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"Maybe in the end, even on the Internet, you get what you pay for." I'm not sure that I want to read the book, but that was an interesting review of it. The la

by drenei 17y ago

"Maybe in the end, even on the Internet, you get what you pay for." I'm not sure that I want to read the book, but that was an interesting review of it. The last paragraph had me thinking about 'free' in the context of music. We've had free music before - radio. It was a lot more restricted than todays 'free' music, but it was free (beyond the initial hardware purchase). Of course there was a monetization strategy (radio = ads = physical albums sales + other revenue). The solution for the problems today isn't a return to yesterday. But also, importantly, things of value yesterday aren't always going to be valuable today (and vice versa). Things change.

Freebytes 17y ago
Grooveshark (www.grooveshark.com) is an excellent example of a way to take something that is free and monetize it in one form or another. VIP accounts and advertising work for the site, and the record labels still can earn money from it so they might be happy. Someone always pays, though... it simply may not be the end user.
- physcab 17y ago
  I hear they also have a great Artists product (artists.grooveshark.com) that provides real-time analytics to artists so they can tour and promote their music more efficiently :)
cdibona 17y ago
I have to admit, I loved the review simply for the use of the word "antegoogluvian". But, substantively, what does 'free' mean? When a reporter writes about a book he didn't write for a publisher he only works for likely in a freelance basis about a company who's existence drives traffic to and is the subject of the article, who values whom from what? I mean, the value chain (if you will) goes from Google (my employer, inclsude standard disclaimers here, as I'm just chatting) crawling the web, then showing ads next to the results that lead people to click through (organically or via the ads) to an article about a book based on a number of visits to Google. It seems to be turtles all the way down.

by drenei 17y ago

Freebytes 17y ago

Grooveshark (www.grooveshark.com) is an excellent example of a way to take something that is free and monetize it in one form or another. VIP accounts and advertising work for the site, and the record labels still can earn money from it so they might be happy. Someone always pays, though... it simply may not be the end user.

physcab 17y ago
I hear they also have a great Artists product (artists.grooveshark.com) that provides real-time analytics to artists so they can tour and promote their music more efficiently :)

cdibona 17y ago

I have to admit, I loved the review simply for the use of the word "antegoogluvian". But, substantively, what does 'free' mean? When a reporter writes about a book he didn't write for a publisher he only works for likely in a freelance basis about a company who's existence drives traffic to and is the subject of the article, who values whom from what? I mean, the value chain (if you will) goes from Google (my employer, inclsude standard disclaimers here, as I'm just chatting) crawling the web, then showing ads next to the results that lead people to click through (organically or via the ads) to an article about a book based on a number of visits to Google. It seems to be turtles all the way down.