Eircom's actions set a dangerous precedent

Over the weekend a storm in a teacup raged over Techcrunch’s claim that Last.fm had given data to the RIAA to allow the music industry body to identify which users of the service had been listening to illegally obtained copies of the new U2 album ahead of release.

Remember I wrote about how Sony had badly handled customer complaints recently? Last.fm’s response to Techcrunch’s allegations was the exact opposite of Sony’s approach. The first thing they did right was acting quickly. Within minutes of the Techcrunch piece hitting people’s feed readers late on Friday night Last.fm staff were commenting on the original Techcrunch post as well as firefighting over on their own forums, where users were understandably venting their frustration. In order to hopefully draw a line under the while affair they posted a piece on their company blog today saying in no uncertain terms that Techcrunch were wrong.

It’s possible that Last.fm are lying and that they really are sharing potentially incriminating data about their users with music industry bodies but their fast, open response claiming it wouldn’t be possible without everyone at the company finding out mean their users are a lot more likely to believe them than the scandal and page impression-hungry lot at Techcrunch. Last.fm’s response to this affair shows that they value their users and understand the importance of getting a positive message out as soon as possible.

Chances are, then, that this is a bit of a non-story and one that may distract attention from much more serious goings on in Ireland. Torrentfreak reports that the country’s biggest ISP, Eircom, has now agreed to block any site or service that the music industry finds objectionable. ISPs the world over have been fighting against pressure to them do this for years and now the main player in Ireland has rolled over and become the music industry’s bitch.

With other Irish ISPs reportedly being pressured into following suit, how long before this spreads to other countries? Big business having a veto over what is accessed online is a slippery slope and one that needs fighting at every opportunity.

I doubt the music industry will have a free ride on this one. As New Zealand has shown over the last week, people aren’t afraid to stand up and protest when the freedom and independence of the internet is at stake.

When the original Napster was at its peak nine years ago it opened up an unrivaled library of music to its users. After it was shut down, free music continued to be available via peer-to-peer and BitTorrent piracy but that easy-to-use music library was never quite matched until a legal solution arrived in the form of Spotify late last year. Now it looks like Spotify’s library is being cut back because of, you guessed it, licensing issues.

Again and again, innovative services that engage the public with music in exciting new ways are crippled or destroyed due to the music industry’s pig-headedness. They tell us they want to move into the digital world but they do it such tiny, baby steps that they continually frustrate customers. The excuse we get every time is “licensing problems”.

Licensing is a very real issue, of course. Labels don’t always have control over recordings for the whole of the world, meaning that music can only be licensed to certain territories. Unless all the licensees around the world for a track agree, there’s no way the track will be available across the whole world. This is the problem that has hit Spotify this week.

Now, the idea of ‘territories’ is all very well when you’re dealing with CDs and physical shops but transfer it to the global digital realm and you just end up with a lot of frustrated potential customers. Isn’t it time for traditional ideas of territories to be torn up and replaced with a truly global strategy?

It certainly can’t happen overnight, and there are a lot of contracts that would need renegotiating) but it certainly needs to happen soon. Only then will we stop the ridiculous scuppering of strong ideas that have potential because of outdated pieces of paper.

Happiness is an empty inbox

Tonight I feel like I have a huge weight taken off my mind. Over the past few days I’ve been engaged in an exercise of Zen-like realignment. Yes, I’ve been tidying up my email inbox. That might not sound particularly significant but then you don’t know quite how disorganised my inbox was!

I’ve been a Gmail user since March 2005 and until today I’d never had an empty inbox since opening the account. Sure, I deleted unwanted email but anything I wanted to keep was left there for quick reference. With Gmail’s excellent Search capability, I reasoned, why did I need to spend time sorting and archiving my email using Gmail’s Labels feature?

At the same time, I’d occasionally forget to do important things I’d been emailed about. Last month I forgot to pay my mobile phone bill on time because the email from my network got lost half way down a page of emails from friends. While I’m generally well organised, it was clear there was a weak link, I just didn’t know what. I’d tried To-do list apps like Remember The Milk but over time I’d forget to use them and my list of jobs would become outdated as newer jobs went unlisted and relied on my fragile human memory for completion.

