Sony Walkman outsells iPod?

Bloomberg.com: News

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OMG! Apple is dying! What more evidence do you need? The Zune can’t be far behind!

Before anyone sells all their Apple shares, let me point out that this ’survey’ conveniently leaves out iPhone sales.

Ah, you say – the iPhone isn’t an iPod? Well all you naysayers, take a look at the iPhone default home screen.

See that little orange icon? It says ‘iPod’.

I.P.O.D.

What’s next? When Apple on September 9th, announces that the iPod loses it’s click wheel and goes all ‘touch’, by this articles rules, there won’t be any more iPods.

Hooray! The Zune outsells the iPod at last!

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What music means to me, you and the labels…

Music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. The first single I ever bought was ‘Food for Thought’ by UB40, it cost less than a pound, and I must have been about 11 years old. I still own it – although it’s a bit scratched now.

My main musical influences come from my family, naturally. Disco & dance from my sisters, motown & indie from my brothers. But most of all they come from one of my brothers. He’s 4 years older than me and throughout his life he has been a mod, punk, goth, new romantic, futurist and countless other genres too subtle to mention.

Although I did not follow the fashion as much as he, I did follow his music, specifically punk, goth & indie, and this music has stayed with me all my life.

My listening habits however, have changed radically as I’ve moved from year to year throughout my life.

Early on (from 12 to about 14), I bought nothing but singles & albums. I was heavily influenced by advertising, and spent most of my pocket money in this area. Music to me at this point was a commodity that you listened to, liked and then bought. It wasn’t until I suddenly realised that there was no reason to do this that I changed to…

…tapes. From about 14 to 19 I spent a considerable amount of time swapping tapes between friends. I hardly spent any money on music, just the very occasional album. Music to me at this point was more about quantity than quality (in terms of recording), and I amassed a huge collection of taped albums (200+).

This changed again when I left school and went into higher education. My music tastes became much more condensed and due to the arrogance you feel at this age, I exposed my self to a narrow range of music. However my appreciation of good quality music (in terms of recording), grew and I found myself purchasing more LP’s, EP’s, CD’s & singles that at any time in my life, indeed this is where most of my current record collection comes from.

But this didn’t last. On graduating, and finding a job (at around 24), money became very tight. Over the next decade or so, I married, had a family and purchasing music was at the bottom of my very long list. Any music purchases were usually compilations, with a little bit of taped radio.

But then came iTunes (in the UK).

At first my interest was piqued, but I still didn’t have much spare cash, so purchases were few and far between, i.e. zero.

It wasn’t until I bought my first iPod (a 4gb mini), that things started to change, and music started to take the centre stage again, (well a bit to the right of centre).
At first, I transferred all of my CD collection to the iPod, at least the tracks I liked, this maybe filled a third of the iPod. Then after a few months of realising what a difference carrying 300 of my favourite songs around with me meant, I wanted to transfer all the songs I ‘owned’.

I say ‘owned’, but I didn’t really own them as such, some songs were on LP’s and singles, so these were legal, however I had a huge collection of taped songs that I wished to transfer as well, these I certainly did not own.

But I transferred them anyway, filling my iPod almost to the brim, and our story is almost to the present day.

What I am presently doing is, slowly but surely, is buying (when I have the spare cash) all the taped songs I do not own from iTunes. Now, this isn’t because I feel guilty about have illegal songs on my iPod, no. It’s because the songs I transferred from tapes I REALLY like, and I want to own the best quality recording of them (at least better than tapes, I know that iTunes quality is debatable).

iTunes is the most convenient way of doing this, it’s simple, cheap and legal.
So this is my musical journey from child to man, and the record companies should take note of this. Is my journey typical? Yes, I’d like to think it is.

Note that at certain times during my life, I have been a rampant pirate. But this had nothing to do with me being a criminal, or making any money. It was do to with the fact that I love music, and I would do whatever it took to listen to music with the funds that I had available at the time.

Indeed, the music industry, allowing me to easily pirate songs, actually increased my exposure and love of music to such a degree, that I am now, as an adult, and avid music purchaser.

If the music industry, back in the 80’s, had started taking me and my friends to court because we shared tapes, our love of music would have been stifled by the fact that our exposure to music would have been greatly reduced. Therefore, at a later date when we had the funds to purchase music, we would purchase a great deal less, and maybe none at all, spending our money to fund a different interest altogether.

The music industry does not seem to grasp this. They seem to not understand their own industry, or the way which their customers have been exposed to, and bought music in the past, and seem to be resisting the changes that are now taking place, which will radically change the way we all buy music in the future.

They must change, because no matter how hard they try, we will not. This is marketing 101, you have to react to your customers buying habits, if you don’t then you are finished.
Maybe they are finished, they just don’t realise yet. All I know is, is that my children will do exactly as I have done, in terms of purchasing music, no matter what the music industry wants.

Computer’s as appliances..?

