When Record Companies get it right
I had an extremely nice surprise last week. I had recently purchased David Bowie’ s Platinum Collection as I’m going through a bit of a Bowie phase at the moment. I’d also bought Reality as I like the track, Bring me the Disco King.
I’d done the usual process of converting CD tracks to MP3 so that I could listen to it on my MP3 Player and it didn’t work. The tracks got all mushed up so that New Killer Star mushed into under pressure. I got really annoyed when Fashion mushed into the Alabama Song. So I loaded the CD again to check it was readable getting fully ready to go into fury mode with Amazon if the CD was damaged.
Then I was pleasantly surprised. EMI/RCA had not only made the CD readable by a CD player, they had encoded copies of the tracks as FLAC, MP3 and Ogg and left them on the CD. Admittedly I had to copy the OGGs and convert them to MP3 as the MP3s didn’t seem to like being copied over and had static. The OGG tracks were fine though.
I have no idea who took that decision for them to be bothered encoding the different sound formats but I applaud you, whether it was David Bowie himself or a faceless record company executive. I like buying CD’s, I’m part of a dying generation who likes music but also likes having a physical memento. I like being able to display my record collection (at the moment they are in drawers until I get a new rack). I like the simplicity of my CD player and being able to just put the CD in and pressing play. I don’t care how simple an IPOD is. My CD player is plugged into a 5:1 sound system and the interface is incredibly simple. Far simpler than when I wish to play music on my computer or my mp3 player. I want the best of both worlds I want to just have the CD put in my car or my CD player and have it just work, but when I am out and about I want to have the portability of my MP3 player. I need music when I’m exercising at the gym or cycling from Dunfermline to Alloa.
I would like more CD’s like this please. EMI/RCA should have been shouting this from the rooftops. They should have put it on the sleeve notes in large letters! They should have told us and keep telling us that they had encoded this and all someone had to do was sync it to the player of their choice that played the format of their choice.
I love Albums and listening to the progression of the tracks as they are cut, I like getting the vision of the journey that musicians take you through. I’m lazy though at the moment, I don’t want to cut a special power mix that I go through on my excercise routine. I want to pick an album, sync it to my player and go.
The reason I like Open Source is the freedom of choice. EMI/RCA thank you again for doing that to Bowies Platinum collection, do it again for more of your copyrighted music!
I can now go on a long bike ride at the weekends with the Jean Genie encouraging me to go just that bit faster and further. HURRAH!
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Music CD mentioned and bought :
Open Source is freedom of Choice, not necessarily a cheaper option.
I was speaking to a Windows Support engineer on the phone last week who uses linux for some aspects of the enterprise needs. He asked me if I use Open Source Software because it is cheaper than the alternatives. I told him no, it’s for the freedom of choice.
I have the freedom to install, configure the software and to adapt it for my needs. I can also choose to make any modifications available to anyone else by contributing it back. Well I don’t as I’m not a coder, but I can feed back any problems that I have as a bug report, and can ask someone else to code it and get them to contribute their code back.
Admittedly Open Source can be cheaper if you think of the code itself not costing anything. However nothing is free, time and therefore money will have been spent creating and modifying that code. To have adequate technical support and installation businesses should be prepared to value the product and the support provided. With Open Source you have the freedom of choice. You can choose to look at the online documentation and the wealth of technical books out there to implement what you need, you can also choose to support the Open Source Product. Or you can choose to hire an experienced professional (or even pay for training in house) to implement and support the product for you. Saying a product is cheaper can be interpreted that the product is somehow lesser than the competition. I do not feel that this is always the case, superior products can develop from close contact between developers and their clients. This is the value add that Open Source can bring to the table.
At the end of the day, whether a product is Open Source or proprietary, any business needs to consider how critical the product is to their business processes and invest in the product accordingly. I’ve come across excellent installations of Windows Server/Exchange with full shared calendering and other communication enhancements, but I’ve also some across some very basic and flaky installations of exchange that just handle the email. It all depends on how it was installed and how good the documentation is. Yes, and experience is also needed in order to support it.
It’s about the experts you hire to install and maintain your business software and information. At the same time businesses also need to consider investing in training. There is always a risk that you may loose the person to another role, but if you don’t train your employees then you can restrict yourself to any new starts that tick the technical boxes rather than the people boxes. You can get loyal employees that come back or never leave but any business needs to be prepared to invest in them as people. Not just the training but in building a group dynamic.
Any investment into any new technology needs to be paid for in some way. People have to eat, if you want professional support and some one to take your problems away from you so that you can concentrate on your business then you have to at least pay a bit for that time. Larger support companies like for example a large hosting provider cannot afford to hire someone who knows everything about the client and cares enough to help them. It’s not in their business plan, if a business want’s technical expertise and hand holding then it has to be paid for. Most people will not need to contact them either, until somethings gone wrong, or a task needs to be carried out. Then be prepared to wait and be charged while you wait to be connected.
If you have an Open Source product that you use and you have the spare cash, consider a donation to that friendly developer who’s taking your bug report and improving your product. They will appreciate that effort.
Friendly Technical experts have to eat too you know.
