Paying with your Mobile Device

I personally think this is a genius move by Starbucks and I would imagine that many other companies in many different industries will follow suit. It is convenient for everyone involved, if done correctly. It makes things easier on Starbucks, the customer, and even the customers waiting in line behind the paying customer. If this trend continues, it may actually make the need to carry a wallet obsolete. Now I am sure we are years away from the wallet becoming non-existent as there are going to be questions and concerns over this payment method, but who knows what could happen if it proves successful?

As far as the transaction time, it makes perfect sense that paying with your phone SHOULD be faster. The issues probably arise when the person paying with their phone hasn't even pulled it out of their pocket yet. If they have their phone out, with the bar code up on the screen ready to use, it should be faster than a credit or debit card, and definitely faster than cash, with the exception being exact change. Although even exact change is probably a slower process for the Starbucks cashier. But this mobile device has to be faster than a card simply because they won't have to ask "credit or debit?" before they even swipe the card. And as I said before, with cash, the cashier has to count out change.

However, as this article points out, Starbucks themselves admits that it doesn't speed the process up on their end as they still have to make the coffee. But even if you save just a few seconds per customer in transaction time, this will add up over the hundreds of customers per day.

I think this is a great idea for Starbucks that will translate well, maybe even better, in other industries. It is a win-win considering it increases convenience for all parties. I do believe this is the future of the "flow of compensation." I do not see too many downsides to it. I think whatever the downsides may be are easily outweighed by the positives.

Music Piracy on the Internet

I don't think there's anyway to stop music piracy. In Dr. Miyazaki's blog, he writes about the "old days" where there were shady vendors selling CDs on the street. Well this continues on today. Go to any large city in the United States and you can find black market CDs, DVDs, etc. The simple fact is whether it's vendors on the street or someone stealing music on the internet, it can't be contained. Even if it were possible to monitor everyone on the internet to see who is sharing files, it would be far to costly. And frankly, there are way more important things law enforcement agencies need to be working on than a college student downloading some music. Also, even if you stopped say, people in the United States from downloading files, what about all the people in Europe, Brazil, India, China, etc. that can download the files just as easily?

I do feel for the musicians who are losing out on money because if people stealing their music. This article from USA Today explains how Eminem's most recent album, which was the #1 selling album of 2010, sold less than half of what his previous #1 album sold in 2002. It's got to be frustrating for them but unfortunately, it is what it is. Like I said before, it can't be contained. However, I think there are some positive effects of file sharing on music. The music is obviously promoted in a highly efficient way and reaches a much larger audience than it did 15 or 20 years ago. The outcome of this (hopefully) would be an increase in ticket sales to concerts, which is really where the musician makes most of his or her money anyway.

I do not believe legislation will be able to keep up with technology. The people creating software to get around current legislation are always one step ahead of those passing legislation to stop new technologies. I think legislation will be able to walk the line between violating basic U.S. freedoms, however even if they do, what about the rest of the world?