Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: It's p-to-p plus applications, stupid

Author:Eric Soroos
Posted:9/12/2000; 9:15:37 PM
Topic:It's p-to-p plus applications, stupid
Msg #:21283 (In response to 21281)
Prev/Next:21281 / 21284

Well, even if we don't make any bucks at least we'll participate in creating a cool new way for people to communicate.

It's becoming clear that someone will make some money, and it's probably not going to be the record compaanies in the near future. I'm betting on bandwidth and services. (and hopefully the artists)

Some random thoughts:

* disk space is roughly $5/gig. Random uncompressed cd's are roughly 1/2 gig. That means that the marginal capital costs to store a perfect digital copy of a cd is $2.50. Mp3s cut that by a factor of 5 for true cd quality. Hidden costs are the time that it takes to shuffle your cd collection through a cdrom drive. I can't see anyone ripping 100 cd's if they don't have an assurance that they won't have to do it again when Murphy strikes.

* tivos come in up to 40 gig versions. (iirc) (=~ 500 albums, mp3'd) fundamentally, the only thing missing form the tivo is ethernet and /or digital bandwidth. (think cable modem. or think that someone will be able to piggyback off of either broadcast hdtv or a spare cable channel) There's your subscription model. Tivo + service $$ a month. So long as you have 10-20 k per second bandwidth, you can stream. More than that and you can slap down whole albums at once.

* Sufficiently high bandwidth Mp3s are really cd quality for all but the fringe of listeners. On my system, 192k through a decent sound card is hard to distinguish from an inexpensive cd player. Fringe listeners have shown that they will support alternate modes of music delivery, at least for a while. (see Mobile Fidelity Sound Labs, a going concern till line bloat and generally better sound from mainstream labels drove them out of business.)

* a Raq would look really nice in my stereo rack. Especially if it had SPIDIF or rca outs. I'm betting that a moderate processor + sound + cdrom + big drive could be done for $300 + the money for the drive. (there are network computers now that are $200 for everything - the drive but with video) Run the mp3 player via a web browser, xml-rpc, or front panel buttons + lcd and you're set. My linux box is already being driven via xml-rpc from RU, it's just that a big beige box is so much less photogenic than rack mount stereo gear.

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the major bottleneck is going to be bandwidth for the masses. Tivo is good because they have an analog fat pipe.

eric - who's at the end of a 1.5 mbit dsl line

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