HBO’s eternal life vs music industry death

You have to love how HBO reaches out to market their shows. It’s never about trying to force proprietary systems and platforms to replicate the functions of pre-existing functions as it seems to be in the Uk. They recognise that their audience is on YouTube and out in the blogosphere and that trying to deliver content to them in what are, in effect, “walled gardens” is only going to hinder the spread of their message. Plus they do it with such elegance and such great design.

The latest offering surrounds a show called TruBlood from the creator of Six Feet Under, Alan Ball. It’s embedding itself into your life with blogs, YouTube channel, online cartoons, newsletters…and if you really want to you can sign up for a vampire dating site, unfortunately for me I am married…

In a market that is time poor - or more accurately perceives itself to be time poor - the more connection mechanisms the better. Just because you will have the chance to actually reacch the people you are worried about instead of missing them when they leave the tele in the ad break to get a soda. Basically, they get it. the entertainment model has changed and your content becomes your marketing, its simple and effective.

By contrast the music industry seems to be having severe problems getting their heads around the changes that the net has brought to music purchase and enjoyment. This is partly because they have a financial model that doens’t slot quite as easily into the new world of free content and content sharing.

I went to a conference held by musictank on Thursday called Meet the Millenials, the result of work by Terry McBride on how that generation consume media and music. His ideas tie directly into the principle that things which can be copied in the digital environment have no value whereas things that cannot be are highly valuable.

Music files = easily copiable hence of low financial value
People = currently uncopiable hence of high financial value

The music industry model is built not around the artist as a brand/commodity, but around the music they produce but for millenials, although they are willing to pay to enable an artist to continue making music there is a tipping point of value beyond which they won’t pay.

Several users got really annoyed and started asking the millenials how they expected artists to survive and continue making music - ignoring the gigging, merchandising, person touching model that was being discussed. The guys being interviewed were a bit stumped, they just don’t perceive it as value to pay for tracks, unless they really want to possess and own them on cd or have loyalty to the artist.

This is a more asian model of creativity - copying of all kinds is not a big deal.

I was stunned to hear this anger from the music professionals, they obviously just do not get it. There is no point being angry, this is just how things are and it springs from passion. I made mix tapes and then got deeply into Limewire because I love music. That’s a powerful thing. And love creates loyalty.  Industry professionals just have to get to grips with the new environment, see this passion for what it is and learn to appreciate the fanaticism that we wish we could create around the brands we all work with to monetise the asset they do have access to, the brand of the artist themselves.

links for 2008-07-18

• Teen time spent online up 41% in 3 years | IT Facts | ZDNet.com
  Just of interest - and because these are the customers of the future.
  (tags: tv teens up technology)

links for 2008-07-15

• Lively Google « Diabolical or Smart
  This will be great if they open it up to creating your own “furniture” and to importing mates from other networks - otherwise it will die on its feet.
  (tags: socialmedia services, web2.0 virtual worl)
• Virtual world analysis for tweens and teens : Kzero
  What with all the excitement about Lively why not check out where it sits in the virtual world demographic at Kzero
  (tags: virtual worlds lively reality gaming social social_network)

links for 2008-07-08

• Ira Glass on Working Through the Suck | 43 Folders
  Encouraging words from Ira Glass on how basically when you start work you suck - but your taste is great - and your work can only get better. Inspirational stuff.
  (tags: creativity experience personal storytelling media, thought writing understanding ideas film tv creative culture)

Conference-tastic 2gether08

I have just finished a pleasant day a 2gether08. It was a primarily socially focused conference on the difference that digital media can make and if offered opportunities for both getting brain downloads from people who work primarily in the social space such as the Channel 4 education types like Adam Gee and Matt Locke, but also those who crossover like Russell Davies and Mark Earls. More importantly it was the chance for social entrepreneurs to meet other social entrepreneurs and digital types to get some input on ideas with the emphasis on positive action and possible matching with funding or partnerships.

As usual I will try and distill some of the interesting stuff which caught my attention and basically point you on to the horses’s mouth as it were.

Let’s talk to coca-cola about saving the world’s children - an idea 20 years in the gestation with little movement outside Berry’s head, but once it got onto Facebook took just 6 weeks to be talking to senior people in Coke about how this campaign could use the ground-level distribution channels that Coke employs to get it’s product throughout Africa, to distribute rehydration salts. 1 child in 5 in developing countries will die before the age of 5 each year because they get diaorrhea and become dehydrated. Yet you can get a coke literally anywhere in the world…

Since the Facebook group launched everything has kicked off - social media driving good. Join the Facebook group.

Ben Page - Ipsos-Mori - When the Danes (the happiest people in Europe apparently) applied their 5 a day campaign to get people eating more fruit and veg instead of saying “eat 5 a day” they said “eat 6 a day” - when you show people numbers and ask them to estimate quantity the higher the number the higher the quantity for the same thing. I am hoping he will put up his slides on SlideShare.

