Comments on: Yahoo’s Ian Rogers To Music Industry: “Inconvenience Doesn’t Scale”

By: MOG Over Promises And Under Delivers With New Music Service

MOG Over Promises And Under Delivers With New Music Service — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 04:57:25 +0000

[...] model. But the crucial part of that service has vaporized – it’s no longer free. And non-free music subscription services don’t work, despite years of attempts by major companies and startups [...]

By: Helge Städtler » Blog Archiv » Measuring 2.0: End-of-Control´ness (part 4 of 5) - Thetawelle

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 22:27:30 +0000

[...] Rogers from Yahoo nailed this with the sentence “Inconvenience doesn’t scale.” A similar point of view is shared by Matt Mason in his book The pirates dilemma. Long story made [...]

By: Yahoo And Rhapsody Team Up For Full Song Playback In Search Results

Yahoo And Rhapsody Team Up For Full Song Playback In Search Results — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 18:20:49 +0000

[...] today, users who search for an artist on Yahoo Search will be able to play the artist’s songs in the search results, thanks to a shortcut sitting at the top of the page. Even better, the songs [...]

By: TechCrunch Gets It Righteously, Hypocritically Wrong on Creative Rights | Redfin Corporate Blog

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:29:59 +0000

[...] Arrington has taken similar positions against digital rights for music, and the blogosphere generally has expressed something like contempt for journalists, artists and [...]

By: Ex-Yahoo Music GM Ian Rogers Launches Topspin Media | Tipstech.info

Ex-Yahoo Music GM Ian Rogers Launches Topspin Media | Tipstech.info — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:29:00 +0000

[...] down consumers’ throats. In October 2007 Rogers addressed a number of music excutives where he explained that consumers aren’t willing to adopt inferior products (namely subscription music [...]

By: Ex-Yahoo Music GM Ian Rogers Launches Topspin Media

Ex-Yahoo Music GM Ian Rogers Launches Topspin Media — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 21:54:57 +0000

By: I Am Failing To Get Excited About Napster’s 6 Million Songs

I Am Failing To Get Excited About Napster’s 6 Million Songs — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:51:09 +0000

[...] since consumers don’t seem to like it and the labels take all the revenues. Ian Rogers explained why that business sucks last year, right before he bailed out of [...]

By: Helge Städtler » Blog Archiv » Mein Blick in die Kristallkugel für 2008

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 09:08:46 +0000

[...] Das Kopierrecht ist ein besonderer Fall. Ich prognostiziere, dass sogenannte “Walled Gardens” tot sind, mausetot. Wenn ich z.B. einen französischen Song nur im iTunes France kaufen kann, aber nicht kaufen darf, weil ich deutscher Staatsbürger bin, dann ist das in Zeiten des Internet eine künstliche Grenzziehung (Wall) die unnötig ist und wirkungslos. In diesem Fall – wie er mir persönlich vor wenigen Tagen passiert ist – besorge ich mir den Song eben einfach auf anderen Wegen. Apple’s iTunes wird sich vermutlich noch mit dem erwarteten Filmverleih nach alten Businessmodellen ein Weile durchhalten, aber dann wird auch Apple einlenken müssen. Die Augen geöffent hat mir diesbezüglich Gerd Leonhard mit seinem Online-Buch “The End of Control” (6 Kapitel als PDF), das ich jedem Leser nur wärmstens empfehlen kann. Mein Resultat: “Inconvenience doesn’t scale”. [...]

By: TechRadar

TechRadar — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:31:34 +0000

[...] also made an impassioned speech last October calling for sanity in the music industry. “Inconvenience doesn’t scale,” he said. And – suing Napster for popularizing music sharing was “like throwing Newton in jail [...]

By: TechCrunch en français » Amazon fortement impliqué dans le renouveau de l'industrie musicale

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 10:33:18 +0000

[...] le prix de la musique se rapproche de zéro et même les grands sites comme Yahoo commencent à tenir un discours nouveau et [...]

By: Brandt Cannici

Brandt Cannici — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 21:54:36 +0000

Arrington has long time been a supporter of innovative paths in the music industry. But in the end his most recent post is right. The price for music distribution will eventually drop to $0; without DRM, why would consumers want to pay a fee to download something from Yahoo or iTunes when they could download it for free via P2P?
I think we need new innovative models that offer some value-add that doesn’t exist now. I’m always considered radical, but I suggest that we have consumers pay when an artist creates something and then let the final product circulate for free. It costs nothing to distribute, so why charge for it? Charge for creation.
The value-add is that consumers can get involved in the creation process. Seeing their favorite musicians’ works grow from idea until completion and giving feedback to affect the growth of the song.
Here is a good example where the artist is slowly constructing his song.
http://www.stra...ault.html?id=21

Not just music but anything could be made this way. If people put their money where their interests are then you would see a lot more specialized music, movies, and books being created. Here is an interesting one about the “Giants of Silicon Valley”.
http://www.stra...ault.html?id=48

By: Roy Smith

Roy Smith — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 20:29:21 +0000

I happen to agree with Arrington that music is headed for “Free”. No configuration of deck chairs on the RIAA titanic will stop that.