I was finally spurred on to a satisfactory solution when American blogger Jesse Stay posted a message on Twitter that he was teaching his 8 year-old daughter to be disciplined with her email inbox. “I am teaching her to read diligently, but keep her inbox empty”, he wrote. Suddenly I knew what I had to do. If an 8 year-old child could organise her email why was I, with 22 extra years of life experience, living with such an untidy inbox?

It was a big job, but I did it. Since Saturday I’ve been spending an hour an evening labeling and archiving my old emails. There were quite a lot of un-needed stuff that had stuck around so that got deleted and finally, at 4pm today, I achieved “Inbox Zero” for the first time in nearly four years. It felt good!

Now, as new emails arrive I deal with them. If I can’t deal with them straight away they’ll stay in the inbox but as I’m always aiming to see that “No new mail! There’s always Google News if you’re looking for something to read” notice, I know I’ll get it dealt with as promptly as possible. Can I keep it up long term? I can’t say for sure but it’s the start of a new year and when better to change some deeply ingrained behaviour?

One to avoid? Amazon MP3

Nearly a year after they launched it in the USA, Amazon finally launched the UK version of their MP3 store at the start of December. When the store launched in the States it gained lots of press coverage thanks to the fact that a major retailer was selling DRM-free MP3s of mainstream music for the first time. Finally a contender to Apple’s iTunes had arrived and unlike most of iTunes’ stock, which has copy protection that limits the number of copies you can make and machines you can use it on, this one offered 100% unprotected MP3s.

Here in the UK we’ve had DRM-free music available online for a long time. Bleep.com was first, with a catalogue of mainly experimental electronic music although it has incorporated a wider range of indie label stock since then. eMusic offers indie, electronic and jazz music but you won’t find the music that most customers are looking for. No Girls Aloud or X Factor winners at Bleep or eMusic.

So, with its mainstream catalogue, you’d think that the UK launch of Amazon’s MP3 store would be met with relief and celebration by music fans but that’s not the impression I’ve been getting. This year has seen at least two digital music sites, Play.com and 7 Digital, start offering a mainstream catalogue of DRM-free MP3s this side of the Atlantic and both of them have a significant advantage over Amazon. Put it this way, if you like paying twice and then getting a refund a few days later Amazon is for you! Let me explain…

A couple of weeks ago I was DJing at a local bar and wanted to quickly download a couple of new tracks to add to my set. I thought I’d try Amazon’s MP3 store. There was no problem finding the tracks I wanted. I entered my payment details and clicked ‘Download’. Here’s where the problem began.

Pointless software

For some reason, Amazon feels the need to encourage you to use the Amazon MP3 Download Manager before you’re allowed to get your hands on the music you’ve just bought. Using the Download Manager is compulsory if you’re buying full releases, rather than individual tracks, as I was. Why? I’ve downloaded thousands of files over the past twelve years of internet usage and I’m perfectly capable of doing it without the help of some annoying software.

Anyway, once it was installed I tried downloading again. The usual ’save/open’ prompt appeared and without thinking I clicked ’save’ and then… nothing happened. The files didn’t start downloading.

Because I was using a download manager I should have clicked ‘open’ to allow the software to handle the MP3s. Because I was in a rush I missed Amazon’s warning about this and now I had a problem. The files hadn’t downloaded but Amazon reckoned I had them.

No second chances

At this point, if I was using Play.com or 7 Digital, I’d be able to visit a page where I could re-download any songs I’d already bought. They’re DRM free so there should be no limit on the number of times I download them, surely? Amazon don’t seem to agree. If you want to re-download you have to pay again.

Pay again I did. I was in a rush, remember, and I wanted to play the tracks during my DJ set. 3 tracks that should have cost around £2.50 ended up costing me twice that. Luckily, Amazon noticed the error and I got an automatic refund a few days later but the experience was enough to put me off Amazon for the time being, especially when there are better thought out alternatives on the market.

I’ve seen other people mention the same problem on Twitter, so I’m not alone. If Amazon wants our custom back it needs to ditch the unnecessary software and allow free re-downloading of MP3s we’ve bought. Until then, I’m sticking with the alternatives.

