Re: CARP passed- this sucks.

[Kim Flint <kflint@loopers-delight.com>]

At 03:22 PM 6/23/2002, Richard Zvonar wrote:
>Kim's arguments would be right on if we were all trying to make music 
>that 
>was commercially viable according to the prevailing tastes of the pop 
>music market. This, however is not the case.

of course. But I honestly can't understand why it makes a difference? Why 
specifically, would the situation be so much different for Richard Zvonar 
or Andre LaFosse vs major pop idols like U2 or David Torn?

Admittedly I haven't spent much time looking into this subject like some 
of 
you have, that's why I ask. I'm not getting it. But from what I've seen so 
far I can't understand all these arguments that the little guy is doomed. 
How do the numbers add up to that?


>Many (if not a majority) of us are making music that appeals to one or 
>another of the many small "mini-markets" that are not served by either 
>the 
>major record companies or the major broadcasters and Webcasters. The CARP 
>fee structure was based on an economic model of a major Webcaster (Yahoo, 
>to be specific) and this doesn't take into account the economics of the 
>minor Webcasters.

This is the part I really don't get. How doesn't it meet the economics of 
small webcasters? If you are small, then your costs are lower. Scale 
revenues to meet them. I'm really not understanding why its a problem or 
how the CARP thing is so debilitating. I'm coming from a position of being 
a little guy in a big pool, as far as web publishing goes. I know exactly 
what the economics of it are like. I did a quick run of the CARP numbers 
as 
far as I understand them, and to me it doesn't add up to something that is 
unattainable, whether you are big or small.


>These minor players are in many cases deliberately small, without 
>aspirations to achieve the scale of the Majors. They may not WANT to go 
>after "real advertising" but as Kim points out, they probably won't 
>survive without doing that.

that's really the part that I say is nonsense. Being a small web publisher 
myself, I know exactly what it is all about to get advertising and other 
sources of income from your website. You are not going to get giant 
accounts with Coke and GM. But you can easily get ads that target whatever 
niche you've got, from smaller companies that are interested in that. Plus 
there are several quality ad networks that bind smaller sites together 
into 
a larger network and land larger ad accounts. Plus all sorts of other 
income streams you can create. The numbers I've seen for this just don't 
look like impossible numbers to me. So manage the situation and make it 
work. If you are seriously putting up a webcasting business already, it is 
going to cost you a significant amount of money anyways. Bandwidth is not 
free. No matter what you have to figure out how to address that cost with 
real revenues from real advertising. If you aren't willing to do that, 
then 
you shouldn't be in the pool.

The model of Live365 makes sense to me, and seems well suited to small 
artists. The have a large network of different "stations", all set up by 
any user who wants to set one up. Microscopic stations for obscure artists 
can plug right in there. Live365 then sells advertising across the whole 
network with everything pooled together. So the little guys just make up a 
piece of the big pie. Live365 obviously has a lot of people listening, so 
the market is there, and they should be able to attract reasonable 
advertising as a result. Yesterday I saw a budweiser ad on there, so I 
guess they are actually managing to figure out how to do that after all 
those pathetic MOMI ads.

kim



______________________________________________________________________
Kim Flint                     | Looper's Delight
kflint@loopers-delight.com    | http://www.loopers-delight.com