Archive for October, 2004
Seven-character album review: Rammstein, Reise Reise
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Whistle while you… drown
One for the “clever, but completely pointless” file, the SwiMP3 player is an MP3 player that works underwater. It uses bone conduction technology to transfer sound from your cheekbone to your inner ear, and you’ll look utterly ridiculous if you use one.
[Via Engadget]
Silence is golden
Why is music in pubs so bloody loud? There’s a discussion about it on one of the music boards I frequent, and the consensus among young, music-obsessed people is: for god’s sake, turn it down. If we wanted to hear music that’s so loud our teeth rattle, we’d go to a gig or a club, or hack our iPods so they make our eyes vibrate.
It’s something that’s become more and more prevalent in recent years, whether it’s city centre pubs blasting house music at volumes that could shatter buildings, or small-town pubs where the entire clientele is subjected to the whole of Frampton Comes Alive until their brains beg for mercy and try a Steve McQueen-style jump from their ears. You can’t even go for a meal without being blasted with hip-hop. Which bright spark decided that going out for dinner would be much more fun if you couldn’t have a conversation?
In the message board discussion, one poster suggests that money is the motive: if you’re sitting back, blethering with your friends, you’ll probably drink more slowly than you do when your conversation consists entirely of shouting. And he’s probably right, although it’s also partly due to the way in which many pubs see themselves as pre-club venues whose aim is to get everyone fired up before moving on to a proper club. And of course, it’s partly due to the ongoing infantilism of the world, where everything is geared to late-teens and sod everybody else.
It wouldn’t be so bad if there were any escape, but there isn’t: head for a traditional old man’s pub and at weekends, you’re almost guaranteed to encounter karaoke. This is even worse than too-loud music: not only has the karaoke operator managed to defy the laws of physics with a small pair of speakers pumping out music that registers on the Richter Scale, but the gin-sozzled twats who dominate such “entertainment” can’t sing for toffee. Never mind the sound of crying babies or nails down a blackboard: the worst sound in the world is a Celine Dion song sung by a blowsy old madam whose relationship with the tune is as strong as my relationship with vegetables and exercise, bellowed through a PA system the size of Spain. And yet instead of killing these people, we encourage them - and we amplify them.
The web is currently ablaze with talk of the TV-B-Gone, a remote control that you can use to surreptitiously switch off unwanted TVs in public places. I’d rather have a Music-B-Gone - or failing that, a rocket launcher.
“And now, Big Aggie’s going to sing-”
CLICK! WHOOOOOSH! BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
Fake Gucci bags “fund terrorism”
Here we go again: Interpol claims that fake goods fund terrorism, although they haven’t bothered to say which groups, or how the funding gets to them from street sellers in the Med.
“When you buy for example a counterfeit watch, the money is channeled into the pockets of Mafia groups, terrorist groups,” said Jean-Michel Louboutin, executive director of police services at Interpol.
I’m baffled by this. Given that the links between organised crime and counterfeiting are well-established, what’s the benefit of trying to shoehorn terrorism in there when there’s little or no evidence of such a connection? Mafia groups, definitely, but the only established terrorism links that Interpol has ever given us are counterfeit brake parts in the middle east (linked to organised crime gangs, some of whose members had hezbollah links) and counterfeit goods in Northern Ireland (sold by paramilitary groups, who are effectively organised crime these days anyway).
The purpose of the claim, says Reuters, is to “rally consumer support behind a global campaign against counterfeiting”. So why peg the campaign on such a shaky premise? There are sound reasons to avoid counterfeit goods: they’re responsible for job losses and reduced tax income; the people who make the goods often work in shockingly bad conditions that make sweatshops seem a model of worker protection; perfumes and other substances can cause nasty skin burns; and in the case of Burberry - in Scotland at least - owning the stuff makes people laugh at you behind your back. That’s a pretty compelling bunch of reasons to forgo fakes, and the various campaign groups would be better off focusing on them instead of trying to conjure up the bogeyman of terrorism.
Banned in the USA
One of my favourite blogs, the gloriously demented Fafblog, reacts to the news that it is blocked by the filters at the Seminole County Public Library:
“Now Giblets’s voice can ring out across the vast electronic wilderness without any editorial restraints!” says Giblets. “And his voice says: Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fucky fuck mcfuck!”
