The Outsidr

Upon learning of Steve Jobs’ recent admission that the iPhone contains a remote kill switch, Stephen Colbert fears for his life. His reaction:

I knew I should’ve gotten a Zune! They can’t kill me… Or do anything else.

Too funny… (relevant footage starts at 5:42 in the clip above)

A follow up to Sunday’s post.

It looks like the big guys aren’t the only ones feeling the wrath of the RIAA these days, and it’s only bound to get worse. Muxtape, a service that allows users to upload music from their personal libraries to create an online mixtape, currently services less than 90,000 unique visitors per month according to Compete. That won’t keep it under the RIAA’s radar it would appear, as the service went down yesterday with the note “Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA” on its homepage. A post on the Muxtape blog provides the following message:

No artists or labels have complained. The site is not closed indefinitely. Stay tuned.

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The following is a copy of my post from earlier today on BGR. I hope every takes a moment to read it and think about the role of the American government in various facets of the entertainment industry.

As traffic to Pandora continues to climb at an impressive rate, far more steep than that of competitor Last.fm as seen in the chart above, the popular custom internet radio provider may be a breath away from closing its doors. Why, you might ask? The answer is not very far from being obvious these days.

Wherever there is an emerging revolution in the realm of music consumption, loved by many yet still on the brink of defeat; the RIAA is never far from the scene. Pandora’s current woes fit the mold precisely. Pandora usage is at all all-time high and usage increased by almost two million visits per month from June to July alone, yet elevated royalty rates are making it nearly impossible for the company to stay afloat. After last year’s decision that internet radio provider per-song royalty rates would double there has been an ongoing battle between providers and SoundExchange, an unincorporated division of the RIAA tasked with collecting royalties from digital providers such as satellite and internet radio.

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I often see a common theme amongst would-be entrepreneurs debating whether or not to “take the leap”. They have a great idea, they research it, start work on a business plan, begin coding it in their spare time – but then something stops them in their tracks.

“Oh no! This site I just found on Google does almost exactly what I want to do!”

99 out of 100 times this should hardly be a deterrent. That sentiment holds doubly true if the would-be competitor you found is doing well. They’ve taken most of the guess-work out of your startup equation. Research them, contact them, try to learn about their history and their customer base. Try to find and interact with users or at least try to locate some public user feedback about the company. Then eat their lunch.

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Why oh why do you sit idly by and watch as spammers turn Twitter into Friendster? Yes, there are popular people on Twitter following thousands of people but does any reputable user add more than, say, 50 or 100 contacts in a day? There needs to be some intervention before Twitter turns into one giant spamburger.

Look at MyBlogLog. They limit the number of followers a user can add each day and the site is doing fine. In fact, I’ve never received a spam add there as far as I can recall.

Or, how about a ratio-based limit? Until you have xxx followers, you can only follow yyy people.

Something needs to be done, and soon. I’m now getting between five and 15 spam adds each day and I’m not even a highly visible Twitter user. I can’t imagine how many spam adds celwebrities get, though they likely just reciprocate without even reading any content.