2007 6
I want my Last.fm!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
I live in Spain. In Spain it´s legal to use P2P. But while people can use P2P programs in their Macs it seems that they will not be able to use them in the iPod Touch taking advantage of the new WiFi functionality. This functionality seems to work only to buy songs (videos not allowed) from iTunes and not to get nor send songs to your friends over WiFi. Even in the States where P2P is illegal, most people download their music using software like Limewire, Bittorrent, and my guess is that at least 90% of the music in all iPods in America has been downloaded from P2P and music streaming sites. Apple knows this well and they know that if they checked if people had paid for all the music they have in their iPods, something they could easily do, their iPod sales would plummet. My guess is that Apple launched the iTunes shop in order to avoid the wrath of the record labels. But iTunes is not for me as it does not even have a decent all you can eat offer like Yahoo Music or Rhapsody. A music unlimited deal would be cool especially when combined with WiFi. This is what what Zing´s gadget offer. I have been using the Sansa/Yahoo all you can eat music offer for a while. I also like Sonos for my home but was dissapointed with Music Gremlin. But at least what Apple could do so I can walk around with the most beautifully designed music gadget that I can connect to Fon is to have Last.fm in the iPod Touch. I want my, I want my, I want my Last.fm!
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shiidii on September 7, 2007 ·
One of the biggest shortcomings of Itunes is the Bitrate of the audio files that they are selling. The standard bitrate of music downloaded illegally is 192kbs, just high enough for the audio compression not to be noticeable, where as 320kbs is just about CD quality. Itunes sells audio at 128kbs, the compression noticeable on a decent sound system. I think it’s unfair that people have done the right thing and purchased their music, yet they are given a low quality version of something they could easily obtain illegally elsewhere.
Rebeca on September 7, 2007 ·
Loving Last.fm too! I discovered it some years ago, when nobody knew that –except for some “musical beings” like me. It helps you discover new groups and musicians and its catalogue (thanks to its agreement with independent music companies) is much more vaste than itunes or yahoo music, because Last.fm has a powerful suggestion tool. And you respect copyright while listening.
Cool! 🙂
pau valiente on September 7, 2007 ·
Martin, on the ipod touch you have safari, so you can open the last.fm page and play music. Have you tried that with your iphone? Does it play fine or it doesn’t load the player?
Martin Varsavsky on September 9, 2007 ·
Shiidii,
Very interesting point. In a way the same happens when you pay a ton for a dvd and they show you trailers and ads.
Carlos on September 10, 2007 ·
Martin
I’d like to share some insights related with wifi sharing and p2p/mobile music services with you. If you really’d like to have some kind of a last.fm linked with your global fon wifi sharing service…why not doing it by yourself? Technically it’s perfectly feasible and for sure affordable. Feel free to contact me at the given email address in case this topic is of your interest.
Btw, nice and really interesting blog.
Carlos
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Martin Vives on September 7, 2007 ·
Yesterday or so I was reading about a record industry guru who was saying somewhat the same: That future of music would be an “allyoucaneat” service accessible from everywere.
I just think that record companies will try to fight against that as long as they can, but if things keep going as they have been, then this is the only future I see as plausible for this mentioned enterprises.
I thought of the merge of Ipod and last.fm almost since I tried last.fm for the first time. I saw some kind of rating-capable software on the new iPod touch, but I´m sure it can not match last.fm community on that…
I don´t play music on my computer anymore as I connect my Ipod to my stereo system which sounds much better than my laptop, but I really missed the capability to keep track of what I listen to in the platform I really use to listen to music too.
The only think I´m worried about, is the obvious adverse feelings that web 2.0 users have against any kind of advertisements or buy-it-now-links, even when they offer us good deals and still prefer to check it out first on our old reliable friend google or even ebay… maybe because we were the generation that jumped to internet when we got tired of being targeted by classic media advertisers trying to rip us off. Is not about objective factors any more, I think it has even become an uncounciously applied criteria.
People will always like music. But since people doesn´t have infinite money to spend on tunes… Creating subscriptions services will benefit the industry as record companies will get constant monthly payments and users will be able to get 10 fold more music than they used to get legally – music that because of their finite budget they would have never adquired otherwise.
I know I´m kinda getting away from the topic, but I´m really wondering how will the industry divide the profit they get from this kind of services rewarding the best artists in a fair way… Its easy to think that companies will only want to promote artists that they know will get people into subscription services and will forget about niche markets that would anyways subscribe to the flat rate service because of another group they like – hope I make myself clear…
I want to end up saying that even I have downloaded tons of music with uTorrent I still like to buy original CDs when the artist deserves my respect… And my progressive change to dowloaded-only music listening, its more due to the CD format becomming obsolete (as I carry my 30gb iPod Video with me always) than to actual price… Even though the actual one will still be an important factor to take into account as long as Im a student.
Suggestion: I hope industry realizes this change in the paradigma before they get late -once again- to this evolution of music-market scheme.
Amen.