Sources said eMusic’s backers … are also seriously considering adding a streaming component in a bid to build upon its recent growth.

… According to sources, the streaming component would be a value-added feature for premium subscribers.

The thinking is that the economics of a download-only model and a streaming-alone model don’t work on their own, but putting them together in a tiered system could help retain subscribers.

I think adding a streaming option would be a great idea, not as a substitute for downloading but rather as an easy way to audition albums before deciding whether or not to spend my (limited) downloads on them. I wrote a lengthy blog post on this topic back in October (Should eMusic offer streaming?) discussing the pros and cons of this. I doubt my post influenced (or was even read by) anyone at eMusic, but it’s nonetheless gratifying to see eMusic apparently considering integrating streaming capability into the service.

I’m curious as to whether anyone else subscribing to eMusic shares my opinion on this, or whether people are looking to Spotify or other ad-supported or freemium services to provide your streaming fix. In this connection it’s unclear what any potential eMusic streaming service would look like. Here are some open questions along with my speculations and opinions to supplement my earlier thoughts:

Standalone service vs. tied to current eMusic service. The New York Post article claims the proposal is to offer streaming as an add-on to the current service, not as a standalone service. I think this is the best way to approach it—position eMusic streaming as a useful option to enable easier music discovery for eMusic subscribers, not as a competitor to Spotify, etc.

Extra-cost option vs. bundled into existing plans. The New York Post article is unclear on this point; however the phrase value-added feature for premium subscribers implies that streaming would be bundled into the overall eMusic subscription price for the higher-priced plans, and not offered at all for the Lite, Basic, or (maybe) Plus plans. I think bundling makes sense if streaming were positioned as a aid to music discovery for people who listen to and download a lot, and not as a substitute for downloading.

Right now I’m paying for a combination of the eMusic Basic plan (annual) and a $5/month Napster subscription for streaming (and some extra downloads — though remembering to actually download them is a PITA). If eMusic were to offer streaming I’d happily drop Napster and upgrade my eMusic plan to a Plus or even Premium plan. (I skipped getting a Plus plan when the recent price increases hit because of concern about wasting the extra downloads on stuff I wouldn’t like that much. Being able to try before I buy via streaming helps alleviate that concern.)

Unlimited streaming vs. a cap on streamed tracks. Of course I’d like any eMusic streaming option to not have a fixed limit on streams per month. However if eMusic has to pay streaming royalties on a per-track basis then it might make sense for it to impose a monthly limit on streams per subscriber. Since I’d be using streaming primarily to try out stuff before I download, I could probably live with a maximum cap of (say) 10 times the number of my download credits, e.g., 500 streamed tracks per month to go with a Premium plan offering 50 download credits.

Streaming tracks vs. (only) streaming albums. Would eMusic allow streaming individual tracks without restriction (other than a possible cap on streams per month), or would eMusic and/or the labels try to bring into the streaming world the concept of album only tracks (i.e., not allowing you to stream particular tracks unless you streamed the entire album)?

If eMusic allowed streaming individual tracks on an a la carte basis then labels might see this as a way for subscribers to evade the album only restrictions, especially for albums with a small number of tracks. (Don’t download that 2-track electronic release for 12 credits, just stream it instead.) On the other hand, to my knowledge no other streaming service implements album only restrictions of any kind, and I suspect the business and royalty model for streaming is different enough to make such restrictions unnecessary or at least not desirable.

Tied to PC vs. available on smartphones. The conservative approach would be for eMusic to implement streaming only in the context of the current web-based download service. For example, if you had the streaming option then the Listen to this album and Listen to this song buttons on an album page might be configured to play the full (streamed) album or track instead of just 30-second samples (as at present).

eMusic might also offer a standalone streaming app for smartphones, like the various iPhone apps for Spotify, etc. However I doubt that eMusic is eager to compete directly with (or be compared to) the streaming-only services, and there would be a number of non-trivial business issues that would have to be dealt with in creating an eMusic offering for mobile devices. Also, I think mobile streaming is more useful as a replacement for terrestrial and satellite radio than as an adjunct to a download service. I think that if eMusic does offer streaming that it won’t be for mobile devices, at least initially.

