If I get one more e-mail defending physical formats, I’m gonna throw my typewriter through the window.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe my Walkman!<\/p>\n
Please, no more prognostications from those who haven’t experienced the future.\u00c2\u00a0 You remind me of my mother, who pooh-poohed the family friend who bought a personal computer in the eighties, lamenting he didn’t spend the cash on a better automobile, and now checks her e-mail each and every day via her Mac.<\/p>\n
You didn’t know you needed HDTV until you saw it.\u00c2\u00a0 You won’t know you need streaming until you properly experience it.\u00c2\u00a0 MySpace and other Websites give you a facsimile.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re good at Google you can ferret through Websites looking for the track you want to hear, which will be rendered in awful quality and will be hamstrung by bad code.\u00c2\u00a0 This is like driving cross-country in a Jeep.\u00c2\u00a0 But with a Mercedes-Benz and a smooth highway and satellite radio you might be eager to take that long ride.<\/p>\n
Apple made online music palatable for the masses.\u00c2\u00a0 There were two factors…\u00c2\u00a0 The iPod and iTunes.\u00c2\u00a0 Suddenly, you didn’t need to know what an MP3 was, nor tags.\u00c2\u00a0 It was just like going to the record store, but you didn’t have to leave your house and you got to purchase exactly what you wanted, with no bloat-tunes.\u00c2\u00a0 Until now, streaming services have been akin to the original Rio MP3 player and the matching software that didn’t sync automatically and transferred tracks at a glacial pace.\u00c2\u00a0 Rhapsody has a bad interface.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve never even used Napster’s.\u00c2\u00a0 To my knowledge, neither has an application that functions on a Mac.\u00c2\u00a0 But now I use both services, because of the Sonos iPhone app.<\/p>\n
I didn’t used to use my Sonos system either.\u00c2\u00a0 The hand-held controller was frustrating, access to music was too slow!\u00c2\u00a0 But the iPhone app is intuitive and almost instant.\u00c2\u00a0 I can dial up the history of recorded music throughout my house without awakening my computer, Rhapsody and Napster come straight from the pipe!<\/p>\n
If you used Spotify, you’d get the magic.\u00c2\u00a0 Because Spotify mimics the iTunes software.\u00c2\u00a0 And you can listen to your desired tunes faster than Apple can download them.\u00c2\u00a0 The elegance and convenience deliver a rewarding experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Prior to the iPhone\/Sonos solution and Spotify, the software wasn’t ready, the experience sucked.\u00c2\u00a0 Which may be why only a couple of million people pay to stream in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Napster’s new deal does not come with new software.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to utilize the browser on your Mac to stream.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s like crossing the street wading in molasses.\u00c2\u00a0 So, I don’t believe Napster will set streaming on fire.\u00c2\u00a0 But as soon as there’s an easily-used, elegant solution, akin to Spotify, streaming will go bonkers.<\/p>\n
So don’t tell me about your CDs, don’t tell me about the way it used to be.\u00c2\u00a0 To pontificate about streaming without truly experiencing it is to proffer an uninformed, ancient opinion.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve got to get Spotify or Sonos\/iPhone in order to know what’s truly going on.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s the way it works in tech. Rather than dismiss the future, you’ve got to check it out.\u00c2\u00a0 The original Napster may have been mass copyright infringement, but what a service! The history of recorded music at your fingertips!<\/p>\n
Unlike the Napster of yore, the new streaming services are legal.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just a matter of tweaking them and exposing them until the public embraces them.\u00c2\u00a0 Will physical formats still exist?\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, you can still buy phonograph needles, you can still buy cassettes, but neither are mainstream formats, vinyl is barely a sideshow.<\/p>\n
So, if you enjoy your CDs, fine.\u00c2\u00a0 But don’t tell me they’re going to rule in the future.\u00c2\u00a0 The industry would kill them tomorrow if they could figure out how to make this online thing pay.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t want the manufacturing, shipping and returns.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, they want to sell ten tracks instead of one.\u00c2\u00a0 But people have moved on.\u00c2\u00a0 Proven by the endless closure of physical retail outlets.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, the future will arrive, no matter what the labels say, because you can’t keep the public back, not forever, once they’ve experienced a better way.<\/p>\n
The future is all your music at your fingertips all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 If you pay at all, whether it be cash or enduring advertisements, it will be for access. Why worry if you brought a certain track on vacation if you know it will be available instantly, anywhere?<\/p>\n
The major labels could have charged for P2P transfers for the last decade.\u00c2\u00a0 Instead, they wanted to eradicate the technology.\u00c2\u00a0 They haven’t been successful and they’ve left all that money on the table.\u00c2\u00a0 But that ship has sailed.\u00c2\u00a0 License P2P now, because it’s dying.\u00c2\u00a0 Tech is a story of evolution. Constant and fast, a la Moore’s Law.\u00c2\u00a0 If you think CDs are perfect, that physical will still rule, then you’re reading this on an Apple II, an original IBM PC.\u00c2\u00a0 But you’re not.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve seen the advantages of the future.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s so bright, we’ve got to wear shades!<\/p>\n
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If I get one more e-mail defending physical formats, I’m gonna throw my typewriter through the window.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe my Walkman! Please, no more prognostications from those who haven’t experienced the future.\u00c2\u00a0 You remind me of my mother, who pooh-poohed the family friend who bought a personal computer in the eighties, lamenting he didn’t spend […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business","category-online"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-vG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1965,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1964\/revisions\/1965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}