The Journal of Rockett Science

Speaking of music subscription plans, Magnatune - which offers high quality DRM-free music downloads and podsafe licensing - announced two new ways to enjoy their music this morning:

Now available for the very first time, Magnatune Memberships allows you to hear Magnatune music without any announcements or interruptions between songs! Starting at just $9 a month, you can stream over 500 albums and mixes into iTunes or player of your choice. Listen online all day, every day wherever you are. For serious audiophiles, we recommend our Download Membership, an “all you can eat” plan that lets you download any of our music, whenever you like, as many times as you like, and in any format, including CD quality WAVs. BONUS: BOTH PLANS include access to our new two hour, talk-free podcasts.

I checked out the details of the two plans. For $9 a month you can stream the company’s entire catalog of music, and for $18 a month you can download the company’s entire catalog of music. Let me repeat that part: for $18 a month, you can download every album on the site to your computer. (Magnatune only asks that you not strain its servers by using a downloading robot.) You also get access to streaming audio and members-only music podcasts. Under both plans, 50% of your subscription fee goes to the musicians whose songs you downloaded and/or streamed. Pretty sweet.

I do not recognize a single one of the artists listed on the site. But what I do recognize is if I really want to expand my musical horizons, Magnatune is a great way to go - particularly if I want to explore baroque, classical, medieval, and electronic music. And there are some fascinating oddities, such as Professor Armchair and his “demented 19th century children’s music“.

I’ll have to think about whether membership is right for me, or whether I’d prefer to cherry-pick tracks that I like. But I’m really impressed with the company’s pro-customer, pro-artist policies.

Tech podcasts frequently debate the best model for consuming digital music via the Web. Is it buying and downloading songs and albums, as with Amazon and iTunes? Is it a subscription model with unlimited access to an entire catalog of songs as long as you pay a monthly fee? Or is it a hybrid such as eMusic, where you pay the service a fee in exchange for a certain number of monthly downloads?

Usually these discussions end with someone saying, “Well, the perfect setup would be a subscription service where you had unlimited access to all of the music that’s out there. It would supply you with music the way the water company supplies you with water. Then there would be no need to own anything.”

The sudden removal of the Rolling Stones catalog from eMusic less than a month after it was uploaded is a great example of why that proposed model gives me the heebie jeebies as a consumer: If I don’t own my music, then someone else does. And they can turn off the tap any time they please.

Thankfully I grabbed three Stones albums before eMusic’s deal with ABKCO went pear-shaped and it had to pull the entire catalog. Once again the message from the music industry is unmistakable: fans don’t matter anymore, lawyers do.

It’s getting to the point where I can’t buy music at all anymore without feeling bad about it. Like the joy has been sucked out of the whole thing.

Feh.

These Rolling Stones boys are pretty good, though.

At the urging of Ms. Teresa Valdez Klein, I’ve registered for the Gnomedex 8.0 tech conference. w00t, as the kids say.

Look, I have a JPEG and everything.

By “everything” I mean…I have a JPEG.

UPDATE: The video is no longer on YouTube, and I’m compulsive enough that I can’t stand to leave broken embedded videos in blog posts. But basically it was the creators of Entourage talking about Microsoft Office Live Workspace, and how they would use it to plot a future episode of the show.

A.J. Kandy wonders, what if the Xbox team had designed the Zune? Here’s his vision of the Xune device enjoyed by the inhabitants of a parallel Earth.

David Armano, VP of Experience Design with Critical Mass, recently posted a blog entry about how Zappos and Southwest Airlines are using Twitter to interact with consumers. Great stuff:

• In addition to linking to company blog posts and promotions, SouthwestAir (787 followers) sends nice messages to customers who mention Southwest on Twitter, and responds to their suggestions.
• The Twitter account for Zappos (1,974 followers) is used by the CEO, and features daily lightning-quick contests. (Posted on Saturday at 6 PM: “Twitter @zappos with your favorite non-shoe brand that we sell on Zappos before 610 pacific, I will pick a winner to get all 3.”)
  • Currently 79 other Zappos employees are posting on Twitter. Zappos displays all of the public Twitter talk about the company on its Web site.

After reading Armano’s post I discovered that GMBlogs also has a Twitter account (288 followers). Like Zappos and Southwest, they’re using it to engage people in conversation: Nearly all of their updates are either open questions for everyone, or public responses to individuals. Even when posting a link to a press release they ask, “What do you think?”

I’m guessing that these companies are using RSS feeds from TweetScan, a Twitter keyword search site, to spot whenever someone mentions them on Twitter and react. For example, here’s a TweetScan search for “Turbo Chicken”.

I’ve received an e-mail from from Facebook’s “Compare People” app, containing the critical data I need to optimize my interpersonal relationships.

Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses:

STRENGTHS:

happiest
best father (potential)
nicest

WEAKNESSES:

best listener
most talkative

So apparently I do not listen as well as others, nor do I talk enough.

A friend posted this on my Facebook wall:

Dude I just had to look up Virgin America because who the hell gets excited about an airline? And then I was like, Whoa, now I’m excited about an airline? And then I was like, I got excited about an airline that I found out about because MY SOCIAL MEDIA FRIENDS WERE ALL EXCITED ABOUT IT. So THAT’S how it works!

Me at my grandmother’s house, 1981. Note the AD&D manual, t-shirt from band camp, and wacky hat. My geek flag was flying.

Nerdiest Photo Ever on Flickr, a challenge posted by the You Look Nice Today group.