Is Shawn Fanning's Snocap melting? 93
newtley writes "Rumors are swirling about the pending demise of Napster creator Shawn Fanning's Snocap, says former MP3.com CEO Michael Robertson. 'Articles mention a sale, but more likely it will be a shuttering and quiet bankruptcy,' he believes. 'Snocap represents a commonplace occurrence in the music business — an unprofitable retailer which withers and eventually dies.'"
Wha wha what? (Score:4, Funny)
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Must be global warming's fault! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Must be global warming's fault! (Score:4, Funny)
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Shawn Fanning, pioneer (Score:4, Insightful)
The only SnoCap that is any good is Pyramid's version, but I don't think we can easily share that online. It's really something better to be shared peer to peer.
Re:Shawn Fanning, pioneer (Score:5, Insightful)
One word. Usenet.
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But the important thing about Napster wasn't the technology, it was bringing everything together into something that anybody could use and taking it to the mass market.
What made it successful was the fact that lots of people were using it, and as a result there was lots of music to chose from.
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I am sad that his business ventures are going south, but it is a competitive industry, and frankly, not too hard to see the huge risk in this. They were not first on
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China man (Score:1, Insightful)
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Michael Scott: Wow, that is a great story. That's the American dream right there, right? Um, let me ask you, is there a term besides 'Mexican' that you prefer? Something less offensive?
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Chinaman is not a particularly respectful way to address someone.
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they said the other day that 225 million people no longer live in their native countries! With most countries being transient countries that don't have any particular group of people staying in their country, and then the other countries that are the destinations. In a world like today, saying any shit like that is bad and uncalled
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Geez, mister political correct (Score:3, Interesting)
Get your knickers out of a twist you pansie. It just means that you can still make a lot of money from something small, if you just sell enough of it.
1 billion sales with a tiny profit still amounts to a hell of a lot of money, China is well known for having the world largest population. Why do you think the US is bending over backwards for this communist country while Cuba (population 2 people and a dog) is on every banlist they can think up?
As for sandals, that is about as racist as saying the dutch wea
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iTunes is a billion of cheap sales.
Napster is you pay us money or we cut off your music supply. It's subscription radio. Satellite radio is trying that and is barely surviving. One company had to buy the other in order to have enough customers to survive.
Subscription video/tv yea that works. subscription music will never work as people don't listen to music that way. At least Satellite subscription offered something unique.
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The reason people react defensively when called out on their "unconscious racism" is because the term is meaningless but still offensive. To be a racist or a sexist or some other -ist requires an actively discriminatory state of mind in which the thinker a
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I am an Irishman. Should I be offended?
Some people are offended by the sun shining.
So any Chinese who are offended, raise your hands.
But wait! I just remembered. Free speech always offends SOMEONE.
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I had no idea Chinese people would be offended by the insinuation that they wear sandals. As far as I can tell most people wear sandals. As for the term "Chinaman", it is a bit archaic but little different from "Englishman" or "Frenchman". Maybe people should focus on substantive issues instead of whether or not they're offended by people not using the most recently preferred version of what your ethnic group likes to be called, or by insinuating that people in a given country might be open to the idea of b
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It's a bit old-fashioned and certainly doesn't reflect modern China in any way, but I think it's a bit of a stretch to find it really offensive.
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Since Chinese people refer to *ALL* foreigners on a regular basis as 'kwailo' (or however you spell it) I hardly think they would object to being called 'chinaman', after all, that is just a descriptive.
The politicall
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I didn't ask about being called "a Dutchman". Has a stranger said "Dutchman" as if it were your name? In addition to that, you glossed over my other questions, including whether or not the term "Dutchman" has a history of derogatory usage. There's nothing derogatory about being from China, but being called "Chinaman" (especially when it's not "a Chinaman") is derogatory (at least in the U.S.). The origin of the word may have been benign, but that doesn't mean that
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And yes, people that did not know
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Unless you know of a derogatory form of "Dutchman", it's not the same. I have no problem with being called Japanese, Asian, American, or any of the "politically correct" combinations (like Asian-American). ("Japanman" would be irksome, but not offensive.) However, none of those have derogatory connotations in the U.S. tha
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For examples you might actually understand, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastica [wikipedia.org] and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigger [wikipedia.org].
Of course, if you think that African Americans and the Jewish have nothing to be offended about, then may I suggest going somewhere where you could tell them that to their face.
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I didn't know that ... (Score:1)
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It's archaic, but it isn't inherently racist unless you make an effort to know what language the PC corps of America has deemed unacceptable regardless of intent and use it despite that knowledge. I personally didn't know, I expect he didn't either.
