Posts from July 2007

At the iMeme panel last week I had the opportunity to sit next to Jim Breyer and watch him take some tough questions from Adam Lashinsky about why Facebook doesn’t sell at the huge numbers that are being whispered in the blogs and on the street.

Jim said something important that really wasn’t picked up in the chatter about his comments. He said that all this attention on what Facebook is worth isn’t doing the company any good. I commend Mark, Jim, and Peter for their obvious intentions to keep Facebook independent and private for now. I think Facebook will make a great public company at some point, maybe in the next year.

But selling the Company would be a huge mistake. First and foremost for the users. Any buyer will screw up Facebook. It’s greatness comes from the fact that the people who run the company live inside the service, they built if for themselves and it works because of that. They have their pulse on the community and they are not likely to screw it up too badly.

If you look at most web services that have been bought, they’ve lost their mojo once they were acquired. What has YouTube done lately that is so great? Skype? MySpace? Delcious? Flickr?

I really don’t see what a large portal/media company does for a web service and its users. I totally see what a large portal/media company does for a "monetization service" like FeedBurner or Right Media. Look at how successful the advertising.com transaction was for Time Warner/AOL.  But social web services/social media is different. I believe these services do better as independent entities.

So why do companies sell? Because of fear, boredom, and personal financial issues. It seems to me that Skype’s founders got bored and wanted to do something else. Billions of dollars and boredom is a good reason to sell. YouTube’s founders knew the copyright issues were going to be a huge distraction and that Google was a much better entity to fight that battle. Fear and billions of dollars is a good reason to sell.

Personal financial issues lead a lot of companies to sell. But in Facebook’s instance, that’s not an issue. If Zuckerberg wanted to sell a piece of his company, I’d buy it. So would any number of people. They’d be lined up. But it’s unlikely that his shares would go any further than Peter Thiel, Accel, or Greylock who would likely snap them up at any reasonable price. So if Zuckerberg had personal financial issues, and I suspect he doesn’t being so young, he could easily deal with those in a private sale transaction.

Bottom line is everyone should stop wondering about how much Facebook is worth in a sale transaction. Because it’s not going to happen. Look for the IPO next year.

This is a cool, seven minute plus groove from the new Shout Out Louds record, Our Ill Wills.

Hard Rain – Shout Out Louds – Our Ill Wills

I hope they do it tonight at Luna Lounge.

I’ve never even heard this term before. Streamripping. I guess it means digitally recording an mp3 stream (ie internet radio) to build up a music library. I am sure it’s technically possible, but I’ve never heard of anyone doing it. I know lots of people who acquire music via torrents, p2p networks, iPod sharing, pando, pownce, IM etc. But not one single person who has ever engaged in "streamripping".

And yet apparently SoundExchange is willing to make a deal with internet radio broadcasters to alter the proposed new net radio royalties if they will use some sort of protection scheme to stop "streamripping".

This irritates me on many levels. First, this is an example of lawyers run amok. I know that lawyers are supposed to worry about "what if" situations, but there are so many better ways to steal music than streamripping that I just don’t see this as a major threat.

But my bigger problem with this is that internet radio is the future of radio. Because we are beginning to see the emergence new connected devices, from smartphones, iPhones, Sonos, Squeezebox, and soon products from Cisco and others that will replace the CD player in our home music system and the iPod in our car. These devices play internet radio and subscription services like Rhapsody, Napster, etc.

They pull the stream over the wired or wireless Internet and play it directly on the device. They key to all of this is that the streams are easily brought onto these devices. When you buy one of these devices, you want to know that it will play whatever stream you want.

This is a huge opportunity for the music industry and this was what I thought the SoundExchange fight was all about, getting as big a piece of this emerging new revenue stream for the rights holders. And at some level, I am OK with the give and take of that negotiation.

But the introduction of DRM into the mix is frightening. This is shooting yourself in the foot after you’ve already done it to yourself once. The introduction of DRM into the file based digital music business effectively gave Apple a monopoly over that business.

The music industry needs to learn from that lesson. The next big thing is music streamed to your living room, your cell phone, and your car directly from the Internet. There is a huge amount of revenue in that business for the rights holders. But if the streams are "protected" in some way, we will never get the innovation and choice in devices that will make the streaming music market the most vibrant.

This is a faustian bargain that radio broadcasters of all shapes and sizes must resist. Because the music industry still doesn’t get the fact that open is good and closed is bad.

