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The Daily Loper – March 12, 2006

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Todays links of interest:

Physical Artifacts For Virtual Music Collections

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It’s almost hard for me to fathom now, but there was a time in my life when I owned over 5,000 albums. My record collection took up most of my living space for many years. My eventual transition to CD narrowed that number considerably, to just under 1,000 albums. Now that I’ve made the transition to digital music I have access to 17,000+ songs on a network attached storage unit, and there’s almost no evidence of my music collection anywhere in the house.

The paradox of digital music is that while listeners are now exposed to a larger quantity of music than ever before, there are very few physical artifacts associated music anymore. The iPod has become the primary tactile interface that music lovers use to select and listen to music. Visual design is less important than ever, and liner notes have practically vanished.

As Gray McCord of M3 design noted during the Smaller, Faster, Lighter session at day 2 of SXSW:

The experience of music has been reduced to a data management activity.

McCord is working on a concept for a new type of music packaging that could be used to represent digital music in a physical world. The concept looks like a cross between a traditional LP cover and a book. With plenty of room for art, liner notes, lyrics, and more, the packaging could restore a vital part of the popular music experience that has gone missing in the iTunes era.

McCord noted that several ways that the packaging might benefit the music industry:

  • Improved packaging could revive the retail experience by giving shoppers a way to interact with digital music in a traditional record store.
  • Could ultimately lead content providers to use less draconian DRM schemes since consumers would be more likely to buy the physical product.
  • Would also encourage consumers to purchase entire albums instead of downloading individual songs.

Or the RIAA could just go about business as usual and pretend that nothing has changed since 1956.

Unfortunately, if I were a betting man I’d have to put my money on the later.

Librarians Versus The Search Giants

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You want a hot discussion? Put librarians, Microsoft, Google, and Bob Stein from the Institute for the Future of the Book on a SXSW panel to talk about issues surrounding book digitization (and call the panel “Revenge of the Librarians”). An hour wasn’t nearly long enough for the conversation – and the diverse audience proved that the issues surrounding digitization aren’t limited to a small segment of the population.

Starting with the ideas of what happens after books are digitized and what the impact of a shrinking pool of knowledge might be, the panel started by discussing the elephant in the room (let me say that it was refreshing to see open back-and-forth dialogue between the panelists, unlike the normal nicey-nice stuff you see): Google’s book-related programs — Microsoft’s project isn’t online yet, so escaped detailed scrutiny. Dan Clancy, of Google, explained the various components of the initiative.

The goal for Google and Microsoft (other than making money, and that’s what corporations do) is to build indexes of authoritative works that will provide resources during search. To do this effectively, they need to have a lot of books digitized. This is an expensive and time-consuming process.

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The Weekly ‘Loper – March 12, 2006

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While you were shooting steroids meant for Barry Bonds into Slobodan Milosevic, here is what we were concentrating on:

The Daily Loper – March 11, 2006

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Todays links of interest:

RIAA: Stop Taping Songs Off of the Radio!

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When I was a kid, I used to place a handheld Panasonic cassette tape recorder (with a condensor mic!) next to a transistor radio to tape songs off of KYNO-AM. Not yet having the the money to go out and buy every single song I liked; these recordings were key to how I connected deeply to pop music, on which I’ve since spent a huge amount of my disposable (and not so disposable) income.
Little did I know, that in the eyes of the RIAA, my 10-year-old self was a thief, and they were itching for a way to keep me from stealing their songs. And now, with the advent of digital radio, they may have found a way.

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SXSW Day 1: Convergence and Transformation: A Whole New Creative World

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The experts agree — say the words “Digital Convergence” and people’s eyes glaze over. Clearly, the Medialoper elevator pitch needs some retooling.

David Pescovitz, of Boing Boing, lead the panel off by noting that he doesn’t really know what digital convergence is. On further reflection he’s pretty sure there is no such thing as convergence, but only divergence. When technologies converge they tend to produce sub-standard products – like the all-in-one uber-pda’s that don’t do any one thing particularly well.

Happily, David-Michel Davies jumped in to make the point we’ve been harping on for a while now — there’s a difference between digital convergence and convergent media.

From our perspective digital convergence is about technology, while convergent media is about content. Davies noted the danger is that media companies seem to be fighting to make the internet more like traditional media, instead of adapting traditional media to be more like the internet.

Some more random notes in no particular order (since that’s what semi-live blogging is all about):

  • Old media = no participation. New media = everyone participating and collaborating.
  • Convergence will ultimately come down to user experience – the ability of users to easily collaborate, interact, and remix.
  • Napkins can be used for good or evil.

Quote of the day (so far):

They used to say, “on the internet no one knows you’re a dog”. Today, everyone is branding themselves as a special breed of dog.

Yes, these notes are somewhat incomplete, but I’m recovering from my first celebrity sighting of the day – DA Pennebaker.

The Daily Loper – March 10, 2006

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Todays links of interest:

Light In The Lopers

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Members of Team Loper have just arrived in Austin, TX for SXSX Interactive. As a result, posting on Medialoper may be someone sporadic over the next week. On the other hand, we may just get the urge to live-blog every session. You just never know.

If you happen to see someone wearing a Medialoper t-shirt, you can be sure it’s one of us. Feel free to introduce yourself and please don’t hesitate to buy us a drink.

Labels Make Another Dumb-Ass Move

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According to the New York Times, in a desperate attempt to goose CD sales, major labels are considering stepping back a decade, and experimenting with the concept of not releasing advance single downloads from upcoming albums.

So just as iTunes hits it’s billionth download; and it’s clear that people are embracing downloading as a viable option the major labels decide, welllll, that ain’t good enough.

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