Internet Famous (and real world infamous)

A story about Internet streaming royalties ran today in BetaNews.

...citing passages from over two years of testimony from members of the recording industry as well as representatives of Internet radio, CRB Judge James Scott Sledge went out of his way to shame apparently everyone for not being much of a help. For example, representatives of the Digital Music Association (DiMA) were chided for, at one point, not being able to provide a clear definition of "streaming."

Last February, the judges had already concluded that the definition of "streaming" was a matter of fact, not law. So when asked to provide facts in testimony the following May, Rhapsody America general manager Alexander Kirk stated it could really mean lots of things: "I mean, one of the wonderful things about computers on the internet is they offer you a number of different ways to do things," reads the CRB's citation of Kirk's testimony. "And streaming can encompass a whole range of behaviors."

This is only a tiny piece of my testimony, and it is presented here out of context (my written statement is here, all related documents here). The reason I was asked to talk about streaming has to do with the calculation of royalties and negotiations around same. So details are very important.

I said "streaming can encompass a whole range of behaviors". I'll expand here. "Streaming" can mean a bunch of different underlying technologies, but generally only one type of "experience". Most people think of "streaming" as an experience differentiated from "downloading".

When downloading, you're acquiring a local copy of the file, which you may then play, copy, store, delete, etc. But your primary goal is to get that local copy of the file. What you do with it after that is secondary.

When streaming, you're interested in experiencing the file (watching, listening, etc.) and you are not particularly interested in keeping a local copy. As far as you are concerned, there is no local copy made. Most streaming experiences are designed to provide this impression.

But in point of fact, very few modern streaming technologies open up a direct connection between you and a single central server and pass bits directly to your machine. There are various caching stages in between. Your OS may cache some or all of the file in RAM or on the hard drive. Your player or browser may cache some or all of the file in RAM or on the hard drive. There are many technologies that look and feel like streaming to the user, but are actually downloading. There are other technologies that sit somewhere in the middle.

The example I kept coming back to was YouTube. Nominally, it's a streaming service. You play it, it's gone when you're done. But if you pause a video, it will download (or buffer) the entire video in your local machine's memory. Guess what? Now it's a download (under some definitions). So what type of service is YouTube?

That's why I refer to "streaming experiences".

The danger with defining streaming as a technology rather than an experience is the technology to enable the experience is continually changing. Especially given the glacial pace of lawmaking, you end up with a bunch of laws that don't end up being relevant to the issues at hand. You also run the risk of legally boxing in "streaming" so tightly that nobody uses it, and thus all the discussion is for naught.

Also, I'm not the "Rhapsody America General Manager" - I'm the "General Manager of Product Management for Rhapsody America". The RA GM is a big deal. I'm just a guy who works there.

Soon I will post about my experience testifying for the Copyright Review Board. It was fantastic.

Escape Philosophy is Piano Music

One of my big discoveries of 2008 was Escape Philosophy, also known as Matthew Davidson. He creates beautiful piano music and has two albums available on Jamendo (a free/paid download service):

I really love it. These two records are on par with both Harold Budd and what Roast Beef describes thusly:

Highly recommended.

Special thanks to Chris Randall of Audio Damage for the tip.

Number 6 Has Finally Escaped The Village

Patrick McGoohan is dead.

Few things have affected me as profoundly as "The Prisoner", his visionary, bizarre television series. WIRED has a good article, and this interview is also worth a read whether you're familiar or not.

I remember seeing the Prisoner on public television before I was a teenager. I don't remember much about those viewings beyond vague impressions - I asked my parents many questions (I did that a lot). I remember the ending of every show - his face silently flying up on the screen as bars slam shut with a giant, echoing noise.

But like many things from childhood, those vague impressions left a mark, and by the time VCRs and cable TV (late to Northern Virginia) were commonplace, I spent every weekend scanning the TV listings to see if it was airing again. Eventually in the summer of 1990, PBS ran some of them and when I could remember to set the VCR and it cooperated, I got a few grainy episodes.

College is probably the best time to see The Prisoner, as its references and ambiguity resonate more. Plus you can walk around the campus (its own little village) saluting people and grimly saying "be seeing you". Which I did. If I had found a dark blue jacket with piping, I would have worn it with white Keds. I even joined "Six of One" for a while.

The more I learned about the show, the more impressed I was. He came up with the idea, pitched it, wrote episodes, directed. There were even meta-layers of story - McGoohan had broken big playing a secret agent (John Drake, in "Danger Man", a.k.a. "Secret Agent" - the show with the famous "Secret Agent Man" theme song). After more than 50 shows he wanted to stop - to resign - and they didn't want him to. He started wondering about what happens to secret agents when they resign...

