Never Be Surprised At What People Will Pay For

from the up-next:-chicken-of-the-month-club dept

The subscription model is a tried-and-true stalwart of the business world, whether it's applied to something like magazines, Netflix, cable TV channels, or bacon. Now those of us in the US can join our European brethren in adding black socks to the list of subscription-delivered goods with the stateside launch of Blacksocks.com. Blacksocks will send you 3 pairs of black socks at intervals you determine: for instance, if you want 3 pair every 4 months, it'll cost you $89 for a year's "sockscription." Laugh if you will, but the company claims to have accumulated 40,000 subscribers since it launched in Europe 10 years ago. Who says innovation is dead?

Filed Under: socks, subscriptions
Companies: blacksocks

Ruckus Music Service -- Which Was Supposed To Save The Industry -- Now Dead

from the how-about-that dept

Remember Ruckus? That was the attempt by a former recording industry guy and a former Napster employee to create an online music service that colleges would pay for, but which students could use for "free" (free in the sense that students wouldn't be paying for it directly). When we pointed out how lame the service was, we actually got angry emails from some folks who insisted that it really had revolutionized the campuses who had bought into it. In fact, the recording industry used this argument in its big push to force universities to sign up for Ruckus.

Apparently the revolution was short-lived -- and without government help to force colleges to subscribe, Ruckus has shut down. For some of those who got their music from Ruckus, the DRM on the tracks means that the music will be unplayable. Some tracks are still playable, but will apparently die once they hit their "renew date" and can't find a DRM server to renew. Yet another recording industry backed solution to the "piracy problem" that wasn't. At what point does the industry finally realize that piracy isn't the problem at all?

Filed Under: music, online service, recording industry, subscriptions, universities

Dumb Criminal Series: When Newspaper Subscriptions Jump From 65 To 2,781 Someone May Get Suspicious

from the no-one-will-notice dept

Romenesko points us to a good one for the "dumb criminal" series. A NY Times delivery carrier has been accused of defrauding the paper of over $300k by sending in fake newspaper subscriptions with the "bill me later" option checked. Apparently, he got paid based on the number of papers delivered, so he took the quick route to increasing his income. In a matter of months, his daily subscriptions jumped from 65 to 2,781 and his Sunday subscriptions went from 103 to 2,818 (seems that nearly everyone of the fake subbers signed up for Sunday deliver as well!).

It makes you wonder how he thought he could get away with such a scam, though his "defense" gives some suggestion. He says he had someone else doing the deliveries for him, and says it must be that guy's fault. Though, as the newspaper noted, when the NY Times grew suspicious and informed him that they were canceling thousands of subscriptions, he "did not seem upset and said it would not affect his workload." Oh yes, also there was the fact that the guy's recycling bins were filled to the brim with copies of the newspaper -- often still wrapped in their delivery bundles.

Filed Under: newspapers, scams, subscriptions

Warner Music Latest To Jump On The Music Tax Bandwagon

from the please,-gov't,-save-our-business-model! dept

Remember earlier this month how there was a story about a guy going around pitching a required tax on ISPs for music sharing as a good idea? Well the main guy who was pushing that proposal has now been hired by Warner Brothers to make it a reality. While the idea is gaining some momentum, it doesn't change the extremely questionable nature of this proposal. It's a proposal based on the laziness of industry execs, who want others to go out and collect money for them, which they'll then get to "distribute" (by which we mean not actually distribute) to musicians.

The fact is that there is simply no reason for this proposal to go ahead. It treats everyone as a criminal first. In the article, one supporter of the plan even admits this:

"At this point, 96 percent of the population is guilty of some sort of infringement, whether they're streaming or downloading or sharing. What we have here is the widespread use of technology that declares all of the population to be illegal."

While that 96% number is made up and pure bunk, it's a bizarre world in which someone claims that nearly everyone is breaking the law and therefore we should punish everyone, rather than get rid of the law. Considering that more and more musicians are showing that there are perfectly good business models that don't require treating everyone as a criminal, can someone explain why this "music tax" should be put in place? And can they then explain what will happen when every other industry wants its own "you're a criminal" tax included on internet connectivity?

