nothing inherently wrong with that. You won't have maximum access to credit and multiple bank relationships but those consequences may not be relevant to you.
> you make sure you don't overspend
That's great, but not related to the number of credit cards someone has.
> never paid attention to how many points you accumulate.
Some people obsess with points but there's a difference between not accumulating optimally and not accumulating at all. It's incredibly simple to get a 1-2% discount on all money you spend by using credit cards. But, again, that opportunity cost may not be relevant to you.
Do you mean generally positive for [the stock price] or [potential earnings]? Seems like while layoff announcements generally would improve earnings they hurt stock prices. It may be related to the perception that layoffs are often reactive to worsening conditions rather than proactive right-sizings of the business.
If Facebook said that people have stopped using Facebook and they're laying off 10% of the workforce that would be a negative. IBM on the other hand has its hands in dozens of businesses with declining revenue with no real way to improve the situation. In those cases, better to lay people off and milk the cash cow for a few years.
You forgot the largest plus: Ads pay for many useful and enjoyable services that are free for the consumer (or cheaper). Things like broadcast television, local news, most of the internet, games, concerts....
I don't disagree that there are many cons, but it's disingenuous not to include the services they power as one of the pluses.
But I can add another minus: ads as a monetization scheme are unnecessarily restrictive, since the only way for an organization to increase their prices is to jump from an ad-based scheme to a paid scheme, and this jump is too big in many cases. Instead, if we paid for everything with money (not with data), then pricing would be more clear and there would not be any threshold in changing prices.
I'm not sure I fully understand, this would be pay walls on everything wouldn't it? If so, I agree it greatly increases pricing clarity but I'm not convinced it's an improvement necessarily.
I'd also mention that many freemium businesses actually introduce paid models to control costs rather than improve profitability - particularly true for streaming media companies.
The key is that you need to align incentives for employees, investors, etc by demonstrating a long-term commitment to the company. Lots of more nuanced discussions of this topic exist but here's one I have at hand: http://startupclass.samaltman.com/courses/lec18/
It's probably surprising because most companies design compensation programs that are normalized on [talent and geography] rather than talent alone. Sounds like your company has a more holistic approach and that's likely a strategic advantage for hiring.
(SQL is the IATA and FAA identifier for San Carlos Airport, near the Oracle headquarters half way between San Francisco International (SFO) and Palo Alto (PAO))
Oh, good joke, just wanted to make sure everyone got the double entendre (I assume everyone here knows Structured Query Language, but San Carlos is a fairly small airport, isn't it)
For the love of all that's holy, my local pizza shop does NOT need a secure password. They don't even store my credit card. I honestly do not care if someone logs in and see's my favorite order.
1) What's good for the consumer isn't necessarily good for the creators. In other words, they have an incentive to fight the future rather than embrace it.
2) The extra efficiency of distribution created by technology is hell on legacy business models. Streaming media is an example of disruption shrinking the whole pie. Craigslist wrecked the classifieds business and became wildly successful but it did so NOT by moving 90% of the industry's revenue to Craigslist; it did so by capturing 10% of the revenue and destroying the rest.
I tend to agree but this is really a separate conversation. These days, the struggling musician will give away music for extra exposure in the hopes of becoming famous so they can make money touring. That's the best they can do because nobody sells 50 million vinyl records anymore, although that's probably more likely than selling 50 million CDs (note I didn't say albums).
Still, regardless of where these dollars flow, to creators or the "industry," it's fewer dollars.
In the past struggling musicians were handed cash by benificent record cartels. /s
In the past the struggle was to even get any distribution or publicity, radio play was sewn up so artists accepted terrible terms from the distribution monopolies.
We agree. It's more possible than ever to succeed without a label or big company behind you. That doesn't mean there's more money in selling music media.
There is more money if the 98% monopoly cut is removed.
I cite Drummond & Cauty's The Manual, how to have a number one and make a million quid * as the KLF they did just this, repeatedly & using pseudonyms. That was in the 'bad old days', Cauty & Drummond proved that without a record company bleeding them dry artists could make a lifetime's cash with a single hit.
