1. The massive conglomerates that benefit the most from every “copy” of a musicians work and the little that musicians get.
2. The transition from albums to singles (because of digital distribution).
3. The modern view of copyright and intellectual property.
4. The advancement of modern recording equipment.
5. DRM

Here’s my shot at it:
1. Things are improving. The “consumer” (or audience in this case) can only benefit when large multi-national conglomerates do not dictate what they can and cannot listen to.
2. The transition from album to single is good and bad. Bad because artists want to distribute a “complete work” (think of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony but only hearing the 3rd movement. Beethoven would freak out). Good because artists (and studios) can’t get away with packaging one good song on a complete crap album. This forces artists to be more creative.
3. A.B. Dada has it right. The problem is the modern ability to continue to charge for every “copy” of the work regardless of the cost of manufacturing and distribution. Before recording music was possible, musicians HAD to perform their work to earn a living. Book publishers charged based on what it cost to produce and distribute a book (plus a small margin). How do you determine the cost for something that costs so little to manufacturer and distribute in the digital age? What’s happening is the capital markets are working as it should. 99 cents a song is too much for a lot of music. Until they drop the price, there will always be p2p file sharing. The same thing will begin to happen with video, as soon as you can download and copy video as easily as music. Streaming video (TV channels) will be obsolete.
4. A lot of albums nowadays are being produced in home studios. The quality of the equipment is so high and the cost so cheap, there is no reason for studios and artists to make the case for exorbitant prices based on production costs.
5. People will ALWAYS want to share their music. DRM will always stand in the way of this. Steve Jobs has it right. DRM is no longer acceptable by the consumer.

So what has this to do with snocap? Well snocap provides the backend magic that figures out what tracks have been uploaded and who owns the copyright for the work so that they get paid, so presumably snocap has some sort of cut on this whole deal and stands to make a mint as imeem grows up to youtube sized proportions. Whether that will happen quickly enough is questionable, but snocap is more than just the music store that people see.

All markets rely on supply and demand: as the supply of an item, prices fall. As the demand for an item goes down, prices fall.

Digital music has a near-infinite supply. Transfering 3MB of data (say, one song), as a cost of less than 1/2 cents from a server. P2P the cost is trivial and far lower.

Yet there IS a way to make money with music: it’s called performing and value added items. When you go to work, say flipping burgers, you’re paid for the act of working, the labor. The person who invented the burger doesn’t charge fees for the act of making a burger. Music is no different. Making music, the act of writing it, is akin to learning how to make a burger. All of us get trained at no profit, and sometimes at great risk of a loss of time. Learning to make music is tricky, and it is artistic, but it should be no different in terms of learning how to make a burger, or learning how to fix a leaky faucet.

Bands will soon rely only on the performance of their music. That’s what differentiates one band from another: their ability to entertain. And entertainment has GREAT value. There are many ways for bands to make money entertaining. You can play live. Maybe sell your CDs and include 1 ticket to a live concert. Or sell a CD, and include 5 tickets to an online performance.

Making money doesn’t end there. How about selling CDs and offering CD purchasers the chance to win an hour of lessons in how to play their favorite song? Oh wait, the government prevents bands from offering contests in exchange for buying an item. It’s the law that harms the musician.

You can make money selling autographed albums, or selling DVDs or CDs of the actual concert people attended. The cost to record a concert, and burn 50 CDs in 10 minutes before people leave, is trivial.

Don’t complain about the zero value of recorded music — its a market process that can’t be worked around. Instead, find ways to MAKE MONEY WITH YOUR NEW AND ONGOING LABORS. Just like the burger flipper or the faucet-leak fixer.

Their model should have been the 99 cent stores. And not for that price, but rather for a price well below what’s normal and painful for the items. How many times have you anybody walked through a 99 cent store and somehow ended up with 25 items? You’d never have bought nearly that many for the regular price at, say, WalMart. Basically you were willing to spend $25, and that’s what the 99 cent store counts on - not “how much per item”, but rather simply “how much.”

And with an incremental cost not much above zero, that model was perfect for Snocap. They could have helped change the industry. Instead they went stupid broke.

snocap, napster, itunes mp3.com, and all these other soon-to-be and soon-to-be-gone music stores (rental outlets) are run by dickheads. they can’t beat free, drm-less p2p. it won’t ever go away, but they will.

good riddance to bad rubbish.