So, my final prediction: Sometime in 2010 eMusic will offer streaming as a bundled feature of the Premium and Connoisseur plans (but not Lite, Basic, or Plus). It will not cost anything extra, however introduction of streaming may occur in conjunction with a further round of (relatively small) plan price increases, possibly associated with adding more major label content. For those eMusic subscribers who have streaming, it will happen transparently using the existing Listen to this album and Listen to this song buttons on album pages. Such subscribers will be able to stream any album or individual track on eMusic, without any restrictions except possibly for a cap on total streams per month that is tied to the number of plan downloads.

There will not be an option to stream to smartphones or similar mobile devices (e.g., e-book readers with wireless capability), with the possible exception of devices that connect via wifi and have web browsers that provide equivalent support for eMusic downloading and streaming to that of standard PCs. (However even this may be restricted in some cases for business reasons.)

Your thoughts?

I’m spending my last few days at the Foundation working on transitioning my various duties to others and helping out with planning for 2010. If there’s anything you need from me before I leave, please contact me in the next few days. After December 11 you can reach me at hecker@hecker.org; my work address will be fhecker@ironkey.com if you want to contact me on IronKey-related matters.

I appreciate all the help and support I’ve gotten from other folks at Mozilla. I’m sorry I won’t be able to thank all of you personally, and I won’t be at the Mozilla all-hands meeting next week so I won’t be able to say good-bye in person. I wish you all the best of luck in your endeavors, and look forward to seeing all the great things coming from Mozilla over the next year, from new releases of Firefox and Thunderbird to the start of Mozilla Drumbeat.

Based on the feedback, the first point to address is: What is Mozilla Education, and what are its goals? The people I asked were familiar with what Dave Humphrey has been doing at Seneca College in terms of introducing students to Mozilla, but weren’t clear on what was going on beyond that. So, some explanation: “Mozilla Education” as a program started out as an effort by the Mozilla Foundation to take what was going on at Seneca and try to replicate it at other schools, on the assumption that the Seneca approach was worth replicating. (There seems to be general agreement on this, though as discussed below there are some limitations to this approach.)

The primary goal of Mozilla Education now and going forward is to help grow a new generation of Mozilla contributors by working with students and educators around the world. In the original Mozilla Education planning document we outlined another broader goal around promoting general innovation in education (“help to drive a new wave of participatory, student-led learning in fields like computer science, design and business”). As discussed in the progress report, we’ve since deemphasized that second goal and are now focusing Mozilla Education efforts primarily on the Mozilla project proper.

In the context of this discussion the term contributorcovers anyone who makes a significant positive impact on Mozilla worthy of recognition; this includes both technical and non-technical contributions, anything from doing heavy-duty Gecko hacking to helping out with marketing Firefox. Thus there are multiple types of students and educators who might participate in Mozilla Education, and multiple types of activities directed toward them. To provide a bit more focus, let’s follow the advice of one of the people who provided feedback and discuss 1) what has worked (and not worked) in the past and 2) how we might take what’s worked and establish scalable processes for the future.

The first thing to note is that the Seneca approach–integrating teaching of Mozilla technologies and practices directly into college and university courses–is proving to be somewhat replicable, with several schools and professors now teaching or planning to teach such courses. (See the progress report for a full list.) However the pure Seneca-style approach has some limitations, at least from the point of view of producing core Mozilla contributors: It has been successful in producing good contributors in such areas as build infrastructure and release engineering, but less so in terms of producing contributors who are hard-core Mozilla hackers.

In my opinion this is not so much a failing of the approach as it is a failing of academia: The schools that have been most open to integrating open source development work into the classroom (like Seneca) are the schools that focus more on practical instruction for job-seeking students. The high-end research universities that attract top-quality computer science students are the ones least interested in anything that smacks of vocational education.

Until and unless this situation changes, I suspect that the most realistic approach to growing full-time core Mozilla contributors (i.e., people who are good candidates for employment at the Mozilla Corporation or Mozilla Messaging) is as follows:

• Continue to promote the Seneca approach to schools that are most likely to be receptive to it, and in particular try to target schools interested in teaching topics like quality assurance through automated testing, continuous integration, and other software engineering practices needed in large-scale projects like Mozilla.
• For research-focused institutions, pursue a more lightweight approach of encouraging professors to have students do Mozilla-related senior projects and independent study, either based on self-generated ideas or based on tasks previously identified as being good student projects. Note this is lightweight only in the sense that it demands less of the school and its faculty; in practice this approach will be limited by the amount of effort existing Mozilla contributors can devote to helping students.
• For recruitment of hard-core hackers continue to rely on recruiting students from top schools as Mozilla Corporation or Mozilla Messaging interns, outside the context of the Mozilla Education program proper. In this context it’s easier to justify the amount of time needed to bring such students up to speed.

