That both the music and software businesses are going through profound changes is, maybe … the understatement of the year. Pretty much of a Capt. Obvious statement.
Like any changes of that magnitude there is a fair amount of uncertainty, along with normally sane people working up histrionic firestorms.
For example, I think Arrington has been making some compelling points about the flattening of the music distribution model … his reasoning just goes haywire when he says that
music itself is nothing more than marketing material for the artist.
That’s absurd at the face of it … but let’s move on to some interesting parallels.
Parallels Between Music and Software
In commenting on my last post, Alex noted the parallels between open source and the music business. He makes some great points, he got me to thinking. Like Alex, I find Fred Wilson’s reasoning on this (particularly with regards to music and what the internet rewards) compelling … though not absolute.
Will free music eventually win out? Maybe, maybe not. Lots of artists (both known and indie) are experimenting with all sorts of combinations of free, pay per play, deprecated free combined with premium upgrades, and all sorts of discovery / distribution models are being built, discarded, built again, morphed, twisted, and rising like so many phoenixes from the ashes … some only to crumble and fade away yet again.
Yet with these obvious changes (from which there’s definitely / thankfully no going back), this is probably the best time in history to be a new artist, and furthermore folks are actually making plenty of money selling music. In fact, today iTunes became the top music retailer in the US … all that in less than five years. So there’s clearly room for more than one model in the music biz, probably even for an extended period of time.
Open Source and Open Distribution
A month or so back we announced our open distribution initiative, which is proving to be a great way to get our technology into the hands of developers and architects. Easy to use and free … a great combination.
Yet clearly not open source … a decision we made for some basic intellectual property and building-the-business reasons.
Think back to what’s happening in the music biz right now … how closely is music really following the open source model? Are people really creating desirable music via open collaboration?
Not that I’ve seen.
What’s really going on is that the reality of frictionless, no cost distribution is being used as the underpinnings of a bunch of different distribution models, with the precise natures of the winning distribution models TBD.
Creation vs. Distribution
In any case, while the players in the music biz fight their transition out, I think it’s clear that the creation of software component of open source need not necessarily be combined with the distribution component of open source.
It’s certainly fine to combine both into one model … it’s just not the only choice. We’ve chosen otherwise for our community edition, and I think you’ll see more and more of that going on, even from traditional open source suppliers.
In essence, that is what we’re doing with open distribution – going down the path of creating viable, low friction, high value ubiquitous communities (free is good!), while having more to say about the process of creating the software itself.
Different circumstances, different needs, different choices … sometimes even within the same company, perhaps even within the same product family.
I LOVE having choices!
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Are people really creating desirable music via open collaboration? Not that I’ve seen.
What the? Isn’t that pretty much the definition of musical culture? Of course people are doing that. Always have, always will. And any time they’re not, chances are it’s because we’re perverting our culture to suit the constraints of a thoroughly inappropriate business model.
When have you ever seen music made in a vacuum?
I definitely agree that the process of creating music is clearly collaborative, even for solo artists (since even they will have engineers, producers, and so forth being involved in almost any serious effort). My point was actually relatively narrow, and probably could have been better stated.
Let’s start with this question: how much music is created by artists who post all of the intermediate work in a publicly-accessible repository, which may be downloaded, mixed at will, with folks being able to replace even the most minute portions with their own creations?
In other words, how many artists are posting out their pro-tools projects for all to download and manipulate to their heart’s content?
In reality while most real music is created as part of a collaboration, that collaboration is not “open” in the same sense that people usually mean by “open source”. Rather, the musicians collaborate in relative privacy, and post out their finished (or at the very least, near-finished) products for distribution in some way.
That is precisely the same manner in which most software is actually written … hence the parallel that I was drawing between music and software creation.
I agree that nearly all software is also the product of collaboration (just as in music) … my main point is that the process of content creation and content distribution (whatever the content) are not necessarily the same, and need not be joined at the hip.
Furthermore, some of the coolest innovation is occurring in the distribution models.
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