Internet Ready Music

I love music. I love listening to it, and I love creating it.

I used to buy Vinyl records, then switched to CDs and now I buy mostly online. I have created mp3 files of most of my CDs so I can listen to them in one big huge playlist without ever putting in a CD.

A couple of months ago, Google invited me to use their new Google Music Beta. It's awesome. With it I can easily place all of my music on their servers and then access that music from any of my computers or Android devices.

But I haven't done that. Why? Because the record companies have been attacking people use the internet to enjoy music. And, while I don't think it breaks any laws to use Google Music Beta, I am not 100% sure. Even if it's 100% legal today, with the music industry lobbying governments and influencing law makers and suing students, and now getting the laws changed so that ISPs are required to spy on us, it's not inconceivable that they could convince law makers to make my uploading of music to Google Plus illegal, retroactively. And since once I upload music, there is really no way to make sure it's removed from wherever I upload it, uploading is an action that I can't really undo.

It seems more and more that the vast majority of digital music that I have purchased thus far is becoming legally incompatible with internet technologies and it's actually becoming increasingly risky to own it at all. My iTunes purchases have declined as I have become more aware of the associated risks of owning music that's incompatible with the internet.

Just like driving a horse and buggy on a modern freeway today would be considered dangerous, using music locked into outdated copyright schemes that prohibit uploading on something designed for uploading and downloading is dangerous.

Some of the music I own, however, is compatible with the internet. Bands such as The Charlatans, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and others have been making their music available for free on the internet for some time.

I have also recently (re-)discovered Jamendo which is a music site that contains 300,000+ songs from all over the world and in all genres, all of which are available for downloading and can be uploaded and shared freely with others using the Creative Commons license.

With Jamendo I have discovered some new music that I am totally hooked on, such as the fantastic Canadian artist Brad Sucks, who you can currently find me listening to most days.

Since the internet is all about sharing, I am starting to call this new music, "internet ready". I can upload it to Google Music Beta without worrying about any scary legal incompatibilities down the road, and I can share it with Friends.

Incidentally, I still pay for much of this "free" music. Usually $20 an album. I like that the whole $20 goes to the artists because I want them to be able to continue to create great music. But mostly, it's worth more to me than the risky legacy "recording industry" music because it's internet compatible and as such I am free do so much more with it.

Facebook Steps Out of the Way

Like most people, I was a bit surprized with Facebook's recent changes with regard to privacy.  I don't think they have done anything wrong, but as a user I allowed myself to be lulled into a false sense of security.  Like most people, I believed that they wouldn't mess with the privacy settings of my account much, allowing me to control who got to see the personal information I put on Facebook on my terms.  I had agreed to their user agreement which stated they could change the terms at any time, but I didn't really pay attention to that fine print.

When they made the more recent change to allow my friends graph and my content to be harvested I realized something.  Not that Facebook is evil or bad, but that they offer a service that I thought was one thing, but it is something else.  I thought it was a way for me to connect with my friends and share my data with them, but actually it is a way for Facebook to profit from our personal data.  Or, as Tim Spalding so eloquently put it, "Why do free social networks tilt inevitably toward user exploitation? Because you're not their customer, you're their product."

For me it's not a big deal that my Facebook content is now available to anyone, I don't store anything particularly private there anyway.  But now, my behaviour has changed and I find myself using it even less than I did before.  Not so much because of the loss of control over my data or the fact that they didn't give me a cut, but because this is a company that is volatile with respect to its user policies.  Frankly, I just don't want to put in the time required to keep up with their changes.  So, I take my privacy into my own hands and limit what I place on Facebook.

On the other hand, I find the recent changes to Facebook pretty exciting.  I think an awesome opportunity has opened up now for a service to emerge that allows people to connect with their friends and at the same time protects their privacy.  400 million facebook users sharing information is a testament to the fact that people want to connect online.  The recent outcries and Facebook account deletions point to the fact that people also value privacy...i.e., there is clearly a market for connecting AND protecting privacy.

