Band Jumps on Bandwagon

Back in the day, I joined a small startup called Audible as their VP of Technology. My task, and that of my team, was to build whatever technology was necessary so that the publishers would allow us to sell digital versions of their audiobooks. The publishers required us to prevent the purchased audiobooks (downloaded files at that time) to be shared freely and played by folks who hadn’t purchased them. Now, I know we could get into a long debate about whether locking away digital content with technology was or is “right” or ethical, or one of you may want to point out that it’s a hopeless task anyway since you can just digitize the content as it’s being played. Not that this wouldn’t be a spirited and “fun” conversation; I just don’t want to have it right now. Post-pandemic let’s plan to grab a beer and really dig into this fertile topic - invite to follow at some point, maybe.

Anyway, back to my story. In those early Audible days there was no available tech to protect the content, so we had to invent some. The term DRM (digital rights management) hadn’t even been coined yet. During that time we and many other tech teams worked furiously on systems that would enable online sales of digital music, audiobooks, book, movies, images, etc. Since these were digital files they could be copied easily and with abandon, with no guarantee that the creators would get paid anything. We all spent a tremendous amount of time and effort focusing on controlling who could listen to - or watch, or read, or look at - digital media.

So when I first read about the artist Beeple’s sale of the NFT of a digital image for $69,000,000 (!), I was struck in particular by an extraordinary aspect of this sale (other than the sale price itself): It seemed as though the primary focus was ownership of a single copy, not on managing someone’s ability to view the image - all that content access stuff that we DRM folks had worked so hard to implement. It’s almost as if mere “ownership” had been abstracted away from all the other things one normally associates with having created a digital thing — the rights to use/consume/lend/rent/sell/destroy. Well, it got you bragging rights at the very least, and I guess it’s true that the full “quality” version isn’t available to anyone but the buyer. I can see various versions of Beeble’s collage on a number of websites:

Yeah, I know it’s nowhere near the full resolution 21,069 x 21,069 pixels (!), but … whatever. Back at Audible we didn’t want you to have a listenable, digital version of an audiobook at all without paying for it. In the image world you can of course see digital images of famous and valuable paintings online, but those paintings are truly unique physical objects. This Beeple art work is already digital — it’s not a physical thing.

The traditional view of digital media was that you could make unlimited copies at virtually no cost, so we were all focused on the commercial potential, selling “access” to as a many people as possible and to the monetary benefit of the “rights owner”. Here the focus is on ownership of a unique (non-fungible) thing, presumably not for sharing, even though it is digital and would otherwise be freely replicable. It’s still not clear to me that the buyer of the Beeple collage couldn’t simply put the full 21,069 x 21,069 pixels file up in the cloud for everybody to grab.

Would I be willing to pay a zillion dollars for the unique digital master of The Beatles’ I Want to Hold Your Hand? Maybe. If I had a zillion dollars. Would I share it with my fellow Beatlemaniacs? Probably.

FWIW, I do recommend the NY Times Daily podcast episode about the whole NFT thing.

So …….. in the end I decided to quit all this over-thinking and get on the bandwagon! Time’s a’wastin’!

I ask myself, Self, which of Storytown’s creations is deserving of an NFT? “Heck if I know”, says Self. But, after a bit more thought, I have settled on it: I have put up for auction an NFT that represents ownership of the highest quality audio file I have of Storytown’s very first single, Run Run:

I will admit that this 24bit 48 kHz file sounds pretty darn good, though since there’s only one of them (non-fungible) you’ll just have to take my word for it until you buy the NFT and get the accompanying download. Like Kevin Roose of the NY Times (who turned his column about NFTs into an NFT and sold it for $765,000), I don’t expect much bidding action, but you never know. The auction lasts until Monday evening April 26. YOU could be the one to take advantage of this ONE TIME OFFER. The very best sounding Run Run on the planet! The only one! GET IT WHILE IT LASTS!


Please send me your thoughts about anything, either in the comments on this page or by emailing me directly at guy@storytownband.com. And go ahead and share this post with a friend who might enjoy it.

Until next week….

Guy Story1 Comment