Comments on: The Death of Consumer Electronics http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2004/07/08/the-death-of-consumer-electronics/ An industry analyst blog looking at software ecosystems and convergence Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:35:40 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Anonymous http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/2004/07/08/the-death-of-consumer-electronics/comment-page-1/#comment-4 Anonymous Thu, 19 Aug 2004 18:50:36 +0000 http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/wp/?p=14#comment-4 Nice article. I especially like the comment about HP and printer cartridges. I had wondered how a company that large survived on their PC sales. But seriously, I think this is a good point. Another (print) article I read make the quite correct comment that virtually all art is impossible under the DMCA; creation is almost never ex nihilo, it's almost always based on the many things that came before. Even something as silly as "Louie Louie" is based on a badly remember song that was based on another badly remembered Latin American song, which itself was probably a badly remembered rendition of something else. (According to the author, the reason nobody can understand the famously unintelligible words is that he couldn't remember what they really were, and didn't want to admit it, so he mumbled.) Really, what's hurt music more than anything else is that people have become passive consumers. And that's changing. Companies like Apple clearly have a clue--even if GarageBand is only about 2/3 of what you need to do real music production (and it's probably not even that), they're enabling people to start producing. And getting them hooked, so they'll buy the more expensive follow-on tools. Whether that will lead to a musical renaissance is another issue, but that's not the point. Nice article. I especially like the comment about HP and printer cartridges. I had wondered how a company that large survived on their PC sales.

But seriously, I think this is a good point. Another (print) article I read make the quite correct comment that virtually all art is impossible under the DMCA; creation is almost never ex nihilo, it’s almost always based on the many things that came before. Even something as silly as “Louie Louie” is based on a badly remember song that was based on another badly remembered Latin American song, which itself was probably a badly remembered rendition of something else.
(According to the author, the reason nobody can understand the famously unintelligible words is that he couldn’t remember what they really were, and didn’t want to admit it, so he mumbled.)

Really, what’s hurt music more than anything else is that people have become passive consumers. And that’s changing. Companies like Apple clearly have a clue–even if GarageBand is only about 2/3 of what you need to do real music production (and it’s probably not even that), they’re enabling people to start producing. And getting them hooked, so they’ll buy the more expensive follow-on tools. Whether that will lead to a musical renaissance is another issue, but that’s not the point.

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