Moving beyond the issue of growing new core contributors, a second topic is that of encouraging students to make technical contributions outside the context of the core Mozilla code. This could include working on Firefox or Thunderbird add-ons, developing web applications that make use of new Firefox features, working with the various technologies being prototyped by Mozilla Labs, and so on.

In the context of Mozilla Education the Processing for the Web project (based on processing.js) is the primary project of this type thus far, and is proving to be quite successful. Projects like this are somewhat peripheral to the core Mozilla activities around shipping new releases of Firefox, Thunderbird, etc. However they do get more people involved in working with Mozilla technologies and code, help to promote adoption of Mozilla products, and help support other Mozilla activities, whether technical or not. (For example, the Processing for the Web work could be used in the context of the “visualize the (open) web” project proposed as part of Mozilla Drumbeat.)

In my opinion doing projects like Processing for the Web is a useful and scalable approach for two reasons. First, it provides a common focus for lots of student work, so that the limited time of mentors can be leveraged across more people: A mentor can help many students at once, and students can help one another. Second, it leverages the time and expertise of people outside the project (in this case people like Al MacDonald who were already working on processing.js), further lessening the burden placed on core Mozilla contributors.

Are there other possible projects like Processing for the Web that could serve as a focus for student contributions? One possibility is a project around Dehydra, Pork, and similar code analysis and rewriting tools designed for large code bases like Mozilla’s. Like the Processing for the Web project, such a project could leverage an existing community of people outside of Mozilla, including developers working in the GCC project and others developing or working with advanced code analysis tools.

Another way to engage students is the design challenge approach pioneered by Mozilla Labs and then adopted in a Mozilla Education context for the Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge. Design challenges and similar contest-like events have proved successful at attracting student participants, including design students and others who are not programmers at heart. Keys to success include have a fairly tightly focused challenge, along with one or more expert mentors who can help the students realize their ideas.

Because they’re focused on leading-edge work not yet ready for incorporation into standard shipping products, the Mozilla Labs folks have some freedom and time available for running design challenges that other Mozilla core contributors don’t necessarily have. In the context of Mozilla Education running a design challenge would typically finding third party subject matter experts to help with the challenge, which in turns means that challenges would typically require additional funding over and beyond what the Mozilla Foundation spends on the basic Mozilla Education program.

With that in mind, here are my thoughts on how Mozilla Education should approach engaging students to contribute outside the context of the core Mozilla codebase:

• Sponsor at least three projects in 2010 that can each serve as a focus for engaging larger groups of students:
  • continuation of the Processing for the Web project
  • a new project around tools for analyzing and/or rewriting code, leveraging existing work by Taras Glek and others and done in loose cooperation with the GCC project or others
  • at least one other new project in an area yet to be determined.
• Start at least one new Mozilla Education design challenge project in 2010, if (and only if) there is a suitable problem (e.g., one that doesn’t overlap with planned Mozilla Labs challenges) and funding can be found.
• coordinate with Mozilla Labs to cross-promote Labs design challenges to the students involved in Mozilla Education activities, and vice versa.

Thus far I’ve primarily discussed engaging with CS students and others in related IT-centric programs. What about students in other areas, such as design or marketing? My feeling is that in 2010 at least Mozilla Education won’t play a major role in terms of growing core contributors in those areas, primarily because they’re outside the expertise of the main people working on Mozilla Education activities.

However that doesn’t mean that those areas have to be (or can be) ignored from a Mozilla Education point of view. One of the things we discussed in 2009 was the role of the proposed education.mozilla.org web site (currently instantiated as a set of pages on wiki.mozilla.org. We’ve pulled back on some of the more expansive ideas for what that site might become. However I do think it makes sense to use it as a central point from which students can find information on Mozilla activities of potential interest to them. That leads to my final Mozilla Education proposed activity for 2010:

• Establish and actively maintain a single high-profile page (e.g., www.mozilla.org/education) that can serve as a portal to information about Mozilla activities of potential interest to students, including not only Mozilla Education material but also links to Mozilla Labs design challenges, student internship opportunities, etc.

Those are all my thoughts for now. If you have comments or questions about the above, please let me know. I’ll next boil this down into an actual plan.

We’ve received a lot of good submissions thus far, and the Jetpack for Learning team is hard at work preparing for the next phase of the challenge.

