I'm not sure who he's talking to in the music business but this idea has been floating around since at least 1998. It isn't as simple as inserting some tables into a database - building this service will require collaboration between tech companies and music labels, something that happens slowly and dysfunctionally.
If you've ever worked in this space, you'll realize that everyone involved on both sides is either a coked out psychopath who is just at the meeting because his boss made him or a "cool guy" hacker who doesn't really believe in the service, since he already has a multi terabyte server in his closet filled with all the music he's ever liked leeched from oink or waffles. Neither really have any "skin in the game." Thus, the likelihood of the technology getting finished or the legal getting cleared is zero.
From a consumer standpoint, the internet and all your friends already serve as a giant distributed, fault tolerant, quasi-illegal version of this service. If you downloaded a song and then you lose your ipod, you can either just get it again from a file sharing network, or from a mp3 blog, or your cousin's ipod.
Why do we need to "save music industry"? The entire "industry" was a byproduct of inventing a way to record sound. Someone with money and equipment (the aforementioned "industry") suddenly was able to record something and make a profit on those who could not.
Soon, however, we invented ways to record sound cheaply, thus one didn't have to spend as much on recording/reproducing hardware, giving people ability to do it themselves, and the "industry" started to bitch about VCRs and cassette recorders.
Now we've come up with even cheaper way to record, copy and even manipulate (!) sound. And a way to distribute it for free.
The "industry" is clearly not needed anymore, there is no "product" behind it, just a bunch of useless "distributors" and "promoters". Why would we want to save THAT?
Nothing is going to happen to music, the music has been around for thousands of years, long before all these inventions took place, and the best musical creations happened without any help from the "industry".
We (engineers) gave them (the industry) an exclusive monopoly to charge for a short-lived privilege of storing and transporting sound, now we're taking it back. In that sense everything goes back to normal: nothing to be saved here.
While I would love to see this happen, I think that people will be clinging too tightly to their shrinking piece of the pie to make it happen. I wouldn't trust anyone besides Apple to build a consumer-acceptable client for this, and it goes against everything they hold dear. MSFT (you name it) and Yahoo (recently discontinued music service) have let consumers down and won't be trusted. Amazon still isn't thought of as a tech company by most people, plus their focus on sales would appear too much of a conflict of interest. Google's products are too unfocused outside of their search core, plus I think they're too big, powerful, and rich for the music companies to trust them. So I think the big tech companies are all out.
Could the music companies come together and make something easy but powerful enough to use, a la Hulu? Based on their history, probably not, but desperation (and a decent model to follow) might convince them to cooperate.
Unless you have substantial leverage to deal with the labels, they will charge you collectively around $12million to just stream songs (imeem). That's a pretty high barrier to entry - something I've been wrestling with for my own startup.
Truthfully, the labels will always remain dubious of emerging technologies because they realize their industry will inevitably shrink.
This is missing the fundamental thing labels are afraid of - making piracy easier. What prevents someone from sharing their user id and then all their friends downloading a copy of their songs?
Well, if the revenue model stays where it is, the music industry is in for an agonizing (for the establishment) long-term smooshing into the long tail. (Imagine an astronaut being pulled into a noodle by tidal forces as he falls into a black hole.) I'm not sure anything can save it, however. Maybe the devastating changes it's going through now are "saving" it?
"Saving the business" implies saving the idea of the business as such: no business, no musicians besides those who are independently wealthy, which means less good music for the rest of us. "Saving the business" doesn't imply that they must necessarily make loads of cash.
I don't know if his idea is any good, but one hopes that there is some model besides "tour lots" that also holds some promise for the Brian Wilson introverted studio wizard types.
[+] [-] menloparkbum|17 years ago|reply
If you've ever worked in this space, you'll realize that everyone involved on both sides is either a coked out psychopath who is just at the meeting because his boss made him or a "cool guy" hacker who doesn't really believe in the service, since he already has a multi terabyte server in his closet filled with all the music he's ever liked leeched from oink or waffles. Neither really have any "skin in the game." Thus, the likelihood of the technology getting finished or the legal getting cleared is zero.
From a consumer standpoint, the internet and all your friends already serve as a giant distributed, fault tolerant, quasi-illegal version of this service. If you downloaded a song and then you lose your ipod, you can either just get it again from a file sharing network, or from a mp3 blog, or your cousin's ipod.
[+] [-] tx|17 years ago|reply
Soon, however, we invented ways to record sound cheaply, thus one didn't have to spend as much on recording/reproducing hardware, giving people ability to do it themselves, and the "industry" started to bitch about VCRs and cassette recorders.
Now we've come up with even cheaper way to record, copy and even manipulate (!) sound. And a way to distribute it for free.
The "industry" is clearly not needed anymore, there is no "product" behind it, just a bunch of useless "distributors" and "promoters". Why would we want to save THAT?
Nothing is going to happen to music, the music has been around for thousands of years, long before all these inventions took place, and the best musical creations happened without any help from the "industry".
We (engineers) gave them (the industry) an exclusive monopoly to charge for a short-lived privilege of storing and transporting sound, now we're taking it back. In that sense everything goes back to normal: nothing to be saved here.
[+] [-] pchristensen|17 years ago|reply
Could the music companies come together and make something easy but powerful enough to use, a la Hulu? Based on their history, probably not, but desperation (and a decent model to follow) might convince them to cooperate.
Good luck to Hank on getting this idea going!
[+] [-] joeter|17 years ago|reply
Truthfully, the labels will always remain dubious of emerging technologies because they realize their industry will inevitably shrink.
[+] [-] lacker|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] demandred|17 years ago|reply
While this is an interesting idea to help advance the revenue model, I'm not sure I understood how this would potentially 'save' the music business.
[+] [-] stcredzero|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cypress-hill|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidw|17 years ago|reply
I don't know if his idea is any good, but one hopes that there is some model besides "tour lots" that also holds some promise for the Brian Wilson introverted studio wizard types.