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Applying a Music Business Model To a Blog
An anonymous reader writes "Many of you may be familiar with Mike Masnick, from the site Techdirt. Beyond just chronicling tech stories for years, he's also been following various music and media industry business models as well. While he's usually among the first (like Slashdot) to express dismay at silly activities from the recording industry, lately he's been cataloging numerous success stories, like business models from Trent Reznor, Amanda Palmer, and Josh Freese. Mike and Techdirt are now taking things a step further, and wondering what would happen if they took the lessons from those success stories and applied it to a media publication: their own Techdirt. The result is 'Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy.' Check out the very special offer for the RIAA."
Some monetization techniques make sense (charging $5 for a premium account), but I'm shocked by this one:
Techdirt Reviews Your Business Plan, only $5,000. Describe your business, and what you're trying to accomplish... We'll run it as a case on the Insight Community
There are better ways to crowdsource a business idea. At least you'll get unbiased feedback (caveat: I'm one of the founders).
To everyone starting out there: conserve your cash, don't spend it on any of those "magical programs" or consultants that promise you the moon.
What almost makes more sense, if you really want to pick the brains of the TechDirt guys is to fork the $1,000 for spending one day with them (even tough I think it's only worth maybe $200).
Here I thought he would be suing his readers.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sue everyone who links to it? BRILLIANT!!!
Unfortunately, it's the music business model where your agent steals all your royalties and money.
1. Connect with fans
2. Reason to buy
3. Profit!!
Crap, he figured out number 2!
Move along people.
I think they should have added three more zeros. At a hundred million, the RIAA might come calling. Not to pay the money, but to try to bargain and bluster the price down.
The offer I'd have given is to sue them for reading the site without permission.
Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
The idea in itself is great, and what I always said. The only problem is, that their prices are not from this world.
They absolutely and without discussion need some proper pre-buyer pricing acceptance feedback.
What I recommend, is asking the user, what he would like to pay. And only showing the price you want, after they chose their price. Then when their pricing is above it, you say that they can get it cheaper, and when it is below it, you say that you're sorry, but that you do not want do give that away for that price.
This way you get instant feedback and a free survey. Also people feel involved.
Then you change the prices to the value, where "price * people who want to buy at that price" is maximized, and send anyone who did not buy but might now, a little note about the change in price. Make it clear that the price fell because of their feedback.
Ok, the only problem with this would be, that it could be manipulated, because the people could give more than one vote, or might not be honest in the first place.
Anyone got a real solution for this? (I bet there is a solution that you learn when you study economics & co. Which I never did.)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I'm familiar with Mr. Masnick and I've seen him speak about his "Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy" model for musicians. It seemed to make sense. He even attempted to squash the perception that this model only works for established musicians. I was sort of buying his mantra of having music be free and having it act as a loss leader. I'm a musician myself, so this is was all very pertinent.
Recently, my brother visited from New Zealand. He's a professional record producer and sound engineer, and he's very interested in questions like this as well.
I told him about this talk I had just seen and asked him what he thought. He thought that it was ridiculous to be a musician and have your primary product, the art that you create, be free, and try to make money off of things such as t-shirts and dinner nights with fans. He pointed out that people do in fact pay for music online, even when using a site such as ThePirateBay. They pay their ISPs every month. They are will to pay for this content. He called this the "swindle of the century".
See, this stuff matters very much for him. He's not a brand that he can sell to fans. He's a brand that he sells to record labels and musicians. He can't survive off of selling t-shirts with his face plastered on them. This model doesn't get him payed and depends on a functional industry to operate. Contrary to popular belief, it is not any easier to get a great sounding recording than it was 25 years ago. Great recordings and mixes still take a lot of talent, and that talent doesn't come cheap. How is a burgeoning young band or artist supposed to get studio and mixing time? $12,000 would be a budget recording and mixing session, good enough for maybe an EP. You can be sure that Radiohead and NIN are spending a lot more than that.
Take a look at Time Warner or AT&T's broadband advertisements. They've got tiered prices, based on bandwidth. Both have similar columned designs showing what plan works for you. Both have "Downloading music." Whose music, dare I ask? Listen, I know this opens up a huge can of worms, because Time Warner and AT&T both pay their own upstream providers, but you get my point. People are not getting music for free. They are paying for it, only the artists or the owners of the content don't see a dime.
