First Radiohead, Now NIN

As I await my email from Radiohead giving me a link to download their new, um , release tomorrow, I found a similar story that made me rejoice. My favorite band, Nine Inch Nails, has gone free agent. No more record company for Trent Reznor. This is the same guy who used camcorders, Final Cut, and a couple of Macs to create a concert collection video. Most of the truly awesome Year Zero recording from this year was recorded on Trent's MacBook Pro. Heck, he even release the Garage Band tracks for several of the songs so fans could have fun remixing the songs. The marketing for Year Zero has become infamous for its viral/guerilla tactics. Given all that, what was the function for a record company for NIN?

So will the next NIN recording be free like Radiohead's new one? That is a very interesting question. One must assume that without a record company, it will be a digital download only. In that case, it has to be DRM-free. It is expensive and complicated to do a DRM scheme (requires dedicated servers after all) and obviously distasteful for artists. Of course NIN could go the iTunes route. He obviously has an affinity for Apple products. Even if it is DRM-free (probably 320kbs MP3s, same as Radiohead is expected to release and same as NIN distributed on thumb drives as part of the Year Zero marketing) it does not necessarily mean it will be free (or pay whatever you want like Radiohead.) Still, I would definitely not be surprised if it was free. NIN has one of the great live shows in all of rock, and touring will always be a huge thing for them.

More iPhone/iPod Thoughts

I didn't pay much attention to the price discount on the iPhone yesterday. I have no interest in an iPhone since I love my Blackberry and I like being on a 3G network. But in terms of business, the $200 price cut on the iPhone is big news. The obvious analysis from every wannabe Wall Street analyst all the way up to the real guys is that the only reason you'd cut the price of the iPhone is if it is not selling. That is an obvious reason to cut the price, and that is the most likely reason. But let me play devil's advocate for a moment.

The thing that caught my attention yesterday was the iPod Touch. Let's forget about why Apple released this wonderful looking gizmo for a moment. Let's just look at its price point. It's $300 for an 8GB iPod Touch. Imagine if the iPhone was still being priced at $600 for the 8GB version. That would mean you have to pay twice as much to get cell phone features added to your iPod Touch (remember the equation iPhone - phone = iPod Touch.) That's right, $300 just for phone features. In short, the iPod Touch @ $300 would really cut into iPhone sales @ $600.

So maybe Apple should charge more for the iPod Touch? Maybe it should go for $500? Ok, that's one way to go. Keep margins high across the board. Obviously there would be lower sales of the iPod Touch, but unaffected sales of the iPhone. There's clearly some calculus that could be done here with an examination of lower or higher prices for both iPod Touch and iPhone. Looks like the lower prices won out.

Then there's the other option of just not releasing the iPod Touch at all. There's clearly an untapped market for people who like the iPhone but will have nothing to do with AT&T. I should know because I'm in that market. So not releasing the iPod Touch would definitely leave some money on the table. Again there's a clear calculus here. How much money do they lose by cutting iPhone prices vs. how much are they gaining by introducing the iPod Touch. Keep in mind that some of the losses in iPhone prices are bound to be made up by higher sales.

So maybe the iPhone sales have stunk it up, but there's more variables in play here. I personally think that iPhone sales have been better than expected and that this was the plan all along. If you look at it in terms of Apple maintaining their monopoly on MP3 sales, and thus digital music downloads, this seems to make a lot of sense. That's their cash cow, not the iPhone.

One last iPhone related thing... The launch of the iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is very interesting to me. Is it a pure web app? Apple claimed that there would be no special apps for the iPhone, it would just be a web app device. Are they eating their own dog food here, or is there some kind of binary being downloaded to iPhones via software update and being pre-loaded on the iPod Touch.

New Running Gear (and more iTunes/Vista Problems)

I'm running in the Human Race in Mountain View again this year. I ran the 5K last year. It was my second race, and I was really happy with the improvement I made on my time. This year I'm running my first 10K. I'm hoping to run a half-marathon, hopefully in the San Francisco Marathon, later this summer.

I made two purchases recently to help me with my training. First, were a pair of Sennheiser MX75 headphones. I wanted headphones that fitted more securely while I ran. I stopped using the original iPod headphones last year. I always thought their sound was ok for running at least. The fit was terrible though. I had to adjust them a lot and the cord caused lots of vibration and noise. I started using some Sony Fontopia headphones that I'm not even sure when I bought. I think I had bought them to use on an airplane, since I like in-ear headphones for riding in planes. Anyways, those were much better than the iPod headphones, but they still required occasional adjusting while running and had problems with cord noise as well.

So I ponied up for the Sennheiser headphones. They are as good as advertised. The fit is exceptional, though I had to try a few of the different ear pads before I go the best fit. The sound quality is good. Not as sensitive as the Sony ones, but better imaging. My only complaint is the cord. It is long and gets twisted easily. It can be a real pain sometimes.

