Most of us are rarely aware of the fact that we live in two worlds. One is characterized by social exchanges and the other by market exchanges. The quality of any one person’s life depends to a great extent on how adept they are at balancing the two. What do I mean by that? [...]
30. May 2010
Inside The Mind Of A Music Pirate
Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger gave an interesting response to a question about music profits recently. He said:
But I have a take on that – people only made money out of records for a very, very small time. When The Rolling Stones started out, we didn’t make any money out of records because record companies [...]
19. May 2010
The Price Of Music Is Based Mostly On Ideology
The New York Times wants to start charging for content. It’s a strategy that’s worked reasonably well for publications like the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. But those publications provide a higher degree of actionable information that appeals to people in the financial industries. My prediction is that the New York Times’ new [...]
10. May 2010
Record Labels Waged War On Human Psychology…And Lost
The major record labels and the RIAA could have averted a PR nightmare and saved themselves millions of dollars by hiring a few behavioral economists instead of lawyers to advise them. The basis of all human economic transactions are psychological. Our animal spirits animate markets. The lawsuits the RIAA waged against consumers several years ago [...]
3. May 2010
The Internet’s Bringing Idealism Back To Music…And Why Microsoft’s Still Evil
Most of us assume that people are motivated primarily by self-interest. It’s a logical assumption to make because, after all, most people do care about their job more than they do about yours. They do care about their own kids more than they do yours. None of this is surprising in the least because it’s [...]
26. April 2010
The Psychology Of Free…(Or, Why I Won’t Pay For A Song)
One of the biggest misconceptions about pricing is the notion that people base most buying decisions on rational economic calculations. The truth is that they’re based far more on psychology most of the time.
There’s several ways to look at this. One is from a value standpoint. Most people would probably rather pay $4.50 for a [...]
19. April 2010
Why The Cost Of Music Trends To Zero
Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources with alternative uses. It sounds like esoteric mumbo jumbo. But all it means is that the world has stuff we want and that we can’t all have that stuff and the market decides how it all gets divvied out.
It’s one of the more important [...]
13. July 2010
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