I read a lot of Bob Lefsetz. The man is the first to comment on just about everything music-related. If there's something he likes that isn't music, he'll relate it to music. Everything from the state of the music industry to youtube hits are covered in the Lefsetz Letter.
Lately, he's been commenting a lot on the push to go paperless. This is a push being made in the ticketing industry to eliminate scalpers and those like them. Because of scalpers, real fans aren't getting tickets to gigs they want to see because of the ridiculous resale on the tickets. To think of ticket scalping as an industry seems bizarre, but it's reality.
There are people on both sides. On one hand, there are people who recognize this problem and want it stopped. On the other, there are people who want a physical ticket. Before the onslaught of Lefsetz's commentaries, I was one of the physical ticket people, but now I'm on the fence, leaning towards paperless.
A lot of my hesitation was just rooted in not being as familiar with the paperless system.
But paperless is no new thing. Years ago there were these things called checks. Suddenly you could pay large sums with a single note. I'm not sure of the exact progression, but eventually came debit and credit cards - a piece of plastic removing the need for any paper.
If you've ever held a couple thousand dollars cash in your hands, it feels great. But holy crap do you have to have balls to go outside with that in your pocket.
Paper is not security. Paper is easily lost and difficult to track. Ever lose a credit card? Yeah, that can go downhill fast, but you can call and cancel it and usually work things out. Ever lose even $10? You can't call the mint and have them fix things. Your human error has shafted you out of $10. Though people shouldn't trust themselves with credit cards, people trust paper even less.
Even school papers are increasingly not paper. I've had classes where I would post papers in blogs and, for other classes, I've emailed papers to my professors. The first time a teacher or prof loses your paper, you've lost trust in the system.
Even the age of paper reading is going out. Between blogs, online journals, and online news, nearly every reading facet is covered. But wait - ebooks and all of that cover not only novels, but also text books. The paper book is going extinct - ask the book store down the street. Oh wait, they just closed.
So with less and less paper exchange, this causes some problems for artists. All of this was stirred by a gig I played over the weekend. A girl really wanted to buy my CD, but had no cash. She had a credit card and had money, just not paper money.
Well that left me screwed. Sure, she could buy my album on itunes and I could collect pennies on the dollar, but then what's it worth to either of us?
She had a credit card, though. If only I had a credit card reader. Yeah, if only I had another electronic gizmo to remember to bring to shows. If only... For a bigger band, that's a viable solution - for me, that's just a hassle.
I offered it to her for free because she was a musician too and I can relate to being broke. Screw it - I'll take the hit. It's not like I don't have another 700 copies of my ambitiously pressed album...
Then on Monday I was reading some more Lefsetz. The guy is a genius. Aside from that, he briefly mentioned square cards. If he didn't provide a link, I would've been absolutely clueless. Basically, it's a smart-phone credit card reader. Like any credit carding deal - it'll cost like 3%, but the payoff for such a small device is amazing. It fits in your pocket - so it could go wherever you would want it to. Too bad I don't have an iPhone/iPad/android ...another day.
This isn't about my personal phone, though. This is about the small solo artist and how they're finally able to catch up to paperless. Everyone's got smart phones nowadays. The square card reader is free too, so there's no excuse.
As it turns out, the girl from the show paid me with a check... Certainly not the ending to this post that would make any logical sense. Yeah, I had a confused look on my face too.
Hmmm... Square is a brilliant idea. If you had a smartphone, it sounds like it would be worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteYou claim that paper is dying, but there are still some of us holding on. I like taking notes with a pen and I enjoy reading a hardcover book. Just a thought. It might not die as quickly as you expect.
To say that it is dying and to say that it is dead are two separate things. It's hard to imagine a world without notes on paper and paper books. There's a feel to it that can't be reproduced. Newspapers are in a similar boat. They won't die, but they are dying.
ReplyDeleteSince the age of the internet, newspapers have been hit real hard. Since the age of digital books (nook, kindle, etc.), paper books have been on the decline.
When you can drive down the cost by cutting the physical production, then you can make your product cheaper to the public and, in doing so, sell more and make more profit. Bookstores and libraries may not be doing too well, but there is so much more potential to the individual.
There was a Lefsetz article maybe about a month ago about a no-name author who had self-released a couple of her books as ebooks, selling them for $1 a piece. A dollar for a book is good. In the past 2 or 3 years, on this model, she has made some $900000 - a ton more than she was ever able to make in print. Someone writing books and making that kind of money is absurd.
So yeah, paper won't die out completely. It is in the process of quite the industry shift right now, though. Very similar to the whole digital music thing. The people who are being slow to transition to new business models are screwing themselves over. Thankfully for you, though, as the consumer, you are always "right" and will likely be able to choose paper for a long time to come.