ContentSphere - Music & Media in an Online Culture

Michael Masnick revisits the shutting down of SpiralFrog, putting emphasis on the fact that however a new idea in online music business gets hailed, there still is at least one predominant reason for failure. To succeed, you have to offer more than what you can get for free using bit torrents. As I mentioned before, quite along the lines of Michael Masnick’s Reznor case study, you need real added value. It’s what Masnick calls the “reason to buy”. Add something to the product (= music) to be obtained nowhere else, be it quality, quantity or core competence.

Learn from history or fail to succeed.

On another note, Michael Masnick had me checking out Richard Smith’s article on the issue of extending copyright. Richard Smith from London’s Guardian features the book “Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind” (free download under CreativeCommons license) by James Boyle, professor of law at Duke Law School, North Carolina. The books’ core statement is that “the world has made a colossal cultural mistake that shames our generation”. No question you wonder which mistake Boyle is talking about. It is the USA’s recent decision to extend copyright “to life plus 70 years”. Many artists may be puzzled about this… why moan? Hey, that’s great! Our property finally gets protected. Cost is: Our culture gets locked. By backdating the law to 1923 “virtually all 20th century cultural objects are locked up”.

Culture needs to develop upon the culture before. It is the same point Lawrence Lessig made when writing “Free Culture” (free download under CreativeCommons license). Now, Europe is about to decide the same way.

Michael Masnick has been announced to hold the keynote presentation at Leadership Music Digital Summit 2009, taking place from Monday, March 23, 2009 on until Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at Belmont University’s Curb Event Center, Nashville, Tennessee.

Don’t miss the chance to witness an updated version of his Trent Reznor case study. Yes, Trent did it again. Michael intends to refer to the latest online activities by Nine Inch Nails which started just two days ago at Twitter. Luckily enough, I just started running twhirl when Trent came up.

Also, Jim Griffin of Choruss fame will be there. Might be fun to see him again shoulder arms to fight the “pirates”…