As it turned out, the recommendation system was the anonymised Genius system.  Genius uses users listening histories to help create better automatically generated playlists and allows Apple to give better buying recommendations.  While Genius is a nice feature it’s a long way from the social potential iTunes has. Is there much chance of that potential being released though?  What’s in it for Apple?

Well, for a start, if iTunes became a social network people would spend a lot more time there.  I can spend hours browsing Last.fm, listening to music and exploring people’s collections.  iTunes’ fantastically easy one-click buying system would mean users could buy songs that their friends like in seconds.  It’s not hard to see why Apple would be keep on that!  While Last.fm has affiliate links for buying music, the only songs you can get with one click are those that rights holders have flagged for free download.

That’s not all; by allowing users to socialise on iTunes would give Apple a lot of useful data on the way people consume music.  From complete charts of their listening histories, to the gigs they go to and the music they recommend to others; it’d all be useful market research data for Apple.  Last.fm are sitting on a lot of valuable data that they don’t make public simply because of its value to music marketers.

So, going social would be good for Apple but would the customers go for it?  Last.fm and its rivals like Pandora and iLike are certainly popular with the dedicated music fans who have discovered them.  The mainstream profile of iTunes means many more people would find Apple’s rival service and while it wouldn’t be a hit with everyone, I think many people who aren’t currently Last.fm users who find huge value in it.

iTunes already features web-based radio stations, so why not feature streams of users-playlists and collections?  Okay, there would be licensing issues to resolve but Last.fm managed to deal with them even before they had the corporate muscle of CBS on their side, so it shouldn’t be a problem for Apple.  Just as with Last.fm, labels could manage promotion of their artists within iTunes, helping boost sales of smaller independent artists.

I’ve written before about the dream of a subscription-based ‘all you can eat’ iTunes Music Store.  There are other promising services in this area too.  If Apple combined a launch of a subscription model with more social features I think we’d be looking at the ultimate online music offering.

The thing is, if Apple did go down the subscription route they’d be less inclined to offer the social features.  Social features encourage people to buy more music. If they’ve subscribed to download an unlimited amount of music why invest money in encouraging them to download more? That would actually be counterproductive for Apple as it would increase the strain on their servers. One way the two could be combined is if the social features were used as a way to encourage people to buy into a subscription model.  “Buy our Unlimited plan and download all your friends’ music collections!” is a strong proposition.

Apple are notoriously secretive and unpredictable so we can’t really predict what their plans are for the development of iTunes are. One thing’s for sure though, they certainly have a lot of options. If they make the right choices they could create an online heaven for music fans .

Subscription plans have existed for a few years now and they’ve all had drawbacks.  Napster offer unlimited downloads for a monthly fee, but the tracks are DRM-wrapped Windows Media Audio files which won’t play on iPods and expire if you stop paying.  eMusic offer unprotected high-quality MP3 files to keep forever but there’s a strict monthly download limit and the choice of music is quite limited, especially outside the USA.

In the mobile space MusicStation is a service that allows unlimited downloads but again it is DRM-encumbered and music is locked to the customer’s phone with no way to transfer the music to a computer.  Nokia’s Comes With Music has just launched and is another DRM-protected, unlimited downloads scheme.  Once again though, the music is locked to one phone although you can copy it to one computer and you do get to keep it forever.  It’s good, but it’s not the DRM-free, unlimited ideal.

It’s understandable that the music industry wouldn’t want to take the risk of licensing their content for such a Utopian dream.  They’d be too scared of helping all the illegal filesharers out there.  It looks like some of them have taken the plunge though.

Datz is a new subscription service offering that ideal of unlimited MP3 downloads with no restrictions.  If you’re prepared to pay £99 per year you get a USB dongle that you plug into the computer you want to download music on.  You can only download music from a computer with the dongle in but once you’ve got the music you can copy it and play it wherever you like.

There are still some teething problems.  The software used to download the tracks is Windows only (although a Mac version seems to be planed for the near future) and some of the biggest record companies such as Universal aren’t on board.  EMI, Warners and Beggars Group are though, so there’s plenty of content you’ll have heard of on there.

