I read a local Miami story earlier this week that Charlie Crist, outgoing Governor of Florida was wrapping up his final responsibilities before vacating his office. It was anticipated that one of those responsibilities would include a full pardon of Jim Morrison, the late, lead singer of The Doors, for charges stemming from a March 1969 concert in Miami. The details of the event that night are well documented and certainly part of the Lizard King’s mystique and legend. Morrison, of course, died in Paris in July, 1971 while the two misdemeanors for which he was convicted (open profanity and indecent exposure) were going through the appeal process. And the convictions have remained in place.

The Doors music has moved in, around and through my life ever since Janice Youngren popped a quarter into the jukebox at McCracken’s Landing on Stony Lake in Ontario and played Riders On The Storm. In around 2003, while licensing content for MediaNet, I wanted to figure out how to get The Doors catalog included, as they weren’t available at all digitally anywhere at the time. An inquiry to my contacts Warner Music, who controlled Elektra (The Doors’ label), led me to Randall Wixen. Randall was the Wixen of Wixen Music Publishing, which administered the publishing rights for Jackson Browne and The Doors among other artists and composers and was the point of contact for any inbound business opportunities for the band. I explained what I was seeking to do – open the door to getting the band’s music out digitally, that I wasn’t looking for any exclusivity, and that the label would handle distribution. Randall was cautious, but explained what I needed to do to make my pitch. “Write a personal letter to each of the three band members – Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger and John Densmore, as well as the Morrison estate. They will discuss it and get back to me.” And that’s what I did. A month later I called Randall, and he said the band had approved it. I thanked Randall, and asked him to thank the band for me. My next call was to Warner, to let them know. And a month or so later, we had The Doors music in all our digital services at the time.

Shortly after moving to Coconut Grove in 2000, I mentioned to friends that I wanted to see a show at the Coconut Grove Convention Center, and asked them if they knew where it was. Little did I know that I’d driven past it a hundred times already at that point. They responded by saying it’s at Dinner Key… that it’s the old Dinner Key Auditorium. To which I replied… Dinner Key… isn’t that where Jim Morrison was arrested? I was out of their orbit at that point, but sure enough, the drab, grey concrete bunker and former Pan Am hangar on Bayshore that I’ve driven past and run past thousands of times, and ridden by a couple of times a week for years (including this morning) is of course “that” place. Now though, it’s mostly home to gun and knife shows – and not much else.

So it’s to-be-determined if Governor Crist can accomplish what he’s set as one of his final goals in office, some 42 years after the alleged incident took place. I wasn’t there – I was way too young and living in Toronto, so I can’t say what actually happened that March night in Miami in 1969. However, this might be Jim’s best shot, and would wipe up a smudge for the Morrison family. And give Doors fans and campaigners a moral victory. At best it’s a curiosity… even more so when you watch the news coverage… a footnote of relevance in 2010… miles from 1969 but strangely not too distant from The Beatles’ decision to now be on iTunes. But then, if The Beatles’ catalog can finally be available to buy digitally, I’m beginning to think anything may be possible.

The availability of Beatles tracks and albums in iTunes is, understatedly, long overdue. The standoff and speculation has been documented endlessly elsewhere, as have the specific issues that have existed between Apple Computer (now Apple Inc. and Apple Corp. I’ll add a couple of points to the stories. Back in the early days of digital licensing… late 2001… exactly 9 years ago, MediaNet (then known as MusicNet) was partly owned by EMI, who hold the distribution rights for the Beatles repertoire. One of the first things I did at MediaNet was to analyze all the catalogs we were missing before launching what is now a laughably small library of 60,000 tracks from BMG, WMG and EMI in a legal subscription service. And I clearly remember, after alphabetizing my spreadsheet of outliers, going to Alan McGlade, MediaNet’s CEO and saying “Alan, we have a real problem with the B’s”. Because we were missing The Beach Boys, The Beastie Boys, Garth Brooks, and The Beatles. All EMI artists. 9 years later, the problem with the B’s is now down to 25% of that original assessment, as with The Beatles finally joining the party, it’s only Garth Brooks who is still sitting on the digital sidelines. Still, that’s 9 years… in case anyone was looking for further evidence that the music business moves at a pace best described as glacial. It’s also worth mentioning that The Beatles catalog was one of the last to be released on CD.

But I will also add this point. One of the top traffic drivers to this blog comes from a post I wrote about the 40th anniversary of the Abbey Road album. So in spite of the slow pace of adoption of digital distribution by Apple Corp., in the digital world the curiosity for and interest in The Beatles and their music endures.

Last week, Sprint announced a landmark outsourcing deal for mobile carriers, turning over its network operations to Ericsson. The headline number is $5 billion value to the deal and 6,000 Sprint employees wlll become Ericsson employees. Clearly this is a major win for Sprint, which can now focus its resources on customer acquisition, service enhancements, and growing the network, while allowing Ericsson to do what they do best –  maintaining the network infrastructure. It’s an ideal example of shifting the commodity segments of a business to an outside vendor to improve efficiency and profitability, and in doing so, shifting the primary focus to growth of the organization, in this case, Sprint. Essentially, the network operations segments of the wireless business, like those in media are duplicative across providers, even with CDMA/TDMA technology differentials. In media, each major  company – Disney, Fox Interactive, Viacom, NBC Universal, has built largely duplicative network operations facilities. Even in a tight margin business like digital music, Napster, Pandora, Rhapsody and iTunes have their own data centers and ingest, encode and host their own content. As the business of digital media matures, and CEOs and CFOs look for ways to improve the bottom line, I anticipate more deals like the Sprint/Ericsson arrangement. It’s easy to see envision a ubiquitous backend service for rich media.  It’s called Akamai. But a ubiquitous service bureau for licensing, hosting and reporting makes even more sense, between content owners and end distributors. It allows the content owners to focus on creating new content, reduces business development and business affairs cycles, and in turn allows distributors recognize similar efficiencies, and  focus on their primary business – growing their customer base to maximize revenue, product enhancements and creative packaging.