A New Business Model for Digital Music?

Posted by Kenneth Ronkowitz on

A relevant followup to my post about the demise of the Ruckus music service is this webinar from EDUCAUSE Live!

Choruss: A New Business Model for Digital Music with Jim Griffin, President
Choruss LLC. A one hour webinar on March 3, 2009 at 1:00 p.m. ET.

Per-copy charges for music and other intellectual property made sense when copies were physical objects, but that business model is ill-suited to the digital world. The mismatch has led to thousands of lawsuits against students and other consumers, tens of thousands of infringement notices sent to campuses and commercial ISPs, and millions of wasted person-hours dealing with these issues. Recently an alternate approach has been gaining momentum: voluntary collective licensing.

In this model, endorsed by organizations as diverse as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Warner Music Group, a flat monthly fee is collected covering all music access by a group of participants, generally the subscribers of a particular network. The money is then distributed to copyright holders based on the relative frequency of access of each individual work.

Griffin will talk about promoting blanket licensing, describe the advantages of this model and his plans for a series of campus-based pilot projects starting this fall.
The event is free, but registration is required and virtual seating is limited. REGISTER NOW.

Early reports on the service say that a small music-royalty fee would be into tuition payments from students. This model could be expanded to make ISPs the collector of these micropayments. Payment for the use of music is probably the greatest obstacle to satisfying the music industry and its customers.

Those unable to watch the webinar live can visit the archives after the event or browse related EDUCAUSE resources on Campus or Subscription Music Services and Licensing.

EDUCAUSE Live! is a series of free, hour-long interactive web seminars on critical information technology topics in higher education. Each seminar is delivered live using online audio and video/image presentation technology, allowing you to interact directly with the host and guests through your web browser. Because enrollment in each live seminar is limited, register early. If a seminar you’re interested in is either filled or scheduled for an inconvenient time, you can access the seminar afterward in the EDUCAUSE Live! archives, where you’ll find recordings of all past seminars.

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