Cringely Proposes a Music Sharing Alternative 730
WEFUNK writes "The I, Cringely 'Pulpit' column at PBS presents an interesting idea for a new business model to take on the RIAA. He suggests that a publicly traded company could legally and profitably buy a single copy of each record which could then be freely copied and listened to by its shareholders under fair use. His 'Snapster' (Son of Napster) proposal is essentially a digital music co-op that would let shareholders/consumers bring copyrighted material into a quasi-public domain. While fair use and the public domain continue to be lost in our courts and congresses, maybe the capital markets will offer an alternative." While a neat idea, it's doubtful that it'll ever be implemented. Still, it's a good read.
Best Article Ever (Score:2, Interesting)
Sales (Score:2, Interesting)
CleanFilms avoids MPAA this way already.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Essentially they operate as a co-operative. On the surface, it is the same as paying a membership fee - but on paper it is a different story (i.e. Snapster would be just like Napster on the surface, but largely different on paper).
Here's a snip from their about page [cleanfilms.com]:
I think the problem is... (Score:2, Interesting)
Therein lies the problem with Cringely's proposal. If I split the cost of a $20 CD with a friend (or a million friends), we can both listen to it, just not at the same time (legally).
Right?
So crazy it just might work (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:one word: my.mp3.com (Score:3, Interesting)
No such relationship existed at my.mp3.com. The people downloading the software were customers of my.mp3.com, not owners.
Owning is a better idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Once you have owned the CD for a day, sell it to someone else and erase your fair use copy. Next time you want to listen to it buy it again and sell it again.
Just like Cringely send some of those IPO shares to http://www.pcast.com.
Brad.
Licenses (Score:3, Interesting)
If I buy stock in a company (even the one I work for), that doesn't mean that I can freely use any software that they buy from another vendor. Most software comes with per-seat licenses, not per-company. What's to stop music companies from just packaging only a single-user license in a CD? Replace the word 'music' with 'software' in this scheme, and it all falls apart.
Yep that'll work... For about three seconds. (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately, it's going to be a long struggle before the Record Industry is forced to submit to the fact that recorded music is becoming an economic public good -- because of pratically infinite distribution (at the cost of bandwidth and storage), the good has become non-rivalrous. This does not mean music will disappear, but it does mean that it will not be profitable for a music company to distribute CDs.
Once the RIAA is forced to accept that, and takes the huge accompanying profit cut, their real business will be the promotion and distribution of the music itself -- it will lower its overhead by allowing P2P-style downloads (let the consumers give up their bandwidth), and will profit by sponsoring artists tours.
The downside is that record stores will, for the most part, go out of business. Were that there was another way to save our slave-wage friends who are knowledgable, but in every war, there are casualties.
But sorry, Cringely -- Snapster won't work for long. The fight for free music will be much longer than we hope.
Re:It's been done (Score:2, Interesting)
Try doing this with a publicly traded company and you'll be crucified by the copyright holders.
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:5, Interesting)
It probably (almost certainly, but IANAL) wouldn't work.
Remember, the corporation and its shareholders are legally separate entities. Thus the shareholders don't own the music (or any rights to it, more properly); they own a company which owns the rights to the music. And since it's doubtful that the RIAA grants a right to rent the music (first sale would not cover renting), the corporation doesn't have the ability to give its shareholders its rights.
In theory, you could do something within the confines of first-sale; it could be implemented as follows:
However, there are kinks in that plan; first, it's doubtful that files made by fair-use rights could be incorporated into this (fair-use as it's been understood by the courts only extends to personal copying; as soon as it's transferred, any legitimacy conferred by fair-use is lost). However, files downloaded without taking advantage of fair-use (iTMS for instance) would not have this issue. Then there's the final requirement; in order to qualify for a first-sale defense, the file would have to be deleted from the server after being transferred. This is somewhat difficult to accomplish, even if you could DRM stuff. However, perhaps copying the file which you obtained through this system to another location would be fair-use (and the system might even employ a hash database to prevent further transfers).
Back to the topic. Even if the corporation could rent/sell it to its shareholders, some portion of the actual value of the data would likely be counted as a dividend, or at least income, for the shareholder, who may end up paying taxes on it.
Re:It's been done (Score:5, Interesting)
You've never paid taxes, part of which go to fund libraries? Or you've never gotten a library card, which usually has a nominal fee? Gee, if nobody pays for libraries, I wonder where they get the money to build them, staff them, and fill them with copyrighted material...
