Lala has it all - paid music, cloud storage, streaming to mobile

Lala - Where music plays

I have been against the idea that paid music (or any digital content) does not work. I have written many posts. Here they are.

I believe one of the significant obstacles is micro payment, which I have mentioned here, in terms of both price level and payment system. And according to Techcrunch, Lala allows you to buy web-only versions of songs for 10 cents. When you want to 'own' the file in your iPod, you pay extra 80 cents.

Another pro is that they will lanch streaming to iPhone. One thing innovation does is to reduce waste. There are guite a lot of waste around music: Many people storing the same songs, storing the same song in multiple devices, songs stored but not being played often, etc. Chris Anderson seems to believe that because we have abundant storage, it is fine to 'waste' it. See his blog or Wired article. (However, he has refined his theory and became much more reasonable, focusing more on freemium.) But I am not sure if those waste is negligible given the abundance we have. Those small wastes add up.

I have not used it. In fact, they are not offering the service to people outside the US. But with their business model, I think Lala may have a chance in the crowded music market. Let's see how it does.

Pay Me for My Content - New York Times

Pay Me for My Content - New York Times: "Affordable turns out to be much harder than free when it comes to information technology, but we are smart enough to figure it out. We owe it to ourselves and to our creative friends to acknowledge the negative results of our old idealism. We need to grow up."

Mr. Jaron Lanier, I agree with you.

Self-interest and altruism (or empathy)

What Is Altruism? - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com

I left a comment:

One thing many economists, or whoever doesn’t believe in voluntary giving (as opposed to forced taxation), seem to assume that one needs to sacrifice one’s self-interest to contribute to others’ wellbeing. Therefore it won’t happen easily. Therefore we need forced contribution.

I don’t agree. Whether you call it self-interest or greed or utility or whatever, people pursue happiness. And very often people feel happy when seeing others happy. Plus, people feel proud and happy when they have helped others.

I don’t know academic distinction between altruism and empathy, but I am certain that contributing to others’ happiness is not inconsistent with pursuit of one’s own happiness.

Does a firm need to be like the market?

Should a firm act like the market to survive through changes?

Some people seem to think so. I have not read it, but “Creative Destruction”, a book by McKinsey consultants, had such remarks. I cannot argue about the book, as I have not read it. But the sentences that I read certainly made me think a lot about what companies should do to survive.

Do you think a firm should act like a market? How much should you diversify to qualify as acting like a market?

There is another question, which might be even more fundamental. Does a firm need to last long? Or, is built to last a good thing for every firm?

The first English version of Artpoli is up

We at Innomove Lab opened the first English version of Artpoli. You can see it at www.artpoli.com.

Artpoli is an open community and marketplace for arts. We are based in Korea, and it was quite natural that we started with Korean artists. And because established artists have relationships with art galleries, it was also natural that we attracted artists who are not known. So, in principle we are an open space for any artist, but for now we have Korean artists who are mostly young and not famous.

We plan to add features like commerce, commenting, and community that Korean version has, but at the moment we have the only the most basic feature for an art site, that is to display arts. But we wanted to open earlier and build incrementally with feedback, while letting you enjoy the artworks of Korean artists.

Most of the user generated texts, including title, artist nicknames, and descriptions, are translated using Google Translate. It is better than nothing and sometimes does a good job, but we may need to have humans translate the content later.

Anyway, it is a start. Please enjoy and let me know if you have any feedback.

Which economics to bet on?

Greg Mankiw's Blog: Wanna bet some of that Nobel money?

If Dr.Krugman takes it, it wil be the gamble of the Obama era.