dean.ero.com

Are you interested on the effects of technology on the music industry? Do you have deep knowledge or a strong opinion about where current technological trends are taking the music business? If so, I would love your feedback on two papers that I wrote early this year on the effects of technology on the distribution of recorded music.

The first paper addresses historical disruption and covers the period spanning from the advent of recorded music through the pre-2000 era of industry consolidation. The current draft is located here:

http://deanero.wordpress.com/paper-historical-disruption-in-the-music-business/

The second paper discusses the current period of digital disruption and makes an attempt to look into the future. It’s interesting to note how much more obvious the trend towards closed systems has become–even in the six months since the paper was written! The current draft is here:

http://dean.ero.com/digital-disruption-music-distribution-in-the-digital-age/

Reading these papers and letting me know what you think would be a huge help for me–I’m sure the versions as posted have holes, inaccuracies, and abuses of the language.

If you’re git savvy, working versions of both papers are available in a public repository on Github (under the MCDM folder):

http://github.com/deanh/Writing/tree/master/MCDM

You can just clone the repository, make changes and send me a pull request.

Thanks in advance for your time. Any feedback is appreciated!

There has been a lot of discussion about the somewhat blatant omission of Flash from Apple’s newly introduced tablet, the iPad. Many of the technorati see the exclusion of Flash as Apple flexing its muscle as a kingmaker. They argue that Apple is using its influence to deprecate a technology it dislikes. While there has been some interesting talk around what this means for standards, web technologies and the future of Flash in particular, people may be missing the point. Apple’s decision to not include Flash on the iPhone OS platform (also used on the iPad) is likely a business decision and not an engineering one.

Those who support the decision argue that the inclusion of Flash would make the limitations of the hardware more obvious; as a CPU hog, Flash would slow down the browsing experience of the iPhone and the iPad and drain battery life. But businesses (Apple included) make engineering trade-offs all the time. Flash’s issues in Safari hardly seem like deal breakers and would be worthwhile trade-off for the value that it brings to a media consumption platform.

I don’t think Apple decided to pick a public fight with Adobe—arguably its most valuable third-party developer—because supporting Flash was too technically challenging. Rather, it likely has to do with Apple’s relationship with the content industry. Flash is verboten on the iPhone OS for the same reason that saving MP3s is verboten. So Apple can placate content owners and maintain the viability of its iTunes business.

If Flash were enabled on the iPhone OS, how long would it take for someone to put a streaming, Flash-based player in front of a new music service? Apple is the leading retailer of music in the United States. Why should it enable competition in a business where it has no peers and on a platform it has no reason to cede?  It simply doesn’t make sense for Apple to undercut its iTunes business and jeopardize its special status among content owners. It’s even possible that Apple’s agreements with rights holders expressly forbid it.

If user experience were the sole consideration, I’m sure Apple would gladly provide a Flash-enabled browser. While Apple may have some valid engineering concerns, they strike me as a convenient cover. Disabling Flash helps Apple control content on the platform by forcing it through iTunes or other approved software. This has to be clear to a firm who’s CEO sits on the board at Disney.

This week Steve Jobs announced Apple’s entry into what he described as a new class of digital devices. In one of the most anticipated product announcements in recent memory, he unveiled the iPad, a hybrid device living somewhere between an app phone and the laptop, designed to tidily wrap the bulk of your digital media consumption needs into a tablet not much bigger than a magazine. While setting the stage for his announcement, Mr. Jobs implied that this new device class was defined fill a gap in both size and functionality between existing devices; larger than a phone and smaller than a laptop, the iPad is designed to do more than the former without the complication (or, notably, the general purpose functionality) of the latter. Perhaps predictably, the days since the announcement have seen the internet awash in debate over the usefulness of such a thing, whether or not it has the potential to be revolutionary, or, frankly  if there’s anything innovative about it at all.

While I’m not particularly interested in throwing my hat in the ring amongst the armchair quarterbacks arguing over significance of the iPad (at least not before I’ve had the opportunity to actually try using one, which remains unlikely for at least two months), I do think that its introduction is important. It signifies, a very corporate realization of the potential of a new type of product, although I don’t think this product type is defined by size or its role as a middle sibling between an app phone and laptop. Rather, it’s an implementation of the realization that not everyone wants to do everything on the Internet. With the iPad, Apple is simply betting that a large class of people is willing to trade a broader world of online possibility for a marked improvement in a few specific types of online interaction. Fifteen years after the onset of Internet hype, people still participate in relatively few online activities on a daily basis. Apple has eschewed broad swaths of functionality and codified the concept of this simplicity into the DNA of the device; this simplicity will, in turn, define how its users interact with the Internet at large.

Which brings me to Code 2.0. Code 2.0 is the second edition of a book written by Lawrence Lessig in 1999 which discusses the regulatory complications and ambiguities induced by the Internet. In the book, Mr. Lessig makes some fairly dark prognostications about the future; he does not see the ‘Net of tomorrow as the bastion of the free ideals imagined by its early advocates. Quite the contrary. In fact, Mr. Lessig describes a future in which the constraints on user activity drift toward increasing and perfect control. Most interestingly, this control is not necessarily exercised by malignant actors, but by something at once more subtle and nefarious: the code on which these activities are built.

Code is a colloquial way to refer to software; specifically, code refers to a set of instructions that a programmer provides a computer. It defines what a computer can and can’t do and makes any particular user action in the context of the computer possible. It is code that explicitly defines the rules within which one interacts digitally; code dictates how my mouse works, how the keyboard interprets what I type, where the bits I type are sent over the network, and what happens to them when they get there. Mr. Lessig uses no small amount of intellectual force to argue that it is the structure of the software that we interact with, and, perhaps more significantly, decisions made by those procuring and implementing this code that defines the universe of the possible in cyberspace. And increasingly, the code we interact with in cyberspace is developed by commercial interests.

