Got My RE T-shirt!
by anil on January 7, 2007
Ever since I bought my RE Machismo I wanted to get an RE T-shirt to wear while I ride. I wrote to the RE people and they replied that I couldn’t buy one anymore as they stopped selling it! That’s very bad actually. They are ignoring a loyal community and losing a chance for free publicity (they fail to support the most loyal motorcycling community in India).
Later I heard that I can get one by writing an article in the RE web site. That’s something I could do, I thought. I like writing too. I decided to wait for another bike trip. But you know what: at Silver Bullets, we almost always ride together and in all the rides I participated another fellow rider was present; it’s none other than Babu Tharikh, our web master.
After every ride, when I sit down to write the story, I get either an Email or a phone call saying that the trip story by BT is already there on the RE web site! He beats me every time!
There is no fun in writing the same story again. More over BT narrates better than I do. I found only two ways to get my T: either I do a trip without BT which I hate to do. Or submit a story before he does which I found almost impossible. So I had to look for other options.
Then came the Ponmudi trip. This time I had an idea: I told him in advance that you write the trip story but I take the T this time. If you do not know what happened in that trip read this blog.
This evening, I got a call from BT. He told me that your T arrived! I said thanks. I went to his place and he was waiting for me with the family on his Bull. I greeted them (but I could not smile at them because of the sutures on my lips, sorry for that). BT handed over the T saying that “don’t fall again, you won’t get anymore T’s”.
I’ll try not to fall again. Thanks for the gift, dude!
***
It’s a regular golf T in dark blue without pocket. Royal Enfield monogram is stitched to the left chest.
RE should start selling RE-branded merchandise. Those who love RE loves to wear RE Ts and use RE stuff. By not selling them RE is making a big strategic mistake.
DRM-free Independent Music
by anil on January 5, 2007
It’s a great business model the people of Amiestreet.com have come up with. Amiestreet works as a showcase for Independent bands and musicians. They can upload their albums/songs free of charge while they keep the copyright. People can download songs for free initially and the prices increase as more people downloads songs. That’s great!
Those who download it first can buy it for free, they can recommend the song if they find it good. If a song gets constant downloads, its price can rise up to USD 0.98. It’s very similar to stock market–if more people need it, it’s gonna be costly (but with a ceiling).
Let me use a cliché here: you got the cake and now you can eat it too: all the songs at Anistreet are DRM-free, plain, MP3s. You can play them in any MP3 player you want. That’s a good-to-have feature these days as most online music stores have some sort of DRM mechanism in place.
Amistreet is a different kind of Freemium business model. But at the same time, I don’t see that their business will explode with sales someday–some sort of piracy mechanism will come up as they become more popular (such as a parallel repository). But this is a very innovative business model, indeed.