Mother Russia, What Happened!?!

First there were instruments.  Then there was the phonograph.  Then came the tape-reel, followed by the vinyls, the 4 and then 8 tracks, cassette tapes, CD's, minidisk, and finally, Justin Timberlake...er...Shawn Parker.  Napster kicked off the digital age of music that was led by the underlying consumer sentiment that if content were delivered digitally and essentially free of shipping and transportation costs, then it would cost less, sell more, and create a more efficient entertainment consumer as the concept was extrapolated over different media.  But the Old Reich still reigned, though not for long.

The old school entertainment industry has kept the price of a new album, regardless of the method in which it was played, at a range of $10-$20 for at least my entire life.  When content wasn't as diverse, plentiful, or easily accessible, that price point made plenty of sense, as there was essentially a price markup for convenience and access (which touches on the 'convenience fees' charged by oligopolistic industries today, but those fees are unreasonable, given the fact that there is no cost to the provider of the 'convenience.'  Those fees are simply fees just to do business with those industries and are, in my mind, criminal).  But today, you can go to one of thousands of websites that sell audio content for download, Big Box retailers that carry the physical CDs, and any number of boutiques or resellers for those trying to find more rare content.

It is this consumer-based interest that has had me scratching my head over the iTunes store for a good six years, now.  $.99-$1.29 per digital song download equates to $14.85-$19.35 per 15 track average album, of which the consumer receives no physical product, no artwork, and did not require any shipping, packaging, or shelving cost to the distributor.  This never added up to me.  Recently, Amazon's mp3 division has made great strides, and their Cyber Week deals this past holiday season allowed for many album prices under the $5 price point.  Amazon almost made a convert of me, except that was only a 1 week promotion, when it should be the standard.

Since 2005, I have used the site GoMusicNow (http://www.gomusicnow.com/), a Russia-based music e-tailer that sells its content online for $.15 per track, and adds a 10% discount to album purchases.  Yes, that means I'm used to paying less than $3 for a digital album, which is a fair price point, considering all of the extra costs the distributor doesn't incur, and the lack of physical product that the consumer receives.  Additionally, as the Web is Worldwide, content can proliferate with greater ease, and potential markets can be opened much faster than before, so potential revenue streams are much more open-ended.

However, it's been a full month since ANYTHING has been updated on the site.  Though you can still access all of the archived albums, no updates have occurred since Christmas Day.  Come Back, GoMusic!  I miss you, and refuse to bow to iTunes!

Meebo Goes Mobile

An all-inclusive IM client that I stumbled on just before Facebook killed AIM, just went mobile.  Do you use Google Chat?  Still have an AIM account?  What about Yahoo, ICQ, or even Facebook (when they get the upgrade patch completed) to name a few more?  Then you should get the Meebo app from the Android market to sync all of your messaging clients under one application.  I'll be even more impressed when they add integration with other clients such as Kik, but I'm going to have faith that those upgrades are coming, and it is pretty sweet as is...

Can I Blame Hollywood For Feeling Stupid?

Now I know I'm not a genius, but I've always considered myself smarter than the av-er-age bear.  However, I know my areas of strength and weakness.  Admitedly, I haven't been present on the cutting edge of computer technology since 2000, when I could piece together, install, and reformat the best Pentium II's out there, and had enough cockiness to talk trash on Compaq and how terrible their hardware design was (Compaq was subsequently bought by HP, and Compaq computers were pulled from the shelves).

Even still, in my office I'm known as the technologically saavy one- and I just got a smartphone in November!  Of course, I'm quick on the learning curve with these things and can navigate for utility pretty quickly.

However, as is probably painfully obvious in this blog, my coding skills are, for lack of a better term, shit.  You best believe that I'm editing this post in the HTML-enhanced editor that is provided, because I just don't care to be bothered with
or whatever tags and code are necessary to make little changes and enhancements to text, etc.  I would prefer to simply click to turn on bold, and click up upload a picture into my post.

Lately, I've been re-watching episodes of 24, and everyone at CTU seems to have a level of programming capability and general knowledge of computers that I'm barely able to comprehend.  And to top it off, yesterday I saw The Social Network; great film, btw.  But again, it seems that every character in the movie, lawyers included to some extent, has an intricate knowledge of computer programming or something similar.  Damn you Hollywood!  You found a way to make even me feel insecure; congrats on your success!

Beautiful MLK weekend in So-Cal... What are YOU up to?

Today's only Friday and we were already flirting with 80 degrees in January. So what's on tap for the weekend? I'm thinking a beach day may be in order!

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Statistical Analysis: Breaking Down the Blog

It's 2011, aka "The Takeover," and in the spirit of beefing up productivity in order to pursue said Takeover, here's a bit of statistical analysis for you...

For all intents and purposes, The Spot has been up and running since 2007.  Damn, really?  I don't rock the blogosphere like Barney Stinson, but yeah, I've had a blog for 4 whole years.  BUT... the 3 posts that have gone up so far this January are more than any previous January in the history of The Spot.

Granted, The Spot needs more attention, dynamic content, and a much broader following in order for The Takeover to truly work, but this is how we get it started, people!!!

And don't even think I'm done for the day...I'm going to bring a pic to you in the next post from last weekend's cruise through Griffith Park via the Droid, so stay tuned!

The Painful Truth...

I came to a disturbing realization yesterday...  for the first time in my life, a young adult was referring to the group, "my generation," and to my astonishment, I was clearly not a member of said group.  And so it goes, with each exciting new experience in life, the freedom of the naiivate of yesterday must fade.  D'oh!

The Great QE Debate: Miscues on the Measures of Success

I was listening to Bloomberg radio this morning on the way to the office, and they were having a colorful conversation on whether or not quantitative easing has been effective in saving the US economy from total collapse.  Most specifically, they were addressing the 'results' of QE2, pointing to interest rates as an indicator of the success of the program.  If the QE program didn't cause interest rates to go down, then it must not have been much of a success.  In fact, the 10-year note has risen over 75 basis points in the time since the announcement of QE2.  And so, one of the panelists was using this as evidence of the policy's failure. 

BUT... since this exercise isn't conducted in a vaccuum, outside factors also have an effect on interest rates and make that argument simply an amature one, and it's annoying that professionals and politicians alike are wasting so much time pouring over flawed statistics.

The resulting movement on interest rates after the QE2 announcement has been in an upward direction.  Had not perhaps a larger injection been priced into the market?  Or, perhaps more likely (and I know, I'm actually not going to sound bearish on the economy, here) is that though the improvement in the economy has been rather minimal, the worst is finally over, and mid-to-long term interest rates have nowhere to go but upwards after the worst downturn since the Great Depression.  With rates having been at historic lows for quite some time, the market has begun to resist such low returns in favor of at least a little bit of risk, in order to make a few bucks.  Then the great supply-demand relationship comes into play and bond yeilds rise, regardless of how the government may try to fight the market to keep rates down.

...and let's not even get into the issue of how it's really too early to be juding the 'results' of a policy that is still in the implementation stages and hasn't really had enough time to take effect just yet.  Personally, I think that barely enough time has passed for us to have an understanding on the impact of what QE1 did for the economy.  But our need for instant gratification persists....

In the end, all that can be said for certain about QE2 at this point is that without it, interest rates would be higher today than they currently are, and that would have a pretty negative effect on the potential for growth out of the recession for the US economy.  Now, whether or not you view that lower potential as a good or bad thing is another entire debate...