New adventures in hi-fi with Spotify
In 1974, Rolling Stone music journalist Jon Landau boosted a then little known musician’s career by declaring, “I have seen the future of rock and roll, and its name is Bruce Springsteen”. Fast forward to 2009 and the future of rock and roll isn’t a person. It’s not even a band. It’s an online music service called Spotify. It isn’t just a game changer for the music industry. It’s a first glimpse of the future of all home entertainment.
Spotify is a music streaming service without the need to buy songs to listen to them. It’s basically Apple’s iTunes, except it’s free. 4 million songs are available and it’s legal since major music labels - Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI Music, Warner Music – are shareholders. Spotify is an attempt to beat music piracy and it seems to be working.
There is a catch. Australia doesn’t have access to Spotify’s delights yet. The UK, France, Spain, Finland, Norway and Sweden are the current lucky countries. The USA and China will soon have access. However, it’s easy to bypass this tricky geographical problem.
I’ve been using Spotify and it‘s terribly addictive. Remember when you used to make mix tapes for friends, lovers and friends you desperately hoped would be your lover? Spotify allows you to build music playlists and share them with friends/lovers/others who can marvel at your impeccable taste in music. Playlist links can be sent via Twitter and/or Facebook. You can even allow friends to add or delete songs on shared playlists. Recently, Apple approved an application allowing Spotify music to stream directly to iPhones.
The future is now. Some luddites will cling to vinyl records. Some may even persist with CDs. But the majority will listen to music this way once it goes mass market. To be commercially viable, it’s likely all users will eventually have to subscribe. Reliability, convenience and legality means most won’t begrudge paying the approximate $20 monthly subscription Spotify’s premium service costs. I’d certainly subscribe if it was available in Australia.
We won’t own music but will be able to listen to anything any time we want. Movies will be next. And, if Rupert Murdoch and rivals are able to build a similar single point user friendly ‘pick and mix’ delivery system offering a compilation of their individual content, people may be willing to pay for online news. Unfortunately News Corp’s own foray into a similar music system – MySpace Music – is frustratingly clunky so you have to wonder whether they could build a seamless and intuitive integrated online news service that people would be willing to pay for.
However, if the notoriously antagonistic music labels can work together to sell their collective wares surely media companies can see sense in a little collaboration? Better to get a little money from most readers than no money from all.
Creeeepy Hungry Jack’s ad
This new Hungry Jack’s ad is totally freaking me out.
Basically, a sinister serial killer-type loiters outside Hungry Jack’s restaurants leering at young metrosexual boys. Then he somehow paralyses them (by slipping something into their burgers?), stacks them onto a trolley and sets off with them to do god knows what (I have a horrible feeling it involves removing the first ‘r’ and ‘k’ from Hungry Jack’s UK namesake - Burger King).
It’s creeeeepy, Hungry Jack’s. I’m staying away – just in case.
Hungry Beast FAIL
What to make of Hungry Beast? It’s pitched right at media geeks so I should love it. Trouble is, it’s mostly cringeworthy stuff. And it got off to a bad start by being totally pwned by Media Watch before the first episode aired.
Hungry Beast is founded on the best of intentions. It’s Andrew Denton’s latest project and aims to give new media talent a chance to shine and “tell us something we don’t know”. All very laudable.
Unfortunately, Hungry Beast consistently demonstrates something I do already know. 90% of media students are smug, arrogant, worthier than thou arsehats.
It’s all here, folks. The balding bloke who insists on having a wacky hairstyle to show how frickin’ crazy he is. The earnest “somewhere in the world right now something bad is happening and you’re too lazy to do anything about it” preaching and worst of all, Dan Ilic - a man who has the self satisfaction gene so deeply embedded in his DNA it fixes a permanent irksome smirk on his face.
Also, how the hell did Marc Fennell get a gig? No disrespect but is he really new talent?!!
There has been one diamond in the rough. Interviews with the families of servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were deeply affecting and are worthy of a documentary in their own right.
If Hungry Beast provides the opportunity for one or two people to launch a successful TV and/or media career, then great. I wish all who sail in her the best of luck. But why should viewers sit through their taxpayer funded audition tapes? If this show was on Channel 31 it’d be OK. But it’s not. It’s on our ABC and it’s simply not good enough to warrant the air time.
Denton admits “I expect it’s going to be quite rough around the edges to start with”. It’s a few weeks into the series and there’s no discernible improvement in quality. Hungry Beast better find its feet if a second season is to be commissioned. Quickly.
News Corporation: the smartest guys in the room?
