Price. Quality. Service. Pick any two. That’s the formula we’re told to expect when we go shopping. If you want the best price, be prepared to sacrifice on either quality or service. If you want the best quality, it will probably include good service but you’ll have to be prepared to spend more.

I decided our home computer could benefit from more RAM. It came with 512Mb, and I had upgraded it recently by adding another 512Mb, which I bought at my local Staples store. It cost around $60, and I installed it myself, thanks to the excellent online support documentation and instructional videos from HP. The computer’s performance was noticeably enhanced, so when I got a few more bucks together I headed back down to Staples to buy another 1Gb of RAM to top it up to its’ full capacity, 2Gb. When I got to Staples I couldn’t remember exactly what kind of RAM I needed. Naturally there are several types. The sales associate tried to help me out, but I simply couldn’t remember enough information. He said I could buy the RAM and if it wasn’t right, as long as I hadn’t opened the package, I could return it ($130). Problem is, I don’t live near Staples, and it’s not on a bus route, so when I could get back there was hard to guess. I left the store without the RAM, and when I got home I wrote down all the info I needed to get the right RAM.

No problem, on a coffee break at work I went online to search for other local suppliers. If they’re on the internet, I couldn’t find them. Try searching for something like “Kelowna add ram to my computer” and not a single local dealer appears in the top 30 search results, although dealers from Alberta and Ontario do. OK, never mind. I remembered that Northern Computer has a store near me. I looked up their number and gave them a call. I was told all their sales people were busy. They could call me back. I said no thanks. Probably just as well. At the last place I worked, we bought new hard drives from them. Unfortunately for them, they were for a computer networkd security class. The students quickly uncovered the “new” drives we had bought were used, because there was another company’s data buried in the drives. Not cool. Next, I phoned London Drugs. I got transferred to the computer department, and after several minutes on hold, I disconnected. If you’ve seen any London Drugs TV ads lately, you’ve probably seen our friend Melanie Bray. She’s a terrific actor. Hi Mel! Anyway, my Telus mobility plan is not exactly cheap, so I’m not going to stay on hold forever.

So I wasn’t feeling the love from my local dealers, at least the ones I could actually find or remember. I gave up on Kelowna and searched Canada. I quickly found a store in Ontario that had several choices of what I was looking for, and in stock, too. I’d never heard of them, but I’m a 21st century guy, so I typed in my credit card info and ordered it. They shipped it by Purolator. Of course I wasn’t at home when it arrived so they left a note that I could pick it up at their Kelowna depot. Their hours? 9-5, naturally. At least they’re open 10-4 on Saturday. So Saturday I picked up my RAM, got it installed and voila, all is good. The 1Gb came halfway across the country for $60, including shipping. Even with picking it up at the depot, the whole experience was quicker than trying to get it locally, and cost half as much.

The Kelowna dealers couldn’t give me 2 out of 3, or even 1 out of 3. Shopping online, 3 out of 3. Guess who I call next time?

Today I was reading a company’s description of the services they provide, and I found that I had no idea what they were talking about. Now that might be OK if they were providing something to do with, say, theoretical physics, in which case I’d be interested but would have to just nod my head politely and hope they said a word or two I could hang on to. But these guys, once I dug further to find out what they were about, were in business to help other businesses get clients. They existed to help your marketing department. My business also exists to help your marketing department, but I hope when I tell people what I can offer they get it, and fast.

What this company was doing was talking to themselves. They had a lot of jargon on their web site; jargon that I had to look up elsewhere to figure out what they were getting at. Maybe they were also talking to people who already knew all about what they offered and why they needed it, and if that’s true, then fair play to them. I will, however, humbly suggest that if they hope to attract new clients themselves, they might want to reconsider their approach. If you tell somebody what you can do for them, and it takes more than 30 seconds, you’d better be offering something no one can refuse. If not, they’ll just nod politely and move on.