Finally all the episodes were released on DVD, and I bought the set. Not every episode is perfect (McGoohan wanted to do 10, they made him do 17 to get a deal), but even the lamer ones feature his steely determination and undermining of the genre while simultaneously hewing to its conventions.

He never uses a gun. There's always a stagey-looking fistfight. But often as not, he gets the crap beat out of him by the goons in the stripey new wave/French t-shirts. He's smarter than everyone else. They can't break him. But he never escapes. Even when he escapes, he can't escape. The fix is in, and everyone in the world seems to be in on it.

The show makes me laugh and makes me very sad and cynical. What more can you ask for of art? It also serves as an interesting period piece. I can't imagine anything this creative and subversive ever getting on television again.

The "election" episode alone is worth the price of admission. Its title, "Free For All", is the type of dual meaning McGoohan (who wrote it and several other episodes) laced throughout the series.

McGoohan saw the world as it was and as it could be in positive and negative futures. A cranky guy, cranky for the right reasons. Also did fantastic acting in "Hell Drivers" and "Ice Station Zebra".

In 1977, McGoohan said:

"We're run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison Avenue, we're run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche...As long as we go out and buy stuff, we're at their mercy.
...
"We all live in a little Village...your Village may be different from other people's Villages, but we are all prisoners."

Be seeing you.

The Music Business: The Future is Bright, The End Is Nigh

The following essay was the basis for a talk I gave at a recent Dartmouth Digital Musics Symposium

1. A Brief History of The Music Business
Technology and technological friction created the music business. New tools took what had been ephemeral and transient – music – and captured, tamed, and sold it, caged in a perforated paper roll or pressed into a platter. Those tools were exotic, expensive and rare. Thus, access to the ability to record and duplicate music was controlled.

Even as technology enabled the music business, technology began to shape and change music in ways great and small. Most of the 20th Century’s points of musical interest come from this shaping and changing, ranging from Thaddeus Cahill’s Telharmonium to musique concréte to synthesizers and the computerization of music.

The technology also disrupted the existing music business. In 1906 John Phillip Sousa wrote a magazine article called “The Menace of Mechanical Music.” The piece was written for two reasons (one of which I’ll address later). The first was a public plea for composer’s copyrights – piano rolls weren’t considered music and thus ineligible for royalties.

Piano roll manufacturers were creating scores of piano rolls and selling them, and composers got nothing! “Piracy” of music like this was impossible to stop – a talented musician can hear a composition once, play it from memory and transcribe it – that’s how Mozart famously “stole” a mass from a church. There was no way to stop it.

The piano roll situation was especially bad for composers since people who had “reproducing pianos” and bought piano rolls would likely not buy the piano sheet music – why did they need a score for a human when a machine would be doing the playing?

Partially due to Sousa’s public and political lobbying, copyright law was changed. A significant result was creation of the mechanical royalty. Mechanical royalties in the USA have two very interesting qualities: they are compulsory licenses and they are offered at statutory rates.

A compulsory license means the copyright holder cannot refuse to grant someone a license. Surprisingly, this was something requested by the composers, who were concerned that one monopoly company (Aeolian, the Apple of their day) would buy up all the rights and control the market. As a result, the laws were written such that once a composition has been publicly released, anyone can get a license to make a mechanical copy of the composition – the copyright owner is compelled by law to grant the license.

“Statutory rate” means the cost of that license is set by Federal law. The rate is currently about 9 cents per copy. It’s a per-copy created rate, which means even if you make 1,000,000 piano rolls and then burn them all, you still owe royalties. This prevents the rights-holder from creating a monopoly and has the side effect of treating all compositions equally.

The compulsory licensing of compositions at statutory rates is how many composers make money – those royalties are an essential component of the music business.

All of that was required because people realized it was impossible to stop people from creating copies of compositions – if I sing a melody to you, you could sing it right back to me. Or to your friends later. Or in a concert hall.

From an economic perspective, these radical changes in law had the effect of changing the incentive structure – if you were required to allow people to copy your work, and they had to pay you a fixed amount of money if they did so, the winning strategy is to actively work to get people to copy your work! The music publishing industry started to dramatically expand in terms of size, revenue, and reach.

Sound recordings complicated things. Of course, sound recordings were much more difficult to duplicate, and nearly impossible to duplicate well without access to the original master and/or lots of exotic, expensive, and rare equipment.

