mediAgora

a new marketplace for media

mediAgora defines a fair, workable market model that works with the new realities of digital media, instead of fighting them.

Principles:
  • Creators should be credited and rewarded for their work.
  • Works can be incorporated into new creative works.
  • When they are, all source works should be credited and rewarded.
  • Customers should pay a known price.
  • Successful promotion of work should be rewarded too.
  • Individuals can play multiple roles - Creator, Promoter, Customer
  • Prices and sales figures should be open
  • Relationships are based on trust and reputation
  • Copy protection destroys value
Thursday, April 17, 2003

Major labels dig their own hole

Independent record labels doing well while the majors crumble. Build your business model to break even further down the power law curve, then reap the windfalls if an act does better:

Caplan, who spent 21 years as an A&R (artist & repertoire) man with Sony-owned Epic Records, says big labels also have lost sight of what music is about - the artists, not the songs.

By seeking home-run hitters at the expense of solid team members, he notes, "They're just ceding a whole big part of the marketplace that we can go after."

Posted 2:29 AM by Kevin Marks

Bricklin gets that it is all about payment, not enforcement

Dan Bricklin writes a detailed and thoughtful piece on how artists get paid:
There is a lot of controversy about digital media, copy protection, fair use, and internetworking. In most cases from the viewpoint of legislators trying to react to lobbyists, as I understand it, it boils down to one question: How will the artists get paid? My answer is simple: The same way artists have always gotten paid. Let's examine that issue to see how it applies to today's world.

Posted 2:25 AM by Kevin Marks

Tuesday, April 08, 2003

Winer wants a media revolution

Dave Winer's Speech and Weblogs:
But gradually we're putting together the Napster system as a bootstrap, using the Web as a basis, and we can do it safely because our tools are used by creative people in totally non-infringing ways and in areas where the fat smelly guys are evacuating, the written word. They aren't smart enough to see our end-run. And even if they were, they'd have to convince the Supreme Court to revoke the First Amendment. Don't worry, they've tried, remember the CDA, passed by Congress, signed by the President, but overturned by the court.

Dave is on exactly the mediAgora track. We need to build payment systems from the bottom up to enable the independent creators to get paid, and encourage those who help people find them to pay too by cutting them in on the sales they generate. What they should sell is a perpetual right to have a good quality copy of the work, not a download, and not a medium.

Posted 4:30 PM by Kevin Marks