Medialoper

We're Not Who You Think We Are

Archives for October 2006

Tower Records Is Dead and I Won’t Miss It Much

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On Friday the other shoe finally dropped on the Tower Records franchise.
Tower’s assets were officially sold to a liquidation company as part of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding. The Tower Records retail chain that so many people know and love is officially dead. Strangely, I won’t miss it.

As a music geek back in the early 80’s I practically grew up at Tower Records. I’d spend hours scouring Tower’s import bins looking for obscure gems to add to the KFSR playlist. These days people talk about building systems to enhance music discovery. Back in the day, Tower Records was the system for music discovery.

Tower maintains what is commonly referred to as a deep catalog. Through the years music geeks have gravitated to Tower because they knew the store stocked even the most obscure recordings. Now, of course, those very same music geeks have numerous alternatives to choose from. The very concept of deep catalog has morphed into the Long Tail and Tower Records has become a victim of the very retail concept that it helped create.

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The Weekly ‘Loper – October 8, 2006

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While you were eagerly anticipating the season premiere of Veronica Mars, Lost and Battlestar Galactica (well, so were we), this is what we were looking at:

The Daily Loper – October 7, 2006

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Today’s links of interest:

The Daily Loper – October 6, 2006

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Today’s links of interest:

That’s What We Like: Battlestar Galactica

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Rather than fight over who was going to get to like the Best Show on Television on the day of the premiere of its much-anticipated third season, we figured that we would split the duties. We are nothing if not democratic at Medialoper.

This isn’t quite an oral history, but just like oral histories, when you put it together, it hopefully gives you a well-rounded view of just what makes Battlestar Galactica so fracking awesome. Note: we’ve just gone ahead and spoiled Seasons One and Two because, well, we believe you should have watched them already anyway. And even if we give something away that we shouldn’t, it won’t matter — as they say, it’s all in the execution. And our beloved Battlestar executes in the best possible way.

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The Daily Loper – October 5, 2006

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Today’s links of interest:

Teaching Consumers About DRM

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Some day in the near future you will purchase a digital audio or video recording and find that it doesn’t work exactly as you expect it to. Maybe it will simply stop playing after a few days, or perhaps you won’t be able to convert it for use on your portable media player, or maybe you won’t be able to skip past the annoying promos at the start of the program. When this happens you can blame Digital Rights Management (DRM) for your dissatisfaction.

While we talk a lot about DRM here on Medialoper, it’s not at all clear that everyone understands what we’re talking about. In fact, a 2005 survey of European digital music consumers (PDF file) revealed that 63% had never even heard of DRM, while 23% had heard of DRM but weren’t sure what it was. There’s no reason to believe that American consumers are any more well informed on the issue.

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The Daily Loper – October 4, 2006

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Today’s links of interest:

There Ought To Be A Law

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I hereby propose a new bit of legislation: those who make laws are hereby required to understand the technology they’re trying to enforce. For sake of clarification, “understanding” is not defined as “taking money from major corporations”. Just wanted to be clear on that point.

In the United States, we have the woeful Digital Millenium Copyright Act — legislation created without regard to anything resembling reality. In Europe, they’re trying to decide if iTunes should be regulated or even made more open. Apparently, iTunes and its proprietary format restrict user ability to play music on other devices. The Europeans may be on to something: we’re rapidly entering an era where Digital Rights Management (DRM) is about protecting hardware sales, not copyright.
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The Daily Loper – October 3, 2006

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Today’s links of interest: