A media player that can’t handle JPGs, MP3s, or WMVs? Guess I won’t be rushing out to buy that anytime soon.

The grand march of corporatism goes on. Boards of directors just won’t be satisfied until every form of potentially lucrative artistic expression is owned, licensed, and distributed solely by corporate concerns primarily interested in things like production efficiency, and dumbing things down for maximum sales volume.

What is the result when music and art are reduced to revenue streams? Turn on your radio or tv and find out. This is what you get when artistic creativity falls a distant second to quarterly profits.

If we can just keep the internet from falling completely into corporate hands, there is an excellent chance that art and music can once again flourish on a personal level in our culture. It’s easier than ever before for people to do things like shoot their own films or mix their own music. It’s the dissemination and sharing part that’s in peril.

If corporate interests manage to regain control of how music and other arts are distributed and enjoyed, we will live in a culture where all significant forms of artistic expression are commodified, packaged corporate products. That’s not a place I want to be.

Sorry for the sermonette, this topic is of concern for me.

September 19, 2006 @ 9:49 pm | Comment

Thanks Slim – I am with you, 1 million percent.

I’m guessing that anytime now DD from Talk Talk China (for whom I have enormous regard) will be here to defend Microsoft – again. He’s so brilliant when he writes about China, and so squishy when he writes about Microsoft.

September 19, 2006 @ 9:56 pm | Comment

Congratulations, Microsoft. You have reinstated my faith in capitalism by proving that no matter how much momentum a corporate megagiant buys, no matter how many competitors it buys out or unscrupulously crushes, it will, with the same reliability as gravity, become so unwieldy and stupid as to be outmaneuvered by a competitor run far more quickly and far better, by people who are either smarter or organized into less maddeningly inefficient, innovation-crushing, morale-sapping byzantine corporate structures.

That the company crushing you happens to be the company you once crushed turns corporate justice into poetic justice.

It also increases the value of my AAPL stock.

It’s a shame I can never manage to spell that German ‘schaudenfruenden’-y word…

September 19, 2006 @ 10:55 pm | Comment

All of Bill’s Horses and all of Bill’s Men…

September 19, 2006 @ 10:56 pm | Comment

A media player that can’t handle JPGs, MP3s, or WMVs? Guess I won’t be rushing out to buy that anytime soon.

then you will not be buying one at all. If you actually read the article it is about how it will not play DRM-protected files from other sources. iPods are just the same. This is a non-story but good for beating that Microsoft-sucks horse.

September 20, 2006 @ 12:13 am | Comment

Bubbles, if you read the story you’ll see how MS buried that little nugget in a footnote. And it’s quite a nugget: “a major flaw of the Zune is that it won’t play DRMed music or videos from other services such as Rhapsody, Napster 2.0, or Yahoo! Unlimited, even though those services use the Windows Media Audio format! ”

September 20, 2006 @ 12:32 am | Comment

Wait a second. Microsoft has 94% of PC operating system market and has significant chunks of the gaming business. It’s founder controls about $70 billion in a charity. Mac is loosing market share year over year (with it’s founder now controlling the evil Disney) and Linux, well, that’s a funny story of betamax.

What’s not to like about the greatest company on earth?

October 1, 2006 @ 12:52 pm | Comment

was that one okay Richard? 🙂

October 1, 2006 @ 12:56 pm | Comment