Eliot Van Buskirk writes the Listening Post blog for Wired. Yesterday he put up a post, including a video clip, about an interview with Jon Simson the head of Soundexchange, the online music royalty organization.
Two things from the post that I want to comment on.
First, Simson says that Pandora should run audio ads in order to earn sufficient revenue to pay royalties. Of course I agree that audio ads are the way to go (although they won't command a CPM high enough in streaming music to pay current royalty rates).
Second, Van Buskirk ends the post with this thought: "Simson makes some decent points in the video, then shows that he has no grasp of the concept that infinitely-replicable digital goods differ from physical goods that must be manufactured."
We have all heard this "infinitely-replicable digital goods" argument before. It basically goes like this - because music is now digital and can be replicated at nearly zero cost it has nearly zero transactional value.
What I don't understand is why the proponents of this argument don't identify and advocate selling the one aspect of music that is not replicable and, any technological developments not withstanding, never will be.
What aspect of music is this? The time spent listening to music.
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