Jennlog

Is a fan someone who likes hearing a song on the radio?

Is a fan someone who records the song off the radio or downloads that song off of bittorrent for their ipod?

Is a fan someone who buys a copy of that song on iTunes Music Store or Amazon.com?

Is a fan someone who buys a CD that includes that song from the Internet or a record store?

Is a fan someone who buys a used copy of the CD for $0.99 on ebay or in a used CD store?

Is a fan someone who buys the artist’s entire back catalog of CDs, used, on ebay or at a used CD store?

Is a fan someone who pays $5 cover charge to see an artist in a bar?

Is a fan someone who pays $1000 to a “Broker” to see an artist in a stadium?

Is a fan someone who pays $40 for a screen printed t-shirt featuring the artist?

Is a fan someone who evangelizes an artist to other people but has never purchased the artist’s music?

What is a fan?

If I ran a Record Label, I’d make sure that everyone who worked for me read Courtney Love’s speech from the Spring 2000 Digital Hollywood conference in New York. This is probably the single most brilliant thing I’ve ever heard or read about the music business in the digital age. Read it.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d understand that artists were successful before labels existed and will remain successful after labels disappear.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d realize that the product I had been successful in selling until digital distribution harshed my world was not music, it was a container — and we were great at making, selling and distributing containers but mostly suck at understanding music as an intangible medium.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d understand that the businesses of manufacturing and distributing music containers were essentially commodity businesses that relied upon scarcity and/or saturation in the marketplace. If an artist didn’t have access to containers, the odds of them ever having their art available to the world were slim — and container listening folks were only able to to access the containers presented to them in their local record/cd store.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d go out of business before demanding or requesting ISPs and Countries support my quickly disintegrating business propositions with blanket subscription fees. I’d know that in most “blanket” music levy situations, only a select few highly promoted artists (and subsequently their publishers and labels) are disproportionate recipients of the collected funds. Recipients of 50% of the Canadian blank media levy are identified by their presence in an annual 14-day sample of commercial and state-operated radio stations across Canada.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d understand that the only music-related business to improve it’s control over the consumer in the digital age has been the ticket scalp^H^H^H^H^Hbroker. I’d work with artists on improving or optimizing the ticket-buying experience of people attending their live performances.

If I ran a Record Label, I’d forget everything that I and my industry had ever done to control the productization, packaging and distribution of containers and focus on helping my artists connect to and maintain a relationship with people who appreciate their art. There is no such thing as a “used” relationship.

This proposed service has so many vertically integrated layers of wrong it is nearly impossible for me to believe HBO is the creator of this service.

I suspect the real brain trust behind this service is Time Warner and I suspect HBO was selected as the Cable Producer-Programmer launch partner because of its familial relationship with Time Warner Cable and an obligation to participate in corporate-mandated “innovations”.

Time Warner Cable and the other cable operators who could sign on to this service have the most to gain if this this service becomes successful. It will enable cable operators to extend the influence of their walled garden infrastructure onto media distributed over their Internet services.

In the world of cable television media production and distribution, there are five roles that “touch” a piece of media before the consumer sees a picture in their home:

1. Producer - creates the content for a
2. Distributor - sells the content to a
3. Programmer - orders the content into linear channels for a
4. Packager - prices the channels for distribution by an
5. Aggregator - sells subscriptions to consumers

HBO is the Producer of its own award-winning shows and series and also the Programmer that positions these shows amongst the many channels it operates between films and other content it purchases from Distributors.

Time Warner Cable packages the HBO channels into tiers and aggregates the content in the tiers to set top boxes leased/owned by subscribers.

The Time Warner Cable subscribers who will be eligible to receive this service are required to also subscribe to the Time Warner-owned HBO premium pay TV package and pay for the Time Warner-owned Broadband Internet service.

This announcement is less about a customer facing media product and more likely the proof of concept for a middleware solution created for cable operators, enabling them to tie the monetization and delivery of Internet media to their legacy conditional access/CRM databases.

In an optimized Internet-based media production and distribution ecosystem, there are fewer roles:

1. Producer

There is no need for ordering and positioning of media as these are roles assumed by the consumer and the distribution of media is negotiated at the transport layer like all Internet communication.

There is no reason why an Internet-focused service should demand a subscriber presence and investment in a non-Internet infrastructure. A small number of highly technical HBO subscribers may find this service useful, but with so many restrictions and conditions on the media, the average family will probably just rather find media through the Internet with the least resistance.

