Monday, January 9, 2012

Disparate Views on the internet music model

On the 4th of January Forbes published Steven Bertoni's 5-page article about Spotify’s Daniel Ek giving the impression that, despite the financial downturn, the music biz and the new-media tech companies had finally consummated the marriage.

Shortly after finishing the article I remembered the "Information is Beautiful" graphic that showed/compared various revenues of music indicating that with Spotify the artist would receive $0.00029 per stream. This image is based on an excellent post at The Cynical Musician called The Paradise That Should Have Been about pitiful digital royalties. The conversation about the music business and the models at the bottom of the page on Information is Beautiful is interesting because it has continued since the original post  and participants are both music creators and music appreciators.

I do not know whether it is by design or coincidence but the Forbes article appeared on the 4th Jan and on the 6th January The Cynical Musician published an up to the minute update on Spotify called 'A Realistic Look at Spotfiy and Streaming' in which he revisits the subject and does some more factual in-depth analysis and concludes in a slightly less than his usual cynical way. I found the article informative and well presented and Faza has unusually opened it up to share in order to continue and develop the ongoing conversation.

Friday, January 6, 2012

full marks for ingenuity to the Polish Postman

A friend of mine from England sent me a Christmas card and left out two items of essential information: the addressee and the house number. All the postman from Poczta Polska had to go on was that it was for someone in my street and it came from England. Full credit to him for initiative - he put 2 and 2 together and got cztery (4).