I remember when I first heard about ESPN360.com. It made me slightly furious. A website that only works for certain ISPs? Well, that goes against the whole free love on the Internet thing, right? But it just clicked for me. This actually makes sense. ESPN nailed it on the head. They are forcing ISPs to pay for the content, while leaving it free for the end user. This would work brilliantly for music.
Imagine if the RIAA decided to make an ESPN360-like service. All music, for free. The catch? Your ISP is paying the bill. You can't tell me that the consumer wouldn't use this service and not pick a local ISP that offered it, even if at first it cost a little bit more than some other provider.
I know there are TONS of holes in these lines of though, but the madness has got to stop. People are paying for all of this content but it is not getting to the people that actually make the content.
I'm not sure we understand yet what the new music business models are, at least not well enough to start applying them to other fields. We have a few examples of things that seem to work, and some blog-based argumentation about why they work, and how those can be generalized. Is saying "let's do that, but for blogs now" really anything more than a really hand-wavy argument that we do New Economy Stuff? Blogs are already pretty much by definition participating in some variety of new-ish economic model. What specifically are they taking from the music business? Just selling shirts directly to consumers is not it; websites have done that forever.
Presumably it means something like, "from observing this experimental phase in the music industry, we've learned some important general lessons about economic activity in the early 21st century, and useful things to do and avoid". But what are those lessons? And are they anything not super-generic, like "sell shirts and stuff"?
Even if Techdirt hasn't given that explanation, I'm curious if anyone knows of a good one. The only book-length discussion of recent music-industry developments (that isn't already dated) that I know of is Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music (came out about 2 months ago), which is a reasonable historical summary of the past 10 years, with a bit of analysis. It's not exactly a distillation of lessons suitable for universal application, though; more of a history just collecting the facts about what's gone on, mixed in with a little bit of breathless tech-hype (as the title suggests; it's got good content beyond that, though, fortunately). Anyone know of any other informative/insightful books (or articles) in this area?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
aka the Eight-Foot Bride
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Whilst I like the basic idea the whole article seems dedicated to peddling his wares. Sure he's giving away the basic concepts and some implementation details away but the primary focus of the article is to drive sales to his new income avenue. I would've understood if he built another business based on the concept (that would've shown it works for smaller outfits as well) but from what I can tell he's basically using the Techdirt name to peddle wares on his readership.
Maybe I'm just jealous because I can't monetize anything I've done on the Internet..... :)
The Refined Geek - Technology, Finance, Space and everything in between
I think everyone that thinks music should be given away for free and should only be allowed to make money from t-shirts and trinkets should consider this model for themselves. How about your boss doesn't have to pay you. And instead you can sell T-shirts and other goods at your work to make money. It's only fair right? Connect with your customer. Give them your services for free and try to make your money outside of your work.
Applying a Music Business Model To a Blog
Sue your visitors and then complain about declining page views?
What? I PAID hard cash a couple times to support my abuse fix unhindered by having to click-to-adblock ads!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
As a musician, my commentary may be biased, but the idea that business models of the music industry can be applied to blogging seems to ignore the reason for these new models.
prior to the recording industry's genesis, no amount of production wizardry or robust business planning allowed a musician to make a living. it came down to the musician's skill (minstrels, epic poets, etc). the barriers towards content distribution erected by the industry (costs of replication and production, legal control over further replication and transmission, etc) introduced new business models. These models worked amazingly well and transformed the concept of musicianship into a lucrative field.
recently, the barriers have become more permeable due to advances in technology (home recording, lossless replication, etc) . As these barriers disappear, the strength of a musician's success may once again rest in their skill.
blogging, on the other hand, is an industry without barriers to content distribution already. it is more like what the music industry will be or was rather than what it is.
in my opinion, the transient music industry business models would not represent a viable model for bloggers.
anyone have a different view?
I was going to buy it but they didn't have a paypal option. :(
One technique I thought would be effective (at least for getting people who are willing to pay for something they can get for free), would be for sites like StumbleUpon to accept donations, and then (after keeping a tiny cut for admin purposes) split your donation evenly across sites you gave a thumbs up. Or something. Just some sort of model where a big site takes a lump sum from you and splits it up. Maybe that sounds too much like PayPal? But more web 2.0ish.
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"