Music industry wasn't just anti-tech By 2000, they were addicted to inflated revenue: album bundling and illegal price fixing meant you payed $15 for a $10 album to get a $1 song. Even if $1 songs replaced piracy, revenue would fall by ~90%. More for fixed price streaming.
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Recording industry couldn't adapt to the internet because >90% of their revenue was artificially inflated. $15 albums online won't kill Napster. iTunes/Spotify may, but that is almost as bad. Lesson: Bezos-style thin margins mean your rev model can't be used against you
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Regarding the music industry fixing prices: > Between 1995 and 2000 music companies ... artificially inflated prices of compact discs. ... It is estimated customers were overcharged by nearly $500 million and up to $5 per album https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD_price_fixing …
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If you think the music industry was disrupted b/c didn't understand tech, you're wrong. They had 2 choices: • Try to kill small companies that facilitated unprecedented amounts of theft. Surely they won't get away with it, right? • Embrace tech; best case lose 80% of revenue
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Replying to @backus
I don’t think they understood those were the choices. Here’s the CEO of Universal in a very interesting article: https://www.wired.com/2007/11/mf-morris/ …pic.twitter.com/XGkm43EjmT
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Replying to @michael_nielsen
John Backus Retweeted John Backus
I love that interview! I read it from the perspective of another author who points out how funny it is for someone in journalism to mock another sector for not adapting to techhttps://twitter.com/backus/status/1007818976343175168 …
John Backus added,
John Backus @backusJournalist: Why didn't you build your own tech to address internet piracy? Music exec: We don't know how. Imagine you had to operate on your dog. What would you do? Journalist: Personally, I'd call a vet Music exec:

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how is that working out for journalism? pic.twitter.com/aIgzaHGwhm1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
yeah I agree that they may not have known how to build a tech business from scratch, but I think there is still something to be said for the fact that they were watching mp3s online in 1997 but were so stingy with licensing that music became notoriously bad for doing startups
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