Blurts

I am guessing most of us listen to music that we receive as a digital stream. We have decided that it is more convenient and possibly less expensive to stream the music we consume rather than purchasing music that we store. There is also the reality that with a paid streaming service we can listen to pretty much anything that suits our fancy rather than listen to what a free source sends to us. 

There are multiple sources for streaming music. For years, I purchased music, downloaded it to my office or home computer and played it from one of these devices. I ripped my own CDs, purchased music through iTunes, and then from Amazon because their $10 per album was a little lower. My collection amounted to more than 5000 songs which amounts to a lot of money, but those who purchase music over many years have invested this much. Apple introduced a service called iTunes Match which allowed me for $24 to stream my songs from one Apple device to another. The advantage for this service is that you don’t have to store your entire collection of songs on each device you want to use to listen to your music. You can offload your music if you want. At this point, I don’t have a stored copy of all of this music because I no longer use the original machines.

I have used several paid streaming services, first Apple, then Amazon, and now Spotify. There may be small differences in the fees, but I eventually moved to Spotify because I wanted to diversify how I spend my money. All things being close to equal, I value maintaining competition especially if the options are Amazon and Apple.

If you follow tech news, you may have read that Apple wrote an open letter to music creators announcing that it was raising its per stream revenue returned to one cent per stream. Apple compared their return rate with the .003 to .006 return per stream of Spotify. This letter to the creatives was also published by the Wall Street Journal. This position challenged a different personal value. I believe online services must compensate content producers in one way or another. For example, I find ad blocking offensive – it may be a way to get back at online services people believe is stealing their personal information, but it also eliminates the revenue for those generating the content that is consumed. 

I have been attempting to research the Apple vs. Spotify issue and the situation turns out to be more complicated than the 1 penny vs. a half-penny. There are multiple variables to consider. Streaming music now accounts for 83% of the income from recorded music. Spotify has 32% of the streaming market (Apple has 18%) and generates the largest return to rights holders generating $5 billion in 2020.

An important difference between Spotify and Apple is that Spotify offers an ad-supported option. This option is used by more active participants than the paid tier (199 vs. 155 million). The ad-based tier generates far less revenue (281 million vs. 1.89 billion euros in one comparison). Spotify simply generates less revenue per stream with more users.

Part of the decision content creators need to consider is whether there is benefit in the streams to those who are willing only to view ads. Without these users they would make less revenue unless some significant proportion of these users would become paid, ad-free users. 

In evaluating the business model of these two companies it is also important to recognize that Apple has certain advantages. The Apple bundles iTunes as the default in all Apple products and those who use these devices pay a premium for their devices.  There are certainly other options, with and without ads, for those wanting free access to music.

Motley Fool

9 to 5 Mac

Google Earth has released some new timeline imagery showing how the earth has changed because of human behavior. The timelapse video is based on satellite imagery beginning in 1984 (image appearing below is a screen capture). The imagery of receding glaciers is dramatic and for those of us who have visited the same glaciers over time we may appreciate this visualization as the sites will often have markers showing where the glacier was within our own lifetimes.

I am a big supporter of reading digital books for academic work. I differentiate academic work and pleasure reading to note that academic work frequently involves study and referencing making the opportunity to search the content personally highlighted and annotated of great value especially as a project stretches over time or many sources. I have written previously about the use of highlights and annotations added to Kindle and how this added content can be separated, stored, and searched.

I borrow digital books from a couple of libraries I frequent using Libby. This software (from Overdrive) allows me to get on the waiting list for books, download digital and audiobooks, and highlight and annotate content as I read. When the allocated time for reading the books ends, the content disappears. This means highlights disappear limiting the usefulness of borrowed books for what I have described as academic work. In some cases, books I download in Libby can be read using Kindle software allowing the saving of my highlights and notes. Not all content from libraries work this way and I am sometimes forced to read in Libby rather than Kindle. It turns out there is a way, although not ideal, to export highlights from Libby.

I offer this tutorial because some may find it useful noting that Libby is also used within some K12 schools to provide digitized conent.

A book that is available will appear in Libby as displayed below. To export highlights you start with the Manage Loan option.

Among the various actions associated with managing a load, Libby users have access to their Reading Journey.

From actions, the goal here is to Export Reading Data.

The goal here is to export Highlights.

The highlights are stored as a CSV file you want to share to yourself and then open in a spreadsheet.

Once in a spreadsheet, you want to sort the entire spreadsheet using the timestamp. The last entry will be the last content highlighted and you will likely want to review highlights from the beginning to the end.

You can keep your highlights in this format, but I like to select the column of highlights and save it as a document. I add the citation for the book to this document for future reference.

I came across this resource suggesting how supporters of a policy should go about using social media as advocates. The suggestions were proposed by KnowledgeWorks specifically focused on ways to support schools in moving to strategies that provided for personalized, competency-based instruction, but the suggestions would seem to be useful in many areas. I happen to be a supporter of competency-based approaches and I have written about the topic for years, but I admit that there are suggestions here that I have not applied. The value of providing tips for how to go about advocacy had not occurred to me and I found the analysis and advice to be valuable.

One learning outcome of the past year’s battle with the pandemic is that broadband is essential to the functioning of the country. Many who read this blog are focused on educational issues and understand the role that broadband has played in education and the struggles schools have had with access for all students. Within cities, residents should have access to at least one provider, but in this case the challenge may be cost. There are other issues with providers such as net neutrality with competition not always a solution for those looking for a provider offering different options. There is also the issue of cost and quality with the U.S. lagging behind the connectivity available in other countries.

Biden has proposed a $100 billion plan to all citizens with community broadband playing an important part of the approach. Community (municipal) broadband would not provide help for those in rural areas with limited service, but it would seem a way to offer service in populated areas. The idea of municipal broadband access is that cities could offer community wifi access as a utility. The cost could be part of the benefits of city taxes, through subscriptions, or a combination. Obviously, proposals to provide municipal broadband tend to be opposed by traditional broadband providers who have worked in many localities to block municipal plans through political action.

Many states (22) have significant barriers to municipal broadband. I was surprised to see Minnesota (my state or residence) on this list because I know that some efforts do exist. The article lists Minnesota as facing “competitive barriers” to the development of a municipal option.

Minnesota state laws require municipal governments proposing to offer broadband services to residents to obtain a referendum “supermajority” of 65% of voters to proceed. Municipal governments are able to construct, extend, improve and maintain facilities for Internet access only if the city council finds that proposed broadband network and service will not compete with existing services provided by private telecom companies, or if such services are not and will not be available through private telecom companies in the foreseeable future.

I was able to find this map showing the location of communities with municipal broadband.

The summary of the American Jobs Plan is available from the whitehouse.gov. The section on high speed internet as critical infrastructure is about 1/3 of the way into the document so you will have to search or scroll to find it (Revitalize America’s digital infrastructure).