Facebook doesn't offer that service, but until now people were not sure if they did or they didn't.  And that ambiguity prevented other firms from offering that service because competing with Facebook was just a non-starter.  Now, thanks to Facebook's recent changes, it's clear.  They don't.

And in that gap between what people want and what is available, lies opportunity.

It's now clear, Facebook is not in the privacy business.  By stepping out of the way they make room for others that want to offer privacy as a key value proposition.

Personally, I would like to see a new type of social platform emerge.  Something taking ideas from status.net and webfinger and Diaspora.  I want a distributed social platform that I can host with any hosting provider that would allow me to connect with my friends. The difference is, I own it.  So long as my friends and I  have this system installed somewhere, our systems would talk to each other seamlessly.

This way we would not be dependent or at the mercy of any one vendor or their privacy policy changes.  We would be able to move our accounts to another host of our choosing, anytime we want, and we would be able to lock down or even delete data any time.

The software would be free and open source as well.  If anyone wanted to add some functionality or just contribute, that would be possible too.  Think self-hosted WordPress, but with social networking instead of blogging.

Rather than one massive "walled garden" users would each have their own garden in a community with other garden owners.  They would be able to share their data with whomever they choose.

I am grateful to Facebook and everything it has done to connect people.  It's truly an awesome service.

Ultimately though, it IS my data.  And I still want to share it on my terms.

freedom debt and the decline of lock-in

Early adopters are starting to notice there's a cost to cool when it's supplied by a single vendor.  At first it's all fun and games.  Then you realize that you no longer own your music collection, you no longer own your social network, and you no longer own your data.

Time after time we see organizations start out challenging the status quo, getting huge, abusing their user base, breaking trust, declining, and finally becoming the legacy they fought against.  Facebook innovated past MySpace, Microsoft innovated past the IBM mainframe and Apple innovated past the IBM PC.  Years later, Facebook's commoditization of users and user content,  Microsoft's crushing domination of the PC market, and Apple's rigid control over anything that comes into contact with its products, including the internet, are all examples of lock-in in action.

They all start with great innovations and intentions but eventually the temptation to use lock-in as a strategy becomes too much to resist.  

It's the classic Innovators Dilemma.  

To amass a huge user base, organizations start out providing something of value or at least perceived value.  That's what gets people to join up.  The more compelling and universally recognized the value is, the more users.  Having first mover's advantage is great here because it means there is no competition.

Once people have joined, there's a need to retain them as customers.  

Option one is continuing to provide value over and above what their competitors offer.  Now that their competitors know what they're up to, it's only a matter of time before the innovation is imitated and possibly exceeded.  Continuing to innovate (taking risks) after they've already captured an audience can be difficult and something that doesn't come natural to large organizations.   

Option two, which is what most organizations default to, is the strategy of intentional 'lock-in'.  Lock-in is the practice of structuring the customer relationship so that it's difficult or impossible for users to switch to another vendor.  Such as holding user data hostage so that it can be entered but not retrieved, or preventing people from moving their purchased music to another platform.  Creating a walled garden environment, so if you want to play, you have to play within the walls, and leaving means leaving your toys behind.  These are just a few of the tactics used to discourage people from using their freedom of choice.  

Notice there's a common thread in option two: none of these tactics are in your best interest.  They are in the best interest of the organization.  

Jim Zemlin said it well at LinuxWorld a couple of years ago.  He likened using a certain well known set of products as volunteering to go to jail.   He pointed out that the  Jail looked a lot like a 4 star hotel room with video on demand, a great view, was clean and neat, and that most of us would find to be rather luxurious... but it's still a jail.

Freedom Debt

By offering you something shiny now, organizations get you to give up a bit of your freedom in the future.  "Take this shiny phone.  It's free", they say. "Don't concern yourself with where your data is stored; we'll take care of it."  

Right.

As we continue to wake up to what lock-in means and to become aware that what we are doing when we choose products and vendors that lock us in is essentially borrowing freedom from the future, I think we'll start to make different choices. 

