Notices

True, but don't tell them.. pretend we use wi-fi for all our networking all the time. (Anyway that's our preference and what we wish for, so it must be what matters. )

hm, e.g. my previous operator had an offer that for 10 euro or so per month you get interactive radio from a library with ratings and so on. guess how sad will they be because last.fm will stop working on mobiles.

the limitation, imho, is about phones because there's still outrageous money to be made there. they don't care about cellular data. they care about the market where 160 chars cost 0.07€, a 30 second ringtone costs 1€ and 10 mb traffic costs 2€. proof is, that here for example internet is much cheaper over a 3g modem than on a phone.

Actually, that's not correct. I've been doing some research on this as things have been coming to the surface and developing and it turns out that this is actually a well laid out plan by the RIAA and MPAA to milk the existing system as long as possible by making it as difficult as possible for the newer systems to get off the ground and take hold.

There are two primary reasons for this. 1) They want to milk existing CD sales as much as possible, and 2) they want time to get new income and revenue streams in place before finally giving in and allowing the new systems to fully take hold.

So in a way, they're just using this as an excuse to stall as long as possible while they change over their business model. Part of the slowness of the changeover is their large number of contracts. As each contract comes up for renewal, they're going to change them and go after every other possible revenue stream the artists have, even areas (such as concerts) that the music bosses couldn't touch before. So in short, the music industry will become what we want it to be, music will finally be freed, but artists will still get screwed over by the media giants nickle and diming them to death.

Raiden: You'll note I added a clarification of my "they're clueless" point: A piece from a blog post I did on the Hulu-Boxee thing:

"See I'm old enough to remember life before cable. A time when Cable was for HBO and Showtime and little else. I saw how Cable went from something extra for the TV to something necessary for TV. Most of the compelling TV has moved to cable. OTA (over the air) broadcast is basically, medical shows, CSI shows and "unscripted" reality shows. That's it really. Well if you don't include the weekend sports. So OTA is really only useful for local news casts. And since 9-11, reception of traditional air broadcasts have sucked by me. So most people pay at least $12 for basic cable (AKA clear OTA programming). Now all those other stations, TBS, SPIKE, etc. are revenue streams for the likes of Time Warner, Cablevision, etc. as well as the "content providers." Cable companies and their local subsidiaries also have a monopoly on break in advertising. They sell advertising on various channels to local businesses. This is a brisk business that has branched out into movie theatres as well. Hulu breaks this business model completely since a great deal of people who use Boxee have cut the cable/satelite and use Boxee as their content viewer of choice. So the really big losers here: Cable companies. Not only are they losing customers who no longer pay the 70+ bucks/month for "premium content." They also lose the advertising bucks because they can't claim to reach x-amount of people per station.

The "content providers" still make money because all Hulu programming has advertising so they can still make a profit and that profit would increase as more people moved from Cable to Boxee.

Now if you don't want to believe me about the cable angle, then take a look at the Boxee blog where they discuss the cable company execs that came to "visit" Boxee at CES. If you think those execs left the Boxee booth saying: "Yo, good **** they have there." I suggest laying off the herb. I will lay out cold cash that these execs were on the cell phones with lawyers and "content execs" as soon as they left the Boxee booth. I surmise the conversations went something like: WTF!!! WTF!!!These people are putting your **** on OUR TV's!!!! We have CONTRACTS!!! WTF!!!!(Think Christian Bale interrupted during a Terminator shoot). I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some threat to not broadcast any "content provider" who continued to allow Boxee access to their content. Think not? How many times have you seen the scrolling threat to cut off some set of channels or another over some dispute with the tag: please call such and such company....?

Yes folks, my thinking is that the "content providers" were more than happy to get Boxee users streaming Hulu content to their shiny flat panel TV's. I believe that the cable companies saw the end to their business. Of course had they NOT decided to stick the public for way overpriced "content delivery." They wouldn't have had this problem, but anyone who did the math I did, realized that streaming video over their internet connection which is a must have today, along with a AppleTV costs less per year even in the first year, than a cable subscription."

And yet all this does is encourages music piracy as well as other recommendation systems. Ones that have the backbone to fight back (like Google is doing with Youtube) or evolve so that each step they take to block or sue users the P2P method improves.

For those of you not following http://maemo.org/news

http://blogs.igalia.com/berto/2009/0...aming-service/

Well, it also encourages to pay for commercial mainstream music (which actually makes sense) or to listen less music from a handful of private media conglomerates (and this includes plenty of "rebel" bands) and more non-mainstream and even freely distributable music bradcasted by public and not-for-profit organizations.

http://www.rtve.es/radio/radio3/ is a great example of what the money of citizens' taxes can pay. Priceless. Only one program (Atmósfera) has been enough to change completely my habits listening music.

And about new trends in commercial services, things like http://www.comeswithmusic.com/ are also interesting to follow.

Thanks, for that Atmosfera podcast thingies are so nice streamed to my nit :-)

I guess I am one of the last people who doesn't download 'free music' from the internet. I am also very biased since I do some sound recording and mixing part time and so I see a lot of friends and acquaintances employed by the music industry losing their jobs and finding it more and more difficult to make a living from their formerly established careers.

I'm definitely not above the making my own questionable moves when it comes to downloading music (I capture my paid Rhapsody stream to play offline) but I truly believe that the free ride nature that is taking over music will really begin to hurt the art not just the top executives.

edit: I do realize that the argument in this thread is more about the "pipe" through which the data comes through, where there is definitely a grey area.

For centuries musicians have got an income mostly thanks to live performances. And it continues to be so for most of them.

so far for the music revolution .
scheduled Revolutions don't take place ... I guess the old saying is true after all, but it was a nice service. any alternatives to look at out there?