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Personal media keeps coming up

To frame the discussion, here are some datapoints: SDForum held an Emerging Technology SIG on Music and Meta Data last week. Creative Common’s novel licensing is attracting most interest around the areas of personal media, mostly audio and video. The ‘podcasting’ phenomenon is gaining almost mainstream status, as users take to the airwaves (even though their broadcasts are canned files posted for later consumption). Check out the article “The Long Tail” from for an idea of the pervasiveness of this concept - the message is clear - with the limitless storage potential of the web, efficient search means the fringe is accessible to all, and with that exploration enabled - personalization is becoming revenue driver. These are real markets - just look at the incredible sales (and usage!) of cameraphones and the staggering fact that the ringtone market was $3.5B in 2003. Sales of add-on, momentarily-cool novelties to kids has become a viable business overnight

Consumer applications often drive technology — we see this constantly with games and pR0n. At this point in time we seem to be seeing a great deal of innovation around personal media.
Perhaps the iPod is to blame - users seem to have established much more personal relationships with the iPods than even previously with their cell phones. But it’s clear that these ‘toys’ are bringing broadband applications out of the house and the office.

So, it’s in light of these developments that I’m inclined to read this piece on emergent music technologies with less skepticism. I’ve never heard that story about Motorola’s genesis….