Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[JimH]

[I'm moving digineer's post from the "Next Year in J Riverville" thread because I think it deserves separate consideration and discussion. -- JimH]

Digineer said:
After reading of your request and subsequent replies from the forum members, I thought I add my own twist as well.  Be forewarned, although you asked for 'next year' musings in terms of HT and marrying the "desk" with the "couch" etc., please forgive in advance my proclivity to reach beyond.  I'll keep it brief and if you think any of my comments prove intriguing,  please advise.  

IMHO, most of the excellent comments herein deal with short-term tactical execution and not long-term strategic development.  All well and good and it is what you asked for, but I don't think it goes far enough.  I believe your app and approach to media offers so much more and from a strategic vantage point could/would serve to help you solve the two big issues you raise: standardization and support.  

1.  Think globally, act locally - why stop at the four walls of the home - extend your MJ/MC model into the 'net and corporations.  I think your app, excellent in its GUI design, ease of use, open-standards orientation and scalability could be combined/extended to include B2B and B2C functionality.  In other words, stand-alone in-home MCPC or MCServer would be nothing more than a 'local' extension of an 'MC portal engine' where a user can choose his/her level of LAN/MAN/WAN connectivity.  Building off this idea:

2.  Start at the top of the food chain - allow content owners/producers to market/sell their programming direct to the consumer via MJ/MC.  One approach would be to create an ASP app that corporations can utilize to host their media for internal consumption by employee as well as offering content for sale/distribution...

3.  Digital Rights Mangement is but one side of the coin - implement automated verification functionality that tracks use and utilization of media, no matter if its form, at home, on the net, in public venues, no matter its delivery vehicle - over the air/satellite or cable.

4.  Current distribution methods are unable to monetize the Internet - this one is easy, if its broke, sheesh - build a different model!!  MJ/MC could serve as the core app of a "better" distribution model that can definitively monetize the Internet, enabling aritist and consumers better value for their $$ spent or earned without disintermediating the music publishers, tv producers, mag pubs, etc.  

These are but a few ideas, but hopefully you can see where I am going with all this.  While none of these ideas speak directly to HT, it does suggest "media integration" as a "new business opportunity" from which the tactical ideas you seek are but natural extensions.  Instead of extending the old models with new revenue ideas, try building a new process altogether; you've got what it takes... IMHO anyway.

don

FYI, I am a newbie to MJ/MC ever since I bought a WiPod for my gf this Chistmas.  So if you ARE doing any of these things already, then please forgive my presumptions.  I merely seek to see if an accumulated 25 years of 'convergent' digital media production and business expertise might prove beneficial to this discussion thread.  GREAT job on your app!!  

[JimH]

Don,
Thank you for your thoughtful and detailed comments.  I'd like to hear what other people have to say, but I'll reply to a few of the things you've said.

 
IMHO, most of the excellent comments herein deal with short-term tactical execution and not long-term strategic development.  

You're probably correct that we're seeing too many trees and not enough forest, but there are SO many things we need to do, and the quality of what we do is critical to the success of our products.

 
extend your MJ/MC model into the 'net and corporations.

An Internet connection works as well as a LAN connection, so technically there isn't much difference here, but you're correct that we've ignored the business market.  Our other software products focus solely on the business market, so we could easily switch if we saw an opportunity.  So far, a lot of companies have lost a lot of money in that market.

...allow content owners/producers to market/sell their programming direct to the consumer via MJ/MC.

We built a complete system that allows this.  It is called Music Exchange.   DRM, e-commerce, everything.  We found ourselves competing for business in an area that is dominated by the major record labels and they couldn't get their shoes on the right feet, so we ducked out of it.
 

implement automated verification functionality that tracks use and utilization of media, no matter if its form, at home, on the net, in public venues, no matter its delivery vehicle - over the air/satellite or cable.  

 
There are some big privacy concerns about this, if I understand what you mean.  RealNetworks, for one, was secretly reporting back on listener usage and got caught at it.  People don't feel good about someone watching.

Current distribution methods are unable to monetize the Internet - this one is easy, if its broke, sheesh - build a different model!!  MJ/MC could serve as the core app of a "better" distribution model that can definitively monetize the Internet, enabling aritist and consumers better value for their $$ spent or earned without disintermediating the music publishers, tv producers, mag pubs, etc.

This is obviously logical, but there are some serious roadblocks.  Congress, for one, has been more friendly to the content owners than to the consumer so far.

As you probably know, an artist may have ownership of the recording, but not own the rights to the song, so you can't cut the music publisher out.  They own the song or represent the rights of the composer of it.

The percentage of popular tracks that are recorded by artists who also wrote the song and own all the rights to the track is probably less than 10%.
 

I merely seek to see if an accumulated 25 years of 'convergent' digital media production and business expertise might prove beneficial to this discussion thread.

If you can see something I'm missing, please elaborate.  I don't want to pour cold water on your ideas.  I'm just a little frustrated myself with the conditions we're trying to operate under.

