Markets are conversations about more than vendor sports
Submitted by doc on Wed, 01/26/2005 - 18:55.
There are basically two ways you can see a market. One is as a place where people gather to do business and make culture. That's what markets have been since the dawn of trade. The other is as an battlefield, arena, playing field, ring, racetrack, or some other war or sports habitat where combatants win, lose or draw.
War is the deeper metaphor, of course; but civilization is largely a matter of sublimation, which is pretty much what sports is all about. That's why mainstream coverage of IT markets (Computerworld is just one example) is mostly about vendor sports.
Here at IT Garage, from the beginning, I've tried to make it (and IT, puns intended) a place where we could talk about What's Happening without getting getting all rah-rah about one vendor or another. Or even about a favorite operating system, software breed or development methodology. Although all those things are always open for discussion.
In fact, I've tried to put vendors in market contexts that are larger than whatever platforms and silos it is their natural tendency to create.
But I think I've failed at that, so far, with the podcasting subject.
Podcasting gets its name from Apple's iPod, which is now often called a "platform". Of course, Apple deserves enormous credit for lots of good things, the iPod among them. And I'll confess to a little bias in favor of the iPod because my friend Tony Fadell is one of the leading creative and engineering minds behind it (and many other cool things). I've given Apple plenty of credit over the years for the good and original work that it's done. And I'll continue to do that, as long as I think the company deserves it (which I'm sure it will). But I'll also criticize the company for stuff it does that I think are lame, or bad, or not helpful... or whatever.
Hence my post, Open the 'pod bay doors, Steve. I liked the headline (a reference back to the movie 2001: A Space Oddyssey) too much not to use it, but in retrospect, it was a mistake. So was using the "Apple is the Microsoft—" line. It was too big a red herring for people to ignore. So, of the eleven comments to the post so far, not one addressed my request for news about anything that provides "hope for free market expansion in podcasting". Meaning, beyond Apple and iPod.
In the course of that, I think it's important to discuss the limitations Apple imposes without getting into sport talk. For example, the iPod, for better and worse, is the hardware end of the iTunes application and the distribution and retailing system iTunes enables. Yes, iTunes is free (as in beer, not as in speech), and it runs on 97+% of the personal OSes out there (Windows and Macintosh). So it may be big and easy and harmless enough for most of us, and for most of our purposes (including playing music and podcasts). But iTunes' ubiquity also gives Apple lots of market muscle.
When I was at CES, I saw car-makers and various other third parties either building products that fit in Apple's silo, or lined up with Microsoft's PlayForSure system (which is open to other hardware makers, but which uses Microsoft DRM), as a way of playing in the market. Apple was seen as the Big Kahuna in the whole portable music playing space. In the auto audio hall, the new sound sources that mattered were satellite radio (which presented a choice of two closed and mutually incompatible systems) and iPods. While the line "Apple is becoming the Microsoft of music" was mine, it summarized the sentiments of many people I spoke to at CES.
Do we want Apple to become the Microsoft of music? I think that's a legitimate question, but I'm beginning to doubt it can be answered in ways that appreciate the fact that the whole market is larger than either Apple or Microsoft, and won't be healthy unless there are lots of independent and do-it-yourself players on both the supply and demand sides of the marketplace.
So, this is kind of a report on what I'm learning as we go along here — as well as a message to new visitors at IT Garage: We're not about vendor sports here. We're focused on how information technology markets grow when independent and resourceful participants roll their own solutions to their own problems.
If you've got any news of that sort, feel free to post it here. My name may be at the top of the page, but there's nothing to stop the rest of you from posting whatever you like. In fact, I'd call this project a success if my own posts were a small minority of the total postings, rather than the large majority they are now.
London
When they gonna stop blow everything?
London
Police have carried out a controlled explosion on a vehicle at the hospital treating a suspect in the attack on Scotland's busiest airport. Officers also made a fifth arrest in the airport attack and a foiled car bomb plot in London.
WTF
These comments are like rubbish
I've got it
I've got it!
But other said
But other said that the judgement induces common sense, tertium non datur
As one clever
As one clever person said the judgement transforms tragical hedonism.
Interesting
Interesting opinion. But IMHO it's just an opinion.
My experience
I have great experience in that. So I can understand...
No
Sorry. I'm not agree with you.
Frank
Hochu jit horosho http://h1.ripway.com/pottery-barn-kid
Nonfriction
I don't know who does Entrepreneurship: Life Long Learning (subtitle: Just another WordPress weblog), but I just added the blog to the Linkbag.