Tim Wright - Hooray hooray for Tim Wright! He is enthusiastic, not pretentious and always interesting. He was talking about how radio may develop. Not (as is currently the vogue) via teaming images with audio but more concentrating on new audio possibilities such as narrowcasting from his own bluetooth (although I couldn’t actually locate his mobile during the talk so that didn’t inspire confidence), location-based content that can be experienced out of, or in, context and receiving audio on new devices. Since I bought my mp3 player specifically because it had a radio in it (so no I am not part of the ipod/itunes mafia) I found this talk very interesting. Here are just a few of the links I picked up from it:-
www.sportsdo.net - a bit like Nike plus but a lot cheaper and plugged into your phone. YOu have to pay for it though…
pocketplanetradio.com - All kinds of random podcasts including one in which the author discusses the life and times of John Stewart Mill with Jonathan Derbyshire and another where they experience a strange world in 2nd life that might somehow replicate the experience of paranoid schizophrenia.
Brilliant.

links for 2008-06-26

• amphibian.media.mit.edu
  I want to find out what this is
• Inside AdWords: Introducing Google Ad Planner
  So here is the newest tool from the google stable - a tool to help media planners determine the best sites for their placements - based on demographics and audience figures that Google holds and uses to serve up AdWords. Should be useful - invitation only
  (tags: advertising adwords google tools adplanner planning campaign business marketing ads ad)
• CASSETTE FROM MY EX
  What a great, simple idea. We’ve all done it - even if we’ve done it as a cd burnt from MP3s. I’m also going to recreate that mixtape on muxtape!
  (tags: art music blogs happiness love thought)

Kill all the lawyers

Day 2 was more fruitful for me. The day opened with an excellent thought piece from John Newbigin about the way society changes when new media forms arrive and how further the current developments are so changing our relationships that they are changing what it is to be human. I think this gets to a profound truth that is slipping by us - it can’t necessarily be influenced but it can be observed and reacted to. For instance, think about this. Schools are being created for the past – what is the role of teachers in a technologically advance landscape? How does technology drive and influence the core business of learning? And how about the fact that creative industries attract more buisiness support than any other area of the uk economy – but creative industry businesses don’t primarily categories themselves as businesses….

Quick fire quotes from his speech -

“Kill all the lawyers” - Henry VI Part 2, Shakespeare
“The first law of creativity is theft”

The next presentation was an intriguing one from Kaiser Kuo on Censorship, Culture and Chinese Netizens. I along with many others find the censorship - that he acknowledges exists - problematic, but he posited some interesting suggestions about cultural difference that we will need to take consideration of if we want to make contact and develop not just business but real understanding across the digital divide. I like to hear presentations that talk not just about different ways of doing but different ways of thinking. One of life’s most difficult challenges is to make a blank slate of your mind and be open to cultural differences but that kind of mental exercise should be easier for planners than most since we spend our days considering and questioning what the truth of an audience’s desires or the values of a brand are.

Quick fire facts from his speech:-
The average of broadband users in China is 32, n the US it’s 42
The Chinese are far more interested in IM than blogging - the anonymity allows more free expression
Online games garnered 70% more revenue thatn the ad sector in 07 - that’s 1.7 billion.

The real censorship is carried out by service providers on behalf of the government - because if it isn’t their sites and services will be taken down. But of course netizens find ways around talking about what they want to… don’t we always? Think prohibition USA.

Best in show for me was Carolyn Maze from fluorescentmedia. I have been saying for years that audience metrics for tv are up the spout and that by so being they seriously impact on the serious and therefore the budgets that are given to new media initiatives within broadcast. She is the CEO of a company that bases their whole business model on accurate analysis of media users and then, by engaging them, develops products they will actually enjoy/play/buy into. One channel now uses her metrics to sell to advertisers since those supplied by the american equivalent of BARB were so off kiltre (metrics stated that the audience for a certain time slot were old people - transpired it was students) About b***dy time. And I wish her every success with the venture and the interactive shows that are coming out of it.

One important gripe - the btween site which should be a model of usability is incredibly difficult to navigate and annoying to use. Shame as there is the potential to really connect people from conferences in the way they are trying to.

btween 08

I am here are 08 listening with half an ear to John Newbigin who is taking us through the ways that technologies have taken much longer to impact on society than thought and how technologies do develop, not in the ways that you think eg

“This is an invention with no commercial future” Louis Lumiere, founder of cinefilm

The most interesting session of yesterday was Cory Doctorow of boingboing fame. He’s also an author and  60-70000 copies of a couple of his books have been sold, his first made the NY times bestseller but crucially and key was made distributable via the internet. The end result is that 1,000,000 copies have been distributed online.

He cites a different model for monetisation of content - his point of view is that distributed content is not the same as paid for content and that distributing it online is like making the book available for people to take down and browse from the bookshelf. He’s more concerned to see that people who would buy his books actually do buy them. It’s an interesting model for publishers to consider.

This Newbigin session is interesting so I will stop posting for now - but leave you with a quote from it:-

“The first law of creativity is theft”

links for 2008-06-17

• Failing Web 2.0 stars pray for copyright abolition
  Some good points about content and my favourite ever quote about the web “a telephone network with pictures”
  (tags: web 2.0 content entertainment social social_network socialmedia socialnetworks sourcing, assessment technology)
• Brands in Sex and the City
  In a way this is a non-story because brand adoration is fundamental to Carrie’s world - it just so happens that brands are desperate for placement as ad attention SlipS.
  (tags: advertising amusing carrie sex_and_the_city brands enterrainment product_placement)
• Musicovery on your phone
  This illustrates perfectly the reasons behind the lack of ubiquitous media experisence now - proprietary mobile phone platforms. I was v excited when I saw this…but not when I realised i have a Sony…
  (tags: mobile phone apps music ambient media ubiquitous_media)

I have a long tail

I quite like it when I become an example of something that every has been banging on about - it gives me faith that opinion can be justified (particularly when there is so much irrelevant spouting off going on - and yes I do include myself in that!). I like evidence and particularly I like to find evidence for theories when I am not looking for it.

I was lying on my bed, student-style, on Friday evening listening to Teenage Fanclub, Songs from Northern Britain and feeling very 1997 when I had a sudden desire to hear Star Sign (very 1992). So I got up and went to emusic.com and low, when I searched there it was.

emusic.com builds its business model on two things

1) MP3s, not proprietary formats a la itunes and
2) long-tail content

Both of these things make it brilliant and I also find it brilliant that I have just demonstrated to myself the power of long-tail as a business offer.

Right - off to download some Throwing Muses.