In other words, you're asserting that words are only offensive because Those Damn Liberals are in your face about it. Whether the people you're referring to with a given term find the term derogatory or demeaning has nothing to do with it. So, really, "nigger" would be okay in all contexts if only the PC corps of America hadn't deemed it unacceptable. Before those damn academics and hippies came along, nobody could possibly have been offended by such a word.
Do you see a logic flaw here? Just a small one?
"P
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Unfortunately there are only two forms of bigotr
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>when there was some random manufactured scandal about the Clintons taking money from a Chinese company, or
>somesuch. Well, a well known magazine at the time decided to run a cover with the Clintons and 1 or 2 other
>people all in "Chinese-face" -- their faces done up in a over the top parody of Asian facial structure stereotypes
>(exaggerated slanted eyes, sunken cheeks, etc)... And n
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The article puts the term in quotes, but a Google search of the term just points back to the article in question.
Do you think that might be a clue? Go and google on any real 'racist epithet' and you'll find thousands of hits - but the one you are worked up about? One hit to the article and one hit to slashdot. If absolutely no one else has used the phrase, then it hardly qualifies as an epithet - a descriptive word or phrase that has become a fixed formula. [wikipedia.org]
Here's a stereotype for you - I would have expected anyone with a hawaiian username, especially one as obscure as the wild boar Kamapua`a, to be a lot more thic
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If you were a Black person in the United States, you would not find it hard to believe. You should also not be surprised that nobody on Slashdot sees the problem, and you got modded down for even bringing it up.
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Snocap made the 2007 Digital Media Losers list (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Snocap made the 2007 Digital Media Losers list (Score:1)
Last week Snocap got pegged as among the year's top 11 losers: 6. Snocap Laid of 60% of workforce after losing CD Baby as a customer. CD Baby founder Derek Sivers offered illuminating insight to the eight-month partnership when he pointed to a paltry earning of $1,080 during the period.
I am on an indie musician mailing list that Derek either founded or co-founded. Derek is good people and he waited an awful long time to try and make the CD Baby/SNOCAP thing a success. I also have a SNOCAP account but I don't have any of my music ready for distribution. I've talked with enough successful indie musicians who also have SNOCAP accounts to know that SNOCAP is a massive failure. They all sell (thanks to CD Baby) successfully on iTunes, Rhaposdy, etc. and never have sales on SNOCAP. Of all the
and do we trust Mr Roberts either ? (Score:1)
Business plan (Score:2)
Oh. I see.
Ok, here's a hint for future venturers in the music sales business (or, in fact, any business): dont hand mountains of money to any joker you run across. As soon as you hand over those mountains you're the one who's taking the loss.
TFA's problems (Score:3, Insightful)
If this is true (I haven't read up on all the figures), then this is what is wrong with the recording industry. If you can't make a profit selling millions of copies of something for £10 which costs (basically) nothing to replicate, and is the work of a few people over less than a year, your business is screwed. Seriously.
No, selling music is _not_ like selling gravel. When was the last time itunes ran out of stock of a downloadable song? The entire idea is stupid. If itunes sell me a song which I download, do they no longer have the song?
The market value of digital music: zero. (Score:5, Insightful)
Recorded music will always have a market value of zero, or close to it. Even $1 per song is too high, and this price will fall.
All markets rely on supply and demand: as the supply of an item, prices fall. As the demand for an item goes down, prices fall.
Digital music has a near-infinite supply. Transfering 3MB of data (say, one song), as a cost of less than 1/2 cents from a server. P2P the cost is trivial and far lower.
Yet there IS a way to make money with music: it's called performing and value added items. When you go to work, say flipping burgers, you're paid for the act of working, the labor. The person who invented the burger doesn't charge fees for the act of making a burger. Music is no different. Making music, the act of writing it, is akin to learning how to make a burger. All of us get trained at no profit, and sometimes at great risk of a loss of time. Learning to make music is tricky, and it is artistic, but it should be no different in terms of learning how to make a burger, or learning how to fix a leaky faucet.
Bands will soon rely only on the performance of their music. That's what differentiates one band from another: their ability to entertain. And entertainment has GREAT value. There are many ways for bands to make money entertaining. You can play live. Maybe sell your CDs and include 1 ticket to a live concert. Or sell a CD, and include 5 tickets to an online performance.
Making money doesn't end there. How about selling CDs and offering CD purchasers the chance to win an hour of lessons in how to play their favorite song? Oh wait, the government prevents bands from offering contests in exchange for buying an item. It's the law that harms the musician.
