Plugins

Ok. How do you tell the difference between a style and a format?

Let me try and define the terms.

I believe “style” is fleeting, it could be a trend, momentary.

A “format” is something lasting, it is a pillar, foundational.

Now we could also relate other terms.

“Platform” vs “plugin” perhaps

A platform is something you stand on. It supports you and you can further launch things off of it.

You cannon stand on a “plug-in”, for it is small and specialized. It probably doesn’t have a lid bearing structure.

How do you know if your idea is a platform or a plugin?

What happens when you try to force a plug-in to be a platform?

To me, I see the internet itself as a platform.
It is immense, vast and w i d e.

It is easy to be built upon.

I see things like Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud, Netflix, these are all plugins. To me.

And yet, they masquerade as platforms.

Or should I say marketplace?

I’m not sure. But at the end of the day, they are all dealers of information. What makes one better than the other?

Well how much information do you have? How is it categorized? Labeled? Sorted? How much information do you have on the people that use this information? How can I use your information to make money?

What is the cost of transferring information? The true cost?

As Gene Kan said at the Napster hearing, “ the internet is a...

Hold up I have to find this

“The internet is the holy grail of distribution channels. It is a zero marginal cost distribution channel.”

It costs the same amount to distribute one copy of intellectual property, than it does 10 copies, or a million copies.

That being said, why should all the media in the world be siloed onto these ‘platforms’. I can’t call them platforms, the more I think about it the more they just appear to be marketplaces.

I propose an internet wide fabric that holds all the videos and songs created, hosted thru IPFS. You can design your own algorithm to find things instead of being told to consume from the black box.

But isn’t this already a thing? Isn’t that what P2P is?

If something can not be artificial manipulated than it is a problem.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this but.

When I produce music, I use a DAW. It’s a big complex program that can do many things.

If I want to make a special sound, I can use plugins.

For instance, this one plug-in I like is called SynPlant. Now I can make many sounds with this plug-in, But it has a very stylized interface, a specific sound aesthetic, and odd controls.

Now what If I tried to make SynPlant the next revolutionary music platform? Would it work? Maybe... but for how long?