Todays 'problem' is everyone wants to create, sample, share, remix, transcode, &c but copyright maximalism largely prevents this.
I believe that a distribution scheme could pay creatives directly, just as a little extra, they can still sell stuff - my thesis is without the 98% loss due to the cartels this is workable and everyone can play & innovate. Ireland does this in reverse, artists don't pay tax there & get tax credits (~£50 per week).
Also restore copyright back to 20-40 years putting the 20th century in the public domain where it belongs and destroying the back-catalogue leverage the monopolists abuse.
So your argument is that the artist's slice of the pie is larger than it once was? That may be true, I don't have an informed perspective. However, for the industry, my original points stand.
I argue that the secret deals between the big labels with Spotify and Youtube rip off the artists just as much as before. *
They are trying to reassert control over distribution by shutting down those who won't pay what they want (grooveshark) or attain censorship power even in excess of copyright- like Youtube & DRM ( trumps transcoding rights & fair use ).
There are just as bad for artists as fans, just as bad as they always were, their death grip has slipped because they were too set in their ways to comprehend the internet was the future.
They also stop or cripple technologies they don't like.
They big label cartels are a social ill supported by monopoly lobbying and governments doing their bidding.
They extended copyright for so long that they own the rights to nearly the entire 20th centuries cultural output.
It will only get worse, monopolies should be broken up they destroy free-markets and build barriers to entry.
The funny thing is that no one ever really sold that many copies of an album. The music industry, for all its reach and visibility, is tiny compared to a single 'blockbuster' movie.
I mean, a "gold record" which is pretty rare and often takes months or years for an album to reach is 500k sales. Compare that to movie tickets (which are now about the same price each, and are only a single viewing!), where 500k sales can be a disastrous failure.
well, digital sales only (which are still less than CD and I think streaming/radio + public performance make much more now than by then) are currently worth more than total music sales in the seventies, which I don't think were a particularly bad time for music creativity. (http://publicradio2.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/files/2014/02/un...)
This chart is comparing dollars (CD sales) to units (digital singles, which probably avg less than $1.29 each). So at their peak CD sales were worth >10x what digital singles sales are now. It's not even close, and if this chart were inflation-adjusted the difference would be much larger.
Forgetting about the Musician's share, all the streaming/satellite radio revenue collectively wouldn't cover the shortfall (terrestrial radio doesn't pay).
I can't comment on public performance but it's certainly become the definitive way musicians make money now and their share has always been high in this category.
> Streaming media is an example of disruption shrinking the whole pie.
Is that really the case for movies/tv shows though?
"Back in the day" I used to get Netflix to ship me DVDs for around the same cost per month that I now pay for streaming. And they had all the latest titles available.
Surely at least as much money is going back to the content creators as it was then?
Yes. Netflix is causing a similar shrinking to the RENTAL market that Craigslist did to classifieds, albeit less severe. However, the SALES of Physical Media (DVDs/Blu-Rays) are down huge over the last ten years and there hasn't been anything to replace that revenue. Essentially selling 30 DVDs to you and all your friends was replaced by selling 1 DVD to Netflix.
One more piece of history that you may already know: in the prime days of the rental market companies like Blockbuster paid ~$100 per movie and had access to the titles before a consumer could purchase them. Netflix didn't play ball, rather than pay those prices they'd wait until the DVDs were generally available and buy at consumer/bulk prices.
I wouldn't shed any tears for the industry though, they'll survive. Besides, just to be clear, I love Netflix, they're great.
nothing inherently wrong with that. You won't have maximum access to credit and multiple bank relationships but those consequences may not be relevant to you.
> you make sure you don't overspend
That's great, but not related to the number of credit cards someone has.
> never paid attention to how many points you accumulate.
Some people obsess with points but there's a difference between not accumulating optimally and not accumulating at all. It's incredibly simple to get a 1-2% discount on all money you spend by using credit cards. But, again, that opportunity cost may not be relevant to you.