Herein lies the rub: in this context, we have little recourse if code restricts behavior that would otherwise be well within our rights. Just as McDonalds has the right to to kick me out their restaurant if I say something that the manager thinks offensive, Facebook a the right to restrict the content of my posts insomuch as they deem them inappropriate. But the power of this control is far greater in cyberspace than in the real world. Facebook can pre-emptively control my behavior by modifying the code that allows me to post on their platform; I’m not only regulated by social norms and by what is punishable, but also by what is possible. We take this restriction of possibility for granted, after all, my ability to interact in a social network is most likely a net gain and Apple’s control of the software on an iPad ensures ease of use. But it’s worth recognizing that as our lives get more deeply intertwined with our interaction with cyberspace, an increasing amount of our possible activity is limited by the designers of the platform’s code. As well-meaning as these designers may be, they are not accountable to the public interest or even the constitution. These are generally closed systems so rules they use to proscribe action are no less opaque than the folks who run these systems want to let on.

The message of Code 2.0 is chilling, particularly in light of the direction the Internet has taken since its writing. Since the release of the second edition in 2006, the world has moved en masse to Facebook, broadly embraced the iPhone, and seen Google creep into every aspect of its online experience. In adopting these platforms users have repeatedly shown their willingness to relinquish privacy and control for convenience. The open Internet has been fragmenting into a collection of major platforms run by increasingly consolidated businesses; while these platforms enable new communications opportunities, one cannot forget that they do so at a cost. The iPad is a continuation of this trend, but no more so than has been dictated by the market forces which facilitate its existence. Like the iPad or not, it’s a signpost on a road that we’ve been on for years. It’s less a revolution than an indicator that we’re still moving steadily into the future described by Mr. Lessig.

If you run a label that takes pre-orders, I think there’s an extra onus on you to have your shit-together. With that in mind, I crafted some guidelines that provide a template as to how a pre-order should be run. Feel free to regard the following as “the ultimate argument settler.”

Harry’s Rules (pre-requisites, rather) for Labels Taking Pre-Orders

1. Understand the process of record production the vagarities of your artists, mastering house, printer and pressing plant well enough to schedule a release date (give or take no more than a week or two). Here are some hints:
   • The record doesn’t exist until your artist has given you music and art. Selling it before then is selling a fantasy.
   • Give yourself 2 weeks to get mastering turned around. And then a month to press records. Print turnaround depends. But remember that the record exists in a way that can be scheduled only once the master’s been cut.
2. Even if you are confident about your release date (give or take a week or two), DO NOT TAKE PEOPLE’S MONEY ANY FURTHER THAN A MONTH PRIOR TO WHEN YOU EXPECT TO SHIP. Unless, of course, you’re trying to capitalize on fleeting hype, in which case you may want to reconsider why you’re putting out the record in the first place.
3. Taking money in order to pay your pressing plant is not a “pre-order” but rather a some sort of a bummer pseudo-ponzi-type situation.
4. Tell people what the release date is when you announce the pre-order. This builds “anticipation” for the record and saddles you with enough specific responsibility to force you keep your proverbial shit together. Release dates move all the time, but people will think you’re hell of together if you can pull one off.
5. If you cannot handle the simple technology of a master list containing the names, addresses and contact information of the people who’ve given you their money in good faith, you should not be taking pre-orders. There’s a particularly popular computer product called Micro-Software Excel that may be able to help to this end. (Yes, we suspect that you do, in fact, have a computer because you posted your pre-order on the internet and take PayPal.) Barring this, a fresh pad of legal paper and a marker should do the trick.
6. (Optional) Don’t put your entire run up for pre-order. This requires a little bit of math and a touch of discipline, but can actually be handled with a few easy steps:
   • Start with the quantity of your entire run.
   • Decide where you’d like to sell the record.
   • Contact the people who may resell your record and figure out the quantities that they’ll need.
   • Set aside the sum of these quantities.
   • Of the remaining total (don’t forget to pull the band quantity!)set aside a fixed amount that you’ll be offering for pre-order.
   • Sell your pre-orders from this quantity. You should maybe even sit on a small number of records until you’re sure that everything sorts itself out: better to make them available later than to fuck over folks that gave you money in good faith.
7. Ship pre-orders at the same time you ship to distros. People who pre-order gave you their money before anyone else. They should at least get the record before folks who didn’t pre-order.
8. Respond to folks who’ve ordered your record to let them know that they’ve either a) succeeded in purchasing the record and it will be shipping to them around specified date or b) you sold out of the record and they’ll have the option to have their money refunded or wait for a repress. Email works very well for these types of communications (using the contact information in your master list outlined in #4, above). Bulk email works great, just try to remember that putting your recipients in the BCC field is the accepted etiquette. You may be able to get away with poor communication if you’ve developed a reputation for your bad-ass mail room work-ethic. You should assume, however, that you in fact haven’t.
9. This isn’t actually a pre-order rule, but: please consider the relative demand for a particular record when deciding how large of a run to press. No one wants to over run records, but 300 is really a no-brainer for most bands. Flake-ily produced, sub-200 copy editions with hand done art should really be the domain of artist self-releases.

If you are unable to do all of the above, I strongly encourage you to wait until you receive finished copies of the record before making it available for sale. If you have the intention to continue to put out records for an extended period of time, the trust and rapport you build with your customers will pay handsomely. In all fairness, I probably couldn’t pull off all-of-the-above, but I also won’t be taking your pre-orders.