Notes week 27 – 2017

The Streaming Problem: How Spammers, Superstars, and Tech Giants Gamed the Music Industry

Super interesting analysis on how online streaming is changing how music is marketed to reach more people and get more streams. Clearly the music industry is still figuring this out and at the same time some artists are “spamming” to get accidental plays (and earn money of those). It’s no different what happened on search engines, videos on YouTube, third party product listings on Amazon and eBay or headline grabbing on social media (“fake” news). The tone of the article is on the negative side – especially towards Spotify which is unfair. Search and replace Spotify with Apple Music, SoundCloud of any other streaming service and the observations are still relevant. The (music consumption) world has changed, get with the program.

Bots are the new spam.

This Amazon bot is generating thousands of phone cases from random photos, and it’s amazing. (via @rjurney) https://t.co/n63W4eo9Q5 pic.twitter.com/VX2Ch7xn9v

— Andy Baio (@waxpancake) July 9, 2017

Standards + Open Internet

Amid Unprecedented Controversy, W3C Greenlights DRM for the Web

W3C moves forward on publishing a standard for Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) which is controversial. DRM is already used today and the web works fine. DRM only exists to support old-fashioned pre-internet business models to enforce scarcity in the distribution channels. They make no sense to consumers. For instance as a US Netflix customer, I go to Europe and get the European Netflix inventory. Why not the US inventory? It’s just silly.

Biometrics

A biometric ring could replace your passwords, cards and keys

Unbundling the smartphone. Great idea but is probable hampered by lack of standards today.

Ticketmaster will soon admit you to events using audio data transmitted from your phone

NFC, Bluetooth or sound consumers don’t care. Sound is interesting because Apple allows it to run in the background continuously. But Apple is also known to change policies at any moment when they think that’s necessary. I think continuously tracking through the microphone will lead to a giant “blue bar” if they don’t choose to disable it first. Remember the Facebook silent sound hack to keep IOS app running in the background?