So, is your favourite band available on Datz?  Once you buy into the service there’s a search facility available in the software but finding out if it has the music you want beforehand is difficult.  Their site only offers an A to Z of artists and a genre search.  Searching for well-known bands i difficult as there are so many little-known artists out there.  I’m not a Coldplay fan but they are a popular EMI act, so are they on there?  You have to search through page after page of artists beginning with ‘C’.  After a while I discovered Chaka Demus & Pliers are on Datz, as are unknowns like Cinema 33 and Cocobongo.  On and on I went clicking through page after page.  44 pages in I finally found Coldplay, but only seven tracks are available!

Datz definitely need to point potential customers in the direction of their best-known content rather than confusing them with long lists of obscure artists.  Those ‘premium’ artists definitely need complete catalogues too.  Imagine paying £99 and discovering most of the music you wanted wasn’t there.

Hopefully Datz will iron out these problems.  Introduce a search facility to the website and if there’s enough music I want on there I’ll happily sign up.  It’s expensive up front but as long as there’s lots of good content to download it’ll pay for itself in no time.  Let’s face it, most serious music fans will spend a lot more than £99 per year on music.  If it’s successful the remaining majors will get on board and it will be an amazing proposition for anyone with even a moderate interest in music.

Datz is definitely one to watch.

Choo Choo - doing it right

Back in 2005 Myspace became the most important tool for bands to get themselves noticed online.  The huge mainstream uptake of the service meant there was a ready audience of potential fans for eager unsigned acts to tap into.

The good times didn’t last though.  It didn’t take long for fatigue to set in amongst Myspace’s non-musical userbase.  Constant friend requests from (mostly awful) bands meant that many people who weren’t big music fans abandoned Myspace entirely.

Facebook arrived just at the right time to suck up those disaffected people.  Myspace was left largely as a network of musicians and other creative people ‘befriending’ each other but not building strong active fanbases.  Myspace remains a well-used social network but certainly in the UK I don’t know many people who have checked their Myspace profile in the past year.  While it remains a useful act-finding resource for the music industry’s A&R departments, bands are having to look elsewhere to engage with existing fans and court new ones.

Facebook offers opportunities for bands to promote themselves.  Anyone can set up a band’s presence using a Facebook Group or the more advanced Pages service.  The difference with Facebook is that general users aren’t so keen to engage with people they don’t know in real life.  In fact, Facebook actively discourage interaction with people you don’t know offline.  That makes fanbase building difficult as only people who are already aware of a band are likely to find their Facebook presence.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t other ways for bands to build a following online.  The growing popularity of Twitter this year means there’s an ever-increasing audience of people who will happily ‘Follow’ anyone who posts interesting content using the service.  So, how should a band use Twitter to promote themselves?  Let’s take a look at some examples…

Doing it wrong: The Hussys

Scottish band The Hussys started following me on Twitter a few months ago but I declined to follow them back because of the way they tweet.  They repeatedly post the same information over and over. Gig dates and links to their website are continually reposted every couple of weeks with very little other interaction with the service.  If they personalised their approach they’d become a lot more appealing.

Twitter is great for having conversations with fans and talking about what a band is getting up to.  The great thing about the service is that it’s both intimate in tone and public in nature.  How great would it be for your favourite band to post updates about how rehearsals are going, what beer’s on the rider for tonight’s gig or teasers about new song titles?

Doing it wrong: Me

Yes, I have to confess that I certainly don’t promote my music well on Twitter.  While I set up my account in order to promote the music I make as The Star Fighter Pilot, I quickly got sucked into the world of Twitter.  While I still tweeted about my music it ceased to be my main focus.  I’m not bothered at all – I’ve got a lot out of using Twitter including, ironically, a song.  However, if you’re joining Twitter to promote your music make sure you keep that in mind when you start tweeting about annoying people on your bus ride to work.

Doing it right but not enough: Stone Walters

Unlike The Hussys above, British soul artist Stone Walters certainly gives insights into his life through Twitter.  “Recovering from the Stevie Wonder show I went to yesterday” he says in one tweet, “Explaining to my son that he can’t do somersaults today as the 15 stitches he had in his face from falling over yesterday need to heal first” he says in another.  The problem is that there’s often two-week gaps between tweets!

If you’re going to have a presence on Twitter make sure you update at least once a day wherever possible. It shows that you’re interested in sharing with your followers and will make sure that you stay in their consciousness every day. If they feel like they know you they’re likely to want to spend money on your music.

