HELLO! Books Are Digitally Different

So what will be the next technology must have and what will drive its adoption? Will media come second and merely follow new technology?

In the last decade we have seen the transition from fixed location desktop PCs, through luggable laptops, the life and death of the notepad, the ‘air’ laptops and the explosion of the tablet. We have seen single functional devices such as the eink ereaders come and almost go, the transition from games only consoles to games anywhere, the death of the music only iPod and Zune and those video movie players. Home entertainment devices and interoperability has been redefined. The app, the cloud and streamed media services have arrived. Today the smartphone, or computer in your pocket, has taken over all our lives.

It has been a decade of significant technological and culture change and is unlikely to stop or even slow down as the technology shrinks, gets more powerful and anytime, anywhere and at high speed continue to drive our thirst to be connected. Our interface with technology is becoming more intuitive and although we may still be some distance from Pranev Mistry’s sixth sense world, it’s coming.

So how are the media and creative industries responding? What can we expect to see soon and what is still stuck some way off?

If we just look at film, music and books we see that although technology has increasingly impacted the development of the stuff, the output is the same. Films are still 90 to 120 mins long and apart from some 3D and computer aided technology the majority remain as they were. Music still retains the same length of tracks and although the technology has dumbed down the quality of content, a song is still a song. Books remain books with the vast majority of ebooks being straight digital renditions of the physical book.

However, there is a significant difference between books and the other two media. Film does not exist in a native technology free form, Unless you count the theatre and live music performances, both Film and music are very different cultural experiences and consumer purchases and not something you can put on the shelf and replay at will. Music has evolved through a series of disruptive technology changes, from vinyl, cassettes, 8track, CDrom, to today’s streamed MP3 on demand. Vinyl may be enjoying a small and limited renaissance and success in clubs, but for the average consumer it’s only like discovering a pile of old 78s and then looking for the device to play them on. The gramophone players, Walkman, ghetto blasters have gone and today we have the personalised earpiece connected to the smartphone and the cloud.

Books are different. Books remain and ebooks are a competing new rendition like the paperback was to the hardback. This difference challenges the ebooks ability to be a disruptive rendition and to kill off its previous forms. Book technology and the reader goes back hundreds of years and isn’t broken, nor is it made obsolete by the new form or its evolving technology. Therefore eBooks over pBooks is not a straight binary decision choice.

When we first grappled with the ebook in the 90s we often tried to enhance and exploit the content with the technology. Many fingers got burnt and so when it returned under the eink revolution, many kept it simple and also found that the eink technology didn’t exactly encourage content enhancement. However as tablets, mobile and smartphone technology become ubiquitous some may now return to enhance the content. Others may choose a different route and abridge it, or even play to the strengths of the technology and embrace the obvious – the short form.

Whatever the route taken the stupid thing would be to continue to merely pour the same content into a digital container. This logic is flawed as it not only creates competition where competition is not needed and can be counter-productive, but it fails to understand the technology, the cultural changes that are happening and the opportunities that are available for the two that matter - the author and the reader.

RIAA Play King Canute

The record industry stands like King Canute commanding consumers not to copy and share music and like Canute it appears doomed to fail. It has filed over 20,000 lawsuits against music fans but has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing. The tide has truly swung.

The Recording Industry Association of America, continue to spew out letters to college students and others demanding payment and threatening a legal battle but has it finally lost the plot and gone a step too far?

Jeffrey Howell, from Scottsdale Arizona refused to pay up and took the case to court. Howell, kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, something that many of us do. The industry now maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. It beggars belief that the RIAA want to pick a fight with almost all its public. It agues that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

The Washington Post reports that the RIAA web site says: "If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you're stealing. You're breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages."

In a Los Angeles Times poll, 69% of teenagers surveyed said they thought it was legal to copy a CD they own and give it to a friend. The RIAA cites a study that found that more than half of current college students download music and movies illegally.

The Washington Post put it succinctly in saying, ‘The RIAA's legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed.’
The RIAA has created a market of customers who specifically now look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies. There are salient lessons here for all intermediaries.

