The end of DRM?

Apple and Amazon have recently secured deals with the 4 main music labels to provide music downloads without any digital rights management limitations - so is this the end for DRM?

I've belived for a long time that DRM was a useless and irritating technology, after all, to make DRM free music all you have to do on a computer is record the audio output, save it as a standard MP3 file and you have DRM free music. This makes DRM a minor incenvenience easily bypassed by an increaingly IT savvy global population.

Music has often been only the tip of the financial iceberg generated by musicians. I remember an old friend of mine, Phil, who used to coach our basketball team, talking to us as we drove to a match. One of my friends was a huge Queen and U2 fan, buying all of their records, standard and limited editions, tickets to gigs, t-shirts, badges etc. My friend was always fairly hard up for cash, running his own little gardening operation to give him some cash, so Phil pointed out that for every item my friend bought, at an average then of £5, millions of others around the world would be doing the same, therefore they were all getting poorer, while the group and their management and record labels were getting much, much richer.

Phil also worked out, after my friend's report on what he had bought at a recent gig, that although a record (in those days!) might cost £9.99, the ticket to the gig, a t-shirt, a badge, a drink, etc. could mean that he spent £50 at a gig. This meant that the group were generating far more from gigs than they ever did from the records.

Phil's conclusion was for my friend to send a letter to his favourite groups asking them to pay to come and see him mow a lawn so they could reward one of their loyal fans for the hundreds, if not thousands he had spent on them over the years.

20 years on, and the point Phil was making resonates even more loudly. Why not let people share the music as they want, particulrly teenagers, so you can get them hooked on an artist, then pitch the other things that actually make you money at them, i.e. the gigs, t-shirts, posters, official fan clubs, limited edition stuff etc.

Fans will allways, if they have the money, want to buy the merchandise and original music CDs of the artists they love. I know I could by the back catalogues of my favourite artists online, but I will pay the premium to own the CDs and the accompanying notes, lyrics and original artwork to go with the music, because I'm a fan.

So DRM less music is finally coming, but I think Amazon could steal a march on iTunes because they can sell the merchandise along side the music downloads, and unless iTunes finds a way of doing this quickly, they could find themselves out of favour with the record labels when they go to renegotiate their deals.

But what about the smaller record companies - how does a DRM less music distribution system affect them? I believe this could be a big problem for indipendant and smaller labels, as they don't have the finance to build up an artist as quickly as the big labels. They will need to sign artists to longer initial contracts, to protect them against poaching, but artists may well pick up on the initial offering as a yard stick as to what they may be worth, and decide to promote themselves over the web with a view of jumping straight to a big label.

The independants and smaller labels may therefore become feeders for the major labels, where they do the legwork of finding the talent, signing them up and then filtering the better performing (in terms of sales, downloads and views) to the big labels for a fee or share of future artist income.

The music industry's move away from DRM is like a dinosaur coming back to life, with one leg missing - they never should have gone down this road and they shouldn't be reliant on third parties to distribute their music. If one of them had had the foresight to buy Napster in the late nineties, they would have dominated the field, with the opportunities to sell merchandising (which is difficult and costly to reproduce) enourmous.

In the very near future I predict more one hit wonders than ever before as managers and record labels try to find the next big thing, with the only truly successful artists, financially and artistically, being those that can perform live to large arena and stadium audiences. There will also be an accelereated creating of copy cat artists, as there seem to be now ("which one was that" is a cry I hear often) to try and maximise revenue by getting fans to buy in to similar artists.

In the medium term this will all settle down - we've been through it all before and we'll go through it all again. I wasn't around when the Beatles made it big, but from the archive footage you can see the desperation of the other groups, managers and music labels of the times, exemplified by the Monkees. However, the cycle will become quicker with the internet driving global exposure faster than ever before, making the likes of The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, U2 etc. rarer than ever, but possible better than ever, as they will need to be to raise to and stay at the top of the Internet quagmire.

SonyEricsson K850i update

After a few months of using the K850i I've come to a conclusion on the phone, and that is a great phone with a bad user interface - by user interface, I mean the keys and touch screen.

It's become clear that the reason for dropping the usual joystick on the K range is solely to accommodate the touch screen facility. There have been countless times where I've touched the screen when trying to use the "call" and "end call" buttons and activated a menu, leading me into an irritating sequence of cancel and back requests.

The navigation solution used in lieu of a joystick is a clumsy one - a square which wraps around the 2 and 5 buttons. It's not very comfortable or intuitive to use, and it's layout displaces the natural position of the 2 and 5, although only slightly, does look very odd.

This would be a truly great phone, had SonyEricsson not used the touch screen just for the sake of using the technology. It does nothing new except irritate the user by sending txt messages while you're on a call and triggering the wrong menus.

A phone should be completely touch screen, as the iPhone etc are, or should use the keyboard and a decent navigation option, such as a joystick. I know some people were not a fan of the joystick, but I think dropping this is a big step backwards.

