This one is in German language: my thoughts on Social Media and Museums. Note that there is still lots of English language stuff in there... give it a whirl.
Digital city. Composite image of a city skyline
superimposed with alphanumeric digits. Photograph: Christian
Darkin/Science Photo Library
From transport to entertainment, work to education, our lives are
already being transformed by high-speed internet that will help create
the fully wired city. Within 10 years, faster, comprehensive, wired and
wireless networks will not only become the norm, they will become free,
says Gerd Leonhard, chief executive of the business thinktank The
Futures Agency. The reason? The enormous benefits to government and
education.
Many of us are familiar with the internet telephony
tool Skype. But an even more advanced, 3D and interactive virtual
version of the technology could revolutionise education and business
(among other areas), putting anyone, anywhere in the world, in visual
touch with anyone else.
"The telepresence business is going to
become huge and it will be standard for people in workplaces to connect
over screens," says Leonhard. "There will be virtual schools for
education and training you can access anywhere, especially in
developing countries." He predicts business travel will be
substantially reduced, saving money and the environment.
Retail
will be revolutionised by 3D printing, technology that is already making
it possible to "print" clothes. And while the debate about appropriate
use of our personal data will continue, consensual services could be to
our benefit.
"You'll walk past a department store and the window
will show a personalised display with your size and preferences," says
Leonhard. "We'll also be able to download and make things at home,
including electronic devices – it will just be a question of downloading
the blueprint."
For travel, our behavioural patterns will be
studied and utilised by tools which then advise us of delays in realtime
and suggest alternative routes. While some mobile phone applications
already do this, the system will become more comprehensive, connecting
trains with buses, planes and road information according to our
schedules.
By 2020, 26m UK homes will be fitted with a smart meter
that monitors energy use and encourages homeowners to be more
efficient. At IBM, Andy Stanford-Clark, the company's chief technology
officer for smart energy, has been exploring how wiring our homes to the
web could make them more efficient.
"The autonomous homes of the
future can monitor everything on our behalf," he says. "The dishwasher,
tumble dryer and washing machine will talk to the electricity grid so
they could turn on in half an hour at a cheaper rate."
I am honored to have the pleasure of working with Ericsson on a few of their pretty cool future-oriented activities, including the 2020 ideas project and the PressPausePlay movie. Here is what Ericsson says about the 2020 project:
"...Broadband connectivity and mobility are changing the way we live, the way we work, the way markets function, and the way societies operate. At Ericsson, we need to collaborate and get inspiration from people outside our business in order to adapt to these changes - people that take a stand, and that want to share and work together. which I think is just fabulous. In 2020 – Shaping Ideas, we ask 20 thinkers to share their view on the drivers of the future and how connectivity is changing the world. They describe a future where a growing population faces never before seen challenges and opportunities; where digital natives will shape their lives and the enterprises they work for, and where technology could create a global golden age...."
Naturally, there is a ton of stuff available online, on the Music Like Water riff, but if you want to start somewhere, check out my follow-up book Music 2.0 (free online / mobile version here), my MidemNet 2009 video "Compensation not Control", and my various slideshares on related topics, here (one of the best ones is 'making money with music when the copy is free')
Finally, here is the video from the Google Insights event in Zurich, on June 10, 2010 (please go here for my previous post on this, as well as the PDF and the embedded slideshow). Download the M4V file (350MB)
Very cool tool - simple and useful. Paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag. A great way to stay on top of all that is shared by the people you follow - even if you are not connected 24/7 !
Lots of good stuff here - check it out. Food for thought, indeed. Thanks, Johanna. View the PDF of Johanna Blakley's TEDxUSC talk about fashion and IP.
The main shift is going to be away from the downloading of content and owning of CDs and more towards music in the cloud. That is going to happen with most media, starting first with music and then going into films and books. This is not just a music business issue. We are moving away from the copy to access. This is a very good model for the artist. In the past, most of the money was spent on the physical product – so the reproduction, packaging, shipping and retail store.
The artist basically got nothing in most cases. Skipping that whole process now means that the brand of the musician becomes the most important thing. This is very good news for the artist, the producer and the creator but less so for the industry as it’s much easier to sell a copy than it is to sell access. The idea that the artist just gets, say, 10% of the sold product is now out the window. Now the artist will give his agent or service agency some kind of fee – say 25% just as Nettwerk Records and other companies are already doing.
The issue is to get attention and clicks from consumers. If that attention is converted into a revenue share based on advertising, a subscription fee or an upselling process, then as soon as you have attention, you participate. We are still in the old system of counting on revenue per use. That won’t work in the future. The bigger your brand, the bigger the attention you will get and the more clicks you get, the more money you’ll make. I believe that consumers will ask for the access models to be free initially but then after they use it for a while they’ll be quite happy to pay so they can remove the ads or increase the quality of the stream for example. Music online will feel like free. There is plenty of money to be made from ads, but it’s just not there yet. It’s coming, though. We have seen that advertising just doesn’t work on the Internet.
It’s so easy to click away the ads or avoid them altogether. Advertising was essentially useless until now as today we are starting to see social advertising, such as on Facebook. Plus we have mobile advertising. Finally advertising is becoming more useful. The brands are no longer looking to spend 1% of their budget on social or mobile; they’ll be spending 10% or more. There is a total disconnect between the way a new business can be grown and how a lot of rightsholders perceive how the business will be paid for by Google or ISPs, for example.
That’s a very bad approach because it makes it impossible to legally grow a new model. You will be much more successful – like YouTube and Last.fm – if you don’t have the right licence and you just do it. That’s a real irony. I don’t think we’ll be able to support new services without a compulsory licence.
We need a compulsory licence for music use on the Internet so that companies like Spotify, MOG and we7 can use a licence rather than just bang their heads against a wall like they have in Germany and the US. A cloud-based model has to win out in the end, as the costs are so much lower, the sharing is so much easier. You can put all sorts of ads into cloudbased systems because you always know what the user is doing. There are lots of great benefits there. But the industry hates the cloud-based model as they lose control over distribution.
