Price: I would expect the market price for audio book distribution to be much lower if there was real competition. Right now ACX charges 60% of the value of an audiobook just to list it on Audible.com, and other sites can’t really compete on price since listing it elsewhere causes the writer to lose money. At this point, I expect anyone listing on other sites to be doing it for ideological reasons, so there’s no reason for Audible’s competitors to compete on price either (since they can’t win).
Features: Audible and Kindle are both laughably bad apps[1] for how insanely profitable they are, but consumers can’t switch apps because the books they want are only on Audible. If Audible had to actually compete for customers, I expect that their apps would be significantly better.
Audible’s pricing model is also a scam[2] and I expect that would be hard to maintain under real competition too.
The Kindle app has trouble downloading ebooks, and fails to load previously-downloaded ebooks about 25% of the time. To fix this, you have to open and close the app a few times, or delete the book and download it again.
On the consumer-side, they charge you a monthly fee for extremely valuable monopoly money that they burn if you ever cancel. On the writer-side, they decide how much to pay you, and if a customer pays with credits, you get very little money.
[apologies—this was a low-effort comment, and did not address the context of the OP and the underlying question ] ”bad” is only meaningful relative to some other reachable situation. Always need to specify “compared to what”.
I note that you leave out a number of groups in your examples of “whom”—bystanders, consumers who are not customers, potential future creators or customers, etc...
I’d say the status quo is amazingly great for almost everyone, compared to just a few centuries ago. Individually, most of them didn’t exist back then, and they now have a positive-value life. Distributionally, any percentile on any dimension today is better off than a comparable group in history.
I note that you leave out a number of groups in your examples of “whom”—bystanders, consumers who are not customers, potential future creators or customers, etc...
Sure. The two examples I gave were just the two most obvious examples.
“bad” is only meaningful relative to some other reachable situation. Always need to specify “compared to what”.
Compared to… whatever other state of affairs OP thinks is possible (e.g. the one that will obtain if his proposed policies are enacted).
I’d say the status quo is amazingly great for almost everyone, compared to just a few centuries ago.
For whom is the status quo bad? For creators? For customers?
Probably both.
Price: I would expect the market price for audio book distribution to be much lower if there was real competition. Right now ACX charges 60% of the value of an audiobook just to list it on Audible.com, and other sites can’t really compete on price since listing it elsewhere causes the writer to lose money. At this point, I expect anyone listing on other sites to be doing it for ideological reasons, so there’s no reason for Audible’s competitors to compete on price either (since they can’t win).
Features: Audible and Kindle are both laughably bad apps[1] for how insanely profitable they are, but consumers can’t switch apps because the books they want are only on Audible. If Audible had to actually compete for customers, I expect that their apps would be significantly better.
Audible’s pricing model is also a scam[2] and I expect that would be hard to maintain under real competition too.
The Kindle app has trouble downloading ebooks, and fails to load previously-downloaded ebooks about 25% of the time. To fix this, you have to open and close the app a few times, or delete the book and download it again.
On the consumer-side, they charge you a monthly fee for extremely valuable monopoly money that they burn if you ever cancel. On the writer-side, they decide how much to pay you, and if a customer pays with credits, you get very little money.
[apologies—this was a low-effort comment, and did not address the context of the OP and the underlying question ]
”bad” is only meaningful relative to some other reachable situation. Always need to specify “compared to what”.
I note that you leave out a number of groups in your examples of “whom”—bystanders, consumers who are not customers, potential future creators or customers, etc...
I’d say the status quo is amazingly great for almost everyone, compared to just a few centuries ago. Individually, most of them didn’t exist back then, and they now have a positive-value life. Distributionally, any percentile on any dimension today is better off than a comparable group in history.
Sure. The two examples I gave were just the two most obvious examples.
Compared to… whatever other state of affairs OP thinks is possible (e.g. the one that will obtain if his proposed policies are enacted).
True but irrelevant to the discussion.