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
Friday, October 31, 2003

Tim Oren has a meta-plan

Tim Oren:

Desiderata for a business model Some of these flow directly from the market description, others need a bit of explanation:

Leverage the net for promotion and distribution as far as possible. Both to reduce the costs of creating new markets (building a peak), and to create a structural barrier to labels tied down by channel conflict.
Be neutral to the artists' and genre audience's choices of revenue model. Whether the model is CDs, MP3s, concerts or merchandise, support it. Support both bundling and variable pricing, whatever makes the market by minimizing transaction costs in the eyes of the particular set of artists and customers.
Disaggregate creation, production, promotion, and distribution. This will allow amortizing infrastructure across genre and artists, while it forms another structural barrier to labels whose models inherent aggregate promotion and distribution. Specialists may ultimately be more efficient than 'tied' services.
Emphasize individual value, to both the customer and artist. This should be the antithesis of one-size-fits-all top 40 demographic marketing. Give them what they want, and then show them some more things they want. Create loyalty and trust among customers and artists; increase the emotional costs of cheating the system.
Be adaptive. It''s a moving landscape. The BigCo's are stuck on the peaks and can't explore. Fill up the new ground by using both artists and customers as scouts.

OK, Tim, which bits am I missing from mediAgora?
Or put another way, isn't mediAgora an ideal component of the choice of revenue model?

Posted 1:36 AM by Kevin Marks

Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Untangling the Web of Music Copyrights

Lydia Loren has a thorough paper on copyright complexity:
The crisis in the music industry has been brought about only in part by the digital revolution. The layering of copyright ownership interests and the complexity of copyright law, particularly as it applies to music, has also played a major role in the inability of the industry to respond to the rapidly evolving ways in which digital works can be distributed and otherwise exploited.

After detailing the tangle of legal rights in the music industry and identifying the vested industry players and their respective roles, this article describes the difficulties faced by users of new technology in attempting to comply with the law. These problems may explain, at least in part, the widespread phenomenon of what many in the industry see as infringement on a massive, and global, scale. Without low-transaction-cost solutions and reasonable absolute price for obtaining authorization for the digital activities of millions of users, we see a classic example of market failure. Users respond to this failure by effectively exiting the failed market, completely ignoring the overly cumbersome requirements of the law.

However, her proposed reform is almost as complex as the current system, and removes the simplicity of compulsory licensing, requiring more, not less negotiation, thus raising barriers to re-use.

Posted 9:54 AM by Kevin Marks