What caught my eye (or my aggregator's attention) was
Is there a place for brand's in these new markets.
I was reading Mark's blog and he pointed out this Wired Magazine article about how brands may not be the asset they once were. The interesting thing is that in a new market empowered by a global medium where everyone is equal, product brands become mere noise in comparision to the direct and pointed input from consumers. The new market place seems to crowd them out becaue of the easy availability of qualified information about products from other consumer eclipses the brand. I think that the point is that while iPod is an example of a successful product and brand. It may not be a godo example of an open market but the stage is set for a shift in tides.
iPod has roughly 92% of the hard drive MP3 player market but as flash prices go through the floor their is room for new solid state devices that might represent a whole new hardware paradigm. Despite iPods rise to dominance it remains to be seen if the device has the staying power in a changing technology landscape. What happens if 10 companies gain 40% of the MP3 market leveraging inexpensive embedded operating systems like Linux and Java to innovate. I think that the iPod is still in it's honeymoon stage.
Now on to the call for a free market? What about the plethora of back office devices coming on the market. IT in a Box is made by some little company in Utah and they are racking up awards like crazy. New entries like Anthology Solutions Yellow Box which wooed CES attendees with their toaster-size terrabyte server and SOHO solution tells me they are able to compete neck and neck with Microsoft, Dell, and a host of other companies. Even though both of these products are Linux-based solutions they are just success because they solve problems and have answered the right questions. So I think there are pockets of free markets.
Boy, is it tough to separate the mixed messages here...
What, exactly, are you talking about?
First you seem to assert that Apple is the MS of music, which apart from a certain alliterative symmetry, doesn't really seem to add anything to the "conversation." Then you say you don't want to discuss "vendor sports." So you get to get your licks in, and then shut down the "conversation." And then you say you want "news" about how "independent" participants "roll their own solutions to their own problems." Well, if it's a solution to their problem and not yours or mine, why is it news?
In any event, Apple as the MS of music is just crap. The MS-metaphor, such as it is, is only meaningful as it represents some barrier to entry to other participants. That's why Microsoft is Microsoft, it erects barriers to entry. If there's a MS of music it's the RIAA, not Apple. Without the RIAA and the labels' fears of copying, would Apple impose any DRM?
Second, it seems to me the success of the iPod has actually facilitated the expansion of the applications for digital music and recordings.
And do we really need to go over again the plethora of other devices that can play and encode MP3s just fine, thankyouverymuch? Again, in the marketplace, what represents a significant barrier to entry? Well, the RIAA and if MS does ultimately have its way, MS!
It seems to me the one possible barrier is the iTunes Music Store and Apple not licensing its DRM. But there are music stores that sell MP3s. Presumably you can still go out and buy CDs and rip them to your PC, unless the RIAA and recording industry successfully impose DRM in that format. But again, in this area, Apple is actually lowering the barrier to entry for new music and recording producers with things like GarageBand, and iMovie and so on.
What "solution" is the iPod impeding? What is the "problem" that you're concerned about Apple locking people out of solving? If anything Apple has opened the space up wider than it has ever been, and it seems to me they're doing well by doing good.
If you want to leave out "vendor sports" discussions, then simply articulate the problem you don't see being addressed and ask if anyone is addressing that problem. Personally, I don't see the problem, but perhaps you do.
Simplifying things
True, I haven't been clear. (I thought I was copping to exactly the kind of failure you're talking about here, not shutting down conversation.) And maybe I'm fulla shit on the "Apple is the Microsoft of Music" line. Among other things.
The problem I'm addressing is the lack of competition for the iPod, and what's starting to look to me like a replication in that market space of Microsoft's domination of desktop computing.
Even if you don't agree with that, do you agree that the iPod could use more competition than it's getting now?
Leaving Apple aside (because they're nearly absent from this one, so far), are you happy with the podcast creation and production software and hardware that's currently available? Would you like to see something more happen in that space? For example, with portable listening devices that also allow you to annotate and record and edit responses for your own podcasts?
If so, who's going to produce that stuff? I think it's a safe bet that Sony won't (they recoiled from the whole subject when I brought it up with them at CES) I'd love to see Apple do it (they encouraged me enormously when they came out with GarageBand); and I'd love to see them help fulfill the promise of pod-safe music. One can easily imagine iTunes providing a marketplace for music produced by individuals, outside the RIAA's ossified system. Steve Jobs may be the only player with the clout, the machinery and the balls to make it happen. Hope he does. But until that happens, doesn't it help to think outside the Apple box? Don't the horizons start to open up a bit? Even for Apple?