Why is this service ultimately going to fail? It relies upon obfuscating the efficiency of transport-layer distribution with application-layer legacy cable conditional access technology (and infrastructure). The service is marketed to cable systems rather than consumers as a solution to reduce the churn of premium HBO subscribers. Ultimately, this service requires that a “Packager” role be reconstituted by MSOs on the Internet, and that’s just messy.

I predict this service will die within a year.

During the last few days, much has been written in the popular tech blogs about the throttling actions of Comcast vs. the proposed metering actions of Time Warner — suggesting that metering might be the preferred and fairer approach to restricting subscribers’ growing bandwidth usage habits. That discussion only focuses on a small part of the bigger picture, however.

From the network operator perspective, degrading service and metering service are mutually exclusive actions that create opportunities for monetization on each side of their operation at the application layer.

In the media distribution food chain, cable companies and telcos have always monetized either side of the communications relationship they are facilitating — at the application layer. Connectivity and access at the transport layer are not monetized by legacy communications infrastructure as it is with IP networks.

Cable companies charge, demand ad revenue opportunities or otherwise negotiate remuneration from television networks requesting availability to their subscribers and then turn around and charge subscribers for access to the television networks.

“Network Availability” (what AT&T and others are suggesting they need, in opposition to “Network Neutrality”) is about restricting and monetizing media availability to subscribers.

“Conditional Access” and DRM are about restricting and monetizing subscriber access to media.

In an application layer monetized world, if an operator can’t negotiate a revenue stream from a media producer or aggregator, availability of the media producer’s product is degraded or disallowed — If revenue can’t be obtained as a result of a subscriber request of a media product, access is prevented.

With the Internet, network operators have been left out of the media delivery monetization pie, other than deriving income by supplying “Naked” transport in to and out from their infrastructure.

Comcast and Time Warner are approaching the monetization of Internet-delivered media completely differently.

If Comcast can successfully negotiate frees from media producers and aggregators in exchange for not degrading their Internet-delivered media, Comcast has successfully generated a huge stream of perpetual income that didn’t exist until that deal.

If Time Warner can successfully implement fees from subscribers in exchange for delivery of their Internet-delivered media, Time Warner has successfully generated a huge stream of perpetual income that didn’t exist until those subscribers signed on.

Today, Netflix announced they are offering their subscribers “Unlimited Streaming” of movies and TV shows “on their PCs” — beginning today their “unlimited” DVD rental subscribers (tiers beginning at $8.99/month) may start streaming unlimited movies and TV shows.

The Netflix press release specifically refers to PCs as being the destination device for their unlimited streaming plan, but depending on the formats and encryption selected, a “PC” could mean any IP-based device connected to a television — an AppleTV or Mac Mini, Tivo, Slingbox or Microsoft Media Center. But, this information is conspicuously absent from the Netflix site which has me suspecting it’s a not-so spectacular Windows-only format.

The announcement of a “Hollywood-fed” full-feed pay-one-price video streaming service is huge, but only if the format is eventually transportable and compatible with mobile and wireline devices. If it is tied to Windows or restricted to a specific player, it’s just another proprietary footnote on the pathway to a useful service.

The number one loser in the market today due to this announcement has to be your local cable company. Cable companies will try to launch stream-based services, to keep their customers inside “The Garden” while they are out and about in Internet land, but will largely fail because cable doesn’t have the mind share when consumers start thinking of feeding their IP-based video devices.

If Comcast scrapes through the FCC hearing on their practice of degrading P2P services used by their subscribers unscathed, you can bet that they (and other operators) will start degrading all third-party streaming services on their networks unless direct per-sub revenue shares are negotiated.

None of the streaming deals are exclusive as far as I know, so as soon as someone in Hollywood starts to see a winning model emerge, they will start feeding the streaming channel directly. Netflix should enjoy their market success now, while it lasts — they will be in Blockbuster’s shoes in three to five years unless they develop some extreme competitive technical and marketplace advantage (highly unlikely).

In my recent post about not attending CES, I referenced an idea I have about a conference I’d love to attend, but doesn’t exist — sort of a “Whole Communications Show and Conference.” Later, I shared a little of my philosophy about media relationships and how devices and infrastructure play a facilitating role rather than a central role.

