We just had great meetings with Congressman Rick Boucher and Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge, and now we're getting ready to head over to the IPac informal drinks get-together, at RFD, 810 7th St NW, from 7:00 pm onward. If you're in DC, we'd love to meet you! We'll be wearing IPac nametags so you can find us.

- David, Ren, and Matt

The IPac board will be in Washington DC this week, and we'd love to meet you. Come join us at RFD Wednesday from 7 pm onward for informal discussion over drinks about IP and anything else going on in the world.

Last week, we discussed how the iPod Shuffle was the new radio. Its a straight forward thesis, hard to argue against.

Have a gander at a this meme making its rounds on the net -- evincing even more evidence that the radio business model of playing music is fading:

This week, we are discovering proof of this all over the
web, via what's been called The ShufflePlay Game.  (I put up my own version of the ShufflePlay Game over here and here).

Here's a short list of blogs posting variations of Shuffle Play:

The Republic of T.:   Music for the Masses    Scott's Place:  Shuffle play   

Matthew Yglesias: Shuffle!

essays & effluvia: Shuffle Play

The Fly Bottle:  Shuffle Game

Stumbling and Mumbling    Shuffle and see    

Crescat Sententia:   Potpourri

divine angst: my ipod's shuffler

Grammar.police: iPost

Class Maledictorian:  Terrible Taste

Knowledge Problem:   WHILE WE'RE IN A MUSIC VEIN ...

Mansfield Fox:   Know Me by My Music

Death in the Afternoon: Six Hour Exams 

aworks :: "new" american classical music: Wedge (1961). Roger Reynolds

essays & effluvia: More Shuffle Play

Cobb:   Self Indulgent Twenty

The Republic of T. gets props for being the earliest of these I've found -- dating all the back to April 2, 2004. Scott's Place gets special mention for having assembled at least 7 random shuffle collections (Kudos!).


If you know of any other shuffle play posts, please let me know, and I'll add them to the list . . .

(listed bloggers feel free to trackback to this post).

Lastly, check out Professor Booty's analysis of the Math of Random/Shuffle Play: 

Okay, let's say you have 2500 songs. To simplify, let's say that's 10 songs per album for a total of 250 albums. And we'll define "repeat" as "hearing a song from the same album you've already heard a song from". How often will you hear a repeat (by that definition)?

By the time you get to the 20th song, the odds of having heard at least one repeat by the same artists is an extremely surprising 76%!

I'd love to see that math verified . . .


UPDATE:  January 24, 2005 6:30 am

Tobias Brandt weighs in on the subject of the Math of shuffle play:

I disagree with Prof. Booty's analysis of the probability of getting a repeat album within 20 songs and my own analysis puts the odds at 54%.  (See spreadsheet used to get the result).  The spreadsheet also has the benefit of being able to account for excluding repeats of previous songs, a feature many  media players have.

Download song_repeat_probability.xls

Prof Booty:  Not sure what accounts for your mistake but generally speaking one can't just sum probabilities and it's best to  look at things like this in terms of a probability tree diagram.

I wish I could get all my questions answered so quickly and succinctly!

Awesome!

Three cheers for State Senator Kevin Murray! He wants to jail everyone! Innovation loves jailtime!

I’ve been thinking about the iPod Shuffle since its introduction this week. The early critique of the newest Pod is its lack of a readout or screen -- even a small one -- to see what song is playing or up next.

The more I think about it, however, the more I think this (valid) criticism is misguided. It misses the point entirely. The Shuffle isn’t supposed to be replacing a full featured MP3 player. Rather, it is a substitute for a similar experience of getting music you know and like -- on the radio.

Only you cannot do that anymore. McMusic dominates the airwaves, preprogrammed from some fluorescent lit, over airconditioned, windowless, soulless dreary office complex somewhere in the bowels of Texas.

You can thank the 1996 Telecommunication Reform act for radio’s massive consolidation -- and really bad music on the radio.

The iPod Shuffle is yet more evidence of Radio’s ongoing decline. Recall we first discussed this last July in Radio's Wounded Business Model. Barrons picked up the meme weeks later, running a very similar criticism.

Where does that leave the fans of music, people who used to be radio listeners?

The iPod Shuffle. Its the new radio.

Think back -- back to when you used to actually used to listen to music on the radio.

What went through your head when you were selecting a radio station? Likely, you wanted to hear music you knew, and music you liked; Bands you were familiar with, songs you know and love.

You also wanted to hear new artists and songs -- what you might be expected to enjoy based upon these other preferences -- the previously mentioned stuff you were already tuning in for. 10 years ago and beyond, Radio didn’t quite have collaborative filtering (see for example, iRate radio). Indeed, the technology didn’t even exist . . . But stations did employ a manual predictive process, based upon the perspectives of experienced program managers and DJs.

