A VC - Latest Comments in Constraints and Rules

Re: Constraints and Rules

Georg — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:34:37 -0000

On the legal music side I think soundcloud.com was one of the more interesting concept I came across in recent times.

Re: Constraints and Rules

doris cheng — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 10:23:47 -0000

The post and comments are very helpful for us to set the usage limits so we can provide a social networking service based on remixing friends into social circles using drag and drop without losing our shirt.

Re: Constraints and Rules

spiridellis — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:33:27 -0000

Orson Welles said it best: "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations."

Re: Constraints and Rules

kortina — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:33:10 -0000

I could not agree with you more about a need to stop fragmenting conversation. I think FriendFeed, for example, does more harm than good in this area, and I applaud the efforts of disqus and now backtype to make conversation across multiple websites easier.

I saw your comment on my feed at backtype.com and when I clicked reply I was thrilled to see it link me directly to your comment in the thread on the original post. Awesome!

Are you guys releasing an API anytime soon? If so, let's talk.

...addenda...
I just realized that although this post is on Fred's blog, the "you" I'm addressing another in my comment is another commenter, not the original author of the blog post. That is cool. Thanks for facilitating conversation / community, Fred.

Re: Constraints and Rules

jeff — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:05:38 -0000

I don't think shutting down completely is the answer. SmoothJazz.com is a great example of how internet radio can thrive. A few years ago they began to play only the artists who signed an agreement that waves the music industry fees. There are still a few major label artists who are played (those who signed an agreement) but many independent labels get spins. There is a lot of great independent music out there and I think that the station sounds better than ever. All Pandora has to do is let their artists choose how important it is for the artist's songs to be heard on Pandora. There will always be plenty of great music to listen to all day long. It might even improve the service as we might not have to sit through overly commercialized music.

Re: Constraints and Rules

Scott Watermasysk — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:47:13 -0000

I don't think the issue is related to Pandora competitors. If this was the "issue" wouldn't the price get closer to zero as it is for traditional radio?

I do not think it they should or need to get a free ride, but it seems a bit absurd to pay $2.91.

Then again, I am sure Pandora knew what it was getting into and I love the services, so I am very biased. :)

Re: Constraints and Rules

fredwilson — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 08:03:05 -0000

That's true (no edit) but fot this purpose its prob not an issue since it my post and if we get spam or a real ugly comment it will be on my blog too and I'll nuke it

I also think disqus could add group edit/moderation easily if this became a real feature instead of a hack

Re: Constraints and Rules

fredwilson — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 07:59:07 -0000

I totally agree and its one of the reasons I am drawn to the third party comment system idea

Re: Constraints and Rules

davidporter — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 01:57:26 -0000

Hi Nikhil - the compulsory license established under the DMCA in the US only covers (currently) non-interactive webcasting, which means the provider must comply with the various requirements for radio-style delivery (short summary here: http://8tracks.com/legal).

Internet radio providers in the US (in general) have faced a challenge due to exceptionally high royalty rates. We achieved monthly profitability at Live365 in late 2005 through a business model that blended subscriptions (both DJ and listener) with advertising. Pandora is now nearly 5X the size of Live365, but it is not profitable as it must rely (primarily) on advertising.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "listen again" functionality but I'm happy to give you my perspective on this as well as what features might define a service as non-interactive vs interactive.

Re: Constraints and Rules

Bruce Warila — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 21:45:10 -0000

Great post. My mantra for startups (music) comes from Google’s Chief Economist: “Provide a scarce complimentary service to something that is getting ubiquitous and cheap.” I love Pandora, but the service (recommendation) is no longer a scarce service, and the majors don't want their music to be cheap (ubiquitous yes). The only way the majors are going to play nice, is if you can build something they can't easily build/obtain on their own. Otherwise, I think you have to be prepared to have the margin squeezed out of your business.

Re: Constraints and Rules

PKafka — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 20:52:31 -0000

Very easy for us (SAI) to do - we insert a single line of html into the post. We ran into a problem with one of Fred's posts (funky url, i think), but beyond that it's been easy. Don't know how much work it took on Disqus' end but gather it was relatively straightforward for them as well.

The only snag we've found for the re-posting site is that we don't have any control over the comment string, so if for any reason we wanted to edit something, we can't do it.

Re: Constraints and Rules

CraigOverend — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:48:03 -0000

"they need to build an api early on so others can take up where they left off."

I don't agree with 'build <en>an API' but do with early. Most APIs are evil, they add unnecessary constraints for many applications. What they should be building in are dataset query languages used to create 'views' of the data. APIs that define semantics early, often hinder innovation when 3rd party developers can't get the data they actually want.