To give you a little more time to prepare your submission, we’re extending the deadline for submissions to midnight (Pacific time) on Monday, November 30. If you’re in the US please relax and enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner before you send in your submission, and no matter where you live feel free to take time this weekend to polish it.

We’re looking for designers, educators and software developers who want to turn their innovative ideas about learning online into working prototypes in the form of Firefox add-ons. We’ll help you refine your designs and teach you how to create Firefox add-ons using Jetpack and other Mozilla technologies. Participants creating the best prototpes
will be invited to the Jetpack for Learning Design Camp and the SXSW Interactive conference in March 2010.

How does it work?

Come up with an innovative idea for a Firefox add-on that brings personal learning features to the open Web. Create a mock-up and submit it on the Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge web-site before midnight (US Pacific Time) on 27 November 2009. Based on the quality of submissions, up to 60 participants will be invited into a 6-week
online course that covers design/UX and technical aspects of add-on development and will help you turn your mock-up into a working prototype. We’ll select the most promising prototypes and invite up to ten of their creators to further refine their add-ons at a
face-to-face Jetpack for Learning Design Camp in March 2010 and to attend SXSW Interactive immediately following the Design Camp.

What kind of ideas are we looking for?

We’re looking for your ideas how Firefox add-ons, preferably add-ons created with Mozilla’s Jetpack technology, can turn the web browser into a platform for rich personal learning on the open web. You are not restricted to work on any particular type of application. Here are a few examples to get you started …

• Turn social bookmarking and page annotation into effective learning
  tools (for example by including peer-assessment features)
• Allow users to easily compile personal e-portfolios (for example, by
  combining their own works—photos, comments, articles—with
  testimonials others have written about them)
• Let the browser suggest relevant materials for learning (for
  example, by automatically identifying additional articles based on
  what sites a person visits or which topics they search for)
• Support social learning communities (for example, by making it easy
  to find and connect with others who share similar learning interests)

Who should apply?

Participation is open to individuals and teams, but we especially encourage submissions from inter-disciplinary groups (designers, educators, and software developers). You don’t need to be a computer geek, but participants are expected to implement their ideas as
Firefox add-ons, which will require writing some software code.

You must be at least 18 years old in order to participate in the Jetpack for Learning Design Challenge. You must also make your submission and your add-ons available for public use under open licenses. See the Jetpack for Learning web site for more information and complete rules.

• Eve Beglarian, Far Off Country (Four), performed by Maya Beiser, from Almost Human. I like this album but have a bit of aversion to spoken-word accompaniments to classical tracks, like those here.
• Neutral Milk Hotel, Two-Headed Boy Part 2, from In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. This album is legendary among people who know it, but I have to confess I feel more admiration for it than love.
• Mogwai, I’m Jim Morrison, I’m Dead, from The Hawk Is Howling. I’m a major Mogwai fan, but on first listen I thought this was relatively minor Mogwai. I’ll have to give it another try.
• Arvo Pärt, Nunc dimittis, performed by the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir, from Da pacem. I’ve been a big Pärt fan ever since picking up Litany (based on a recommendation in Wired, oddly enough).
• Tristania, Angellore, from Widow’s Weeds. An experiment on my part in venturing into the melodic metal arena; not bad, but I’m still not that interested in metal.
• M.I.A., Fire, Fire, from Arular. I was dining at Fatburger, which features a free jukebox with a net connection, when someone played Paper Planes from Kala. I decided to reciprocate by playing Galang Galang from this album.
• Eve Beglarian, Far Off Country (One-Two), performed by Maya Beiser, from Almost Human. iTunes put two tracks from this album onto the list; I have no idea why.
• Dumptruck, Better Of You, from For the Country (not on eMusic). In my opinion this is one of the best non-country country albums ever recorded, right up there with Meat Puppets II.
• The Fall. An Older Lover etc, from Palace of Swords Reversed (not on eMusic). I have lots of Fall albums; this is one of the better ones.
• Johann Johannsson, Englabörn, from Englabörn. I like Johannsson but don’t recall liking this album as much as IBM 1401: A User’s Manual.
• Amiina, Saga, from Kurr. Another Icelandic production, not in the league of Bjork or Sigur Rós, but well worth listening to.
• Team Dresch, Hate the Christian Right!, from Personal Best (not on eMusic). The Butchies have their charms but are no substitute for this band. Supposedly Team Dresch have reformed and are (maybe?) recording a new album; I always worry about this sort of thing but am definitely looking forward to it if it ever happens.
• The Wedding Present, I’m Not Always So Stupid, from George Best Plus. I listened to this album only once; it was a bit too much of its time for me.
• Super Furry Animals, Patience, from Rings Around The World. Another album I listened to only once, and need to try again.
• Bocuma, Boards Of Canada, Music Has The Right To Children (not on eMusic). CollabNet didn’t really take off as a company, but I have to say that my co-workers there (who recommended this to me) had great taste in music.

