m2cw – my 2 cents worth

steve jobs essay on DRM and music has stirred up quite some dust in the blogoshpere.

here’s an especially interesting article from someone in the music industry

more to come…

yesterday, steve jobs published a very rare open letter on his “thoughts on music”, which covered the issue of DRM in music.

here are three thoughts/predictions i’m having (incl. links where those have been inspired):

1. apple will start becoming its own label (inspired by this comment on macalope): with the beatles/apple fight out of the way and apple now owning the “apple” brand (and licensing it to the beatles for their apple records) it could really mean that apple will start becoming its own label and as such selling DRM-free music on itunes. this would be huge as it would be in direct competition to the big four (sony/bmg, emi, universal and warner).

2. apple might start selling drm-free indie label music soon: despite becoming its own label apple could start pushing the four big labels by selling unsigned artists (as outlined here. this way jobs would put his money where his mouth is…

3. if the labels follow jobs, he might have just killed podshow’s business case with podsafe music… (i’m really looking forward to adam curry’s thoughts on this)

only time will tell…

update: adam curry’s thoughts are very, very good and right on the money! (listen to DSC #541). he pretty much follows this argument

check out this page for some of the most amazing charts:Karl Hartig

unfortunately they all end before 2000! it would be cool to have some of them updated!

interesting post on productive meetings

interesting post about 10 reasons why user-experience is hot and features are not: new laws of digital technology

remember my last post?

well, then read this: stay foolish. because god rewards fools!

steve jobs’ commencement speech at stanford last week:
‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says

the best quote:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

he is simply an amazing person!

i agree, but have to think what my main learnings were besides those… A VC: The Five Things I Learned In Business School

helge.at | a future-proof newspaper

Carly’s Way

a former HP engineer on what carly did wrong.

i don’t agree with everything he says but one thing is definitely true:

To me, this rabid fixation on short-term profits is a bigger threat than outsourcing — it is killing our ability to make astonishing things.

even more so, the fixation on quarterly results (as is the case with almost any company nowadays – at least the ones listed on the stock-exchange) is the wrong way to go – it does not lead to long-term sustainability (i.e. also with an eye to the environment and other things than the pure profit). but the finance markets think it’s what’s necessary and “money is still king”.