The New Organization

The trends around open source, open data, open government, open protocols, open API's and open communications, indicate that more and more organizations are recognizing that people are aware of the consequence of giving up their freedom.  These organizational models point to lock-in as something to avoid, and use it as a lever to distinguish themselves from the legacy organizational models they disrupt.  

This not only makes those organizations more competitive, it also means their goals are more aligned with ours, and gives us something more valuable for the dollars or attention we give in return.  

And the big upside for them is that openness and our knowing we can leave at any time builds a kind of trust and loyalty that the old model can't hope to compete with.

OSCON 2009

As many of you know I had the privilege of attending OSCON 2009 last week. I just want to say, for the record, that it was easily the best conference I have ever been to. From the presentations, to the speakers to the BoFs, the whole thing was well organized, well executed and totally worth the 3,200 clicks I put on my motorcycle to get there. :-)

One of the things I got by going was the sense of community and the sense of contribution. Here were people from all walks of technology, from people just starting out to veterans of 20+ years, from database to Web 2.0 to Gov 2.0 to algorithm fanatics to social media creators all gathered to talk about their passion for creating, improving, using and championing free software. I am thrilled to do my part as a contributing member of these communities and am grateful for the opportunity.

The main takeaway though for me was the sense of leadership. The open source community is chock-full of leaders. People who dare to see and meet the call of something bigger than themselves and who are willing to stand for the result while it is only a possibility and who will act to make it real.

It's completely unreasonable to get an idea, collaborate with people all over the world in your spare time for months or years at a time, create world class software and then give it away for free to anyone who wants it, with no strings attached. And, that's exactly what is happening 24 hours a day 365 days of the year, all over the world.

It's completely unreasonable.

And it's so much fun.

Thanks OSCON for the excellent week. See you in 2010.

Ps: see some of the OSCON action by going to the OSCON site and viewing their videos of some of the talks.

Licensing Costs

This article about the cost of unlicensed software use has left me wondering how commercial software will deal with unlicensed users. Specifically, will they treat them as "the enemy" as the commercial music industry seems to do on a regular basis? I doubt it, actually.

The software business has a lot more experience in dealing with the licensing of content than the music industry has, since everything the software business does is by definition digital. We have been through the copy protection schemes, the hardware dongles, the secret activation keys, and these have probably worked to some extent and the other thing they have done is helped fuel the open software movement.

Free and open software is important for many reasons social, political and practical but I think software licensing schemes like these, that make it a pain to use commercial software, that are at least partially responsible for users looking for alternatives, and free and open software is a pretty attractive alternative.

When you can get the software for free, without worrying about whether or not you are licensed properly, get free upgrades on a regular basis, have it supported by teams of people, and know that you can transfer it to any machines and use it forever at no cost... well, that seems like a much better option. The fact that's even more reliable and secure than the commercial alternative is gravy.

There is obviously a market for innovative commercial software, and happily some of that is still being produced, and some of it is even no cost!

But a lot of commercial software just offers the same old licensing, same big sticker price, same old promises, and a shiny new look... but putting lipstick on a pig doesn't change the fact that it's a pig.

Free Radiohead

I know it's been a few weeks now since it's release but I have something to say about the new music distribution experiment being conducted by Radiohead.

I like the album. I want to buy it. But when I went to the site to pay for it... the site asked me for a bunch of personal information.... my question is, why?

That information grab was actually enough to prevent me from buying it. In an age where giving someone your personal information can result in spam, junk mail, annoying phone calls, or even contribute to identity fraud, etc... I am fairly careful about where and when I give out my info and I am certainly not willing to give it out for the right to purchase some music. I don't give it to the local record store so why would I give it to Radiohead? I wouldn't, and so I won't enjoy that album and my willingness to support "free" music ( as in freedom ) will not be counted by this experiment. Hmm.... too bad.

Well, when someone finally releases free music, I am willing and ready to pay for it.

It will happen.