You can make money selling autographed albums, or selling DVDs or CDs of the actual concert people attended. The cost to record a concert, and burn 50 CDs in 10 minutes before people leave, is trivial.
Don't complain about the zero value of recorded music -- its a market process that can't be worked around. Instead, find ways to MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR NEW AND ONGOING LABORS. Just like the burger flipper or the faucet-leak fixer.
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I own a small music production and marketing business, and I help quite a few local bands make money. How do we do it? We book them shows non-stop. We target cities in the middle of nowhere, visit there once, build a street team, and then go back over and over and over. We sell awesome and rare silkscreened posters that cost us $0.15 each but sell for $5, $10 with an autograph. We sell limited edition LPs (yes, records) and move to sell them out faster than we get them in.
I designed a system that records a concert (music feed from the board, two cameras without cameramen) and burns DVDs of the show within 15 minutes of the end of the show. Those DVDs can be given away, or sold for a small price. Sell 5 DVDs for $5 and let people in the town give them to friends (or better yet, give them away freely). This generates more buzz for future shows.
A band is no different than a plumber, a burger-flipper, or an architect. We all learn how to produce new labor on our own time and dime, and then we use that learning to generate income by working. Recorded music is marketing, and marketing has a cost, rarely a profit. You market yourself to get people to pay for your future labor, not your past.
I see a future in my small market to generate millions, but not online, and not with the recorded music. Instead, we're talking about packing shows in Bertrand, Nebraska and DeKalb, Illinois, where there are thousands of teenagers and young adults who are seriously bored out of their minds sitting on the web all day long. They want, and pay for, good bands to come out and charge their lives with loud and fun music. Don't visit a town once, visit it 6 times a year. A tour van costs $15,000, and the gas is $100 or so a show. Pack a venue with 300 young adults paying $6 each, sell $1000 in completely
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So in your world, there are only physical products and labor. What about other intellectual property that can't be 'performed'? I can't 'perform' my software as a software developer, but it can be distributed at zero cost. If I'm a scientist/researcher, I can't 'perform' a medical drug, but it can be distributed at low cost. I can't 'perform' a book -- well, not in a form people will want to hear -- but I can sure write one, and the book, too, can be d
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You gave an example that refutes your own statement. We already live in a world where developers are paid to write software which is distributed at no cost.
Books have a tangible value, so they will continue to be sold. Electronic copies of books have no value, but many of us LIKE the physical books and will pay for their continued existence, so I think authors are safe. Drugs are not electronic in any situa
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-Scientist/researchers are paid to "perform" research by funding agencies - usually government. Pharmaceuticals are a messed up oddity in research -hence why drugs are far too expensive.
-Writers in most fields are paid to "perform" writings for periodicals, not to collect royalties for 100+ years. For books, people pay for paper versions because they like the convenience.
Yeah copyright i
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That's an exceptional reply, and had I not posted the original one, you'd get one of my rare modpoints. Thanks for that insight.
I've come up with a theoretical replacement for copyright, one that I use myself. Nothing I produce is held under copyright, it is all pseudo-public domain. Because of this, my own income has gone up significantly more than when I "protected" myself through copyright or subscription-only services.
My system is MoralIP, which has two color: green and red. Green means the
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Ummmm...
No, it's NOT like flipping burgers. Playing music requires serious skills. Now, playing BAD music requires very little skill, but if
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"Recorded music will always have a market value of zero, or close to it. Even $1 per song is too high, and this price will fall."
You mean that recorded music has zero monetary value to you. I'll even wager that all your friends feel the same way: you enjoy acquiring music but you do not think it is worth paying for. No argument there -- but the iTunes Store is seeing its business grow each year, along with the rest of the digital music market. That's the problem that some record companies are having rig
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Not true at all. My wife and I don't pirate any music
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Imeem Has A Deal With Snocap (Score:1)
What happened with CD Baby and Snocap (Score:5, Interesting)
Snocap had everything going for them, and could have probably succeeded, but their execution was so bad that it was unbearable.
Check out my What happened with CD Baby and Snocap [cdbaby.org] article, and especially the comments below it, with all these musicians so frustrated that Snocap won't reply to anybody's emails.
The most brilliant idea, with bad execution, is worth nothing. [oreillynet.com]
Why does anyone care what Shawn Fanning does? (Score:1)
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here but he's just some geek who wrote a poorly implemented, centralized, file sharing database engine that people used to keep track of who had what music so they could share it, right?
So, what makes that so 'special' that he's a 'guru' in the online music biz? He isn't. He's a guy who wrote a server application to t