Sound recordings are different from compositions, and so is the copyright law that refers to them. Composing had been around for hundreds of years, and people had ample time to consider the business thoroughly. Sound recordings were new, and the record companies (then and now, typically the owners of sound recording rights) had no desire for government regulation of the fruits of their investment in the nascent business and expensive equipment. So no compulsory licenses at statutory rates. The record companies effectively controlled the reproduction of sound recordings.

Or at least, they did until the digital era.

Digital recording brought tremendous benefits to the music business. Better sound quality and the ability to re-issue and re-sell almost every record they had previously sold. The CD helped lift the music business out of its early-80s doldrums and into a prosperous period. The CD was the ultimate reproduction format.

The CD was also the beginning of the digital revolution. A few short years after the commercial launch of the compact disc, recordable CDs hit the market, alongside consumer CD burners.

Personal computer technology started its rapid evolution. Processors got faster. Storage grew bigger. Connections between computers grew and began to accelerate. The Fraunhofer Institute created a perceptual data compression scheme known as MP3.

And then in 1999, a college student created Napster, which wrapped an easy interface and massive connectivity around what was previously a complex affair – swapping digital files of music on the Internet.

Suddenly, almost literally overnight, copying music had become effortless. A click, and a copy was made – of both the sound recording and the underlying composition. And there was no way to stop it.

2. Rhapsody and Today’s Music Business
In 2001 the first version Rhapsody launched. A week later, Apple introduced the first iPod.

These two products embody the digital music business. My colleague Tim Quirk says “iTunes is yesterday disguised as tomorrow.” iTunes sells digital singles and albums, in a no-frills, no-excitement vending machine available online. The iTunes Music Store was started primarily to combat accusations that iPods and iMacs encouraged music piracy. Today, iPods hold thousands of songs, but the number of purchased songs per iPod continues to remain around 20.

iTunes is not fundamentally different from buying CDs in a record store. The pricing is about the same. It is certainly convenient, and the selection is immense relative to any physical CD store. But there are drawbacks – the audio fidelity has been compromised, files lack CD booklets and liner notes, and the listeners who purchase files can’t sell them when they tire of them. And until very recently, all the purchased music only played on Apple’s portable devices.

When iTunes launched, its sales were negligible relative to the CD business. 8 years later, iTunes is the number 1 music retailer – not Tower (now gone), not Best Buy, not Wal-Mart. And Wal-Mart has been allegedly contemplating removing CDs from its stores for a while now.

Of course, the record business is now actively working to undermine iTunes, as they see iTunes’ success not as their potential salvation, but as iTunes having “built a business on their backs” – a phrase they’ve applied to radio, the sellers of record players and CD players, MTV, and just about everyone else involved in their business ecosystem.

Rhapsody offers a different model. Users pay a monthly fee for unlimited listening, not ownership. It’s a business model relatively new to the music industry, though Rhapsody does owe a spiritual debt to Thaddeus Cahill and the Telharmonium.

Rhapsody faces many obstacles, including the incredible (and well-deserved) success of Apple’s products. Another challenge Rhapsody faces is rights clearances. Getting publishing rights is relatively easy – the publishing companies have built their businesses around making licensing easy. Music publishing companies have been licensing their content for a long time – it’s what they’re incented to do by the licensing structure. The more they license, the more copies are made, the more money they stand to make.

Getting the rights to sound recordings has been and continues to be a challenge. Every label requires separate negotiations. Labels have been poor custodians of their intellectual property and frequently do not know whether they have the rights to enable Rhapsody’s streaming (the publishers are better but also far from perfect). Newer music frequently contains samples of older music, which exponentially complicates matters. And the labels themselves are bound by the same rules – they have to be sure about whether they have the rights to make copies in the first place, and in many cases, the costs of locating the original contract with the artist, having an attorney read the contract, and tracking down the rights holders becomes prohibitively expensive – a money-losing proposition. It’s easier and less costly to let the work remain out of circulation.

So a good deal of music remains unavailable on Rhapsody (and to a lesser extent, not available on iTunes) - but it can be found on the “black markets” of the Internet – frequently with complete scans of the CD booklet and full audio fidelity. And for free (if you don’t mind breaking federal law and “stealing” from artists).

The recording copyright owners have monopolies on their sound recordings, and they believe their businesses are best served by tightly controlling copying, and defining the costs of copying themselves

3. The Music Business is Dying
The music business has seen sharp declines almost every year since Napster launched and digital file trading went mainstream. The black market is not solely responsible – there is far more competition for the entertainment dollar. Music fans now spend money on video game hardware and software, mobile phone hardware and software, video, and ironically, a new iPod.

