snapshot 3/14/08

Rocker Lou Reed takes aim at new technology
Lou Reed is lashing out at new modes of audio technology, saying that "people have got to demand a higher standard" than current MP3 music files. In typically glib and dry-witted form throughout the wide-ranging 55-minute conversation, the bespectacled Reed bemoaned the current state of audio and other digital technologies, noting that "it's like the technology is taking us backwards. It's making it easier to make things worse.

"Here's our song reduced to a pin drop -- what, what, what?!" Reed explained. "It's like if no one knows any better or doesn't care, it's gonna stay on a really, really low level and people who like good sound are gonna be thought of as some kind of strange zoo animal." Reed did express some hope that "you hear they've got a newer version (of MP3) that sounds better, and you suddenly hear the other instruments that are on the song. They've got to bring up the standard. You have the world open to you now; you can get almost any song in the world as an MP3, and I suppose if you like it you can go out and try to find a version you can actually listen to -- if you like good sound. If you don't like good sound, none of this matters for a second."


Bebo Music Meets AOL Music (Or Something Like That)
The ink is still drying on the massive, $850 million buyout of Bebo by AOL. That means that integration details are largely unresolved, including those related to music. AOL Music is one of the largest stand-alone music portals, and it represents a very different animal than Bebo Music. Bebo officially started in 2005, the year that MySpace was purchased by News Corp. That seems hard to believe, though the internet is now crowning champions overnight. Still, the compressed timeframe means that Bebo's music strategy has developed more recently.

In the summer of 2006, the company opened dedicated band profile pages, and well-known names like Paramore, Rihanna, Dizzee Rascal, and 50 Cent are now among the most visited. In October of last year, the network reported a total of 700,000 profiles. Additionally, Bebo music fans can download the iLike application, which offers its own set of 200,000 profiles.


With the HD War Over, Why Aren't We Seeing Blu-ray Drives in Apple Computers?
Before we attempt to calculate what's at risk here for Apple, let's think about what the company has to gain -- or what they might THINK they have to gain – by delaying. Apple clearly sees a huge part of its future in content distribution including TV shows and movies. I can only guess that Jobs sees Blu-ray as a threat to that download business and this decision to delay Blu-ray deployment is an expensive stalling action, buying time for Apple to launch its own true HD alternative. Yes, you can download some movies from iTunes in 720p right now, but in the surging HD market 720p is no longer good enough. The obvious standard is 1080p and right now you need Blu-ray or BitTorrent to get that. Putting on my near-futurist hat, then, I'm guessing Apple is working madly to deploy its own 1080p download solution and is hoping the world will wait for it.