So recently we've been seeing a phenomenon I like to call the Rage Against The Stream, where artists & labels have been pulling their content from services like the aforementioned. I probably don't have to point out that in a reality where everyone is competing with free, attention has become more scarce and valuable than ever before and thus the categorical dismissal of access models such as subscription services is unlikely to pay off in the long run (p.s. I love understatements).

The day after Spotify launched its platform, articles started popping up, commenting on the fact that it's impossible to 'monetize apps' and there thus being "no clear upside to developers." And that's where I grab my BS-defense-stick and start drawing the line.

No, you can't put ads in your app.
No, you can't charge for the app or create in-app purchases.
No, Spotify doesn't give you part of the revenue of music streamed through your app.
So?

It's the same lack of creativity of coming up with innovative business models that can be seen in other parts of the music industry... what's new is that this time it's coming from the tech side. What it comes down to is the same as competing with free - and saying you can't compete with free is saying you can't compete period.

Want to make money by building a Spotify app? Build one that uses Facebook Connect for user registration, focus on building a great experience that's non-obtrusive, make it easy to share this experience and funnel that back to your main platform (that's outside Spotify) - focus on discovery and then sell the premium. The SongKick app is a good example, but it can be applied in many more ways. Since it's going to be primarily power users and music geeks using the apps for now, items like vinyl copies come to mind. Focus on gaining & holding the attention - which is scarce, then build your way towards monetization by doing something that Spotify is not.

Spotify Apps are highly monetizable, you just have to be creative. Just like with music.

When NBC removed its content from the iTunes store for about nine months in 2007 and 2008, there was an 11.4 percent increase in piracy, but no increase in NBC’s DVD sales — a loss of close to $20 million, given 23,000 lost sales per day at an average price of $3. And when ABC added its content to Hulu in July 2009, piracy dropped by 30 percent. Likewise, when a major book publisher stopped selling new Kindle titles on Amazon in 2010, there was no increase in hardcover sales, and when the Kindle titles were finally made available, their sales were 50 percent lower than they otherwise would have been.

But for all those that may comment suggesting most are making less, my response is, you've got to be kidding me. These artists, all of them, are outside of the traditional system. Some are earning hundreds of thousands and some are earning $20.

And this is bad because...?

With the music industry democratized more artists are making more money than ever before. All of this money you are seeing is going directly into these artists' pockets; this is money they would have never ever seen before.

Now add the songwriter money on top of this money.

Someone needs to explain to me why an artist earning something vs. nothing is a bad thing, as I truly cannot understand that logic. As far as TuneCore, as I have stated over and over, it's your music that causes it to sell. It's up to you to decide if the services and fees TuneCore charges work for you.

But now, it turns out there's an even more depressing figure: 99.875% - or nearly all - of Tunecore artists are making less than minimum wage through the platform, based on revenue figures recently shared by the company.

And that only counts revenues - not costs for creating content or annual fees owed to Tunecore. It also assumes that Tunecore revenues are being paid to one, solo artist, instead of being divided by a group.

Paul, why do you put down artists for making money? These artists did it on their own, drove every sale, earned every penny without having to give up their copyrights or sacrifice control, something never before possible in the history of the modern music industry. I published the numbers in response to statements claiming artists cannot can sell music without a major label. So why on earth are these tangible, actual results being painted as failures?

The "average income" formula you created may be the most useless, meaningless statistic I've ever seen. Here's an example as to why:

An artist that makes $20 a year in music sales sits alone in a room. Average made per artist = $20. Now an artist that makes $1,000,000 a year enters the same room. Average made per artist = $500,010.

So what did we just prove exactly? Same thing you did; nothing.

The truth is, most artist don't make that much in music sales a month, and we all know it. Most make much less. So what exactly is the point of your article? Are you saying that artists should give it up, as it's a tough business? What exactly is your news story? Drop your guitar and go work at a fast food restaurant?

The "odds" of becoming a household name in music during your lifetime, of becoming a superstar, have always been microscopic, and we all know it. But until recently, every single one of the artists who "made it" and did not "make it" were forced through a system of gatekeepers, opinion-shapers, cultural and business guardians that took their copyrights and took advantage. Are you advocating a return to that system?

It can take years, thousands and thousands of dollars of investment, endless hours of work and sacrifice before something finally gives and the stone wall you've been banging your head against finally cracks. Your pseudo, baseless "analysis" suggests independent artists can't "make it". Bullshit.

Tell them the truth: it's hard, it's going to be tough, most of you won't become a superstar. Here's the information you need to know, here are the options, it's up to you to make it happen. Go into this with eyes wide open. No promises.

So some artists made a "mere $1,280" a month from digital music sales (this is a put down?). Newsflash, many made less, but had they gotten those sales while signed to a traditional record label, they'd have gotten no money and, most likely, six weeks after street date, they would have been dropped. That's the fate of 98% of the acts that came through the majors alone.

Imagine a system that can identify correlations between a user’s eating habits, workout schedule, social interactions and more, to deliver an ecosystem of health and fitness apps, websites, and sensor devices that really work, based on a user’s own historical health and fitness data. The Health Graph has the potential to completely alter the health and fitness landscape.

