, but even with the small amount out there, they’re downloading and purchasing a ton of music over the air on T-Mobile.

This to me points to some encouraging signs:

Android has an edge for developers. Note that from a development, user experience, and deployment perspective, the Android platform was a big part of this success. You couldn’t do an Amazon store on the iPhone.

Android has legs. None of that would be meaningful if it weren’t translating to sales. But this says to me that the open Android platform can be a successful outlet, without necessarily needing a middleman like Apple. And it suggests some positive things for, say, developers selling software (or musicians doing weird, 99-cent generative music games) on the platform.

Mobile sales in general could be big for music. The whole problem for the record industry isn’t all that complicated: it’s that one medium (CDs) has been shrinking in dollar figures faster than its successor (online music) has been growing. So the industry just needs new growth. It’s encouraging to see that that could mean just selling music at reasonable prices, free of DRM. That’s a huge change from the previous plan, which appeared to be slicing 30 seconds out of a track, calling it a “ringtone,” and charging more than you would for a single.

There’s plenty worth checking out in the whole story. But this does make me feel even more excited about Android and what’s possible. The Amazon store is amazing: you buy and download tracks over the air, and then bring them back to your machine. Sure, you can do that with iTunes, and finally iTunes doesn’t have DRM on its tracks. But Amazon was able to come onto the device as a third party (working with HTC, Google, and TMobile). With Apple, the only way to get tracks back on your computer is to go through their iTunes conduit. With Amazon, you can do whatever you like. And the underlying stacks that enable the app are all open source, from the APIs to the developer tools. That’s a pretty marked difference.

Having a different mechanism for selling music could also mean that the UMG of tomorrow is very different from the UMG of yesterday. It’s certainly encouraging to think there are people at the company who see technology in the way a lot of the rest of us do. But this could also mean new opportunities for independent artists and smaller labels – and greater opportunities for everyone making music.

We’ll be looking more at the Android platform in 2009, and other trends in mobile. Now I just need to get myself a G1.

slotMusic.org | Press Release

See also GearLog, which notes that SanDisk previously did a free promotional SD of music

Wired News asks, “but why?”, to which I’d answer – it might well be easier to load music onto a phone in parts of the world other than the US, you might more easily distribute videos, and artists looking to increase the value of their CDs could innovate on revitalizing album art.

First, let’s start with the players, as that’s basically the big news here.

Hardware: SanDisk, the folks who invented flash storage and make more of it than anyone else

Labels: A huge set of the majors – EMI Music (which includes the likes of Angel, Capitol, Blue Note, and Astrelwerks), Sony BMG, Warner Music (including Atlantic, Nonesuch, Rhino), and the world’s biggest music company, Universal Music Group

Retailers: Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and other US retailers, with Europe to follow – keeping in mind, Wal-Mart remains the biggest brick-and-mortar seller in the US

When it’s happening: Exact date TBA, but officially by the holidays

Which artists: Most likely, lots of them. An EMI representative who spoke with CDM confirmed two chart-topping examples: Coldplay’s Viva la Vida and Kate Perry’s One of the Boys.

Now, you’d be right to be skeptical of how this format will be received, but it’s certainly a big distribution play with that arrangement of labels and retailers.

The hardware in question is basically SanDisk’s tiny removable flash memory format microSD, rebranded and repackaged as slotMusic. (A representative of SanDisk tells us there are some other subtle technological differences; more on that soon.) The important thing about this is that the hardware you buy has no DRM on it at all; it’s just standard flash memory you can plug into phones and mobile devices, or, via a tiny included USB sleeve, a computer.

SanDisk’s format specifies DRM-free, 320 kpbs MP3s as the music format. Gruvi, SanDisk’s previous attempt at turning their lucrative flash memory business into a music format was a miserable failure, but by contrast, it was locked with DRM features and, excepting a big release by the Rolling Stones, lacked support from labels and retailers. (I see Gruvi has even been largely erased from SanDisk’s website.)

