I guess if you don’t like Phil Collins’ commercial style. OK. I’ll deal with that. Even though he has sold more than 100 million records over a couple of decades as both a solo artist and with the band Genesis.

But don’t be critical of his musicianship. The man can play. He is an incredible drummer spending years as the drummer in Genesis. If you haven’t heard any of the original Genesis psychedelic recordings, check them out. Peter Gabriel brought the theatrics as the original singer, and Phil helped keep it real with his percussion. And after Peter left, Phil stepped out from the drumset shadow to take over lead vocals.

He’s not attractive and he knows it. Yet he puts his face on the cover of every one of his solo albums. He can’t dance; just watch the Sussudio video or his duet with Phillip Bailey for evidence of that. But as I said above: the man can play.

His skills range from 70s progressive rock to commercial solo success with records such as Face Value and No Jacket Require. If you don’t like him, you could still probably name three songs by him. So let’s all pay a little respect.

Ten Essential Phil Collins Songs:

• In The Air Tonight
• Easy Lover (Duet with Phillip Bailey)
• I Missed Again
• I Don’t Care Anymore
• Sussudio
• Separate Lives
• Something Happened on the Way to Heaven
• Both Sides of the Story
• Take Me Home
• Groovy Kind of Love (So, so cheesy, yet I can’t turn it off)

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I typically dig the songs from iPod commercials. Except for maybe that Eminem one. And I thought the new iPod Touch commercial followed along nicely with picking something catchy and safe. So, I clicked over to Google to see who the song was by.

What I found surprised me.

Sometime in September, an 18-year-old kid named Nick Haley put together his own iPod Touch commercial using video footage from Apple.com. He found a song he thought was perfect (it is), from Cansei de Ser Sexy named Music is my Hot, Hot Sex. He posted his project on YouTube.

Rather than send this kid a cease and desist letter, Apple emailed him to say they wanted it for their own. They re-cut it, got permission from the band and now you are seeing it five times a day.

His original cut commercial is a little rougher and doesn’t include the Foo Fighters. Check out the final cut.

Here’s what I love about this. This student has an awesome story that will get him laid for a couple of years. But also, this little known Brazilian band, CSS, now has their song featured on national TV, and is currently number 30 on the iTunes top 100 list. I think it is great that an English student has the power to help break an obscure band.

This is all, of course, hinging on whether or not this story is real. I hate being so cynical.

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Now, I love music. No. You don’t understand. I really, really love music. My blood pressure rises with the volume. My heartbeat follows the tempo. It’s a lifelong thing. So, whether or not radio will whither, here is the reason it shouldn’t: Accidental Discovery.

I feel the same way about Electronic encyclopedias and Google Maps and the Internet in general. Online search has gotten so good; you find what you want so quickly and easily that you can miss the things you didn’t know you wanted to know. I have found most of my new music from friends and the occasional sleepless night watching MTV. Yes. Music Television does still play music videos in the middle of the night.

Sure there is an argument to be made over the myspace music section or for any of the dozens of independent music sites where you can find tons of free independent music. But, frankly, there’s a lot crap to wade through there. I want someone to do some the weeding out for me. I found Maxwell one day while I was napping through the old Rosie O’Donnell Show. With Muse, it was one evening while I was reading and had my Dish Network TV box tuned to the Modern Alternative Rock channel. I found My Chemical Romance one night on MTV when my spring allergies wouldn’t let me sleep.

The randomness of radio done right can let you stumble on to new and old favorites. Music you forgot about, or never know existed. But AM-FM radio has been in trouble. Most areas across the country only have a dozen or so options, with fewer than that coming in without static. And these frustrations have given birth to the satellite radio phenomenon.

But the thing holding up satellite radio is the “format” battle. Do you want XM or Sirius. Sirius has Howard Stern and Martha Stewart. XM has Opie & Anthony and Oprah. It may sound like deciding between satellite-TV providers, but it’s not. The difference is Dish Network, DirecTV and Cable all show the same channels (Food Network, Bravo, FX, local affiliates…); subscribers are paying for the content delivery. Satellite radio is both different content and delivery.

At some point XM and Sirius are going to get together. One’s going to buy the other, or there’ll be some crazy merger or synergistic alliance where subscribers to either can listen to content from both. Then it’ll work just like the cable TV and we won’t think about it.

And it’s not all roses for satellites. First of all there aren’t local stations available on satellite radio. And I’m not sure the masses are ready to pay for music during their commute. Sirius signed up Howard Stern for $100 Million a year, and then signed up more than a million new subscribers. Yet even with those results Stern has fretted repeatedly about his audience’s not following him to Sirius.

