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Matt hasn't realized just how awesome piracy of music is if you are a member of a site like waffles.fm. It is much better than any legal music service. How coul
by rms 18y ago
Matt hasn't realized just how awesome piracy of music is if you are a member of a site like waffles.fm. It is much better than any legal music service. How could the RIAA compete with a mainstream waffles.fm?
- ivankirigin 18y ago1. Get all your music for free. 2. log your usage. 3. Use a micropayments engine to slice out support. You could dial the support up or down, maybe giving a disproportional amount to a certain band. I think you're totally right: unlimited and immediate access to music is just better. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't directly support the artists. The RIAA can't compete because they are fundamentally no longer part of the exchange. They add nothing. They continue through momentum, and will die soon.
- rms 18y agoI support that model in general, but I'd much rather spend my money supporting live performance. My favorite band is Radiohead. I didn't pay for their most recent album, because it didn't seem worth it. But I have paid over $200 to get 3 tickets to see them in concert this summer.
- ivankirigin 18y agoLive music is certainly awesome. It isn't the only model though.
- mattmaroon 18y agoIt's the only proven model, and the only one that has even the slightest hint of economic viability yet. Maybe you'll change that. I hope that you do.
- ivankirigin 18y agoGetting money for digital content distribution is an excellent value proposition for music makers. You need to show up at each, err, show. You only need to upload files into a distribution engine once, then every person on the planet can buy them.
- rms 18y agoYou mean like Pearl Jam's distribution and sale of their concert recordings? It's a great idea. I wish Radiohead would do the same thing. I'm actually surprised they haven't, since they definitely like extra opportunities to make money. Probably they haven't thought about it.
- mattmaroon 18y agoIt's much different for established bands. But yeah, that is awesome. Pearl Jam has been very innovative ever since they took on Ticketmaster in the 90's.
- mattmaroon 18y agoOf course, it just remains to be seen if this can be accomplished. Studies have clearly shown in many occasions that humans will generally not pay for something they can get for free. In fact, we'll incur a ridiculous amount of cost just to get something for "free". A few weeks ago, Papa Johns locations in north east Ohio gave away free pizzas worth about $5. People stood outside in the 45 degree weather, with rain, for 2 hours to get that pizza.
- aneesh 18y agoYeah, people like free too much, irrationally so. Chipotle in Cambridge gave away free burritos (worth $6), and the line was over an hour long. That said, I don't think this spells doom for micropayments. A successful "donations" model is Ben & Jerry's Free Cone day - a not-insignificant fraction of people donate to help various causes. I'd be interested to see statistics on this.
- JesseAldridge 18y ago"I think you're totally right: unlimited and immediate access to music is just better." Better for users, but not for producers. Also, Matt has made the point that the vast majority of people are unwilling to donate when they don't have to.
- ivankirigin 18y agoFree content is often free because people understand the the increased eyes and ears on content will make up for it being free. Only a fraction of your audience will pay, but your audience is probably orders of magnitude larger if free vs. gated by a pay wall.
- whacked_new 18y agoDoesn't this assume the profit you gain from kN users donating X/k price on average, given free content, equals or exceeds N users paying X price, or something like that? Of course this is a gross simplification, but how else does it justify making something free and expecting increased exposure to make the operation sustainable? IIRC Wikipedia is not looking good financially, and there is probably nothing with more eyeballs at the moment. I'm guessing you have thought though this situation much more thoroughly, and maybe have data on it too; otherwise, I'd be very surprised if things work out so ideally.
- DougBTX 18y ago> the increased eyes and ears on content Those eyes and ears were supposed to be looking at ads, where more impressions equals a happier advertiser. It isn't obvious how that extends to donation-ware, when everyone can just move on to the next free source of music.
- JesseAldridge 18y agoUm... I think his point was that the RIAA wouldn't be able to compete. They would go out of business, likely taking a large portion of the music industry with them. Copyright laws prevent this from happening by preventing waffles.fm from going mainstream.
- rms 18y agoLaws only have so much power... Oink was close to breaking into the mainstream before Interpol hit. Problem was that Oink was hosted in the UK. Waffles is hosted at the PRQ, so given sufficient server capacity they can dabble in the mainstream.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI'm pretty sure that the government will not let this become mainstream. There's always a way to combat a site.
- ivankirigin 18y agoYou should follow the Pirate Bay. They've been very good at avoiding arrest. Making a sea-steading country is also a good solution. If your servers live there, and can connect to everyone else, it will work.
- mattmaroon 18y agoHa, sea-steading still seems a little out there. They still have to connect to everyone else through an actual country. I don't know how TPB has lasted as long as they have. It is impressive.
- abstractbill 18y agoThey still have to connect to everyone else through an actual country. I'm not sure if you were meaning "connect" physically, but of course there's always satellites, and other non-physical ways to connect.
- mattmaroon 18y agoI use Rhapsody + FairUse4WM.