the rajam report

Apple:

This version of iTunes comes with several new features and improvements, including:

• New MiniPlayer. MiniPlayer now includes a beautiful new view that showcases your album artwork. In addition, a progress bar is now built right into MiniPlayer.
• Improved Songs View. You can now enjoy your album artwork while in Songs view.
• Multi-Disc Albums. Albums with multiple discs now appear as a single album.

I like the new MiniPlayer. It reminds of the “Now Playing” screen on the iPhone Music app now. Now if only they would add Notification Center integration… 

Marco Arment:

Facebook Home rested on two major assumptions:

1. Your friends put good, recognizable pictures of themselves as their profile photo.
2. Your friends post photos so good that you’d like to see a selection of them, chosen automatically, on your lock screen.

OK, show of hands:

1. How many of your friends’ profile photos are either barely recognizable from poor lighting or angle choices (if you’re under age 25), or have become pictures of babies instead (if you’re 25 or older)?
2. How many of your friends’ photos are so good that you’d rather see them randomly on your lock screen instead of a great photo of your choice that you took?

I’ve felt this way from the beginning. Whenever Facebook launches a new product, I feel like the only people who will actively use it already work at Facebook. 

Even Graph Search suffers from the “real world usage” issue. I imagine Graph Search is helpful if your friends check-in everywhere and “like” all of the content they enjoy. My friends don’t, so it’s largely useless for me. 

Zach Epstein, for BGR

The HTC First, or “Facebook phone” as many prefer to call it, is officially a flop. It certainly wasn’t a good sign when AT&T dropped the price of HTC’s First to $0.99 just one month after its debut, and now BGR has confirmed that HTC and Facebook’s little experiment is nearing its end. BGR has learned from a trusted source that sales of the HTC First have been shockingly bad. So bad, in fact, that AT&T has already decided to discontinue the phone.

Our source at AT&T has confirmed that the HTC First, which is the first smartphone to ship with Facebook Home pre-installed, will soon be discontinued and unsold inventory will be returned to HTC. How much unsold inventory is there? We don’t have an exact figure, but things aren’t looking good. According to our source, AT&T sold fewer than 15,000 units nationwide through last week when the phone’s price was slashed to $0.99.

Whoa. That is absolutely insane, especially considering how many television ads I’ve seen for Facebook home and the device. Seems like the most successful thing to come out of Home has been Chat Heads. 

Ken Segall:

Back when the very first iPhone was about to launch, it was assumed by many inside Apple that iPhone would follow the path of iPod before it. The first year or two would be devoted to evolving and perfecting the device — and then the iPhone line would be expanded to address various types of customers.

iPod’s biggest years came after it had expanded into a family of products.

Given that history, and given the growing demand for certain variations on the theme, there’s a good chance that the next iPhone will actually be a family of iPhones.

Federico Viticci over at MacStories has put together a good list of things he’d like to see in iOS 7. I’m onboard with most of these, particularly his call for better inter-app communication. Like Federico, I’ve spent much of the last year using my iPad as my main computing device instead of my Mac. The whole “duplicate file” issue that arises with the current “Open in” framework is particularly annoying when working on iOS. 

Insanely addictive iOS game from the folks at Betaworks. It’s as simple as it sounds, and it’s free on the App Store. It features in-app purchases, but I don’t think they are necessary to enjoy the game. 

BBC:

Storm Thorgerson, whose album cover artwork includes Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, has died aged 69, the band’s management has confirmed.

A childhood friend of the founding members of the band, he became their designer-in-chief, fashioning a string of eye-catching creations.

Most-famously he designed the prism spreading a spectrum of colour across The Dark Side Of The Moon.

His credits also include albums by Led Zeppelin, Peter Gabriel and Muse.

His family released a statement saying he died peacefully on Thursday surrounded by family and friends.

“He had been ill for some time with cancer though he had made a remarkable recovery from his stroke in 2003,” it said.

David Gilmour, in a statement on his website:

We first met in our early teens. We would gather at Sheep’s Green, a spot by the river in Cambridge and Storm would always be there holding forth, making the most noise, bursting with ideas and enthusiasm. Nothing has ever really changed.

He has been a constant force in my life, both at work and in private, a shoulder to cry on and a great friend.

The artworks that he created for Pink Floyd from 1968 to the present day have been an inseparable part of our work.

I will miss him.

One of the greats. His work will live on forever. 

Openculture:

Since time immemorial — or, in any case, since the mid-twentieth century — adolescents have looked to rock stars for life lessons. This works out better with some rock stars than others, of course, and in bygone days kids would have to infer these lessons from song lyrics and the occasional Rolling Stoneinterview. Now that most of their musical idols maintain active, even garrulous presences on several forms of social media at once, internet-age youngsters in need of counsel have a great deal more material to work with. Certain rock stars have taken this responsibility seriously, as you can see in the video above featuring Radiohead mastermind Thom Yorke and producer/multi-instrumentalist Nigel Godrich (also known as the men behind the supergroup Atoms for Peace). If you find yourself confused by boys, let these two fortysomething Brits clear it right up.

This is as absurd and amazing as it sounds. 

If you like Star Wars, or are just generally a “nerd” or “geek” this will blow your mind. Just watch it.

Rohin Dar, for the Priceonomics blog:

If the traditional band business model is to generate hype through the media and radio airplay, and then monetize that hype through album sales and tours, Phish doesn’t fit the model at all. For a band of their stature, their album sales are miniscule and radio airplay non-existent. And so when the “music business” cratered in the 1990s because of file-sharing and radio’s importance declined because of the internet, Phish remained unaffected and profitable as ever.

Phish doesn’t make money by selling music. They make money by selling live music, and that, it turns out, is a more durable business model. This wasn’t some brilliant pre-calculated strategy by the band or its managers; it’s the business model that sprung forth from the kind of music the band makes. The band developed the kernel of this musical style during their first five years when they played almost exclusively in bars in Burlington, Vermont, and slowly, but organically, grew their audience.

During this period they maniacally focused on improving the quality of their music through intense practice and frequent gigs at bars. And while at first these gigs were relatively unsuccessful, over time their audiences grew, the band started to make money, and then, after five years of obscurity, they were profitable before anyone in the music industry knew who the hell they were. And with profitability came the freedom to make music on their terms. 

In the parlance of startup language, Phish bootstrapped their business rather than seeking support from institutional players like record labels, talent agencies, and concert promoters. And that’s made all the difference.

I’m not a Phish fan at all, but I will always respect the hell out of them for what they do and the success they worked for. It’s a very inspirational story to me as a musician, particularly the bit about practicing.