eCommerce

The traditional model for music artists to release their music to the public is to seed the public with a few singles, then follow with an album. This strategy is about scarcity and marketing, more than anything else. Is it suitable for digital only artists?

Every other day you see a story from some legacy industry about how the modern world is decimating their cushy income model, about how they've failed to react and adapt to what their customers have been demanding, and how the government should step in with some laws in some area to protect their income stream. Why adapt when you can lobby government so you don't have to?

There's a persistent myth that Linux users won't pay for software, where Windows and OSX users will. It's used as part of the salvo of excuses or reasons why developers don't bother making Linux versions of their software. It's not as cut and dried as either camp make out.

Plenty of the legacy industries think it's perfectly normal that consumers have to pay them over and over and over again for the same product, if it changes hands or for a new format version. They think that it's nothing short of money laundering if those products change hands and don't pay them another fee. Let's change the context to see how ridiculous that assertion is.

The key balancing factor in a Capitalist system is consumer choice. Companies can do whatever they want, behave however badly they want, price their goods however uncompetitive they want. If enough consumers choose not to use them, they go out of business. Amazon need to assist their customers, not hinder them.