One could make a compelling argument that Marc and Ben over at a16z have already been pioneering this industry on a large scale with their talent services division.
E-mail is incredibly underutilized as a technology.
One could make an argument the majority of instagram's (of course not the filters) functionality could be handled by e-mail, but the "perceived need" to use apps on the smartphone that you purchased for a large percentage of your monthly income but the experience of using the app is difficult to discount.
Another point worth considering is that much of the functionality associated with Path is available in Facebook if you want to play around with settings, but for some reason Path still seems relevant.
@khangtoh - American Idol online - Isn't that just Ourstage? won't fandalism already capture this with the "props" feature that already exists on the site?
@mladenkovacevic- Re: A Discovery engine for Musicians to find one another and "jam" over the internet - +1 Others have pitched this, but not with @pud 's vibrant user base. As far as monetization worries, a cool tool of this kind is just as much a sound business model as any site fueled by display ads. Here's why in my opinion...at this stage in the development of the consumer web every product's success is a function of its ability to capture the waking hours of the consumers' disposable leisure time (this isn't the 90s when every web site was supposed to have the same business model as the new york times). Consider this assumption. Musicians spend a lot of time playing music alone and with each other, possibly more than instagramers spend taking pictures. Ultimately, especially if the bull market for venture backed companies continues, someone will create a way to capture these disposable leisure hours from the wide user base of musicians. but @pud it would be a lot easier with half a million users...
@replax
Mic Quality Problem
a) A fair point, but its worth considering the fact that most musicians would cede a high quality mic for the ability to interact with one another. Also, lets not forget that the barriers to entry for a powerful microphone have come down considerably in the last ten years. Today, a Blue Snowball (<$100 used maybe new) will compete with microphones that were well above its price range ten years ago.
Also check out the iRig. The possibilities are endless and could tie back into the mobile platform @cruso (building a quick mobile app) and the online @mladenkovacevic jam session idea.
P.s. its interesting that crusso's was the only post that mentioned mobile
@replax again
Bandwidth Problem
b) key problem that every video chat service has been able to overcome, and if we can't solve it now we will be able to solve it shortly as bandwidth improves...
Thanks for the opening up the dialogue pud. This is an exciting space. Excited to see where people take this, but you have a one up with your years of experience and rock solid user base (don't leave them hanging!) :)
P.S. ur servers were down temporarily last night ;)
http://a16z.com/talent-services/