Now that we have the internet, and blogging, it’s easy to surf around and find a whole lot of people talking about a whole lot of things, from lousy service to lousy products, pet peeves to rants about former lovers. And it seems like some people forget that it’s not a case of “what happens on the ‘net stays on the ‘net”. Uh-uh. Anyone who’s ever used Google’s cached pages knows stuff can hang around a long time. So that rant you posted about the company you work for when you were having a bad day is still out there, and maybe it’s been copied and pasted and printed who knows how many times by how many people and shared with people outside your immediate circle. You are leaving your legacy. It used to be people had cute little locks on their diaries. Now they put it out there for the world to read.

Anytime I’ve ever researched any college or university, public or private, if I dig around enough I will find dirt. Always. Huh. Isn’t there a perfect school out there who pleases all of the people all of the time? Guess not, but there certainly are charlatans in the business, and it’s disheartening to those who really take education seriously.

Any of us who remember our college and university days remember blowing off steam and railing against the authorities who ran the place and didn’t get it. We did not know, or care, what challenges they may have been facing in terms of their budgets, staffing issues, office politics, and who knows what. And should we have? We were there to get an education, without necessarily realizing all the ramifications of that word, “education”. I always liked that Mark Twain quote about never letting my schooling interfere with my education.

But if we were railing against our schools 30 years ago, why haven’t these problems been solved? Why should anyone have to still be complaining about incompetent teachers or inadequate courses, etc.? Well, one of the trickiest aspects of delivering education is that it’s a moving target. In my lifetime, I have already had jobs THAT DIDN’T EXIST when I was in college. So how did my specific schooling ever train me for that?

Anyway, if you’re thinking of publicly lambasting your school or teachers on the ‘net, let me offer two points to consider (albeit, from my middle-aged out-of-touch perspective, but hey, don’t rub it in, alright?). As you’re probably at that point where you’re trying to start a career in your chosen field, and this will invariably require you to work with other people (whether you work for them or they work for you), if you slam your schooling, your prospective employers and employees will learn two things about you:

1. You make poor decisions
You picked the school, right? It cost a lot of money, and you did the research, right? And you still blew it on a big, expensive, important, decision that could affect your entire life?

2. You don’t take responsibility
Who is ultimately responsible for your education? Apparently not you—it’s all up to your lame teachers and the crooked, bonehead administrators who created the living hell that was your school experience.

I am not advocating putting up with crap, or shrugging off inept, or worse—academically unsound—schooling. Of course you should do something about it.

But if you really want to kick start a career, despite a dodgy educational experience, maybe you would stand out from the crowd a little better if you expressed what you learned from your poor experience, how you would apply what you’ve learned in the future, what you would suggest the culprit school do to mend their ways, and finally what advice you could give the next batch of prospective students to help them pick the right school, or at least make the most of the school they’re already at.

I mean, picture the job interview. “It says here you graduated from the” Acme School of Everything”, and you reply “Yeah, but it was a crap school and they ripped me off. I never learned a thing there.” Ooh, impressive. Next!

No, I’m not suggesting you blow smoke. If the school sucked, it sucked, but put the emphasis on what you learned from that experience, if not what you learned from the school. Rant to your friends. Rant to the school. But rant on the ‘net and you just may be closing yourself off from some golden opportunities.

I’ve read (so it must be true!) that as many as 3 in 4 HR execs google prospective hires. I’ve done it myself. What if googling your name brings up some blog where you’ve posted a poorly-spelled, petulant hissy fit, running people down and making derogatory comments about your peers, colleagues, or alma mater? What would a prospective associate think of that? You can bet it won’t do a lot to make you look like someone other people would want to work with.

Um, like I’ve been saying…
Music’s Future Digital and Online: Experts

The Web, the radio and the record companies
or
How things might work out so musicians can make a living (from a Canadian’s perspective)

originally written by Karl Hourigan November 8, 2005

I’m writing this little train wreck of an essay in the hope that I can, at best, spur some discussion and inspire our imaginations as to what may come to pass in the not so distant future. At worst it’ll just waste your time to read it.

