
Middle Men, Aggregators, And Apologies - twampss
http://zedshaw.com/blog/2009-02-27.html
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lionhearted
I enjoyed Zed as a bringer of change and entertainment back when he did it
loudly. I'm enjoying it even more now that he's toned it down - he's still got
attitude in a good way, and brings a beatdown on specious thought, but he's
much friendlier and courteous about it now. I think it actually makes his
writing more powerful, and it's just as fun to read.

~~~
aaronblohowiak
... and now you know who he is. PT Barnum and all that

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grandalf
If you want to sell your music online, why not just build a simple e-commerce
site?

Zed's answer to this has to do with the feed reader.

So he actually has two problems: a "checkout" problem (how to actually accept
money for the music) and an "awareness" problem.

An already famous artist could set up the simplest e-commerce store and sell
copies of a long-anticipated album through it.

But Zed needs to get the word out. He has a hunch, like any entrepreneur, that
there is a market for his music if only more people were exposed to it.

Sure he could pay Google lots of money for click-throughs to his e-commerce
site, but that wouldn't be any fun.

So in comes the idea of using RSS. I admit, I've noticed that a lot of
companies have a business model like:

1) Idea 2) RSS 3) ? 4) Profit

Zed is reinventing the wheel... the traditional music industry exists _not
because it is evil_ but because it helps match musicians with consumers who
happily buy the music.

Consider all the music fandom lore about waiting in line to buy an album, etc.
People love making the purchase, they love the cover art, they love the
unauthorized leak of a track before the album's official release date, etc.
These things are part of the larger entertainment and social value of music.

So Zed wants to reinvent the wheel, with the help of RSS, to get all the
clueless people, clods, and scammers out of the way so that people will
discover his own music and the music of other tortured artists.

The real question to ask is to the consumer: "Do you have a music problem?" I
personally do not. There is a lot of great stuff on iTunes, Pandora, etc., and
I have maxed out the amount of leisure time and money I want to spend on music
enjoyment.

In economic terms, the marginal cost of discovering another great artist is
extremely low, effectively nil. I know where to go, I can afford the price of
the album, etc. The reason I don't buy more music is because I don't care to.
There is tremendous abundance and quality.

So to make a persuasive argument from the perspective of a consumer, Zed would
have to argue that there are lots of artists who (if discovered) would make
music listeners significantly happier, or would save them significant amounts
of money, or both.

Zed's music-themed rants sort of remind me of an infomercial.

~~~
patio11
_If you want to sell your music online, why not just build a simple e-commerce
site?_

Allow me to plug my favorite e-commerce provider: e-junkie makes this so easy
even a coked-out rockstar can do it. Upload MP3s, set price, copy/paste cart
code for page. Done.

To the extent that it is a take money, give music problem, they solve it
pretty well. (The build an audience willing to pay you money problem... well,
there is a reason the labels don't charge BritStreetBoys $5 a month.)

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swombat
_Here’s an actual question: If I sell my music on Amazon or iTunes can I sell
it for $0.10 or $20.00? Do I have to charge $0.99? Just like the labels?_

 _If it’s true that I can’t set the price to compete with the labels, then the
labels are guilty of collusion and price fixing. Someone should look into
that._

The music labels? Guilty of collusion? Price fixing? Never! It's just that all
music is equally worthy.

~~~
bryanwoods
It's interesting, actually. The idea is that you should be able to set the
price of your music, but there's quite a bit of weirdness and technical
issues. For example, I'm selling an album I recorded on Amazon. It's a full-
length, so you'd expect something like ~$9.99 to be the final price, but since
it's only one track (21 minutes long), it ended up going for 99 cents at
Amazon. I have no doubt that somewhere on the internet exists a form where I
can edit the price, but it'd be a real pain to deal with. I'm glad selling
music on Amazon/iTunes is a hobby of mine and not a business.

~~~
ibsulon
This is probably why The Mars Volta split up their longest songs into multiple
parts.

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njharman
I'm not sold that a new "better" player/browser is needed. People need to be
able to move songs onto their player/browser of choice, MPUI, itunes, ipod,
car stereo, zillion dollar sound system etc.

I like Zed, but seems less than knowledgeable of copyright and music
rights/ownership.

The not knowing .99 itune is Apple enforced and not the Industries doing(which
hates it btw)

Not understanding/admitting difference between public performance (what ascap
collects royalties for) and downloding/playing music.

"That’s right, as long as you don’t edit the content, when you provide hosting
and search for an artist, and they pirate music, then you are safe."

Worked awesome for Napster!

prev article "The problem is gatekeepers in general." I didn't read all of
this but I don't think Zed sees/said what I think is obviously(debatable I
guess(like ID is debatable)) the main problem with music in general and esp
online music and double esp independent music is The Music Industry. Destroy
them and it will be all rainbows and kittens.

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tstegart
I would love to be able to put music "ads" in my blog feed. Seriously, is that
do-able? You pick a song you love, and at the end of each post an "ad" appears
for it, which is really an embedded music player and allows a person to play
30 seconds of it. If someone clicks through and buys it, I get a commission,
ala Amazon.

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klon
Since this topic is right where my startup (<http://www.klictrack.com/mdt>) is
trying to push things forward, please check us out and tell me where we need
improvement. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