And copying music is so widespread that some of the newest generation of music fans believe music is, or should be, free.

The losses for the last several years have been severe – 5-20% declines, year after year.

On January 1, 2009 Nielsen released the final music business statistics for 2008:
• Total physical and digital units sold down by 8.5% in 2008.
• Physical units dropped by 20% (363 million units sold).
• Digital unit sales increased 32% (66m units)

Atlantic Records (part of the Warner Music Group) was the first major label to have digital revenue exceed CD revenue, and it happened in 2008. The “Classical” genre dropped by 22%.

The average per-capita expenditure for music has been in decline, too – it’s down to about $36 per person.

4. Music is Thriving
But oddly, there is more music available than ever before – recordings long out of print can be found, shared, and heard. Nearly 35,000 albums were released last year, both new and old music.

The dramatic democratization of computer music technology has placed tools of unprecedented power for composition, performance, and recording in the hands of the masses.

Unfortunately, most of these are clearly “consumer products” and the fastest-growing are the ones most toy-like and least instrument-like. The continuing simplification of popular music is an inevitable and audible result.

The Internet has democratized the means of distribution. Anyone can make and distribute their own music now, as well as those of others. That doesn’t mean it’s going to all be any good.

5. The Future?
I mentioned that Sousa had a second point to his 1906 article. In “The Menace of Mechanical Music,” Sousa speculated about the potential cultural effect of recording technology, and thus, the music business:

“…the tide of amateurism can not but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant”

The tide of amateurism has definitely receded – where some degree of musical proficiency was once considered an essential part of education, today music education is in decline. Most people cannot play instruments at all. They do not sing on a regular basis. And perhaps most appallingly, do not think they should be even trying to create or play music because they’re not “professionals”.

Most are content to listen to the latest “professional executants” on their new mechanical device, plugged into their headphones, increasingly isolated not just from the rest of the world, but from each other.

Also isolated from the music itself. Today, music becomes merely a background for doing something else. Attention can barely be sustained for an entire 3-minute song - much less an album-length work - before clicking “next.”

In Sousa’s time, nearly every home had a parlor – a room where a piano or other instruments were available. People regularly visited homes to make music, singing together, playing together. It was a social activity, and whether or not you were “good at it” was less important than the participation. Professional musicians still existed, but nearly everyone was an amateur musician.

Perhaps the music business is the anomaly – a phenomenon brought into being by technology and technological friction. Technology created the music business and it continues to guide it and shape it. Only now, it’s shrinking it, or putting it in a more appropriate role.

I have a hard time believing today’s music business will survive. I expect the major labels will shrink to simply managing established rights catalogs with the occasional “blockbuster”/"sure thing" pop record aimed at the mass market and lowest common denominator. The music business will be much smaller, and only a part of our larger communal music experience.

People have been making music together longer than they have been speaking, writing, and trading currency. They’ve only been selling recordings to each other for a tiny amount of time.

The desire is clearly there. Karaoke, Rock Band, and Guitar Hero provide pale imitations of a community music experience and remain popular activities around the world. It’s no coincidence that major social events (marriages, funerals, church, etc.) all typically feature group musical activity. Research has shown that singing in groups has beneficial health effects.

Perhaps instead of agonizing over the shrinking music business, we should focus on the opportunity to take music out of the headphones and speakers, off the stages, and back into our homes and communities. Spend less time worrying about the few currently making music and more time worrying about the many who aren’t making music.

My Top 10 Albums of 2008

Yes, I still buy CDs. Some people find this surprising given my line of work. This is the CD's Golden Age, and not long from now we will fondly reminisce about 2008 and how you could buy a physical CD with full fidelity of almost anything you wanted for cheap, and how the stamped CD lasts nearly forever, as opposed to your CD-Rs which are silently erasing themselves as you read this.

I am proud to say this year's edition at least feels like it has fewer "old artists" on it. Also you can play a sampler playlist using the embedded player at the bottom!

1. M83 - "Saturdays = Youth"
   There was no contest - this was my favorite record of 2008. It's perfect - the cover art, the sounds, the words. It reminds me of how intense, embarrassing, painful, and powerful it felt to be a teenager. Each track works on its own and as an album it's even better. Reminiscent of classic 4AD artists but not totally retro.


2. Neon Neon - "Stainless Style"
Unlike M83, this record is almost totally retro. Neon Neon is comprised of one of the guys from Boom Bip and the singer from Super Furry Animals. I was vaguely familar with the former and not at all with the latter. Regardless, the two of them created a great pop album.

