With Music, Apple Pleases Older People, Microsoft Focuses on Youth

I’ve spent the last few weeks with a demo Windows Phone running the new version 7.5, or  ”Mango”, operating system. It’s been a splendid time. Microsoft is really onto something.

My regular phone is an iPhone 4S, though, and I have to say: there are no two operating systems so different as Apple’s iOS, which runs on my iPhone, and Mango. They differ in every way, from philosophy, to user experience, to look and feel. And that’s a good thing.

One key element I’ve noticed about the two platforms is this: Apple’s iOS is geared towards an older crowd, while Microsoft’s approach is much more attuned to youth culture.

A good example of this is in the way the two platforms provide commercial access to music.

What Do We Use the Internet For Anyway?

It was banned in Egypt.

It was made a legal human right in Finland.

It has its own government department in Australia, and it’s the single-largest infrastructure ever built in that nation’s history.

It’s the internet. We all know it. Most of us love it.

Heck, as Canadians we each spend an average of 42 hours a month online.

But what do we actually do with it?

Whatever music you want, whenever: $5 a month. (UPDATED)

I have tasted the future of music, and it’s quite delicious.

A new service from the guys who brought us the seminal Skype, Rdio (pronounced R-deo) is a subscription-based streaming music service that was released in Canada this week.

Unfortunately, like Skype, Rdio is a great idea only moderately well executed and fails to fully deliver on its own promise. Both technical and licensing problems trip it up too often to make it ready for widespread adoption.

However, again like Skype, it’s a harbinger of what’s to come.

Synthesizing Steve: Music Bots Are No Match for Boutique Expertise

Back in the day, I relied on my friend Steve Gedrose for musical advice.

He owned a boutique CD store called Rose Music down on 4th Avenue, and he was a walking musical encyclopaedia.

But more than a human tome of raw information, Steve was an attentive music enthusiast and empath.

He maintained a elaborate mental record of his customers’ likes and dislikes, passions and apathies. As a result, Steve was almost always bang-on with his musical recommendations.

I’ll never forget this one day I walked into Rose Music and Steve jumped out of his chair.

“Hey, Andrew,” he exclaimed. “I found a disc you’ll love!”

A fat funk beat overlaid with DJ Logic’s erratic vinyl scratching exploded onto the Rose Music sound system like an aural kaleidoscope.

As I gasped in awe, Steve’s other customers cringed.

11 years later, Medeski, Martin & Woods’ Combustication remains an essential album in my collection.

These days, most of the the Steve Gedroses of the world have shuttered their independent stores as the digital music revolution drew their customers online.

And we are all poorer for that.

The Stevebots we’re now forced to suffer – those online music recommendation programs – are far less effective than the humans they replaced.

Take the iTunes Store “Genius” feature.

Or, I’ll just call it the anti-Genius, since it seems to employ such a crudely logical set of recommendation parameters.

Like, if I listen to Plants and Animals, then Grizzly Bear is going to appeal to me, right? After all they’re both neo-hippie jam bands that kind of sound the same.

If only it were that simple. Musical appreciation is much more than a comparative analysis of trends or genres.

Through conversation Steve had learned that, while I wasn’t a huge Miles Davis fan, I love the trumpet player’s jazz-fusion A Tribute to Jack Johnson soundtrack.

Steve also knew I was picking up some rock and hip hop albums at other shops.

So when he read a review of the then-underground MMW album that sported hard-rocking drum beats, killer B3 Hammond riffing and a popular DJ to boot, he knew the album was for me.

The iTunes anti-Genius would never have figured that out.

It would have suggested something obvious like Wynton Marsalis, because he’s a great jazz trumpet player, sort of like Miles. (Whereas Steve also knows I don’t dig such clean playing.)

So while Steve combined a number of my musical interests to introduce me to a new sound I wasn’t familiar with, the iTunes anti-Genius just assumes I want the same-old, same-old.

Technologists will be working until the end of time to synthesize Steve’s musical brain into an effective Stevebot. But they’ll never succeed.

Most artificial intelligence as applied to musical comprehension focuses on the qualities of music like rhythm and melody and patterns of individual consumption.

Resulting systems rely on some form of statistical analysis, which is the core problem. Musical enjoyment is not a structured beast.

Sometimes we like a song, well, just because. It makes us feel good, or sad, or it just plain resonates with our very being.

You can’t apply statistics to that.

So artificial intelligence misses one very important aspect of musical enjoyment, and that is the act of enjoyment itself.

In the 1993 anime series Astro Boy, the Japanese term kokoro is used to describe certain innate human characteristics that robots have been programmed with, such as emotions and empathy.

Kokoro lends Astro and other robots the capacity to recognize and respond to a broad range of both overt and covert sensory input.

In other words, kokoro gives robots the ability to be illogical. Kokoro gives robots a “gut.”

Kokoro is, of course, the state of being human, with which we are all naturally endowed.

It’s something that really can’t be taught or, I would argue, programmed.

That’s why technology-based musical recommendation systems will never be as good as Steve Gedrose.

Steve didn’t used to sit around all night calculating my musical interests, analyzing my purchases for patterns.

Based on what he knew about me, and his consummate understanding of the art and craft of music, Steve just had a gut feel for what I might like.

