I've started buying people subscriptions to last.fm for their birthdays now. I'm slowly getting my friends to become my music recommenders, and I am enjoying exploring music more than I have in years.

Last.fm builds you your own private radio station based on the music you listen to in winamp or iTunes. It suggests new music based on the music profiles of those listen to similar music.

I keep finding myself thinking, "How will this effect the big publishers?". How will this effect radio stations? If we all begin to recieve custom media, will the big content producers still manage to maintain their control? How will a producer manage to engineer a song's popularity if most people get music tailored to what those around them are listening to?

I don't think the big producers will go away. I think there will always be some mechanism by which to engineer a Hit. But things will change.

If we end up with peer production and peer recommendations everywhere, it wont take long before we get peer-rights management. (If it does not exist already) How will we control the way in which our information is shared?

For those on the receiveing end, DRM is a very invasive things. It is preventing us from doing things by restricting our actions. Generally it really gets in the way - but, no matter how hard we moan, it's not going to go away.

How can we learn to accept DRM, and how can we learn to use it to our advantage? Seeing DRM as negative means that we may be missing something. As long as we are in an us-and-them ideology, they are the ones with all the power.

Collaboration is all about Rights Management. Who has the ability to do what? Open Source has it's own rights management; GPL is pretty restrictive. The fact that it does not attempt to enforce anything does not deny the fact that it is still a form of DRM.

So, rather than letting the few Scrooge's at the top (or bottom) of the pyramid control the process, can we not start to explore better system?


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