What’s the Business Angle?

My colleague Eoin Rossney sent me this story under a headline on Ireland’s SiliconRepublic.com that screams “SanDisk and big labels in tech deal that could save the music business.” That’s obviously hyperbolic, but it’s also wrong. To me, it seems to be about three things:

1. It’s an experiment. Music labels want their music everywhere they can get it – as, frankly, they should; that’s their job.

2. It’s a massive end run around iTunes. Remember, part of what helped prompt some of the more stubborn labels to remove DRM was the realization that their DRM deal with Apple had placed Apple in the position of dominating download sales for the device most people owned.

3. Most phones aren’t iPhones. Labels will continue to do business with iTunes because iTunes is selling their music – but they’d be nuts to turn their back on the rest of the mobile phone market, which is far bigger. The press release notes 1.2 billion phones are due to ship this year, a number Apple can’t approach even with all their iPods and iPhones put together. In fact, it’s hard to wonder if, on a global scale, iPod won’t slip into the shadows with the number of increasingly multimedia-savvy phones out there.

Despite the hip factor of the iPhone, Apple has a tiny slice of an exploding global market for mobile devices. Instead of using a cable and a fancy vendor-specific store, you can just give people music they can pop directly into their phone, which – from vendors other than Apple – typically has a microSD slot. And as I noted last week, Apple’s alternative is a store/software sync arrangement that they control exclusively.

Music Everywhere, and Back on Objects

I’m not sure slotSD will be the “new CD,” or that it even needs to be. I think it’s better to see this as one of a variety of options you’ll see for music distribution. And, of course, even slotSD is best understood in the context of a growing amount of music showing up on flash memory, because it combines the flexibility of digital formats with physical objects.

“This is one of many initiatives to make our music available in as many different forms as possible,” Jeanne Meyer of EMI Music tells CDM. “Our big MO is to experiment with as many as possible.”

EMI, for one, has a record of trying just this sort of thing. There was a re-release of Radiohead’s studio albums on memory stick, though that seemed to cause some controversy. EMI has even toyed with big retail, with a release of UK superstar Robbie Williams at England’s own big box, The Carphone Warehouse. (It’d be interesting to know what sales were like.)

Of course, you can easily download files. Physical media is all about the object. A SanDisk representative confirms that labels are planning physical liner notes and album art in the package. You can also expect the memory to be loaded with digital extras, in the form of artwork, videos, and the like. Given the middling quality of online video, and the fact that bandwidth costs aren’t going down at the rate many had hoped, I think that could mean higher quality and more access to video via physical formats than online.

Indie Artists and Digital Contents

So, I imagine for many of you not on Sony BMG, and listening to many artists who aren’t, this won’t be terribly earth-shaking news. But I do know SanDisk reassures CDM that they have worked with indies in the past on various promotional projects.

What can artists do with a format like this? Well, they can load it up with goodies that might actually be otherwise rack up bandwidth costs. One excellent example of an artist experimenting with this format is Sound Tribe Sector 9. They sent their latest release, Peaceblaster, to me. It’s loaded up not only with the files for the album, but extra images, podcasts, a screensaver, and videos. We saw these kinds of extras squeezed onto CDs at one point via formats like Enhanced CD, but there’s no question it’s more convenient on USB stick.

I think the big challenge will be how to make these contents interesting and unique, and even with bandwidth costs comparing unfavorably against increasingly high-definition media, how to compete with online alternatives.

Somehow, I imagine the slotMusic format winding up being a plain-vanilla blister pack that, stuck in a dull music department in Best Buy, just confuses consumers. I’m happy to be proven wrong there. But there is, in the meantime, plenty of room for independent artists and labels to innovate with short-run releases and ideas for what to pack inside the digital media that no one has thought of yet. And while majors have earned the skepticism of consumers and artists alike, I wouldn’t be surprised to see majors being more adventurous – especially once they discover that, in addition to the perils digital media pose, there could be a significant profit payoff for those experiments.

