Nickname: indie friend

Review: The recording industry is ripe for reinvention and combining the fan, the band and the club in interconnected communities while eliminating DRM and enabling a discounted price for downloads is the future.

Date reviewed: Sep 6, 2006 4:34 PM

Nickname: musician

Review: Let those old dinosaurs die. Those old business models can't survive, and to lose those middlemans, well, good riddance. Bands and musicians will establish their own channels directly to their customers, and make money through live concerts and selling stuff to fans. Some silly megastars will lose, but for culture ,in general, so much the better!

Date reviewed: Nov 24, 2005 11:52 PM

Nickname: Clapton

Review: The recording company's busines model is dead in today's digital market. Garth Brooks is already paving the way with his deal with Wal-Mart for sole distribution of his product. Yahoo, Apple, et al need to begin negotiating directly with the artists to acquire content that they can distribute profitably. Right now there are too many hands reaching out for the music dollar.

Date reviewed: Nov 24, 2005 3:26 PM

Nickname: scorcher14

Review: The old music business model of promoting via radio and selling via stores is dying. And there is not yet a new model to replace it. We have well-established means of distributing music electronically, but until the marketing side of the equation takes off, we will continue to see declining sales. The key to the future is tying together online distribution with an equally effective online promotion vehicle to replace broadcast radio. That piece has yet to be invented, but kudos to the one who figures it out!

Date reviewed: Nov 23, 2005 8:08 PM

Nickname: Timo

Review: There's tons of money to be made by lowering the price point to ignite paid for downloads. You can do that without destroying margins by shifting cheapo content to "rental" or time limited offering using technology. This is opening new markets without destroying the current model (permanent copy at premium price). How does 5 cents for a week's use sound?

Date reviewed: Nov 23, 2005 8:56 AM

Nickname: LadyMatika

Review: There are some people who can't afford the high costs of p2p servers. And most of the people can't afford to have credit cards and Visa's and there are people who are not even gonna give out their checking account numbers online. Give me a break. So free file sharing p2p systems are available because they know a lot of people can't afford the others. Actually, the only one that I could afford to pay for was limewire but I had to discontine it because of all the problems I'm having on my computer. And it's not because of downloading songs because limewire and my virus control are intertwined. And as for what I think of RIAA, they are a bunch of money grubbers that use their artists to get their wives and spoiled children expensive gifts. Face facts people, when and if they get rid of free file sharing--and I doubt they will--they will go after and shut down the paying ones!

Date reviewed: Nov 22, 2005 11:30 PM

Nickname: Action

Review: I find it ironic that the recording companies charge such high rates to online music offerring companies when these companies are "suppose" to be the answer to fighting illegal downloading. Illegal downloading has been blamed, by recording companies, for their recent income shortfalls. So why charge your supposed saviour such high rates making it virtually impossible for these online companies to be profitable. A perfect example of Recording Companies Backward Logic!

Date reviewed: Nov 22, 2005 10:32 PM

Nickname: musicman

Review: music value chain is full of actors. Renting is the solution and I think that nowdays music companies will have to be more flexible on their revenues, online music is here to stay!!

Date reviewed: Nov 22, 2005 9:15 PM

Nickname: AnotherView

Review: Yes, but... How many illegal downloads *really* represent lost sales? I used to download a lot of music that wound up deleted after a short period or languishes in a seldom-visited corner of my hard drive. These were songs that I never would have purchased anyway, so who's hurt? Like the software industry, the record companies love to blame piracy for "billions" in lost sales, but provide very little evidence to back up the claims.

Date reviewed: Nov 22, 2005 6:38 PM

Nickname: Kythe

Review: Stopping illegal downloads is not only infeasible; it could very well hurt bottom lines, rather than help. There is substantial evidence that free music distribution acts as a form of marketing, especially for lesser-known artists. The real bottom line is this: the middlemen (e.g. record companies) are rapidly becoming obsolete.

Date reviewed: Nov 22, 2005 1:43 PM