With all the news about Sony clogging up the airwaves (can you say that it internet parlance? how about blogwaves?, interwaves? webwaves? whatever). Anyway Sony – all the bad press Sony has been getting recently has made me think about another one of Sony’s cash cows – home appliances; specifically TV’s, VCR’s & DVD players.

I have recently bought all three of these appliances, and I can tell you, all the talk that computers (especially Apple’s) are nearing the nirvana of an appliance are way off the mark, in fact completely missing the mark. It is in fact, the other way around.

I don’t know about your experiences, but as far as I was concerned, you could buy a TV in 1995, turn it on, watch it, switch it off thousands of times over the years without a hitch. Then buy a brand new VCR or a DVD player a decade later, plug it in and guess what? with minimal configuration it would work. Very Apple like, everybody’s happy.

Then came the problem, (in my experience anyway), digital TV. I’m talking from a UK perspective here.

About a year ago I bought a Sony DVD player, my first DVD player (I know I’m late to the game, but I don’t watch a lot of TV). I hooked it up to my Tatung TV (about 10 years old), this TV also had a Samsung VCR (about 5 years old), and it did work fine. Watching TV, VCR’s or DVD’s was easy, recording TV as easy as it ever was.

Then, unfortunately the TV died, and by coincidence so did the VCR (however the VCR was never the same after having food pushed into it – I have a child under 2 you understand).
So I was in the market for a new TV & DVD player. I decided (with hindsight a mistake) to go all-Sony. After all I had a Sony 12″ TV from my university years that still worked fine, so my decision was made. It was made at a great price as well, a new VCR & 28″ Sony TV (with Freeview) for £500.

After the inevitable purchase of a new aerial to get Freeview, I settled down with the new set-up, happy that I was cutting-edge (well as sharp as you can be for £500).
Then almost straight away things started to go wrong. For some reason the DVD player stopped working. Usually opening and closing the DVD drawer would switch the TV to the DVD channel (again, very nice, very Apple). For some reason this no longer happened. DVD’s played (I could see and hear the actual DVD spinning up and down & counting), but no picture.

Then I realised that the VCR wasn’t recording. At least wasn’t recording the digital channels. Analogue channels recorded fine. It would record the digital channels, as long as you didn’t change channel, or turn the TV off, or turn the sound down (now I ask, what is the point of that?).

So I look round the back of the TV at the cables. This originally had been reasonably straight forward when first setting up the TV. It took a while, but following the manuals I had it hooked up as they specified. However, it was a cable mess. No longer is there just a couple of cables going from analogue, through the VCR to the TV, you now have almost a dozen cables, all going in different directions, god knows what any of them do.

So I check all the cables to see whether anything has popped out, but this in itself is difficult. The icons & writing on the back of the TV, telling you what each port is for are black, embossed onto a black background. Impossible to see, even in daylight without a torch. There are 3 different manuals, one for VCR, DVD & TV. This you would expect if they were all from different suppliers, but these all all Sony products. These products can be used with other products, so you do need separate manuals, but you would expect the manuals to look the same, be structured the same, and use the same names for each port – they do not, so you have to always translate between them.

After a lot of trial and error, I realise that the Sony scart cable supplied with the DVD is faulty, so I purchase the a new & better one, from a local independent electrical supplier. That’s the DVD sorted, but I find out that recording digital channels is purposely disabled in this way. Not taking no for an answer, I resort looking on the internet. There is a work around, but here it is:

Can you believe this? I’m still not sure this will work (I need to put aside an entire evening to find out, and guess what? I have slightly more important things to do with my time than translate the above diagram into reality).

All this reminds me of the original iMac campaign. One of the selling points of the iMac was it’s ease of setting up to the internet, and its lack of cables. One of the TV ads that was used shows this perfectly:

That PC is exactly what my TV, VCR & DVD set-up looks like.

Imagine if the above iMac was translated into an Apple branded TV/VCR/DVD…

The idea that computers need to become like appliances is misguided. Today’s appliances are just as complicated to set up as a Windows PC, but there’s an opportunity here for Apple. I really wish that Apple would enter the home appliance market because if they followed the same ease of use in both hardware & software that they do with the iPod & Mac, they would wipe the floor with companies such as Sony, and change the face of home technology for ever.

Sony are a huge company, it should be perfectly possible with today’s technology, to have 3 appliances, a TV, DVD player & VCR, and have 1 power cable, 1 cable going from the wall to the TV and the 2 more cables from the TV to the DVD & VCR. Apple does exactly this with all their technology why cannot everybody else? Why does no other company get this simple premise?

It’d be nice as well if the software they used to drive the settings for these 3 appliances was Apple-like as well, but I do not believe it is possible to do this outside Apple’s campus.

The interfaces used to drive these 3 devices are all different, break just about every GUI guideline there is, you have to learn different skills for each one, etc, etc, etc. It’s like Apple Human Interface Department never existed.

Is Front Row and the new iMac a move in this direction? Maybe. Just think for a moment about these words, iMac, Powermac, Xserve. Now think of the differences between them. Now think about iPod, powerPod & xPod, a pod for the consumer, professional and administrator?