Actually, forget everything I’ve said in this entire article, and let me sum it up in one line:

If physical distribution brings art back to album releases, it’s a good thing, and it’ll work.

The generation of music lovers staring into album art wasn’t wrong.

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

• In many circles, Metallica is no longer cool or never was cool.
• Lawyer make people MAD. Angry. Smash. (Apparently in addition to going after 60,000 pages of fans on Napster, Metallica doesn’t even like fan-made buttons.)
• Metallica is not Radiohead or Trent Reznor. (Stop the presses!)
• Even if you’re not Radiohead or Trent Reznor, you probably want your fans on your side. Pitchforks and torches tend to be a bad sign.

Of course, some might see the doomsday scenario of Internet music releases, in which fans determine that all music should be free and you can’t make money on releases any more. Big bands give away their stuff for free, the independent artist dies, music isn’t made any more, etc., etc. But given glowing fans proclaiming that they’re “glad I could shell out 40 pounds for the discbox” of In Rainbows, that seems unlikely.

And that’s the fundamental nature of fans. They’re looking for ways to give you their money so you can give them something back. Lesson learned by Metallica: don’t piss them off.

Fans Rip Metallica a New One [Wired.com Listening Post; enjoy the Napster-era parody video]

Photo: massdistraction, via Flickr.

Let this be a lesson to you, purveyors of online music. If you do DRM-lock digital music, be prepared to continue to support it well into the future, lest users rebel. Microsoft announced earlier this year that its MSN Music service, defunct now for some time and never terribly popular, would cease to function as of August 31, 2008. This would mean that people who bought tracks from MSN Music would no longer be able to authorize files to play on new PCs and devices. The only workaround: burn to CD and re-rip.

Even on a relatively unsuccessful service, though, that caused a major outcry. Result: Microsoft has backpedaled, extending the deadline to "at least the end of 2011" and possibly even beyond. (By then, you may have to appeal to our new robotic overlords anyway, after the Great Cyber Rebellion of August 4, 2011. Oops, sorry, the people of your time aren’t supposed to know about that yet.)

The lesson here seems clear to me: the cost of DRM is ultimately exacted on the vendor. It’s especially ironic as video sellers move toward more DRM rather than less, but DRM in music seems utterly dead. And whereas the DRM controversy began as a discussion of piracy issues, it’s now centered on sales. The simple fact of the matter is, online music has proven to have real profit potential, even if it’s been slow to catch up with the late 90s CD bubble. True, DRM does live on in subscription services, though I think the comparison there isn’t entirely valid — the point of subscription models is unlimited access to music, not necessarily building permanent collections. And even there, we’ve seen a migration away from DRM, as in the streaming/purchase model on Lala.com, which I examined earlier this month.

Tomorrow night, I’ll be attending the launch party for the Wax Poetics digital download store, and they’re a print magazine for vinyl buffs, for crying out loud. (Oh yeah — guess that bit about print and vinyl being dead was also wrong.)

Conventional wisdom: 0. Music lovers: score.

It’s clear that the new world of music listening involves more — more music, listening in more places, with more styles of music from more places in the world. So, naturally, it makes sense that we won’t pay per-album fees for everything we hear; even if you were addicted to your indie college radio station 20 years ago, that’s the case. (And I’ll be you didn’t buy everything you heard, though you probably bought some of it.)

The question is, how to model those costs, so the people making and distributing the music make money. Make whatever argument you like about “all music should be free,” but someone will want to turn it into a business model. And it’s not necessarily fair to say all that money will come from live gigs; on the contrary, the best way to make your live gigs work as an income stream is to have other income streams.

This week, I’ve been playing with the beta of a new version of lala.com, an online streaming and discovery service. (See next.lala.com; lala.com is the old site.) Their model is this:

1. The first time you listen to a track — any in their large library — it’s free, via online streaming.
2. Add it to your library, and you can listen to it an unlimited number of times via streaming, for 10 cents a song. (Believe it or not, that adds up, but they give you 50 to start with.)
3. If you want to keep the track, you can buy a DRM-free, reasonably high-quality MP3 for 89 cents a track (slightly less for a whole album).

