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Discogs Turns Record Collectors' Obsessions Into Big Business
HughPickens.com writes:
Ben Sisario writes at the NYT that Discogs has built one of the most exhaustive collections of discographical information in the world, and with 24 million items for sale, (eBay's music section lists 11 million) Discogs is on track to do nearly $100 million in business by the end of the year. One of Discog's secrets is the use of Wikipedia's model of user-generated content with historical data cataloged by thousands of volunteer editors in extreme detail. The site's entry for the Beatles' White Album, for instance, contains 309 distinct versions of the record, including its original releases in countries like Uruguay, India and Yugoslavia — in mono and stereo configurations — and decades of reissues, from Greek eight-tracks to Japanese CDs. "There's a record-collector gene," says Kevin Lewandowski. "Some people want to know every little detail about a record."
The site, once run from a computer in Lewandowski's closet and originally restricted to electronic music, has grown rapidly. "It took about six months working nights and weekends on Discogs, and I launched it in November 2000. It was very simplistic compared to what it is now, but it started growing right away." Discogs now has 37 employees around the world, 20 million online visitors a month and three million registered users. Lewandowski, who is the sole owner of Discogs, says he had no interest in selling the business. He has watched other players enter the field over the last 15 years, including Amazon, which in 2008 introduced SoundUnwound, a Wikipedia-like site for music that was quietly shut down four years later. Discogs may have survived because of the innovation of its marketplace, giving collectors an incentive to expand the database with every imaginable detail. "I want it to go on forever," says Lewandowski.
The site, once run from a computer in Lewandowski's closet and originally restricted to electronic music, has grown rapidly. "It took about six months working nights and weekends on Discogs, and I launched it in November 2000. It was very simplistic compared to what it is now, but it started growing right away." Discogs now has 37 employees around the world, 20 million online visitors a month and three million registered users. Lewandowski, who is the sole owner of Discogs, says he had no interest in selling the business. He has watched other players enter the field over the last 15 years, including Amazon, which in 2008 introduced SoundUnwound, a Wikipedia-like site for music that was quietly shut down four years later. Discogs may have survived because of the innovation of its marketplace, giving collectors an incentive to expand the database with every imaginable detail. "I want it to go on forever," says Lewandowski.
Having never heard of Discogs before, it basically sounds like it's like MusicBrainz with more data. Is that about right?
I'm always uneasy with helping private, for-profit entities fill a database with publicly-available information (e.g. Amazon-owned IMDb), since there's generally very little stopping them from taking it all private and locking it behind a paywall in the future. If a site is asking its users to assume the responsibility to generate and maintain the data, as is the case with these publicly-maintained databases, there should be protections in place ensuring that the data remains in the hands of the users. Wikipedia, MusicBrainz, and other non-profit projects do a great job of cataloging public information, and they do so with the backing of organizations and foundations whose primary purpose is to maintain the projects for their own sake, rather than to turn a profit.
I'm normally not an "information wants to be free" sort of guy, but apparently I am when it comes to this sort of information.
There's four links in the summary and no actual link to Discogs itself.
Birthday
Revolution 1
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."