Filed Under: copyright, jim griffin, music, subscriptions
Companies: warner music group

Steve Jobs Back To Being A Fan Of DRM In iPhone 'Bundle'?

from the let's-pretend-we're-bundling-music... dept

This has been rumored for some time, but the Financial Times is reporting that Apple is trying to negotiate with the record labels for a new offering that would provide access to music as a bundle with an iPhone. The idea is that you could buy the iPhone and get "unlimited" access to music, either in a lump sum or with a subscription fee. Of course, there are some rather important caveats. While this would get a lot of attention, you only get access to the music for the lifetime of the device or subscription (if you didn't pay a lump sum). While there's a small concession that you'd get to keep 40 to 50 songs after the device died or the subscription ended, you'd lose the rest of the songs. In other words, despite Steve Jobs' supposed dislike for DRM, this music would be quite DRM'd. Limited subscription plans have been around for ages and they've never gone very far because of those limitations. People know better by now, and so should Steve Jobs.

Filed Under: business models, drm, iphone, itunes, music, steve jobs, subscriptions
Companies: apple

Yahoo Finally Dumps The Music Service It Never Really Liked

from the why-do-it-in-the-first-place dept

A few years back when Yahoo launched its music service, it was pretty clearly designed to fail. Yet, Yahoo kept it going for a while, despite the fact that the executives who ran the program clearly were not fans of the company's own offerings. Thus, it should come as no surprise that Yahoo has simply moved all of its subscribers over to RealNetworks' Rhapsody service, which is having its own problems adjusting to a changing music market place. One could hope that Yahoo's ditching of the music service is a sign that it's actually going to do something more interesting, but given this little merger the company may be involved in, it may be difficult to do very much that's unique or innovative.

Filed Under: drm, music, subscriptions
Companies: realnetworks, yahoo

MPAA Explains Why It's Okay To Tie Federal Funds To Blocking File Sharing

from the because-we-say-so,-dammit dept

While Congress' new bill on education funding may not be as bad as some are making it out to be, it still seems quite questionable that Congress appears to be regulating the idea that universities need to do the kind of marketing and educational campaigns that the recording industry cannot. We've asked supporters of the bill to explain how it could possibly make sense to mandate such things, and the MPAA's top lawyer, Fritz Attaway, has given his answer, claiming that it's because the internet is "used primarily to allow college students to traffic in infringing content," while being subsidized by gov't funds. It would be nice if Attaway or someone else at the MPAA could actually back up the claim that the primary use of the internet by students is infringement. While I wouldn't doubt that it's a popular use, to say that it's the primary use is hard to believe -- unless you count things like visiting Facebook pages, using Google and sending emails as "infringement." At the same time, this doesn't seem to support the reasons for this bill. After all, many kids on college campuses own cars -- and I'd imagine that most of those students break the speed limit frequently enough. Yet, we don't see any bills being proposed in Congress that would prevent financial aid funding unless universities start handing out more speeding tickets and put in place plans to offer public transportation. So why should they do that for copyright infringement?

Filed Under: congress, copyright, fritz attaway, mpaa, music, subscriptions, universities
Companies: congress, mpaa, napster, ruckus

Congress Moves Forward With Required University Subsidies To Napster, Ruckus

from the business-as-usual dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about how Congress had slipped a provision into the Higher Education Act that would require universities to put in place a plan to have published policies on unauthorized file sharing and to also "develop a plan" to offer "legal alternatives" such as Napster or Ruckus. Of course, some would point out that many file sharing systems, by themselves are legal. It's just that some people are using them for things that break the law. Really, what this bill represents is a gov't backed subsidy for Napster and Ruckus, forcing colleges to offer them even if their students don't want it. It's not clear, at all, why Congress should be in the business of demanding a particular type of music delivery system be offered on college campuses. The announcement of the bill resulted in plenty of attention, leading the House committee that was debating the Act to distribute a "fact sheet" that is anything but factual. It accused those criticizing the bill of being "supporters of intellectual property theft." That is not the case at all. In fact, it's rather insulting that Congress would automatically assume that anyone who questions why Congress is forcing universities to pay for commercial music distribution systems is a "supporter of intellectual property theft."

