What happens to my iTunes music after I die?

What happens to my iTunes music after I die?

itunes-death

What happens to my iTunes music after I die?

It’s been something I’ve been thinking about.  Now that Steve Jobs has left us, it’s come to the top of my mind. For months I’ve been looking on iTunes at the Beatles complete collection.  It is around $100, a $9.99 download does not make be think, but $100 makes me stop and contemplate.

When I die… can I leave my vast iTunes music collection to my children?

My CD’s sure, but what about digital rights?  I’m not sure if anyone is having this conversation.  What about divorce?  Who gets the iTunes?  After reading the lengthly iTunes user agreement, it is unclear.  So in preparation, I changed my official iTunes email login to a family-oriented email.  If I get hit by a train, my family will have control of my music and Apps.  This made me look at copyright lengths.  UK Copyright lengths are 50 years.  What that means is that:

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Copyright June 1967 will be free to copy in June 2016.  Unfortunately, this will be in the UK only.  The US copyright has been extended to 95 years.  How to resolve the US/UK difference?  I’m sure the Beatles copyrighted music and the US and UK, but it is interesting to think about.

This made me think more.  Is this why bands keep releasing “remastered” sound tracks?  A new soundtrack means another 50 years copyright.  That is every band’s right. It is also my right to hold on to orginal CD’s of non-remastered recordings until they pry them out of my cold dead hands.

What it all comes down to is that there will be many more discussions on digitial music and video rights. It is interesting.  I just want to live long enough to learn to play Stairway to Heaven and then use the sound track for a really cool product release…royalty free.

An article on UK copyrights:

The decline of Apps and the rise of Agents and Clewds

The decline of Apps and the rise of Agents and Clewds

Last week, while presenting a live webinar “The Near and Far Future of Recruiting” I had an epiphany.  I was talking about the eventual decline (or morphing) of Facebook.  The theory is this: Mobile computing power in 10 years will be server-capable.  Add in violation of trust and general mistrust of social networks.  The result is peer-peer social networking.  No Facebook needed.  Everything sits on your mobile device.  More private, more secure, total user control and no ads.  Facebook may lead the way, but it will be hard to do as they would cannibalize their own ad-driven revenue model.

This was last year’s Epiphany.

What led to the new epiphany was my pontificating on CRM systems.  This was a recruiter-centric talk about the future of recruiting.  Many recruiter CRMs have connections to LinkedIn profiles.   Every one of these, that I have seen, has been implemented incorrectly, not due to any fault of the vendors.  In an optimal situation, the data inside the Profile should be mashed up with current CRM data.  Instead, LinkedIn requires usage of their API which brings back a canned LinkedIn profile. This is what I call “social linkage”.

The optimal situation would be a pair of  “social agents”.  While a company may have 1000 company prospects  in their CRM, they may only contact 50 in a given day. One “social agent” would automatically refresh the entire CRM on a longer cycle such as once per quarter.  Another just-in-time social agent would update the CRM just before the outreach process.  Why is this important?  LinkedIn is not a definitive data-source; nothing is.  What happens when you combine Facebook, Google+, Jigsaw (now data.com), Foursquare, twitter and whatever social network Microsoft comes up with?  Are you going to clutter your Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics interface with 6-8 little snippets, much with redundant information?   This gets ugly fast.  The optimal implementation is to have a social agent retrieve LinkedIn, Data.com, Google+, Facebook, Twitter information.  Next, mash, score, apply analytics to present the information in a way that optimally fits your selling model.

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