DMEC

I feel like I tend to hear about new web services before most of the country. Somehow, Jajah has reached two million users without me hearing a peep out of them. Has anyone used Jajah? How do you compare it to Skype?

Apparently, one of the things Jajah enables: you provide it your phone number and someone else’s phone number and it rings you both, connecting the call. At the least, I like that innovation is occurring around all these phones we have. Being attached to a computer to make cheap calls is not pleasant. Or, is it a bad thing that innovation is occurring around what we know as a phone today, meaning that consumers will continue to be saddled with the cost of phone service when there are cheaper ways to communicate by voice? If anything, I think plays like Jajah, Jangl, and Grand Central will provide pressure on incumbents to innovate on service and reduce costs. As an aside, I think Grand Central has a great name for what it is, although I believe Minor used to use the name for a different business. Maybe it’s a good thing that business didn’t work out.

I’m fond of raw innovation (e.g. Skype), but I’m perhaps equally fond of innovation around existing infrastructure (e.g. Jajah). Jajah’s creative offering reminds me of another piece of genius underway in Texas: powering the city during the day with energy generated at night from wind and stored in a gigantic virtual car battery.

While we’re on the topic of innovation around what we know of as phones today, I’m a big fan of the service I receive from SunRocket. Better sound quality than Skype without the irritation of expiring credits. And, I can use any standard cordless phone with it. To top it off, an annual contract is not required and they offer a plan for $10/month ($20/month is too much to pay for a home phone when already paying a fortune for mobile phone service).  If you decide to sign up and give them my phone number, I think they’ll give you something extra in return.

The record labels have stooped to a new low. I know—hard to believe, but true, and it’s happening in our own backyard. And what’s more disturbing than the actions of the labels is the compliance of the UC school system—UC Berkeley in particular. Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me set the stage.

CD sales are down for the seventh consecutive year, inciting panic among industry giants. While still profitable, their once-healthy margins are eroding rapidly, as they haven’t taken the time to innovate around a new business model that would capitalize on digital music. Instead, they are clinging to a faulty DRM system amid recent counterstrikes such as Steve Jobs’ appeal to eliminate the faulty system, and fellow industry giant EMI’s alleged move to offer its collection DRM-free.

So what is their solution? “Let’s sue college kids, because once they realize the penalties of sharing our music illegally, they’ll be sure to buy CD’s again or pay $0.99 per song, right?” Now even though I wrote it, I’ll not dignify this rhetorical gem with a response.

Here’s where the real sordid details come in. How do the labels know how to find the students? Surely their identity is somehow masked behind the guarded cloak of their university. Alas, it seems your esteemed university, the bastion of ideals and convictions, has been caught in bed with the unsavory fat (albeit much slimmer now) cats of the music industry (unless you’re affiliated with the honorable University of Wisconsin, which has maintained its principles in rejecting the overtures of the labels).

Now I’m not advocating the illegal sharing of music, or the circumventing of DRM, or anything else against the law. I was just trying to put my finger on the real problem in the music industry (before I was sidetracked by the shameful matter of privacy and your university). If the recording industry wants to make money from digital music, they are going to have to figure out how to give it value. They need to stop trying to lock up the music and develop a way to give it value again. I challenge you all to think about how this can happen. Is it additional content from the artists that is tied in with a new type of player? Is it the ability to deconstruct a song the way Nine Inch Nails has allowed through GarageBand? Is it song quality (probably not)? Is it tied into video games?

Whatever it is, I’m confident that music fans are not going to flock back to CD stores and fork over cash for tracks just because a few of their friends are getting sued. In fact, they’re likely to rebel even harder in the future. There’s no question the generation of listeners out there today is many times over more innovative than the morons that pass for executives in an industry deteriorating before our very eyes.

Slashdot is reporting that the RIAA is going after a 10 year old girl in Oregon.  Okay, we get it, pirating music is illegal.  But a 10 year old girl?  Whose mom is disabled and living off social security?  Gimme a break.

I wonder if the RIAA recognizes how evil they seem.

There’s a fascinating article in the most recent East Bay Express about Johnny Shaw, a homeless Berkeleyan who has produced a film about the many interesting characters and life in general on Berkeley’s streets. Johnny lives in a carport, gets his meals free from a local church, and doesn’t usually have more than a few dollars on him at a time. However, using a digital camcorder and a laptop, which he acquired through some interesting means, he’s created a film that’s gotten distribution through local retail and indieflix.com. A variety of film festivals across the globe are also requesting his film. The meat of the story deals with how Johnny will wrestle with the undesirable notion of playing in the normal rules of film production, not because it’s a typical story of selling out, but because Johnny’s central theme and creative flow is a direct result of his situation.

Finally, a serious competitor to Google in the search market.  I mean, if you can’t win a prize while searching, what’s the point?  And from Kevin Federline!
http://searchwithkevin.prodege.org/ 

(PS The site is powered by Yahoo)