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Music to no one’s ears

July 29, 2002 by Scott Rosenberg

In tonight’s Salon cover story, Farhad Manjoo surveys the sorry state of the online music world. Much of the file-trading world has been hobbled by the RIAA’s legal assault, yet the music industry has not stepped forward with an alternative that makes sense.

In its prime, Audiogalaxy was beautiful, even better than Napster — it allowed us to hunt for an obscurity even when the people who had the track weren’t currently online, then download it once they reconnected. I used Audiogalaxy to fill out the odd corners of my library with live recordings and rarities; every artist whose work I downloaded and kept was one whose entire recorded commercial oeuvre I’ve already paid for in CD form.

My demographic profile may not be exactly what the record companies are after (I’m 43), but I’ve probably spent $1000 a year on music for the last decade or so; it’s my biggest personal-entertainment expense by far. My music purchases soared during the heyday of Napster and Audiogalaxy, when I could easily sample new bands and new work; in recent months my purchases have tapered off. If the music industry wants to know where its sales have gone, there’s one clue.

In the meantime, anyone who’s looking for an online music service that offers variety and depth and doesn’t try to control your behavior or limit how you can listen to the music you pay for, I recommend EMusic. For $10 a month you get unlimited access to their catalog. No, they don’t have the major labels’ hot hits. But they have enough interesting stuff to keep the alternative/indie fan happy for months — like vast quantities of Guided by Voices, They Might Be Giants, Yo La Tengo and Pavement — plus oldies, jazz and other eclectica.((Full disclosure: EMusic has worked with Salon on the music mixes we offer our Premium subscribers. I’m not involved with that — and I gladly pay the company for its service.)

Filed Under: Music, Technology

Twilight of “open computing”?

July 26, 2002 by Scott Rosenberg

This little sentence was in John Markoff’s Thursday N.Y. Times piece covering Microsoft’s .NET summit:

  Microsoft also warned today that the era of “open computing,” the free exchange of digital information that has defined the personal computer industry, is ending.

It had folks on Slashdot scratching their heads, wondering whether this was a trumpet blast against open-source software development (which would have been odd at the same time Microsoft was sealing a deal to bring the open-source Apache web server into the .Net tent) or a warning to file-sharers that the boom is about to be lowered on their heads (which might make sense during the same week that Hollywood-friendly congressmen introduced a bill making it legal for copyright holders to hack into your computer to see if you’ve been naughty).

The statement is in fact opaque. I’d guess that Microsoft is trying to say, “The free-for-all that began with the Internet boom is over — everybody better get used to paying more for everything digital from now on.” Which is probably, whether we like it or not, an accurate description of reality. The troubling thing, for Microsoft and everyone else in the technology business, is that the free-for-all also caused the Internet boom. It was the “free exchange of digital information” that enable the amazing growth rate of the ’90s, along with all the sales of hardware and software. Cutting it off may be what the holders of intellectual property rights (which includes both “content” publishers and software companies) want. Cutting it off is also a recipe for stagnation and loss.

Filed Under: Technology

Links from PeterMe

July 25, 2002 by Scott Rosenberg

Peter Merholz offers a great collection of links offering real research into the nature of online relationships.

We know there continues to be some lag time intermittently on the blogs.salon.com server. Working on it!

Filed Under: Technology

Live from OSCon

July 24, 2002 by Scott Rosenberg

Doc Searls is blogging live from the O’Reilly Open Source conference. Speeches by Larry Lessig and Richard Stallman. (Footnote: the earlier Doc post commenting on Sun, “Scott vs. Scott,” attributes a Salon article to me that was actually by Michael Thomas.)

Filed Under: Events, Technology

.Net vapors

July 24, 2002 by Scott Rosenberg

Two years ago I wrote that Microsoft’s .NET scheme was vaporware. Today Rebecca Buckman in the Wall Street Journal reports that, basically, it still is.

Filed Under: Technology

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