David Fredh : Blog and Pictures

Have you heard about the Wired CD?

The Wired CD was shipped together with the newspaper in november 2004 with the sloagan: “Rip. Sample. Mash. Share”.

These musicians are saying that true creativity needs to be open, fluid, and alive. When it comes to copyright, they are pro-choice. Here are 16 songs that encourage people to play with their tunes, not just play them. — WIRED magazine, November 2004 issue (CD was included with magazine.)

Wired highlighted a license form that is very common when it comes to photos and videos thanks to sites like Flickr.com. However, it haven’t succeeded in the music world. Maybe piracy can be one reason? Read the rest of this entry »

What is good enough? According to Wikipedia it is a rule for software design. According to the writer on wikipedia:

Once the quick-and-simple design is deployed,
it can then evolve as needed,
driven by user requirements

I think good enough market segments are kind of new but they are easy to find if you look for them. When it comes to technology during the 90′s, the market was mainly focused on 2 segments: good or cheap.

For every “good enough” product there will always be a small group that wants a high fidelity version. All the big volumes will be in the good enough segments and the high fidelity versions will be expensive and targeted for small groups. In the same time it will be a big market for “a bit better than good enough” targeted for people that wants a little extra. This means that you will create 3 markets from just one! This fragmentation will go on and on and on. Then you have a market that is more fragmented than ever with: cheap, cheap but a bit better, good enough, good enough but a bit better, cheap almost high fidelity and high fidelity. At some point you will have too many “small segments” between good and high end and finally some markets segments will disappear. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a post regarding the subject that has been discussed widely here in Sweden since the Pirate Bay Trial. We also recently got a new anti piracy law, IPRED (After the Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive proposed by the European Union). IPRED made it easier to aquire persional information about users that are suspected pirates.

This law change was not popular. Weeks of debates helped the Swedish Pirate Party to get one of Sweden’s seats in the European Parliament. We also could se decreasing internet traffic and fewer pirates. People got scared and maybe didn’t want to take the risk.

“It’s obvious that those who are using file-sharing have been scared and moved somewhere else, like streaming music sites,” said Daniel Johansson, a researcher at KTH Institute of Technology in Stockholm. (source)

They recently have proposed similar laws in Great Britain. It will be very interesting to follow if the result will be the same there.

This is my opinion: Music … could … be free! But let the authors/artists or the music industry decide the details! Read the rest of this entry »

Today Apple made an announcement that iTunes will be totally DRM free from April 2009. DRM stands for Digital rights management and is a “nice word” for copy protection. Already today most of the music on iTunes is available without DRM. The DRM-free music (called iTunes+) has a lot better sound-quality as well.

Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music. – Steve Jobs, February 6 2007

Last year when I read this I did not believe him. When iTunes used DRM, the songs could only be played on iPods. This made people stick to their Apple-player in favor of other brands. I choose an iPod instead of the beautiful and cheep iRiver only because of all my DRM-protected music on iTunes. Read the rest of this entry »

The IT research company Gartner just released a report that recommends the music industry to prioritize downloads:

The music industry must move away from the retail CD as its primary revenue generator before Christmas 2009

Many bloggers and newspapers are proclaiming the death of the CDs. This has been done for many years now, but the CD, as a medium, is still around. Read the rest of this entry »

Under de senaste 2 åren har jag registrerat min avlyssnade musik till tjänsten last.fm. Detta innebär att jag har samlat på mig mycket statistik gällande mitt musiklyssnande. Jag kan hitta nya “musik-tvillingar” och hitta ny musik. Jag kan också se vilken musik jag gillar bäst.

Här är min topp10-lista:

1.  Nils Landgren
2.  Michael Jackson
3.  Jamiroquai
4.  The Ark
5.  Angélique Kidjo
6.  Guru
7.  Incognito
8.  Christian Walz
9.  Toto
10. The RH Factor

Mer statistik på: Last-fm profil

I had the privelidge to be included in the Spotify early beta test phase (Thanks Filip) and i must say that Spotify is one of the gratest applications i have tested, ever!

Did I say it was swedish?

Spotify is entering the group of listen-to-streaming-free-music. There is a lot of competing solutions as last.fm, pandora, web-radio, podcasts and so on. Great services, but all with one problem: You cannot choose the song yourself.

Spotify is basically an iTunes ripoff but with a huge music-library that you can use directly. You can create playlists, search for new music, listen to webradio etc. Everything is fast and seamless. It’s almost like all the music is on your local computer.

There are 3 different ways to subscribe to spotify. Free, 1-day and premium. Free is free, but with commercial between the songs. You can pay for one day or monthly to skip the commercial.

I only have 1 minus point. The most of the music is old, and no new album that i have checked has been added. Maybe this is something that will be changed now when the application is released as a public beta.

Give it a try at: www.spotify.com