But terrestrial radio has hope. Think about the recent surge of the nearly talk-free Jack-FM. And then there’s HD Radio. Think HDTV: but only audio and in your car or on your deck. While only about 7% of the nation’s radio stations offer HD a broadcast, the tipping point for HD radio is going to be cars. And at some point radios are just going to switch. When you buy a new radio, it’ll have HD capability whether you want it or not. You won’t have to think about it or pay extra for the service.

The “important” thing here is that any one of these offerings creates a new revenue stream for retailers and manufacturers in the form of new hardware. So stores and factories will hedge their bets to make sure they don’t pick the wrong horse.

For satellite you need to cough up the dough for both the hardware and the service. For HD Radio, you need only cough up the dough for the radio; the content is free. But even then, if you still want to hear un-FCC-encumbered entertainment and your favorite stars, you’re going to have to go satellite; but it’s gonna cost you. You’ll need to help pay for things like Sirius’ great new ad campaign.

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I just read about the SanDisk e-something today.

iRiver relocated and wants to offer a better experience.

Sony’s set to joust with Apple? I do like the medieval touch, but it seems a stretch. (Full Disclosure: I owned a Sony/Nike MP3 player about 5 years ago. I think it was 64 megabytes. It had this crappy software for uploading music that crashed my computer two out of three times I used it. I ended up literally throwing the thing away in frustration.)

Creative flails.

I’m all for competition, so I’m a little torn over the attempts at excitement over a new commodity player from one of the guys fighting over 1/5 of the market. There are a few people/companies talking about the next step in MP3 players, namely that it won’t be just a music or video playback device, but when will the rest of the media catch up?

Phone, video, PDA, dictation machine, GPS, heart rate monitor and more in some crazy as yet to be determined/announced configuration? Though I am concerned about too much convergence and multitasking.

Five years ago, we had like 20 printers in our building. A few laser printers and lots of ink jet printers. We had five fax machines and four copy machines. It seemed they were all over the place. In 2004 we got this massive Savin Printer/Scanner/Fax/Copier. We thought it’d be great that all of those functions are now in this one machine, saving us money and space and work and adding ten years onto the life of every employee.

But here’s the problem. The other printers are gone… The other copiers are gone. We have two fax machines in the office. When one person wants to print 10 copies of a 50 page presentation, in color, and three people want to make two photo copies and one person want to scan a press clipping (that’s me…) The system breaks down. And imagine for a moment, what happens when the machine breaks, which it does about once a month. It’s chaos.

I complain, but I like the machine. There is usually not a problem, but there are problems.

So right now, I carry around my wallet, my keys, my phone and my iPod. When I travel I add my Powerbook and digital camera to the mix. I can see a time when a few of those things “converge”. But am I looking to Creative or Zen to make it happen? I’m banking on Apple and here’s why.

1. I’m pulling for a lifestyle unit, that’ll change the number of things I carry around in my everyday life.
2. Style: At the very least, it won’t be an eyesore.
3. Usability: From a one-button mouse, to OS X, to the iPod’s scrolling clickwheel. I have faith.
4. Content: Music, videos, text. If it’s not coming from Disney, NBC, Fox or Dreamworks, it’ll be coming from some of the most creative independent minds around: Other Apple people.
5. Friendly Features: The lifeblood of Apple.
6. 80% market share is incredible. Apple killed the iPod Mini in favor of the Nano, proving that when it’s time, all good things can get better. For example, while everybody else is talking about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray discs, Apple is talking about skipping the disc altogether. Forget how good the current system is. Let’s talk about how we make a new better system.
7. And finally, I’m a Machead. Sue me.

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One of the tell tale signs, as Ken Belson writes, is that President Bush is has been publicized as having an iPod. But does anyone seriously think he walked into Best Buy and put down his Visa? And certainly, W is not sitting down at his PC loading songs (downloaded legally, of course) onto this cool bit of technology. The fact that the White House press office is talking about this at all is just an example of marketing in politics. The man who sits on the throne of the establishment is not going to tarnish the image of the product that is geared to the non-establishment uber-cool. His people are just trying to get their boss to appeal to that young voters demographic.

Everything will pass in due time. Sure, somewhere in a New Jersey garage, there’s a 17-year-old kid creating the thing that will kick the iPod’s ass. It’s all cyclical, and one day my current 3G iPod will be sold on eBay or buried in a shoebox somewhere. Just like my Cassette Tape Sony Walkman.

But here’s what Apple has done with the iPod giving it a good chance to stick around:

• Adding features and versions before people know they want them – iPod Mini, iPod Photo…
• Updating the software on iPods (eg. making it do new and exciting things) is incredibly easy . Just plug it in to your computer as if you’re charging it.
• Encouraging tons and tons of accessories. (Belkin, Monster…) Other companies are banking on its success.
• The deal with HP.
• And finally: Making it seem techie, while keeping it simple

And even if the iPod doesn’t live forever, I am really digging mine right now.

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