Michaelwagner Wrote: > Isn't Slimserver kinda like the playboy in the frat house?
Sure. Except the playboy is not a physical object. A physical object cannot be shared by a lot of people at the same time. A physical object becomes worn as it is used. Also, you're considering a frat house with some millions of "brothers". > I'm playing some music on the slim when my buddy comes to visit. He says > "hey, what is that, I like it". I look at the display (or he does), and > say "it's the new Madonna (or Springstein, or whatever) album". > (advertising). > > He says "neat, I gotta go pick that up for my house". (sale) I don't know about your buddies, but most of mine would say: "neat, I gotta go pick that up for my house. Can you put this on a CD for me?". (theft) This is the risk that record companies see. They may not be the smartest marketing or technology cookies, but there is no denying my alternate scenario is a very common and likely one. Just got a friend on the phone that said "I just got this DVD recorder so now I can copy DVDs. Will you lend yours to me so I can copy them?". Didn't that or something along the same lines happen to you? In my book, record companies have a natural reaction to a very real risk, and all they are trying to do is to mitigate it. Now we can discuss how smart they are in mitigating it, and how likely it is that they are alienating their customers in doing so. We can also discuss about alternate ways of financing music creation, which would eliminate record companies (f.e. most art is financed from taxes). They dealt with Apple because Apple is a major brand name (lotsa sales) that fully controls the delivery chain (from source to customer ears) (medium risk). Balance between perceptions of revenue versus risk. Other proposal failed probably because they did not provide (or failed to convince they could) the same mix. rudholm Wrote: > it's just amazing how badly RIAA constituents understand their market. > [...] One thing that really struck me about Slimdevices was its obvious > understanding of its market. It may not be what you meant, but I am not sure the market of Slim Devices and RIAA constituents is the same. It seems to me the former is a subset of the latter. Slim Devices customers are technology-aware people with USD 500+ (considering you need amp, speakers and PC) to spend on a "gadget" for playing music. The market of RIAA constituents is much larger, pretty much any user of music. My mother belongs to the RIAA market but not the Slim Devices market. The only reason she would ever buy a Squeezebox would be because of me, and then she would not care about the fact it is Open Source (case in point, it's not listed as a Product Feature on Amazon). She has, however, be exposed to CD copies (gifts from friends). My point is that RIAA is trying to prevent the mass from copying music. At some level, I am sure they understand that in doing so, they may anger a subset of the market that understands the whole issue a lot better. But then, what is worst (somewhat random numbers): loosing the 50'000 or so Squeezebox customers or half of the 10 million other customers ? Nothing is black or white. Everything is grey, and the shade of grey changes depending on the side of the pond you happen to sit on. Fred -- Fred ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Fred's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2170 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=20941 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