Before getting into my own proposal I should address two possible answers to this question that reflect conventional wisdom. The first is simply to assert that streaming is the future way music will be delivered to listeners, and that services like eMusic that offer downloads are ultimately doomed. One sees this attitude reflected in the hype around Spotify, for example, as embodied in comments from Bob Lefsetz and others.

On the other hand, streaming services face a variety of obstacles both from a consumer point of view and from an industry point of view. As a listener my concern with relying solely on a streaming service is twofold: First, I’ll want to listen to music in contexts where there’s no network through which to stream. This concern can be addressed to some degree by offline caching of tracks; this is essentially what Spotify offers as part of its premium service.

However note that for various reasons such offline use is typically implemented using a DRM scheme that expires tracks if your subscription ends. (Spotify is no exception in this regard.) This restricts portability (you can use only approved devices) and doesn’t address a second concern: That I’ll lose access to my favorite music due to the actions of the service, the labels, or others with a legal interest in the music. Recall the recent controversy over Amazon deleting copies of 1984 and Animal Farm from users’ Kindles: what a DRM-based content service giveth, a DRM-based content service can taketh away.

From a music industry point of view the problem with streaming services is that they don’t yet have a viable business model. Even Spotify, the great hope for streaming, has people predicting its imminent death, with its founder begging the music industry to change its ways in order to help make Spotify and similar services sustainable for the long-term. This concern is well-founded; details on Spotify’s business model are hard to come by, but a reasonable analysis concludes that royalties and licensing costs for Spotify are extremely high, and that it’s able to survive for now only through special deals with labels.

My conclusion is therefore that traditional streaming services remain unattractive from both my own perspective (which may be shared by others) and a business perspective. My own concerns can be addressed by the possibility of getting DRM-free downloads, and the financial concerns might be addressable by a business model that eliminates either free-to-consumer streaming (requiring that all customers have a paid subscription) or all you can eat streaming (putting a cap on total number of streams per subscriber per month) or both. As it happens, eMusic subscribers are already required to pay a monthly fee and also have a cap on their use of the service; what they don’t have is access to streaming via eMusic.

This brings us back to the question we started with: Should eMusic add streaming? The second snap answer is that eMusic is by its nature a download service, that eMusic users don’t need or want a streaming service, and that eMusic couldn’t make a success of such a service.

Regarding the first objection: As I stated in my previous posts, I personally need a low-cost way to preview music for my permanent collection, and streaming services offer the most convenient way at present for me to do that. However the lack of such a service at eMusic means that I now have to use a minimum of two services. This is inconvenient for me and in the long run at least is bad for eMusic, since it takes subscribers like me away from the site and lessens our loyalty to the service. I suspect my experience is representative of many eMusic users.

As for the second objection, some might point to the present incarnation of Napster, which at first glance seems to be offering the same thing as a hypothetical eMusic+streaming service: a paid subscription service offering a combination of streaming and MP3 downloads. Yet Napster is seen as gasping in the face of competition from Spotify. Why should an eMusic+streaming service be any more successful?

The answer is that eMusic would not be trying to compete directly against Spotify. Rather it would simply be trying to better serve the existing eMusic subscriber base and offer a more attractive value to prospective subscribers, while doing so in a manner that is consistent with eMusic’s business model. Thus streaming in the context of eMusic would not be positioned as a primary service; instead it would be positioned (at least initially) simply as a way for subscribers to try out releases before they download them—an extension of the current Listen to this album function on every eMusic album page that plays 30-second samples of tracks.

(In the longer term eMusic could also offer standalone streaming, most notably in the form of an app for mobile devices such as the iPhone; this would allow eMusic subscribers to also audition releases in their cars and on the go, again without having to switch to a non-eMusic service. It may be better for eMusic to wait on this until it can offer the complete eMusic experience in a mobile context, including over the air downloads; however for business reasons, including existing eMusic contracts with wireless carriers, that may not be possible for quite some time.)