"The problem I'm addressing i
"The problem I'm addressing is the lack of competition for the iPod,"
Is it the lack of competition for the iPod, or the lack of any end-to-end solution like, iPod, iTMS and iTunes? Because, from where I sit, there is no end to competition for the iPod. They're just not doing well. I go to my local Target and there's probably 15 devices that play MP3s and Windows DRM-format hanging on the wall. Robert Scoble once pointed to a MS web page with, I don't know, a couple dozen "cool" personal digital music players. In the last day or so, he pointed to a review at some weblog of how a SanDisk device eats the Shuffle's lunch, according to the reviewer. Where, for heaven's sake, is the "lack" of competition? There may be a lack of "success" for the competition, but there's no lack of competition from where I sit.
"are you happy with the podcast creation and production software and hardware that's currently available? "
Can't say, I don't create and produce podcasts. What little I know suggests anything capable of recording and encoding MP3s is capable of producing a podcast. You want more bells and whistles like sound effects and music, you need somewhat more advanced programs. But GarageBand, according to O'Reilly's DevCen and MacAddict is a pretty good podcast creation environment, and there's a Sony app that competes with GarageBand, Acid something. I'm really not familiar with the audio recording and editing applications on Windows, but given Windows' ubiquity, I'm hard pressed to believe there's a dearth of such applications. Do you believe there is? Is anyone developing a strictly podcast-oriented podcast production application? I suspect not, given the relative novelty (as in "newness") of the format.
Portable devices? I've got a Clié I can record voice notes to. Do I really need a portable device where I can listen to a podcast and make annotations on the run? Maybe some people do, but then a laptop computer is pretty portable. Maybe one of those PocketPC things can have an app that'll allow you to split and edit existing podcasts on the run. Is there a market for that sort of thing yet? If such an application is developed, my guess is it'll be a freeware or shareware solution running on a PDA or mobile phone, long before we see anything from the big competitors. Again, I don't see what Apple has to do with this particular problem, although I guess we're leaving them out apart from mentioning their name.
What stuff is going to be produced? As I mentioned before, Sony already produces handhelds and laptops that can play MP3s, and a GarageBand-like music application that is probably appropriate as a podcast "production" application. I suspect there are many more. So I think Sony is a player in this space, at least to the extent that the same tools that facilitate the creation and playback of user-created audio are the same tools that one uses to make podcasts.
As for pod-safe music, have you played with GarageBand? All those loops are "pod-safe" and you string them together and you (potentially) can have some pretty decent pod-safe music. Now, some people will cringe at that, but it's no worse than the production values of some podcasters' voices, or the quality of their discourse. Not everyone can sound like Adam Curry, though GarageBand can at least help us sing on key if we're going to include a chorus of Happy Days in our podcast.
Doc, I think you're exercised about something that isn't really a problem. User-created audio is happening, and will continue to grow. Whether that's music or "podcasts" or whatever. I'm not sure it'll ever be as large a phenomenon as weblogging, it takes more time and technical skill, and the payoff doesn't seem as great or as immediate. And frankly, it's easier to read a lot of different points of view, than it is to listen to them. I can go back and re-read your paragraphs much easier than trying to guess where you said something, or to be mindful enough to press a flag button to mark a part I want to comment on while not missing what is being said immediately after the thing I want to comment on. User-created music seems more likely, and whether the iTMS becomes an avenue for turning that into a "business model" remains to be seen. There does seem to be a need for some type of quality-filter before just anything can be offered at the iTMS and to whatever extent, the labels do seem to provide that service.
Maybe the market isn't moving as fast as you'd like to see it. But isn't that sort of up to the market? "Emergence," "wisdom of crowds" and all that. I don't see Apple (or Sony) impeding the market for podcasts or user-created music. I see plenty of competition. I see one stand-out success and that usually means there's the inevitable failure story to follow, and then the usual crowing and monday-morning quarterbacking from the people that, had Apple only listened to them, would have "saved" Apple, or the iPod, or whatever.
But from what you've written here, about the most I can distill is that you want a handheld device that will allow you to playback podcasts and make non-destructive voice annotations. Seems there's hardware already out there that can do this on a handheld, and there's at least some sort of opportunity for an enterprising developer to fill this need. I suspect it's a very small need, but maybe I'm all wet.
New vendors
A big part of the problem with the media device market is that one of the VCs aren't funding any startup that touches media because they're afraid of media industry lawyers.
There needs to be an alternate source of funding here.