What does this mean for device manufacturers and developers? They now have the opportunity to build an endless array of apps, that draw on the powerful data within the Health Graph. Health Graph developers also benefit from the social features on RunKeeper.com to gain exposure and drive sales. Social features, like our FitnessFeed and Facebook & Twitter sharing integrations, are a fundamental part of the RunKeeper.com experience; we’re opening up these forums to apps and devices that build on the Health Graph, to provide our 6MM+ community members with easy access to all the tools that integrate with RunKeeper.

This change is not in the best interests of users or developers. In the history of technology and innovation, it's clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.

Perhaps more importantly, the intervening time has been good to YouTube as a business and as a brand. In this sense, compare Grokster to YouTube. At the time of the Grokster cases, it was still very much an open question whether Grokster would ever evolve into a tool where legitimate activity dominated. While we might still have had that same question about YouTube in 2006, by 2010 YouTube has answered that question resoundingly. YouTube's business practices have matured, everyone has had positive legitimate experiences with YouTube (even behind-the-curve judges), and it's clear that major legitimate players have adopted YouTube as a platform for their legitimate activities. For example, YouTube's brief makes the point that all of the 2008 presidential candidates published YouTube videos as part of their campaign. I'm guessing no 2004 presidential candidates used Grokster for campaign purposes.

So as time goes on, YouTube solidifies a brand as a legitimate part of our information infrastructure. As we learn that the YouTube story has a happy ending, I suspect judges become less interested in punishing YouTube for past practices. For this reason (and others), I thought a lot of Viacom's inducement arguments ran hollow because they ran counter to my brand impressions of YouTube. I would also note that Viacom appears to be giving up its litigation over activity after May 2008, so even Viacom seems to be happy with YouTube in its current form.

Would Microsoft have distributed Microsoft Office rivals such as SmartSuite or WordPerfect Office via its app store?

Well, maybe, in theory at least-after all, it doesn't sell Microsoft Office as part of Windows, so it couldn't use the "it duplicates functionality that's already in the product" excuse. Call me a cynic, though, but I suspect that competitive office suites would have run into trouble if Microsoft had controlled all Windows software distribution. And hey, didn't WordPerfect duplicate features in Notepad?

How about Netscape Navigator?

When Netscape first appeared in 1994, the current version of Windows (3.11) didn't have a browser. Even Windows 95 didn't have one at first--Internet Explorer was part of the extra-cost Plus Pack. Then again, Windows 95 did ship with the dreadful client for the original version of MSN, a proprietary online service which definitely did compete with the Web. That might have been reason enough for Microsoft to nix Navigator for duplicating Windows functionality. And once IE was part of Windows, Microsoft could have given Navigator the boot retroactively.

Safari? Firefox? Chrome?

They all appeared long after Windows got a browser as standard equipment. No, no, and no.

• Its campaigns have certainly helped bands grow their audience and improved ways to connect with fans. One of its first major projects was the release of David Byrne's latest album, and it increased his email list by 3000%. (Update: Originally we said 37%, but that was wrong. It's actually 30x, or 3000% as per Topspin).
• The various projects have shown that people are quite willing to pay if they're provided with real value and given a real (rather than artificial) reason to buy. The average transaction price is $22 -- significantly more than what people are paying for "just the music" and even more than what an average CD costs.
• Perhaps the most appealing stat: on a recent project 84% of the orders were premium offers above the lowest tier. People will pay more for being given real value, rather than just being forced to pay for the music.

The difficulty with opening up the platform is that the Kindle business model—particularly the wireless aspect—depends on limiting the Kindle's functionality. Amazon is able to offer free cellular access for the life of the product in part because it controls the applications that will run on it, and can therefore guarantee to cell carriers that users won't start running bandwidth-hogging applications on it. And Amazon is willing to pick up customers' bandwidth bills in part because it charges premium prices for content, some of which is available for free off the open Internet. So if Amazon licensed the Kindle name to third parties, it would have two choices. It could tell the vendors they're on their own in terms of negotiating their own wireless plans, which would be a headache for the vendors. Or, if Amazon wants to bring third parties in under its own wireless umbrella, it will presumably need to impose some draconian restrictions on the functionality of the Kindle clones. And how many vendors are going to want to sell Kindle clones that have all the same limitations as the original?

The question, of course, is how to reach this "sweet spot" of an open, flexible, and universal platform. Sometimes (as with the web) we just get lucky, and the designer of the initial standard has the foresight to make it open and extensible. But when that doesn't happen, and it often doesn't, the next best hope is reverse engineering: a company (e.g. IBM) develops a proprietary platform which achieves popularity and is then reverse-engineered by competitors, transforming it into a de facto open standard. The modern PC platform isn't really controlled by anybody, although Microsoft and Intel have more influence than most other vendors. And because nobody controls it, it's both fiercely competitive and highly interoperable.

Because reverse engineering is so important in transforming closed standards into open ones, we should be especially worried about laws that stand in the way of that process. I've written before that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is one such roadblock. For example, one would expect companies to be working hard to reverse-engineer Apple's iTunes-iPod ecosystem in order to sell iPod clones. We might expect the emergence of a de facto open standard around Apple's platform, with a variety of iPod clones and drop-in iTunes replacements. Unfortunately, in part because the DMCA limits the reverse-engineering of FairPlay, Apple's DRM technology, few vendors have attempted this. Hence, the DMCA is helping to perpetuate the competition-versus-standardization dilemma Adam laments.