Re:Uh no. (Score:2, Interesting)
"I think most dl'ers are just going to continue 'copyright infringement'"
Open Letter to the Media Industry (Score:2, Interesting)
I have been watching morbidly as the RIAA tries to make felons out of normal people. I am disgusted by these tactics, and it saddens me that the United States government would even momentarily entertain the thought of fining or jailing people for wanting ownership of that which gives America a cultural identity.
We don't all have common backgrounds, or live in similar situations. What ties Americans together as a nation is a longing for freedom, and the music that provides our identity as a generation, or as a nation. It is along this line of thinking that I wrote the following, and I would appreciate constructive comment on it.
We are not criminals!
We are not criminals. We are the proud citizens of these United States of America, and we want our culture back. For too long the music industry has branded us criminals -- thieves who would fight to take what is not ours, unwilling to support those who influence our lives and shape our culture, our national self-image. Yet there is no sign of the media calling off its plan to define and control our culture.
The music industry claims to have the interests of artists in mind while persecuting those who would attempt to make free certain parts of our culture. With the belief that work should be compensated fairly it is self-evident that artists deserve fair compensation for their work. However, the music industry routinely uses the "work make for hire" clause of the Copyright Act of 1976 to rob artists of their right to profit from their own creations by working with whichever publisher they choose.
If the music industry holds fair compensation in high regard, perhaps they could consider a business model in which an author retains ownership of her own works. If they are unable to fairly compensate artists, it is not the fault of the consumer. Business does not exist in a vacuum, and it is unfair to produce legislation which aims to preserve a monopolistic industry's position without significant consumer benefit. We want the right to experience the music of our lives at will without being forced to use our dollars to vote for the music industry's dominance.
While the popular media industries demonize citizens whose lives are most strongly tied to their products, they are fighting hard to retain their status as the group solely responsible for driving American culture. These self-proclaimed owners of our national identity strive to ensure that our lives are pervaded with their music, their movies, their values. They force their media into our lives; billing movies and albums as not just mere entertainment, but "events" which will affect our lives. One can hardly watch television or a film or listen to the radio without being subjected to mainstream music. Yet rather than rejoice and celebrate their successes they cry out at the realization that culture is a hard thing to bottle.
We do not consider it fair that the media surround us with the same sounds and images, over and over, yet we are criminalized for trying to integrate them into our culture. We have a right to our culture, and to not be regarded as criminals for demanding ownership.
A company cannot own a common term; trademark laws are such that trademark owners must take action to prevent their trademarks from falling into common usage, lest they become public-domain terms. The curious lack of a similar concept in the media domain means that our lives can be immersed in elements which become part of our cultural vocabulary, yet current law dictates that most of us will die before gaining ownership of our cultural identities.
We want ownership of the media that pervades our lives.
Well, that's it, folks. If I had bandwidth I'd turn it into a petition of sorts, but as it is all I can do is put it up here for comment, in hopes that somebody else will be inspired to take some action.
Please do comment -- I'd like to hear what people have to say.
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:1, Interesting)
You bring up an interesting point here. CD rentals are legal in some countries (not in the USA? maybe now!)... and the companies that rent videos and CDs are laughing all the way to the bank. If I recall correctly, in the past the RIAA has attempted to even stop the resale of music CDs (without success).
All you need to really make the one share holder may listen thing work is a parent Corp. that holds thousands of samller penny market Corps. All you have to do is match the number of child Corps. to a number that will match peak listeners... that and sell a companion stream ripper like program.
I think it could be done... legally... profitablly... and in a way that will bring about the demise of the RIAA.
They can't "make it illegal". (Score:3, Interesting)
The US Supreme Court has already ruled (I can't find the link at the moment, try "supreme court wordperfect" or something similar) that it is legal for you to buy one (1) copy of (say) MS-Office, and install it on all 3,000 workstations at your company.
The trick here is that since you only have one (1) license, only one (1) copy of the software can be active at any time.
A similar thing already exists in the physical world, it's called "loaning a book to a friend".
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:4, Interesting)
The ignorance of both business and law displayed in his article is nothing short of breathtaking.
Yeah, I had the same feeling when I read some of his articles about software development. He seemed pretty off-the-wall for a guy who has run development groups charged with very large projects including an entire from-scratch operating system for Apple and the first version of AOL.
