heute:pop:blog.  

This is a post I recently put up on the Nimbi Blog:

This story is not only interesting because it deals with a struggle of an industry moving their content into digital formats but it also highlights the battle between the interest of the content creator (the artist) and the content owner (the company that monetizes the art):

The book publisher HarperCollins wants torestrict the number of times their ebooks can be lent digitally through a library to 26 times. The reason behind this is that this is the number of times a physical book can be lent out in average is 26 times before it is ‘used up’ and no longer readable. This is of course a desperate measure to hang on to a business model that is changing due to transformation of technology and those kind of decisions (that we have seen many times in other content industries) are mainly driven by fear and lack of imagination on how to view new technologies as a business opportunity. It’s discouraging to see that the book publishing industry is making the same mistakes that businesses like the music industry have made many times over the last decade. An example is the fact that all big record labels used to insist that all their music is to be sold protected by DRM – a decision that has since been reverted (and regretted) as the disadvantages for the consumer outweight the benefit for the labels by far.

What makes this development even more complex is that the interest of the content creators is not always in line with what the industry thinks is best: various best-selling authors have spoken out agains HarperCollins e-lending policy (in addition to the more than 65,000 people that have petitionsed on change.org) and Ryk E. Spoor is giving a very good explanation on why lending of digital books should not be limited:

“Libraries — both school libraries and public libraries — are the foundation of true learning, literacy, and love of books. You can’t FORCE someone to love to read… but if you give them the opportunity, let them wander through the stacks (virtual or real) themselves, and choose their own path, they’ll teach that lesson to themselves.”

There is no doubt this struggle will continue over the coming years. But it will be vital for the industry not to alienate themselves from the creators and the consumers – otherwise they make themselves redundant within the ecosystem of digital content.

After talking all day about digital content consumption I find these kind of videos very inspirational. Reminds me that the delivery technology is not important but just the experience itself:

Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer – Public Reactions from Visual Editions on Vimeo.

A lot of the work I am doing right now is around digital books so this video is very inspiring. Reading a text such as a book is a very simple, linear and engaging user experience so many of the ideas mentioned below cannot be called a book any more. “Text-based information and entertainment apps” maybe?

The Future of the Book. from IDEO on Vimeo.

It’s the time of the year again: SXSW is looking for suggestions for panels and presentations for the 2011 edition which will as always take place in March in Austin, TX.

This year I have submitted not one but two panels since I will attend the Interactive as well as the Music part – one idea for each part of the conference.

I would appreciate if you could vote for my ideas in the SXSW PanelPicker, this is what I’m suggesting:

1. Digital Content: What Books Should Learn From CDs

I always found it fascinating that other content industries have difficulties learning from the mistakes of the music industry from the last ten years. This panel will invite people from the music and book publishing industries and discuss what they can learn from each other. You can vote here.

2. Entrepreneurs in Music

I will invite different music entrepreneurs and compare how they’re making it in their respective fields. Starting with a musician I will also get a start-up CEO, a indie record label boss and a band manager on the panel and talk about the joy and struggle of working independently in music. You can vote here.

Voting closes 27th August. Also, make sure you support my fellow OpenMusicMedia organizers, you can find a list of their suggested panels here.

I had the iPad since its release in the States so I had some time to play around with it. One thing that has to be said is that there still aren’t that many great apps but this isn’t the devices fault. It’s my fault for buying it so early. Also, the fact that I can’t buy apps on the iPad with my UK iTunes account is inconvenient. I have to buy the apps in iTunes on my mac and then sync them over which really disturbs the experience. Those issues will work themselves out over the next few months.

The biggest criticism for the iPad seems to be the fact that it’s hard to say what its purpose is. “The iPad is just a big iPod Touch” I hear a lot. And this couldn’t be truer. And this is why it’s so great.

The size of the device is what makes it so valuable for the media and entertainment space. Even though functionality on the iPad might be something we have already seen on the iPhone and iPod Touch it feels very much different just because the device is bigger. Consuming media on a bigger interface doesn’t only decrease the amount of scrolling or page turning but changes the overall experience. Everyone who tried to read a book on the iPhone will know what I’m talking about. It works fine but reading a book on the bigger device is actually pleasant whereby reading longs texts on the smaller screen means endless scrolling so you spend more time interacting with the device as oppose to taking in the text.

Another example: I normally use kayak for my flight planning and they have released an iPad app early on. The big app does exactly what the iPhone app does but the overall result is very much different just due to the amount of information displayed at the same time.

The lack of additional functionality on the iPad is not a weakness but a strength. And if you ask yourself whether you need one: no, you don’t. But you want one if you like to consume media and entertainment digitally.