Every day (literally) I come across articles about MP3 in one form or another. We all know the current challenges with this digital format, and many of the conversations sound very familiar to anyone who remembers the introduction of the cassette tape, or if you’re REALLY OLD, the invention of recorded sound. The RIAA’s credibility in this regard has been further weakened by two fairly recent events: 1. major record companies in the US have just lost a court case and been fined for essentially colluding to gouge retail customers 2. major artists and industry observers have spoken out in an articulate fashion about just what a sad deal most record companies give their artists.

It has been said that “digital information wants to be free” (numerous sources). It has also been said that “music wants to be free” (Travis). OK, but everyone wants to get paid. The trick now is to find a model that accepts digital delivery AND generates an exchange of dollars.

Anybody with a computer and an internet connection can be their own radio station on the internet. Unregulated, uncensored, unlicensed and unaccountable–in other words it’s a kind of like a vision of nirvana for anyone too young to really understand what mortgage payments look like. This vision is currently a songwriter’s nightmare.

I’d like to suggest a different dream that brings together a number of existing or plausible technologies. The players in this little drama are:
Streaming media
Wireless internet
Internet appliances
Central storage
and the usual suspects who control, administer, own or profit from copyrights.

The potential of internet radio is waiting to be realized. First, let’s try to describe a business model that would appeal to the end user, then explore the ramifications of that model on the vested interests (artists, publishers, record labels, radio, etc.). Finally, let’s take a look at some of the challenges that can prevent this from working out.

The End User Experience
Internet radio is readily available now on a typical home computer. As broadband quickly becomes more ubiquitous, and more and more homes have internet-capable computers, internet radio will flourish. The advantages of internet radio include an unprecedented wealth of potential programming, catering to every possible interest group. Like traditional broadcast radio, it’s free to the listener (except that we’re paying for an ISP).

What’s needed is an internet radio appliance that can use a simple familiar interface, but offers much more than conventional radio. Let’s imagine such a device in a hypothetical setting:

The internet radio is mounted under the upper cabinets in the kitchen. It plays music in stereo, or even 5.1 surround sound, at higher than CD quality. “Stations” can be chosen in a number of ways—styles of music or content (classical, rap, punk, news, talk, etc.), artists or groups of artists (e.g. Beatles or Beatles solo), place of origin (Detroit, Iraq, Russia, etc.), random, traditional broadcasters (e.g. CBC programming) and so on. Of course our radio can remember presets and preferences. It can automatically add new stations by category as they come online.

So far so good, but here’s where the interactivity of internet radio takes off from traditional radio. Let’s say you’re listening to a track by an artist you’ve never heard before. You can check the read out on your internet radio (let’s NOT refer to it as iRadio!) and instruct your radio to play more songs by that artist or from that album, or in that style (e.g. “choose more music featuring the sitar”). In the future, this could be voice-activated so you wouldn’t even have to stop chopping vegetables in the kitchen! You could return to the previous programming at any time.

But what if you listened to this new artist and decided you wanted to “bookmark” the song or artist for future listening? No problem. And here’s where we possibly return to the pop age of the “single”. Through the ISP connected to your internet radio, your subscription includes a certain number of “bookmarks” every month, say 50. If you want more than that, you are charged a very nominal fee. Your ISP account has a counter that tracks your “bookmarks”. Of course with internet radio, if you remember the name of the song or the artist, there may be a dedicated “station” where you can hear that artist anytime you want. But once you’ve bookmarked a song, you can go straight to it on demand. But wait, there’s more—through your internet radio’s FireWire connector, you can download your bookmarks and output them in any digital format you want, from mp3 to CD. Now you can take your bookmarked favourites with you. Later, when cars have internet radios, you can log on and access your bookmarked music in your car or wherever you have access to an internet radio device. The bookmarked material is not stored on the internet radio, it is stored by the provider (e.g. copyright holder, publisher) and served through your ISP. This also ties into wireless internet radios for accessing your “bookmarked” music.

