Apple Music, et al. license content and there are few companies that are able to do this. This creates a barrier to entry that wasn't present for the "content clubs" Gates discusses. In fact, his primary point is that due to the lack of a barrier to entry in the market and no accumulating advantage of any kind, there wouldn't be a single dominant player.
>In fact, his primary point is that due to the lack of a barrier to entry in the market and no accumulating advantage of any kind, there wouldn't be a single dominant player.
Well, we have at best 2-3 "dominant players" in each field, so not much better. And doesn't already Kindle dominate in eBooks? Surely iBooks is not that much of competition.
Gates doubted verbatim that the whole industry would exceed 4$ billion in total, thus no single player could reach that point.
> Apple Music, et al. license content and there are few companies that are able to do this. This creates a barrier to entry that wasn't present for the "content clubs" Gates discusses.
That's not true, because Apple licensing anything is still not a barrier to entry into that market even today. Also, such licensing wasn't available to anybody back then.
> In fact, his primary point is that due to the lack of a barrier to entry in the market and no accumulating advantage of any kind, there wouldn't be a single dominant player.
No, that was another point he made. The fragmentation of the market and he was certainly right on that one.
However, that was still not the point he mad I was talking about, the total size of the market.
Apple Music, et al. license content and there are few companies that are able to do this. This creates a barrier to entry that wasn't present for the "content clubs" Gates discusses. In fact, his primary point is that due to the lack of a barrier to entry in the market and no accumulating advantage of any kind, there wouldn't be a single dominant player.