I for one would put my Sony products on eBay, and buy the Apple equivalents in a heartbeat.

Sony, don’t bite the hand that feeds you…

One of my favourite authors is the late, great Douglas Adams. His humourous insights into any topic that caught his eye made him an immensely enjoyable read. The book (or books) he is most famous for of course are the Hitch-hiker books and one of his observations is pertinent to a situation that has recently rocked the tech world.

Now, bear with me, ‘cos if you haven’t read the books, this isn’t going to make much sense. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect have just ridden on the back of a Perfectly Normal Beast and have gone through some sort of hyperspace rift into a new world, one that is populated by (amongst other things) a transport café, which they visit in order to gain some refreshments, and to see The King (yes THE King). There’s some REALLY funny bits about a credit card, restaurant write-ups and nibbling fingers, but I digress.

Once entering, the author remarks on the customers of this café. The establishment is a dark and moody place, full of dingy corners and shadowy, nasty ne’er-do-wells, such as drug dealers, murderers, assassins and record company executives.

This small observation, made in jest perfectly sums up the people we are dealing with here in connection with the Sony rootkit scenario.

The problem here is one of control. The record companies know that at some point in the future (not to far away either), all media will at some point in it’s journey from producer to consumer, pass through a computer.

Now the consumer sees this as an opportunity to transform & manipulate that media into whatever they want, in order to transfer it anywhere for their convenience. After all, they bought the media and they should have the right to do whatever they want with their property, correct?

The producer (in this case it is not the musician, it is the record company), sees this opportunity in a completely different light. Previous forms of media transportation (such as cassette, LP), had little in the way of copy protection because you could never make a perfect recording, the same applies to VHS. The record companies were not too bothered by this, and there was little they could do about it anyway, the technology didn’t exist that would have allowed them to stop it, so they grudingly lived with the situation.

CD’s took them by surprise. From what I can see, record companies are run by people who have little understanding of technology. They failed to see the upcoming danger of personal computers and ripping CD’s to MP3, and are now playing catch up.

This ‘catching up’ basically consists of making up for all the (apparent) lost revenue they saw since VHS Video cassettes first came onto the market. In their eyes, when you buy a CD or DVD, you are not buying the contents of that media. What you are buying is a licence (details of which varies from country to country), to experience that media under the conditions of that licence, and to a certain extent, they are right.

Now the conditions of that licence have changed little over the years, but what is different now, is the Record Companies see that with the potential use of technology (Black Hat Rootkits), they can enforce that licence in a way they have never been able to do before, and even change the conditions of that licence when they see fit. They see this as their last chance to enforce something they’ve wanted all along, potentially make a pot load of cash in the process and they are not going to let go of it easily.

There are a number of problems with this viewpoint, they do not see them, but we do:

1) A pirate is not a potential customer, and never will be. The record companies think that every pirated copy of a song is a lost sale. This is obviously incorrect and ignores a basic understanding of how consumers operate. Bill Gates once said in connection to piracy rates of his software in China, (and I’m paraphrasing here), “If they’re going to pirate software, let’s make sure it’s ours. We’ll figure out a way to collect later.”

2) Fair use. Now this little loophole in the licensing conditions differs from country to country. Where the law applies, you can make a back-up of the CD’s you have bought for your own usage. Some countrys are less than flexible (such as the UK), and other laws state that you cannot broadcast the songs you have bought to other people. The law regarding fair use is badly thought out and confusing. Consumers need a simple, fair system that takes into account their listenting & watching habits, plus takes into account the use of new technology. Until this happens, consumers will feel it is their right to treat their music in any way they want.

3) Respect for the consumer. What the record companys don’t understand, is that by tighteneing the grip on the listening conditions of their media, they will squeeze all the life out of it, and kill it stone dead. The consumer will not agree to (for instance), buying another copy of their music CD to give to their friend. They will simply copy it using iTunes, as they did before with LP’s and cassettes. The record companies have not lost a sale, because their friend would not have bought it anyway. The tenuous relationship that exists in this licence is the best they are going to get. If they push too hard, sales will go DOWN, not up.

What they should be doing is introducing fair DRM, like iTunes, on their CD’s. (Apple – a chance to licence FairPlay here please?). How about lowering their prices, and giving better value for money with these CD’s in terms of discounted tickets for live events, fan clubs & merchandise? This would give added value to the physical CD, and is something that is impossible to pirate.

Record companies, and all media companies have a problem with piracy, but this is not a new phenomenon. Their business model is totally reliant on a flexible approach to usage rights and if they try to alter this approach to the detriment of their customers, these customers will simply walk away, (probably in the direction of BitTorrent). The best way to fight it is by treating this threat as a competitor for your customers, not by treating your customers as criminals.

If you haven’t read the passage in Hitch-hikers as described above, the following won’t make any sense either, but a statement in this book sums up the attitude that media companies should have towards us:

“You should never bite the hand that feeds you. Nibble it occasionally, even suck on it really hard sometimes, but not actually bite it.”