In order to minimize the impact on its existing cost structure and business model, eMusic could and (in my opinion should) put fixed limits on the number of tracks a subscriber could stream per month. For example, we can imagine an eMusic Basic plan that would offer 24 download credits (the same as today) along with the ability to stream up to 100-200 additional tracks (or 10-20 albums) on demand. How big could this limit be? It’s very hard to tell. Royalty arrangements for on-demand streaming are fairly complicated, with separate royalty streams going to labels and to songwriters and publishers (mechanical royalties). In some cases these royalties are paid on a per-track basis, and in some cases they are calculated as a percentage of revenue. (This discussion thread gives a good feel for the confusion occasioned by streaming royalty arrangements even among people involved in the music industry.)

I’ll leave it to others to figure out exactly what level of streaming service eMusic could offer profitably, and at what price point. Streaming capability could be offered as an extra cost option to the current plans, or bundled into future versions of the standard eMusic subscription plans (for example, as part of some future round of price increases). The important part is not the exact pricing, it’s offering a service that is well-integrated into the current eMusic offering, financially sustainable for eMusic, and perceived as a good value by its customers.

In this regard the division between downloads vs. on-demand streaming vs. automated streaming (Internet radio) is an artificial one from the point of view of customers. At heart eMusic is not a download service per se; it is a music service that delivers a particular type of experience to a particular type of customer. The first paragraph of the eMusic story says nothing about MP3 downloads; it talks about a more immersive, authentic music experience, better prices than mass market digital music retailers, the most musical context, subscription-based pricing that rewards discovery, and other aspects that eMusic thinks are key value propositions for the service. If adding a streaming component (or for that matter an Internet radio component) would enhance those aspects then eMusic should seriously consider investing in such improvements.

In the end there are two general ways forward for digital music services. The first is exemplified by Spotify today and by (the original) Napster in the past: attempts to remake the music industry through high-profile, potentially high-reward, and (to one degree or another) high-risk business strategies. The problem is that in a fundamental sense the music industry doesn’t want to be remade: There are multiple actors with their own interests, an attachment to traditional ways of operating, and both legal precedent and political clout to back them up; even with general consensus that the industry is in crisis the collective action problem is daunting. In the long term the structure of the industry may indeed change as new genres and industry players emerge, but this may take 10-15 years or more (as I’ve previously argued). In the meantime services like Spotify may achieve some measure of success, but it’s equally likely that they’ll just crash and burn as they run out of cash.

The second approach is the one that I think is most suited to eMusic: To work within the realities of the music business as it exists today and then to do what one can to serve customers best within those constraints, aiming for consistent profitability and growing the customer base organically (being patient for growth but impatient for profits, as Clayton Christensen puts it). To use a sports analogy it’s like hitting for singles in baseball instead of swinging for the fences, or having a consistent ground game in football vs. throwing the long bomb.

It’s an unexciting strategy to be sure, but then eMusic at present is an unexciting company. With the collapse of the rumored acquisition of eMusic by Amazon eMusic’s owner Dimensional Associates lost any immediate prospects for selling eMusic at an attractive valuation. Now with eMusic’s subscriber base relatively stagnant and the company’s image damaged by the Sony PR debacle, eMusic’s only hope in my opinion is to execute well, become consistently profitable, and achieve long-term sustainability. At that point eMusic may become an attractive acquisition candidate for someone looking for a nice boring business with steady cash flow and some plausible prospects for growth.

Rather than have Swindleeeee!!!!! join the millions of other blogs that have dribbled off into nothingness, I’ve decided to give it a dignified exit. More specifically:

• I’ve moved all my old Swindleeeee!!!!! posts over to this blog under the music category, in case you ever have occasion to read them or link to them.
• If you subscribed to Swindleeeee!!!!! using a newsfeed reader (e.g., Google Reader, NetNewsWire, etc.) and you want to see my future posts on similar topics, please subscribe to my music-related posts on this blog using the new feed URL http://blog.hecker.org/category/music/feed/.
• As time permits I will redirect I’ve redirected all permalinks for the old Swindleeeee!!!!! site to the corresponding posts on this blog, so that the old URLs will still work for anyone who’s referenced them in a blog post or other context.

Thanks to all of you who read and commented on Swindleeeee!!!!! posts. Please continue reading this blog if you’re interested in what I might have to say on eMusic and the music industry.