But I enjoy his columns anyway, because he has so many risky ideas. I like crazy ideas. Which would you rather read about: "lateral solutions" that fail in interesting ways, or more retreads of "industry = evil, so I'm just gonna grab what I can get"?
what happens when the RIAA buys shares (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Say WHAT? (Score:3, Interesting)
Even if it IS all perfectly legal... (Score:1, Interesting)
(reply with your smarmy comments about the rise to power of the indie labels, the labels changing their business models to pure-play marketing organizations, etc.)
Re:Wow this usage seems very fair (Score:3, Interesting)
This is what RTMark does and it works (Score:4, Interesting)
Read the RTMark FAQ [rtmark.com] if you don't instantly grok the above.
Once the corporation has been established no one is going to the lose their shirts, e.g. college kids won't be forced to give up their life savings. [theinquirer.net] All you can lose is whatever the corporation owns. I think the only thing that breaks the corporate shield is worker's comp.
So Cringly is pulling an RTMark, but instead of activist reasons he's using it to trade music (which could be seen as an activist reason too).
Bravo.
Now here's the fun part. Why not live our lives as corporations? People complain about corporate power all the time, so if we can't beat them, lets join them. What if everyone made a corporation in their name and put all their assests into it? From there you can add shareholders (family, friends) then safely and legally swap MP3s, share ownership of just about *anything*, hire people to do your job at a cheaper rate and pocket the difference, wear a world's sexiest CEO t-shirt, take out loans, form off-shore tax havens (why pay tax?), have a great time knowing that whatever you do will be the fault of the corporation not you personally, etc.
Excellent "What is a corporation" primer here. [nv-inc.com]
Damn straight. I'm off to become a corporate entity.
With a few tweaks and modz...maybe (Score:2, Interesting)
Create a corporation. Corporation could either be a co-op or publicly traded with multiple classes of stock. Their would be the normal two classes of stock (Common and Preferred) plus further classes of securities particular to this business. A third type of security would be issued as something like a common stock with a reverse dividend. For example, you could buy into the company by purchasing the stock but then to keep the stock valid you would be required to pay a reverse dividend. The reverse dividend would essentially be a subscription fee at a guaranteed rate. Failure to pay would render the security void, invalidate it for a period of time, change the securities fee schedule or revert ownership to the company. The securities, having a set rate which could cause the stock to increase or decrease in value in relation to the interest rate would be fully transferable so that they could act as something similar to options. (Okay, an investment quality subscription seems farfetched but I just like the idea.)
The Corporation negotiates use rights with the copyright holders for digital use and redistribution. The contracts here would really have to do two things; guarantee unfettered access to the music by the corporation, allow the corporation to set rates as it sees fit (with no necessary relation between what the corp charges and what the copyright holder receives) and determine a payment schedule agreeable to the copyright holder.
In regards to the agreements between the corporation and other companies I think it fair to note that it would be VERY important that deals be directly with the copyright holder. Ideally this would be (in order of preference) the author/band/singer/musician, the label/producer, the major label, the distributor and/or the licensing agency (RIAA). The more intermediaries get cut out the better.
Owners or co-op members could have use of any piece of music on a sliding scale depending on purpose of use and membership type.
In determining the amount of payment for stock and reverse dividend an equitable use/cost business model would have to be determined. For example, a standard user could download whatever music I like and listen to it without limit. A club or mobile DJ user could download with specific performance rights at a slightly higher rate. A radio DJ could purchase a set of rights for rebroadcast at yet another rate. Bulk use rights could be purchased by radio stations or other rebroadcast entities allowing use of any audio for any length of time. Use rights could allow rebroadcast, restrict redistribution, set quality requirements. The market would really determine all of this so I won't go further into the business model just now..
Actual payment to the copyright holders would have to be on the basis of real and/or statistical models. This would mean that if you purchased a back library from Xunil Records of 1000 songs then regardless of what you are paid you would have to fairly report the actual use and probable use from a pre-arranged statistical model. So payment to Xunil might be a flat rate of $.10 per track, plus $.05 per download, where 450 songs were downloaded once, 100 were downloaded twice and 50 were downloaded three times. That would mean (1000*.10)+(450*.05)+(100*(2*.05))+(50+((3*.05)). But as we know one download would not mean only one use. The statistical model would have to describe the manner of compensation for any downstream uses.
