Perspective? From Macrovision?
Ok, so let me start off by saying that Macrovision (MVSN) has been very very good to me. They purchased my former company, Trymedia, in 2005 for a pile of cash. The check cleared. So far so good. I also lucked out in that I didn’t have to work a lockup after Trymedia’s sale - which means, in short, that even though I was instrumental in selling my former lover to MVSN, I never had the experience of punching in (or out) there. So everything I’m going to say about MVSN now is from the perspective of a (somewhat) outsider.
Yesterday, Richard Bullwinkle (who, incidentally, went to the same school as me and has an awesome name!) posted the most inane piece of corporate shill-swill I’ve seen on CNet since…well…Tuesday. In a pointless diatribe, he extolled the virtues of a consumer-centric perspective in digital media (check!), the need for open standards (check!) and told everyone that he likes the Beatles (check?). The central thesis of his “blog” “post” was that Apple (whom he exhorts from the perspective of a fanboy) needs to open up its systems to ensure interoperability. This would, eventually, lead to greater consumer satisfaction, he says.
His core point is well taken, if banal. We all know that an open, interoperable system that can ensure a consistent (and high-quality) user experience is the holy grail of designers everywhere. Anything less is usually the result of “strategic” thinking (see: NBC vs Apple) or strategic “thinking” (see: Windows Vista, PlaysForSure, etc). What Rocky conveniently forgets is that prior to Apple’s arrival on the music scene, everything *was* open and standards based. There were tons of great choices, most of which could play all the available digital music in the world. That’s because it was the open source community and teenagers that were responsible for the format choice (the MP3) - not the brilliant technical minds at Universal, Sony or Microsoft. Those “creators” (or destroyers, depending on your perspective) depended on interoperability to win the status game they were playing. In the original Napsterian universe, you were either a god-like figure who’d ripped all his music in 1998 (the giver), or the music explorer, smoking dope and spending hours “playing” Napster to find long-forgotten songs (the receiver). In fact, many people played Napster as a social game - with multiple users in a single physical room enjoying the process of discovering and playing long-forgotten songs. A game of nostalgia, or memory, if you will. 
Now the experience of discovering, sharing and exploring music is a lot less fun. To my eye, it seems like a rote shopping (or design) experience. We now do it in private, like it’s somehow dirty or onanistic. But it wasn’t only the free part of Napster and KaZaa that made it fun, it was the basic interaction. We were discovering something. Together. It was a new frontier, and we were cool in our exploration of it: You bring the broadband, I’ll bring the beer. Napster was the original in-room multiplayer Web game. Nowadays, online music is about 1-click shopping (c) and “browse the catalogue”. They’re filling options, maybe. Delicious? Never.
Maybe MusicNation or startups like ConduitLabs have an idea of how to resolve this fundamental disconnect. Perhaps their vision of the connected future spells “Funware” with musical notes instead of letters. They are, after all, run by people I admire and are known to be planning great things. I just don’t know how exactly things will pan out. But one thing I can tell you: the vanguard of this movement won’t be Apple, Microsoft, Google or Macrovision. And it isn’t because of open standards or consumer friendliness that people will rally around the next generation solution for music.
It will be because it’s fun.