I thoroughly enjoyed an interview of John Buckman discussing Magnatune on Out-Law Radio. I enjoy John’s perspective on many subjects. Of note, pay-what-it’s-worth-to-you was tested long before Radiohead’s recent news. One thing I didn’t know: most of the money for (small?) bands is in licensing? Maybe the clarifying details were edited out of the interview.

I think John’s dead-on by identifying that people don’t want “ownership” of digital music to require a data back-up process that would make a Fortune 500 CIO proud. Heck, we can’t even manage to transfer phone numbers when we switch phones (unless you store them on your SIM card, part of the GSM standard designed for portability, only to be made unportable by U.S. carriers).

I’m totally confused what the interviewer meant by Magnatune has “broken every intellectual property rule in the book.” I’m not aware of a label that shares as high a percentage of revenue with its artists.

In related news, I also enjoyed what Ian Rogers of Yahoo! Music had to say about the ongoing battle between record labels and their consumers.

I see fans’ willingness to “overpay” for music as an indication of their desire to stimulate creation of more art that they like. Emotion, not logic, drives both the appreciation and creation of art and leads to both inelastic demand and supply.

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