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Medialoper Bebop Episode 23: Zen Arcane

November 18, 2011 by Jim Connelly

This week, Tim, & Jim and a very yelly Kirk tackle the following subjects:

First, in a brand-new segment entitled “Explain it to Kirk,” Tim & Jim explain the Twilight phenomenon to Kirk. (3:35 – 8:50)

Then, it’s reported death of the Compact Disc, which — according to some reports — is going to be abandoned by the major labels as soon as the end of this year. (08:53 – 18:00)

Here’s the chart we’re talking about in the podcast:

Also, iTunes Match has been launched, and we debate whether or not it’s worth shelling out $25.00 a year for. The answer may surprise you, though probably not if you’ve ever listened to our podcast. (18:13 – 26:10)

Once again, Medialoper Bebop Commissioner Gordon Loper harasses us with a phone message. And to spite him, you should probably follow us on Facebook. (26:11 – 28:07)

Finally, it’s a very deep look at a very deep album, Hüsker Dü’s landmark Zen Arcade, as it is inducted into the Medialoper Bebop Great Albums Hall of Fame. (27:22 – 47:58)

http://media.medialoper.com/podcast/Medialoper_Bebop_023.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:47 — 75.3MB)

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[Read more…] about Medialoper Bebop Episode 23: Zen Arcane

Filed Under: Podcasts Tagged With: Apple, AT&T, Bob Mould, Breaking Bad, Community, Donald Glover, Google Music, Gordon Loper, Grant Hart, Greg Norton, Guinness, iTunes, Jack Lemon, Jay Fung, Jerry Sandusky, Kim Karadashian, Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Netflix, Nickleback, Ralphs, RIAA, Scott Oliver, Side-line Magazine, Snooki, speakeasy.net, Stone Brewing, The Smiths, Twilight, Walter Matthau

The Day Apple Didn’t Change the World

January 27, 2010 by Kirk Biglione

Paper Steve Jobs Apple’s latest gadget is everything we hoped for, and so much less. Granted, the iPad is very cool, but it’s more evolutionary than revolutionary. It is essentially an extra-large iPod Touch with optional 3G wireless.

In my last post I identified five things I’d be watching for during the iPad event.

Here’s what I saw: [Read more…] about The Day Apple Didn’t Change the World

Filed Under: Apple Tagged With: Apple, AT&T, iPad, iPhone, iPod, iTunes

When the Smell of Books Becomes the Stench of DRM

February 22, 2009 by Kirk Biglione

By now it should be clear that ebooks are more than just a passing fad. That digital reading revolution we’ve been hearing about for over a decade is finally starting to take shape. Amazon has sold over a half million Kindles, Sony has moved several hundred thousand digital Readers, and Stanza, the free reading app for the iPhone, has been downloaded over 1.3 million times.

As consumer adoption of digital reading devices accelerates, publishers are grappling with the impact that digital distribution will have on existing business models. It’s hard not to feel a certain sense of déjà vu as we witness yet another form of mass media completely remade in the digital era. And it’s hard not to feel just a little bit sad that publishers are making many of the same mistakes we’ve seen made in other industries — most notably by the recording industry.

[Read more…] about When the Smell of Books Becomes the Stench of DRM

Filed Under: Amazon, DRM Tagged With: Adobe, Amazon, Apple, DRM, ebooks, iTunes, Kindle

Imagining an iTunes eBook Store

January 27, 2009 by Kirk Biglione

Update: This post was published on 1/27/09 – exactly one year to the day before Apple announced the iBookstore. For an update on what was announced, see The Day Apple Didn’t Change the World.

Confession time. I was wrong about reading ebooks on the iPhone.

When I evaluated various ereading devices a few months back, I came to the conclusion that the iPhone was not suitable for long form reading. Months later, I’ve now read several books on the iPhone and I have to admit that the experience is growing on me. In fact, I frequently find myself looking at my bookshelf and thinking, “I wish I had that book on my iPhone”.

In most cases those wishes are an impossibility because there’s no (legal) way to get the book in question onto my iPhone — or any other reading device, for that matter. In some cases, where digital editions are available, they aren’t available in a format that would work with any of the current iPhone reader applications.

There’s hope that all of this may be changing soon, as publisher interest in the iPhone/iPod Touch seems to be growing by the day. Publishers are rushing to experiment with all manner of ebook releases targeted at the iPhone.

In part, publishers are turning to the Apple platform as a way to neutralize the momentum building behind Amazon’s proprietary Kindle platform. Ironically, not long ago record labels were headed in the opposite direction, offering up their catalogs to Amazon in hopes that Amazon’s MP3 Store might neutralize some of iTunes’s momentum.

[Read more…] about Imagining an iTunes eBook Store

Filed Under: Apple, Publishing Tagged With: Amazon, Apple, DRM, ebooks, iPhone, ipod touch, iTunes, Kindle

Apple Gets Smart With The DRM and the Pricing

January 6, 2009 by Jim Connelly

Well, all I can say is that it’s about godsdammed time. Today’s big news out of Macworld — that the iTunes Music Store is going DRM-free AND adding a tiered pricing structure — is good news for everyone involved.

It’s good news for consumers because — from the consumer standpoint — DRM sucks fully, totally and utterly. No matter how it was spun as one of those “for your protection” things, or as “protection for the artist,” it’s been proven time and time again to be a big pain in the ass for consumers. Anytime you purchase an artifact — including a digital file — with eithervsome kind of purely arbitrary use restriction and/or dependency on the large corporation that sold you the artifact to keep it working, that’s potential trouble. Period.

