Ok, so... like, I'm not much of a blogger, per se, but for Paul, I'll do it. I am sure that once I get used to my newly acquired soap box powers, that I will never shut up and he will have to turn me off anyway, but for now, here are my humble thoughts on this year's Jupiter. I was generally glad to see Jupiter come out and rain on the parade of digital music jubilation… after a half-decade of irrational exuberance, I believe this kind of “you better check yo’ self” introspection is not only appropriate, but necessary for the survival of our industry. We all, myself more than included, tend to get caught up in our own future-perfect paradigms of digital bliss only to look around and realize that no one else really cares, because its too hard to use, too expensive, or otherwise free. An old engineer friend of mine used to say “open always wins… unless closed works better”, and he’s right… in our space, so far, Apple has proved him right as well. The lack of discussion about P2P made me feel weird… like there was a 10 ton purple brontosaurus in the room dancing with an iPod. The very panel I spoke was rife with giddy “ring-tones is going to be huge” mantras – all the while, the purple brontosaurus looked on with disbelief. What… people aren’t going to figure out how to get around labels and the carriers when a ring tone is $2.45? What if I already bought the song for $.99 (or … gasp, the whole CD)… I don’t get the ring-tone for free? Is this not fair use? Xingtones and Snip ‘n Send are simply paid versions of what someone will create for free. I’m certainly not advocating going around rights holders… all I’m saying is didn’t everyone learn the hard way the first time around?