Halloween “offensive to real witches”
A US school district has banned halloween celebrations as they might offend real witches.
Number crunching: CD giveaways
An interesting snippet in the current issue of Private Eye magazine:
2.5m CDs sold in a week in the UK
10m CDs given away free with weekend papers in the UK
Who gets what when you buy a CD?
Some interesting figures buried in Rolling Stone’s article about Wal-Mart’s quest for $10 CDs:
This breakdown of the cost of a typical major-label release by the independent
market-research firm Almighty Institute of Music Retail shows where the money
goes for a new album with a list price of $15.99.$0.17 Musicians’ unions
$0.80 Packaging/manufacturing
$0.82 Publishing royalties
$0.80 Retail profit
$0.90 Distribution
$1.60 Artists’ royalties
$1.70 Label profit
$2.40 Marketing/promotion
$2.91 Label overhead
$3.89 Retail overhead
Putting that into UK money at the current exchange rate (£1 = $1.80), that works out as:
Retail price of CD: £8.88
£0.10 musicians’ unions
£0.44 packaging
£0.44 publishing royalties
£0.44 retail profit
£0.50 distributor
£0.89 artists’ royalties
£0.94 label profit
£1.33 marketing and promotion
£1.62 label overhead
£2.16 retail overhead
Of course, things are different in the UK - VAT is higher than US states’ sales tax, although while UK firms charge VAT they can claim back the VAT on their spending - and the average retail price of a CD is currently £10.50, not £8.88. I suspect retailers’ profit margins are higher, too.
An iPod for U2?
U2’s iPod ad is doing big business on the Apple site, but there’s also speculation that the partnership will go further: according to rumours, there may be a limited edition black “U2 iPod” released soon. The rumour may well be bollocks, and I’ve lost the link to the article talking about it. Not the best blog entry I’ve ever written, then.
Update, 18 Oct
Think Secret reports on the rumour:
While Think Secret has been unable to confirm this with one-hundred percent certainty, sources say that Apple is planning to release the U2-edition iPod around the week of November 21, when U2’s new album will hit stores. For a small premium over the regular iPod, said to be around $30, the U2-edition iPod will feature a distinctive enclosure and will come pre-loaded with all the band’s major album releases.
Update, again
Macminute reports that something is afoot:
Apple has sent out an invitation to select media announcing a special event to be held next week at San Jose’s California Theater. The event appears to be music related as the invite reads: “Steve Jobs, Bono and The Edge invite you to a special event.” Bono and The Edge are of course members of the popular rock band U2. The band and their new signle “Vertigo” are featured in Apple’s latest commercial for iPod and iTunes. More to follow…
Attack of the clones
Is it time to open up the iPod and iTunes, letting people play Napster downloads on their iPods or iTunes downloads on their Creative Muvos? Writing in Business Week, Alex Salkever suggests that if Apple doesn’t start licensing, Microsoft’s going to give it a serious wedgie. He says:
If past is prologue, Apple should expect a relentless marketing attack tightly integrated with offerings from Windows PC makers. Moreover, time is on Microsoft’s side. The digital-music-player market is still nascent. The prices remain high and penetration low. Apple may have the lion’s share of business right now, but the market will grow quickly.
As you’d expect, the Mac faithful aren’t convinced. The unofficial Apple weblog, writing about the latest raft of Microsoft media announcements, says:
The people have made their choice already. Microsoft just doesn’t want to admit that like the choosy moms who choose Jif, choosy consumers choose iPods. Deal with it! 92% of all hard-drive-based music players sold are iPods. More than 65% of all digital music players sold are iPods. Sure looks to me like people have made their choice and are really quite pleased with their choice.
The MSN Music service is destined to fail - at the very least it will pale in comparison to the iTunes Music Store, which will continue to dominate the market. Microsoft is out of their league on this one. Too little, too late.
You’ve got to admire the blog’s enthusiasm, if not its accuracy: the NPD report that it’s talking about says that Apple has 82% of the hard disk player market and 42% overall. The blog also makes the (understandable) mistake of confusing market share with actual units sold, when they’re two different things. Market share is based on money, not units: for example, if Apple sells 1 million $399 iPods and the competition sells 4 million $99 flash-based players, Apple would have 50% market share and the competition would have 50% market share, even though the competition was outselling iPods by a factor of four.