Doing it right: Choo Choo

Swiss act Choo Choo (not to be confused with similarly-pronounced Californians, Xiu Xiu) use Twitter very effectively.  They don’t spam their followers with gig listings, they converse with them using @username replies, they give insights into what the band are doing and talk about other bands that they like.  Earlier today they were using it to crowdsource some help in securing gigs in the UK.  By using Twitter in the same way a ‘normal user’ does but by keeping focused on the band, Choo Choo are providing value for, and interaction with, their fans.

So are we close to newspapers proclaiming someone to be “the first band discovered through Twitter”?  It’s not likely – you’ll always need good tunes, a strong image and heaps of dedication to achieve musical success.  That said, Twitter is a great, cost-effective way of giving fans something extra.  If your band has a social networking fiend in its midst why not get them to set up and run a Twitter account today?

The key points again:

• Offer insights into life in the band.  Something extra beyond the music.
• Reply to fans’ messages using @username replies.  It shows you value their input.
• Post regularly.  People may ‘un-follow’ you if you don’t post for a while.  Being active attracts more followers.
• Don’t spam fans with gig listings and links to your web shop.  People can find those things via the link on your profile page, or a simple Google search.

Sway has done extremely well for himself, considering he’s done most of it entirely unsigned (unless you count his own label).  His first album, This Is My Demo, was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and he won a MOBO award in the same year.  He’s recently signed to Akon’s Konvict label for territories outside Europe but he maintains his indepenence on his home continent.

As well as finding out about his new single and album, this podcast interview features Sway talking about the advantages of being independent and telling me why he might never discount entirely the idea of signing to a major label.

Future podcasts will feature interviews with interesting people from the worlds of technology, music and the media.  There’s a lot happening here in Manchester all the time and I hope I’ll be able to give a flavour of at least some of it on the podcast.  I’m not quite sure how frequent it’ll be yet but I’m aiming at a new episode being published every month.

So, without any further ado why not head to our podcast page and get downloading?

“Dear Twitter musicians. For my birthday, can somebody write me a bleepy electronic song about robotic pigs driving flying cars?”

Quite why she wanted that particular subject matter I have no idea.  However, always up for a challenge (there’s nothing like a specific brief to concentrate the mind) I decided to take her up on the task.  Well, I missed her birthday by two days, but on Thursday night I turned in my finished MP3.

On Saturday morning it went up on the blog that Justhipper co-runs, The Indie Credential, for free download. The question is, is it the first song ever commissioned via Twitter?  There have certainly been songs written about Twitter (this one for example) but maybe, just maybe, we made a little bit of social media history last week.

If you know different feel free to correct me by leaving a comment below.

Such a move would certainly be welcome.  The idea of being able to fill up my iPhone with new albums without having to worry about individual purchases is fantastic.  Most competing subscription services lack iPod compatibility meaning they’re unlikely to ever hit mainstream acceptance. Emusic, which does offer iPhone compatible MP3s, has a far too limited catalogue of music to truly compete.

The assumption by most people so far has been that an iTunes subscription model would offer unlimited downloads.  Is that really likely though? I don’t think so and here are the reasons:

1. Would the Record Labels allow it?
They’ve certainly denied any kind of deal is on the table.  While other services like Napster offer unlimited  downloads, iTunes is way ahead in the music download market.  To offer unlimited downloads via iTunes would cut a huge number individual sales out of the digital market and the labels would be worried about losing out in a time when they’re desperate for all the money they can get.  While they may be okay with an iTunes subscription model, they’d want download limits.

2. Would Apple want it?
If a huge number of their customers started downloading everything iTunes has to offer (just because it was possible) that’s be a huge hit on Apple’s servers.  Having some restrictions makes sense from a technical point of view.

3. Is Apple capable of not disappointing?
While this isn’t a well-reasoned argument, Apple have certainly let their faithful customers down a lot recently.  From dodgy iPhone reception to a botched MobileMe launch, it’s been disappointments all-round recently.  Another disappointment wouldn’t be surprising.

So, while there may well be an iTunes subscription service sometime soon, don’t expect to be able to fill up that 1 Terabyte drive you’ve just bought.