The other new purchase was a Nike + iPod Sport Kit. This has seemed like a cool gadget that would be particularly useful to me, but I had two concerns. First, I don't wear Nike shoes and I'm not going to buy the "special" Nike+ shoes. I'm a bad overpronator, so I wear Brooks Beasts. If I wore Nike shoes, I would have lots of knee pain. So I was concerned about keeping the pedometer sensor attached to my shoe. Turns this is not a big deal. I slide it in under the laces near the toe of the shoe and it is very secure.

My second concern was with the iPod sensor. It attaches to the dock connector on the Nano, but I have Marware armband that fits very tightly over my Nano. I've been leaving the end flap open on the armband. I guess there is the possibility of sweat getting in that way, but it seems pretty but it seems pretty unlikely.

Using the Sport Kit is really easy. I need to calibrate mine. I have some pretty accurate routes I've drawn up, so I know it's a little off right now. My stride must be slightly longer than average. I'll do that later this week when I run some 400M intervals at the Santa Teresa High School track.

Uploading the workout data to Nike is the best part of the Sport Kit. Unfortunately I had some more Windows Vista problems. iTunes was unable to open a connection to the internet, though it could open a connection to the iTunes Music Store. To fix the problem, I had to re-enable Windows Firewall. That wasn't a typo. iTunes could not connect to nikeplus.com with the firewall turned off, but it could with the firewall turned on. It doesn't make any sense, but it's true.

Once I was able to upload my workouts, I had a lot of fun using the tools on nikeplus.com. It was really interesting to see the graphs of my pace throughout a workout. I could really see where hills were that slowed me down or when I "caught my second wind" and was able to pick up the pace nicely. It really gives me a good idea of my potential. I'm very confident in being able to run under 60 minutes for the 10K next month (I ran faster than that over a longer distance this weekend.) My new goal is to get under 55 minutes. I've looked at some VDOT tables, and I actually think I'm capable of around 50 minutes, but I doubt I'll hit that on my first 10K.

First Major Vista Problem: iTunes

Most of my transition to Vista has been pretty smooth. Gmail Notifier does not work on Vista. After reading some Google Groups posts, it doesn't sound like Google is going to fix this. That's not too big of a deal though. I use Google Talk anyways, and Crystal uses the Google Toolbar for Firefox. Both provide the same functionality.

A much bigger deal was iTunes. I could not get iTunes to make a secure connection to the iTunes Music Store, thus I could not authorize my computer. This prevented me from playing any songs that either Crystal or I had bought to play. That was a very big problem. I kept a cryptic error message about "Unknown error -9808."

I ran the iTunes Network Diagnostic (I didn't even know they had this!) It took me to a support page that suggested that I needed to make sure Internet Explorer had either SSL 3.0 or TLS enabled. I found it funny that I had to fiddle with Internet Explorer to get iTunes to work. But that was not the problem.

I turned off the Windows Firewall. No luck. I tried turning down IE's security settings as low as they can go. No luck. I tried telling Vista to run iTunes as an administrator. No luck.

Finally I found this article on Apple's support discussions. This sounded like it would not help, but I tried it anyways. I reduced the Maximum Transfer Unit on my router from 1500 to 1400. I restarted the router. Then I launched iTunes. Mysteriously I got a message from Windows Firewall saying that it had been blocking some iTunes functionality.

WTF!? I had turned Windows Firewall off. I had rebooted since I had done that, and got a complaint from Windows about having it turned off. And yet, it claimed it had been interfering with iTunes. It kindly asked me if I wanted to stop blocking iTunes, and I emphatically clicked in the affirmative. I then tried once again to sign in to the iTunes Music Store and voila!

I wish I could claim to understand what happened here. Did changing the MTU on my router really cause Windows to suddenly ask me about enabling iTunes functionality? Was it just same bizarre coincidence? Who knows. At least it is working. For now.

Album Artwork

I really like the iTunes feature of displaying album artwork, Cover Flow I believe they call it. It always annoying when I have a CD with no artwork. I was listening to "Hells Bells" by AC/DC and it had no artwork. I right-clicked on it and instructed iTunes to "Get Album Artwork" but it didn't work. I then click on the little arrow next the artist so I could search for AC/CD on iTunes. Much to my surprise, "Back in Black" is not available on iTunes Music Store, thus there was no way for iTunes to download the artwork.

I recently started using Last FM. I opened up Last FM on its "Now Playing" tab. It showed the artwork for "Back in Black". I clicked on it and it opened the Last FM in Firefox. I then right-clicked on "Hells Bells" in iTunes and selected "Get Info" and then the Artwork tab. I grabbed the artwork from Firefox and dragged it to the Artwork on iTunes, and somewhat surprisingly it just worked. Now I have artwork for any of my songs from "Back in Black." There could have been a few less clicks in the process, but it was still pretty intuitive and worked really well.

Blogged with Flock