This should sound familiar: it’s very close to existing subscription services like Napster and Rhapsody. But those services have had their problems. First, the flat fee isn’t necessarily appealing to everyone. Psychologically, people seem not to like paying a big fee for music that they don’t “own”; despite the fact that this makes listening to massive libraries affordable, users complained that if they canceled their subscription, their library went away. At 10 cents per track, you can add 120 tracks to your library each month with Lala, and listen to them forever — not including the tracks you only listen to once, which likely includes a lot of consumption on the subscription services.

DRM is always the deal-breaker

But the bigger problem has been DRM. The whole selling point of Napster, Rhapsody, and such is that you can take media and load it to your device. What they don’t tell you is that this requires a compatible device, a Windows software client, and buggy and awkward license loading on both your computer player and mobile device. Yuck. It’s a practical issue as much as one of principle: DRM breaks stuff, so people don’t like it. It’s unnecessary technology that ironically reduces the value of what you’re supposed to be buying.

Now, you can ignore these and simply use these services as high-quality streaming services, which is how I’ve tended to treat them, and as that, they’re great. Assuming you’re regularly near your computer and not in your car or on the go, you get a whole lot more content for less money than satellite radio gives you. Too bad these services have also been plagued by clunky online interfaces. Rhapsody’s will work on different OSes — I’ve even run it under Firefox in Linux — but it’s not nearly as friendly as it could be. Lala bests them on this, too, with nicely-designed interfaces and cleaner layouts. In short, it’s simply more usable.

The record industry still doesn’t get it

Despite all these problems, many in the record industry still view subscriptions as the future, even though they would mean less money in their own pockets and a technology roundly disliked by consumers. They also assume such subscriptions require DRM. Ars Technica has a good story on this bizarre angle:

If music DRM is dead, the RIAA expects its resurrection

And this is where things get weird: it’s as if the industry is more in love with DRM than it is, you know, actually making money selling music. (I wish I could get to be a suit.)

Lala isn’t perfect, but it’s immediately apparent that the basic model is right — and it flies in the face of everything the industry is telling you.

1. It’s a subscription without DRM — and that works fine. (Keep in mind, streams don’t sound as good as downloads, and even though bandwidth prices are coming down, people would rather turn that into profits than higher-quality streams.)

2. It supports DRM-free downloads as the desired end goal. When they really love something, consumers have demonstrated that they want to listen to it again and again, where and when they want, without DRM or format/platform restrictions. I’m personally much happier now that I buy DRM-free music online and manage it with software of my choice, copying it to where I want to play it.

3. You can wind up spending more, not less, on music — but you also get more.

Anyone remember radio?

Here’s the thing: consumers have long had a “tiered” diet of music. It’s what the entire record industry has been built on since the dawn of radio. You listen to a big stream of music for free, pick out what you want, and listen to that over and over again. Whether it’s Britney or the Beatles or Beethoven, people find music — bubblegum and masterpieces alike — addictive. And that’s what makes the model work.

Lala is indeed not perfect. I find the streaming quality to be really poor; I’d actually pay a small subscription fee to get premium content. (Suggestion: how about “pro” accounts with high-quality streams and a bundle of discounted download purchases?) The library is still incomplete. I’d love Last.fm hooks and RSS feeds of music I’m hearing. But then, Lala is still early in its development, and I expect it will be one of many, because I think this basic model works.

In other words, you have two tiers:

• The “radio” tier: Free or dirt-cheap streams of music with easy online access across platforms (not in any one player)
• The “ownership” tier: Files you buy and keep in high-quality, DRM-free formats.

In that context, in fact, even band-subsidized releases, like those from Nine Inch Nails, start to make sense. They encourage online ownership for bands that have other revenue streams that can support them — or independent artists who need to make their stuff more easily available. But it’s also clear that for many artists, selling downloads will continue to make sense.

