state51

Category: strategy

  • Music v. Tech – How to Stop Fighting Yesterday’s Wars

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    Google recently released some startlingly large numbers relating to the number of copyright infringement takedown requests it receives and continues to act upon. Almost at the same time (it can’t entirely be a coincidence) the UK book publishers’ trade association chief unleashed a broadside which looked calculated to prevent dialogue between content and tech for…

  • The Relative Incompetence of the Music Industry

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    Perhaps in the days of paper forms and typing pools it was excusable that the music industry shied away from line by line accounting in favour of statistical sampling and pro rata share outs of royalty pools. An additional copyright in those days meant a collective investment in administration that could be disproportionate. Now however…

  • Some Numbers In The Digital Music Industry

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    There are now very few barriers to entry in the digital music industry, if you are lucky enough to be middle class in a developed economy. Production tools are essentially free if you have a computer; broadband connects you to a number of service providers that can put you on sale. Even if you have…

  • Sony’s Gatfield Shows Mutual Misunderstanding Between Music & ISPs As Deep As Ever

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    Nick Gatfield, recently appointed CEO of Sony Music UK, took the opportunity of an interview with the Guardian newspaper to do a bit of grandstanding on behalf of the music industry. Broadband businesses he said “are being built on the back of illegal filesharing”, and went on to call ISPs liars if they claim they…

  • Unreasonable and Discriminatory Licensing in Online Music

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    Some time ago I was asked to provide a note that could be circulated to European ISPs about some of the practices employed by music copyright owners which, in my view, represented obstacles to the growth and health of the online music market. A recent discussion on the Pho mailing list prompted me to dig…

  • We Need a Creators’ Revolution in Music

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    It is telling how difficult it has proved in the UK for artists and songwriters to find their own voice. The Featured Artists Coalition (artists signed to record labels) has started for sure, but unless I am mistaken its funding comes from PPL, which is owned by the BPI. He who pays the piper… In…

  • Lessons for Music from the Steam Age

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    If you go to London’s Science Museum and look at some of the early commercial steam engines you might notice a ‘pump counter’ which ticked up with every pump of the piston. Boulton and Watt’s original business model was to charge a build fee, and then a usage fee, on the basis that their engine…

  • Pandora Tries to Flatten Earth – Cloud Dumps on PRS

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    A few years ago Pandora tried to launch in the UK, taking a PPL or nothing approach to licensing which unsurprisingly failed. I thought they missed a trick, and could have established a strong foothold with independent catalogues – which is where all the exciting new music is anyway – at low cost, and then…

  • Music’s Lap Dancing Future

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    Music can learn a lot from other industries. So I was delighted to see a piece of research into the UK’s lap dancing boom reported in yesterday’s Financial Times newspaper (which I find shrugs off butter and jam far better than would the iPad I don’t yet have). It’s not lechery that is driving the…

  • Amazon, GaGa, & UITS

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    Amazon’s inability to ship Lady GaGa album downloads is getting a bit of attention currently. I doubt they under-estimated demand – if anyone knows about demand it’s Amazon. It was unlikely to be a basic scaling problem either. Just about anyone with a hardware budget and a few decent systems/network guys can manage to get…