A Better Place to Play

It's the cloud, stupid: why Apple and consumers need unlimited music

I'm surprised by some of the negative reaction in the blogosphere about the possibility of Apple introducing an unlimited music offering.  I don't think people understand the full implications of such an offering, and people don't realize what's broken in today's model of $.99 per song.  The situation actually reminds me a lot of the "big switch" that is currently underway in information technology -- the move away from software and hardware ownership towards software as a service, or as Google likes to call it, "cloud computing."

Just as some businesses cling to the ownership of hardware and software, some individuals are clinging to ownership of music.

In order to help influence Apple and consumers, I thought I'd explain why an "unlimited music" service in the cloud is in everybody's best interest.

"Unlimited music" facilitates music discovery (obviously)
People who know me also know that I love music.  I listen.  Constantly.

For me, a subscription music model is absolutely necessary.  If I purchased every song I listen to, I'd spend a significant part of my income on music.  Thus, I've used a number of subscription music services over the years...the first was Pressplay, which was then renamed Napster...then Yahoo Music...and now that they're shuttering Yahoo Music, I've switched to Rhapsody.

These services have been somewhat disappointing because of DRM glitches, incomplete music libraries, and, of course, the fact that they don't work with the iPod.  But nonetheless, they were still by far the best way for me to discover and sample new music from a variety of genres I wouldn't experiment in if I had to pay specifically for that music.  Would I buy a Britney Spears or Kanye West song for $.99? Heck, no.  But would I play these "musicians" at a party, or maybe at the gym?  Sure.  Having a subscription service was the only way for me to get the music I want at a reasonable price, at least without resorting to piracy.

Thanks to subscription music, I've grown my musical palette much more than I would have if I had to buy each and every song I listen to.

But, clearly, the notion of "unlimited music" hasn't been able to capture as much mindshare as the iPod.

How the iPhone changes everything
For several years my need for subscription music far outweighed my desire to be cool and own an iPod.

Of course, the moment Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, I jumped on the Apple bandwagon.  The iPhone is revolutionary in so many ways besides music that I happily endorse the device to anybody who will listen. Despite the shortcomings of iTunes and the iPhone, I think it's going to be a while before a different company releases another phone that combines the internet and entertainment so well.

But what's not widely discussed about the iPhone is this:
The iPhone has infinite storage capacity and infinite computing power.

Because the iPhone is a fully internet-enabled device with Wifi, it can outsource many interesting computations to the cloud, and rely on the cloud to send back whatever information the iPhone needs.  The iPhone's only limitations are in how quickly it can retrieve data from the internet, and how quickly its processor can handle this data.

iPhone users already enjoy the benefits of the cloud to access video through YouTube, or through a browser-based video website like vTap. (vTap itself is worthy of a blog post, as vTap is absolutely fantastic on the iPhone).  Thanks to services like YouTube and vTap, I can watch videos and news anywhere I've got a WiFi connection (which, these days, is almost everywhere).  And once the next generation iPhone is released on a 3G network, I expect I'll be able to watch video anywhere, even on a cellular network.

Music in the cloud
Because of the cloud, I don't have to sync videos from my desktop computer to the iPhone.  If I threw my desktop PC and laptop into the garbage, I could still watch videos on the iPhone.

Since the iPhone can stream internet video, it's also capable of streaming audio.  The iTunes Wifi Music Store is further proof.

But the way the iPhone works today, I can only listen to as much music I've stored on the device.  I've got 30 GB or so of music on my desktop, and I can't fit that on the iPhone.  If I want to hear a particular song, I can only hope that I previously synced it.  Today, the iPhone is a pitiful device for music discovery and for accessing songs I have on my desktop computer.

The current model also forces us down a less than desirable path of maintaining our own individual music libraries.  Today most people store their music on computers and iPods that they maintain.  If your computer's hard disk dies or your iPod is stolen, you're screwed. iTunes and the iPod are pitiful solutions for preserving your music library.

Music in the cloud solves both of these problems.  Discover music when you want to.  No need to worry about storage or backup.

The death of syncing: how Apple could lose the iTunes empire
The most painful part of using any MP3 player is the syncing of music to the player.

People forget this, but the iPod was not a runaway success from the get-go.  The iPod only took off after it was made dead simple to sync music to the player through iTunes, both on Macs and PCs.  And music sales through iTunes only took off because people used iTunes to sync music to the iPod.

But what if it was unnecessary to use iTunes to get music on the iPod?  Most people wouldn't bother with iTunes.