Now the only remaining question is, when will the industry get over their Chicken Little Syndrome, and their accompanying DRM fetish, and get back in the business of feeding the public’s music addiction and making money?

(Hint: if the traditional industry doesn’t do it, musicians and the growing cottage industry around serving them online will.)

PC games — and even Windows customization utilities — make up a much larger market than music software. But in this parallel universe there have been echoes of the challenges facing music developers since the early days of PCs. Both have highly dedicated, niche audiences. Both face rampant piracy. Neither has the support of big business sales as the likes of Adobe and Microsoft do. Many of the customers use the products in their free time, rather than as tools that generate revenue. (Sorry, but it’s true.) Both have, let’s face it, customer bases who often don’t have that much money to spend, period — particularly after a hefty hardware investment.

And both gamers and musicians have been the target of aggressive anti-piracy campaigns, campaigns that get to the heart of the debate over software DRM, and very often blame pirates for failing business models.

Stardock, a “boutique” developer with a rabid following of sci-fi strategy gamers, finally spoke out. And they had good reason: a game with absolutely no DRM made it to one of the top three spots in the country.

Piracy & PC Gaming

There are real lessons for the potential of future music software development, not only in terms of piracy, but in terms of building future businesses.

Now, before the music developers start coming out the woodwork to tell me I’m deluded because I think piracy isn’t a problem, nowhere does this article say this — and neither do I. Quite the opposite, in fact. Stardock simply turns the argument on its head: the problem is not to figure out how to stop pirates with new software technologies — it’s how to connect with more users who actually pay, because they’re the ones that matter. Count paying customers — and stop counting users pirating your tool as lost revenue, because (as piracy foes themselves argue), it’s by definition revenue you’re not getting back.

In fact, once you start looking at it that way, you begin to see that users and developers alike have real responsibilities to support tools they care about:

• Developers have to target paying customers. It’s sound business sense. In the case of Stardock, that means making games appealing to a broad audience, affordable, and widely compatible with different hardware — all equally relevant in music software.
• Developers have to earn customer loyalty. Stardock actually doesn’t harp on this, but it’s true — they’ve provided exceptional support and built fantastic relationships with users over a long period of time. Look back at our industry, and the folks at the top have done the same thing.
• Users have to pay for software they use, if they want to see it shipping. This one should give you pause: lots of products have simply died because users didn’t embrace them, or didn’t pay for them. This is where pirates really do kill entire development houses. And it is a problem. But it’s one you have the power to solve — by paying for the software you use, you vote for the software you use. No DRM needed, and no massive undercover sting operations needed — neither of those actually encourage people to buy (or use) anything. It really is in users’ hands. And it’s a loop: if users pay for software they value, developers make more. If developers don’t make software users value, users don’t buy it.
• The press (and blogosphere, and forums) have to call attention to little-known software. If no one sees it, no one buys it. Stardock’s word-of-mouth power — and a few press advocates — have managed it to stack up to big developers with huge marketing budgets.

None of this evades the problem of how serious piracy can be. It simply rephrases the problem, from this:

Software is doomed by piracy.

To this:

Software development depends on paying customers, so we need more of those.

And the “more of those” part in the case of their latest game, Sins of a Solar Empire, are entirely the result of an improved product with great buzz for a wide audience. Much like music, sometimes the really large market (bedroom producers, or real-time space strategy gamers) is bigger than what everyone perceives as “cool” (think celebrity artists and big-name audio studios). But the solution in this case was not DRM or legal action, because those don’t generate sales, period.

But, as with that game, the responsibility doesn’t just lie with developers and industry. It lies with us as users, too. And in music, in particular, if we are using proprietary software at all, I think we have an obligation to put our money into tools we believe in, and encourage others to do so. (I can’t count them number of times I’ve had to convince friends to go out and pay for an upgrade, or buy the tool they “evaluated” from a friend — and often successfully.) I think there’s even a parallel in open source software — just with a different value model. If you want open source software to succeed, you need to contribute code, or documentation, or other value — and because open source developers and users also have rent and health insurance and the like, you still often need to find a way of generating some revenue somewhere, even if via a different model.

