

The New Economics of Music, or, why stealing feels so right - steffon
http://www.bubblegeneration.com/?a=a&resource=musicrisk1
This article (part 1 and 2) has helped me think critically about new models for selling music, along with the process of discovering other kinds of user-generated content.  
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colortone
I started a facebook group yesterday to discuss all aspects of
Bubblegeneration/Umair Haque, FYI:

<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5842972550>

Obviously, the game is in reducing search costs.

The REAL issue I see here for all these "music recommendation" startups is
that they still are nowhere near competing with quality human DJ/knowledge.

There are thousands of music supervisors, party Dj's, and just general record
nerds whose recommendations/playlists CRUSH last.fm, et al.

Somebody needs to build the Digg of music, moderated by people with real music
knowledge.

That's the moneymaker.

All this implicit listening information is garbage.

~~~
steffon
But would the Digg of music be enough? iJigg, which is something like that,
launcher earlier this year. <http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/18/jigg-that-
music/>. Although it doesn't seem to have moderaters with real music
knowledge. But even if it did, that wouldn't be enough to make results
relevant for everyone because the criteria for relevance is an individuals
concept of "good". Sure moderators might know what is "good" for certain
audiences, but if results are organized in a digg-esque fashion, it becomes a
top-ten list, meaning that no matter how good your moderators are, they can't
generate recommendations that will be "good" for individuals (and the strategy
to appeal to the largerst number of individuals is to appeal to the lowest
common denominator, which one could argue radio already does well.)

~~~
colortone
well, my proxy of "digg for music" is only a jumping off point.

It would have to be organized differently.

That iJigg thing is garbage, for now

I would strongly recommend reading Scott Karp's pitch for Publishing 2, a
"journalist-powered news aggregator":

[http://blog.publish2.com/2007/08/14/introducing-
publish2-net...](http://blog.publish2.com/2007/08/14/introducing-
publish2-networked-news/)

The key with these communities is seeding them with, OMG, domain-specific
talent.

I can imagine a social platform where various DJ's, music supervisors,
musicians, etc, could be the curators of long long long playlists [organized
by mood, genre, style, time period, lyrics, whatever] that are tagged with a
bunch of metadata [enabling them to be recombined easily].

Non-curators can suggest tracks and gain authority by having them added to
curated uberplaylists.

Or something like that ;-)

The key is knowing your ass from a hole in the ground about music...really.
Not just thinking you have good taste...that's how all the media execs (that
all tech people hate) got into this mess in the first place.

Anyways, I'm already on this, if anyone is interested further you can contact
me ;-)

~~~
steffon
I don't think that it is entirely accurate to equate news delivery with music
delivery, nor do I think the lessons from journalists are entirely relevant
when it comes to building a social platform for music playlists. Cultural
objects (e.g. music,art,fashion,film,literature etc.) are substantively
different than news articles.

The news is largely valued for its accuracy, timeliness, and topical relevance
to a reader. Music and other cultural objects are valued for their enjoyment,
which is contingent on individual personal preferences. I'm skeptical of a
platform that would use domain-specific talent to create playlists for what
comes down to individual personal preference. Domain specific talent makes
much more sense regarding news where the relevance can be easily determined
because it is largely topical, whereas the relevance for music is based on
personal preference, which can't be determined through domain specific talent.

I'm also not convinced that more meta-tagging is the answer either. If I tag a
song with a mood, genre, style, etc., it will help a user find that song based
on those new categories. But in the end, finding new songs based on categories
isn't that helpful because what matters is finding songs based on individual
personal preferences. For example, I might know I want an energetic, intense,
electro-rock ballad, but defining that domain doesn't guarantee I will like
the results. People rarely like all the songs on an album, and as far as
domains go, albums are very tightly defined domains. Likewise, using Uber-Dj's
as domains don't seem to be the best answer. After all, their playlists are
based off of their preferences, and, regardless of how much they "know" about
music, unless their preferences are like mine, their list will not help much.

~~~
colortone
You're being pretty dogmatic about what music is...

You may be right that, in some respects, "cultural objects are substantively
different than news articles", but not in ways that are germane to this
argument:

"The news is largely valued for its accuracy, timeliness, and topical
relevance to a reader. Music and other cultural objects are valued for their
enjoyment, which is contingent on individual personal preferences."

I addressed this in an earlier response..."personal enjoyment" of music is
_inexorable_ from "timeliness" and "relevance."

I get more "personal enjoyment" from John Zorn than anyone else, but I don't
wanna hear it when I'm making out with my girl, or at a club.

Think about the success of mood/circumstance specific mix CD's like "Ibiza
Club" or "Ellington for Lovers"...

Musical preferences have a lot more to them than "people like you also
like"...

Also, with all the choice available, it's easy to overestimate people's desire
to even HAVE choice.

