5 ms·

I guess you can argue that it's not worth the cost, but at least half of the trends you listed are in the direction of increasing utility for the consumer. Sp

by shasta 11y ago

I guess you can argue that it's not worth the cost, but at least half of the trends you listed are in the direction of increasing utility for the consumer. Spotify or a pile of CDs? Are you kidding? The main problem with this trend is not that it's happening, but the way that a few companies are able to position themselves as gatekeepers. This will lead to abuse or at least monopoly pricing. Unfortunately, competition isn't really a good solution. I don't want a second Spotify.

nostrademons 11y ago
I think the replacement of products with services inherently tends toward monopoly, and your last sentence illustrates why: once a business is focused on servicing the immediate need rather than providing tools to service the immediate need, then customers will naturally gravitate toward whichever service fulfills that need best. When you sell a physical product, there are inherent inefficiencies in distribution & usage that allow for some differentiation; this allows multiple firms to exist in the same market. When you sell a service, your distribution goes straight to the consumer at the moment they have a need, and you have the opportunity to tailor your service directly to the customer. It becomes more efficient to buy up small companies that offer slightly-differentiated variants of your service and incorporate them into your own offering than to maintain separate firms. Interesting. This seems like a tradeoff of efficiency vs. freedom: the more you outsource a task, the more convenient things become for yourself, but the less agency you have over the terms under which that task is conducted.
- shasta 11y ago
  I don't know... maybe there could be another big competitor to Spotify. I can imagine the record labels would want one. The threat of there eventually being such a replacement probably puts a cap on how much leverage Spotify has. I don't think the data Spotify owns (my playlists? listening preferences?) is particularly valuable, but maybe I'm wrong about that. Another factor is that selling physical products often results in a market for lemons, where the buyers can't figure out which product will last longest and so purchase based on other more visible factors. Buyers can try to trust brands, but many brands will cash in on their brand by switching to greatly reduced quality at the same cost. Replacing a product with a service can better align the incentives. If, instead of a refrigerator, you purchased a service contract for refrigeration for X years, then the supplier will want to provide a refrigerator that doesn't break.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    We had that competitor, it was called Napster and that sort of entity scares the crap out of anybody with a rental model.
  - wfo 11y ago
    Unless the company goes out of business, or you decide all of a sudden you aren't okay with the new "cloud-enhanced food profile" your refrigerator builds about you with the newest cloud-pushed update that records everything you eat and sells it to advertisers. Or until the market is flooded with the cheaper, ad-supported fridges that play out loud ads for sponsored products whenever you run out of something. There's something, I don't know, honest about building something that works, and works well, and just selling it to people who then own it.
frik 11y ago
> Spotify or a pile of CDs? The audio quality of streams are often sub par. What about Youtube and then buying MP3 files from Amazon/etc? And Audio-CDs are still the best for lossless audio.

by shasta 11y ago

nostrademons 11y ago

I think the replacement of products with services inherently tends toward monopoly, and your last sentence illustrates why: once a business is focused on servicing the immediate need rather than providing tools to service the immediate need, then customers will naturally gravitate toward whichever service fulfills that need best. When you sell a physical product, there are inherent inefficiencies in distribution & usage that allow for some differentiation; this allows multiple firms to exist in the same market. When you sell a service, your distribution goes straight to the consumer at the moment they have a need, and you have the opportunity to tailor your service directly to the customer. It becomes more efficient to buy up small companies that offer slightly-differentiated variants of your service and incorporate them into your own offering than to maintain separate firms. Interesting. This seems like a tradeoff of efficiency vs. freedom: the more you outsource a task, the more convenient things become for yourself, but the less agency you have over the terms under which that task is conducted.

shasta 11y ago
I don't know... maybe there could be another big competitor to Spotify. I can imagine the record labels would want one. The threat of there eventually being such a replacement probably puts a cap on how much leverage Spotify has. I don't think the data Spotify owns (my playlists? listening preferences?) is particularly valuable, but maybe I'm wrong about that. Another factor is that selling physical products often results in a market for lemons, where the buyers can't figure out which product will last longest and so purchase based on other more visible factors. Buyers can try to trust brands, but many brands will cash in on their brand by switching to greatly reduced quality at the same cost. Replacing a product with a service can better align the incentives. If, instead of a refrigerator, you purchased a service contract for refrigeration for X years, then the supplier will want to provide a refrigerator that doesn't break.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  We had that competitor, it was called Napster and that sort of entity scares the crap out of anybody with a rental model.
- wfo 11y ago
  Unless the company goes out of business, or you decide all of a sudden you aren't okay with the new "cloud-enhanced food profile" your refrigerator builds about you with the newest cloud-pushed update that records everything you eat and sells it to advertisers. Or until the market is flooded with the cheaper, ad-supported fridges that play out loud ads for sponsored products whenever you run out of something. There's something, I don't know, honest about building something that works, and works well, and just selling it to people who then own it.

frik 11y ago

> Spotify or a pile of CDs? The audio quality of streams are often sub par. What about Youtube and then buying MP3 files from Amazon/etc? And Audio-CDs are still the best for lossless audio.