DRM in Music Fast Becoming Fatally Wounded

What makes a tipping point and makes a nice to have a must have, a nice design a design icon and good seller into a market leader?
Pepsi and Amazon are planning a yearlong download promotion which ios forcing Warner and Sony to consider distributing music in the MP3 format, and move on from the now unfashionable digital rights management technology. News of the Pepsi promotion, expected to be announced during the Super Bowl in February, coincides with Wal-Mart's ultimatum that major labels supply walmart.com with their music in MP3.

EMI and Universal Music Group began their move earlier this year. Disney's has joined the list of labels testing MP3 at Amazon and walmart.com. EMI began selling its music in MP3 format in June. WMG and Sony BMG Music Entertainment both have remained in support of using digital rights management for music downloads. But times change and the writing appears to be on the wall with sources saying Sony BMG is considering an MP3 test.

The impact of the move will be fatal to those who believe that DRM is the way forward. The tipping point will occur and we will all embrace MP3. As with Betamax and VHS the battle is not won by technology, but by those who create that special thing that turns the market. Once a tipping point is achieved there is no going back. The impact on audiobooks is inevitable and even those who lost their nerve in Penguin recently will have to reconsider their position quickly.

Ask.com gets smart over music

Every now and again you stumble onto a web site and experience a Wow factor and forget to add it to favourites and spend ages try to find it again. Quite by accident we found Ask.com’s music search site. You put in your favourite musician and the result is perfect.

The layout is simple but effective and there before you are not only search results but also videos, tour dates, lyrics, albums, tickets, wikipedia, tracks etc but look for yourself http://uk.ask.com/web?q=U2&qsrc=93 It just a pity its so hard to find!
Just think if we had a books site that was constructed on the same basis it would be very impressive and a great place to go.

Amazon to download….

No sooner has Steve Jobs left stage left having announced the deal to sell digital downloads without DRM protection, than Jeff Bezos enters right stage and announces he can do it too.

Amazon has approached all the music majors in the past fortnight and said that it wanted to sell unprotected MP3 songs in May. Will they meet their deadlines? Can they break the stranglehold iTunes have on the download market?

Forget Google and Microsoft the issue is between Bezos versus Jobs. These two individuals want the consumer business for both music and books. Will Jobs next announce ebooks on iPhones? Will Bezos announces a ‘secretative’ deal with major publishers and Google to create middleware and a new ebook playing field?

What is clear that Jobs has the style the lateral thinking and the fashion tag, whilst Bezos has the determination, single focus and importantly all the bases covered.

Bring on the giants!

Apples are good for you?

Ok imagine that you are sitting on top of the market, selling 70% of the legal music downloads, some 2 million songs since launching in 2003 and also selling millions of iPod players and have the iPhone just about to get connected, why would you want to talk about dropping DRM? After all, some would argue your proprietary DRM inhibits the market and has helped catapult your business forward and restrict your competitive threat.

This week Steve Jobs, the boss of Apple, urged the world's largest record companies to begin selling songs online without security software. Although the industry had already started to think about this, the statement was somewhat a ‘bolt out of the blue’.

Many now believe that the only way to compete with the pirates is to take them on. Consumer rights groups in several European countries have also lodged complaints with Apple over the incompatibility of iTunes with other music players.

Mr Jobs stated that if DRM safeguards were dropped, Apple would be in a position to create a download system which would work with other devices, including Microsoft's Zune music player. The abolition of DRM would enable all MP3 users to access music from any online music store, including iTunes.

True the relaxation of DRM is a hard ball game and one where the result could go many ways, but what is becoming clear, is that the more you tie the music up in DRM, the more the consumer and pirates fight it and find ways round it.

Ok what does it mean for publishing? Well it could revolutionize the audio book market and really make that happen. It would certainly cause Audible to sit up and question their DRM position. The physical book can easily be copied today and although piracy is rife in some markets such as Asia does DRM actually make much difference other than often restricting the consumer from doing what they want to do?

This is not an easy situation nor is the outcome clear, nor the timescales but what is clear people are starting to think the previously unthinkable with respect DRM.