But all of this reveals the past “gloom and doom” piracy argument as what it is: an excuse. Really finding solutions means actively building them, and it requires involvement from everyone who cares about the tool, from developer to user to, yes, the press.

The good news: if you make that happen, you get long evenings of fun romps through the galaxy.

And there are worse things in life than splitting your time between FL Studio and Sins of a Solar Empire. Hurrah, geekdom.

Trent sez: “Buy all these music formats from meeeeeeeeeee!” Photo: Jenna Foxton.

Artists are known to mouth off a bit about the Future of Music and Digital Distribution and whatnot, but Trent Reznor is putting his money — and not money — where his mouth is.

Nine Inch Nails Menu of Ordering Options for Ghosts I-IV

via Mashable: Practice What You Preach: Nine Inch Nails Gives Away New Album

And they certainly have their bases covered with their new album “Ghosts”:

• Get the first volume of the album free on torrent sites (or via the NIN site)
• Pay US$5 for a download of all 36 tracks (take that, Radiohead!)
• Get a 2 CD box set for US$10 (which also includes immediate full download of the tracks)
• US$75 gets you the 2 CDs, a data DVD with the digital tracks, and a Blu-Ray disc with 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow
• US$300 Adds four LPs on vinyl, two prints, and Trent’s John Hancock — limited-run 2500 pieces

I think they should have just kept going. You know, $800 gets you cassette tapes, Pro Tools session files, 8-tracks, surround sound. $50,000 adds an IMAX film (projector not included) and one of those little plastic mini records. $500,000 adds a DIY planetarium show, plus a special Buddha Box edition and a low-power FM radio transmitter so you can self-broadcast the album. $1 million and you get a Jaguar pre-loaded with a specially-signed sound system that plays the album, plus reel-to-reel multitracks. $500 million and Trent comes to your house, brings his studio rig and console, and re-records the album for you in your living room.

Before you assume the downloads are worthless, though, even the torrent file includes PDF “liner notes” and 320 kbps MP3 files. Buy the download and you have an option of either FLAC lossless or Apple Lossless audio — something I know readers here have complained about.

There’s only one problem. The fact that musical superstars are experimenting with various formats amounts to great research into what people may want. But if you’re not a Nine Inch Nails junkie, this is all awfully … well, complicated. For lesser-known artists, it seems like finding just one or two solutions that make most people happy is a better route, and it’s not clear what those are yet.

I’m personally most interested to see how the torrent thing works. Then again, with bandwidth costs plummeting, serving up your own audio — even lossless audio — becomes a viable option for artists and small labels. And so far, the torrent doesn’t seem to be cannibalizing the for-fee options, as NIN’s site says they’re experience high volume of traffic and orders. If enough people spring for the higher-cost options, the free versions may pay for themselves.

By now, you’ve likely heard that Apple’s iTunes Music Store has taken the #2 spot in music sales — all music sales – right behind retailer giant Wal-Mart. This tends to lead to one of two somewhat gloating reactions from Apple advocates. One is a sort of “rah, rah, go Apple!” attitude. The other is along the lines of “hurrah, discs are dead, go throw your CDs in with your eight tracks and vinyl while we leap into the future!”

A typical sentiment comes from Scott McNulty on The Unofficial Apple Weblog: “I have an iPod, an iPhone, an Apple TV, and I manage all my music with iTunes as I am sure many, many other people out there do as well… “

Eep. Any votes for “I have a Sony Cassette Walkman, a cheap mobile phone, a … TV, and I manage all my music on my bookshelf”? Is that more boneheaded nostalgia?

Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be this way — any of this.

