2highbehind

Would anyone at the in the Boing Boing community know what company it is?

Boing Boing reader Chris Hoofnagle of EPIC says:

As part of my work at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, I scan direct marketing publications to see how companies are selling your personal information. This data sale appeared today in Direct Marketing News. It proposes to sell the personal information of those who subscribe to "an online digital music community...These consumers pay anywhere from $9.00 to $19.99 a month to gain access to a diverse catalog of over 500,000 music downloads in a variety of genres from top independent labels." The "datacard" says that the company has race, age, gender, religion, and income information on the subscribers. I'm wondering what music subscription site is selling their members' data! Would anyone at the in the Boing Boing community know what company it is?

Link

Analysts Remain Lukewarm on Download, Subscription Models

Most agree that the digital music market is immature, though analysts remain bearish on the near- and mid-term possibilities. Online music sales models, including a-la-carte and subscription plays, have been mixed at best, though few analysts are predicting a sharp upturn anytime soon. "It will be at least three years before anyone can make a serious profit selling digital music," commented Radar Research managing partner Adam Sinnreich, referencing the current dominance of Apple. Sinnreich, speaking to TheStreet.com, also assailed the digital download business model, pointing to razor-thin profit margins. "Nobody will ever make money from selling 99-cent downloads," the analyst asserted.>> Digital music news

Gotshrimp >> Indeed most and not everybody. I beleive that it is possible, even to sell for less than 00,99$ and still make a profit. The discussion about digital is almost always without taking the physical product and other lines of revenue for music companies, because of that the conclusion of 'most' people is that with i-tunes behaving the way they do it's impossible to make a good profit. This ofcourse is the biggest %^&** of all. Steve Jobs created a service that is so good that millions of people use it every day. Apple was the first (and still the only) that created a compelling offering for music lovers. Everybody should thank this company for making digital an interesting line of business, it's the fear of not knowing what next that keeps people from granting mr. Jobs the credits for making this service a success and take digital to the next level. I say focus on what your customers want and offer a music experience that goes cross platform, each outlet strenthens the other and the total music experience becomes more compelling and will enable a shift from people spending their money on games, mobile and other sources of entertainment to spending more money on music on all platforms. Today it's so damn difficult to access digital music. You buy a track that expires??? &*^% that DRM..