You Don't Win In Court

YouTube is a transitional product.

You'd think the music business would learn. That if you don't like today's business model, just wait for tomorrow's. You're gonna get another bite at the apple, the game is to acquire knowledge and enter the future with an agenda. Which is how the major labels ended up controlling streaming music, demanding ownership, never mind good rates.

One nincompoop crashed his Tesla in Florida and the know-nothing commentators and the behind the times government insisted we jet back to the twentieth century, when everybody drove his or her own car and we were free to get into crippling accidents.

But Elon Musk said NO!

That's all it takes to stand up to the bullies, just say no. And that's what Robert Kyncl is doing to the record labels with YouTube. YouTube is a challenged business. It tried to create series but it turned out Amazon and Netflix were better at that. And now youngsters are moving on to Snapchat for content. What has YouTube got? Endless hosting and bandwidth costs. YouTube invested in the wrong players. When you want a revolution you bank on those who've been there before to get you there. In other words, you can reinvent distribution, but as far as what goes through the pipes...you need people with experience. And despite some YouTubers getting traction, they're not the ones dominating, it's the old wave music stars who do this. Some newbies crossover, those specializing in makeup and fashion, but the truth is they're transitional objects, just like YouTube itself.

You see there was no solution. Nowhere to get all the music for one low price a month. And when Warner wouldn't license Spotify, YouTube came in and filled the hole. Sure, we had Rhapsody, but first we had to kill piracy, which was and is the goal of the Spotify free tier.

YouTube is a bad place to watch music. And it's a miserable experience on the mobile hand-set. As for YouTube Red... That's one thing you know for sure, when they release no numbers, the numbers are bad.

So Robert Kyncl can't change the split because it makes bad business sense. He can't give up the action.

But the recording industry can wait for time to pass YouTube by, which it nearly has.

Then again, nitwits want to eradicate the free tier on Spotify, which eviscerates piracy and causes paid-for conversion.

But Spotify might be eclipsed by Amazon.

You see we're in a period of evolution. From ownership to access. And the model has now been figured out, all the music for one low price a month. We just don't know who's going to provide it and at what price.

Apple and Spotify are jockeying to be the provider. But they're selling the same price point. Amazon wants to lower it.

And Amazon is baking music into a larger offering, Prime, which includes shipping.

Meanwhile, the music industry wants the government to step in and right the ship when the truth is business will figure it all out.

Remember when Pandora was the problem? Well, it turns out Pandora's radio product is being eclipsed by the playlist, and Pandora itself screwed up by not expanding throughout the world. You think Spotify's numbers are bad? That's because you don't know the company is reinvesting around the globe. Ain't that America, where everybody thinks it's about them, and just them, where few venture beyond the nation's borders. No wonder all the innovation comes from Europe, those people have BEEN SOMEWHERE!

So you take a bite out of the NEXT apple!

You forget about YouTube.

You worry about Amazon.

When the government gets involved it kills innovation, cripples companies, like Microsoft. And it doesn't save those who were eaten alive, like Netscape. Business moves too fast for the government, and the government doesn't understand.

The music industry should be focused on streaming service adoption. Instead of decrying the new offerings, they should be encouraging people to check them out, the same way they sell a new band. Spotify is great, not the enemy. As for the naysayers... Does anybody want to listen to a David Lowery record anyway?

There, I said it. There are winners and losers in a new world. And once you start protecting the losers you're living in the land of "Atlas Shrugged." The revolution was built on tech, is all about the end of the old and the beginning of the new. Remember Sun? How about Osborne? Never mind Commodore and all those websites and apps that disappeared.

YouTube is not the enemy. It got the public to stop stealing.

You want the barrier to access to be low. Otherwise people will go somewhere else, there are so many offerings today. And maybe ten bucks a month, one hundred twenty a year, is too expensive. Most people never spent that much on music before. We're figuring out the compensation model, but be sure to face forward as opposed to looking to the past.

It's tech that allowed everybody to get a ticket to the show.

It's the music industry that refuses to charge what the tickets are worth, or go to paperless.

Stop complaining about the bots. Stop complaining about StubHub. Certainly stop trying to get the government involved. Tweak your assets to get the desired result, the power is with you!

P.S. Napster was killed and KaZaA sprouted up to replace it. Lawsuits didn't end P2P acquisition, legal offerings like the ITunes Store and Spotify did.


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