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This fits nicely into a discussion I’ve been having off and on with Andrew Dubber at New Music Strategies – that the laws of economics have been turned on their heads in the digital world.

The discussions frequently end with the riposte from Dubber along the lines of “Surely even you see that this is different to
traditional economics…”.

Which reminds me of exchanges I had with a CIO of one of my customers who used to start sentences off “With all due respect, John…” to which I would say “What you’re really saying, Richard, is : Listen, you stupid prick..”.
At which he’d smile.

(Dubber, I’m joking. Sort of)

But what happened on Friday underpins my thesis that the flood of available (free) music is approaching/has approached a tipping point where sensory overload will (has/) become) counter-productive in the same way that Bill McKibben experienced his enforced watching of 1000 hours of TV in “The age of missing information” in 1992.

And that this will result in the emergence of service providers who will be our personal shoppers for media.

And that there’s business model that will work.

It’s happened in online travel portals, where people who originally abandoned their travel agents to get the best deals directly are now finding that the marginal cost (in time) of getting the best deal is too great to justify.
And they’re returning to the same travel agents who have now reinvented themselves to fit the market need.

I first discovered Jefito’s blog less than a year ago after noticing an uncanny clustering of songs that I liked on HypeMachine and their source.

In the intervening time, he’s helped me discover huge chunks of music, I’ve been able to give him some back, I’ve enjoyed his writing and wit enormously and been privileged to get involved in some Good Works at Bloggers for a Cure.

So – just after I’d declared to Dubber that I’d be prepared to pay some form of subscription for Jeff’s services as talent scout – when his host dropped him like a hot potato for swamping their servers and he asked for some contributions for the upfront costs for the switch to a new, more enlightened host, I thought I’d be a bit of a bastard if I told Dubber I’d be prepared to pay and then not

So I contributed what equates to 50c a week for a year. Which is fuck-all when you think about it.

And then the new hosting service killed him on Friday.

Now, I don’t know Jeff Giles, but from what you can make out from his interweb presence, if he knocked on the door, we’d invite him in for dinner and ask him if he needed a bed for the night. And he could stay for as long as he wanted, actually.

All I know for sure is that he’s a skilled writer with profound knowledge of music and pop culture. He proves that week for week.

And Bloggers for a Cure proves without doubt that he’s a good person.

And he appears to have a nice family. Which I think he probably deserves.

But he’s too popular forwhat he’s doing at the moment and it makes hosting providers nervous. Nervous? It gives them the shits.

So last Friday probably went like this.

My guess – based on a bit of experience with one of the biggest commercial data centres in Europe – is that Jefito’s provider was running pretty hot.

Their business plan probably didn’t include a major capex in a big shiny new server (which whacks the unit cost up until economies of scale kick in again) and they were probably trying to squeak by with load management.

I started getting “Server timeout” and “Unavailable” on Thursday which was unusual in my experience.

And along comes Jefito – bless his cotton socks – with around half a gigabyte. Within 7 hours

07;00 – Mixtape 100MB
12:30 – Bootleg City Tom Petty 110MB
14:00 – Bootleg City Van Morrison 150MB

Multiplied by what. 100? 200? 500?

(In comparison – Croz gets 2000 hits when he posts Dylans’ TTRH of a Thursday, but you’re “only” (sic) looking at a 90MB download.)

And all of us who have been lurking around in the shadows all week – because Jeff’s had satellite problems due to the sloppy white stuff – come ripping in like Attilla the Hun.

Every bastard and his brother starts downloading as if there’s no tomorrow – did we know something, or what? -, the alarm bells start ringing in the data centre over at Mr and Mrs Host Provider’s house, the core starts melting down and they start looking for culprits.

Sure, they’ve got a copyright clause writ large in the contract, but they’ll turn a blind eye as long as they’re ticking over quite happily.

But as soon as things go pear-shaped, they’ll pull the wild card and close Jefito down.

Do not pass Go, do not get your 2 years’ upfront back. At least he doesn’t go to jail.

I don’t know what Jefito wants to do going forward.

I don’t know how his business model/life goal works, but if he wants to keep doing this – and I really, really hope he does – he’s going to have to rethink his approach.

Which is where we have to try to square the circle.

So this is an open letter to Jeff, based on the sort of structure I’ve used successfully with customers to make sure they’re getting the product they want and to make sure that they know what they really want you – as a supplier – to do for them.

1. What do you want to achieve with your website?
Are you looking to make money directly via advertising/product/commission? Are you looking to grow a user base that will help you leverage your other jobs? Are you using it to get a reputation in the industry by word of mouth? Are you doing it because you enjoy sharing your love of music with other people.Or do you just want to have a lot of friends?

2. Do you think people are prepared to pay something for what you do for them? Do you KNOW if people are prepared to pay something for what you do for them? Have you thought of finding out? Or do you have a personal problem with charging for what you do?

3. What are the legal risks involved into turning the site into a non-profit/non-loss unit?

4. What are the legal risks of continuing as is?

5. Are you in a position to risk-manage them?

Chew over this idea:

– Get someone to analyse your traffic log and look at spreading your stuff over the week more, so that you don’t frighten the hosting providers. Do their load management for them

– Put up a poll and ask the right questions about price sensitivity

– If you get the commitment, use more than one host

– Constrain accessibility if you have to.

– In the meantime, ask around your mates whether they’d have any bandwidth available

I do.

You can have some