November 3, 2004
Software manufacturers plotting to stop us playing music on our mobiles
Some people are already using their phone as portable music player. Phones allowing you to store over 100 music tracks are going to be commonplace by the end of this decade.
Charles Arthur from The Independent reports about a conference gathering some of the people who write software to let people listen to music on their phones, basically, policing what you listen to.
All kinds of technology scenarios to "control" music on the phone were imagined: songs which can only play a certain number of times, or which you can pass on to another person's phone, who would then have to pay to listen to it or who could listen to it a couple of times before it stopped playing. Imagine, said the specialists: virally spread music, or phones that find songs a bit like what you're listening to. "As long as there's a friction-free way for users to be able to get hold of a one- or two-pound track, you don't have to surround it with protection like Fort Knox, as you would for a £10 album," suggested one.
According to the journalist what pervaded there was the assumption that the owners of mobile phones should not be trusted with music tracks, especially stuff you could buy over the net or in shops. Yet people might use their future phones more democratically than the phone and record company anticipate. Why should the future be more locked down?
Just as with other digital-music players, we will demand the ability to choose how and how often we listen to our content (...) After all, text messages flourished not because the phone makers focused hard on them, but precisely because they ignored them. As long as they leave the huge storage on upcoming phones alone, they'll see sparkling results. But to try to determine how we listen to what we choose - well, that's the surest way to kill the golden goose of music.
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