The real beauty here is that the company would be handling both distribution and licensing fee collection in a single step. Effectively this would displace bypass RIAA and deprive them of influence in any future digital music marketplace. Any business model that can do this is worth a look.
Or I might be wrong.
Why not... (Score:3, Interesting)
Frankly, I don't see why the current system of copyright is tolerated. It benefits only a very small number of people while harming tens of millions. Times and technology have changed, and the cost of distribution is now effectively nil. In that sense information _is_ free.
Yes, I know there are other costs asociatated with producing a work, but even those costs are dwarfed by the economies of scale involved here. If every america downloaded just one album a month at 5 cents a song, that'd be around $150 million a month. Plenty to keep the industry going, I should say. I understand that in Napster's heyday, the volume of downloads was much larger than this.
Furthermore, I don't see any reason why violations for copyright infringement should be punished with anything more than requiring the person charged to pay for each item at the going rate. Copyright violations are _not_ stealing. It's copying. That's why it's called copyright. If I steal your car, you have one less car. If I copy a song, you don't have one less song. You've lost a sale, nothing more. The degree of damage is much less.
Not that this'll ever come to pass. Something I figured out a while ago is that just about everyone is secretly hoping to be the guy to stike it rich with copyrights/patents/whatever. So even though they probably never will profit from the system, and will probably end up being screwed over by it, they'll defend it to the death forever looking forward to the day they get to be the ones doing the screwing over.
Mmm, since when have audio CD's been rented? (Score:3, Interesting)
As film director, Richard Linkletter said once, "I thought the film industry was run like a Mafia until I had to deal with the music industry!" He was trying to get rights to a certain song for a film. But my point is the RIAA are not reasonable people. They are Special People with Special Powers. It appears that there was a Secret Admendment to the Constitution pass when we were looking and They would never allow this.
I would just like my DVD rental service to have the right to backup out of print DVD's so they would have a spare when one breaks! And the public domain return to us - 28 years was plenty!
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Online library with DRM-enforced distribution (Score:2, Interesting)
Here's a (hopefully) legal and tractable alternative Cringely's idea:
Libraries can legally lend a CD because there's only a single physical copy. The big problem is that you've got to pick up and return the physical copy.
So why not use DRM to our advantage, and have our libraries electronically lend the CD (or a single track), and use DRM to ensure there's only one electronic copy out at a time. Add a "Just In Time" inventory model where you only borrow the song immediately before playing it, and you return it immediately afterward. Then each track is potentially played a large number of times, back to back, throughout the day, by different users. We'd make a request to a server that finds a library with an available copy, and maybe queue up if none is free right now.
Of course, you've got to be online when you listen to the song for this to work, and you've got to get a lot of libraries (or entities with a similar legal status that would permit them to distribute a single copy of a work) involved.
An alternative it to set up such an entity which buys lots of copies of each CD, and simultaneously distributes as many single, one-time copies as it has a right to. Perhaps the users pay a tiny amount to fund the CD purchases.
What your reply and others like it miss (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen this argument three times now: "Just because I own a share of Corporation X doesn't mean that I have rights to copy its corporately owned IP." Granted. This is absolutely true.
But Cringley's Snapster is a compnay that is set up so that owners become part of the corporation, and one of those rights of the corporation is to space shift its corporately owned media. Snapster would be set up so that this was the raison d'etre of the corporation. As part of the corporation I would exercise my corporate ability to space shift the corporately owned CDs.
Furthermore, the ownership of a CD and the ability to space shift is very different than the terms of an EULA on, for example, MS Windows. Without such an EULA, Sony, BMG, Time-Warner, etc. might be out of luck. There is no explicit restriction to how many machines may play a space-shifted back up.
Still, Snapster might not fly, but only a court can test that. These arguments about how "Snapster would be just like Microsoft/Mp3.com/etc." have not considered the terms of incorporation Cringely proposes.
Re:Wow this usage seems very fair (Score:4, Interesting)
But, I've also seen it said that book sales were down about 30 percent.
It seems as if the least hypothesis is that file sharing, rather than costs the RIAA members zillions, is actually costing them statistically nothing.
Re:Why make a copy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Different Markets (Score:3, Interesting)
I have an example, but first some assumptions... (Yes I know the joke about assumptions)
First: We will assume that there is a lot of profit in an individual CD sale. I've seen enough evidence of this that I believe it to be true.
