Wow, I'm still somewhat shocked that there are people who believe that subscriptions are the answer. The problem is marketing. Rhapsody (and formally Yahoo!) doesn't know how to properly market the service. Yahoo! Music is the number 1 music site on the Web. If they can't market a music service I'm not sure who can. Still I even heard from one of the smartest guys in the industry that if Apple would offer subscriptions as part of iTunes that will be that, subscriptions will come of age.

Sure. Apple might increase subscriptions, but only a small fraction of people (possibly even myself if the price is right) will ever choose to have subscriptions. The reason subscriptions are only popular with a small fraction of people is not due to lack of marketing it's a result of PURE economics.

I wrote about this 3 years ago in a post called, Why Music Subscritions Fail:

"Having [a music subscription service] tell me I have 1 million songs at my finger tips for $9.95/month is irrelevant. I will never listen to a million or even 100 thousand different songs in my life time. And I only have the capacity IF I am lucky to discover 100 new songs that I like and will listen to more than once this year.

So a subscription model will cost me about 120 dollars during that year for those 100 NEW songs. And I have to pay again for them next year unless I discover another 100 NEW songs I like. So as a rational person, I would rather pay for the 100 NEW songs once for a total cost of about 100 dollars.

Now if the subscription model was less than 100 dollars you have me interested, but forget about my wife as a customer. She discovers about 3 new songs a year that she likes, so the subscription for her better be under 3 bucks."

It is also for the very same reason that imposing a flat tax/levy on ISPs and subsequently on all users regardless of their music listening habits would be viewed as EXTREMELY unfair taxation and doomed to kill any government which tried to levy it. I believe that the only acceptable levy would be so close to the margins (cost of delivery) that very little/meaningful money at all would ever make it back to an actual artist. In that situation what would be the purpose of the levy again?

On February 15th, my family and I are moving to a new home. It's in Edgemont Village about 5 blocks away from where we are now, but a much nicer place. Yeah nicer place, but moving is a brutal experience even when it is only 5 blocks away. So imagine Mandy's reaction when I mentioned that I was already booked to attend or present at a number of conferences over the next 6 weeks.

I don't blame you if you can't picture it. I wouldn't want to go there either.

Anyway, should I survive to travel, these are the places I will be:

February 24th and 25th: SanFran MusicTech Summit. It is supposed to be a great meet-up of leading music industry technologists and thinkers. The speaker list is pretty impressive. I'm keen to hear and learn what other people are doing.

March 5th-8th: Canadian Music Week in Toronto. I was booking my ticket to attend when I was contacted to sit on two of the panels. That got me pretty stoked. After I confirmed, Gerd Leonhard, who I have been following for years, contacted me and asked if I wanted to demo a product from Project Opus. "Hell Yeah!" I hadn't planned on demoing our JAMM Technology until the end of March, but we are going to try and get the bugs worked out in time for CMW so I can demo there.

March 7th-16th:SXSW. This will be my first time at SXSW. I don't know what to expect really. I hope my friends from Virtue Vice will show me the ropes. Though I hope the balcony doesn't collapse this year.

March 12th-14th: Content Convergence & Integration. I'll be presenting: Content Mash-ups: An assault on copyright or a new publishing reality? The smart and highly energetic Rahel Bailie has organized a conference focused on the three main assets in the content management equation:
1. The actual Content (Strangely the most often forgotten element in most CMS conferences)
2. The enabling technologies (All the CM conferences have this one, naturally.)
3. User Relationships (Smart addition. A content management plan and technology can not be deployed in a cookie cutter fashion.)

If any readers are going to these events, I'd love to hook-up. Send me an e-mail.

Oh... and for those of you who think I'm a heartless bastard for leaving my poor wife alone with two kids and a dog for the bulk of our move, I'm shipping in my parents from Calgary to help her out.

Is that love!