This day is not far away.  Thanks to the iPhone SDK, it should be possible to port a streaming music service to the iPhone, probably within the next six months.  Similarly, I'd expect additional ways to transfer music from your computer to the iPhone/iPod.  And when this happens, iTunes becomes unnecessary.  (Apple could continue to prevent this through a combination of legal and technical hurdles, but I think that this is begging for antitrust review).

The death of syncing is inevitable, and with it, so comes the death of iTunes, or at least what iTunes has been most useful for.

In order for iTunes to continue to get eyeballs, it has to become useful for something besides syncing and the occasional music purchase.  And what could be more useful than an iTunes service that lets you access any piece of music anywhere?

So here's hoping that Apple gets this right.  Maybe Steve Jobs was right that people weren't ready for subscription music a few years ago, and surely, some people resist the idea even today.

But in the long run, the benefits of a music delivery service in the cloud are clear, and the iPhone is the device that should make the dream of any song, anywhere, at any time a reality.

Google Apps

Let me preface this by saying that these are my own thoughts, and do not necessarily represent those of Google.

That being said, I'm pretty excited about tonight's launch of Google Apps.  We've chopped the "for Your Domain" from the name -- doesn't "Google Apps" have a nice ring to it?

But besides the improved name and the fact that I've been working on Google Apps, why am I excited?

Let's start with Gmail...

The flagship application of Google Apps is Gmail.  I was first invited to use Gmail for personal email shortly after it launched.  Gmail was obviously better than the Yahoo mail I had used before, but still, it took me a good year to wake up and start forwarding everything to Gmail.  I've been a happy camper ever since.

While my personal email solution continually improved, my email solutions at work and at school persistently stunk.  Prior to Google, I had used four email systems at various companies since high school: Lotus Notes, Oracle Collaboration Suite, Microsoft Exchange, and Webmail.us.  I don't know what the system was at Cornell -- but sadly, I don't have any of my emails from when I was in college :(

With all the email systems I've used other than Gmail, I've had to delete emails because of low quotas.  I've lost emails and often struggled to find the information I need.

I only became happy with my work email solution once I started forwarding my work emails to Gmail.  At JotSpot this was encouraged, but at most companies, this practice is either taboo or expressly forbidden.

With Google Apps, we're giving businesses and schools the ability to offer Gmail to their employees and students through a legitimate mechanism.  This will be a great improvement for end users and administrators.

...and let's not forget about the other apps...

Google Apps includes calendaring, IM, word processing, spreadsheets, and more.  Each of these applications offers its own advantages over older solutions.  We use Google Apps internally at Google, and it's wonderful having universal calendaring and IM systems.  Docs & Spreadsheets is probably the application I spend most of my time in outside of Gmail and easily handles 90% of my word processing and spreadsheet needs.

But it's the fact that we're starting to package these applications together and provide them as a comprehensive solution that makes Google Apps a legitimate platform for use at work and at school.  And, of course, these products will only get better with time, and I suspect we'll add other applications that fit well with the suite.

...and, last but not least, Google Apps is ridiculously cheap (i.e., free).

The last reason I'm so excited about Google Apps is that we've set such a low barrier to adoption.  Businesses and schools can adopt it in their organizations for free, no strings attached.  If Google didn't already have such an amazing infrastructure, this wouldn't be cost-feasible, but evidently we can pull this off.  Pretty amazing.

For businesses with certain advanced needs, we're offering Google Apps Premier Edition, which costs just $50 per user per year.  Not free, but still remarkably cheap considering it would normally cost hundreds (or even thousands) of dollars per user to set up similar services.

If you happen to control the domain name for your business or school, it takes just a few minutes to set up Google Apps for your group.

And if you don't control the domain name but are tired of using email systems from the 1990s, you should start complaining.  Most people who control DNS settings are the last people who will want to adopt Google Apps -- these guys will have less work to do if they don't have to maintain hardware and software.  If you want to bring these solutions into your office or school, you're going to have to demand it.

The New Google Mini -- My First Product Launch at Google

Two blog posts in two days...sheesh.

I haven't blogged about what I do at Google since I was acquired along with most JotSpot employees back in November.  This was partially because I've been swamped with new work, and partially because I don't want to convey anything that isn't public knowledge.

Well, today I've finally launched my first product at Google: an updated Google Mini.  Among other things, I've been working on the product marketing for the release, which adds a number of new features that make the Mini an even better fit for search within companies and on public websites.  Prior to coming to Google, I had never worked in a company with a reliable internal search solution, and I've really come to appreciate the one we use internally.  So I'm glad to be marketing a product I believe in.