Second: We will assume that the music industry WANTS to make as much money as possible FOR ITSELF. (As opposed to making lots of money for it's artists)
Anyway, My example/idea/experiment is this... The next time Madonna, or Brittney, or whoever's hot next week, comes out with a new album, sell it for $6.00. Or maybe $6.50. Work out a price that still gives everyone in the distribution chain at least 1/2 the profit they were making on a 'regular' cd. (Except the Label, who's profit margin would be cut to 1/3 what it is right now.)
I predict that two things would happen. First: A lot more people who wouldn't buy an $18 album will be entirely willing to buy 3 (different) $6.00 albums, thus increasing total cash receipts. Since we halved everyone's profit (Except the record labels, which we cut by 2/3'rds) the artist is seeing 50% more money, and the label is making the same money it was on the expensive albums. This would also have the effect of tripling unit sales. Second: People would be more willing to buy an entire album just to get one or two songs. This also means more money coming in. And Third, people who had been entirely priced out of the market (Example: Young Kids) would now be in a position to buy music. All of this means more cash coming in.
(Short Tangent: If they did this, The Electronics arm of Sony would give every Record Label a big wet sloppy kiss as they cranked out more and more mega-CD-changers....)
This kind of pricing has precident. Anyone remember when Taco Bell used to sell it's regular taco's for like $1.79? They decided to swap volume for price, and they are now one of the Big Three Fast Food Chains.
But it won't happen.
Since the record industry makes it's profit after they pay everyone else, it is in their best interest to keep unit sales low, and costs high. Why go to all this trouble just so the ARTISTS can make a few more bucks? The Label doesn't care if the artists album goes Platinum or not. Just as long as they are raking in the bucks.
On a personal note, there are MANY artists who I own SOME albums of, but not all. If CD's were priced like tacos, I'd own the entire catalog of many musicians, just to say I had them all.
Specific examples: They Might Be Giants, Madonna, and The Nylons (Who?
Also! I'd go out tomorrow and buy up the entire back catalog of "Weird Al" Yankovich. I single out Weird Al because I already own all of his music, but much of it is on Vinal and Cassette. I'd have no problem re-purchasing on CD if the price was right. I bet you'd do the same thing.
Nipok Nek
Why doesn't NetFlix get into trouble? (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks
The Business of Music (Score:3, Interesting)
Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 16:26:36 +1000
From: Sam Johnston
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.2; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030718
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
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To: bob@cringely.com
Subject: The Business of Music
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
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Good Afternoon [Robert Cringeley],
A regular reader of your column, I write from Sydney, Australia to
provide some feedback about your 'One Possible Future for a Music
Business That Must Inevitably Change' article
(http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpi t20030724
lawyer, so I cannot comment on how successful your model would be
although at first glance it seems to be taking advantage of a loophole
that would soon be plugged. Worse still, initiatives like this are
clearly not in the spirit of 'fair use' and may jeapordise the future of
fair use provisions. I believe the test is 'would it replace a sale',
and on that front you're buggered in a similar fashion to mp3.com.
That said, you have correctly identified the (diminishing) role of music
companies. I currently have some guys in my office churning out HDTV
ready broadcast quality footage using a $1,500 Mac, $500 in software and
a $10k DV camera. Admittedly these guys won the 'Best Comedy' section of
Tropfest (http://www.tropfest.com/) using similar technology earlier in
the year, and thus possess some amount of technical and creative
ability, but the point is that they are not requiring hundreds of
thousands or even millions of dollars of equipment to generate content.
I trust the same applies to the music industry.
Now, if new electronic distribution companies were set up which would
allow content creators (note I'm using the generic term, rather than
musicians) to sell their content with a 95/5 split (or thereabouts) in
the creator's favour rather than the current (reversed) situation, and
if the cost of the content was adjusted to maintain similar returns per
sale, I believe we'd all (with the exception of fat record company execs
and content creators who require significant investment - eg hollywood
studios) be much better off. All of a sudden we're paying 90-95% less
for content. Distribution is much cheaper and so the distributors are
still able to make a profit (which is more in line with effort
expended). Content creators still get $x/sale. However, content
consumers are suddenly able to stretch their content budget much
further. Say I spend $300/annum on CDs - that might be worth 20 CDs
which are bulky, inconvenient and prone to damage. Instead, I get
something like 20 times that, and in a format that is convenient. Note
that even if I spend 1/20th of what I spend today, the artists are no
worse off.