Don’t get me wrong, 82% market share for hard disk players is impressive stuff (and 42% overall is nothing to be sniffy about), but reading those figures as “92% of all… players sold are iPods” is plain wrong.
Let’s throw a few more figures into the ring, this time from The Register:
US research company In-Stat/MDR reckons some 10.4m hard drive-based music players will ship in calendar 2004, up from 2.1m last year. Apple is likely to account for at least 3m of those, based on Informa’s forecast and existing Apple’s sales, giving it at least 28 per cent of the world HDD player market. In-Stat/MDR reckons a further 7.6m Flash-based music players will ship this year, for a total volume of 18m digital music players. That figure will grow to 52.4m by 2007, the company forecasts.
Of course, there are lies, damn lies and statistics, but I’ll summarise: Apple sells a lot of players (but not as many as some of the Mac evangelists think), and the market is growing very quickly. Enter Microsoft.
Microsoft is gearing up to “do a Netscape” to Apple in the digital music arena, and I wouldn’t like to bet against them. Anyone with even a passing interest in technology knows that the market is rarely dominated by the most innovative or most stylish firms; what happens again and again is that someone comes out with something interesting, then the competition comes up with their own version. Look at Apple: the digital camera, the laser printer, the PDA… all businesses where Apple innovated, and all businesses where Apple is no longer a player.
So let’s look at what’s happening with the iPod. Manufacturers of Windows Media players are targeting the weaknesses in both the iPod and iPod mini, so already they’re offering much better battery life and slightly increased storage. They realise that iPod accessories are a big part of the appeal, so they’re linking up with third-party firms to release accessories for their players. They’re adding fancy features such as built-in FM radio (why isn’t that in the iPod now?). The MSN Music Store may be an iTunes music store clone, but Windows Media Player provides a front-end MSN, for Napster, the Wal-Mart music store, etc etc etc. Taken together, the Microsoft package is likely to be more compelling for many people: a bigger choice of hardware, a bigger choice of music stores. Sure, it’s a closed system just like the iPod/iTunes system is, but it’s a closed system with a much, much wider range of options.
Writing in Forbes, Arik Hesseldahl hits the nail on the head:
Apple Computer defied expectations and proved a viable business could be built around digital music. And, so far, the company has done better in this arena than anyone else has. But now the copycats are on the march, and in time they’ll have the numbers on their side. If competitive offerings gain market share or an industrywide standard is imposed, Apple would either have to adapt to market realities, making its two-part music offering less special, or leave it unchanged and watch iPod sales–and profits–erode.
I’ve heard this story before. I didn’t like how it turned out the first time.
As Hesseldahl points out, the record companies (and lots of hardware manufacturers) are pushing hard for a single, standard format for digital music; not necessarily a standard file format, but a standard form of Digital Rights Management technology. You can bet your bottom dollar that Microsoft will be willing to help them with that, because unlike Apple, Microsoft doesn’t care about selling hardware: it’s only interested in licensing its technology.
Apple has done a wonderful job with the iPod and iTunes, and the iPod is still the must-have MP3 player - something that you’ll no doubt see reflected in the sales figures for MP3 players over Christmas. However, part of Apple’s success is due to the fact that competitors’ products have been crap, and that is definitely changing. I’ve been playing with some of the new “plays for sure” Windows Media devices and they’re bloody good, and getting better with each iteration.
The iPod is still the best music player on the market (I’ve got two and I’m about to buy a third), but if lots of competing devices are almost as good and come with a cheaper price tag, lots of people will buy them instead - the same way lots of people might want a 17″ PowerBook, but buy a cheap Toshiba laptop, or the way I want an Aston Martin but drive a Renault. The market for digital music players is becoming a commodity market, just like the PC market has become, and it’s going to treble in size over the next four years. That’s an awfully big pie, and Microsoft wants a slice.
The Unoffical Apple Weblog says “Microsoft still doesn’t get it”. I think Microsoft gets it very well. Get ready for the Attack of the Clones.