Launching a product at Google has definitely required a lot more coordination than launching a product at JotSpot where I was the webmaster.  We never even translated JotSpot into other languages, but we're launching the new Mini simultaneously in 18.  It's been a big change moving from a startup back to a big company, but the transition is going pretty well.

How long will it be before Apple buys Midomi?

About a year ago I reconnected with an old friend from high school by the name of Mike Grabowski.  Mike was Solon High School's freakishly smart valedictorian in the Class of 2000.  Despite his being at Stanford, we had fallen out of touch for no good reason.  When we met up last year, we were both bubbling with enthusiasm about our current projects.  I was excited to be at JotSpot, and Mike was even more thrilled that his startup had just raised funding.  We met up for lunch, and it was that afternoon that I tried a music search engine that late last week launched under the name of Midomi.

Mike was insistent that he and his friends had developed technology that could recognize music based on the sound itself.  I'm a huge music lover, so I was naturally enthralled with the idea.  That day I sang The Beatles' "Yesterday" into Mike's computer, which was connected via the internet to a small database of songs.  Low and behold, the system was able to determine what I was singing.

It took a year for Mike's team to bring their new music search technolgy to market, but I think they're going for something pretty cool with Midomi.  Midomi is most importantly a search engine for discovering music based on what you sing or hum.  It's also a social network that could be a lot of fun for singers who love to share their recordings and listen to others'.   BusinessWeek already called Midomi "MySpace meets iTunes meets Google".

I played with Midomi this weekend and found it to work pretty well.  I sang "Wonderwall" and "Don't Look Back in Anger" and the system returned the song titles at the top of the results.  I hummed the tune of "Fields of Gold" since I can't remember the lyrics and the system nailed it.  And then I sang "Anna Begins" and Midomi had no clue.

So as of today, Midomi's technology is far from perfect.  But the good thing is that it will naturally get better as people use it.  The search engine uses recordings as tags, and when a song isn't well tagged (or tagged at all), the system doesn't work.  I believe the system only has around 10,000 unique songs tagged, meaning that it's not going to find much of what you sing into it.  But as I understand things, this is largely a restriction due to the fact that getting more recordings indexed would be a financial and logistical challenge for a startup.  Thus, Midomi's greatest technical challenge is going to be building a comprehensive index of music that has enough tags that it can recognize when guys like Michael Arrington sing into it.

Probably even more importantly, Midomi will face challenges in terms of business model.  Google and Yahoo have made billions of dollars through web search, but that's because those search engines have 3 core attributes:

1. technology that helps people find what they're looking for
2. a way of consistently monetizing a search
3. millions of repeat users

When you consider those attributes, you can approximate just how much money any search engine makes.  Midomi has an algorithm that might eventually lead to a solid answer for #1.  But the company is trying to sell PlaysForSure DRM'd songs and is linking out to Amazon in its search results.  Thus, the company's answer to #2 is quite weak.  And as for #3, the company just launched and it's not clear how it can acquire the millions of users it needs to make money and improve its core search technology.  And it's also questionable whether people need to search for music by singing.  I guarantee that "if you build it, they will come" is not going to work for Midomi.

So, Midomi has some very promising technology, but as a business, they've still got a ways to go.  But if I were Apple/Microsoft/Google/Yahoo/Viacom/Verizon/Cingular/Sprint, I'd take a close look at what these guys are doing.  Existing digital music stores already have the sales and marketing down, and Midomi search would be a great way to differentiate their products and sell more music.

Love for Love

About a month ago Joe and Graham treated the entire Jot team to a day trip to Las Vegas.  (thanks again!)  We were celebrating the Unicorn deal, and since Joe went to Denny's instead of Vegas back when Excite got funded, Vegas was the natural destination to celebrate JotSpot's success.

For some of us, what was supposed to be a day trip turned into an all nighter, and I decided to stay overnight in Vegas to see the new Cirque Du Soleil / Beatles show, Love.  At about 8:30 PM I went over to the Mirage and managed to buy the final ticket for that night's showing.  I was excited but apprehensive at the same time, mostly because I still had some lingering concerns about the show's soundtrack.  The music for the show is a remix of original Beatles recordings, and the idea of remixing the Beatles still seems sacrilegious.  Fortunately, George Martin (The Beatles' producer) and his son produced the soundtrack, so I knew the music was in good hands.  And, of course, Paul and Ringo had given their thumbs up to the project.