Apple’s invention of the iPod and iTunes in 2001 revolutionised the music industry. While music companies – still sometimes quaintly referred to as record labels – struggle to sustain profitability due to illegal downloading, Apple has got very rich indeed by selling the hardware (iPods/iPhones) and providing the distribution means (iTunes) for music without having to worry about the risky time consuming and expensive business of paying for musicians to record music and promote their wares in the hope something may be commercially successful enough to turn a profit.
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation wants to be the new Apple. The Australian’s Caroline Overington couldn’t resist boasting about News Limited’s “cool new toy” to her company’s rivals at last week’s media140 conference in Sydney. All the signs point to News Corp launching that much vaunted – but never successfully implemented – holy grail of a user friendly device that enables consumers to read online news they want, when they want it, on a relatively cheap subscription basis. Basically, an iPod for news with an iTunes-like gateway allowing users to pick and mix the news they’re interested in reading.
Two possibly insurmountable obstacles stand in News Corp’s way.
The first is the free availability of public taxpayer funded news services, hence the reason James Murdoch launched an attack on the UK’s “dominant” BBC last month claiming that “dumping free, state-sponsored news on the market makes it incredibly difficult for journalism to flourish on the internet. Yet it is essential for the future of independent journalism that a fair price can be charged for news to people who value it.”
The second is, in some ways, even more problematic for News Corp. They’re just not very good at the internet thing. Sure - Rupert may have learned a few new tricks from selling financial news from his newly acquired Wall Street Journal to those who invest in the stockmarket but News Corp still shows signs of just not being able to deliver the goods online. And there’s been a recent example right here in Australia.
A few weeks ago MySpace Music was launched in Australia. Rupert Murdoch, the man who has been slammed by so many for having the audacity to try to make money from online content he’s paid people to write (with some exceptions…), suddenly decided to give content away for free. We can all now listen to an extensive selection of music via News Corp’s MySpace social media website. Initially this seems to be a fantastic proposition but there’s a problem. Far from being user friendly, MySpace Music’s interface is horribly and frustrating clunky. It’s not anywhere near as good as the likes of Spotify (unfortunately not available in Australia yet).
The promotion of the concept has also been dire. Despite the local News Limited newspapers dutifully trying to spruik the *ahem* cool new toy that is MySpace Music by publishing a survey of politicians’ listening habits (Joe Hockey likes Nickelback?! Say it ain’t so, Joe!) and laughably claiming politicians are “scrambling to join the site” (way to get down with da kidz…), it’s pretty much sunk without trace. Two (2!) fans turned up to a free Wes Carr MySpace Music gig recently. Wes Carr may not be everyone’s favourite singer but when only two people turn up to a free gig you have to wonder how competently it was promoted. MySpace Music has appointed Australian independent agency Bulldozer Inc for strategic communications with the account said to worth US$3 million in media and marketing. But it doesn’t matter how much money they spend to sell the sizzle. A shit sausage is still shit.
But here’s the really scary part. News Corporation is possibly every other commercial media companies’ last, best hope to save their own skins. Rupert has hinted he’s happy to speak to his rivals about forming an alliance so their content can also be made available via the iRupe (or whatever it’s eventually called).“We should be talking to Fairfax about a structure for charging for content online,” states Rupert in an interview published in today’s Herald Sun (ironically, not available online!). It’s a smart move. Fairfax is interested. The ACCC may protest but what’s wrong with media companies collaborating on a delivery model to benefit all and provide a service that will allow consumers to decide what news they want to read?
It’s just worrying that News Corporation’s reporting, especially its political analysis, is so biased. And it’s so antagonistic toward anyone who questions their motives it’s possible they’ll stymie their rivals’ content by not offering a level playing field. With great power comes no responsibility.
Let’s hope News Corp is successful in its bid to save the media industry from itself by being so innovative and kind enough to ensure everyone profits from providing online news.
I, for one, welcome our new media overlords.
What is Matt White’s sinister secret?
Today Tonight’s Matt White is alright. Seems like a cheery and decent (well, as decent as a host of Today Tonight can be) sort.
So why does the ominous voice introducing Matt White each evening on Today Tonight make him sound so…sinister?!
In the highly unlikely event you don’t watch Today Tonight regularly (!), check out this little montage of TT intros I made especially for you:
Give KAK a whirl
If you don’t like Kerri-Anne Kennerley we can never be friends.
Sure, KAK’s beat is mostly inane advertorial fluff – just like all morning TV shows – but every so often she comes up with moments of insanely inspired television. As Joe ‘Shrek’ Hockey knows.
Check out this morning’s efforts. While you were down the local TAB picking your horse for the Melbourne Cup based on its name and/or colours of the jockey’s guernsey (or by form if you’re a loser punter), KAK was giving this novel method of tipping a whirl.