That intelligent predictive process is now mostly deceased -- it certainly is hard to find on a local basis. And radio as a source of finding new music keeps diminishing in importance. Really, it hardly matters anymore; that’s what P2P and the internet is for anyway.

So the new iPod shuffle turns iTunes users into DJs and music programmers; Indeed, part of the new Apple advertising campaign is the phrase “DJ Your Day.” Only the ad free radio they now listen to consists of 10,000 of their favorite songs or so, in 120-150"blocks.” Thats about 6 hours of music.

Radio’s slow bleed continues . . .


NOTE: There's a robust discussion on the topic in comments at The Big Picture.

We are losing our history:

As Americans commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy today, no television channel will be broadcasting the documentary series Eyes on the Prize. Produced in the 1980s and widely considered the most important encapsulation of the American civil-rights movement on video, the documentary series can no longer be broadcast or sold anywhere.

Why?

The makers of the series no longer have permission for the archival footage they previously used of such key events as the historic protest marches or the confrontations with Southern police. Given Eyes on the Prize's tight budget, typical of any documentary, its filmmakers could barely afford the minimum five-year rights for use of the clips. That permission has long since expired, and the $250,000 to $500,000 needed to clear the numerous copyrights involved is proving too expensive.

This is particularly dire now, because VHS copies of the series used in countless school curriculums are deteriorating beyond rehabilitation. With no new copies allowed to go on sale, "the whole thing, for all practical purposes, no longer exists," says Jon Else, a California-based filmmaker who helped produce and shoot the series and who also teaches at the Graduate School of Journalism of the University of California, Berkeley.

This is bad for everyone. When you make bad law...

link:

IBM (NYSE: IBM - news) is taking the wraps off of its proprietary software technology, releasing 500 patents to open source developers and challenging its I.T. competitors to follow suit.

Big Blue touted the move as the largest ever public offering of patents and as a major shift in the way the company manages and deploys its intellectual property (IP) portfolio. The pledge is applicable to any individual, community or company working on or using software that meets the Open Source Initiative (OSI) definition of open source software.

IBM conducted a detailed analysis of its IP policy and determined that the best way to foster innovation is to promote cooperation among software developers, Douglas Heintzman, director of technical software strategy, told NewsFactor.

"As the information age matures, collaboration is critical for generating new ideas and technologies," he said. "We don't want intellectual property to get in the way of that."

The company's pledge is the first step toward establishing a balance between invention and the limitations posed by IP, Heintzman said, with IBM agreeing not to charge royalties or restrict the use of its patents for those promoting open standards and interoperability.

Eventually, the company plans to form an industry-wide "patent commons" in which IP is used to build a platform for innovations in areas of broad interest to information technology developers and users.

IBM, that's crazy talk. Communists like large for-profit technology companies make us all nervous.

Come hand out with IPac at San Francisco's fabulous 111 Minna next Monday, January 17. We'll be showing up at 7 to hang out, gossip, and plot the revolution with people who care about free culture and technical innovation. Details are available here:



A donation is not required to attend, but you'll have to pay for (your own) drinks. Events in D.C. and New York are on the way, but feel free to drop us a line if you want to put something together in another location.

Resolutions have been made, Boxing Day is long gone, and IPac is greeting the new year with a new campaign called "Jailed for a Song." Congress was busy with copyright in 2004, and JfaS is a retrospective on what almost went down. We note several of the craziest items that Big Content asked for - but didn't get - in 2004, and encourage people to get involved this year. Check it out!

Senator Hatch is expected to chair a new subcommittee on Intellectual Property.

Ugh.

[Background: The Senate has lots of committees through which various types of legislation emanate. That's how Senators specialize. Once legislation has been discussed in a committee and approved, it goes to the floor where it is further debated, amended, and approved/rejected. Though that's not where all the action happens, committees are really important because that's where legislation actually gets written. IP stuff tends to go through the Judiciary or Commerce committee. There are also subcommittees, which specialize even further within committees. Hatch, though he was just removed as head of the Judiciary Committee because Republicans impose committee head term limits, now has control of a new subcommittee in intellectual property. Thus, he will continue to wield a huge amount of influence over new IP laws.]

link

In recent years, there's been a lot of people clamoring to reform and restrict intellectual-property rights. It started out with just a few people, but now there are a bunch of advocates saying, "We've got to look at patents, we've got to look at copyrights." What's driving this, and do you think intellectual-property laws need to be reformed?

No, I'd say that of the world's economies, there's more that believe in intellectual property today than ever. There are fewer communists in the world today than there were. There are some new modern-day sort of communists who want to get rid of the incentive for musicians and moviemakers and software makers under various guises. They don't think that those incentives should exist.

And this debate will always be there. I'd be the first to say that the patent system can always be tuned--including the U.S. patent system. There are some goals to cap some reform elements. But the idea that the United States has led in creating companies, creating jobs, because we've had the best intellectual-property system--there's no doubt about that in my mind, and when people say they want to be the most competitive economy, they've got to have the incentive system. Intellectual property is the incentive system for the products of the future.

