Comments on: When is it Okay to Charge?

By: Brian

Brian — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 12:30:07 +0000

Acouple more interestig links on this issue;

http://news.zdnet.com/2422-19178_22-320699.html

http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=807

By: morg

morg — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:40:31 +0000

I think “someone” (you, Matthew) needs to find out exactly how spotify does charge. I’m assuming the licencing issue is circumvented by the fact that you don’t ‘own’ it. I suppose it could be classed, legally speaking, as an interactive radio station.

I’m optimistic about this micro-payment model though. Maybe I’m naieve but it would seem to me that if we all went premium on spotify the technology is there to carve up your (admittedly tiny) subscription fee and pay each label/artist a per listen fee. In principle at least. Big bands would still be big and small would at least be visible and without completely giving the music away. It would seem to cut out alot of middlemen.

Does anyone know whether I should be optimistic or whether Spotify is likely to be unmasked as an denizen of some evil empire ?

By: muptup

muptup — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:20:32 +0000

It could get really interesting if people can just download a CAD model for a new dining set. Many in industry are not in slightest bit prepared for that kind of change. It will be places like Asda that will feel the hurt at that time. There’s no way to currently make electronic products on a small scale and that’ll provide some insulation.

That distinction is becoming less obvious in music. I imagine there’s few listeners on here that would get more listening value from a hugely expensive U2 record than many bedroom recordings.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:36:14 +0000

Surely, but with medical products it’s the tortuously long, expensive and arcane approvals process which will provide more of an obstacle than anything else. As I said, the home 3D printer stuff will be more of a threat to the ‘bits of plastic kitchen shit’ market than medical devices at the moment.

You’re right though, as the means of production become more and more affordable that will presumably change.

By: George B

George B — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:25:10 +0000

Adobe’s business model is – if you’re a serious company with an income, you’ll pay the thousands per head for photoshop or whatever and not blink. And that’s because all the amateurs who eventually work there know it, and prefer it. The game tool I used, Unity, recently made this more explicit – its free unless you’re a large business or need some of the fancy extra stuff. Which is a great strategy, and great for amateurs, too.

And yeah, the games industry is focusing on services, on MMOs and the like, rather than one off products. Because they can do things like throw pirates off, like the recent xbox live foofaraw. Doesn’t work entirely, but I can’t be see it moving that way. Besides, people spend more if its per month than a one off… (but then, to keep people paying you need to consume a lot of their time – and attention is only vaugely more scarce than money)

As for your day job – developing an OS is a long and complicated business too, but open source has done it once. I guess the difference is that you can compile one on your home computer, and that OSs (and especially unixes) are hugely modular. And there’s a bunch of legal obstacles too. I suspect that if home 3d printers ever get competitive with centralized producton, things will change though. Heh – once the proletariat owns the means of production…

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:45:37 +0000

George, it doesn’t really, no. Developing serious products is a long, slow and complicated business. There is pretty much zero (imminent) chance that the kind of time, coordination and expertise required to develop new products like that will be feasible for this kind of project. Disposable bits of plastic kitchen shit maybe, but not more complicated stuff – not for now anyway.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:41:10 +0000

Kurt Vonnegut was a good one for that, actually. I’ve found myself talking about him a lot recently, but haven’t read one of his books for years. Might be time to get back to him…

Actually, the cost of software is an amazing one. I don’t know anyone who pays for it because at the real cost I don’t know anyone who could even come close to affording it. I suppose in a sense that locks everyone into your software, so not chasing up individual infringers makes a degree of sense from a business perspective, but with games that aspect pretty much goes out the window I guess.

Surely there’ll come a time when the developers give the game away for free and then lock people into subscription packages for updates, customisation packs, new bits and pieces and stuff like that.

By: George B

George B — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:35:23 +0000

Oh, and, Matthew – I seem to remember your day job being something like medical product design… Does stuff like http://openprosthetics.org/ give you shivers?

(Added to the list of requirements: the tools should be relatively affordable. I’d say a couple of tens of thousands is the limit…)

By: George B

George B — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:29:35 +0000

It doesn’t end with newspapers and music, either. Videogames have the same problems – which are fought back with by technological measures, trying to lock down content as much as possible. And by the cost of making them is huge, more on a par with films than with music. (Of course, the area I’m into is indie games, which has more in common with music – games made by small teams without proper funding. And with audiences not huge enough to support the makers…)

And films! The cost of them…

And TV!

And basically any industry that produces things that can be replicated digitally and which creating fulfils creative urges. Which is, I guess, an expanding range of things. Just wait til robotics and AI really starts to take off in every day life – see what can’t be made digital…

(And, I’m aware that I’m rambling and straying from the point at hand, but – in old sci-fi magazines, people predicted in the future, everything would be automated, and society would have huge problems due to the surfeit of leisure time. What to do, when machines do all the work for you? Except it never quite works out like that, does it?)

By: Diana De Cabarrus

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:27:12 +0000

aaah yes that’s what I was going to say-trying to go big enough for the tiny margins to add up (there are sites like kerchoonz that have free content, where the punter doesn’t pay to download, but the artist gets revenue from advertising, again, a nice idea but just too peanutsy in practice) seems daunting from the perspective of a write-a-few-tunes-play-a-few-gigs person. But! I think going small might be the way forward. I’m not just saying this because i played there and Alan is my friend, but the Leith tape club is perfect example. Small, once a month, but highly crafted, with a nice USP in the compilation cd which is exclusive of tracks recorded on the night. There are people I spoke to there who go to it as their outing of the month because they are confident in the choice of bill. That sort of thing can work well.