| I like Grooveshark's business model.. I think it's one of the most clever of all the new media companies. Media is a two way market. Both content owners and buyers must be completely satisfied for the market to work effectively. The two problems with labels: 1. they want to get paid alot and 2. they want to control their catalogs so that they can control their marketing. The two problems with customers: 1. they want to pay less and 2. they want to listen to whatever they like. Grooveshark solves these problems completely. They pay copyright holders to stream songs on the system and charge customers through ads or fees for the service. At the same time, missing songs in the library can be uploaded by users and they get fairly paid for the "work" from Grooveshark's profits. Content owners don't have to do any work to seed the system with their content but they get paid for every stream or download. So labels save money by not having to manage their content, since, in theory, it's already been uploaded by users and the crowdsourcers make money "working" for Grooveshark. The catalog ends up more complete than labels typically allow and the users are happier. Everybody wins. The only problem is that the system only works if the labels give up some control and they HATE that. Hopefully Grooveshark survives, I think it has the best shot at finding a workable path for everyone. |