It's even a concept album about the life of John Delorean, and it obliquely (but chronologically) details his epic rise and fall, in new wave synth-guitar-and-drum-machine glory. Even starts off with a theme that could have opened an early-80s TV show.

The few hip-hop tracks are fairly weak and feel tacked-on - though I give bonus points for them trying to set Delorean up as sort of the "ur-hustler". The sexy groove behind "Racquel" (Welch) and the melancholy-but-poppy "I Lust U" are also great.


3. The Roots - "Rising Down"

"My squad's part Mandrill and part Mandela, my band 'bout seventy strong just like Fela, yeah part Melle Mel and part Van Halen and we represent Illadelph...kinda like W.E.B DuBois meets Heavy D and the Boyz"

Those lyrics open the album, and the best tracks live up to that. Half of the record is strong, melodic, and has enough guest rappers to keep the vocals interesting.

Some of this record is just awful. The Roots have been making music for a long time, and felt it was important to bracket the record with some screaming telephone messages. I'm sure they found it interesting and relevant. I found it acoustically painful and totally unnecessary. They included a rap recorded when one member was 15. Please no.


4. Santogold - "Santogold"
Great songwriting, with nods to 60's girl groups, ska, reggae, new wave, and a bunch of other influences. Not a bad song on it. I don't think there are any classics - she's not the new Bob Dylan - but given how many artists these days can't write a melody or even a hook, I am quite pleased to hear someone who knows how to craft a fine song stretch themselves.

Over time I find I don't much care for the production, which sounds sort of cheap and instantly dated to my ears.

I was reluctant to try this album due to all the hype around it. My loss. It's very strong, and I look forward to hearing Santogold's next album.


5. TV On The Radio - "Dear Science"
This album is probably on every hipster's year-end list. But this year's model is actually very listenable, despite extremely dense production. I think the songs could have been a little stronger, but the grooves and feeling are undeniable.


6. Local H - "12 Angry Months"
My wife said "Aren't these guys always angry?" Exactly.

This record is another concept album - the singer broke up with his longtime girlfriend, and spent a year (the titular months) detailing his feelings. Some of it is a little forced, but Local H is my epitome of loud rockn'roll. Some great stuff on here - the opening and closing tracks are long epics, which is a nice change from Local H's usual 3-4 minute glittering gems of hatred.

Plus I'm pretty sure there's some Big Country influence audible on "The Summer of Boats".


7. Old Fogey Category (3-way tie)
   These 3 old fogey artists all released albums that were as good as anything they did in their prime. I really enjoyed all of them up to some mysterious tipping point, at which point I said "well, why am I listening to this instead of one of their older records?"
   
   Bauhaus - "Go Away White"
   Bauhaus' new (and absolutely final) album finds them at their most aggressive, hard, and tight. They sound utterly confident and powerful. It makes one wish their other records were as solid. The songs also have a fire and immediacy that reflects their "live in the studio" origins. "Too Much 21st Century" is a great start and there's no stopping. "Endless Summer of the Damned" manages to both comment on environmental destruction and lampoon goth culture. Genius, and a fitting finale to their career.
   
   Al Green - "Lay It Down"
   I really liked this one at first. Nicely produced and recorded. Sounds classic. Some good guest stars. But eventually I realized it just wasn't as good as his old stuff, and by refusing to even try anything new, the record eventually proves itself completely inessential. Oh well.
   
   Grace Jones - "Hurricane" (no streams available, import only)
   Watch the video. This is some amazing stuff. Machines stand in for Sly and Robbie, which makes it both different and less compelling than her classic records, but like Bauhaus, there is a confidence and power here only hinted at in her earlier records. Funky and creepy.
   
   



8. Obligatory Harold Budd Record
   Harold Budd & Cliff Wright - "A Song for Lost Blossoms"
He made an album this year, so of course he's on the list!

A very nice record with awful cover art. My friend Ray Guillette said it made him wonder what Harold Budd's bathroom looks like.

Nice music for a Sunday, especially when it's cold and/or raining.

9. Anu - "Cyborg Love Songs"I listened to this a lot, even after I was done making it. People are actually buying this record, making it my most popular non-Pants record since "The Shape of The Universe".

My 2007 picks are here.
My 2006 picks are here.

Work Quote of The Year

"All our research indicated 'Rock N'Roll Cats' would do well..."

Work Quote of The Day

I'm sitting in a meeting that is scheduled to run from 10:30 to 6:00 pm.