Constraints are everywhere, it's choosing the right constraints for a specific task that's important. Forth programmers call this Thoughtful Programming. There's a book by Leo Brodie available online called Thinking Forth that exemplifies this. Forth could also be thought of taking constraints too far. ;)

Re: Constraints and Rules

Joe Lazarus — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:36:07 -0000

Very cool. It would be great if Disqus and the other comment systems could figure out a way to make this more universal so all comment threads followed content as it travels the web. It's a mess trying to keep everything straight between comments on my blog, on FriendFeed, on Facebook, and what not. Figuring out portable comment threads is probably a big job, but SAI's hack is a cool experiment to demonstrate the concept. Nicely done.

Re: Constraints and Rules

Nikhil — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 19:21:44 -0000

"Playing the rules." I wonder if that's what Beatport have done here?

http://www.bumastemra.nl/en...

If the ECC anti-competition actions go through, that certainly spells good news for the online music fraternity.

Re: Constraints and Rules

Nikhil — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:57:30 -0000

Okay cheers David. I got my terminology mixed up as it seems the UK terms are slightly different.

Non-interactive webcasting = pure webcasting

PKafka below mentions that no-one has managed to make "interactive webcasting" work at any scale so far. Is that indeed correct?

What about the "listen again" site for Bauer Music's radio portfolio:
http://www.whatson.com/

And www.samurai.fm - they seem to be paying broadcast fees (but also have an extremely high CPM).

Does Gaydar Radio offer listen again functionality?

The status of a radio show or DJ mix with an available tracklist seems a tad ambiguous. You know what's coming up, but you're not able to "skip" straight to another song. I believe it's the functionality that determines the category - e.g. the BBC radio player used to only allow forwarding (in 5 minute chunks and a limited number of times).

Re: Constraints and Rules

davidporter — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:17:00 -0000

Fwiw, you can correct the missing metadata on any uploaded MP3s by clicking on the [edit] link next to any of the tracks in the Your Tracks tab.

We're working with MusicIP to fingerprint tracks -- so missing or incorrect metadata will be automatically fixed -- and this will be available shortly.

Re: Constraints and Rules

davidporter — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 17:12:25 -0000

Yes, this is true, particularly for music from the 4 majors, short of legislative change. Keep in mind, though, that the compulsory license does not preclude direct deals, and there is greater willingness to explore such deals when it comes to the independent label sector.

It's sad because all that's really needed is a change in *basis* for the royalty. Simply changing the royalty to a reasonable %-of-revenue rate (as is the case with terrestrial radio outside the US, and satellite and cable radio in the US, and composition royalties generally), and the industry is re-born.

The reason the rates are calculated on this unusual "per-performance" basis is an interesting but unfortunate story. Rates were initially established in 2002 based on the lone "marketplace deal" at the time, that between the RIAA and Yahoo, which the latter had intentionally agreed to so that "low-revenue webcasters would be unable to compete", as Mark Cuban put it. More on that here: http://www.kurthanson.com/a....

Re: Constraints and Rules

CG — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:38:07 -0000

I think it's great that there are efforts like this to stop fragmenting the conversation. Regardless of where the post is discovered, readers should benefit from all of the conversation. It would be great if Disqus could release a standardized way to share (and contribute to) single comment threads.

Re: Constraints and Rules

fredwilson — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 16:13:28 -0000

it's something we've been doing for a few months now. when AI and I talked about them re-running some of my posts, I asked them to share a single comment thread. and we worked with disqus to make it happen. i honestly don't know how AI is doing it, because they worked it out directly with disqus. i hope this becomes a feature that everyone can use because its great.

Re: Constraints and Rules

terra210 — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:27:24 -0000

8tracks is great. Thanks for that. and yes, another interesting post. Am reminded of beautiful enigmatic music from "Ghost's Ive Met", http://tinyurl.com/5alzxw. Used for our earlier video call: http://tinyurl.com/696rqc

Re: Constraints and Rules

Joe Lazarus — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 13:32:35 -0000

I just noticed that this post and the version on Silicon Alley Insider share the same comment thread...

http://www.alleyinsider.com...

Cool trick. Is that a Disqus feature or just a some sort of hack that SAI did specific to this post?

Re: Constraints and Rules

fredwilson — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:58:05 -0000

I totally agree. Our portfolio company indeed has managed to build a great business in job search but craigslist doesn't embrace them while everyone else does. It only hurts craigslist and their paying advertisers in the end

Re: Constraints and Rules

Jeremy Bencken — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:54:19 -0000

Interesting to consider Craigslist in this light-- they got the constraints part down, but make it impossible for others to innovate around their constraints (or block certain sites capriciously, making it impossible to build a business around their platform)... e.g. Craigslist served Oodle a C&D, but not Housingmaps for identical behavior. Refusing to become a platform may be the single greatest threat they face, and it's self-imposed.

Re: Constraints and Rules

fredwilson — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:54:09 -0000

Yeah it didn't recognize that one. I think its my beloved monster by the eels

Re: Constraints and Rules

jeff — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:18:23 -0000

track 7on your 8tracks mix is listed as [object object] by [object object]...come to think if it, that could be a great band name...