Newspapers like us when we’re angry
Jason Wilson has written an excellent New Matilda article about the rise of newspaper ‘trollumnists’. Read it here.
It’s a development that’s becoming ever more prevalent. The Herald Sun, for example, doesn’t even bother hiding the fact their highest profile trollumnist Andrew Bolt writes articles to make readers angry (to get lots of ‘hits’ on their website), as highlighted by MediaMook back in December last year (read about it here).
It’d be funny if they weren’t so serious. Also at The Herald Sun, Susie O’Brien appears to suffer from the delusion that she has the power to shape public opinion.
Media’s shameful night of hypocrisy
Today’s Sunday Age The Heckler column notes Brendan Fevola ‘is the bad boy of footy’ and amid his recent misdemeanours ‘the allegation that attracted the most mainstream attention was the report that Fevola had sexually assaulted a female journalist’ (at the Brownlow night at Crown Casino).
Lest we forget, for such a big story, the mainstream media wasn’t keen to initially give the assault allegation any coverage, only doing so 17 (seventeen!) days after Fev’s drunken ’night of shame’ at the Brownlows. It was then, on October 9th that 3AW’s Neil Mitchell admitted the incident “had been known around media circles for some time” (listen here) before being revealed by “a scurrilous website”.
Ignore Mitchell’s sanctimonious bluster about his reasons for airing the allegations on his show (he didn’t need to mention it and it was his show that gave the green light to the rest of the mainstream media to report what most of them already knew); the whole case stinks of media hypocrisy. The mainstream journalists present that night at Crown basically decided to take a communal vow of silence over Fevola’s disgraceful sexual harassment behaviour since it affected one of their own. It’s actually good to see some ethical behaviour from those present and those in the media that subsequently heard the rumours. But let’s not pretend the media always makes that decision. They should act so considerately more often. They won’t go anywhere near a story involving one of their own but are more than happy to harass and question the character of anyone else who has the misfortune to find themselves in a similar situation.
Finally, that “scurrilous website” VEXNEWS doesn’t come out of this whole sordid affair with any honour intact either. Shamefully they (or should that be he?) named the Herald Sun journalist involved and posted a photo from her Facebook profile alongside the original blog post and then had the audacity to write the next day that ‘We have decided not to name the victim of the attack, for privacy reasons’. Thankfully, the Herald Sun reporter’s personal information has now been removed (you can read the amended version here).
MediaMook returns
*Ahem*
Well that short hiatus turned into an eight-month sabbatical. I didn’t plan it to be that way but one thing probably extended Mook’s (hmmm, do I really want to persist with this third person conceit? Probably not.) absence from ranting about the media – Twitter.
Don’t worry. This isn’t going to be yet another clichéd and turgid argument for Twitter changing the world (it has, by the way). It’s just that Twitter made me wonder whether blogs were worth writing anymore. Even short blog posts seemed redundant when you could now be snarky about the big, bad media machine in 140 characters or less. Especially when it can be used as a way for Alastair Campbell to tell me to f**k off (one of the highlights of my life, despite David Bray’s attempt to soil my moment of glory).
I love the media and most who sail in her. I really do. Hopefully, I can still have fun highlighting instances where the media gets it wrong with a little more — but not too much more — grace. If you disagree with me, feel free to comment. I’m happy to be proven wrong and may even occasionally *gasp* reconsider my opinion on a particular issue.
I’ve reposted the ‘old’ MediaMook articles for better and for worse (I do cringe slightly at a couple of my more excitable pronouncements that I’ve subsequently reconsidered), with some glaring exceptions that those who have previously read this blog may be aware of (life is too short).
Again, for regular readers info, I am still planning to follow up on issues and people that deserve a little more coverage, rather than just suffering the full glare of a media that no longer has the inclination and time to dig deeper before the circus moves on (as previously promised in the now deleted ‘new MediaMook mission statement’). MediaMook is probably not the best forum for that particular project to flourish though. More details soon.
Finally, I’ve decided to blog here using my real name. I always knew I was easily traceable so it wasn’t a big secret anyway. But I’ll explain in more detail why I made that decision in a future post. You can read a little about me in the meantime here.
MediaMook is back, biatch.
Leave Thorpie alone!
The UK’s Daily Mail has had a crack at our Ian Thorpe. They’re claiming he’s fat!
Still – at least the Daily Mail has the courage to actually write what they mean without resorting to innuendo and “nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean?”-isms. Our Australian media has over the past couple of days, snidely reported on Thorpe’s live-in housemate (is there any other kind?!) Daniel Mendes, without ‘coming out’ and stating what they really mean.
Who cares whether Thorpe is gay or not (Thorpe says not)?
Leave Thorpie alone!
