

Saving The Music Business - whalliburton
http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/07/saving-music-business.html

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menloparkbum
I'm not sure who he's talking to in the music business but this idea has been
floating around since at least 1998. It isn't as simple as inserting some
tables into a database - building this service will require collaboration
between tech companies and music labels, something that happens slowly and
dysfunctionally.

If you've ever worked in this space, you'll realize that everyone involved on
both sides is either a coked out psychopath who is just at the meeting because
his boss made him or a "cool guy" hacker who doesn't really believe in the
service, since he already has a multi terabyte server in his closet filled
with all the music he's ever liked leeched from oink or waffles. Neither
really have any "skin in the game." Thus, the likelihood of the technology
getting finished or the legal getting cleared is zero.

From a consumer standpoint, the internet and all your friends already serve as
a giant distributed, fault tolerant, quasi-illegal version of this service. If
you downloaded a song and then you lose your ipod, you can either just get it
again from a file sharing network, or from a mp3 blog, or your cousin's ipod.

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tx
Why do we need to "save music industry"? The entire "industry" was a byproduct
of inventing a way to record sound. Someone with money and equipment (the
aforementioned "industry") suddenly was able to record something and make a
profit on those who could not.

Soon, however, we invented ways to record sound cheaply, thus one didn't have
to spend as much on recording/reproducing hardware, giving people ability to
do it themselves, and the "industry" started to bitch about VCRs and cassette
recorders.

Now we've come up with even cheaper way to record, copy and even manipulate
(!) sound. And a way to distribute it for free.

The "industry" is clearly not needed anymore, there is no "product" behind it,
just a bunch of useless "distributors" and "promoters". Why would we want to
save THAT?

Nothing is going to happen to music, the music has been around for thousands
of years, long before all these inventions took place, and the best musical
creations happened without any help from the "industry".

We (engineers) gave them (the industry) an exclusive monopoly to charge for a
short-lived privilege of storing and transporting sound, now we're taking it
back. In that sense everything goes back to normal: nothing to be saved here.

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pchristensen
While I would love to see this happen, I think that people will be clinging
too tightly to their shrinking piece of the pie to make it happen. I wouldn't
trust anyone besides Apple to build a consumer-acceptable client for this, and
it goes against everything they hold dear. MSFT (you name it) and Yahoo
(recently discontinued music service) have let consumers down and won't be
trusted. Amazon still isn't thought of as a tech company by most people, plus
their focus on sales would appear too much of a conflict of interest. Google's
products are too unfocused outside of their search core, plus I think they're
too big, powerful, and rich for the music companies to trust them. So I think
the big tech companies are all out.

Could the music companies come together and make something easy but powerful
enough to use, a la Hulu? Based on their history, probably not, but
desperation (and a decent model to follow) might convince them to cooperate.

Good luck to Hank on getting this idea going!

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joeter
Unless you have substantial leverage to deal with the labels, they will charge
you collectively around $12million to just stream songs (imeem). That's a
pretty high barrier to entry - something I've been wrestling with for my own
startup.

Truthfully, the labels will always remain dubious of emerging technologies
because they realize their industry will inevitably shrink.

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lacker
This is missing the fundamental thing labels are afraid of - making piracy
easier. What prevents someone from sharing their user id and then all their
friends downloading a copy of their songs?

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demandred
Hank's titles are almost always hyperbole.

While this is an interesting idea to help advance the revenue model, I'm not
sure I understood how this would potentially 'save' the music business.

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stcredzero
Well, if the revenue model stays where it is, the music industry is in for an
agonizing (for the establishment) long-term smooshing into the long tail.
(Imagine an astronaut being pulled into a noodle by tidal forces as he falls
into a black hole.) I'm not sure anything can _save_ it, however. Maybe the
devastating changes it's going through now are "saving" it?

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cypress-hill
why does the music business need saving? where is it carved in stone that
musicians must be rich?

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davidw
"Saving the business" implies saving the idea of the business as such: no
business, no musicians besides those who are independently wealthy, which
means less good music for the rest of us. "Saving the business" doesn't imply
that they must necessarily make loads of cash.

I don't know if his idea is any good, but one hopes that there is _some_ model
besides "tour lots" that also holds some promise for the Brian Wilson
introverted studio wizard types.

