DailySpotlight

It's interesting to see how some hardships and some choices we have made or will make can deeply change our lifes for ever. I'm not really comfortable with the idea of destiny ; I prefer to believe we all have the possibility to make of our lifes what we want them to be. It would be despairing if we could not influence anything about our existence. But I do consider that we should have faith in what we really want to do and what we really want to be. If you are confindent and you trust in your projects and your expectations, even if nobody takes you seriously, never mind ; work hard to do what you LIKE. I do think the worst thing about life is having regrets, so as Steve Jobs said in his emotional speech adressed on 12th June 2005 to the graduated students of Stanford, "Stay hungry. Stay foolish".

Listening or reading this text you will be able to better understand why and how Steve Jobs became what he is today ; the charismatic CEO of one of the most innovative and succesful companies of the Silicon valley.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

In 2007, Steve jobs, the Apple CEO, wrote an open letter about the record industry issues (Thoughts on music, February 6, 2007). His conclusion was pragmatic and rather audacious at this time. To struggle efficiently piracy and sustain the growth of online music sales it's necessary to "abolish DRM entirely".

This prophetic statement has been followed (some months after) with the lauching of iTunes Plus consists in selling songs from EMI's catalog (one of the big 4 labels) without any DRM. This first step was a real success and had to make the other big labels think more again about a necessary new strategy.

This year the dream of a "world where every online store sells DRM-free" is about to come true. Indeed, all the big four (WARNER, UNIVERSAL, EMI and very recently SONY-BMG) have decided to abolish gradually the technical restrictions which bother the digital & legal music market.

However this (r)evolution is going to achieve without the visionary Steve Jobs and his famous iTunes store. Probably bored by the arrogant leadership of Apple on the digital music market, three of the big four labels (Warner, Universal & EMI - to a lesser extent) have decided to go without iTunes store to experiment the sale of DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats (MP3).

So, they choose an iTunes challenger to launch their new strategy, the first real competitor which would able to threaten its share market. Its name is : Amazon Mp3. So, after so many attempts, 2008 could be the year when the Apple iTunes store could lose its monopoly. The famous entertainment online store (high tech and media store) has got almost everything to manage to shatter the music business of Apple.

3 millions songs without DRM in its catalog (when iTunes offers 6 millions songs but "only" 2 millions DRM-free), encoded in MP3, the most popular digital audio format compatible with all music players (whereas Apple has chosen AAC ; better audio quality but "almost" only compatible with the iPod), at a very competitive prices : from 89 cents a song and from $5.99 to $9.99 for most albums. Isn't interesting?

Update : Amazon Mp3 starts to sell songs from Sony-BMG this month. Bad time for iTunes, but this is an excellent thing for customers.

If you want discover other online shops which sell DRM-free music at good prices or even totally free, take a look to the following challengers :

Airtist

E-music

7 digital

Death of DRM Could Weaken iTunes, Boost iPod

Sony BMG Plans to Drop DRM

Sony official press release

Itunes Store : La concurrence s'organise

According to the Fortune magazine, the most important and influent personality of this year is... the Apple's CEO, and I really think they right. 2007 was clearly a historical year for Apple which get a so hudge and deserved success. If someone can be proud of this rebirth, it's clearly the charismatic co-founder of the firm, Steve Jobs. Because it's obviously the new strategy implemented by Jobs when he came back to Apple in 1997, which allowed Apple to become again a profit-making company, which now worth more than Dell in matter of stock-exchange value. After bringing a different way to think computer, "changed the dynamics of consumer electronics with the iPod, and persuaded the music industry, the television networks, and Hollywood to distribute their wares with the iTunes Music Store", this year he shattered the so concentrated and so predictive cellular telephone business with the incontrovertible iPhone.

So It seems indisputable that Steve jobs deserves to be considered as the most powerful people in business of the year 2007.

The power of Steve Jobs