I don’t care to be tracked whenever I play something on my iPod.

It’s creepy, like someone reading over my shoulder.

MP3 works fine for me, so why would I switch.

I can email it to a friend, or send a link to it. Anybody can play it.

Sure, since the format is completely open, some tech-types could easily rip out the listen-count-tags, but so what? That’s hardly gonna be a majority…

After all, this isn’t really a *format* problem, but a *platform* problem…

We built this city…and not just on rock n’ roll

Closed systems usually fail in the end – users will find a way to break out or go elsewhere frustrated…unless it’s a monopoly. I think building sch things into it at the start would have been a barrier to entry for the early adopters – you’d not have gotten the Dawn and Drews or Madges or Bicyclemarks – just re-fried old media…really this needs a new approach, the old advertising media model is the one that’s outdated and wrong, not podcasting.

It would be cool to know how many plays you have tho – I agree as podcaster that would be nice to know, as long as it’s open source and transparent. But maybe that could be built in the MP3 header and player? Ultimately tho, you’ll always have unconnected devices that won’t tell you who played what – most players are not connected via Wifi or mobile networks…if they were, you could use something like Audioscrobbler but it’d have to be in every player – either a sneaky Sony style DRM or open source and thus optional? Hmm…

http://mashable.com/2005/11/13/does-podcasting-need-better-measurement/

Om Malik said that we don’t need Audible when Fruitcast will do – completely missing the point that pay-per-download is an easily gamed metric and you can’t study what happened after the download. By the same token, though, I think the systems which solve this problem should be as open as possible.

You totally failed to convince me that MP3 is in some way incompatible with either the subscription/pay-per-download or advertising model.

As far as advertising is concerned: consider broadcast TV/radio and AdWords/AdSense. In the first case, there is an auditing process that is statistical and based on very loosy-goosy metrics (how many TVs with Nielsen boxes are on and at any given time). No reason why this couldn’t work for MP3s. In terms of clickthroughs, there isn’t a direct equivalent but you could use promotional codes (mention “ademporium.com” for a 20% discount) to track response.

I was equally baffled by your assertion that DRM is necessary to monetize MP3 through non-advertising means. The jury’s out on this, of course, but I’ve yet to see any serious attempt to offer mainstream media for sale sans DRM, so we have no way of saying what effect it would have. Personally I believe iTunes, for example, would sell considerably more and make considerably more money if they didn’t use DRM. Who can prove me wrong?

Matt