Re: [ARSCLIST] Internet Radio Status Update

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I agree that the discourse is getting overheated, please turn down the Net-postal rhetoric. I don't 
agree with my friend Bob either. But I sure respect him and thus take his point of view very 
seriously.

I still stick to my point a while back -- musicians and their record companies flirt with disaster 
if they price themselves out of net-based streaming "radio." A simple review of the Arbitron books 
indicates fewer and fewer people listen to ANY music on AM or FM radio. The whole purpose of 
broadcast recorded music -- low-cost wide-spread publicity and resulting record sales and venue 
sell-outs -- is in jeopardy. I get the impression that Big Music and its allies confuse venture 
capital for profit. Most of these net "radio" companies are far from profitable. They are a series 
of niche business and ad revenue is appropriately small and spotty. I would dare say they are far 
from BROADcasters, rather they are amalgamations of narrow-castings. Interested parties might do 
some reading about Yahoo, which has been around long enough to turn out not nearly as profitable as 
its dot-bomb claims. Amazon, too, for that matter, but Yahoo is more akin to net "radio" since it is 
really a collection of narrowcasted snippets of "content" combined with allegedly targeted 
advertising that turns out to not be the great revenue stream assumed in the IPO days. Given that 
reality, Big Music and its allies will find that there is no golden goose to fleece, and killing the 
rather skinny sparrow that actually exists in the bush will be highly detrimental because it will 
forever wed them to a near-dead medium (music radio).

-- Tom Fine
(realist/capitalist)

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Abrams" <steve.abrams@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 2:27 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Internet Radio Status Update


> I am sorry Dismuke but you obviously DO mean to be rude.  Your posts have been abusive and personal 
> and now they are becoming incoherent.  I don't agree with Bob Olhsson, but I think he has argued 
> his case effectively and courteously.
>
> Steve Abrams (socialist)
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Dismuke" <dismukemail@xxxxxxxxx>
> To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 17, 2007 5:33 PM
> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Internet Radio Status Update
>
>
> > --- Bob Olhsson <olh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Free Enterprise just
> > > isn't a good enough
> > > business model for these folks. Wouldn't it be nice
> > > if Congress also put a
> > > cap on our housing prices?
> >
> >
> > I have not had time to look though the many postings
> > you have put up on the previous thread on this over
> > the past weekend so I cringe to think of what might be
> > in those.
> >
> > I am sorry, I do not mean to be rude, but the above
> > statement is absurd and downright dishonest.
> >
> > FREE ENTERPRISE?
> >
> > You call a GOVERNMENT PANEL setting prices FREE
> > ENTERPRISE?
> >
> > I am sorry, but that is something that is done under
> > socialism/communism.
> >
> > You call an CARTEL of private corporations that have
> > de-facto control over a government sanctioned MONOPOLY
> > that the cartel's competitors have to go through in
> > order to transact business and get paid an example of
> > FREE ENTERPRISE?
> >
> > I am sorry, but that is actually an example of a
> > varient of socialism known as fascism.
> >
> > Free enterprise is where the only role of government
> > is to enforce legally binding contracts and allows the
> > voluntary decisions of all of the many millions of
> > players in the marketplace to determine how much all
> > of the participants get paid and what sort of prices
> > they are able to get away with charging.
> >
> > There is nothing free enterprise about this whole
> > sordid mess.
> >
> > I don't know why you shill for such dasterdly people -
> > but may the rest of your life be spent listening to
> > nothing but the sort of music one finds on commercial
> > FM radio.  You very richly deserve such a fate as that
> > is exactly the consequences you have been asking for.