Michael Geist
mgeist@uottawa.ca
This web site is licensed under a Creative Commons License, although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed.
Michael Geist
mgeist@uottawa.ca
This web site is licensed under a Creative Commons License, although certain works referenced herein may be separately licensed.
We must control this niche
CBC Music is just another form of CBC radio, but it’s “broadcast” over the internet, rather than the FM band. I know, I know, you want to monetize the concept. And really, I’m fine with you competing (and enforcing a cost) for your services, but insisting that they be removed so that you can maintain control of a market niche is absurd. I mean, you don’t even believe that your own model can succeed without controlling the market :
“…
Because of the unique royalty structure of most on-line music services, which is based on a fee paid each time a song is streamed, it is very difficult to generate any profits from advertising-based business models for standalone music services. Popular services like Pandora in the United States for example have been losing money since they launched.
”
This, to me, says that a crown-based operation is the perfect fit. This market niche is unable to sustain itself, therefore a publicly funded operation props it up until it can. Maybe the fees your enterprises are forced to pay are simply too great? If it is an unsustainable amount, then your business model is going to collapse. So who will pick up those pieces, then? Probably the same group of people charging the fees which are driving you into the ground, now. I’m sure once they regain control of the “waves (streams?)”, those fees will become quite reasonable for the services distributing them. But I speculate, cynically…
Frankly, it sounds like you are middlemen who are being pushed out by your own suppliers, are being affected by an industry which is no longer necessary to its artists. CBC is doing it right, CBC Music is an impetus to competition in a market uninterested in competition, and your business model’s problems can be resolved without government intervention.
Good article. If they are successful in shutting all channels down, then there’s no music being broadcast. Period. Who benefits? No one. Artists want songs played. This is counter productive to artists and to the public interest.
Thanks to these fools I now know http://music.cbc.ca/ exists lol THANKS.
keep them damn free!