Music Like Water (MLW) Manifesto

Gerd Leonhard shares some highlights of his "Music Like Water Manifesto" in his latest blog entry, which is a preview of some of the concepts covered in his next book, "Music Like Water - the next REAL music revolution. Definitely a good read with some thought provoking predictions and my favorite snippets are below...(I guess if you're going to dream for positive change, one might as well dream BIG :-)

"Imho, it confirms that indeed very few initiatives for significant change are coming from within the industry; almost every major change seems to be coming from the outside."

"The bottom line is that the SYSTEM, the OPERATING PARADIGM, is broken, at the core, and that truckloads of band-aids will not make it well again."

"The current situation - the Orwellian law-suits, the hideously unclear and convoluted licensing situation, the DRM-booby trapped CDs and online services, the raging tides of incompatibility, and the never-ending user frustration - is simply unsustainable and is strangling the market. Instead of technology giving us MUSIC2.0 it appears that the music rights situation is pushing us back to a pre-jurassic Music 0.5."

"Isn't it time to FINALLY give the user what they actually want, when and how they want it, rather than trying to TELL THEM what they should want?"

"DRM will become CRM, aka Customer Rights Management, and rootkits will become marketing kits."

"The MLW system really means that the users, themselves, are the content and create the real value for companies that offer services in this turf."

"Keep in mind that, as evidenced by Google's latest move, targeted, customized advertising-in-media is an explosive growth market that some analysts have described as 100x as powerful as the current advertising market - this would dwarf any money that we could make just selling 'copies' of songs."

Google's Video DRM = No Portability

Google's proprietary approach to DRM seems to be focusing on an "online only" version - "One aspect of Google Video, however, will not be so easily changed: its copy-protection scheme, a new one that Google wrote itself. You can't burn the shows to a CD or DVD, and can't play them back on portable players like iPods. In fact, most of the TV shows don't play back at all without an active Internet connection, which, for most people, also rules out laptop playback on planes, trains and automobiles. This is sickening news for anyone who thought that two incompatible copy-protection schemes - Apple's and Microsoft's - were complex and sticky enough already. And compared with the ABC and NBC shows available on the iTunes store, the value of the CBS shows looks even worse."

Mashboxx Launch Coming Soon?

Looks like Mashboxx has hit a few snags along the way to launching... it's been in the works for more than a year and is now expected to launch in early 2006.

"...We wanted to write and thank you for signing up for the Mashboxx Beta Program. We know that it's been a while since you registered and we just wanted to bring you up to date on our status. Due to the process of obtaining the proper authorization from the music industry and building a fun and easy-to-use peer to peer service, we have been unavoidably delayed in launching our public beta. The good news is that our software is currently in a closed private beta, and we will soon have the music industry authorization finally solidified so that we can release Mashboxx to the public.

One of the most critical features of Mashboxx is having the industry authorization to allow you, the user, to be able to use a file sharing application that provides you with the ability to have a comparable experience to the one you have always been able to enjoy using other peer to peer software. This is a gigantic leap forward for file sharers around the world, as Mashboxx is the first company to do this.

As a user you'll be able to search across the existing peer to peer networks and download music safely and securely. No adware. No spyware. No problem.
You have received this email because you subscribed to the Mashboxx Beta Program. We respect your privacy and your email address has not and will not be shared with anyone outside of Mashboxx.

Thanks and we look forward to providing you with a quality file sharing experience."