Comment Re:Copyright lobby won't let this stand. (Score 1) 171
I think you were replying to ElectricTurtle.
Well, I was meaning to...
I think you were replying to ElectricTurtle.
Well, I was meaning to...
For a lot of people - like me - music isn't all that important. [...] Perhaps when you manage to look beyond your own situation you will see that Spotify for many people no longer makes sense.
I don't think Spotify should be basing their pricing around what appeals to people who don't have much interest in music.
50p per year for unlimited streaming is about the maximum that I'd be willing to pay.
Then you are either phenomenally cheap or your have no interest in streaming music. Neither of which apply to most of the people in this discussion.
The average person doesn't have a clue about this media vs copyright war that has been happening since before the internet even existed.
I don't know what this "average person" is to whom you refer, but outside of Slashdot, I think most people think the notion of copyright is reasonably fair. Inside of Slashdot, you get modded down for being anti-piracy.
Paid Spotify won't pay the bills. This is a death knell for Spotify--they don't know it, but it is.
What are your figures for this and why do you believe that Spotify don't know something about their business model that you do? The idea that paid spotify wont pay the bills seems rather arbitrary when you consider that a digital service like Spotify can scale up or down its infrastructure and costs according to demand. Costs and demand move in quick step with each other unlike physical manufacturing where if you invest heavily at a certain productivity and demand falls, you may be stuffed.
I had to scale up a digital service recently (not music). It involved clicking some buttons on a hosting company's website, configuring a server and putting several hundred dollars on my card. In two months time, if I don't need it anymore, I'll cancel. I have cost of X per user, and profit of Y per user. So long as X
However talent is singular, and cannot be bought or taught
I've yet to meet a really good musician who wasn't taught their skills by other musicians. Perhaps one or two self-taught types are out there and are a success story. The rest all got taught. Often those lessons were paid for.
Of course, with the abuses regularly commuted by our various 'law enforcement' agencies, do you really trust them with anything?
The only people I trust less than law enforcement, are the people who do trust law enforcement.
The good is just a license, which the supply of is inherently infinite if you control it.
No, the good is the movie / computer game / novel / recording / whatever. The licence is a means of getting payment for that good. It's only artificial scarcity if that movie or other content just somehow popped into existence for everyone to come and get if it weren't for someone artificially constraining them. But the content didn't just pop into existence. It was produced at a cost.
Everything else follows from you focusing on cost of reproduction, rather than cost of production.
You misunderstand completely. I never implied that it was "good and noble"
Ah, no, I was expressing my surprise because you weren't saying it was good and noble. I'm just tired of people on Slashdot arguing about how it is virtually a moral act to pirate a movie or song because the company is stealing from culture or something. Your position is more honest and slightly refreshing, imo.
People who have actually tried to compete with free or very low cost (because download times, blank media, HDD space etc do have a small cost) have found it is possible to do. In fact the movie and music industries have been doing that for years in China and other low wage countries where a CD at western prices is more than a month's wages.
Well keep in mind that those markets are subsidised by our own. You can be certain that sales of DVDs in China didn't pay for the Lord of the Rings trilogy alone! If prices in countries where copyright is more respected fell in line with countries where it's widely disregarded, that would be a major dink in the profitability of movies, computer games, ebooks, et al.
Suggest you just sit there and wait till life gets easier.