The True Significance of the Tablet
This blog post and the comments about it have provided me with a great deal of inspiration. This is actually the second essay inspired by it. The first was the previous post about the music industry. It was not directly related to the post, but it serves as a foundation for what follows.
When I was young, America got its news from two sources, its local newspaper and Walter Cronkite. Now, I say that somewhat tongue in cheek, but it really was true. I grew up in the age of TV, and Walter Cronkite really was that important. I am not old enough to speak to the importance of radio as a source of news.
In the TV age, we got our news from the TV, both local and national. Newspapers continued to be an important source of news. The newspaper was local, but through the AP, UPI and other news services it carried stories from across the nation and around the world. As the broadcast TV of my youth (yes, I can remember a time before cable) changed into cable TV, we were offered more choices, but the news paradigm remained unchanged. Instead of the nightly network news, we may have watched CNN, but the format and delivery remained familiar.
But, we have moved beyond the TV age. Yes, we all still have TVs and some of us still watch the network news. Newspapers are not faring as well though. We have entered the Internet Age, and many of us get our news through the new medium.
In the comments to the blog linked above is a reference to newspapers as a news aggregation. News aggregators are common across the web. But I think that many have failed to recognize that we have, to an extent, become our own news aggregators. Most of the people I know get their news from many sites.
It might be because we like CNN over MSNBC but it may also be (and in my opinion more likely) that we do not get all our news from one site. And, it is not just that we use more than one news site, but that we use specialized or focused sites. I don’t go to MSNBC or CNN, I go to Fox sports for sports news and Gizmodo for techie news and then I check the formula one site, and…
I think you get the picture. I don’t rely on any one site for my news. I browse several sites, grazing here and there finding what I want and consuming it.
And I think that many of you are like me.
This change, which I think has already occurred, has had and could have several far reaching effects. One will be discussed in a future essay, where I will be working together ideas from this essay and the previous one.
Now, back to Fakesteve and his idea that the tablet will be tied to some “…entirely new way to convey information…” I think that he too has missed something.
It’s already happened.
Well, that’s not completely true, at least not the way that Fakesteve is thinking about. Many sites already include video when they can. Gizmodo is a good example. We have moved well past the old standard of news, from a few aggregators to hundreds or thousands, from generalized to specialized, and from single media to mixed media.
No one knows what the next change will be, but I believe it is a mistake to think that there will be one new way to convey information and to bind yourself to one “format”, or to withhold a product waiting for “it” to appear.
The future is diversity. I am not sure that there will be a single new standard for conveying information. There may not be a new equivalent to the newspaper or TV.
The iPhone did not succeed at changing the landscape alone. Without iTunes and the Appstore, the iPhone would be just another cellphone.
The tablet, whether Apple’s or Courier or any of the existing tablets are going to change the landscape only when content providers and programmers start to create content and apps formatted and aimed at tablets.
Maybe Steve Jobs can pull that off, but I think that the change will come, even without him.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The New Music Paradigm
Before tearing into the heart of today’s topic, I want to say that this is the first in a set of related essays. They do not follow a single topic, but they are built on one the other. This essay sets a foundation for the next.
The New Music Paradigm
What can we learn from the plight of the music industry?
First, let’s look at the past.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I own an enormous quantity of vinyl. Well, I suppose it isn’t that much, but I do have several hundred LPs.
Back in those days a group put an album about once a year and an LP cost about $3-4. Most LPs had 8-10 songs. Out of those, a couple would be great (hits) and a couple more would be good and if you were lucky, the rest would be okay. 45s went out of vogue while I was in junior high. No one I know bought them. I bought 1 (for a B side).
This was the modus operandi of the music industry for decades. Most bands weren’t (and aren’t) good enough to produce an album with nothing but winners every year, for every Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) there were probably a dozen LPs with only a single really good song.
Now, the switch to digital music and the proliferation of file sharing, and through it music sharing, may have turned things down a different path, but the ultimate truth is that the path was taken and where we find ourselves today is vastly different from my youth, when we got our music on vinyl.
Today, we buy songs, not albums. And yes it is still an album, even when it comes on CD. An album is a collection. A collection of photos is an album, and so is a collection of songs. But, enough of that aside, back to the topic at hand.
Today, we listen to music on MP3 players, not record players. We buy songs, not albums. We use iTunes or Napster or Rhapsody and we don’t buy as many CDs. We won’t pay a band for the mediocre songs they write to fill out the album. We don’t hear them when we see the band live and we don’t want them on our MP3 players. We may never again see the sort of album sales that were common in the 70s and 80s. I am waiting for the first band that really gets it. I am waiting for the first true internet band.
No record deal. No CDs. Play live and sell your songs on your website. A few are starting that direction. Muse has at least a dozen songs that you can listen to, in their entirety, on their website. No need to hope that their album is good, or buy a song based on a 30 second clip. Listen to the whole song and then decide. This is a step in the right direction, but Muse is an established band. I think it will take a new, unknown band to break though. Maybe one already has and I just haven’t heard of them.
But, I think that this new paradigm may have an effect beyond music, but for that you will have to wait until I post again.
The New Music Paradigm
What can we learn from the plight of the music industry?
First, let’s look at the past.
I grew up in the 60s and 70s. I own an enormous quantity of vinyl. Well, I suppose it isn’t that much, but I do have several hundred LPs.
Back in those days a group put an album about once a year and an LP cost about $3-4. Most LPs had 8-10 songs. Out of those, a couple would be great (hits) and a couple more would be good and if you were lucky, the rest would be okay. 45s went out of vogue while I was in junior high. No one I know bought them. I bought 1 (for a B side).
This was the modus operandi of the music industry for decades. Most bands weren’t (and aren’t) good enough to produce an album with nothing but winners every year, for every Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd) there were probably a dozen LPs with only a single really good song.
Now, the switch to digital music and the proliferation of file sharing, and through it music sharing, may have turned things down a different path, but the ultimate truth is that the path was taken and where we find ourselves today is vastly different from my youth, when we got our music on vinyl.
Today, we buy songs, not albums. And yes it is still an album, even when it comes on CD. An album is a collection. A collection of photos is an album, and so is a collection of songs. But, enough of that aside, back to the topic at hand.
Today, we listen to music on MP3 players, not record players. We buy songs, not albums. We use iTunes or Napster or Rhapsody and we don’t buy as many CDs. We won’t pay a band for the mediocre songs they write to fill out the album. We don’t hear them when we see the band live and we don’t want them on our MP3 players. We may never again see the sort of album sales that were common in the 70s and 80s. I am waiting for the first band that really gets it. I am waiting for the first true internet band.
No record deal. No CDs. Play live and sell your songs on your website. A few are starting that direction. Muse has at least a dozen songs that you can listen to, in their entirety, on their website. No need to hope that their album is good, or buy a song based on a 30 second clip. Listen to the whole song and then decide. This is a step in the right direction, but Muse is an established band. I think it will take a new, unknown band to break though. Maybe one already has and I just haven’t heard of them.
But, I think that this new paradigm may have an effect beyond music, but for that you will have to wait until I post again.
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