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Unfortunately, it will be the few million people who will be unable to tune into the Celestial Jukebox because they live too far out in the sticks to get decent broadband:
Depending on the definition of broadband speed, providing universal broadband would cost between $20 billion and $350 billion, according to a preliminary report released Sept. 29 by Federal Communications Commission task force charged with delivering the National Broadband Plan to Congress. The wide-ranging report also noted that its initial findings show actual broadband speeds lag advertised speeds by at least 50 percent.
The task force said its early analysis indicates that approximately 3 million to 6 million people are unserved by basic broadband, defined as speeds of 768 Kbps or less, but the number of unserved increases as the definition of minimum broadband speed increases. The FCC estimated it
would cost $20 billion to provide 768 Kbps
or less universal broadband service and northwards of $350 billion for 100 Mbps or faster service.
On the brighter side, most of those digitally disenfranchised millions probably live within driving distance of a Wal-Mart, so there will always be a market for Toby Keith Urban CDs.
Other than that, the only future for physical products will be indie road warriors selling (or ‘giving away‘) prodcuts at their gigs. But if it’s all “in the ether,” then even the imperative to purchase at the scene is eventually going to evaporate.
You know, like the crazy French Kinniggit in Holy Grail, “He’s already got one…” because with the Jukebox, he’s already got everything.
I continue to be annoyed that Spotify generates all this press, when it is still not available in the United States. Meanwhile, services like Lala.com, which is both viable and available today, continue to languish in the public consciousness.
That said, anything Spotify or any other company can do to encourage subscriptions, and thus advance the “access” over “ownership” paradigm shift, is a step in the right direction.
Spotify today encouraged more of its users to pay for premium services by integrating PayPal.
Previously Spotify only accepted Visa and Mastercard.
Adding PayPal will open subscription to many more users, particularly under-18s who aren’t eligible for a credit card. PayPal payments can be directly linked to bank accounts.
The venture-funded jukebox service faces a battle to convert tens of thousands of non-paying users into £9.99 per month subscribers. Revenues from the advertising Spotify inserts into free streams are understood to be very low.
Unfortunately, he has to get it from his Zune…
This is the best $15/mo I spend.
I have gladly given up owning my music for the convenience of having access to all the music I can discover. (The only bands I haven’t been able to find on Zune’s subscription service are Tool and Rammstein).
Who’da thunk that Microsoft would ever get ahead of the curve that Apple has been bending for an entire decade? Or that an Apple/Mac/iPod convert like me would have something favorable to say about the friggin’ Zune?
I keep reading that (for example) iTunes won’t offer a similar subscription-based service because of Steve Jobs insistence that users want to “own” and not “rent” the music they listen to.
OK, that’s fine for those narrow-minded consumers who want to listen to the same thing over and over again. But there are some of us who actually like to discover new music, and are willing to shell out the cost of a single CD each month if it means we get “access” to everything.
Note the use of words here: “rent” carries this negative connotation of temporariness, the idea that “if you stop subscribing, you loose all your music.” Well, if you do stop subscribing, you don’t really lose all the music, it’s still there.
The better word is “access,” because when you speak of “access” to the entire universe of recorded music, then the notion of a temporary “rental” becomes, well, pretty fucking irrelevant.
It’s sorta like the “public option” in the health care debate. You want your current plan, fine, keep it (and keep listening to the same damn thing over and over again). But there are some of us who want another option.
So it’s good to see, as this blogger attests, that once people discover the advantages of “access”
over “ownership,” the market is going to continue growing.
Skimming through a few unopened e-mails from last week, I find this startling item via TechDirt:
Let me repeat that: despite all of the whining and complaining about the state of the music industry, some of the music industry’s own economists are admitting that the market is growing.
Not surprisingly, it found that retail product sales have declined, but the other parts of the industry have grown noticeably more than the decline in retail sales. This growth has come from a few sources. Live show attendance has increased more than retail sales have decreased. Consumers have actually spent more. On top of that, the business to business side of the industry (sponsorships, licensing, advertisements, etc.) has grown as well, opening up new and lucrative means of making money.
This is encouraging to read. What with all the “free” music I’ve been listening to lately via Lala.com, I’ve been wondering, “so, where’s the money going to come from?” to support all these emerging (and even the established) musicians who are drifting around in my Celestial Jukebox.
OK, so, maybe the cash-flow isn’t coming from direct “sales” of music, but the study cited in this article does seem to be saying that it’s coming from….. somewhere. Whew.
I’ve been trying to get this post from Derek Sivers on here for a few days, various technical conspiracies have intervened.
Call it the McBride/Sivers principal if you must; it started with uber-manager Terry McBride and Derek has breathed more life into it. Wherever it started, whatever you call it, the importance of the principal as a fundamental tenet of Music 3.0 cannot be overstated.
Because every person left each show with a CD, they were more likely to remember who they saw, tell friends about it, listen to it later, and become an even bigger fan afterwards.
Then, when the band came back to a town where they had insisted that everyone take a CD, attendance at those shows doubled! The people that took a CD became long-term fans and brought their friends to future shows.
Music 3.0 — aka the era of the Celestial Jukebox — is about getting people to show up for the experience. If “giving away” the “product” (actually, selling MORE of it…) makes that happen, then it’s entirely worth the price of the exchange.
Also important to note that the artist that McBride first tried this with is Griffin House, one of the artist on the 2008 “10 out of Tenn” tour that demonstrates another important aspect of the shifting paradigm.
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