  Decemberists 
  Originally uploaded by mediaeater.

Is a song about a latin gang war (with west side story overtures).

O Valencia – Decemberists – The Crane Wife

The Media Eater and I learned that and more last night on a beautiful evening in Central Park.

Mark had a photo pass and shot this photo and more.

I stood back in the crowd and let the sounds of Colin Meloy’s wonderful voice and fantastic songs wash over me.

He is a terrific song writer. Jackson will certainly chime in the comments with the observation that rock stars don’t wear seersucker suits. But if Colin keeps writing songs like he’s put on the past two Decemberists records, he’s absolutely gonna be a big star before he’s done.

My new year’s resolution this year was to get completely off of Microsoft products and it’s been an abysmal failure. I have not been able to get off of Entourage which is the worst software product I have ever used because I am locked into a Microsoft Exchange platform at work for sharing contacts, calendars, and email. And we are locked into it because it works so flawlessly with our Blackberries. It’s a killer combo. It’s funny that its RIM’s technology that’s keeping me on Microsoft technology.

So I am caveing in, which many of you predicted, and going back to Windows and Office. I am getting a new MacBook Pro and pre-installing Parallels and Windows and Office on it.

I’ll use Windows/Office for work stuff and OSX for everything else.

But I am hopeful that soon we’ll leave Exchange for Google’s platform, gmail and gcal primarily. All Google needs to do is build a client for Windows and OSX and Blackberry and iPhone. And I’ll be gone from Microsoft for good.

And it couldn’t happen too soon.

Weeks go by where I don’t pick up the paper. We get both The Post and The Times at home and we get both the Journal and The Times at the office. But I can’t be bothered. My news is coming at me all day long and prefer to get it on my phone and laptop than in paper form.

But I’ve been travelling today. From Naples Maine to Amagansett New York. You do that by driving, flying, and then taking a bus. I am on the bus portion, happily connected to mobile broadband.

I read the Times and The Journal today. Here are some stories I found interesting.

Happy Blogiversary – WSJ – Blogs are ten years old this week according to the WSJ. So they celebrated by getting 12 people to tell us what they make of blogs. First of all I am shocked that Dick Costolo didn’t mention this blog as one of his three favorties. I guess now that he’s at Google, he doesn’t have to pretend to like this blog anymore! Second, I think Tom Wolfe’s section was written tongue in cheek. He can’t be that much of a luddite. It’s an entertaining read and I had no idea that Mia Farrow is a blogger. I’ll have to check that one out.

A Patent’s Worth Having, Not! – NYT – Ok, I bastardized the headline. But not the point of the column by Michael Fitzgerald in the Sunday business section. He covers some research that shows that patents are a huge waste of money and are stifling innovation. All you need to do is listen to most of the people working on software and Internet technology and they’ll tell you the same thing. Patents are absurd. But you know I felt that way a while ago. I think patents are like nuclear bombs, if others have them you have to have them as well. Fortunately we can eliminate patents. Unfortunately we cannot eliminate nuclear bombs.

The Boat Is About To Rock In Internet Video – NYT- This is Brad Stone’s piece on Veoh’s new software for watching web video. First, I like the sound of Dmitry. He’s a nimble russian technologist/entrepreneur. I’ve made money with guys like him before. Veoh came in as an also ran in the web video sweepstakes. We all know that YouTube won that one going away. But instead of giving up, they’ve copied Joost and build a client side app that acts as a set-top box style interface to video. But, and this is a big but, instead of going and asking permission from the content ownes like Joost is doing, Veoh is just pulling all the stuff that’s already on the web. That’s the way to do it. Nobody wants a closed system anymore other than the content owners. Open wins, closed fails.  My only beef is with Todd Dagres’s quote (Todd is a friend who sits on Veoh’s board). Todd says:

“We are going to try to be friendly to content owners,” said Todd
Dagres, a partner at Spark Capital who serves on the Veoh board. “We
are going to try to be the white-hat company.”

Not exactly Todd. Joost is the while hat company. That’s why Veoh is going to win and they are going to lose.

Sushi For Two – NYT- If you love sushi, read this. I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t want to eat sushi anywhere other than the bar talking to the chef.

  The Veils 
  Originally uploaded by Mark Bruko.

Writing about music is so easy. I’ll find myself listening to something and I feel like I have to blog about the music. And that’s all there is too it.

