May 3rd, 2006
Letting 'them' eat cake
Thank God for Steve Jobs or the Cartel would be so totally unafraid of the midgets in the Valley (+ Redmond) about the future of music. In this afternoon’s panel, the Napster rep told us that ownership will go away. In the next breath she talked about letting users snip an HTML clip of a song. The whole panel, led by D’s Kara Swisher, beat up on Apple for not showing up. Me, I thought it totaly appropriate given the chimp mentality at work among the rent-a-track hypesters.
Why don’t they get that the iPod broke the back of the record monopoly, just like the VCR broke the back of the projectionist’s union. Michael Robertson: Jobs has to open up the APIs. Not really. Then the Apple trivialization. It’s about design, it’s the hardware, it’s oh so clueless. It’s about the model, folks. Jobs has combined all those tools with a landgrab barrier to entry to move the market inexorably toward the timeout on music catalogue back rights.
On the way down on SouthWest I watched shows on my Video iPod–Rocketboom. No DRM, switched over to Hendrix ripped from the CD. I only had 30 minutes between device clearance and device shutdown. iTunes and AirTunes are my system at home. Save losslessly. Renterz: good night and good luck.
Oh and Pandora still bites, whether it’s MusicIP or whatever. Lessee, what sounds like the Beatles. Bbbzzzzzt. Game over.
