gregjohn wrote:
> Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with Magnatune other than being an infrequent
> customer.
> 
> In the blog (
> http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2008/11/reassuring-my-musicians.html ) of
> the founder of Magnatune founder John Buckman, he indicates they have a
> financial problem. Many people are coming to the site to hear music, but not
> many (1/150) are buying music, compared to the 1 in 32 when he started.
> 
> My analysis: his problem is that he's giving away "bandwidth" too freely, even
> if he's appropriately giving away "the music" under voluntary pricing or
> creative commons licenses.  I admire the humanitarian & political implications
> of his desire not to be "evil" in his pricing schemes. Is there a way to
> accomplish this in a business setting, to let people experience the music,
> without giving away the store in bandwidth?

Yes.  Every registered user may download X amount of content per week 
(measured in songs or total download byte count) without paying 
anything.  X starts out at just enough to whet the user's appetite. 
Content that is intended to be a sample counts as only a percentage of 
its actual size (and this percentage may be set at zero if Buckman wants 
it that way).

Every time the user purchases something, X goes up by 10 to 50 percent 
for that user.

After X*N downloads by a user, without a purchase, X goes down by ten to 
fifty percent.  N should be greater than one, but not greater than ten.

There needs to be some protocol in place to minimize multiple accounts 
for users.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message