Finally, I am imagining a more sophisticated metadata model that is not just
about creating categories for things. I don't really have the details on that,
though ;-)

~~~
steffon
The examples you use as counter-arguments to my approach are not really
counter-arguments, but deal with a different issue than what I was talking
addressing in my last response. I was talking about finding music based on
personal preferences. Your counter-examples of "making out with my girl" or
dancing "at a club" are group situations where group preferences are most
important.

You are right when you say that compilations like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington
for Lovers" make a lot of money: so does selling Muzak (the background music
in supermarkets and most commercial spaces with music). Background music is
the ultimate "genre" that is compatible with group preferences: no one is
offended... but at the same time, nobody really cares.

I agree with you that musical preferences have more to them than "people like
you also like"... this would disregard the reality that people sometimes do
categorize music by situation/mood, categories like listening to music to
dance, exercise, study, make-out, host cocktail parties etc.

But as I suggested before, domain specific categories of music do not have to
be mutually exclusive to personal preferences (currently they are). Let's say
your goal is to have romantic music. Why not use a "people like you also like"
function bounded by the category of romantic music? This way you could get
romantic music, i.e. music everyone thinks is romantic, and romantic music
that you like as an individual. Even better would be to use a "people like you
and your girlfriend also like" function within the specific category of
romantic music :)

"Also, with all the choice available, it's easy to overestimate people's
desire to even HAVE choice." This is pretty fatalistic don't you think? I
think the explosion of choice online frustrates people because they KNOW
something is out there that they will really love, but they can't FIND it.
This screams opportunity for a website to act as a choice agent to direct
people to the music, video, merchandise etc. that they want but can't find
themselves among the infinite choices. Infinite choice results in infinite
search costs without a decision agent.

~~~
colortone
Okay, I think I have identified a central reason why we disagree on some of
this stuff, and it basically stems from views on art criticism.

The phrase "personal preference" to me makes a case for relativism:

"If I think something is good, then it is good."

WRONG.

As Bruce Sterling and others have argued, just because you like something [or
just because you can _make_ something, like a mash-up] doesn't mean it's good.

I don't have time to parse this much more right now, but the fact is that it
behooves technologists to develop a robust art criticism within these
applications.

Another reason I am high on the idea of people making decisions about what to
listen to vs. algorithms [if there has to be a choice] is that, while there is
a LOT of choice in the music world, it's not even CLOSE to infinite.

I believe that among the 10,000-50,000 (a pretty random number of people i
picked), "legit" (whatever that means) music aficionados could parse out the
vast majority of great music in all genre/mood/styles, from Britney to Bach,
in a fairly short amount of time.

Also, this paragraph:

"You are right when you say that compilations like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington
for Lovers" make a lot of money: so does selling Muzak (the background music
in supermarkets and most commercial spaces with music). Background music is
the ultimate "genre" that is compatible with group preferences: no one is
offended... but at the same time, nobody really cares."

Is utter bullshit. Do you honestly think I'm thinking of it that way?

Finally, let the record show that in all my hundreds of hours listening to
last.fm and Pandora [PURELY for research reasons] I have NEVER EVER heard
anything that I wasn't already aware of _that was half decent_. EVER.

So, my perspective on this is skewed. Like everything else, 95% of people
don't know shit about music, so these incremental algorithmic solutions are a
panacea to them.

Your idea of weighing "influential" people heavier in an algorithm has a lot
of merit. I just think that pure human-powered peer production would get to
the solution of better music for every occasion a lot faster.

------
cstejerean
interesting article, but i'm not sure if I agree.

I think iTunes reduces a lot of the risk the article is revolving around (of
buying something you didn't like in the first place). I think most P2P
downloads are of songs one heard on the radio. If I wanted to discover new
music I'd go for Pandora or last.fm instead of illegal downloads.

I can say from personal experience that when I was a student and was low on
cash I felt bad about spending 20 dollars at a time on an album (out of which
I liked a couple of songs). Buying songs from iTunes allowed me to buy what I
wanted or get entire albums for $10 dollars. But even that didn't allow me to
get all the music I wanted on a student budget.

Now that I have a job I ended up spending hundreds of dollars on iTunes over
time because for the most part it was less time consuming than finding the
music on P2P networks. Once my time became valuable buying music started to
make sense.

~~~
rms
When online piracy reaches a certain point of perfection, there is no reason
to buy music anymore.

I'm a member of oink, which is one of the best private bittorrent trackers out
there. It is focused mainly on music. It's both where I acquire music and
discover music. Everyday, I go and I look at the Top 50 most popular albums
uploaded today and at least three or four sound interesting. I usually
download at one MB/s and the oink archives are by far more complete than
iTunes. I also get to pick from a FLAC and V0 encoding, at least. By the time
I've discovered my new music, I already have the whole album. Thank you,
technology.