Media relationships are rare in today’s communications environment — In fact, media producers seem to have been actively trying to avoid them. The cable system operators and telcos have amplified this inclination, by locking media and communications products behind Walled Gardens.

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However, both audio and visual media have reached the point where their consumable and broadcast formats are universally available on one hand and universally usable on the other. This optimal state enables the media products to escape proprietary devices and networks and exist wherever the format is understood.

The recording industry has been very slow to adapt to this development and the motion picture and television industries appear to be a little more cognizant about their future, but seem to be hesitating when it comes to fully embracing change.

There are several high-profile examples of television networks developing Windows-only media download services and film studios still encourage the formation of operator-based exclusive content deals.

Tethering media products artificially restricts media’s availability to consumers and conversely constricts a consumer’s access to media — this is why “Network Neutrality” is important. However, if media producers were truly invested in neutrality, they would be enthusiastically pursuing the formation of media relationships, and they aren’t — yet.

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Under the misnomer of “Convergence,” media producers have been sold on a vision of the future that advises them to adapt their existing products from one old media device or infrastructure onto another old media device or infrastructure.

The “Triple Play” concept invented by the incumbent infrastructure operators is a perfect example of the linear thinking and tunnel vision behind “New Media”.

Media producers are best to forget about Triple Plays and start conceptualizing media products for features that exist across platforms and networks — there are no more televisions or stereos, there are players.

The days of remonetizing assets across and upon new platforms are also over, as demonstrated by the fact that everyone has re-encoded their music collections for use upon audio players — it’s only a matter of time before consumers start re-encoding their film and television collections for use upon video players.

“Mobile Video”, “Mobile Web” and “Mobile Commerce” do not exist — short of operators obfuscating access to their platform to inflate the size of their Walled Garden. There will be no logical reason why IP video, web or commerce can’t exist natively within a mobile environment as it does on any other Internet-connected device.

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There are a couple dozen media industry conferences produced worldwide. Most have been around for decades, begun as their respective industries took shape. Until the 90s, most of the media industries were segmented along proprietary infrastructure — For example, cable television shows were all about the newest set top box, largest head ends and widest coax cable and mobile telephony shows were focused on how to deliver more voice calls, of a higher quality through a matrix of smarter cell towers from smaller portable telephones.

As the Internet gained users and growth, an avalanche of digital media applications were tacked onto the formerly-proprietary networks and devices courtesy of IP-inspired technologies. The trade shows however, remained very linear in their focus. Even their “New Media” context was all about identifying and segmenting off the newest digital services within their old, proprietary business models.

I believe there will always be a need for shows for device manufacturers, for media producers and game developers to meet separately amongst others in their field to formulate standards, discuss best practices and whatnot.

Infrastructure operators across platforms need to begin thinking of meeting together at a large IP Network shindig (less NetWorld + Interop, more outward-facing) or else become naked transport against their will. Whole Media will commoditize incumbent infrastructure into raw transport, they will need to become the best, most efficient transport they can to compete effectively in a Whole Media economy.

The Whole Communications Show will give media producers a place to spend a little time at the 50,000 foot level with device manufacturers and work on products that create media relationships independent of infrastructure and allow for license federation across devices — Whole Media.

Producers that ignore Whole Media will find their existing and planned business models and partnerships disrupted — and eventually, their assets outside of their control.

Consumers are quick to understand that they can move abandoned media wherever they desire with or without the producer’s participation. Whole Media is about grabbing hold of the media relationship with consumers and actively working with them to facilitate a relationship wherever it may go.

Whole Media is a relationship without segmentation — concerning products without boundaries.

I lied in my previous post. I said that I would be sharing some thoughts about my Whole Media Show and Conference concept, but I need to provide some background first.

During my GWH&A/Hallmark Interactive days, I came up with a diagram that went into a white paper I wrote about our Associative Media Platform architecture. This diagram eventually made it into our AMP patent application (USPTO 2005/0060640) — and with a few tweaks for the purposes of generalization, the diagram remains a useful aid in sharing my media relationship philosophy.

Anatomy of a Media Relationship

First and foremost, media is a relationship between a producer and a consumer (or subscriber). From a story shared around a fire 2000 years ago to a video shared over the Internet today — media is about a creator and a consumer — everything and everyone else facilitates this relationship.

