Entries tagged with “napster” from Tools of Change for Publishing

Lessons from Digital Disruption in the Music Business

Andrew Savikas
October 29, 2009 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Last week's On The Media (mp3 download here) devoted the full program to challenges and changes during the past decade or so in the music business -- from the unanswered legal questions about sampling (check out Girl Talk for the genre taken to the extreme) to the shifting economics of concert tickets and promotion to the changing role of industry rankings like Billboard's Hot 100. (Fun fact I picked up while listening: more than 8.5 billion songs have been sold via iTunes.)

My favorite segment was near the end, about the changing nature of the relationship between artists and fans, a segment called "Why I'm not Afraid to Take Your Money" which featured a great interview with Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls:

Everyone has to stop thinking there is an answer. The answer is, there's an infinite number of answers.

People don't love music any less. There might be a lot less money out there in the industry, but maybe that's a good thing. Maybe the fact that the live industry is tanking to a certain degree means that ticket prices are now going to be reasonable. As far as the music is concerned, maybe it ups the ante. If you're a teenager with a dream of being a rock star, maybe you'll really think about why. Were you doing this to be rich and famous or are you doing this because you really love music and you want to connect with people, and you'll do it even if it just means you make a living wage? If that's true, I'm - you know, I'm a fan of the new system.

MyGazines Settles With Magazine Publishers

Mac Slocum
October 3, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

Mygazines, a Napster-esque magazine service, has reached a settlement with a host of magazine publishers. From Folio:

... according to a source with knowledge of the terms, confirmed later by additional court documents, Mygazines has agreed to remove all of the publishers' copyrighted content, review and screen uploads for any content not authorized by the publishers and open a channel to allow Mygazines to be notified when copyrighted content appears.

The service is still open, but Folio says many of the titles present at the site's launch are no longer available. Mygazines is promoting a vague Publisher Program that offers demographics and revenue sharing.

Related Stories:

• Joe Wikert: "Mygazines.com: The Magazine Industry's "Napster Moment"?"
• Maghound Customizable Magazine Service Launches
• POD Opens Door to Magazine Experiments and Customization
• Piracy and Advertising: An Unlikely Union that Just Might Work

TOC Recommended Reading

Mac Slocum
August 21, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (0) | Listen

On Being Positive in August (Adam Hodgkin, Exact Editions)

Publishers need to consider the possibility that anything that can be published, will certainly be published digitally, and will, in principle, be available anywhere from many devices. That does not mean that it all will be free (why should it mean that?). But it does mean that it will either be available for free (sponsored by advertising) or because someone wants to buy, give, or rent it.

A New Model for News (pdf) (Associated Press Report)

A key question for news planning today is "How can this story be told?" Increasingly, the answer can be found outside traditional storytelling formats. In one popular example in the 2006 U.S. elections, an AP multimedia producer "mashed up" excerpts from political attack ads with a musical mix. The result garnered more than half a million hits after going viral and getting passed along from the customer sites that displayed the piece. (p.61)

Mygazines.com: The Magazine Industry's "Napster Moment"? (Joe Wikert, Publishing 2020)

This is a golden opportunity for the magazine industry to see how a Napster-like platform for periodicals could and should work effectively. Mygazines is essentially doing e-content R&D for the entire magazine industry; I just hope the industry takes the time to study and understand the results before they look to kill the service.

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