Talking About The Latest Digital Music Store Messes
from the yakkety-yak dept
Over at IT Conversations, Ernest Miller has is running a new web-based radio show called “The Importance of… Law and IT.” The latest show (the second one he’s done) talks about Apple v. Real v. Microsoft in the digital music download store space… and I’m on the show as a last minute panelist. It was a fun conversation, and I’m probably removing myself from future shows by criticizing my own performance, but listening back over it there are two glaring problems with the show we did today. First, and most importantly, is the lack of someone from within the industry. This isn’t Ernest’s fault, as he tried very, very hard to get someone to appear, and I think my spot on the show was to fill in for the lack of anyone from within the industry being willing to come on the show. As it stands, while an interesting conversation on what’s happening in the space, there’s pretty much universal agreement among all the panelists. We might nitpick over definitions or where certain things are going, but on the whole, we all seem to believe that this whole Apple vs. Real vs. Microsoft battle is sort of a minor diversion in the overall effort to redefine the future of how people create, obtain, distribute and listen to music. Which leads into my second critique: this really is a minor skirmish in the larger scale of things, and we should have made more of an effort to frame this particular debate in a much larger debate about the overall industry. The show still is worth listening to, but I wish I had thought more to frame the overall debate better. Still, considering it’s only the second show, and knowing the quality of Ernest’s regular blog, it’s clear this show has plenty of potential in the future.