Secondly, devices and infrastructure are commodities that are used in the formation and extension of media relationships. People do not purchase devices or subscribe to infrastructure services for the sake of owning a device or pleasure of viewing blinking LEDs. Devices enable consumers to retrieve, receive and enjoy media (and yes, also create media as producers) — computers, ipods, televisions, stereos and movie theaters are all devices. Infrastructure also enables consumers to retrieve, receive and enjoy media by providing a transport for media from the producer to the consumer’s device — CDs, DVDs, motion picture film, the Internet, FedEx trucks, and mobile data networks are all infrastructure.

From the Producer’s vantage, a deliberate conformation of media towards exclusive devices or a restricted availability upon infrastructure platforms can destroy the possibility of maintaining a consumer’s connection to media product across devices and/or infrastructure.

In an ideal media world, decisions and accommodations concerning the device and the infrastructure would not exist. Media would truly exist within a direct relationship with subscribers. Relationship constraints that affect the delivery and enjoyment of media products would be dynamically assessed and media products prepared for the subscriber’s environment.

- A consumer could begin watching a film at a theater with friends, leave early — continue to watch on a bus ride home on a mobile phone, and finish watching it on her television and yet use the media product within linear (or even non-linear) license boundaries set by the producer.

- A consumer could select whether he would pay “in-full” for their media products, pay “in-part” for his media products and either participate in promotions or agree to receive an advertising-based subsidy — or some dynamic mixture of the two within a-la carte purchases/opportunities and/or package subscriptions independent of delivery.

A consumer would have the ultimate control over her device preferences and pay her infrastructure providers of choice for the utility of packet/cell/frame distribution.

Subscriber identity would be liberated from the infrastructure operators and devices (IMEI/ESN, MAC, IP) and instead be released to subscribers at the application layer. Identity would be utilized within media use, rather than connectivity status or device ownership.

The media marketplace (and industry as a whole) is broken. The media producers’ adherence (or possibly obligation) to the kings of outmoded infrastructure has precluded their monetized (modeled) inclusion within and upon new infrastructure as they evolve.

Media producers should be leading the evolution of availability, sustainability and accountability. Media should be exciting for consumers not an invitation to litigation.

Minitel image from Wikipedia: Tieum

Firstly, I can’t call it a “Kindle” because it sounds like something you might need to start a fire. Doohickey sounds just right.

Amazon has decided to bring this $399 mobile eBook device to market with a modified iPod sales model — sell the device, sell content for the device at a nice iMall.

However, there is a pretty clear divergence. Amazon frees the device from requiring a tether (positive and negative points here).

Positive: Rather than requiring a PC to sync content the device from the iMall, the Doohickey uses a nice wireless phone connection that silently dials home to Amazon any time it needs something.

Negative: iTunes gives you a local copy of the asset you have purchased (or licensed, to use the media industry term). iTunes makes it easy for you to burn a copy of your movie or music so that you may listen to it in your car, on a stereo or wherever. You can also burn that CD back into iTunes without the Apple DRM, allowing you to use the DRM-free content on any device, anywhere you wish. Amazon’s iMall allows you to download your AmazonBook onto any other Amazon Doohickey, anytime you wish.

There are no plans to open up the proprietary Amazon eBook format, so if you wish to revisit your current AmazonBook in the future, you will need a Doohickey.

Actually, now I’ve spent all this time researching the Doohickey. The Doohickey is closer to this Minitel Terminal from France than an iPod. It has all the words you may ever need, but you’ll need the terminal and a few francs to retrieve them.

I’ve been watching quite a lot of television on the web since I put my DirecTV service on hiatus for the summer.

Thus far, I think the winning implementation for delivering on-demand television to the web is Move Networks. The shows (sometimes) available from my local Fox station are next to flawless and really enjoyable experience.

In contrast, the worst experience by a wide margin can be found on CBS’s “innertube”. The CBS television experience features hundreds of “Buffering… Buffering… Buffering…” waits between random akamai/doubleclick errors* and dozens of CBS web server-based “slow script”** errors. When did Akamai and Real Networks begin to suck so much?

And what is up with the web television commercials that have the audio cranked to 11? One word for you web television services: “NORMALIZATION”. Seriously, the audio on some of these commercials is at least three times louder than your programming content. Computer users should not have to leap to their volume controls in an attempt to prevent their speakers from being destroyed every time a commercial starts streaming.

