Legal downloads start to make money

From Forbes: “Apple Computer observed the one-year anniversary of its iTunes Music Store today by adding new features to the service and releasing new numbers to demonstrate its success.

It’s almost funny looking back on the strange buzz that surrounded Apple a year ago. Days before the service was unveiled, weird rumors surfaced that Chief Executive Steve Jobs was also intent on going after Vivendi Universal’s music business. That deal never materialized.

Still Apple has rocked the music industry. Jobs said in a conference call today that Apple has sold 70 million songs since launch, and it has turned what he described as a “small profit.” Consumers are buying songs at a rate of 2.7 million songs per week, which works out to 140 million songs per year, Jobs said.

Real Networks said that as of April 15 it had 450,000 subscribers who were buying 1.8 million songs per day on its Rhapsody music download and subscription service. Apple doesn’t disclose the number of customers using its service.

The download library is also expanding. When it launched a year ago, iTunes boasted about 200,000 songs, but has since grown to 700,000. Jobs said one of Apple’s “next big challenges” with record companies is getting them to open up more of their catalogs for digital distribution. “

This squares with the latest findings from the Pew Internet Surveys:

“The Project’s national phone survey of 1,371 adult Internet users conducted between February 3 and March 1, 2004 shows that 14% of online Americans say that at one time in their online lives they downloaded music files, but now they no longer do any downloading. That represents more than 17 million people. However, the number of people who say they download music files increased from an estimated 18 million to 23 million since the Project’s November-December 2003 survey. This increase is likely due to the combined effects of many people adopting new, paid download services and, in some cases, switching to lower-profile peer-to-peer file sharing applications.”

The pleasures of gardening

I’m a hopeless gardener, but now have to do it. The wonderful thing about tulips is that they just appear. They were planted by Sue, many moons ago, but they still appear every year, as a lovely reminder of her.

Renewal

I’m very fond of our beech hedge, which provides a dense screen for the house every summer (not to mention a home for lots of birds). But then in the winter it withers, and its impossible to believe it will ever be green or dense again. So I watch it anxiously at this time of year. And miraculously, green leaves begin to appear, and I relax. Silly, really. But that’s how it is.

Job hunting?

Ben Hammersley thinks this is the best job application ever. I’m inclined to agree.

Why Disney will continue to lobby for indefinite copyright extension

“Publicly, Disney’s people are protective of the mouse’s reputation and point to the sheer amount of money they still rake in off goods that bear his likeness. Here’s Andy Mooney, chairman of Disney’s consumer products division: ‘In my world, a character that generates $4.5 billion a year in retail revenue and is at least four times larger than any other character in the world except Winnie the Pooh doesn’t need refurbishing.’ According to Mooney, Mickey has ’98 percent unaided awareness for children 3 to 11 worldwide’, and has started to appear again as a real favorite among girls 8 to 12 and, surprisingly, boys 13 to 17. ” [Source: Henry Jenkins.]

On reflection…

Ashe Street, Tralee, seen in the window of a white van.

Why write?

Joseph Epstein’s just published a lovely essay on this puzzle in Commentary. It takes the form of a review of a book on the neurophysiology of writing (a science which, let it be said, underwhelms him). It begins:

“I was recently asked what it takes to become a writer. Three things, I answered: first, one must cultivate incompetence at almost every other form of profitable work. This must be accompanied, second, by a haughty contempt for all the forms of work that one has established one cannot do. To these two must be joined, third, the nuttiness to believe that other people can be made to care about your opinions and views and be charmed by the way you state them. Incompetence, contempt, lunacy — once you have these in place, you are set to go.

But why bother writing at all? What would motivate anyone to take up what often turns out to be a life fraught with many obstacles and few palpable rewards? This vexing question has received a number of usually unsatisfactory answers. They include the notions that serious writers are divinely inspired; that they have a preternatural love of aesthetic order; that they are in relentless pursuit of the truth (as they understand it); and, on the somewhat less complimentary side, that they are ego-driven and therefore attention-craving beyond all reckoning…”

En passant, much the same is said of Bloggers…

Ford repudiates SportsKa ad

A few weeks ago, I wrote in my Observer column about the viral video ad for the sports version of the Ford Ka which apparently shows a cat being decapitated by the car’s sun-roof. I wondered whether Ford would like the idea of having its family-friendly image dented by association with this grisly little stunt.

Well, according to USA Today, the company was not amused. “We find this unauthorized ad totally unacceptable and reprehensible and deplore the fact that it has been unofficially issued,” Ford spokesman Oscar Suris said.

Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide issued a statement saying it also didn’t sanction the commercial, which was leaked onto the Internet on April 1.

“Both companies find this unofficial advertisement totally unacceptable and reprehensible,” the statement said. “The action in the video clip was totally computer generated, and we would like to assure you that no animal was harmed in its making.”

Phew! So that’s all right then: moggies of the world unite; you have nothing to fear from the Ford Ka!

Google founder in drag

Charming archive photo of Google co-founder Sergey Brin in drag at a Stanford student party. Nice to know that even embryonic billionaires did daft things in their youth.

So how good is Google Mail?

Not great, is Jack Schofield’s verdict. This is a very clear, critical evaluation. He concludes:

“To sum up, Gmail flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which offers two ways to handle email: a slow but simple web-based system, accessible from anywhere, and a faster, more powerful approach based on downloading mail to a PC. At the moment, Gmail comes somewhere between the two. But it is not as simple as a web-based mail service should be, and is not as powerful as a PC-based one can be. If the compromise works for you, it’s a brilliant innovation. If it doesn’t, it could be a terrible mistake.”

Thanks, Jack. I won’t be using it. Could this be the first thing Google got wrong?