Author Archives: ratpie

Hypercompetition. How Platforms Destroy Markets.

Posted on May 21, 2021 by ratpie

The first rule of platform business success: increase supply as far beyond the market’s ability to sustain the suppliers as possible. It doesn’t really matter how – and many tactics have been tried. It doesn’t matter what it costs either … Continue reading →

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Platformed! Music’s New ‘Disempowerment’ Business Model

Posted on March 8, 2021 by ratpie

In his book, Noise, Jacques Attali makes a startling assertion – that music is the vanguard of revolution. Changes, he says, in the relationship between music and the economic and social structures that govern its position and remuneration prefigure fundamental … Continue reading →

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A Truth-Based Alternative to Spotify’s Danceability Index

Posted on February 25, 2021 by ratpie

When Spotify bought Echonest, several years ago, they added a set of skills and knowledge in how computing can be used to analyse music. This field of work is fundamental to recommendation systems. Conventionally researchers had taken one of two … Continue reading →

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The Public Interest in Music

Posted on January 26, 2021 by ratpie

The UK music industry is going through a period of internal arguments, and as sometimes happens some of us are reaching out for an adjudicator, or referee. January 2021 saw the UK’s law makers brought into the ring in a … Continue reading →

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Music’s Dissonant Value Gap

Posted on November 30, 2018 by ratpie

At the time of writing, a Google video search for ‘crushed by the wheels of industry’ delivers as its first result a YouTube upload with the plea, ‘NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED’ from a user which calls itself ‘mrrockwithmebaby’. Try it … Continue reading →

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An Act for the Encouragement of…

Posted on February 18, 2018 by ratpie

The Statute of Anne, enacted in England in 1710, opens with a statement of intent: An Act for the Encouragement of Learning I have argued elsewhere that it succeeded. Whether by the mechanisms intended, essentially the first modern copyright, or … Continue reading →

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Net Neutrality Won’t Help Music. Here’s Why…

Posted on December 29, 2017 by ratpie

With the best intentions, some in the music industry are adding their voices to protest the US FCC’s rollback of net neutrality regulations. Keeping them won’t help the music industry; pretending it will means the real threats to open and … Continue reading →

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Three Conditions for Independent Music to Survive

Posted on July 17, 2017 by ratpie

My biggest mistake was to assume that major labels would not want to buy margin-shrinking and inherently weak independent distribution companies. Since 2015, several ‘insider’ distributors (the kind whose founders and owners sit on trade association boards) have been sold … Continue reading →

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My Platform, Right or Wrong!

Posted on May 5, 2017 by ratpie

It was an early hero of the United States navy, Stephen Decatur, Jr., who gave the world the dubious chant of nationalist zealots, reportedly in an after dinner toast to, Our country – in her intercourse with foreign nations, may … Continue reading →

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A New Social Contract For Music

Posted on February 19, 2017 by ratpie

Music, in its various forms, has done quite well in the age of copyright. Digital technology has brought with it many tipping points, when old certainties give way to chaos before finding new stable states. Any new stability will rely, as … Continue reading →

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