Re: ebooks "a smoke and mirrored mess"?

No, not tongue-in-cheek at all. Yes, there's a huge amount of music online. But most people, apart from serious music fans, would fall into the category that you place yourself in.... " I don't actively pursue music on the Internet very much". For many people, the front page of the iTunes store, and Apple's "genius" thing, or whatever it's called,  is the most important music retailer there is. 99c a song, isn't it?

I agree with you, Magnatunes is great, and innovative. I used to listen to it a lot, and now that you've reminded me about it, I'll go back there today.

I've noticed that my kids, who I regard as totally mainstream, still being educated into the process, music consumers,  get their music from Youtube. They get on there and search for Justin Beiber, and Beyonce and other performers whose names I never bother learning, who are being pushed by large corporate interests. They never buy anything. They don't have to, because there's a constant supply of new or undiscovered material. Youtube, as far as my kids and their friends are concerned, IS music.

And I think that a similar trend will happen with ebook readers and mobile devices. For my own part, the first question I would ask about any reading device (e.g. I'm looking forward to seeing the Dell Streak released) would be "can I download epub titles from sites like manybooks and Baen?" 

David

--
dminoz.com
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---- On Thu, 17 Jun 2010 07:43:18 +1000 Jon Jermey <[email protected]> wrote ---- 

>     Is this meant to be tongue-in-cheek? I don't actively pursue music on 
> the Internet very much, but my impression is that there are a good many 
> mid-range performers finding reasonably-sized audiences via 
> intermediaries such as Magnatunes and Last.FM. I've listened to quite a 
> few of the Magnatunes offerings and while few of them have inspired me 
> to investigate further, most of them are presented to a high 
> professional standard. I don't know what the musical equivalent of 
> 'needing a good edit' is, but it doesn't seem to fit here. The overall 
> average quality is at least as good as that heard on Top 40 radio. And 
> Magnatunes is still growing, so it must be giving something back to its 
> suppliers.
> 
> Jon.
> 
> On 16/06/10 14:04, David Major wrote:
> >
> > That Huffington article was interesting, and raised some good points. 
> > I've heard a similar line of reasoning before - that the cheapness and 
> > sheer amount of ebooks will create a massive underclass of authors who 
> > publish their own work, usually still in need of a good edit, and who 
> > sell a few copies in obscurity, and a small elite of authors who are 
> > superstars, who receive all the hype and become buzzwords on the 
> > interwebs, and sell accordingly. Exactly the same as has happened with 
> > music.
> > David



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