[Read more…] about Apple Gets Smart With The DRM and the Pricing

Filed Under: Apple, DRM, iTunes, Mediacratic, Music Tagged With: Apple, DRM, iPod, iTunes

Why I Won’t Miss iTunes

October 1, 2008 by Jim Connelly

So here’s the deal: The National Music Publisher’s Association has said that they want to increase the royalty rate for each legal download from $0.09 to $0.15 per song. Apple has responded by threatening to shut down iTunes.

I assume that “iTunes” means “iTunes Music Store,” and this has nothing to do the the TV Shows, Films and Applications that also go through iTunes, because, well, that would just be stupid.

I’m not here to argue the merits of what one side will say is only a six cent increase and the other side will say is a 66% increase, nor am I going to point out that this is Apple’s way of saying that if they don’t continue to get exactly what they want, they’re going to take their ball and go home.

But I will say this: if the iTunes Music Store went away tomorrow, it wouldn’t even be a blip on my radar.

[Read more…] about Why I Won’t Miss iTunes

Filed Under: Actual Mileage, Amazon, Apple, DRM, iTunes, Music, The Long Tail Tagged With: Amazon, Apple, emusic, iPod, iTunes, Rhapsody

The Mess of The Rolling Stones Back Catalog

September 4, 2008 by Jim Connelly

Yesterday, Kassia took issue with a Wall Street Journal article that trumpeted the fallacy that closing off a major avenue of music distribution was somehow a good thing.

One of the examples that the article used to show that selling a lot of music on iTunes was somehow a bad thing was the fact that while The Rolling Stones have sold 6,000,000 songs digitally since January 2006, they’ve sold the fewest amount of back catalog albums among the six top-selling catalog artists.

This, of course, is one of those made-up stats that purports to mean something while meaning very little. How is it not not a good thing to be among the top six selling catalog artists of the past two years? Or sell six million songs, many of which go back decades, and many many of which you’re no doubt reselling to some of the same people you’ve previously sold them to?

However, by using the high songs / low album sales as an example as how digital distribution can harm an artist, it totally ignores two very very important facts about The Rolling Stones.

  1. Since the very start, they’ve been marketed as a singles act.
  2. Their back catalog is a confusing mess, which is a huge factor to its relative — relative! — paucity of sales.

[Read more…] about The Mess of The Rolling Stones Back Catalog

Filed Under: Focusing on the Wrong Problem, iTunes, Marketing, Music, The Long Tail Tagged With: iTunes, The Rolling Stones

NBC’s Plan to Make The Zune Even Worse

May 8, 2008 by Kirk Biglione

The NBC programming that went missing from iTunes last December has finally turned up in the Zune marketplace. Fans of The Office, Heroes, and 30 Rock can once again pay to download episodes of their favorite programs — provided they own a Zune and a Windows PC.

Given the Zune’s miniscule market share it’s curious to see any network choosing Microsoft’s media platform over iTunes for paid downloads. When NBC pulled its programming from iTunes, network officials sniffed at the relatively small sales the Apple service had generated. By comparison, sales in the Zune marketplace are bound to redefine the term “nano”.

Clearly this move isn’t about selling digital content online. NBC seems to be more interested in punishing Apple for exercising control over iTunes pricing than it is in actually expanding the market for legal downloads.

[Read more…] about NBC’s Plan to Make The Zune Even Worse

Filed Under: DRM, Zune Tagged With: DRM, iTunes, NBC, Piracy, Zune

How Amazon’s MP3 Store Will Challenge iTunes, and Why Steve Jobs Doesn’t Care

September 27, 2007 by Kirk Biglione

This week the long anticipated Amazon digital music store finally launched. Unlike recent efforts from the likes of Wal-Mart, Amazon’s DRM-free store could pose a substantial long-term challenge to iTunes. While that may sound like bad news for iTunes, it could prove to be a good thing for Apple.

Here’s why I think Amazon will pose a serious challenge to the iTunes music store:

[Read more…] about How Amazon’s MP3 Store Will Challenge iTunes, and Why Steve Jobs Doesn’t Care

Filed Under: Amazon, iTunes Tagged With: Amazon, Apple, iTunes, mp3

Apple Scruffs: New iPods & the Universal Dust-Up

September 6, 2007 by Jim Connelly

It’s pretty much Apple week here at Medialoper, and why not? So I figured that I’d add my perspective on the new iPods, as well as the Universal’s wholesale abandonment of iTunes for Amazon’s Unbox.

Everybody I know seemed to be keeping at one browser tab open on the press conference yesterday, and until the drastic price drop of the iPhone, it pretty much went the way that most people had predicted beforehand. Without going into any deep analysis of What It All Means, here are some of my thoughts.

[Read more…] about Apple Scruffs: New iPods & the Universal Dust-Up

Filed Under: Actual Mileage, Amazon, Apple, iTunes, Marketing, Music Tagged With: Apple, iTunes

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Previously on Medialoper

  • Certain Songs #2549: Sugar – “Try Again”
  • Certain Songs #2548: Sugar – “Needle Hits E”
  • Certain Songs #2547: Sugar – “Man on the Moon”
  • Certain Songs #2546: Sugar – “If I Can’t Change Your Mind”
  • Certain Songs #2545: Sugar – “Helpless”

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