Hi Jim,
Thanks for your response. I'm glad you consider my comments worthy of further evaluation by your community, so I'll add two more cents to keep things going. :-)
You're probably correct that we're seeing too many trees and not enough forest, but there are SO many things we need to do, and the quality of what we do is critical to the success of our products.
I am not surprised that your list of things to do is greater than the time/manpower/resources you have, so my comments in no way mean to criticize. I merely wanted to suggest that you may be able to "kill two birds with one stone" to borrow a trite phrase. In the area of "media asset management/access" I am seeing the opportunity to marry business and consumer needs largely being ignored even though the effort/cost to do so would be negligibly greater or perhaps even reduced. Basically, I see MJ/MC at a critical junction point and as Nila opined, if you standardize MJ/MC around business protocols (i.e. SQL), it could easily become the app that traverses both consumer and business processes.
... So far, a lot of companies have lost a lot of money in that market.
You are absolutely correct and on that note, contrarian thinking suggest that now may be the time to analyze why those companies lost money and how you can take advantage of the vacumn left behind. Again, IMHO, most of the companies lost money because of a poor business model, poor execution and lack of seasoned mgmt... not to mention poor timing.
We built a complete system that allows this. It is called Music Exchange. DRM, e-commerce, everything. We found ourselves competing for business in an area that is dominated by the major record labels and they couldn't get their shoes on the right feet, so we ducked out of it.
I did briefly review your website info on Music Exchange and while there exist a number of very large players trying to capture this market (because no one even owns even a sizable single digit marketshare percentage), I believe if J River approaches this opportunity from a strategic alliance POV, you may create the ability to 'capture' the music publishers and others without having 'compete' with the big boys or teach them right from left. It was also my review of your ME endeavors that led me to suggest a marriage of both your consumer and business development efforts (one app could become a subset/superset of the other).
There are some big privacy concerns about this, if I understand what you mean. RealNetworks, for one, was secretly reporting back on listener usage and got caught at it. People don't feel good about someone watching. This is obviously logical, but there are some serious roadblocks. Congress, for one, has been more friendly to the content owners than to the consumer so far.
Actually, what I am referring to is simply the ability to know when and where content is played, primarily in the B2B arena where privacy et. al. is not a primary issue. Within the B2C environment, I concur that other issues like privacy come into play and more thought would have to go into designing the appropriate consumer model. I think however, if structured properly, most listeners/viewers would not object to tracking and verification as long as it was disclosed up front, ignorant of their personal data and properly structured.
As you probably know, an artist may have ownership of the recording, but not own the rights to the song, so you can't cut the music publisher out. They own the song or represent the rights of the composer of it.
Yes I do know that the artist is but one part of the whole process. Nonetheless, I believe your app may offfer the ability for each 'stakeholder' within the media publishing process a way to financially gain from the Internet so that noone need be disintermediated. With respect to publishers, they provide a very valuable service which is not easily replaced, namely marketing. It's just that they haven't figured out how to enfold the new digital workflow processes into the more traditional legacy analog marketing & distribution paradigms. As you expressed earlier, it is difficult to take them beyond what they know. Even so, I believe if you approached them from a strategic alliance POV and show them how they can benefit financially AND not lose 'marketshare to the Internet or P2P processes, I believe they'll listen.
If you can see something I'm missing, please elaborate. I don't want to pour cold water on your ideas. I'm just a little frustrated myself with the conditions we're trying to operate under.
In no way did your comments "pour cold water" on the ideas I proferred. If anything you've asked for clarification - I admit my comments to being a bit general considering this is a public forum. Nonetheless, I hope enough has been said to encourage others to weigh in with their thoughts on how J River, MJ/MC, ME can truly become a 'cross-media platform' that enables digital commerce (in media publishing) to co-exist with traditional commerce.
Some time in the future, if time/conditions/interest converge, perhaps I can introduce you to some potential alliance partnerships that at a first glance I think might offer J River the option of implementing a wide and deep strategic platform from which to launch tactical endeavors.
don