Users don't bother sharing it because:
- the distributors have fast, distributed networks as opposed to slow,
intermittent connections that are oh so common on P2P networks
- their files are high quality, and are able to be converted (ideally
'peeled') to lower bitrates for portable devices
- the integrity of the files is guaranteed by checksums and/or digital
signatures
- digital rights management (if any) is transparent and unobtrusive.
an identifier - maybe a watermark if it could be implemented without
quality degradation, or simply a header and digital signature (without
which integrity could not be guaranteed) could be used in cases of
copyright violation.
- i can still be sued by the distributor or industry associations and
the value proposition is simply not worth the risk. this process is self
funded, and without a secure way of ensuring my identity is concealed,
is an effective deterrent.
- significant value is added in the way of being able to download
content at multiple sites, maintaining and sharing playlists, etc.
Re:Best Article Ever (Score:2, Interesting)
Still trying to replicate the recording industry (Score:5, Interesting)
In an editorial mentioned on Slashdot [slashdot.org] a couple days ago, Doc Searls said something about television that I think is highly relevant: that it is a mistake to think of television shows as products and viewers as customers. Searls points out that the television industry makes its money selling eyeballs to advertisers. Shows aren't the product, they are merely bait that converts ordinary people into ad absorbers who might buy products later.
Likewise, from a musician's viewpoint, recordings are a way to convert people into future concert ticket buyers. It's been pointed out abundantly on Slashdot and elsewhere that musicians make money by performing, not by CD sales. What musicians get out of distribution (of any sort) is the fame that generates better gigs. For some reason everybody seems to have a hard time letting go of the idea that somebody has to make money selling copies of songs.
Try looking at it this way. The recording industry is in the position television set manufacturers could have been in if they had thought of building tv's like pay phones, collecting the coins, dictating which shows could be broadcast and demanding most of the rights. If that were the case, television set makers would now be right in the middle of the fray over video file swapping, claiming to be losing money with every download, probably also claiming to be protecting the creative artists who produce the shows (but who get none of the coins), and perhaps suing everybody like the RIAA is doing.
Obviously all that is unnecessary and sounds ridiculous, but it might not seem so if we were used to it. After a century of constantly feeding quarters into televisions, it might well seem like something was morally wrong unless someone was getting paid whenever a show was viewed.
There is in place right now plenty of infrastructure to freely distribute the songs of anybody who wants their songs distributed. What musicians and the public get from this technology is a way to eliminate the filtering imposed by the music business, do the distribution automatically, get the exposure for free and let the public pick the winners. Replacing the recording industry with a different middleman is completely unnecessary.
Re:Why make a copy? (Score:3, Interesting)
You set up some kind of server that contains all of the music, and only allows one person to have any particular track "checked out" at a time. (Officially. If you're the type of person who really wanted to 'bypass' the one copy limit, you're not likely to be called on it because it's not a multi-national organization with millions of file-sharers. Just a couple dozen people who all kinda know each other. But 'one copy in use at a time' is the "understanding" everyone has of how it's setup.)
In all honesty, you don't really need THAT many people in your group to cover most of your music needs. In this type of setup, having one million people all contributing the same Britney Spears CD doesn't benefit you in any way, so you might as well not have them. You'd form your group with people who have similar tastes in music (or widely disparate tastes, if you want to broaden your horizons), and when a new CD came out that many people wanted, only 1 person actually has to buy it.
I guess this is kind of the Gnutella version of the article's Napster idea... decentralized, only members join the servers, which are run by the members themselves. Would work out better in my opinion.
Re:This is sure absurd (Score:2, Interesting)
If they can get people to pay to hear them play, all well and good.
If they can persuade people to pay money for recordings og their work, even better.
But for a situation to arise where people are forced to pay where a free alternative is available is totally illiberal and against all rational concepts of a free market.
Before copyright, only the best music survived, because it was worth supporting (in an abstract, not an economic sense).
Now we have a morass of pop-pap and gangsta-rap, thrash metal and tuneless, inane crap thrust down our throats by the marketing fools, and they expect us to part with our money like good little drones.
And I'm not a classical music snob - I merely prefer to listen to properly crafted music played by musicians who have a love of what they do, rather than mechanically generated studio pap.
Patronage - let's go back to it. There was plenty of music around then, all played by real people who ate, payed rent and enjoyed life.