The show began at 10:30 and it wasn't long before I was awestruck by the synergy of the music and the performance.  The show begins with a slow motion crawl across stage to the tune of an a capella version of "Because", and then breaks into cacophony with the opening chord to "A Hard Day's Night" that segues into "Get Back".  And from that moment on it's pure bliss.  I'm not going to review the show in detail, but for any Beatles' fan it's a must-see.

So why blog about the show now?  Well, I'm still experiencing a high from it.  I was extremely disappointed when I left the show because they didn't have a CD of the soundtrack.  But the "Love" album was just released this past Tuesday, and for the past several days I've been watching a circus in my head every time I listen to it.

The Unicorn Rides Again. JotSpot Acquired by Google.

This morning, at long last, it was finally revealed that JotSpot has been acquired by Google.  This past year at Jot has been a blast, and I think we're on our way towards bringing wikis to the masses (which is nearly as good as bringing sexy back).  I can't say what's going to happen when Google and JotSpot  work together, but it's going to be exciting.  I'm looking forward to joining the Google team.

Sony makes advertising art

I often hate ads because they promote products I don't want, or even more often promote products I can't afford.  Perhaps this is one reason I do marketing now -- I  want ads to be naturally aligned with the viewer's interests.  (a la search ads)

But sometimes advertising can be entertaining, and many people readily admit watching the Super Bowl to see the ads.  (of course, I watch for the game).  It's rare that advertising excels beyond entertainment and into art, but I think Sony's done that with its promotion for its new Bravia LCD TV.

I haven't seen the TV in person, but the ad looks fantastic!  It reminds me of the Diet Coke and Mentos video, but much cooler.

Don't Look Back in Anger, live from the EMP

I will probably regret posting this, but I need to know I gave rock super stardom a real shot.  So, to all of you music agents, and for all of my adoring fans, here's an MP3 of my latest rock'n'roll performance.

Live from the Experience Music Project in Seattle...

Download ryan_pollock_dont_look_back_in_anger.mp3

Major Lodge Victory (Welcome Back, Gin Blossoms!)

I just got the best Yahoo Music alert ever…a new release by the Gin Blossoms!

 

The Gin Blossoms were one of the great melodic rock bands of the 90's, and they quietly disbanded after the release of "Congratulations, I'm Sorry" in 1996. It's a bit embarrassing to admit, but the Gin Blossoms played a formative part in the development of my musical taste. They were a modern rock band that my parents could actually tolerate, and their guitar riffs were inescapable and infectious. Wussy or not, the Gin Blossoms were a great band, and I was sad to see them go.

 

Left without new Gin Blossoms music, I moved onto the "hard stuff" like Oasis and Counting Crows, and my Gin Blossoms CDs gathered dust. I paid some attention to projects that Gin Blossoms members worked on after they split, but nothing I heard sounded quite as good. A few years ago I learned that the Gin Blossoms were playing together again, and I actually saw them light up the San Mateo County Fair one summer.

 

But that was the last I heard of them, until now. I'm a few tracks into "Major Lodge Victory", their new album, and it sounds great! Welcome back, Gin Blossoms!

A few things I've learned from being a product manager

Work continues to dominate my time and thoughts, which is why I blog so rarely.  I'm approaching the end of my second year as a product manager after a year at Nextag and almost a year at JotSpot, and I thought I'd share a few of the learnings that keep popping up in my increasingly manic depressive mind...

• The only business lever with virtually unlimited potential is marketing. There are 6 billion people in the world, and unless they all know and deeply understand your product, there's still marketing to be done. The only reason marketers don't reach all 6 billion people is that marketing to wider audiences becomes increasingly expensive.  The more money a business makes, the more it can afford marketing, and the more money it makes.
  
  However, even though there's infinite marketing to done, infinite marketing is not going to win infinite customers.  People know what they want -- and in many cases, there's no changing their minds.  A vegetarian won't buy a cheeseburger no matter how many times he sees a McDonald's ad.
• When building products, any improvement you make to a product has a finite maximum impact. And if you prioritize correctly, the work you do today will be less valuable than what you did yesterday. This is an example of one of my favorite economic laws, the law of diminishing marginal returns. For non-vegetarians like me, the second cheeseburger isn't nearly as delicious as the first.
  
  As product builders, we need to build the optimal product and then move on.  Growth becomes harder and harder, and after a certain point, all you can do is make a product worse.

There's certainly a lot more to share.  And maybe someday I will blog all the great things I'm learning from life at JotSpot.

But right now, I'm off to NJ for a wedding and to Boston to see my sister and niece.