How Amazon has outsmarted the music industry (and Apple)

I remember a time when everyone and their grandmother was trying to smack down Microsoft for just about anything they could. They were the Evil empire. It doesn’t seem to be that long ago. Now that Microsoft is playing catch up, the new target of ire is one that was on pretty shaky ground before but is now the new Evil empire: Apple.

I’m talking, of course, about Lala, the pioneering digital music service that Apple purchased in December 2009 and shut down more than a year ago. The first thing Apple did, almost immediately after purchasing the company, was to disable its Music Mover feature, which allowed Lala members to upload their personal music collections to a cloud-based locker where they could play it from any web browser.

Yesterday, with the double-barreled launch of its Cloud Drive storage service and the tightly linked Cloud Player, Amazon brought that capability back to a mass audience. They’ve executed their strategy brilliantly, and they’ve painted the recording industry and their archrival Apple into a corner. Read more…

What was it that Princess Leia said to Grand Moff Tarkin? “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.” Control is an interesting thing: you have to fight tooth and nail to get it, but after you do, you have to fight tooth and nail to keep it. The problem with walls: somebody’s always trying to tunnel through them. Sometimes people want to get out; other times people want to get in. Which side you happen to be on will determine how happy you are about the tunneling efforts.