See, the thing about buying music and movies, is that it's so ridiculously expensive. Let's say I buy a new DVD release. That's 200 NOK right there. Almost the same price for CD's. How much, exactly, goes to the artist? I'd venture a guess and say "not much".
Last year, I found Spotify, which was just a whole new world for me. I mean, paying a monthly fee to get access to decent quality music streams? I was delighted. I found quite a lot of the music I usually listen to there, and it wasn't long before I didn't even bother to keep Winamp up. You could just queue hours and hours of music, and not grow tired.
So the concept is valid. However, it would need some slight changes. First of all, it needs a wider selection. For this to come true, the industry needs to cooperate. Which they won't, since the whole concept of Spotify renders several links in the chain obsolete, which in term makes those links earn no money on the music, and that, ladies and gentlemen, is definately something they will fight for.
I think basically the only thing holding the Spotify-concept back, is the expensive chain between the artists and the consumers. The powers making money off of artists, are too overwhelming, and too strong at the moment, for the consumers themselves to dictate the terms.
A lot of people I've spoken too agree that paying a monthly fee of, say, 200 NOK for music and movie access online, is an agreable option. Of course, it wouldn't be expected to gain access to "new things" until a fair time has passed since release. I.e. movies are available when the DVD is released, and music albums maybe X amount of time after they hit stores. I don't know, I'm sure something could be worked out.
Other issues that would need to be adressed are:
- Whether or not we would be allowed to store data locally for personal use.
- Pricing on the subscriptions, different kinds of subscriptions etc.
- Online/offline problem.
I just wanted to let it out there, for people to think about. Do we really need the money hungry middlemen?
(Related article from db.no here, from itavisen.no here)
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I couldn't agree more my friend. And we may also mention that we are students at the moment, so buying all the shit that we want to watch or listen to, is just not going to happen. I believe that the technology has reached a level that makes the middlemen irrelevant, actually they're not needed anymore. If I use music as an exsample: I firmly believe that a band could choose a part of todays technology to distribute their music themselves, easily. But, using middlemen saves them a lot of work, and gives them the opportunity to focus solely on the music. I get that part, but the industry needs some changes. I haven't used Itunes much, but they are getting there.
ReplyDeleteOne reason that makes people download shit: They want to know if the movie or album is any good before they buy it. We can't afford to buy everything, so we download it, and then we buy the good ones. The ones that we feel deserves our money. I'm not going to buy a movie that I'll watch once, and then it's just sitting in my shelf. So I will always download stuff, and there is no way they can stop that in my opinion.
Crazy idea: Why don't they let you download their movie from their site? And encrypt the file, so that we can only open it once. And if it's any good, we buy it. If not, tough luck. If we dont buy the movie, well, you probably didn't make a good one. This last segment was just bullshit, but the point that I wanted to show was: Do something instead of trying to stop everything from happening! Give us an alternative that is more attractive to us than downloading it for free. Something we all can agree on. I am waitning, and I'll listen to every suggestions.
Apparently, some of those in power have now started catching up, read here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dagbladet.no/2009/03/19/kultur/musikk/fildeling/spotify/tekno/5364866/