I've already had to sit through a 30-minute discussion about what a product manager does. I've been doing product management since 1993, so this was not exactly enlightening.

The best quote so far was this absolute gem: "Frequently, people will pay money for convenience".

That's what I hear.

Survival of the Fitness

Nearly 23 months ago, I noted that I was not in great shape. After 3 months of working out and eating healthy, I made substantial progress.

However, that progress came with a price of its own, as my various leg problems started right around that same time.

In the 2 years since, I've been to a half-dozen doctors and finally have something approaching a diagnosis - I have mild scoliosis. That means my spine is curved, and it turns out the curve is to my left side, through the L1-L3 vertebrae, which are likely pressing on or irritating the nerves for my left leg. (That image isn't my X-Ray, mine is in different places and is of a different degree.)

In all likelihood, this scoliosis is the result of breaking my left femur when I was about 3. My left leg is about 11 millimeters shorter than my right, which causes my pelvis to tilt down on the left side, which causes my spine to aim to the left. Let it sit like that for 36 years and add a bunch of weightlifting and running and you end up with scoliosis and some more wear on the right side of the vertebrae than you'd like - though miraculously the discs are all healthy and intact.

Unfortunately, there isn't much one can do for adult scoliosis. I've got some shoe inserts which seem to be helping a little bit (step 1 is level out the pelvis). My back muscles are really imbalanced now - the left side is huge and strong, the right is weak, short, and tight. Correcting that imbalance may help, but as the right side gets stronger, the left may try to overcompensate.

Beyond those basic changes, one enters the realm of the sort of voodoo which I generally avoid. (I've been given a "prescription" to try that, by the way).

Regardless, over the last 2 years I gained back all the weight I lost, in no small measure due to curtailing gym activity because of the pain and twitching in my leg. Time to get back on the horse (or in this case, the treadmill) and eat right.

I've also had a lot going on at work lately, most of it not good news. That said, I'm happy just to have a job (and health insurance) at this particular moment in history.

I've got a few new musical tools and some ideas, and once I can tear myself away from the latest computer games, I'll be back to composing and working on other projects.

I hope everyone else is doing OK. Drop me a line, let me know.

Anu and Rhapsody in USA Today

I am not afraid of the iPod.

As part of my job I get to talk to the media every once in a while. USA Today dropped by our offices a few days ago to take some photos and chat.

Apparently the story is running in today's USA Today. There's also a video clip down in the lower left, which was shot several weeks ago.

For all sorts of reasons I don't talk a lot about the specifics of my job here, but I'm always happy to answer questions for you lot.

Talking to the press is always scary - you never know what they're going to do with what you say or how they're going to make you look. I think about that every time I have to open my mouth in front of a reporter.

Thankfully, the USA Today team did a fine job. I guess I'm semi-famous for a day now.

And to be clear, I think iPods are awesome. I've owned many and still own an original Shuffle and one of the new iPod Touch things. I just think if you're passionate or even interested in music slightly beyond "yeah, I buy a CD now and then", you owe it to yourself to try Rhapsody. It's not perfect yet, but we're working on it.

I am at the airport, and happy to be here. 30 minutes of uninterrupted time. To listen to music. To think. To write.

I had a really nice weekend. I went to the gym both days, took care of some errands, and got in some good goofing off. Ate some tasty food. Got good sleep, except for last night, which was my own fault.

I haven’t been happy a lot lately – a lot of crankiness and frustration, mostly of my own invention. I seem to find a lot of things to agitate me these days – There’s a lot going on at work, for example, but I think some of my frustration is just me projecting my own insecurities and problems onto others. But I know some of it is continued irrationality in the workplace. Not that most other jobs would be better.

Things that have frustrated me in the last few hours:

• I forgot to change shoes for my trip and am wearing my heavy workboots instead of comfortable sneakers. I may end up being happy about this if it rains tomorrow and Wednesday as forecast.
• My Ibiza Rhapsody MP3 player isn’t playing well with Rhapsody – MP3s with album art don’t transfer the album art over. AAC files are being transcoded instead of transferring natively. The UI is very close to perfect, but that just throws its few mistakes into greater focus
• Work meetings where I can’t tell if I failed to prepare adequately or other people did.

The airport continues to evolve. Southwest has installed these ridiculously posh (by airport lobby standards) leather club chairs that have power points and USB chargers. I kept waiting for some sort of meter to pop out (“Please swipe your credit card for 5 minutes of comfortable seating and electricity”). But I guess they’re just trying to make waiting in the airport tolerable.