I can’t wait until web television/IPTV content aggregators decide to apply some quality control to their products. This industry technology left the experimental stage more than ten years ago.

Peer-to-peer television holds great promise, but the most popular solutions all seem to require Microsoft Windows or Intel CPUs at this time. I wonder if Broadcast TV would have been as popular if NBC programming was limited to General Electric TV sets and shows on ABC were only compatible with RCA sets?

Web Television has a long way to go.

* “RealPlayer: Connection to server has timed out. You may be experiencing network problems. rtsp://a1770.v219276.c21927.g.vr.akamaistream,net/ondemand/7/1770/21827/v7201400/
cmscomstor.download.akamai.com/8605/_!/g2demand/entertainment/primetime/bigbrother8/
rebroadcast/ep05/bigbro805d.rm?auth=daEcObMbEb.dwbkaWb1cLbncHaadMcsddai-bgOq2X-buy-EaEncVlg&aifp=v07201400”

** “A script on the page CBS.com - Innertube http://www.cbs.com/innertube/player.php?cat=140205&vid=&format=&auto=1 is making Safari unresponsive. Do you want to continue running the script, or stop it?“

There are two consumer electronic DRM stories bubbling to the Internet consciousness recently.

The first has to do with Sony Pictures deciding it was time to start encrypting their movie content with a new DRM scheme that their own Sony Electronics DVD Players (not to mention any other DVD player made until maybe a month ago) cannot decypher.

This can’t be too good for Sony, as they are still struggling with the poor “goodwill” created when they started installing malware onto their customer’s PCs.

If at first Sony doesn’t succeed, try again. And again. This is clearly a protracted example in how to piss customers off, permanently.

The second involves the reprogramming of more recent HD-DVD and Blu-ray “high definition” disc players that, unlike their DVD playing hardware cousins, were actually meant to be “field re-programmable.”

AACS LA, the DRM licensing authority for all your favorite take-home HD media needs has determined that it is time to release new DRM keys for your favorite take-home HD media players.

This is all fine and good, in an ideal world where hardware keys and locked media are defined and matched dynamically, you expire the old key and activate the new key at the same time you expire the old lock and activate the new lock.

The problem with hardware is, once it has left the factory (or store), you are purchasing a device with a defined key. The problem with take-home media is once it has left the factory (or store), you are purchasing a piece of media with a defined lock. The lock and key have to match before you are allowed by the media producer and the hardware manufacturer to enjoy your content.

If one side of the key holder and lock builder scenario diverge, consumers of keys and locks (because this is where the consumer media marketplace has evolved) are left with locks, keys and no content.

Field-programmable devices (such as HD-DVD and Blu-ray disc players) can accept their new keys by an automatic update included with all new locks er media, simply include a special header in the media handshake process that forces the player to avoid the content on the disc and install the new keys from the disc instead and then reboot. For device manufacturers, this is the ideal key distribution case. The other common hardware/firmware update can occur through manufacturers requiring consumers to download software from the Internet onto a CD-Rom and have them turn on their DVD/CD player with the disc inside (this is less ideal, as it requires alot of action from a consumer).

Where the funkiness begins is when key expiration is required. What happens to the old locks in your collection that needed this key to play? Well, they don’t unless they are allowed to work, only on media produced before the revocation date (when the new key and lock set were published).

The second amount of funkiness starts when lock makers (media companies), decide it is time to make, design and distribute a new lock. Not simply filling the distribution pipeline with new locks generated from the same algorithm the previous key could unlock but creating a new algorithm. This new algorithm needs to be installed along with new keys inside your DVD player or computer so that the media encrypted with the new lock. But what about the old keys and locks? Well, they don’t just go away either. They stick around anyway.

Requiring a media player to store and understand all these keys and algorithms is fine when it’s a PC, but sooner or later an “untethered” device will start to slow down or simply stop working because it can no longer handle all of these firmware changes.

The media companies have already defined a path, stating that it is the consumer equipment manufacturers’ responsibility to keep consumers up to date with the keys required of the media companies’ locks, even when these locks are non-standard and proprietary (and breaking the media format specification).

I predict two things will happen. Consumer electronics manufacturers will tire of their devices’ becoming randomly but eventually disabled by media companies’ drm policies. And, consumers will get pissed off that the lifetimes of their electronics and purchased media no longer means life-time it means time-to-disabled.

DRM can not last.