The New Economics of Music, or, why stealing feels so right

interesting article, but i'm not sure if I agree.

I think iTunes reduces a lot of the risk the article is revolving around (of buying something you didn't like in the first place). I think most P2P downloads are of songs one heard on the radio. If I wanted to discover new music I'd go for Pandora or last.fm instead of illegal downloads.

I can say from personal experience that when I was a student and was low on cash I felt bad about spending 20 dollars at a time on an album (out of which I liked a couple of songs). Buying songs from iTunes allowed me to buy what I wanted or get entire albums for $10 dollars. But even that didn't allow me to get all the music I wanted on a student budget.

Now that I have a job I ended up spending hundreds of dollars on iTunes over time because for the most part it was less time consuming than finding the music on P2P networks. Once my time became valuable buying music started to make sense.

What iTunes does not reduce are the search costs incurred by a user. If a user isn't planning on purchasing what is on the top ten list, a user has to know what he wants beforehand at iTunes, just like shopping at a Virgin Megastore. So before a purchase is made, a user still has to pay search costs to find what he wants before he makes a purchase.

So as you said, you would go to Pandora or last.fm instead of illegal downloads to find new music and when the new "good" song is discovered, you go to iTunes to purchase it. In this situation, Pandora and last.fm decrease your search costs by presenting what you found to be a "good" song in less time than it would have taken you to find a "good" song on your own. So as long as Pandora and last.fm can reduce your search costs enough so that the value of the "good" song outweighs the cost, then Pandora and last.fm replace the record companies as better agents and you derive more value from your music.

But are Last.fm and Pandora good enough agents for everyone? Or do they really only work as good agents for some people (i.e. better solutions exist)? For example, record companies can and do play a strong hand in determining the results on Last.fm. As long as there are mass-media outlets like the radio and MTV, record companies can influence the "tastes" of mass numbers of people, which influence what music they play and share on file networks, which influence dramatically the scrobbling statistics on Last.fm and the recommendations Last.fm produces with its collaborative filter, skewing results dramatically and consistently toward major label artists: getting results of mainstream artists on Last.fm does not reduce search costs as these artists were easy to find regardless.

It seems to me that the search costs for discovering music on Pandora are also very high, as I have to listen to Pandora like a radio station as opposed to just getting results, and the database is set-up by what musicologists think. Sure the sonic characteristics and structure of a song influence the song, but it doesn't determine whether I will think it is "good". As an extreme example, take two piano sonatas: one is written by Chopin, the other by Tom Dick last week in Ohio. A musicologist at Pandora would classify them the same as they have the same sonic characteristics, arrangement, instrumentation, structure etc. but that does not help me reduce my search costs because I still have to listen to Tom Dick's sonata on their web radio before I get to Chopin.

I think audiences that consume a lot of music could significantly reduce their search costs on a site like oink, because everyone there consumes a lot of music. Because everyone in the community is always on the hunt for the new "good" music (and are technologically savvy), their top ten lists are predictably very relevant to their community, probably much higher than any of them would ever find on Pandora or Last.fm.

But would the Digg of music be enough? iJigg, which is something like that, launcher earlier this year. http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/01/18/jigg-that-music/. Although it doesn't seem to have moderaters with real music knowledge. But even if it did, that wouldn't be enough to make results relevant for everyone because the criteria for relevance is an individuals concept of "good". Sure moderators might know what is "good" for certain audiences, but if results are organized in a digg-esque fashion, it becomes a top-ten list, meaning that no matter how good your moderators are, they can't generate recommendations that will be "good" for individuals (and the strategy to appeal to the largerst number of individuals is to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which one could argue radio already does well.)

oh yeah, another point is that the giant uberplaylist aggregator thing doesn't need the actual music, just links to where to get it...

the problem for peeps is not ACCESSING the music, or SAMPLING the music, it's finding tracks that are good...

FOR A PARTICULAR SITUATION

music choices are circumstance-driven, completely

You're being pretty dogmatic about what music is...

You may be right that, in some respects, "cultural objects are substantively different than news articles", but not in ways that are germane to this argument:

"The news is largely valued for its accuracy, timeliness, and topical relevance to a reader. Music and other cultural objects are valued for their enjoyment, which is contingent on individual personal preferences."

I addressed this in an earlier response..."personal enjoyment" of music is inexorable from "timeliness" and "relevance."

I get more "personal enjoyment" from John Zorn than anyone else, but I don't wanna hear it when I'm making out with my girl, or at a club.

Think about the success of mood/circumstance specific mix CD's like "Ibiza Club" or "Ellington for Lovers"...

Musical preferences have a lot more to them than "people like you also like"...

Also, with all the choice available, it's easy to overestimate people's desire to even HAVE choice.

Finally, I am imagining a more sophisticated metadata model that is not just about creating categories for things. I don't really have the details on that, though ;-)