Birthdays and Aging

We're the last generation to grow old
Our children won't have that problem because they're so lucky
For us, being old is going to be a big problem
Who will dispose of all of us?

- 9353, "Senior Citizen Disposal Plant"

63 years ago today, the world's first atomic bomb was exploded at the Trinity site in Alamagordo, New Mexico. I am told my grandfather worked on it.

39 years ago today, the first manned mission to the Moon was launched from Cape Kennedy. Also I was born. 4 days later my newborn eyes saw the television broadcast of the landing.

Over the last 39 years technology has made some astounding advancements. In 1969 a "computer" was a room- or building-sized machine that was little more than a fast calculator. There is more computing power in an iPod now than was used for the Moon shot.

We finally have the "hang-on-a-wall" flat-screen, high-definition color televisions (telscreens?) that I heard about when I was a kid. Almost every piece of recorded music is available on-demand, and video is following close behind (funny that books, the oldest data/media format, are not yet available this way). Video games have gone from "Pong" to things that, at a glance, are barely distinguishable from HDTV broadcasts.

I grew up with rotary dial phones. I remember when the government broke up Ma Bell, and allowed MCI to start competing. Now mobile phones are not just common, they're banal. "Mail" has been replaced with "e-mail", and "e-mail" is also something completely different. As is Twitter (which is also something completely stupid, but that's another post) and all the social networking junk.

Medical science has progressed as well. While I personally am rather disenchanted with medical technology these days, medicine has come a long way. There are fantastic new drugs, ranging from anti-baldness treatments (something that was joked about when I was a kid) to better sleeping pills and advances in painkillers. Advances in medical imaging that put full-body scans within reach of anyone. Things one couldn't do at any price now available down the street.

One reason there will be so many more amputees, damaged brains, and other disabled veterans of the Bush wars is how much better doctors have gotten at saving lives. Many of these same patients would have died had they sustained their injuries in the 1991 Gulf War. Technology marches on, for better or for worse.

Medical science even found a vaccine for HPV - a virus, and a cancer-causing one at that. It's a double miracle. Yet many people are hesitant to give their children the shot to prevent it, for a variety of reasons. Some of which are the typical fear and ignorance that have caused humanity problems for thousands of years.

And now the respirocyte. Apparently a scientist is developing:

"a robotic red blood cell that, if injected into the bloodstream, would allow humans to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath or sit at the bottom of a swimming pool for hours at a time"

Man, how cool would that be? It would revolutionize swimming and diving, at the very least. Maybe more people would walk if they didn't get winded. Marathons would be a lot easier. Presumably this could also be modified to allow breathing of oxygen-poor atmospheres - either our own soon-to-be-carbon-laden Earth or perhaps even the 95% CO2 Martian atmosphere.

That's how it starts - first people just want to improve a little bit. Like say carving up your eyes with lasers so that instead of seeing 20/150, you now see 20/15? You don't look any different, and hey, now you're "back to where you were a few years ago, maybe a little better", right?

Given technology's relentless march, where will we be in 3 or 4 more decades? I used to want to live forever. Now I'm not so sure. Certainly I want a long, healthy, and happy life. It's been a good 39 years, and I hope to have around 39 more. But our planet is already over-populated, and the numbers aren't going the right way. Should science be extending people's lives, perhaps indefinitely?

Even if the technology permits, will religion and other social/cultural biases allow it? I also believe there will be generational issues. Tattoos and earrings have become banal, too (much to my chagrin!), but to older people they still have certain connotations (I was asked to remove my earrings before testifying in front of Federal judges). What about body modification? I'm not talking about tiny metal barbells through various tissues, I'm talking about leopard spots. Or bioluminescent skin or hair. Or scales. Or built-in displays and memory.

I look forward to the future, and hope that I last long enough and that it comes fast enough that I can at least see it, if not actively participate.

Hey you kids, get off my lawn!

Car Trouble: 100 Years and Counting

Have you ever had a ride in a light blue car?
Have you ever stopped to think who's the slave and who's the master?
Have you ever had trouble with your automobile?
Have you ever had to push push push push?
Car trouble oh yeah

- "Car Trouble", Adam Ant (from "Dirk Wears White Sox")

The world recently passed the 100th birthday of the Model T - the first mass-produced and successful car. I've been thinking a lot about how quickly the world used up all the gas, and what the car has done to the planet and society.

Depending on how you score and who you believe, the first automobile to run on gasoline (primitive and nasty gasoline at that) appeared in 1875 or 1890, and various European companies were building cars during the last decade of the 19th Century.

