Holy cow, free music from Universal?!?

Colour me shocked. Stunned, even. A fledgling online music company by the name of SpiralFrog has announced that they're going to make Universal Music's entire North American music catalogue available for free downloading on their website. A test of the service is supposed to start in North America (USA + Canada) by the end of the year, with Britain and other European countries following next year.

Of course, all this free music isn't really free. Instead of spending money, you'll have to spend time to download these songs, and I don't just mean the download time. See, you'll have to watch or listen to ads on their website in order to download the songs and if you want to keep the songs, you'll just have to keep watching ads on the site regularly. As long as the service offers fast download speeds and little to no server downtime, I think people won't mind that too much.

A bigger problem is that SpiralFrog's music offerings will be encoded in Microsoft's WMA format, which isn't compatible with the iPod. Oho. That's a large segment of the digital-music market they're shutting out right there. Is SpiralFrog insane? With a name like that, you'd be tempted to think so, but it looks like they didn't have much of a choice. I'm sure they'd like to support iPod compatibility, but the iPod isn't compatible with any DRM systems but Apple's own FairPlay technology- which isn't and probably can't be used by anyone but Apple.

This leads to an interesting possibility: services like this (I'm sure more- including a yet-to-be-announced service from Kazaa- will be along the way soon) might just erode Apple's dominant position in the digital music market- but only if other hardware manufacturers can get their acts together and start offering compelling alternatives to the iPod. Microsoft's upcoming Zune doesn't count because apparently its only going to support it's own proprietary DRM encoding instead of Microsoft's existing technologies (unless they do an about-face following this news, or try to one-up SpiralFrog with their own free music service). Maybe it's time for Creative to shine?

Still, the big question for me now is simply this: When will we get services like this down here in Asia?

Technorati Tags: Universal Music, SpiralFrog, music, online music

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Youtube serves a million videos a day!

According to this Reuters report, online video site Youtube's viewers are now watching 100 million videos daily. Wow. That's a whole lot of videos. They've definitely captured the market in online videos. Blog TechCrunch raises an interesting question- given their high bandwidth costs (over $1,000,000 a month in April this year- bound to be higher now), how is the service going to make money? Increased advertising would be the obvious solution- question is where will Youtube put the extra ads? Before or after videos? More banners? Well, I'm sure the company's savvy enough to figure something out. Today, they'll be toasting themselves on their fine achievement- beating out large industry players like Google (with their competing Google Video) service to create the household name in online video.

On a sidenote, it's very amusing to read some of the comments on TechCrunch where people try and pinpoint single magic factors that led to Youtube's popularity. Of course, there isn't one. Their success, like any sucess, is due to many factors, but the most important is one that TechCrunch nails with this statement:

"It just might be that YouTube is simple, easy, works well enough and people like it - there may be no more mystery than that."

Well said indeed. Others who want to succeed in the world of "Web 2.0" should make note of that.

Technorati Tags: Youtube, Web 2.0

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Online Resume-writing tips and resources

Writing a compelling resume is no easy task. It's not something they teach at school (at least, not at the schools I went to!). Thankfully, there are some really good tips and guides to resume-writing available online.

Rockport Institute, who specialize in helping people choose their career paths, has a really good multi-page article titled 'How to write a masterpiece of a resume.' The article teaches readers how to wriet a resume that markets themselves well and is compelling for employers. Good stuff.


Purdue University's Online Writing Lab has an extensive resume-writing section, including a sample resume and an online workshop.

Montana University's 'Tips on Resume Writing, Interview Skills, and Job Hunting Techniques' page has lots of links to relevant resources online.

Technorati Tags: resume, writing, job hunting

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Steve Jobs' presentation secrets

Steve Jobs is well-known for being one of the most charismatic and exciting speakers in the corporate world. Business Week has a great article that details his five keys to delivering a superior presentation. Some great advice in there.

Technorati Tags: Steve Jobs, presentations, Business Week

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My $0.02 on service in Singapore

Well, I live in the CBD and do all my shopping in the City Hall, Bugis and Orchard Road areas and in general, service at all those places is pretty darned excellent nowadays.

Why, just 2 days ago I went with a friend of mine to Funan Centre so he could buy a new router cos his old one's just given up the ghost lately. Actually it's my old Linksys BEFW11S4 that I gave him after I got a free router from Starhub for upgrading my MaxOnline plan (BTW: Boys and girls- don't buy Linksys routers. Every one I've used has given me no end of headaches). Anyway, we reached there quite late at 8:30pm and most of the shops were already closed. But we found a shop on the 5th floor that was still open and lucky for us they sold networking equipment! We went in and I asked the guy at the shop- knowledgable looking guy in his 40s or so- which wireless router he'd recommend to us.

There was a number of different models on the shelves there but he took one of the shelf right away and showed it to us- twas the Netgear WGR614. It's quite an attractively designed router with an Apple-inspired white color scheme and nice rounded corners. But more importantly, it was one of the cheaper models at S$75.00 and it came with a 3-years warranty! Our salesguy confirmed that a lot of people had problems with Linksys routers but he claimed that so far, he hadn't heard of any problems with the Netgear one. Well, one could be cynical and say that of course he'd say that- he's trying to sell that model! But he also had Linksys routers in his store so I doubt he was just giving us a load of bull to make a sale.

So like, he was really informative and explained the differences between the model he recommended and the more expensive models and why he thought this one was the best buy. In the end it was his the combination of his testimony, the sweet price, the 3-year warranty (compared to a mere year for Linksys) and a nice little PC World recommendation stamp on the router's box that sold me on the router so I told my friend to go ahead and buy it. So far he hasn't had any problems with it. And if he does- got 3 year warranty what!

