Category Archives: revenue models

So the principle current business model for ambisonia.com is selling DVD’s with the ‘best 10 tunes submitted this month’ …kind of thing.

This might seem strange since ambisonia already offers everything for free download…. why would someone buy the stuff when they can just download it.

I think there are _some_ reasons why.  Here they are:

1. The Audio CD will act like an official document. There’s no ‘officialness’ on the internet … all there is is billions of web pages changeing everyday. Having an Audio CD is like having an encapsulated, standalone, official memory of something.
2. Zigging to their Zag. One of Dave Winer recurring concepts involves not being affraid to do the opposite of what the other major players do. Everyone is moving towards downloads … so I am moving towards selling albums.
3. Incorporate some kind of ‘goody’ into the Audio CD … maybe a poster, or an extra track, or some other thing… something useful would be the best (any ideas?)
4. The Ambisonia Audio CD will become a collectable (ahem).

I think point 3 is interesting… any ideas for stuff that I could incorporate into a Audio CD?

2 posts ago, Oli asks the question … how do I intend to make money from Ambisonics…. good question. I’m not 100% sure.

Ultimately, the aim is to create a micro-economy where the public can have easy access to lots of Ambisonic recordings and the contributors can earn money from their work. If the contributors are paid for their work then the activity becomes sustainable. Contributors can afford to create more work and the public will have growing range of work to listen to.

The question is where is the money coming from… the proposed answer (at the moment) is:

1. publishing Audio CDs and selling them on the site (sharing the revenue with the contributors who have pieces on the CD)
2. selling gear that is related to the recording and play-back of surround-sound (sharing the revenue with the contributors by ‘most downloaded this week’ style of logic)

The point is that it is the contributor’s work that brings people to the site, so the contributors should see revenue irrespective of how the revenue is being generated.

It might take me 6 months to organise the Audio CDs. It would take me longer to organise selling surround-related gear.

What will I do in the mean time? This is the difficult part.

This is what I am thinking right now:

1. Google ads (which is bringing me about $5-10 per month… not yet enough to cover server costs)
2. Paypal ‘donate’. Offering a mechanism for users of the site to donate money to further the development of the site
3. Sell ambisonia/ambisonic T-Shirts. T-shirts with the Ambisonia logo, or the sound-evolution graphic on it.

I dont really know how much money 2) and 3) would bring in …. I would guess not that much…. but in these early stages, any amount would be a help. I can only find out by trying. Both 2) and 3) would not take that much effort to implement, so it is probably worth the effort.

If anyone has any ideas/comments/suggestions/thoughts please dont hesitate to put your 2c in.

jpegmag …. I think they might have done it. They might have found a business model that sustains User Generated Content.

Finding a business model that can sustain User Generated Content (UGC) , I reckon is the holly grail of WEB 2. Its what You Tube couldn’t work out how to do….

So jpegmag  have a model where, basically, you submit a photo and if people vote for it, it gets included in their magazine, you get some exposure and some cash.

Now how could this be done with music? Its more difficult with music because people dont need to ‘buy’ something to get a better quality version. Or maybe that could work?…hmmm … I’m going to think about this one.

I guess this is the most obvious revenue model for Ambisonicbootlegs.net. But I dont like it. I dont like it because I believe that advertising is of dubious value on the Internet. Ambisonicbootlegs is also a small traffic (relatively speaking) high niche site, meaning that advertising on the site is likely to have considerable value for certein niche products like Surround Sound microphones (eg. the Soundfield).

I’m not sure how well Google advertising performs for highly niche sites. I suspect it is not so good.

Ofcourse, traffic on Ambisonicbootlegs has the potential to be rather large. Given that the home theatre market is thin on the ground for good surround ‘content’, and frankly, some of the material that is posted on AmbisonicBootlegs is of stunning world class quality. The site has the potential to become a self-regulated publishing platform for anyone who wants to get their surround wares ‘out there’ and earn some cash whilst doing so… well, at least that’s my aim.
To access those larger masses, I have to build a ‘distribution’ pipe to them. This, I am thinking about and plan to do. But first I want a small revenue model to get me off the ground, get me earning something so that I can put that revenue back into building up the site.