Speakeasy members got an email this morning from the company’s CEO informing us that Best Buy has bought the company. My first thought was “Come on, it’s a little early for April Fools gags,” but apparently it’s real. Like many others, I’m pretty concerned about this. I don’t talk about very many companies, but Speakeasy is one that I’ve consisted liked and recommended. That they are now owned by a company I don’t at all care for is not reassuring. I’m going to have to keep an eye on this in the future — it’s not going to be a simple “I need teh internets, go sign up with Speakeasy” proposition anymore.
Ze Frank is a prolific creative force who has provided tons of cool stuff over the internet since some time in 2001. He started a year-long video blog last March 17, which he finished yesterday. It was consistently good, often great, just by itself. The cool thing about Ze is that it doesn’t stop with what he does: he’s hugely interested in community. Most episodes of The Show opened with introductions provided by Sports Racers (the community). There’s a social networking site for Sports Racers, and lots of other goodness. Ze will apparently be working with Dreamworks now (the penultimate episode of the show featured a cameo by Jack Black — what that means I don’t know, but hey, he’s famous) and I can’t wait to see what he does from here.
Ze spoke at the TED conference back in 2004. He didn’t have very long to talk, but it gives some fun insight into his performance quality and what about the internet interests him. Check it out. His performance reminds me of vintage Steve Martin at times.
Tonight I traveled to Hyde Park to meet with some of the people behind eMusic. I’ve been a subscriber on and off since the dark ages before Vivendi/Universal bought them and they offered unlimited downloads. They’re now owned by a company called Dimensional Associates, which bought them from V/U in 2003. I’ve been a subscriber with this incarnation for almost three years.
I got an invitation by email yesterday, and even though it was kind of last-minute, I figured I should go. I’ve been pretty interested in the way eMusic is going about their business, and the idea of meeting some of the people, and maybe having some sort of influence on what they’re doing, was appealing. The ransom of some free downloads and food didn’t hurt either.
The gathering was not what I expected on many levels. For one, there were quite a lot more people than I expected — at least 40. There was a guy who came from Elgin (as he said, it’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from there), people of many ages, races, and a good mixes of men and women. There were people who had been with eMusic a couple weeks, and some who were effectively lifers (7 years).
The gathering was essentially a big focus group. The CEO, David Pakman, started things off by asking each individual their name, occupation, and how long they’d been with eMusic. From there, he asked a series of questions about our media consumption habits, picking random individuals from the audience to give answers. From there, Reid Genauer (Director of Brand Marketing) asked a couple questions, including a solicitation of words we would use to describe eMusic if it were a person (a totally common exercise in branding). Except for the guy yelling “Mechanical Royalties!”, everyone was pretty much on the same page there. The rest of the evening was spent with Deirdre Stone (VP of Product Development, which encompasses the website for sure, and other stuff) who asked for things we like, and things we don’t, about the eMusic website and other products. There were some remarks about pricing and business model (bring back unlimited downloads, etc.) too, but the discussion didn’t go too far afield.
I’ve never been in a focus group before, and my understanding of them from previous design training is that they’re usually best conducted in groups smaller than this one, but I think it’s safe to say that’s what this was. If I were working as a designer for eMusic, I wouldn’t feel like I got a lot of rigorous data from this exercise, but it seemed like everyone was pretty satisfied on both sides of the podium.
The eMusic folks seem to take a great deal of pride in the fact that they are making a business out of selling DRM-free independent music. I got the impression they’re doing this little tour (we were the third or fourth stop, I think) to check that they’re really doing the right thing by sticking to their guns on the things they thing are important: selling DRM-free tunes that will play on anything with no restrictions, having good reviews and other editorial content, and keeping the price low so customers stick around for a while. People at this thing had some little quibbles here and there, but if I’m eMusic, I’d come away feeling like I’m doing something right.
Afterward, I stuck around for a few minutes to talk to the people directly. I collected business cards from a couple people, whom I plan to contact about little website enhancements I’m going to think about. I don’t know if these things will have an effect, because I know how the design process works, and their goals aren’t necessarily the same as mine, but it was nice to have the chance to meet these people who are getting some of my money every month. I feel like I’m doing the right thing sticking with them, never mind that I have gotten so much great music through them.
I’ve said this before, but if you love music for its own sake and don’t mind trying something new (or something old that you may not have heard before), you should definitely try out eMusic. This thing’s long enough, but that bears repeating. Their Kool Aid tastes awfully good to me.
I just read a few things about eMusic and DRM that I’m just going to dump here. They’re worth reading.