interesting article, fwiw
Source: Angry Coffee
angrycoffee.com
Liquid Audio Player 5.0 Preview (May 18, 2000)
I have to confess that I'm a little surprised. After all this time,
among all the names in the music downloading derby, I didn't
expect that the Liquid Audio 5.0 beta would make as much
sense as it does. It wasn't that long ago that Liquid Audio was
trying to sell servers to record companies and its software didn't
support mp3-compressed files. After a resounding, "buh?" from
the music world, a year or so ago Liquid steered their boat into a
digital music service that is at least making an attempt to be
neutral -- and perhaps most importantly they're trying to make a
technology that provides useful e-commerce answers for people
who put music on the Net.
So let's take a look at the player first. And then we'll get into
the really geeky stuff: retail.
Simply put, if you download the Liquid Player 5.0 Preview, you
should be able to open all kinds of music files and listen to them
from that player and you won't be stealing from anybody. The
big idea is that Liquid will be interoperable in two important
ways. It will eventually support all sorts of codecs -- including
mp3, Windows Media, in addition to Dolby Digital AC-3 and AAC;
and the company will support a whole end-to-end digital music
distribution system. It's the neutrality horse in an exceedingly
wacky horserace, and it's in the lead...It's only the far-turn,
mind you, but it's in the lead.
If downloadable digital music evolves into a real industry and
consumers get used to buying music online, the latest Liquid
player has some compelling features. The tracklist lets you
arrange lists of Liquid files and mp3 files niftily. And yes, Liquid's
done a deal so that there's a plug-in dowloadable from the
RealNetworks site for the G2. There are also clever ways of
downloading artwork and album notes and the like. By far the
most handy is the fact that you can give the files real names
that make sense to you instead of the bizarre filenames affixed
to the files when you downloaded them.
Besides the latest iteration's little extras like keeping your files
organized, you will also be able to save Liquid files on a bunch of
hardware devices. You can already download music to your
portable mp3 player, but Liquid has a pretty good idea of an
easy way for you to pay for it, too, and the industry as a whole
is eager to distribute music and keep track of it. Whatever you
think of distributed music networks, like Napster and Gnutella
and the like, the technology behind Liquid Audio's strategic
position within the heavily-consolidated music industry is
actually pretty novel.
If you have never been a big fan of digital certificates (or you've
been utterly baffled by them, for that matter), Liquid Player has
a one user, one machine deal that is pretty easy. If you choose
the lightweight "FastTrack Security" option, Liquid binds one
song to one machine; if you download a bunch of music on a
bunch of different machines, you can use their "Passport"
option. I suppose the Passport will allow you to buy music on
your mp3 belt device at the mall, on your PC at work, and on
your machine at home, and all the while organize your playlists
no matter in what formats or codecs the music comes in.
I'm guessing the goal is that some day in the future we'll look
back on these crazy, mixed-up days and shake our heads with
mirth at how retail music was distributed -- kind of the same
way we feel when we watch old film of telephone operators on
rollerskates plugging and unplugging phone exchanges. Hey,
don't laugh. At the time, the rollerskates were a damn fine
strategy.
Behind the scenes, and very rapidly, a bunch of companies have
developed a bunch of ways to protect security for upcoming
digital music distribution. There are companies that provide
something called Digital Rights Management, or DRMs, who are
roughly analogous to current publishing rights organizations like
BMI or ASCAP. These companies (InterTrust is one) report to
other companies called Clearinghouses Reciprical is one), who --
yeah, I know -- act as clearinghouses, keeping track of all the
songs that are sold and making sure everybody gets paid.
Liquid Audio seems to be in a smart spot. Liquid has positioned
themselves in such a way that they provide a good way for
people to buy music, and they provide an overall service to the
record companies and retailers, neither of whom want to deal
with some potentially painful and costly e-commerce logistics.
Liquid will integrate the alphabet soup of the DRMs and the
clearinghouses in this future digital music space -- and
remember: it is alphabet soup to a big and important chunk of
folks in the music industry.
There's been a lot written (rightly so) about the moral and legal
issues around the commerce side of digital music distribution.
But another thing that could be slowing online music distribution
could really be boring old logistics. Keeping track of song
downloads is complicated, it's complicated for consumers and it's
complicated for record companies. In a strictly logistical sense,
piracy is simple; there's no paper trail of publishing royalties or
mechanicals and whatnot for songwriters or record companies or
publishers to keep track of; you aren't paying anybody, so you
can pretty much toss the spreadsheets of who wrote what...and
by the way what's the current mailing address for your third
drummer, again? By focusing on the logistical problems in the
digital music space race, Liquid Audio's back-end strategy as it's
executed in the company's new player might just give it the
lead. |
