For the record, I'm not at all convinced by "secret sauce". The idea seems to go like this:
1. If the music industry hears about our plans they will recognise their brilliance and steal them. The music industry has the capability and the will to do what we are doing, they just haven't had the great idea we have had yet.
2. If the music industry heard about the PeerTracks music business model or software architecture etc. they could revolutionise the music industry for the benefit of artists instead of us!
3. Therefore we have to keep the idea secret until we demonstrate it is effective by getting artists on board.
4. The music industry, though they have such resources to compete with us if we tell them the idea, cannot possibly catch us once we get a few months lead time to build the system.
There are several things wrong with this line of reasoning but everyone here seems to take it on face value without question.
I can go into more detail if anyone is interested. Of course if I have something wrong here please let me know.
Christo, are you questioning the existence of a disruptive business model or Peertracks ability to execute? the issue here is that we are having to make assumptions based on limited information and you quite rightly point out that what we have gleaned is incomplete. I think a lot of questions have been asked and the sense that the community seems to have been willing to accept very little information is about trust.
I believe peertracks has a new business model, powered by Bitshares and they have been doing their best to build the platform and stay ahead of the competition. My biggest concern is around what happens once the time for secrecy has passed. It will become clear pretty quickly if they have succeeded in building a disruptive business model and if they have failed, then we try again.
The project members have chosen not to tell us the true status of the project in any detail because of fear of competition. How revolutionary can this "new business model" really be if it needs to be protected by secrecy? It must be something that is very easily reproducible by the music industry.
Not a good sign.
After watching this project for about 8 months (and they have been going well over a year) with no software releases I am being drawn to the conclusion that Peertracks is basically using the money raised to build proprietary software which they own 100% and they are neglecting to invest any significant time into a BitShares music blockchain or "distributed automated company" for music which this forum is supposed to be about.
It's a stark contrast with BitShares.
I asked for detail about the operation in an earlier thread
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,12323.0.html and was almost completely ignored. I asked for the details of the supposed "nonprofit" called BitShares Music Foundation and was ignored.
Who exactly is being paid with the money raised? Is any money left? Is there going to be any open source software released or is EVERYTHING A SECRET?
We hear about promotional activity but no engineering detail. We hear about music industry event MIDEM, we hear the podcast interviews rack up. Lots of talk. No software has been released. No beta program has launched. No source code with anything to do with music is even visible.
Why? Oh yeah secret sauce. I'm not convinced.
Now, it's possible in theory that the team is totally capable of executing and they really do believe that they cannot release
anything until they have some kind of first-mover advantage against the music industry. But they are asking people who are paying their bills to believe them without any apparent obligation to even answer basic questions about their operation. I don't consider this honourable behaviour and I don't respect it.
This in no way resembles a competent professional operation.
Come on Peertracks prove me wrong!