As the founder + chief fan of Liveset, we’re trying to navigate this exact issue right now. We’re creating beautiful HD content of live concerts in real-time, and have built a destination platform through which music fans can watch the concerts live, and come back later to watch them on-demand. We’ve started with the assumption that if the content is great, music fans will pay for it. It’s very early days, and we may have to change strategies, but I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thank you -

rh

Well done providing the roadmap of a perilous journey. It is truly the Wild West out there. We will continue to try and pave the road to town.

Scott

a) the cost of Lady Gaga produced content is probably crazy high and you would need a sponsor to write a big check (ex: Telephone music videos) and the advertiser wants as large of an audience as possible

b) wireless is still largely way too fragmented to be a meaningful platform.

That being said, don’t think you are off or wrong, just that execution is challenging. Also, in my very humble opinion and personal experience, if as a content provider you want to place your bets on the Lady Gaga’s of the world (as the source of content) AND wireless as the distribution platform, you might as well burn your money…

Again, it does not work for every piece of creative content, but it can be a great alternative. And, the small sums multiply quickly!

In my experience in consumer media (5 years at AskMen, an online magazine + 5 years at WatchMojo) consumers really don’t want to pay for content, be it on a monthly basis or per article. Yes, iTunes works, but with music you sometimes don’t want the hassle of piracy and even though you pay for the music once, you will listen to it forever… so very, very different than an article or video which also has good-enough alternatives out there for free.

If you look at Salon.com for example, what did the paid model really get them? I think free, ad-supported content is a HUGE opportunity, perhaps not a big enough one for an established traditional media company with a 100-year old business model and cost structure… but for new media startups that stay lean but have a big enough “net”, it can work.

So since you bring Joost up: yes, the notion of getting consumers to download an app might have made sense for Skype but that was the problem, Joost was tackling online video as if they were building Skype 2: there was a lack of media and content know-how, which is odd given that CBS, Viacom et al. invested… but I guess that indeed, J&N ran the show without much input from others.

Mind you, the first time I saw the interface and player, I thought “wow”. As an insider, you probably have more great insights than I do, but even on the programming end, Joost was making some odd decisions from the get-go. That could merit a post in of itself.

The key mistakes were mostly technology-related and were made very, very early on, when we had less than 10 employees. J&N had no idea what they were doing and no one was allowed to question them.