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I'm sad to see earbits go. It was a great idea and a great service. Joey, we traded a few technical emails around when you started, and I wish you, Yottam and t

by jcr 12y ago

I'm sad to see earbits go. It was a great idea and a great service. Joey, we traded a few technical emails around when you started, and I wish you, Yottam and the others the best in your next endeavor. Also, thanks for regularly being the "voice of reason" on HN in regards to questions about the music industry. I'm still curious about one thing; two-sided market? Are you using this phrase as the simple way to say it, or do you really think it's a two sided market. I've always seen it as a multi-sided market. When I think about all the specialized skills (and equipment) that goes into music, both recorded and live performances, it always seems to have a mind boggling number of sides. Worse yet, the various sides tend to be in competition (labels versus artists, consumers versus distributors, sound and instrument equipment manufacturers versus ...). Though some truces and alliances exist, each of the many sides is vying against the others to get paid. I recall reading one of your very early blog posts where you mentioned the vast amount of effort you put into advertising and marketing your own band, and this gave you the idea for earbits. Essentially, the marketing and advertising you did for your own band was in competition with the similar efforts of labels/promoters for other bands. Am I wrong in thinking of music as a highly complex, intertwined, multi-sided market?

earbitscom 12y ago
Nah, you're absolutely correct. And in fact, it's crazy because one single song can have 3 writers, 8 performers, a record label, 2 publishers and two different performance rights organizations all with a stake in that track. But, we paid standard rates to publishers and only needed to convince the owners of the master recording to license the music to us, which is usually a label or band. Then we had listeners. We were mostly just trying to please those two groups, but that's because we paid the publishers outright.

by jcr 12y ago

earbitscom 12y ago

Nah, you're absolutely correct. And in fact, it's crazy because one single song can have 3 writers, 8 performers, a record label, 2 publishers and two different performance rights organizations all with a stake in that track. But, we paid standard rates to publishers and only needed to convince the owners of the master recording to license the music to us, which is usually a label or band. Then we had listeners. We were mostly just trying to please those two groups, but that's because we paid the publishers outright.