If not for that salesdude recommending us the Netgear router, I think we'd probably have ended up going for yet another Linkys router- despite their suckiness, we didn't know of any better routers (D-Link ones are even worse). And you know what, he was so nice that he listened to my sob-story about my own router- it crashes once a week for no apparent reason and I have to turn my modem and router off and back on again to get it to work- told me to download new firmware and even offered to help me upgrade my routers firmware if I couldn't do it myself. Like, for free! Coolness.

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Today I read the newspaper!

This is an exciting and unusual development. I usually just scan the frontpage but I don't usually read the whole paper- see, I get most of my world news on the net. But this does make me a bit (or very) backwards when it comes to local news. But I'm trying to catch up now- especially cos following the latest news and trends is highly important for 2 modules I'm taking at university this semester- Theories of Communications and New Media and Principles of Marketing.

So anyway, there's a story on the front page about how the government's starting a new Customer Centric Initiative (CCI) to improve service in Singapore, starting with the retail sector. Well I kind of expected something like this after what my Marketing tutor told me on Monday (I blogged about it a couple posts down). Of course, it's a jolly good idea. Who doesn't want better service?

Over in the home section there's a big 2-page spotlight on some big companies participating in the CCI. There's also a couple of interesting anecdotes about good customer service here by Mr Lim Swee Say, deputy secretary-general of the labour movement here (Wow I didn't know there was one! Wonder what they do?).

There's a big section on haze today. It's quite sad how poor farmers in Sumatra have no choice but to clear land by slash-and-burn methods. The Indonesian government really should help them out by providing some kind of alternative. It's a real shame that we had to see a repeat of what happened in 1997. Thankfully Singapore wasn't affected this time becos of wind directions and yadda yadda... but we might not be so lucky next time.

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UK ISP offers legal file-sharing! Meanwhile, Singapore arrests some more file-sharers...

(via BoingBoing)

UK-based ISP Playlouder MSP has struck a deal with SONY BMG that will allow it's users to download any song in the record label's catalog for free as well as file-share their own music collection with other users of the ISP. Well it's about bloody time someone finally figured out a solution that makes both the consumers and producers of music happy. Bravo!

Meanwhile, back here in Singapore, the RIAS got the police to arrest 3 people for sharing their music collections on the net. Under Singapore's new anti-piracy laws, these 3 barbarous blackguards can face up to 5 years jail time or a S$10,000 fine. Oh and I just found out apparently these guys received prior warnings before finally getting busted. Well in that case the RIAS's tactics aren't really all that hardline. Just a bit over the top... Anyway I bet these guys won't get full sentences. After all, the main purpose of these arrests is really to create examples out of these guys, right? But really, what were they doing sharing their music online on IRC? It's not like they're earning money from it!

Well, it's kind of ironic that these 2 events happen within a week of each other. Seeing as how they represent two almost diametrically opposite ways of dealing with the problem of Internet music piracy, and the underlying problem of the traditional means of music distribution, CDs, being displaced by newer and more efficient means of distribution in the form of P2P networks on the net.

So we see one party co-opting the new distribution systems, legalizing and limiting their use while the other fights to keep the old system viable. Only history will really tell but right now I think its reasonably safe to say the future of music distribution is online. And the bottom-line for the RIAS is that they don't want to lose music sales to piracy. So I think they're better off implementing a similar system to what Playlouder MSP has done rather than keep trying to scare people off P2P systems by arresting a few every now and then. P2P's not going away anytime soon and you can't get it rid of it. So they've gotta find a better way to deal with it.

Note: I edited this post extensively cos well... terrorist jokes aren't funny anymore and besides, no matter how miffed I am at not being able to rip my new CDs to my hard disk because of weird copy protection schemes (though that's kind of a moot point here as it's illegal to rip songs from your CDs onto your hard disk!) ranting about the issue isn't going to change much. Though wow, ripping songs is illegal? Weird. Thats one law I bet is never going to get enforced. C'mon, if people can't convert their CDs to MP3s, Creative Zen MP3 player sales will plummet! Sure die, leh.

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Service in Singapore

I found this interesting article about the poor level of service in Singapore. Hmmm... my Marketing (I'm taking an intro to Marketing module at school this semester) tutor was talking about the same thing this week. Her opinion was that most people in service industries in Singapore don't really care about customer service because they don't really have to. Their jobs aren't on the line. I think that's an interesting point. I mean, if your customers are buying stuff from you no matter how rude you are, why bother to be polite? My tutor, who's originally from Hong Kong but has now settled down here, told us that service in Hong Kong industry has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years because the economy was so terrible a few years ago that businesses were compelled to improve their level of service to woo back customers. So does that mean Singapore needs a similar retail crisis for an improvement in service to happen? Well, I don't think so. For one thing, the governments a lot more hands-on here than there. According to my tutor, the Singapore government has already sent some people over to Hong Kong to take a look at how things are being done there now and how they managed to improve their level of customer service.

To be fair, service in Singapore isn't all that bad. You can find stores where the staff are friendly and don't act as if they'd rather you left their store, real fast. But then again, there are some stores where the staff look at you as if they hate you, just for existing. But its up to us consumers to lay our feet down and say No to Bad Service. Why bother buying stuff from a store where the people who are supposed to serve you act like you just murdered their grandfather? I don't. Last year, I bought my PC from a different store at Sim Lim than the one I was originally going to buy it from. I paid about $50 more. But I just couldn't stand the service at the first shop so I let my money do the talking and gave them the cold shoulder. See, if we consumers let shops with bad service know what they're doing wrong by depriving them of sales, then they'll be forced to think long and hard about what they're doing wrong and CHANGE.

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