First, it’s hard not to notice that Apple’s success involves a somewhat Borg-like approach to media consumption. All Apple gadgets, all Apple software. Ironically, even Windows users — the people Mac users had for years railed against as overly conformist or beholden to Microsoft-branded stuff — use a variety of listening gadgets and happily reject the clunky Windows Media Player for Winamp, Mediamonkey, and foobar2000, among others. Brand loyalty aside, what if you want other control over cataloging, encoding, and mobile listening? It’s your music collection, after all.

But more importantly, iTunes has itself become a kind of Wal-Mart for music: a retailer so large, it starts to impact the rest of the business and stifles variety. And that wasn’t the vision for online music distribution; supposedly we were all going to be rid of major labels and one-size-fits-all outlets. So, that’s the bad news — the good news is, iTunes’ giant presence may be the best thing that ever happened to music sales. Here’s why:

• Apple’s dominance scared the record industry into dumping DRM. Lots of ink has been given to Steve Jobs’ “Thoughts” memo, which called for eliminating DRM because it’s bad for consumer. But iTunes’ DRM-free music initially cost more and covered less — and Apple was beaten by others to going entirely DRM-free. The real reason major labels dumped baked-in protection was they realized adding DRM to music gave the iTunes/iPod combo total control over the market, and they (rightfully) feared an Apple-dominated music world. Without DRM, you use any player and mobile device you want, meaning you don’t have to buy it from any one vendor. Little wonder that many labels went to nearest rival Amazon first. Dropping DRM wasn’t for the consumer; it was a competitive move.
• Sales of music aren’t down; they’re just moving from physical to online media — then back again. The “sky is falling” argument from labels generally comes down to this: physical media sales are down enough that they’re wiping out the benefits of explosive growth from online sales. Physical is down, online is up, and online isn’t yet making as much money as physical sales did at its peak. But that money is going to legit, online sales, not piracy. And that’s a big relief to the rest of us; the labels can be left to figure out how to make money on the new format. Meanwhile, just as Radiohead offered a premium physical-CD for its best fans….
• The CD isn’t dying — it’s just becoming a luxury item. Bloggers have been comparing the death of CDs to the death of vinyl. Maybe that’s the right comparison, but “death” isn’t the right description — for either one. First, there are still billions in CD sales, so don’t expect CDs to go away any time soon. In fact, the CD could rebound slightly if CD sales outlets and labels can find a way to adjust their business model and releases for this new music listening market. One fair bet: make CDs a luxury item. Just ask vinyl. Vinyl has made a resurgence among hard-core aficionados and DJs, people who love its sound, its packaging, the community of people around specialized retailers — all things that could also be true of CDs. The numbers may be small, but if independents can pick up big margins in little markets, who cares? Take the money and run.
• iTunes’ embrace of a Wal-Mart audience means opportunities for other online retailers. I’ve got two words to sum it up: American Idol, for which Apple is now an official sponsor. Apple has traded in its indie cred for big music business. And tastes in music are more diverse than ever. That means iTunes has nowhere to go but down, as stores like Beatport, dancetracksdigital, Other Music, Bleep, Deutsche Grammaphon pick up specific genres and retailers like Amazon work to win out with unique features and varied content. Apple’s likely to remain healthy, sure, but competitors have both the reason and the opportunity to fight back.

Nothing against Wal-Mart — I’ve bought the odd item there. Or Apple — without Apple, I expect we’d still have bungling majors building broken services of their own, like the pre-iTunes, DRM-laden Napster reactionary stuff. But music lovers benefit from choice. And I think Apple’s very dominance, alongside the death of DRM, could paradoxically let that choice happen.

But let’s be clear: no matter how much you like Apple, one retailer, one store, and one mobile device is not a formula that helps music or encourages innovation. It means one company controls pricing, one company controls assortment, one company decides what margins go to music labels, and one company decides what features you want. That’d be a bleak picture, except I think what Apple is doing is carving out a market it won’t be able to continually dominate — meaning the “one” in all of those will disappear soon. You know, like the eight track.

(photo top right: ktpupp)