that’s whacked

the timeliness of the Open Media Web

Thursday, Jan 3. 2008  –  Category: Music, Songbird

Songbird has been pushing the concept of the Open Media Web for a while now, and openmediaweb.org’s first interview with Lucas Gonze is now live.

The issue of open-ness and captive data is especially timely given Scoble’s Facebook-ban. Granted, Scoble’s case is more around who owns what data - but it boils down to the same idea: it’s never as easy to get data out as it is to get data in. Web services should capture audiences and users through continuous innovation, not by holding our data usage.

Gonze’s primary message is that all media on the web should have canonical, authoritative URLs. This is not too surprising a message from the creator of the XSPF playlist format. I guess I’m conflicted here since protecting and charging for content is a reality of life. I’d love nothing more than to see album tracks by artists published for free with revenue coming from fan contributions and tours, but the reality is that isn’t happening. So music stores and publishers/labels will continue to charge for content. But notice that Gonze’s message doesn’t say that content should be free. In fact, expanding upon this, I’d love to see platforms that provide canonical URLs with standards-based APIs for basic media functions and commerce, e.g. a way for all music stores to provide:

1. an authoritative canonical URL to each artist, album, and track
2. a standard API to preview a 30 second sample
3. a standard API to authenticate (OpenID/OAuth?) with another ecommerce/financial site (PayPal, Bank, etc.) to purchase track
4. a standard API to download said track to media library

This same API would be applied (only without step 3) to free/CC-licensed/etc. content on the web thus enabling media players like Songbird to provide standard and uniform ways to interact with, sample, purchase, and acquire music thus freeing up labels and music stores to focus on innovation and creativity rather than the dull drudgery of running an ecommerce store.