Another non-starter: Micropayments at P2P File Sharing

Here's another non-starter: Micropayments. Extensive obits have been written. I won't go into that here. See clay Shirky's piece Fame vs Fortune: Micropayments and Free Content for background. There IS value in micropayments. They might work some day. But not any time soon. The problem isn't technology. It's the marketplace. You must have adoption by many different groups with different interests - sellers, distributors, consumers, developers, aggregators, etc. The market is [...] Read More


Digital music, the next generation: MP3Tunes+Beamer An Apple Beater? at P2P File Sharing

+ > ? Michael Robertson has unveiled his master plan. If Apple is going to be beat, it is not through YAOMS (Yet Another Online Music Store), a relic of the old days when records were vinyl, retail meant stores, and the labels played god. The game would have to be changed, much as it was when Apple designed their YAOMS (iTunes) as a promotional engine for their [...] Read More


Digital music doldrums - Long-term change at P2P File Sharing

This article is one in a series examining the Pali Capital report that showed paid music download growth is slowing. Long-term change The long-term message is that the industry's problems can no longer be obscured by digital. Does this spell doom for music? It depends on your definition of music. Independent artists are thriving through the Internet and P2P. Big music though is another story. While the industry falsely blames others [...] Read More


a new wave of micropayments applications at TJ's Weblog

Anita guided me a good roundup from the MIT Technology Review about recent developments in the micropayment area. It intensively portrays Peppercoin a very different approach to the transaction cost issue. "The timing looks good, too---not just for Peppercoin, but for other micropayment companies as well. "One year ago, it was, 'Will people pay?' Now it's, 'How will they pay?'" says Ian Price, CEO of British Telecommunications' Click and Buy division, [...] Read More


Paypal Slashes Fees for Micropayments at TJ's Weblog

Red Herring reports that Paypal is slashing its fees for microtransactions, finally admitting that its charge for digital goods is just too high."The digital content to be covered by the service would include video games, online greeting cards, news articles, mobile phone content, and music. PayPal has already been working with digital music providers to process small payments, a typical example being the $0.99 payments for iTunes.PayPal's transaction fee is [...] Read More