I'm going to try to tell you a little about the economics and division of labor here. I guess I'm still feeling "defensive" as my friend, moe, suggested.
Frankly, what we do is hard. It's really hard. We're not stashing it all away in Switzerland or buying a new villa in Miami. We live well, but we're not overpaid.
We've got a great team:
Bob
Yaobing
JohnT
Matt
Hendrik
Brad
JimH (the slacker)
That's seven of us. All but Brad and Hendrik have been together for decades.
Behind the curtain is Deanna, who keeps the business in order. She's been here just as long.
We have a very modest office. By European standards, we look destitute. Concrete floors, cracks in the walls, cracks in the windows, etc. But we like it. We love working together, even if we don't say much about it.
We get there rain, sleet, or snow, and we do our jobs. We know our jobs well enough that there isn't a lot of management crap. We just work.
So that's to say, it's a very humble organization, but I think we've done something amazing, and without the millions that have been burnt on the competitors that took a run at digital media.
Pressplay
Musicnet, which became Medianet
Songbird
Rdio
Live365
Winamp
and all the rest, many of whom I've chronicled here:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,101545.0.htmlOnce strong companies like Yahoo and AOL took a serious run at the space we're in and ended up being unable to compete.
So, with nothing more than a great community of people, a lot of work, and a little luck, we've managed to keep our digital media work going for more than twenty years, and we've done it the old fashioned way; we earned it.
I started a thread over the weekend to invite you to tell us what we need to do. Not features, but direction. You did a great job. Here's the thread:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,122286.msg846172.html#msg846172I summarized it here and added my thoughts:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,122286.msg846337.html#msg846337But that's not what I started out to say. I wanted to explain why we just can't do what you can imagine. And we can't fix all the defects you can find. We concentrate on the software and sometimes we do it at the expense of other things you'd like. I think it's part of why we've done so well in the face of such formidable competition.
Thanks for your understanding.