On the positive side, the big screen is great for web browsing (I've had to upgrade my account to unlimited!) and viewing pictures taken on the great camera. I hadn't really noticed how big the screen was until I started using my wife's W850 phone and thought my eyesight had gone!

So, SonyEricsson, keep the big screen, camera and all the usual SonyEricsson goodies, and drop the touch screen.

Updated Rating 6/10

SonyEricsson K850i - good, but not perfect

Just received my new SonyEricsson K850i, which I've been waiting months to receive, and before I start my review I must confess that I am a bit of SonyEricsson fan. That's not to say I haven't tried other manufacturers, but I just find that, particularly with the K range, you just get everything on a SonyEricsson with decent battery life, whereas Nokia et al usually leave features off some phones and the battery life is woeful.

At first, the K850i looks like a slightly bloated K810i (which I also own and is a fantastic phone, arguably better than the K850i - more on that later!), but it has a few tricks up it's sleeve, some nice, some dirty.

The K850i is the first time I can remember a SonyEricsson phone not having a dedicated back button - this is now achieved using the three touch screen areas, "soft keys", at the bottom of the screen - usually the right "button". This takes a little getting used to, but you can also use the "End Call" button to the same effect.

"Ooooooooooooh - touch screen!" you say - hold on a minute! I suspect that this will be a common feature of touch screen phones, but it is particularly irritating, and that is that when you talk, unless you have the cheek bones of a bulimia ridden super model, your face is happily navigating the phone's menu system. This often results in texts being sent, usually blank, to the first contact on your contact list. A little tip here - make sure you have inclusive texts in your plan, and make the first contact (cal it AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA to make sure it's listed first) your number (It may be that if you put a bum number in you don't get charged, but I can't verify this at the moment). This little dirty trick has led me to use the included headphones when calling in private - why isn't there a setting to automatically lock the keys (excluding start and end call) when you answer or make a call? If anyone knows of a way around this, feel free to add a comment to enlighten the world.

The touch screen soft keys can also cause problems with some older apps or games, as they haven't been specifically designed to deal with these, but on the whole, the left and right soft keys are labelled, and the middle key is usually "select".

Another obvious change from the usual K range layout is the joystick. I liked the joystick, especially to play my favourite game, the tennis one. I still can't decide if I like the new arrangement, which is a raised "border" around the 2 and 5 keys, which acts like a joystick, but far less intuitively as you have to feel round the square. I would urge SonyEricsson to consider returning to the joystick for the K range as it really does make a difference - hence my plug for the K810i!

The phone has the usual, if slightly tweaked and updated, SonyEricsson interface and menu system. A nice new feature is that when you start to type a number, the phone automatically presents you with possibilities from your phone book, making dialing much quicker, and making quick dial virtually useless.

When you turn the phone on, one of the soft keys is automatically labelled "Media", and when you go into this you find a whole new experience. You're presented with a menu system that allows you to browse, manage and view/listen to photos, music and video. The media system is quite sophisticated, and makes setting up play lists and tagging items much easier than in previous versions of the K series. If you turn the phone from portrait to landscape, the screen automatically rotates, which is great when viewing pictures or videos.

HOWEVER, and it's a big HOWEVER, with previous versions of the K phone, when you were playing music you could start and pause the music player using a key on the side of the phone (usually used to take pictures) - however on the K850i this doesn't seem possible - again, if anyone knows how, let me know. This therefore requires going through the "media" soft key and a couple of clicks before you can start listening to your tunes, which is irritating, but also a little bit of a security issue as you tend to hold the phone in front of your face whilst you do this - not very safe when you're on the Tube with one of the latest phones on the market.

Listening to music is a joy, as it has been for a couple of generations of K phone - which is why I wouldn't bother with a W phone. The included headphones give a decent quality sound, also acting as the aerial if you want to listen to the radio. The included 512Mb card can hold a couple of hours of music, and I would recommend re sampling your MP3s to 96kbps as, unless your listening to classical music, you won't be able to tell much of a difference, and to me it's better to have the music available.

Now you may have noticed that the M2 memory card is not that generous, but it's fairly cheap to upgrade, with a 4Gb card costing around £35 and an 8Gb card around £60. Not bad when you compare it to the equivalent iPod or similar, especially if you get the phone for free. The memory card is tiny, and will easily be lost if you're not careful, so I would recommend getting a bigger one so you don't have to change it around.

My main reason for getting the phone is the 5 megapixel camera, which I have to say is actually quite good. I enjoy taking pictures (http://www.flickr.com/digenie) and am starting to get more into the various parameters of photography, so it was a pleasant surprise to find that the phone has a proper flash, what seems to be optical zoom as well as digital zoom, and takes quite a good picture.

