[gallery]
audience at an early Kraftwerk performance, 1970
Oh to have been in that audience.
The ultimate problem for Apple, Beats and any other media distributor is that people want to experience art for themselves. These marketers speak in terms of data, simplification, and “music discovery,” an asinine formalization of “turning on the radio.” It’s not about discovery, the “user experience,” or their “trust” in your brand: it’s about finding a way we can arrive at music, on our own terms, free of the hype, advertisements, PR chicanery, and editorial bias you’re offering. We’re not paying you to tell us what to like: we’re paying you to provide us an easy platform through which to navigate music. Shut up, and take our money.
Chris Ott (via newspeedwayboogie)
Love the sentiment, but don’t think it’s true for most people.
Let’s remember one of the cardinal rules of social media. Out of 100 people, 1% will create the content, 10% will curate the content, and the other 90% will simply consume it. That plays out on this blog, that plays out in Twitter, and that plays out in most of the services we are invested in.
What Not Dying Looks Like
Google Reader was a monopolist product built on an anti-monopolist technology. Now that they’re gone, RSS is once again anyone’s game. You’re going to see a lot more innovation and new stuff for RSS. I never know if its supposed to be a blessing or a curse to live in interesting times. But I have to believe this RSS is entering maybe the most interesting time in its long history.