

Ask HN: Music startup vs. Audio startup? - redment

I've seen Dalton Caldwell's talk on why starting a music startup is a bad idea, but I'm wondering, is starting an <i>audio</i> startup bad as well? I think not, but I want to know your thoughts.<p>YouTube, for instance, let's people upload videos and they remove things that are copyright violations.<p>Why not have the same for audio but remove the stuff that gets reported for DMCA violations? How much of a challenge is there that I'm not seeing?
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b0ttler0cket
(b0ttler0cket):

This may be an interesting idea. I do not know too much about the music
industry, except from what I've read and the people I've talked to. Here's a
quote I remember reading from PG (taken directly).

"...record labels...are effectively a rogue state with nuclear weapons. There
is nothing we or anyone else can do to protect you from them, except warn you
not to start startups that touch label music."

I am not sure if that is ample enough advice, but it is a strong warning. I
don't exactly know what "touching" label music means, but I'm assuming it
would apply to your situation since I have a feeling that the vast majority of
the "audio" would be music. Self-produced music is fine (as long as it doesn't
have 7 or more consecutive notes that belongs to another song, I believe), but
I think you may have problems when people start to post label music on your
site. From what I understand (I've studied law for 4 years), labels can begin
to file copyright claims against you. It's common practice and unless you have
the legal firepower to combat it, you and your company may be quickly
smothered by legal issues and fees (and even damages).

In all, I think the risks here far outweigh the rewards. Even from the
perspective of managing schlep for gains, I think this battle is so uphill
it's like trying to scale a vertical wall. I have a strong feeling that you'll
have much more fun with another project. :)

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simantel
Isn't "YouTube for audio" SoundCloud?

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redment
It seems like SoundCloud is more like the Vimeo for audio. They provide free
and paid versions just like Vimeo. I don't think I've seen the YouTube for
audio yet.

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lifeisstillgood
I cannot remember the name but there is a company that fingerprints record
companies copyrighted music, and then monitors radio stations etc for which
songs played where, then works out which ones violated agreements.

Sounded like a cool piece of tech, but a not cool use case. Kind of like
designing a golden violin that plays like a Stradi - for Belzebub.

