A few years ago I wrote a post about what music labels could learn from the app store model (http://bijansabet.com/post/272385429/).

Unfortunately it’s as hard as ever for startup to get licensed. Thats not good for anyone.

We need a way for artists to get paid and for consumers to get smooth and easy access

Last week I had lunch with my friend Anthony (twitter.com/fascinated) who is the creator of the Hype Machine (http://hypem.com).

I mentioned that as much as I love rdio and spotify, the idea of sharing links to songs from those paid services to Twitter was the functional equivalent of tweeting a link to a news story sitting behind a pay wall. That’s a poor user experience and as a result i never tweet a link to a story behind a paywall. And I don’t tweet a song that sits behind a pay wall either.

This morning Fred wrote about the NYT’s porous pay wall (http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/08/on-porous-paywalls.html). That’s a fantastic model. Easy for casual visitors but payment is required for active users.

I’d love to see music labels adopt a porous wall as well. It would increase shared links to music and I bet it would increase subscriptions too.

Update 5:24pm: a number of folks have pointed out by email and Twitter (eg https://twitter.com/pegobry/status/102831734369959936) that spotify is porous because of their ad model. I think it’s a nice start but porous in my mind means they should get rid of the desktop app requirement, lose registration requirement and work on all platforms.

(please excuse typos and lack of links. wrote this in my iPad).

Fred’s post today about files vs the cloud is really excellent.

This past weekend, our firm switched from Microsoft Exchange server that we self host to Google Apps. It feels good to get more desktop software off my Macs amongst other benefits of moving to Google. 

One thing that Fred talks about in that post that resonates with me are the steps to get music from one service into another. I love listening to music online. In fact, my iphone today doesn’t have any local songs on it. 

Soundcloud is great for this. It’s very easy to get SoundCloud tunes into Tumblr for example. Inside the Tumblr Dashboard, you can select audio post and then automatically grab a track from Soundcloud. It works great. All the music stays in SoundCloud and Tumblr just plays it back. No file transfer anywhere in that process. 

Another way to get music into Tumblr is with exfm. Simply install exfm’s extension into Chrome. Then when you hit any music blog, you can play the song as you would normall do or you can select “Share” and then choose Tumblr.

For example, here’s a great indie music blog - Indie Rock Cafe.

Recently, Indie Rock Cafe posted a free single that the band Beiruit released to the public. When I click the “+” button that exfm inserted in the player, i can “note” it which saves it to my exfm profile page or I can share to Tumblr. 

This is what it looks like:

The cloud is a wonderful place to be. 

I’d love to see photos smoothly move through the clouds like music is starting to. That would sweet. 

I’ve been following this entire Airbnb story (as has the entire Tech world). It’s fascinating on many levels. It’s still dragging on. The “truth” is in there somewhere, though it’s still doing a very good job hiding. My gut (and cynical side) still feels this is a set up. Just the whole timing of it all smells fishy.

Regardless, if there is one certainty in all this Airbnb handled this situation like shit. From the customer service team, to the founders, all the way up to Paul Graham. They’ve botched it pretty much every way you could. In the public arena that is (I can’t speak for what they have done or are doing behind the scenes). It’s not that hard, people. Be honest. Take responsibility. Be proactive. Be empathetic. And most of all be human.

This should serve as an important lesson for any start up. You’re a company. With real users. Whether you take 100K or 50MM. You’re responsible for your users. You need to be loyal to them since they’ve been loyal to you. Don’t fall asleep at the wheel when something bad happens to any of them. Tech start ups are throwing small fortunes at top programmers to ensure their product runs, scales, and delivers. You also need to make sure you have someone in the company who can handle situations like this. The right way. You’ve now been warned. Unfortunately, it’s Airbnb footing the bill to pay for this valuable lesson.

Turntable.fm is buzzing. Rightly so.

It’s a neat concept and people are certainly finding it engaging. I encourage you to check it out here. That may come as a surprise and have you thinking, “But you work for a competitor at ex.fm?” I don’t see it that way at all. I use a ton of music services - Rdio, Turntable, Bandcamp, GroopEase, 8tracks, HypeMachine, SoundCloud, TheSixtyOne, We Are Hunted, Last.fm, etc. – and really like them all. And, I’ll be the first in line when Spotify hits the US. There is plenty of room in the music pool. And the water is nice, too.

I never understood why the ‘Tech’ space embraces a winner takes all. It’s stupid. We don’t all drive Fords. There is always room for multiple entrants. Still, the bigger issue here, and this is more of a start-up beef than just a music space beef is that valuations are going though the roof. I mean just absurd levels. It’s not healthy. I don’t write about the tech space much even though I read a lot about it. I’m more of a lurker. Though this one has been bouncing in my head for a while and I just wanted to get it out.

A recent TechCrunch article on Turntable.fm’s possible financing was just the latest of these unsubstantiated valuations. The article is mostly speculative, of course, but there are definitely kernels of truth in there. For instance, I used to think Fred Wilson had an Oreo Poker Tell where he’d tip his hand a bit. Turns out he just has a 'I’m basically telling you here people tell.’ For a few weeks he’s been peppering his Tumblr feed with Turntable.fm tracks. Then a post about meeting someone from across the globe in a Turntable room. Then a few public lobbying posts on his blog about valuations being too high and you can easily connect the dots he made an offer and was worrying he was going to get out bid. Now, Fred knows his shit. He’s knows what the valuation of a company should be. My guess is that the number he and USV floated out there was actually much higher than he even wanted. And yet he still might get beaten by an offer double his. Crazy. (For the record, I’d take Fred and team USV over a boatload of cash any day). But, that’s just how things are in the Tech Space right now. Techies are rock stars. Heck, even Bob Lefsetz is writing about tech companies now since they are so hot (and, of course, in true Lefsetz style jacking their strat for his own gain).

Look, I don’t know Seth, Billy, and the Turntable.fm team. I really wish them well and much success. This is most certainly not an attack on Turntable.fm. Again, I think it’s a great, great concept and believe they may have even tapped into what Chris Dixon’s has written about so well - the next big thing will always start out being dismissed as a “toy.” I’m just a bit worried because I work in this space and well things are moving right past frothy and toward the clown in the corner who’s getting his helium tank ready for all those balloons.