February 8, 2006

I just moved to a new desk and was going through some of my old files when I came across this gem of a quote. Jim Griffin, whose claim to fame was to convince Aerosmith to upload a track of their music back in 1994, talks to Wired about MP3s and why they are not a threat to the recording industry.

Starbucks will sell you everything you need to be a pirate: the coffee pot, the beans, hell, they’ll give you a pamphlet that tells how to make every drink. They’re not worried because you’re coming back tomorrow. – Wired News, 1999

Create a good enough service at a compelling price and you’ll be able to keep them coming back for more.

I’ve been playing around with the recently updated Yahoo Music Engine which, for $5/month, will give you unlimited access to all the streaming audio you want. There’s a sharing component which plugs into Yahoo Messenger so that you can broadcast your collection of music to your Messenger buddies, regardless of geographic location. There’s also a recommendation engine that learns what you like so you can discover new music. For $5/month, there’s very little incentive to rip & burn your own cds – everything you have is right there waiting for you the next time you jack into the net.

UPDATE: Nice vote of confidence on YME from an Microsoftie.