October 30, 2007
Warning: Rambling tech post ahead.
AppleInsider | NBC chief says Apple ‘destroyed’ music pricing
“We wanted to take one show, it didn’t matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99,” he said. “We made that offer for months and they said no.”
NBC misses the point completely here.
To illustrate:
An iPod is the complete opposite of a printer. My printer for example, an Epson Photo R220, was bought for roughly £40. If you want to buy a complete set of ink cartridges for it, that will set you back around £30. The printer came with a set of cartridges, so that puts the value of my printer at roughly £10. Possibly the stupidest pricing model ever conceived, but one that makes Epson a fortune.
The iPod on the other hand, is quite an expensive bit of kit (iPod Classic Black 80Gb - £152 from Amazon), but the songs are incredibly cheap at 79p each.
You get the impression, even if it is just an illusion, that once you have an Apple product such as an iPod, Apple do actually care about you as a consumer. They want you to be able to say “I just heard this really cool song, I can go and buy it now for less than a quid”. NBC are clearly in it for the short term money.
Apple don’t rely on the necessity that something like a printer imposes. I need ink for my printer to work. I don’t need iTunes music to run my iPod (although it’s always a big plus).
Television episodes are the same, if not worse. You can watch an episode of Scrubs on television and think it was awesome (and you’d probably be right), and then go and pay to download a different episode which was terrible. You don’t want to risk wasting money on a bad episode. Whilst you might get potentially hooked on a series, it’s pretty unlikely your work depends on it.
NBC appear to be working on the basis that users will just pay for episodes which they’ve missed and jacking the cost up won’t affect the number of sales.
Yes it will, and more to the point, people won’t trust Apple and NBC. Apple have other products to sell, which is why they want to gain the trust of their customers with pricing that reflects what they’re selling. It’s partly because of trust that people like me will get an iPod and then consider getting a MacBook.
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October 27, 2007
- Harmonisation measure
- Ring-fencing
- Let’s draw a line under this, and move on
- Internet Explorer is better than Firefox
- URGENT (when this is the subject line of an e-mail that is certainly anything but urgent)
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Editors played the last gig of their UK tour at Rock Sweaty Rock City on Thursday, which I have to confess I had already been looking forward to for some time.
The first band on were Ra Ra Riot, who were like a smaller version of Arcade Fire (although perhaps not as epic). In my opinion, they weren’t bad and were perfectly “listenable”, but nothing outstanding. This was then followed by The Kissaway Trail, who I’m afraid weren’t great at all. They consisted of three guitars and a bass lined up, with a drummer behind them - a fairly unusual format but not one that worked. Quite shouty and mostly incomprehensible, although to be fair this might not have been their fault.
None of this especially mattered though, as Editors were on next. And they were good. Really good.
Rock City appears to be a much smaller venue than Editors would normally play, and it was absolutely packed. The crowd were pretty happy as soon as the band came on and the opening bass drum of An End Has A Start was played, before generally going ballistic.
Tom Smith was much more of a showman than I expected, spending a lot of time jumping around and dancing on the piano, before at the start of the encore responding to the water thrown by the crowd by throwing some back and starting a mini water-fight.
Pity poor Chris Urbanowicz, who as someone who comes from Nottingham got a lot of attention from the crowd and was at one stage referred to by Tom Smith as “your local hero”. Still, he seemed to take it all very well.
All-in-all, a superb gig. I certainly wouldn’t object to seeing Editors again, whoever their support is.
There is also a very good review of the gig on Sarah’s Soul Drift Music Blog.
After the jump, the set list. (more…)
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October 21, 2007
As promised, a slightly fuller review of the Black and White Album by the Hives.
The album opens with the new single, Tick Tick Boom, an odd name for a mad song, but very much true to the Hives’ style. And damn it’s good.
This then leads into the equally manic Try It Again (followed by You’ve Got It All… Wrong), which contains the brilliant line I quoted earlier and will quote again here for completeness:
They say the definition of madness is doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
Despite the very recognisable Hives-esque sound of the album, the Black and White Album certainly isn’t “doing the same thing and expecting a different result”. Some have called it experimental, and arguably some tracks are.
Puppet on a String is a prime example, and is perhaps where the album falters slightly. Nevertheless, it picks-up instantly with Bigger Hole to Fill and the almost childish Fall is Just Something That Grown-ups Invented (I say almost childish in much the same way that the Aquabats are - silly, mad, and perhaps even juvenile, but great fun).
All-in-all, a superb return from the Hives. Hyper as always, but that’s one of the things that makes the Hives great. Perhaps not to everyone’s taste, but once you just sit back and enjoy the lunacy it is an incredibly catchy album.
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October 18, 2007
It might be appropriate to say a few words about the internet’s new political obsession, Ron Paul.
He appears to have been getting a lot of coverage lately in his campaign as well as having truly phenomenal support on the internet. This, as 1066 And All That would say, is a good thing. As far as I can tell he seems fairly rational, and pretty much anything is better than the current state of things.
Even better is the way in which the internet campaign has picked-up momentum. Take from his own website, Ron Paul’s reference to:
our Revolution
Quite.
Arguably the internet is one of the most free forms of media available in that anyone can contribute. Essentially, it is like one giant Wikipedia without having to conform to strict facts and with opinions. Some have pointed to the technophiles who have taken part in the campaign so far and argue that their dominance over the issue isn’t a truly democratic representation. Perhaps not. But, there are a lot of politically minded people who aren’t technophiles and have their say on the internet. To ignore what’s going on would be fairly daft.
Nevertheless, there is a different cause for concern. For the moment, no spam comments have gotten through onto this site due to moderation and Akismet, but I just received one which was the usual incomprehensible nonsense and a link to an article praising Ron Paul.
I’m not for one second saying that this is indicative of all his supporters, but the fact that people will try and spam as part of the campaign should be worrying for both supporters and foes of Ron Paul. The internet is a very free medium, but that means it is open to abuse.
Perhaps what this is more a sign of is the zealous way in which the internet campaign is being run. The campaign is easily dominating talk of the future presidential elections, and good for the supporters, but they need to be careful that it doesn’t become intimidating. Just because enough people vote a Ron Paul story up on Digg doesn’t mean they’ll vote for him at an election. The incredible support for Ron Paul might well be one of the most damaging things to happen to his campaign.
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October 16, 2007
Just got the new Hives album, which is quite good generally but has a few bad tracks on it. I’ll do a fuller article later, but I just thought the pause where Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist stops singing and just says this was awesome:
They say the definition of madness is when you do the same thing and expect a different result.
I should probably take notice of that warning.
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October 12, 2007
Having been pretty reliable so far (save for a short delay in getting my account set-up and the phenomenally slow Fantastico service), Midphase hosting have started to have problems.
Midphase is the parent company of my host ANHosting. Several of their servers have been having problems lately, with a DDoS attack on ans04 and serious problems with ans02, which has cunningtitle on it.
I’m assuming they resorted to a back-up, because now half my posts are missing. Oh well - not sure there was anything critical in there.
For those of you wondering about DDoS, I can’t be bothered to explain, so I’ll just leave you with this:
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