In my previous post, I described a basic music experience that I would like to have. In this convenient experience there are two types of content with two classifications.

A. The two types of content. Let’s call them:
1. Official Content .
2. User Generated Content , or should I say Fan Generated Content.

and,

B. The two classifications of content. Let’s call them:
1. Free Content. Content that is readily offered without thought to compensation.
2. For Sale Content. Content that the owner wishes to make some financial return. It may be offered for free in lieu of other considerations.

So we have four quadrants:

Quadrant 1: Facts

(Top Left)
The upper right quadrant of Free/Official content. This is the metadata and factoids for the song, album, or artist in question. It can also be the meta-media, which the copyright holder is offering openly for consumption, such as album art, liner notes, possibly even lyrics.

Quadrant 2: Original and Fair Use

(Top Right)
This is original and fair use content generated by the fan. This is the reviews, photos, artwork, opinion, etc. It may even be copyrighted material under fair use provisions.

Quadrant 3: Creative Works

(Bottom Left)
This is the creative content developed by the artist(s). This includes audio, video, pictures, imagery, interactive content, etc. Consumption can be “Free”, and compensated by other modes other than money. This can be any type of content not just the typical song, pics, and video. Think interactive digital items. Widgets if you must, but don't limit your thinking to the common Flash widgets populating the web-o-sphere at the moment.

Quadrant 4: Derivative Works

(Bottom right)
This is content that has been remixed, mashed-up, reused and re-published as a derivative work. The question mark represents content that will be anything that reuses column 1 content. Like quadrant 3, we shouldn't pigeonhole this region to video, pics, audio, etc. Also, let's not forget that other artists can be fans, too.

We believe this is the essential architecture for a digital media package solution.

The concept of being able to Play The Web requires:

Open Media and Data Portability which I could never explain better than the following video:

DataPortability - Connect, Control, Share, Remix from Smashcut Media on Vimeo.

Weird Karma - I just watched a video blog

Chris Messina just pointed me to Episode 2 of the Open Media Video blogs with Tantek Çelik.

First, I think interviews - although talking heads - are valid A/V content as they are discussions/conversations and as such benefit from the medium. A transcript would be nice, but they are time consuming. Though a podcast may be preferable to video if no visuals are needed.

Any way...

I like Tantek's thinking on open formats. I posted about the need for open formats for rich media a while ago. However, I am not sure I hold his view on the public domain being good for open standards.

Now I am not a copyright lawyer, but putting something into the public domain must be done with a great deal of thought, as the ramifications are quite profound. As I understand it (and am happy to be corrected), when a work is in the Public Domain - I or anyone can actually take the work and make a derivative work from it. That derivative work will have all rights reserved unless otherwise stipulated. I am not even obligated to credit the original source.

Now in the open standard world there are many competing interests and MANY perfectly acceptable ways of doing anything. However, for a standard to become "standard use" it must align the majority of the competing interests into adoption. By putting everything into the public domain there is very little motivation to work with others. Working together with others is hard work. We all have different views. Public Domain removes the burden of working with others when I am free to take what everyone has contributed to and make it suit my interests. My interests are the reason I participated in the project/idea/work to begin with isn't it? Remember, interoperability is not the only reason we may participate in an open source project.

It's important to note that I might be really smart and in the end my interests are your interests and my way will be adopted. Even then, it would be better if I had to work within a GPL or CC framework so that my work actually remains in the public interest if not the public domain.

Tantek Çelik is a crazy smart guy. He obviously has thought this through, but I am having trouble seeing it.

Kudos to the whole team at Yahoo!

Yahoo just released a plug-in free musci player

I know for many people this looks like a small thing. A player. So what. There are tons of them.

I cannot emphasize enough how relevant I think this is. But in fact it is clearly illustrates the needed paradigm shift in media play thinking. All you need is a modern browser - no plugins required for a rich media experience.

For followers and adopters of XSPF, it is highly unlikely that broad adoption of the standard would have ever taken place without a player reference.

Unlike the XSPF player, it's not open source. But supposedly it is quite hackable. We'll see. I'm not so sure I like the idea of my player being hosted outside of my domain (even if it is Yahoo).

Yahoo! Music's Ian Rogers posted his presentation from THE ASPEN LIVE CONFERENCE

It has already caused quite a stir - picked up by:
Bob Lefsetz
Tech Crunch
Read Write Web
Mathew Ingram

Ian has been a big supporter of what we are doing at Project Opus - in particular our DYLAN project which has transformed into what we are now calling JAMM. He was a big help in getting our funding to research music packaging experiences. He illustrates a simple use case using my favourite band, Pink Floyd. However, JAMM like other open media and play the web technologies is a much more than what was described.

This has been a process of discovery for close to 2 years for us, and we actually don't assume that we have the perfect solution. In fact until other companies and individuals start sharing their ideas and working together there simply is not going to be a solution. Having said that and considering the mass amount of e-mail Ian's post has generated to my in-box, I think it is about time we start talking about our thoughts and experiences on this subject, and what is needed to pull it off.

I've given presentations on this issue for over a year now, and usually get "It will never happen, the industry will never go for it. Content authoring must be controlled. How do I get my 50%?"

BAH!

Thanks Ian and Lucas for exposing our work and finally bring the industry eyes to this issue. Fun times ahead.