Communists? Us? Well now. If we're communists, that must be why we support Creative Commons, a system for registering copyrights that allows for greater public participation in the creation of content while still protecting the rights of copyright holders to profit from their works. To the barricades, comrades!

The year end numbers are now out for both Film and Music sales in the US, and they are rather interesting. Each data point contains both good news and bad for the industry:

• Sales of Movie Tickets Were Soft in 2004; Revenue was up while actual number of tickets sold were down.

• US CD sales rose by 2.3% in 2004; It was the first rise in four years, but was far below the 8% year over year gains in the first Q of the year.

AP reported:

" U.S. box office receipts soared to a new record in 2004, although the actual number of moviegoers declined for a second year in a row.

Movies took in $9.4 billion in 2004 at the domestic box office, according to tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. Revenue for the year was lagging last year going into the final weeks, but "Meet the Fockers," the sequel from Universal Pictures, propelled gross revenues with total ticket sales of $162.5 million in the last two weeks of the year.

But the record gross was due more to rising ticket prices than attendance.

Factoring in the nationwide average ticket price of $6.22, attendance fell about 1.7% in 2004 to 1.51 billion. Attendance in 2003 was 1.54 billion, down 4.3% from 2002. The average ticket price last year was $6.03.

The highest grossing film of the year was "Shrek 2," which earned $436.5 million.

As to actual CD sales, the BBC reported:

US CD sales rose by 2.3% in 2004 -  the first rise in four years - despite the growing popularity of legal digital music downloads.

The CD format still accounts for 98% of the 666 million albums sold, according to research company Nielsen Soundscan.

A total of 140 million digital tracks were legally downloaded last year, equivalent to 14 million albums . . . By the end of the year, purchased downloads reached a weekly high of 6.7 million tracks, up from 300,000 in mid-2003.

The top 5 selling US CDs were

1. Usher - Confessions
2. Norah Jones - Feels Like Home
3. Eminem - Encore
4. Kenny Chesney - When the Sun Goes Down
5. Gretchen Wilson - Here for the Party

Note that both Usher and Eminem were heavily downloaded on P2P networks.

Quite telling were the results in the Great Britain: "The UK recorded a record year for album sales in 2004, with 237 million sold in the 12 months up to September, an increase of 3%."

Note that the UK population is over 60 million people, while the US has under 300 million people; With a population 20% the size of the United States, the British buy 37% as many CDs as we do. In other words, on a per capita basis, UK consumers buy nearly twice as many CDs as do consumers in the US.

Why is that?   

How is it that they are setting records -- despite vibrant broadband penetration, and access to P2P services -- while the US remains far below 1999 levels?

I suspect there are three likely causes:

1) A more vibrant, less consolidated broadcast radio music scene;
2) Less mass produced corporate McMusic so prevalent on the radio in the States -- from Ashlee Simpson to insipid Boy Bands;
3) A robust economic expansion. The US '90s bubble was far more muted in the U, so its after effects are also less insidious.

A careful analysis of the P2P phenomenon continues to reveal that the claims of the music industry are greatly exaggerated . . .


Sources:
US sees growth in CD sales market   
BBC News, Thursday, 6 January, 2005, 09:56 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4150747.stm

Sales of Movie Tickets Slump in 2004
AP, January 03, 2005  8:06 PM
http://www.smartmoney.com/bn/ON/index.cfm?story=ON-20050103 000426-2000

Grey Album named Record of the Year

Whether you like the idea of Mash ups (See also the Beastles, as well as Hip Hopera) or not, this is significant. It forces the music industry to recognize that excessive copyright restrictions constrians the artistic process.

Here's an excerpt from EW:

The Grey Album Danger Mouse Jay-Z, meet the Beatles: Only in the age of accelerating technology could someone have thought to pinch rhymes from the rapper's Black Album and synch them up to random riffs, refrains, and snippets from the White Album. The someone in question is DJ Danger Mouse, a.k.a. Brian Burton, and the result could have been a novelty worth one listen at most — the sound of an iPod with seriously crossed internal wires.

Yet far from being a wack job, The Grey Album — a free download before the Beatles' reps not surprisingly put a halt to it — is the ultimate artistic validation of technology and the mash-up. Even such praise, though, doesn't hint at its ingenious merging of two generations: the hypnotic blend of ''Long, Long, Long'' and ''Public Service Announcement,'' the ''Hova!'' shout-outs in ''Encore'' newly buttressed by the guitar snarls of ''Glass Onion,'' the childhood recollections of ''December 4th'' merged with ''Mother Nature's Son.'' (The album would have been the perfect capper to Jay-Z's retirement, had he actually retired.) Rock and rap have tangled with each other for over a decade, but rarely this...