The ISP and other music-on-demand sites have logged every “bookmark” of every customer so that should be no problem to assign royalties to the correct parties. The customer never has to buy another CD if they don’t want to, but they can access their music library from any internet appliance (like say, your wireless internet watch). They’re paying for music, every recording is tracked, and everybody can get a little tiny piece of the action. ISP’s could offer to sell custom one-off enhanced CD compilations too, with videos, lyrics etc., just as an additional revenue stream.

The Vested Interests
If the internet radio delivers inexpensive music that you can try before you buy, a lot more music will be sold (how much music would you buy at pennies a song?). This may have a negative effect on the multi-million sellers that are sold on marketing hype, but could provide some viable income to a wider spectrum of artists.

Record labels move their business from pressing CD’s to an emphasis on marketing to get their artists heard and subsequently “bookmarked”. Publishers get a way to generate income from a greater selection of their portfolio (the long tail effect). During this phase, traditional radio and the income it generates is still ongoing.

With digital delivery through ISP’s, it should be realistic to mark and track every tune played. The ISP’s would pay performing rights societies (micro-payments) to deliver such content, just as radio stations do today.

Artists and their labels could still release CD’s, but internet radio would actually deliver higher audio quality (why settle for 44.1kHz 16-bit audio any more?). Of course, individuals could still be their own internet radio stations, but they would be challenged to support the interactivity of the dedicated internet radio appliance. Given the consolidation of publishing, production, artist and repertoire management, plus broadcasting and distribution AND manufacturing prevalent in today’s market (e.g. Sony), the major record labels are in a position to profit from such a change in the way music is delivered—manufacturing internet radios, reducing losses to piracy, activating income from more of their catalogue, etc..

“Bookmarks” could also be arranged by the subscriber into any categories they wanted (e.g. Summer Road Trip 1). Subscriptions could allow for multiple users, as in a family.

Hey, but what about…
CRTC and other broadcast regulatory bodies would be in a very difficult position to regulate internet radio. The attraction to the end user is all about choice, convenience and low cost. CanCon would suffer, for example, but there is nothing today to prevent me from listening to radio from around the world via my computer. I can hear a range of uncensored music and views. Pandora’s box has been opened, and in free democracies, we are reluctant to shut that lid. We prefer to choose not to listen if we don’t like what we hear. The difficulty for artists is that under the present situation, they are not being paid for current internet usage of their material. But if record companies insist on trying to collect pressed record type prices for internet delivery, the artists will ultimately lose out. ISP’s and record companies must realize the potential of micro-payments as a viable business model in an internet radio environment.

Another sticking point would be labels or artists not participating. The attraction would be to have any and every thing available. ISP’s could make licensing agreements with record labels. Given the current consolidation in that market, this is a good time to pursue agreements that would give ISPs access to most titles. New services would spring up (or old services would adapt) to help independent artists have their music featured on “independent” channels. More radically, a change in copyright laws could allow anyone to “broadcast” anything on the internet provided they were licensed to do so, meaning that they were following rules for tracking and paying royalties on distributed materials.

Scenario – the view from Sony
So you’re Sony. And you want to plug your artists and publishing. But you realize that internet radio restricted to only your catalogue, as big as it is, is not enough. So you license your entire catalogue to sub-stations, who offer up whatever playlists they want to, which can include Sony stuff. Plus Sony still gets paid back by the ISP’s who serve up their stuff regardless of the “station” that the end user has bookmarked the song from.

I think historically any time technology has introduced new ways to distribute music (read expand the potential audience), after the initial shockwaves and catastrophes, new business models emerge and new opportunities are created. Don’t get hung up on mp3’s. They’re not the last word. They’re just the first shot in this latest battle of the digital revolution. Record companies and radio stations need to get right in there with wireless internet technology, because they already understand many of the components that can make that business model work.