So while we’ve gained a magnitude of convenience from the digital music revolution, we’ve paid a great price.

We’ve lost Steve and his ilk.

The online Stevebots we now suffer demonstrate about as much musical sensibility as a Roomba bouncing around from couch leg to wall in search of dust bunnies.

Fortunately, I know Steve Gedrose has moved on to bigger and more important musical pursuits.

But my musical library is poorer for his absence.

Originally published in the Yukon News on Friday, August 7, 2009.

It’s All About Lame Licensing, Not Free Downloads

The Guardian reported today that research performed by the 11-month-old Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property suggests illegal downloads cost the UK economy more than $21 billion (£12 billion) annually (Cost to British economy of free downloads is revealed).

The Guardian quotes David Lammy, UK minister for intellectual property, as saying:

“Illegal downloading robs our economy of millions of pounds every year and seriously damages business and innovation throughout the UK. It is something that needs tackling, and we are serious about doing so.”

This is the worn out, stock-in-trade response to the issue of digital access to intellectual property and it demonstrates the fact that politicians are incapable of grasping the true root of the problem. No matter that it came from the other side of the Atlantic; Canadian politicians have memorized the same prattle.

Think of it this way: if an orchard stood on one side of the street, and a closed, locked, and heavily guarded grocery store stood on the other, where would consumers go for their produce?

While the Guardian’s article addresses a UK-specific study, the problem is the same worldwide. It’s particularly acute here in Canada where we seem to get falsely accused on a regular basis by American producers of somehow being the root of the problem.

The truth is, most media consumers are not “bad” people, and none of us take pride in consuming content that artists and producers are not being compensated for.

The real problem is with the media licensing models that govern access to content, particularly movies and television shows. Despite the best efforts of online retailers like iTunes, most media production companies insist on making it incredible difficult to access, purchase, and consume their products.

Why are non-American residents blocked from Hulu? Do producers really think that by building an artificial wall around their content, they can prevent us from accessing it?

No, that’s what BitTorrent is for. It’s the orchard just across the street from the heavily guarded retail outlet. As soon as that store opens, we’ll all head over and pay good money for quality produce (well, most of us will, anyway).

So illicit downloading is not the problem here. A lame and decrepit licensing model is what needs dealing with. Governments around the world need to move their focus away from consumers and force the issue on producers and their resistance to change.

the audacity of hope

Wow. Where can we get a prime minister who can talk about contemporary art with such insightfulness, articulation, and pragmatism?

Best. Kids. Album. Ever.

I grew up with what was, at the time, some pretty cool kids music. Sharon Lois and Bram. Raffi. Heck, even the Irish Rovers did a decent version of Puff the Magic Dragon (that I can’t find anywhere).

But, bar none, the best kids album ever is Here Come the ABCs by They Might Be Giants.

If you grew up with any alt sensibility at all, then you know TMBG are da bomb anyway. (Heck, if you haven’t whigged out to Istanbul (Not Constantinople) your life is too straight.) But set them loose with the freedom to write some kooky tunes about the alphabet and you shouldn’t expect anyting less than pure kid-rockin’ genius. Heck, it’s worth a listen even if you don’t have kids.

It’s the only kids album that I can honestly say I rock out to as much as my son. It’s pure alt-pop that’s fun, bouncy, sunny, and 100% irreverant. My favourite track is “D is for Drums,”  and “C Is for Conifers,” while Cole totally digs “Fake Believe” and “Go for G.”

They’ve got a new album out, Here Come the 123s, which is also very good. And if that’s not enough they have a brilliant free Friday Night Podcast that features videos from both albums in between puppet version of John and John goofing around.

Earth to NBC: It’s Business, not War

News.com reports this morning that George Kliavkoff, chief digital officer at NBC Universal, is calling on Apple to build anti-piracy technologies into iTunes.

I have a better idea: let me buy your content.

NBC and Apple are engaged in a lover’s spat these days, unable to agree on pretty much anything. It all started last year when they publicly carried on about pricing. Then Apple either kicked NBC out of the iTunes Store or NBC quit it. Nobody know how it played out for sure.

This childish behaviour doesn’t benefit either company. Both seem intent on engaging in political media warfare more than serving the interests of consumers, and in the end that type of behaviour won’t benefit anyone.

The bottom line is, consumers want to access NBC’s content as painlessly as possible. iTunes is currently the simplest and easiest way to do this. The two companies need to gain some maturity and institute an interim situation that serves consumers’ interests and take their bickering into the back room. Really, we don’t want to hear about it. We just want to watch Lost.

Because the more their dispute is prolonged, the stronger that alternative channels of media distribution will become. NBC calls that piracy; I call that necessity. Developing and instituting anti-piracy technology will accomplish squat. Hasn’t Mr. Kliavkoff heard about that dismal failure called DRM?

I download Lost from the BitTorrent network out of necessity. I’m not a criminal, there’s just no other way for me to access this content through online channels. I’m not interested in cluttering up my personal space with discs, so I won’t buy the DVD sets.

But I would pay if NBC would choose to offer me the opportunity to do so. For some funny reason, however, Mr. Kliavkoff’s company has decided to make that impossible for me.