In My Experience... | Taking control. (1340)

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Taking control.
[ Posted by Dan on September 24, 2003 | 6 Comments ]

This idea of going wireless with the iPod and removing the hard drive is the least consumer oriented music idea I have seen so far (outside of lawsuits). What follows is a totally knee jerk reaction to a manufactured business model that seems to me to be an effort to take control away from consumers and place it in the hands of of industry.

Riddle me this: What would you get if you crossed a BlackBerry with an iPod? The answer: The future of the music business. Let me explain. Imagine, if you will, an iPod as a wireless digital ladle. It would dip into a nearly bottomless stream of continual music, scooping up any song you wanted, when you wanted, where you wanted. There would be no need for CDs, hard drives, or any other storage device. And trying to capture such music would be about as easy as trapping mist in a jar. Every song would contain a digital expiration date, so, over time, they would evaporate.

Riddle me this buddy, what happens when people see that there is a subscription model (no ownership) and the music is transient (again, no ownership, and this time no control) and no one buys into the business model? What then? Oh yeah, the Invisible Hands bitch slap you.

What happens when programming your digital, wireless only music device needs to be done in the field. Well, we can deal with by making a nice iTunes like interface that makes playlist editing easy beyond compare.... but.... this is a wireless only device, right? Oh yeah, indeed it is, and thus we'll need a nice QWERTY keyboard to edit our playlists, and demand new music when we want it... oh wait, I'm out of the service area? I downloaded that track yesterday, and I want to listen to it again, and I can't? Why can't I just store the music I bought on this thing and listen to it when ever I want?

Good luck answering those questions Mr Recording Industry. In the meantime, my iPod and I will do exactly what we want, when we want to do it, and wherever we please to be.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating...

I'm stuck with a dialup internet connection. Many, if not most, people in the USA are, too.

This wirelessly-connected iPod idea makes me feel like I'm living in 1999 again, with a technology solution in search of a problem. (E-Shoes.com, your one stop source for shoe laces, shoe horns, shoe polish, and all shoe-related needs on the internet!)

Any techno-idea that requires a constant connection to the internet is just not gonna make it in the country. At least not in the next decade. There's not enough bandwidth penetration. This nation is geographically HUGE! I should know... I live in rural Ohio; my next-door neighbor lives a quarter-mile away. It'll take tremendous resources to get everybody wired up satisfactorily.

Only once this happens can we then talk about continuously-tethered services and applications.

-Posted by Jeff Sommer on September 24, 2003 10:32 AM

it's a cool idea, if it included a hard-drive, and a broadcaster (think rendezvous and Itunes Music sharing) so that I could listen to my iPod, or someone elses while I'm chillin in starbucks... great way to share musical influences, which might actually drive sales of music to people who are stuck buying Britney, but would buy more if they heard more...

Radio works that way, only with paid advertising supporting it. The record labels really ought to share 'wireless streaming' of music between people withing 20-30 feet of each other, as a way to increase the distribution channels of their products... just like radio, only without the ads or the stupid DJs.

-Posted by john on September 24, 2003 11:19 AM

riddle me this? why is wireless only partially reliable? fools need to work on getting wireless *reliable* first, then work on these other cruds. i trust my harddrive. if i pull up a song, i'm 99% more comfortable that the song will be available for me. i'm feeling you on the control tip--this is *precisely* what's going down here.

lack of control + shaky technology = none of my $$.

-Posted by jon on September 24, 2003 01:20 PM

You know cost is important. If you put Wifi in the iPod it could tip of around $500 you can almost get a notebook for that. Look at the uber powerfull sony PDA that is 700 bucks so no one can justify buying one.

-Posted by Jake of 8bitjoystick.com on September 24, 2003 01:38 PM

Yeah, the lack of ubiquitous wifi, low cost structure, and 100% on-demand reliability only makes this whole idea a fun thing to think about.

Cory Doctorow wrote about this type of thing in one of his short stories. His idea was similar to what John was saying, where car stereos would all have Redevouz like music broadcasting, and those with large libraries of music would pay less to drive the roadway (thus incentivizing people to drive that toll road).

I love the sci-fi-ish-ness of the whole thing, but like Jon said "ack of control + shaky technology = none of my $$"

-Posted by Dan on September 24, 2003 01:46 PM

what an intensely stupid idea, on so many levels. But since most of it's been covered, I'll point out the single thing that kills every stupid idea like this involving music.
It all comes down to the output. I can record the output.
I can hook the audio out to something, and record it. I don't have to worry about expiration dates, and the audio quality will be exactly the same as it was when I was listening to it.

Now, maybe a handheld satellite radio would be cool, or an add-on to the ipod that could handle satellite radio... but I think I'll keep my little 15-gigger that has every CD I own on it, plus all the audio books I've downloaded, and still has 8 gigs to go.

-Posted by JC on September 25, 2003 08:12 PM

Comment posting has been turned off because I don't have enough time and will to deal with the constant comment spamming. I'm very sorry and will fix this sometime soon (soon = before 2004 ends).