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While we’re on the topic of music and the labels in this “new” era (talk about timing)… Ian Rogers, of Yahoo! Music, has come out against what you could dub as insanity: trying the same approach over and over..and hoping for a different result (not his words). The rules changed. Ian’s take is refreshing, not simply because of the words, but because of his position and that if these thoughts have reached Yahoo! in such an outward manner… a new era could be ahead of us. Here is one more example of the new rules, 8 years later as Ian states…

Excerpts from Ian Rogers’ blog:

Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends -

…eight years later, Amazon’s [MP3] finally done what was clearly the right solution in 1999. Music in the format that people actually want it in, with a Web-based experience that’s simple and works with any device.

… It only took 8 years. 8 years. How much opportunity have we lost in those 8 years?

…Yahoo! Music demonstrates this scale discrepancy perfectly. Yahoo! is the world’s #1 Internet destination. Hundreds of millions of people visit Yahoo! each month. Yahoo! Music is the #1 Music site on the Web, with tens of millions of monthly visitors. Between 10 and 20 million people watch music videos on Yahoo! Music every month. Between 5 and 10 million people listen to radio on Yahoo! Music every month. But the ENTIRE subscription music market (including Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo!) is in the low millions …, even after years of marketing by all three companies.

When you compare the experiences on Yahoo! Music, the order of magnitude difference in opportunity shouldn’t be a surprise: Want radio? No problem. Click play, get radio. Want video? Awesome. Click play, get video. Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you’re on Windows XP or Vista, and you’re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear…if you’re still with us.

…History tells us: convenience wins, hubris loses.

I’m here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I’m not interested. … I won’t let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don’t have any more time to give and can’t bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life’s too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.

If, on the other hand, you’ve seen the light too, there’s a very fun road ahead for us all. Lets get beyond talking about how you get the music and into building context: reasons and ways to experience the music. The opportunity is in the chasm between the way we experience the content and the incredible user-created context of the Web.