Curt, I do agree that WLAN/802.11 will play a big
role in the distribution of music to mobile devices.
Just think about ad-hoc file sharing of people coming
together in a hotspot using software like the instant
community management software of companies like www.colligo.com.
This is what I call face-2-face file sharing and it will
be very powerful and very decentralized.
As a matter of fact, it will take a long time until MNOs
are able to offer value-based billing instead of volume-based billing
for the mass market. Until then, the cost of cell-network-based wireless
bandwidth will be too high to make music buying and instant downloading
to the keitai a valuable business. However, if you think mobile
purchasing and consuming in an asynchronous way - buy now and schedule your
low-cost
download over DSL/WLAN/... - you will come closer to the answer.
Jan.
PS: You may want to read "Dancing to mobile music ..."
here: http://www.mobiliser.org/article?id=54.
> The ingrained habit with a phone is to download stuff using the built-in
> web browser. (Well, in Japan, anyway.) There seems to be no problem
> downloading ringtones, for example. If it were easy to do, fast and
> cheap, I don't think that there would be a problem. It would probably
> start a reversal in consumption habits, too, in that people would move
> away from LPs back towards singles.
>
> But the biggest problem with using the built-in media slot is the cost
> of the media. A CD costs a few cents; with case, insert and everything
> the cost has been well under a dollar for some time. A 64 MB card is
> currently about 3000 yen retail, and I'd estimate, even with the price
> falling by half every eighteen months, it's going to be four to five
> years before one could even think about selling songs on electronic
> media rather than optical. Still, it could easily be that long before
> data gets cheap enough and fast enough that one could comfortably
> download songs on the keitai, too, unless the providers change something
> to make this happen faster.
>
> As far as the data costs that someone else mentioned, I'm working on
> the assumption that they're going to come down to something reasonable.
> There's enough competition that there's no reason that this can't
> happen, though it may not be cellular data that we end up using. It
> seems reasaonably likely that the short-range technologies (PHS and
> 802.11-style stuff) will take over in that area.
>
> The 802.11 thing is a bit problematic in that competition in the open
> part of the spectrum leads to unbearably low data rates as everyone
> tries to use the same space at the same time, but licensing some
> spectrum for that could easily allow a half dozen people in a particular
> (square 150 m) area to be downloading at a megabit per second each,
> giving each of them the latest hit single in half a minute or so. And
> even the current PHS spectrum supports at least an aggregate bandwidth
> of, what, 80 KB/sec (20 channels * 32 Kbps) in a (square 500 m to 200 m)
> area, giving one person, anyway, the ability to download a single in 45
> seconds or so.
>
> I wouldn't go so far as to say this will actually happen. But as
> far as moving the data around, the technical issues are not at all
> insurmountable. A much bigger barrier is whether data providers care
> to switch from a "scarce, expensive" resource model to a "lots of it
> and cheap" resource model, at the cost of short-term profits. This is
> possible; take a look at where PHS data seems to be going. But an even
> bigger barrier yet is whether the owners of the content are going to
> completely reverse course from preventing copying at any cost to selling
> a lot at the cost of some "lost" revenue from copying. They seemed to be
> able to more or less live with the copying in the analogue age (though
> with a lot of reservations, as the whole home videotape battle shows),
> but at this point the RIAA, it seems, belives that if it allows even the
> amount of copying that it used to allow the world will end for them.
>
> I think Sony might be the one to watch over the next few years to see
> where this might go. Sony is currently fighting a pitched internal
> battle between the hardware arm (which wants to make it easy for the
> consumer to put his music where he wants it, at the cost of making it
> easier to get music without paying for it) and the content arm (which
> would prefer that consumers not have the music at all than get any
> without paying for it). And who wins that battle will probably, in
> the end, come down to whether governments will support the content
> owners' wish to make illegal the technology that allows easy copying.
> There's no way to stop the copying with technology itself, but if enough
> governments outlaw the technology, it will never spread.
>
> It almost reminds me of pre-Meiji Japan, really. The content providers
> would at this point be perfectly happy to lose the chance at big gains,
> if they can avoid the chance of big losses. And there aren't any black
> ships on the horizon this time....
>
> cjs
> --
> Curt Sampson <cjs_at_cynic.net> +81 90 7737 2974 http://www.netbsd.org
> Don't you know, in this new Dark Age, we're all light. --XTC
>
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Received on Mon Apr 28 18:54:38 2003