RIAA’s monopoly was built in a time when it was too expensive for an artist to record themselves, produce a physical LP or CD, get wide distribution for it, and promote its sale. Each one of these roadblocks is now easily within reach of even my 18 year old son’s garage band.

Technology and the Internet have rendered all media distribution businesses obsolete (newspapers, book publishing, record and film distribution). Most of them just don’t know it yet.

By: Uhhh..

Uhhh.. — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 19:25:42 +0000

I actually really, really like Yahoo! Music Unlimited.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:03:23 +0000

I think Ian Rogers is the one of the rare digital media executive who truly loves music and is young enough to understand the realities of P2P. I’m still shocked how much I’m in agreement with TC in regards to everything music.

By: Bruce Warila

Bruce Warila — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:55:51 +0000

The other problem (beyond the what Ian describes) with music subscription services is the failure of these services to account for the total end-user cost of obtaining a single track.

The real cost of obtaining a track is not the pennies that subscription services charge, or the .99 cents that download services like iTunes charge. The real cost of obtaining a track is the value of the time it takes to discover a new track plus the purchase price of the track.

The value of the time it takes to find a new song that you like is actually more valuable to most consumers than the retail cost of the track. This explains why a far greater percentage of the population prefers to own the music they consume. The retail cost of loosing your music is one thing, but the time value of loosing the collection you amassed during so many music safaris is priceless.

It seems like the best solution to the collection-disappearance problem would be to offer a bookmarking feature or service that enables any subscriber to easily move his song collection to any other music platform in the marketplace. After all, nobody wants their song collection inescapably tied to one company.

The music subscription service providers only have to look at how phone number portability in the telecom industry has helped ease consumer concerns, as well as to drive new service activations.

By: mathew

mathew — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:14:43 +0000

Rogers is right. And exactly the same argument applies to video.

I’ve bought music online, but I haven’t bought video online, precisely because of the DRM. So the TV companies have missed out on probably hundreds of dollars of revenue from me alone.

BTW, techcrunch’s Atom feed link for this item took me to the main techcrunch.com page, not to this item. Perhaps it needs looking at?

By: phenom

phenom — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:13:56 +0000

songs should be free or should cost less than a dollar… sounds like an online dollar shop

http://vidsonly.blogspot.com

By: Bjorn Tipling

Bjorn Tipling — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:00:25 +0000

This post completes me. Finally people are shouting that the Emperor has no clothes.

By: Jim Z

Jim Z — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:52:27 +0000

#17 – LPs are great! Check this out: http://www.broo...mp;cm_re=Result*R1C1*T

I wonder how long before the music industry will request the list of people who bought that device…

By: Luther

Luther — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:39:52 +0000

If music makers can’t find any way to protect their copyrights, then music will go amateur, sort of like youtube home videos.

By: emerson direct

emerson direct — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:17:21 +0000

The issues arent the price of a song people, it’s how to access the song that you want to buy. people have no problem buying A song, but they dont want to have to jump through a hoop to buy it, and then jump through another to download it and then another to transfer it to a device and then another if they wish to share it with a friend.

it seemed so simple when they were on lp’s now, didn’t it?

there are too many layers as there has always been in the music industry, and as usual, they all need and want to get paid…

By: ProHipHop: Hip Hop Business

ProHipHop: Hip Hop Business — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 14:21:11 +0000

Yahoo!’s Ian Rogers Big Ups Amazon MP3 Store…

Michael Arrington has a great post on the perspective of Yahoo Music VP of Product Development Ian Rogers who points out that the music industry has forced Yahoo! to create unpleasant consumer experiences. His disregard for DRM even leads him to descri…

By: Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:15:17 +0000

It doesn’t matter if music is free or not. Peole will continue to download it for free and you can’t stop that.

By: Julian Bond

Julian Bond — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 13:08:03 +0000

It’s not the Titanic. They’re soaring. It’s rearranging the deck chairs on the Hindenburg.

“I think the future of music really is online songs for less than a dollar.” Actually the future of music sales is any encoding you want for 10c a track. That’s about the price point where easy can compete with free.

By: Steve Ballmer

Steve Ballmer — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 12:55:08 +0000

WRONG!
Inconvienence scales quite nicely!
Have you ever tried SAP, VisualBasic, .net, xBoxLive, ….
You people should find out what you are talking about before printing this stuff!
Inconv. slows down users, yes, but it slows down hackers even more and should be engineered into every system!

http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com