Jim

[nila]

Just something I have been thinking recently that tied in a lot with the statement of expanding this to allow for .asp apps etc to work with MJ.
MJ is a great database and that is it's strongest point, it's database management. Since it is such a great database however it would make sense to me to extend it to me yet one more standard - SQL.
This is the standard database language and it would extend the capabilities of MJ and make it that much closer to a powerful full fledged database. MJ should be able to export to full SQL tables with table syntax and also insert statements for all the data. Either as a relational database or as a flat table. It should also be able to import directly from SQL statements. This would just extend it's capabilities even further and bring it that much closer to being a VERY powerful management software.

As well as this, I think MJ could be extended so that instead of what it has right now which is a web plugin, I think MJ should be extended to be a database that can be directly spoken to and queried from languages like PHP in a smiliar way to mySQL. This would allow the content management and tools of MJ to be integrated into powerful web apps with MJ's tools available as functions for php. I suggest php over .asp because of it's open source nature and its rapid growth.


When I first started using MJ I thought your aim was to make it the ultimate all in one Music app (ripper, encoder, player, jukebox). Now with it's new path it seems to be following it seems that MJ's direction is more to be of Multimedia Management software rather than Music app. If this is right then adding web functionality to it at a core level would seem like a very powerful move that provides a LOT of power to other developers to work with MJ.

[digineer]

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your response.  I'm glad you consider my comments worthy of further evaluation by your community, so I'll add two more cents to keep things going.  :-)  

You're probably correct that we're seeing too many trees and not enough forest, but there are SO many things we need to do, and the quality of what we do is critical to the success of our products.

I am not surprised that your list of things to do is greater than the time/manpower/resources you have, so my comments in no way mean to criticize.  I merely wanted to suggest that you may be able to "kill two birds with one stone" to borrow a trite phrase.  In the area of "media asset management/access" I am seeing the opportunity to marry business and consumer needs largely being ignored even though the effort/cost to do so would be negligibly greater or perhaps even reduced.  Basically, I see MJ/MC at a critical junction point and as Nila opined, if you standardize MJ/MC around business protocols (i.e. SQL), it could easily become the app that traverses both consumer and business processes.

... So far, a lot of companies have lost a lot of money in that market.

You are absolutely correct and on that note, contrarian thinking suggest that now may be the time to analyze why those companies lost money and how you can take advantage of the vacumn left behind.  Again, IMHO, most of the companies lost money because of a poor business model, poor execution and lack of seasoned mgmt... not to mention poor timing.
 

We built a complete system that allows this.  It is called Music Exchange.   DRM, e-commerce, everything.  We found ourselves competing for business in an area that is dominated by the major record labels and they couldn't get their shoes on the right feet, so we ducked out of it.

I did briefly review your website info on Music Exchange and while there exist a number of very large players trying to capture this market (because no one even owns even a sizable single digit marketshare percentage), I believe if J River approaches this opportunity from a strategic alliance POV, you may create the ability to 'capture' the music publishers and others without having 'compete' with the big boys or teach them right from left.  It was also my review of your ME endeavors that led me to suggest a marriage of both your consumer and business development efforts (one app could become a subset/superset of the other).

There are some big privacy concerns about this, if I understand what you mean.  RealNetworks, for one, was secretly reporting back on listener usage and got caught at it.  People don't feel good about someone watching.  This is obviously logical, but there are some serious roadblocks.  Congress, for one, has been more friendly to the content owners than to the consumer so far.

 

Actually, what I am referring to is simply the ability to know when and where content is played, primarily in the B2B arena where privacy et. al. is not a primary issue.  Within the B2C environment, I concur that other issues like privacy come into play and more thought would have to go into designing the appropriate consumer model.  I think however, if structured properly, most listeners/viewers would not object to tracking and verification as long as it was disclosed up front, ignorant of their personal data and properly structured.  

As you probably know, an artist may have ownership of the recording, but not own the rights to the song, so you can't cut the music publisher out.  They own the song or represent the rights of the composer of it.

Yes I do know that the artist is but one part of the whole process.  Nonetheless, I believe your app may offfer the ability for each 'stakeholder' within the media publishing process a way to financially gain from the Internet so that noone need be disintermediated.  With respect to publishers, they provide a very valuable service which is not easily replaced, namely marketing.  It's just that they haven't figured out how to enfold the new digital workflow processes into the more traditional legacy analog marketing & distribution paradigms.  As you expressed earlier, it is difficult to take them beyond what they know.  Even so, I believe if you approached them from a strategic alliance POV and show them how they can benefit financially AND not lose 'marketshare to the Internet or P2P processes, I believe they'll listen.  

If you can see something I'm missing, please elaborate.  I don't want to pour cold water on your ideas.  I'm just a little frustrated myself with the conditions we're trying to operate under.

 

In no way did your comments "pour cold water" on the ideas I proferred.  If anything you've asked for clarification - I admit my comments to being a bit general considering this is a public forum.  Nonetheless, I hope enough has been said to encourage others to weigh in with their thoughts on how J River, MJ/MC, ME can truly become a 'cross-media platform' that enables digital commerce (in media publishing) to co-exist with traditional commerce.

Some time in the future, if time/conditions/interest converge, perhaps I can introduce you to some potential alliance partnerships that at a first glance I think might offer J River the option of implementing a wide and deep strategic platform from which to launch tactical endeavors.  

don