Of course, when the committee is calling anyone who opposes such a plan as being a supporter of theft, it's no surprise that they wouldn't take any of the criticisms seriously and moved forward with the bill without any changes to the controversial section. They also dismissed the claims that universities who don't sign up for Napster or Ruckus would lose financial aid funding, though, that's clearly what the bill allows to happen -- and you know that the RIAA and MPAA (and Napster and Ruckus, for that matter) will push to make it a viable threat.

Either way, it would be nice for Congressional supporters to answer this simple question: Why is it any part of Congress's business to mandate that universities sign up for a commercial music distribution service?

Filed Under: congress, copyright, music, subscriptions, universities

Would Congress Withhold Financial Aid From Colleges That Don't Offer A Subscription To Napster?

from the slippery,-slippery-slopes dept

It looks like the media companies are making good on the strategy they floated in June (and seems to have been mulling since at least March). A relatively well-buried section of this year's amendment and extension of the Higher Education Act places new requirements on schools whose students receive federal student aid — requirements that oblige them to lend Hollywood and the record companies a helping hand in their fight against P2P piracy. Needless to say, this is ridiculous. As Carlo's post argues, there's no reason why schools ought to be conscripted into propping up a troubled industry's business model.

As you might expect, the copyfighters are incensed by the idea. Fortunately, it doesn't look like the bill (pdf) is quite as bad as they're making it out to be: though the idea may be detestable, its execution in this case is less-than-complete. An affected institution is only required to "make publicly available to their students and employees the policies and procedures related to the illegal downloading and distribution of copyrighted materials" and to "develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity" — and only to do so "to the extent practicable". It sure sounds like these provisions could be easily satisfied: posting regulations and drawing up a plan (but not necessarily implementing it) simply isn't that much of a regulatory burden. Is it a bad idea? Yes. Is it going to result in swarms of penniless scholars trudging, broken-hearted, away from the academy and toward a lifetime of menial toil? It seems unlikely.

Still, it would be a mistake to ignore the inappropriateness of the requirements, or the slipperiness of the slope we're presently on. This is, after all, an industry that's perfected the art of regulatory capture to such an extent that it could now be better described as regulatory taxidermy. If congress can be convinced to repeatedly hand our copyright system over to industry, there's little reason to doubt that it's willing to throw in the education system, too.

Filed Under: congress, copyright, music, subscriptions, universities

Universal Music's Plan To Take On iTunes: Bring Back PressPlay And MusicNow!

from the wait,-that-sounds-familiar... dept

Business Week has the story that Universal Music's Doug Morris is planning to take on iTunes by bringing together the major record labels and having them set up their own music subscription service, and then having ISPs and mobile operators force customers to opt in. First of all, it should be pointed out that this same story broke a month ago about Universal Music's plans for a subscription service by the site Digital Music News. It just that this is from a more established publication. When the initial report came out a month ago, we detailed why it wouldn't work, and there's no indication that anything's changed. Doug Morris has shown repeatedly that he doesn't understand the economics at play, and is simply looking to squeeze as much money as possible in the short term, without any kind of long term strategy.

However, what's most amusing about this is that it looks like it's going to merely be an update of the last time the record labels tried and failed to do something similar. The big labels all teamed up to create the services MusicNow and PressPlay, which became better known as MusicNot and PressPause. That's because they were created by companies who were too scared of cannibalizing their existing business. It took Apple to come along and show them how a music service could be done. While you can hope that they've learned something, Morris's repeated statements on the economics of music suggest he still hasn't figured it out. He might want to talk to his bosses at Vivendi, who seem to understand that selling music isn't the business model the company should be in. In the meantime, as was noted a month ago, there's still not the slightest shred of evidence that ISPs or mobile phone operators are willing to force all their customers to opt into a $5/month charge for music subscriptions.

Filed Under: itunes, music, record labels, subscriptions
Companies: apple, riaa, sony bmg, universal music, warner music group