This is the other reason to get a bigger memory card, as each picture at 5MP will be around 1.5Mb, so you'll soon run out of space. The phone has a dedicated button to power up the camera, as well as some of the keys becoming dedicated camera setting keys when activated. Because of this, the camera is ready to shoot in a couple of seconds, so you should be able to capture the mood or get the shot before the moment has passed.

The camera has a best picture mode, which takes 9 pictures just before (how does it know?!) and after you press the shutter, so you can choose which one to keep. This is very useful for action shots, but more useful when taking group photos, so you can choose a picture with the least shut eyes or distracted gazes. You can also tell who reacts slowest to the "Cheese!" trigger.

You can choose from a number of modes, including a panorama mode where you link a number of pictures together to create the panorama. You can usually leave the camera in Auto mode, but you may want to play with the settings if you have time, especially if the light is poor or you don't want the flash to go off, e.g. shooting through a window.

This now brings me back to the K810i - and I may very well go back to it.

The K810i is much easier to use, especially the media player if you want to use it as a Walkman, and has a decent 3MP camera. It's smaller, slimmer and easier to use, doesn't send texts when your on the phone, and has 3G for Internet browsing. If you can't afford the K850i, or you're not interested in taking photos, go for the K810i - it's a great alternative.

I think I'll stick with the K850i for now and keep taking my photos, but if the touch screen keeps irritating me and I can't find a way to easily play my music, I may resurrect my K810i.

Rating 8/10

Nokia N70 - Internet on the move?

I've just received the Nokia N70 together with the Web'n'Walk package from T-mobile promising the Internet on your mobile phone.

We've all heard this before with the launch of WAP in the late 90's, where we received a very slow, very expensive service that displayed differently (if at all) on different hand sets and provided you with snapshots of the information you actually wanted.

I developed a number of these sites resulting in very limited usage from our target audience. A user would typically connect a couple of times, probably because they had just received a new phone capable of WAP browsing, were down the pub with their mates and were showing off. Suffice to say that we didn't bother keeping the service after a couple of months.

Fast forward to 2006 and the mobile operators have made, and are continuing to make, new promises based on the much hyped 3G networks they spent billions buying. 3G in theory allows speeds to your mobile comparable with broadband, allowing information to be sent quickly and in large volumes, making video on your mobile a reality. You can now get video highlights on your 3G enabled phone, initially for free while they try and make you an addict before hiking the prices up a la the TXT messaging strategy of the mid 90s - do you remember when it was offered free as a buisness gimmick by the likes of Orange?

So, back to the Nokia N70 - quite a nice piece of kit, with a 2 mega pixel camera (and a flash, usefull for up to 1.5 metres!?) and 3G capabilities. So, how is the Internet on the move experince?

Supprisingly good, in fact - mainly because you are not limited to WAP style sites, although these work very well at high speeds. You can actually browse the web with this device, i.e. go to actuall web sites and see them on your phone.

OK, you think, but the screen isn't nearly big enough with most web sites at at least 800 pixels wide, but the N70 gets around this by giving you the option for it to fit the page to the screen, which sometimes works very well, sometimes not so well. If it doesn't work, the N70 steps up to the mark and allows you to switch off the optimisation so the page loads normally, obviously much bigger than the screen, but you can scroll around the screen using the "joypad" on the phone.

The browser supplied on the phone is Opera, and it does a pretty good job of rendering the pages. It has a number of shortcuts you can use to speed up your browsing, e.g. press 7 to bookmark a page.

So, overall, I'm very impressed. I'm also impressed by the T-mobile price plan which allows me to use the Internet for a fixed monthly fee, although I'm not allowed to use the connection to connect via my laptop, but, as the service is pretty good on my mobile and my laptop has built in WiFi which is almost omnipotent in my daily life, I'm not bothered. I can check my e-mail very easily via hotmail mobile (most of the big web based services will automatically redirect you to mobile optimised pages) and make sure the sites I manage are functioning OK, as well as get all the news, results, weather, traffic reports etc. that I need to get my daily fix.

Get on the Internet when you're on the move - it's arrived.

File Hippo - all you need to keep your PC ticking over and looking cool

FileHippo.com lists the best tools to keep you PC spyware and virus free, e.g. CCleaner, SpyBot Search & Destroy, Avast! Antivirus etc. and some cool utilities to customise and make the most of your desktop.

It also lists common drivers and software, e.g. Real Player, ATI and nVidia video drivers. But most of all, it always lists the latest version, so it's easy to stay up to date.

It's also worth checking out some of the less familiar downloads - click on a link and you'll get a detailed description of the software and a link to the vendor's website - remember most of the files listed are free for personal use.

My favourites are:
- Skype
- Avast!
- Konfabulator
- Picasa
- iTunes
- CCleaner

Put FileHippo in your favourites and check it out a couple of times a month - your PC will run as smoothly as Michael Johnson in his golden boots!

[click here to visit FileHippo.com]