The ONLY solution.

[3shiftgtr]

Sven, our viking roots rock bud, has brought up a great discussion in his views about Spotify. And not having tried it, combined with my ability to add and subtract, I am a bit skeptical. So how do we deal if it just comes in and sits there. Like Rhapsody etc. If as richardmac says, the patient has stabilized. It just becomes part of the landscape, and it changes nothing.

 

The question that then needs to be asked (and has been), is what WILL change the landscape?

 

Everybody is looking to BUSINESS MODELS to change the landscape. But I feel that that is the problem. The problem is at the source: before the product gets delivered, not in the model.

 

Every great business fills a need. All capitalist business models have 3 elements:

1) Product

2) Producer

3) Consumer

 

In the auto business the product is the vehicle, the producer is the manufacturer, and the consumer is the end user. In music, there is a confusion as to who the producer is. The producer either distributes the product or hires someone to do so. The producer is NOT the musician in the music biz. He/she/it is a line worker in the product phase. It is the musician's lender that is the producer as the lender in the musician's case, handles all the distribution. Whoever holds GM's notes doesn't sell their cars. Big difference.

 

Currently the musician has as much power to create and be the producer as the "music lenders" (labels), and as much opportunity to distribute as the "music lenders". So the problem lies not in a new way to get the product to the people. The problem lies in distribution.

 

All this talk is about distribution sources. Spotify vs. icloud vs. Rhapsody vs. itunes vs. whatever. And it still doesn't STOP the problem. It tries to ADAPT. And that is why "the patient has stabilized".

 

There is only ONE solution. Identify the problem and stop it. The problem is everything free, cuz it is. Too many people get the stuff for free. Another limewire, another napster; it WON"T end unless something stops it.

 

The only solution is an INVIOLABLE MUSIC DISTRIBUTION DELIVERY SOURCE. The key word is source; a medium if you will. Music needs to be distributed in a form that can't be duplicated with out cost, expense, time and consequences. And that is certainly NOT the case now. itunes did it half assed (the proprietary mp4a) and is heralded as the only success story the music biz has had in the past 15 years.

 

The ONE solution is an inviolable music distribution delivery source. Tell me why this will never happen. Cuz it certainly needs to.

[richardmac]

 

Tell me why this will never happen.

 

 

You asked! So here goes...

 

I am with you on the iTunes thing - I thought their protection scheme was fair and I never had an issue with it. And it couldn't have been any easier to hack - burn a protected song onto a CD, and poof! You could then do whatever you wanted to. The funny thing is that very few people did this, because 1) they'd already payed for the music, why go through the expense (even minimal) of time and energy, and 2) you could already find anything you wanted to via Limewire etc. Eventually Apple ditched the concept altogether. They never liked it to begin with. It doesn't matter to Apple if music gets stolen, because it ends up on their iPods and iPhones.

 

Apple is one of the biggest players in the music biz and they don't care. That's one reason.

 

Another is legacy. There are countless billions of song files out there NOT encrypted by any new scheme right now. It would only impact stuff sold from now on. It simply wouldn't help that much.

 

There's the technical difficulty of it, too - you'd have to tie it to hardware, which would mean getting every CD, DVD, CD ROM, etc manufacturer to play ball, along with every cell phone and portable handheld music player, including Apple, which would laugh any such idea out of the room and then slam the door.

 

And THAT is why this will never happen. The software industry has learned to live with high amounts of piracy*. The music business will, too.

 

* Interesting how difficult it is to pirate an iPad or iPhone app, though, isn't it? Apple has the whole ecosystem locked down. So apparently they do care about piracy - but only for software developers, not songwriters.

[daddymack]

Free isn't the real problem, it is a symptom of the lack of cohesive control due to the rapid evolution of technologies.

With the final nail in Limewire's coffin still vibrating, I suspect we will see the hackers turn their attention to cracking the mp4a security, just as the DVD and now blueray security codes are cracked.

How to make it inviolate? One thought: a standardized ultra high quality 'playermode' that can't be hacked. With the inevitability of cloud access, digital music is not going away, but better security and better audio quality would certainly impact the casual thieves. Yes, I know there are several competing higher end formats aorund, and that is a good start, but just as every one had to agree on blue ray, a new agreement on a certified unbreakable ultimately pristine perfect digital audio standard needs to be reached. And maybe there needs to be another stage to this, maybe with a license fee that has to be ponied up periodically, every year, every other year, monthly...but somehow, somewhere, someone needs to take this by the horns and make it profitable and make it accessible.