How the first subscription-based music service was built online, and why it’s time to move on.

Nearly fifteen years ago I began hashing the plans for what would become, as far as I can tell, the first subscription-based music service online. What we built was…

Making sense of the mixed methods for calculating Spotify users and conversion rates

Warning: this is a LONG post.

As Spotify continues to grow, both in terms of the number of countries within which it operates and the number of users signing up…

Rockonomic: Spotify versus iTunes, when are streams-over-time worth as much as a sale today?

The “streams versus sales” debate continues to rage. A greater number of artists are posting their payouts from streaming services (e.g., Spotify, Deezer, Rhapsody, rdio…

Big data in the media industry: Overcoming a preference for Prophets, Pundits, Polemics, and Pedantics.

If you look closely at the use of data — big or small — in the media industry, you find (most likely) a preference for three make that four sorts of…

Ass-backwards Analytics: From single case studies to general rules, from big data to little exceptions

People respond to data, or the lack thereof, in interesting ways.

The ‘Lather, Rinse, Repeat’ model for understanding the copyright licensing paradox

Since the season of “he said she said” in copyright licensing is now in full bloom, I thought it wise to reveal a model I have developed for understanding the copyright licensing paradox.

Rockonomic: £0.000073 ($0.00012), the value to labels/artists/performers of a spin per Radio listener in the UK

This report is part of a continuing “Rockonomics” series investigating the value of the use of music across a range of experiences —…

Anti-scale in music licensing: The Spotify example

More often than not, startups are in pursuit of venture dynamics that exhibit benevolent economies of scale: cost per unit, or per user fall as the number of users increases.

Innovation at the edge: An investigation of music licensing efforts and the process of opportunity development

I have been finishing up a rather lengthy working paper, “Innovation at the edge: Making sense of opportunity at the boundary of technology…