Since the commercial Internet crawled out of the primordial soup, it laid bare the classic behavior of cannibal capitalism: find a food chain and manage to insinuate yourself into it so you just take a bite out of everything that goes by. Sometimes this actually “added value” by improving the scaling behavior, but other times, not so muc…
Since the commercial Internet crawled out of the primordial soup, it laid bare the classic behavior of cannibal capitalism: find a food chain and manage to insinuate yourself into it so you just take a bite out of everything that goes by. Sometimes this actually “added value” by improving the scaling behavior, but other times, not so much. Sometimes it actually reduced value because it was just one more mouth to feed so the end-used price went *up*. On the Internet, it is comparatively easy to spawn a new thing, and at first, not that hard to wiretap a food chain when nobody was looking too closely. Now it’s harder to do but the spoils of disintermediation are mich larger. Of course, Tik-Toc will soon be seen as the next fatted calf and it too will have done to it what it is doing. The record labels are just this round’s big losers. But there is another point here worth considering. Disintermediation is the enemy of scale, but scale is necessary for efficiency. The question is whether we end up with a system where teams of raiders keep hatcheting each other to the point that *nobody* gets critical mass, or are there saddle points where the system can stabilize within rational limits.
It’s already happening to the video streaming services. When they first hit town, everyone was gonna ne a cord cutter - cut that nasty old coax from your cable TV provider. OOPS! Do you need that coax for Internet service? Even so, there are now enough streaming services that we are back at 100 streamers and I cannot find where to find the damn show I want to watch! People failed to appreciate that one of the critical values of cable TV the number of channels bit the directory service that lets you find and navigate to what you want. If you subscribe to 10 streaming services, you can’t find your shoes much less your shows.
It’s the metadata, stupid!
Labels vaporizing themselves won’t help if suddenly there are 100 places people release music and they spend all the time they would spend *listening* rummaging around the Internet.
That means that metadata will be the most valuable thing in the long run. Currently the music biz is in the throws of disruption *at small scale*.
What happens at large scale? How long do you think it will take GOOG to be the place people go to find music?
Plenty is a double-edged sword. Ultimately people pay to have sense to made of things.
And that puts the power back in the hands of aggregators and curators.
Good analysis. I think finding the content/music you want is going to get easier and easier. Your favorite DJ / search engine / curator will also still be around to help you.
Since the commercial Internet crawled out of the primordial soup, it laid bare the classic behavior of cannibal capitalism: find a food chain and manage to insinuate yourself into it so you just take a bite out of everything that goes by. Sometimes this actually “added value” by improving the scaling behavior, but other times, not so much. Sometimes it actually reduced value because it was just one more mouth to feed so the end-used price went *up*. On the Internet, it is comparatively easy to spawn a new thing, and at first, not that hard to wiretap a food chain when nobody was looking too closely. Now it’s harder to do but the spoils of disintermediation are mich larger. Of course, Tik-Toc will soon be seen as the next fatted calf and it too will have done to it what it is doing. The record labels are just this round’s big losers. But there is another point here worth considering. Disintermediation is the enemy of scale, but scale is necessary for efficiency. The question is whether we end up with a system where teams of raiders keep hatcheting each other to the point that *nobody* gets critical mass, or are there saddle points where the system can stabilize within rational limits.
It’s already happening to the video streaming services. When they first hit town, everyone was gonna ne a cord cutter - cut that nasty old coax from your cable TV provider. OOPS! Do you need that coax for Internet service? Even so, there are now enough streaming services that we are back at 100 streamers and I cannot find where to find the damn show I want to watch! People failed to appreciate that one of the critical values of cable TV the number of channels bit the directory service that lets you find and navigate to what you want. If you subscribe to 10 streaming services, you can’t find your shoes much less your shows.
It’s the metadata, stupid!
Labels vaporizing themselves won’t help if suddenly there are 100 places people release music and they spend all the time they would spend *listening* rummaging around the Internet.
That means that metadata will be the most valuable thing in the long run. Currently the music biz is in the throws of disruption *at small scale*.
What happens at large scale? How long do you think it will take GOOG to be the place people go to find music?
Plenty is a double-edged sword. Ultimately people pay to have sense to made of things.
And that puts the power back in the hands of aggregators and curators.
And the wheel of incarnation makes another turn.
Good analysis. I think finding the content/music you want is going to get easier and easier. Your favorite DJ / search engine / curator will also still be around to help you.