We’ve been listening a lot to The Veils lately. I first heard this band on Radio Paradise three weeks ago. They have two records, both of which are on Rhapsody. So we got into them right away and they’ve been in very heavy rotation in our house since then.

The first record is The Runaway Found and the new release is called Nux Vomica. I first got into Runway Found with songs like Lavinia and The Leavers Dance. I listened on Rhapsody and Yottamusic over and over.

But I recently bought the Nux Vomica record on eMusic and so I’ve had it on my iPod. And because I’ve been on a lot of planes and car rides recently, Nux Vomica has risen to the top of the playlist.

It’s a fantastic record. The song that first convinced me about this band, Jesus For The Jugular, is on this record. Other favorites are Advice For Young Mothers To Be and the ending track, Night Thoughts Of A Tired Surgeon, which sounds like it belongs on Strangeways Here We Come (The Smiths for those of you who never went through the Morrisey phase).

Night  Thoughts Of A Tired Surgeon – The Veils – Nux Vomica

The Veils are from New Zealand and the lead singer, Finn Andrews, is known for being intense on stage. I learned all this from Wikipedia, so it could be completely false, but I rely on it anyway.

The Veils are coming to Bowery Ballroom on Sept 10th. Tickets are on Ticketweb. I bought four this morning at the very reasonable price of $13 each and hope to be there to see if Wikipedia is correct.

I am not sure there is a case of blogging too much.

But ever since I’ve been on Twitter, I’ve had this feeling that this is an activity that needs to be moderated.

I started out not knowing if I would ever have the urge to post a message. That went out the window the second day. Then I had the urge to send a message to Twitter every hour. I held back. I figured, like blogging, I should post something around twice a day.

Lately, I’ve been twittering three or four times a day. But I still am holding back. I could Twitter my whole life. Some do. And I have the urge to take them out of my feed. Which is exactly why I hold back.

I am curious to hear what others who use Twitter think about this. Is there a case of "too much". And if so, does it depend on the person, the messages they post? Or is there just a magic number?

Bob Lefsetz said this in his recent post The Price Must Drop

How about rental?  Rhapsody, Napster and Yahoo?

Good model, but presently people don’t want it.  They want ownership, we live in an ownership world.  You can fight this, or accept it.  Hell, until there’s a reasonable rental device, as easily used and as sexy and cool as the iPod, rental is a total nonstarter.  Why hasn’t anybody come up with a device this good in five years?  Well, how come latecomer Apple makes the coolest and best mobile phone?

I sent Bob an email after reading that. Because there is a killer rental device. It’s called Sonos with Rhapsody. I have four of them and we barely play mp3s anymore even though we also have a terabyte of legally purchased mp3s on our Sonos system.

My daughter Emily has a friend. He’s 14, same age as Emily. He loves music the way I loved music as a teenager. The way I still love it. He’s got an iPod full of mp3s and always walks around with his earbuds in his ears or flipped over his chest waiting to go back in his ears.

But when he saw the Sonos, held the controller in his hand, played the music right from the controller and it came out on the speakers all over the house and in the backyard, his jaw dropped. It’s hard to describe Sonos with Rhapsody. You just have to do what Emily’s friend did. He sat in our backyard by the pool last weekend and DJ’d all afternoon. He was in heaven.

The “problem” with Sonos is its expensive. $399 for the zone player you connect to your music system and another $199 for the wireless controller. But that’s only $99 more than the iPhone. It’s not absurd and everyone I’ve shown it who has had the means to get one has done just that.

Sonos is not a master of marketing like Apple. Not enough people have seen it. Not enough people understand why ownership doesn’t matter when you have pretty much all the recorded music in the palm of your hand.

Maybe Sonos will break out. Maybe Cisco’s rumored “connected device” offerings will break out. Maybe Apple/Jobs will finally understand that streaming audio and video from the cloud is a better way than selling files. I am not sure who will be the iPod/iPhone of the streaming/rental device market.

But I am sure that it’s the future. All you need to do is get Sonos and Rhapsody and you’ll agree.

UPDATE: Bob wrote me back. Don’t you love it when your favorite bloggers write back? He said Sonos with Rhapsody is nice but he hates the scrolling. He wants search like in iTunes. I agree with Bob on that point. If Sonos had a search on the wireless controller, now that would be super killer.