By the early 1900s, cars were the fastest-selling transportation. Ford's Model T was the thing that really took off, though (which was a relief, as Ford's previous ventures and efforts had been failures).

Gasoline underwent substantial evolution as well. By the 1920s the world had catalytic "cracking" (which greatly improved distillation yields) and 40-60 octane. Engine technology had advanced and required higher octane and higher quality, which lead to...lead. Leaded gas - gas mixed with tetraethyl lead, some of the most toxic stuff man has ever created intentionally.

By the 1950s, lead levels had increased and octane levels had increased again. Better cracking technology again. In the mid-1970s, just 20 years later, the industry and the world agreed to stop using leaded gas for a variety of reasons (toxicity, the fact that leaded gas destroyed catalytic converters, environmental concerns).

The period from the 1920s to the 1960s also saw massive proliferation and expansion of the gas station. They popped up everywhere, offering more and more services as differentiators. The energy crisis of the 1970s more or less killed momentum here and turned gas stations into the minimal dispensing facilities we know today.

Now it's 2008. There has been minimal consumer-facing innovation in the entire gas-auto ecosystem for the last 20 years, and arguably regression - the biggest-selling American vehicles were basically bimbo trucks - fake off-road "cars" built on profitable but fuel-inefficient truck platforms. Fuel efficiency stagnated.

The world is fast running out of gas, and it's happened relatively quickly. 100 years is not very long.

But it was long enough to define America's cities, its economy, its values (family, environmental, corporate, governing), its architecture, its lifestyle. For most Americans, life without a car isn't just unthinkable, it is impossible. And without cars and trucks (and lately airplanes) today's society would quickly collapse.

Yet it has been so clearly unsustainable for so long. How can the world not be ready to move on?

I am old enough to remember pumps dispensing leaded gas. I remember cars that did not have shoulder seat belts, or had them as add-on/after-market accessories.

I also spent my primary school years during the oil crisis of the 1970s. I remember gas lines, even/odd license plate rationing, and many science classes being told in no uncertain terms that the world was running out of oil, and that was probably good anyhow because cars were poisoning the environment in just about every way one can imagine (it's not just the emissions. Think about the paint, the construction, the batteries - hell, just the tires alone are a nightmare).

My father can remember cars without seatbelts. His generation saw the maturity of the gas-auto ecosystem. That was just 50 years ago.

His father (my grandfather) would remember the first modern gasoline and gas stations, and my great-grandfather would likely have remembered the introduction of the Model T.

And now it's all but gone, in 3 generations. A short period of time in human history, and yet our entire society is dependent on it. Look around you. It's all gasoline, it's all cars and trucks. And it has to stop - there is no choice. It will stop - the gas will run out, and/or the environmental damage will cost too much to continue.

Biofuels aren't the answer. Drilling for more gas and oil isn't the answer. I'm not even sure magic fuel-free cars are the answer, as just having a car-centric society creates so many problems. Carbon emissions need to dramatically decrease. Society has to change.

I think about how much gasoline and the car affected and steered development for 100 years. About how much the Internet has changed society in just 20 years. I have yet to imagine a pleasant post-gasoline society 100 years from now. Or even 20.

It must be possible, right? I suppose (and occasionally fear) I'll be around long enough to see the beginnings of it.

And remember this:
You don't need anything after an ice cream

Music business says radio plays are piracy.

Latest news from the goofballs in the music business: Apparently radio plays are piracy and have not just no value for the recorded music business, but in fact have negative value (It's stealing! It's piracy! We should be getting paid!)

Really?

Then why have so many of the labels been found repeatedly guilty of payola? Why have they all literally been breaking the law to pay ridiculous sums of money to get airplay for their music?

Would you pay someone to steal from you?

It is true that in other countries, sound recording owners are paid when music is played on the radio. I'm not opposed to that - I'm just opposed to these tactics, as well as the sudden change of heart.

USA radio stations have never paid royalties for sound recording use. Nobody really complained while the music business was riding high. The labels just kept sending the hookers and blow and cash to the radio DJs and everything was good...great, even, because the artificially high cost of getting music on the radio meant that the copyright cartel could continue controlling the airwaves and all but lock out any independent music.

Now the recorded music business continues their "brilliant" plan of suing and/or making life difficult for all of the people in their value chain (retailers, digital services, customers, etc.) in an attempt to alleviate their own financial misery.

Radio listening is already dropping among those who buy music. Adding additional financial burden to radio will result in more advertising or more cost-cutting, further lowering quality. This will drive more users away from radio and towards the Internet, at which point the industry can expect less revenue and less control.