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James Zhang

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New Paradigm Shift in Patents and Intellectual Property

Here's my thread about new Social Media platform for Ideas: http://www.ted.com/conversations/12881/social_media_platform_for_idea.html

Here's what I've realized what needs to be done. So take piracy and the music industry for instance.

Before, the model was pay-per-albums and pay-per-song model. Piracy, however, made it easy to steal the songs and distribute them for free. This is a problem, because artists make money off of each song or album. If other people get them for free, how will they make money to support themselves? And what's worse is piracy is pretty unstoppable. By design, it's easy to do, and hard to stop and regulate. Why should people PAY for songs when they can easily get them for free? From what I've seen, the only people who really pay for the songs are only doing it to support the artists themselves. These people realized that there will be more great songs if they simply support the artist.

So here's the Paradigm Shift:

THE SONGS/ALBUMS ARE THE FREE SAMPLES. THE ARTIST IS THE TRUE PRODUCT. One great song is great. But a million great songs is GREATER.

The individual songs themselves aren't gonna make more music, only the artist can.

The paradigm shift should now be: We need to support the artists directly somehow, not the songs.

So what kind of business models are trying to support this paradigm?

Spotify, and a few others.

Topics: Intellectual property innovation
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  • Rusty Roberts

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    Aug 3 2012: When I saw your question I thought....TWITTER. Artists have twitter followers. Why not create a platform that allows individuals to pay to follow. This payment would allow a follower access to all of the artists work for a particular time. A membership so to speak. This way people are not being asked to be charitable (give if you feel like it) and the artist has more control over their income. With a premium account followers could gain back stage access so to speak.
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      James Zhang 30+

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      Aug 3 2012: Indeed, there's another business model called "donation-based" model.

      So why don't we just simply add a "Donate $1" button on someone's twitter page?

      • Rusty Roberts

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        Aug 3 2012: I think the word "donation" places the artist at the mercy of the public. Whereas a button called "PREMIUM FOLLOW" would allow a follower to pay to follow. This would give the followers access to that artists IP. Download at will but sharing capabilities would be restricted.
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          James Zhang 30+

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          Aug 3 2012: Well, I mean if you think about it, "donations" is not much different than a regular business nowadays.

          A business is also at the mercy of the public. If the business doesn't sell products that anyone wants, they're done for. So if the artist doesn't make anything that anyone wants to hear/see, they're done for.
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      James Zhang 30+

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      Aug 3 2012: I mean if you think about it, we're not paying twitter guys in "pay-per-tweet". I'm just saying...

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