Oh, you seem all right.
If you shaved off your beard.I think one of the problems is that, you know, how much money could I make without If someone works on that, Topspin could be a very valuable tool.I think Kickstart is interesting, but I'm not sure if it can scale. I'm actually pessimistic about whether it can scale.What about the people who argue that the old book or the movie or the record or the CD is the give away and that the money is to be made in live now in speeches or in gigs? What's your reaction to that? Is that a viable model for a 21st century entertainment economy?I don't think it's a viable model for an economy, I think it's a very viable model for some performers. Radiohead certainly did very well with that. You know, a band like U2 makes a lot of money on the road compared to the albums they sell. For books, I have a hard time imagining myself making that much money on the road.Well, maybe you need to improve your speaking skills.The publisher stopped it, I think that was a really good thing. I think that the amount of pirate books out there, and this is a small problem but it's starting to get bigger quickly. I think believing that you have no power to charge your things leads you to make very poor decisions.But what does that mean in terms of pricing?. Give me some concrete examples. Use the example of your book, for example. What needs to change to make it easier for you as an author to make a living in the digital 21st century One thing is that I, as a creator, I would like to have and to make money, I would certainly want to have more control over pricing. The best way to maximize revenue is to start the price of the book very high and gradually lower it until you reach the maximum number of buyers at each pricing level. But that already exists, right? You have a hard back and then a soft back.That exist in a very primitive form for a long time when amazon put a lot of pricing pressure on books, that all the kindle books had to be ten dollars, I think that was a really bad thing. They're saying, "We don't like this bill. We'd prefer no enforcement at all." That's not really a valid answer, and it's not going to get us closer to a better solution. Look, I think there's room for both models. I mean, some nonfiction authors are very charismatic, they're going to do very well as speakers. Others aren't. I would, I love living in a world where some people can make a lot of money speaking. I don't think I want to live in a world where it's impossible to write non-fiction unless you can make money speaking. Well, let's go beyond the business models: when we, when you talk about how the culture business can fight back, do you think this needs to be done. Washington D.C. with legislation like Protect IP. Certainly, I think that's part of it too. You know, there are things I like about Protect IP. There are things I'm not wild about, but I think you need to have some level of copyright enforcement, and what disturbs me about Project IP is that the people who don't like the bill are not saying, we don't like this method of copyright enforcement, we prefer this one. in our increasingly transparent world, it's harder and harder to actually do paid content if you're in nonfiction?I think so, and Speaking of companies I cover, which represents a serious conflict of interest. So you're saying that many of these artists are kind of inevitably compromised by the live speaking thing?I think journalists can be, I don't know about artists, I think journalists can be. You know if I had, you know, I was offered a couple speaking opportunities for money by companies I cover, if I had taken those opportunities, and you found out that I had received twenty thousand dollars from Universal Records and Warner Music -- I have not -- if you found out that I had, would you want to read the book, or you would say "Hey, this is a bunch of nonsense, this guy's getting paid by these people."Well, I wouldn't have a problem if it was after you'd written for them.Okay, I think a lot of people might, see, I think you would write it with that payoff in mind, or it would be hard not to write with that payoff in mind. So you're saying that and quality of content.But even the cable industry needs to go a la carte, doesn't it?I think so, I think the market will take care of that though. And you're an ex-Billboard reporter, so you know the music business very well.Right.What start-up businesses outside of Spotify in the music business are promising? What about some of these companies that are rebuilding the commercial relationship between artist and audience?I think some of those are interesting. I think that a lot of them are interesting; you know, Band Camp is okay, I think Top Spin is really interesting, but I think that what artists need more than tools on how to sell things is someone to invest. Like, if you're a beginning artist, and you want to sell t-shirts, you have a way to sell t-shirts, but no one's going to buy your t-shirt until you have a following? How do you build a following without funding? That's a much bigger problem. Who's going to work on that? Definitely the market, I think you need legislation to set some boundaries for the markets, the market can work. But definitely the market is where this is going.Well Robert, I want to thank you for some very valuable, free entertainment on the free network Techcrunchtv.com. Thank you so much. Much rather, that would not be, that would be my last choice. My first choice would be going after commercial scale pirates in an aggressive way. When you think about what we've done to to enforce copyright, the idea of suing or opposing penalties on a lot of users does not sit very well with me. It seems unfair, it looks terrible, there's always a debate about how much these people know what they're doing is wrong, and it's inefficient. So that's why you like Protect IP, that it goes after the large pirate companies rather than individuals?Oh, yeah. And now you look at the Pirate Bay, the guys behind the Pirate Bay are facing jail time. I think that's great. I think jail is where they belong. I mean, based on my understanding of the issue, jail is where they belong.Finally Robert, the market or legislation, when it comes to saving the entertainment industry, one or the other.You know, I would hate to let the content business decide the future of the internet. But I would hate to let Google and some other technology companies block any kind of law enforcement at all, those boats seem like bad futures, and you know, this might sound idealistic, but I think we all deserve better. I was in Europe a couple of a weeks ago And the French have a very different attitude to this, to the Americans. Do you favor the European model of more aggressive legislation? Yes, I do. I think that. There's things about I'm not wild about; I think that slowing internet access as a penalty is a much better penalty than cutting it off. And I think that you need to be sure that when you. "have these kind of regulations. You allow for an appeal process, but i think the principle is a good one.""But if three strikes, you're out?""Some number of strikes" "strikes, yes, with an appeal process I think is a good idea.""And you would favor that kind of solution in the U.S. for people who continually steal online?""I would"
If, like the author of Free Ride, Robert Levine, you believe that digital parasites are destroying the culture business, then the time has come for a major counterattack against both piracy and the free culture movement. Thus, as Levine told me last week when he came into our New York City studio, the challenge is for the culture business to establish what he calls ?more control? over pricing as well as embracing more innovative artist-fan business models like Top Spin and Bandcamp.
But Levine doesn?t believe that the market alone is sufficient to enable the culture business to effectively fight back against digital parasites. Thus, as he told me, there is the need for certain new laws, such as the proposed ProtectIP Act now winding its way through Congress, designed to eliminate pirate sites. Not everyone, of course, agrees with Levine. And yet given the enormous value of the culture business to the US economy, only a really hardcore opponent of large media companies would dismiss the need for any legislation to fight today?s digital parasites.
This is the second and final interview with Robert Levine. Yesterday, Levine explained to me why, he thinks, Google is killing our culture.
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