The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
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Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
#2This goes beyond just the digitalization of media. In the age of access you rent more or less everything. Your car and your home (either directly or via loans), your music collection, library - maybe even your furniture and clothes:
http://www.weartodaygonetomorrow.com
Huge opportunities for startups to be disruptive here.
Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
#3The article talks about how the music industry is shrinking, but says nothing about musicians. Musicians who embrace the new reality are doing fine. What the Internet is really doing away with is a giant industry that used to be useful, but now is merely parasitic.
The same is happening to the book publishing industry. We don't really need them anymore. Instead of giving $15 to a publisher who then gives $1.50 to the author, we can just give $1.50 to the author directly and be done with it.
In the process, we'll see lots of articles like this bemoaning the 90% shrinkage of the publishing industry, while actual authors make more money than ever.
Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
#4The article talks about how the music industry is shrinking, but says nothing about musicians. Musicians who embrace the new reality are doing fine. What the Internet is really doing away with is a giant industry that used to be useful, but now is merely parasitic. The same is happening to the book publishing industry. We don't really need them anymore. Instead of giving $15 to a publisher who then gives $1.50 to the…
What the Internet is really doing away with is a giant industry
that used to be useful, but now is merely parasitic.
we can just give $1.50 to the author directly
Musicians who embrace the new reality are doing fine.
I would also love a functional gift economy, instead of one of scarcity ... but on the Internet a gift economy doesn't really work, because most users are not giving back. How many users of open-source software are giving back contributions and donations?
Even when your software is used by lots of corporations; you either have to beg, or your software has to be broken (in need of a fix).
And I quote from http://www.undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=200603210... ...
OpenSSH is in use by millions around the world
however the revenue stream just simply isn't there.
Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
#5> The role of piracy. I think we know. And the trends are negative, for both readers and authors.
Except that the role of piracy is anything but clearcut. As Tim O'Reilly famously said in 2002 [1]: "Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy."
Again and again over the past several years, we have seen both studies and anecdotal stories from artists finding that file sharing produced a net economic benefit. If "piracy" increases ten times and sales double, that still means doubled sales.
Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
#6The article talks about how the music industry is shrinking, but says nothing about musicians. Musicians who embrace the new reality are doing fine. What the Internet is really doing away with is a giant industry that used to be useful, but now is merely parasitic. The same is happening to the book publishing industry. We don't really need them anymore. Instead of giving $15 to a publisher who then gives $1.50 to the…
What the Internet is really doing away with is a giant industry that used to be useful, but now is merely parasitic. That can go both ways: the Internet is also breeding a generation of customers that used to value and support music & books, but now is merely parasitic. we can just give $1.50 to the author directly I'm all for eliminating middle-men, but free is still a whole lot better than $1.50; and when downloadi…
"and when downloading hundreds of songs from PirateBay, that's several hundreds of dollars versus free."
No, it isn't several hundreds of dollars, since many people who are downloading from PirateBay would not buy the songs even if the free option wouldn't be available.
Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
#7The article talks about how the music industry is shrinking, but says nothing about musicians. Musicians who embrace the new reality are doing fine. What the Internet is really doing away with is a giant industry that used to be useful, but now is merely parasitic. The same is happening to the book publishing industry. We don't really need them anymore. Instead of giving $15 to a publisher who then gives $1.50 to the…
What the Internet is really doing away with is a giant industry that used to be useful, but now is merely parasitic. That can go both ways: the Internet is also breeding a generation of customers that used to value and support music & books, but now is merely parasitic. we can just give $1.50 to the author directly I'm all for eliminating middle-men, but free is still a whole lot better than $1.50; and when downloadi…
You're denying basic free market economics with an emotional argument. In a competitive market, the cost of a good tends towards its marginal cost of production. We get all excited as the cost of solar cells tends lower and lower, as the marginal cost of their production gets smaller. Do we "value" solar cells less because of this?
"the Internet is also breeding a generation of customers that used to value and support music & books, but now is merely parasitic."
To borrow a phrase, "Citation needed".
Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
What the Internet is really doing away with is a giant industry that used to be useful, but now is merely parasitic. That can go both ways: the Internet is also breeding a generation of customers that used to value and support music & books, but now is merely parasitic. we can just give $1.50 to the author directly I'm all for eliminating middle-men, but free is still a whole lot better than $1.50; and when downloadi…
"and when downloading hundreds of songs from PirateBay, that's several hundreds of dollars versus free." No, it isn't several hundreds of dollars, since many people who are downloading from PirateBay would not buy the songs even if the free option wouldn't be available.
That's his point. The choice for a consumer (who knows about BitTorrent) is between paying hundreds of dollars, or paying nothing. Given that, most people will choose to pay nothing.
Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
#9There's another way to look at it. eBooks sales, whether in Kindle, iBooks, or another marketplace, end up with similar dynamics to the App Store in iOS. People have paid $0.99-$4.99 millions of times over for apps such as Angry Birds that would have sold far fewer copies as a $19.99 boxed PC or game console game. I think eBook readers actually encourage buying books, and for the vast majority of the public, it's so easy to do that they'll do a lot more impulsive buys than before.
Additionally, as DennisP mentioned, if the author is actually getting more money from it, then we're just doing away with a middleman. That's what lot of startups are trying to do right now, after all, and it's a great opportunity. For creative writers, musicians, or designers and coders, there's more chance than before to get your content out there and sell it more seamlessly than before. That can't be all bad!
Re: The downward spiral of ownership and value (happened to music, books are next)
#10It's interesting to see where things go, will piracy lower the quality of new books being turned out or will it breed a generation of authors just as talented as those in the past that are willing to get by making a significantly smaller amount than they would have a generation ago.
I can't really say that the declining music sales of the last decade have effected the quality of music being put out in any noticeable way.
I guess the longer term problem is that it's creating a next generation that know no other way but to freely obtain content without contributing anything back.