Gigmor's David Baird On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

David Baird of Gigmor

If you ever wanted to replace a player in a band or find a band to join, you know how difficult the process can be. Finding players of the same interests and proficiency levels really complicate things.

David Baird had the same problem when he moved to Los Angles (just about the last place you'd think that would happen), so the savvy technologist built a new platform called Gigmor that allows not only players to connect with each other, but bands and artists with venues as well.

On this week's podcast David will tell us how Gigmor got started and how to get the most from this innovative website.

In the intro, I'll talk about the implications of Pandora buying some of the assets of the Rdio streaming service, and the hi-res music logo that the RIAA just introduced that seems to cause more confusion than it solves.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes, Stitcher and now on Mixcloud and Google Play.

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The Pros And Cons Of Pandora’s Rdio Acquisition

The music streaming wars just became a bit more interesting early this week when Pandora agreed to acquire some critical assets of the Rdio streaming service out of bankruptcy for a reported $75 million. This will the second strategic acquisition that Pandora has pulled off recently, following its $450 million purchase of Ticketfly a few months ago.

On the surface this seems like it could be a huge positive for the company, but there are also a few potential land mines that come with the deal. Let’s look at the pros and cons.

Pro: On-Demand Infrastructure Can Provide Growth
Pandora is acquiring Rdio’s streaming technology (as well as some of its staff), which could be key to its global expansion. Right now the service is only available in the United States, and to a lesser degree, Australia and New Zealand.

A real problem for Pandora until now has been its ability to expand beyond those territories, mostly due to the company not being able to come to a suitable agreement with the licensing organizations in various countries (which all seem to favor on-demand streaming).

The company is now more more likely to be able to grow, as having Rdio’s on-demand streaming infrastructure available as an integral part of the service not only makes for a more attractive package for the consumer, but may make it easier to gain approval to operate in other countries.

Pro: The Public Prefer’s On-Demand
Give Pandora credit, as it saw the writing on the wall that on-demand streaming would eventually become a clear winner with consumers over the radio-like non-interactive service that it currently provides.

This was blatantly evident with Apple’s recent entry into the market with it’s on-demand Apple Music after only offering the Pandora competitor Apple Radio previously. You could see the trend in user numbers as well, as on-demand Spotify’s numbers continue to grow while Pandora’s have been relatively stagnant.

Con: On-Demand Licensing Costs Are Considerable
While that on-demand infrastructure is important, Pandora didn’t inherit any of Rdio’s roughly 1 million customers in deal, mainly because it’s not buying the Rdio business itself. Maybe more importantly, it didn’t get any of its licenses with the record labels, which were non-transferable. That means that the company will need to negotiate these deals, which can be both costly and time-consuming. Read more on Forbes.

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Gaming The Streaming Networks With Fake Listeners

While most people play by the rules, there's always someone that wants to game the system. It happened on MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and just about every other platform, so when a story came out about a programmer who gamed the streaming services, it should be no surprise.

Security consultant Peter Fillmore showed how an automated program called a bot (a software based robot) could generate royalties a few years ago. Fillmore made about $1,000 in royalties and even topped the Australian streaming charts of Rdio by having the bot listen to his own music nonstop. In Fillmore's case, it wasn't about making money as much as it was about showing the various streaming services the potential vulnerability.

Fillmore's music was sampled every 30 seconds for about 6 months, when Spotify finally caught on and took down his album.

In a great article on Motherboard, William Bedell attempted to duplicate Fillmore's method and wound up making approximately $32 a day from Spotify, at about $0.08 per stream, which is at the high end of the Spotify payout.

That being said, while this might be child's play for an experienced hacker, it's beyond the abilities of most musicians who aren't programmers. It involves disguised user bots using virtual private networks and dozens of paid Spotify accounts (see the graphic above). Still, Bedell estimates about a 600% rate of return on the venture.

You can be sure that Spotify and all the other streaming services are taking these approaches very seriously, so by the time you try something like this, it's possible that this hole in their services will be patched.

It does go to show that people will always try to game the system if they can.

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