I like this idea.
From the Reuters coverage:
Lala.com, which allows fans to trade music discs for just $1, plus shipping, pledges to give a fifth of its sales to all the musicians, including lesser known session studio players, involved in the making of CDs exchanged on its site.
In a move that is certain to stoke controversy with music promoters, the founder of the Silicon Valley start-up said Lala will circumvent traditional copyright and royalty payment systems to compensate identifiable working musicians.
The site works something like an eBay auction exchange as it encourages consumers who sign up for the service to list all the CDs they may want to exchange as well as ones they would be interested in receiving.
Hm…. As someone who creates content I can see the attraction here — you, theoretically, might get follow on revenue from this that you wouldn’t have otherwise gotten.
That said I’m not so sure about it. What I don’t like is the possibility of this providing a leveragable precedent that Sony, etc should get revenues everytime something they sold once is sold again. There’s good theoretical work that shows, in a reasonably concrete fashion, that the resale market increases the overall value of goods.
If something like this comes to pass you KNOW that the big music, media and publishing companies will want a cut. And how will the small, independent used book, music and DVD stores ever send royalties to everyone they should? Or is LaLa positioning themselves to be a 3rd party broker for compensation on secondary sales? And do we really want that?
But I’d agree it is a damn cool idea.
Hi John,
It’s been awhile (I think since Onebox.) Swing by Palo Alto and we’ll fill you in on the mission.
Regards,
bill
founder, la la