Nokia Visual Radio

good post by Rags Gupta
refering to a news.com feature. Key quote: "Here's an industry that's really old and becoming threatened by new technologies," said Vikki Pachera, vice president of strategic alliances and business development for HP. "We're able to help them create a relationship with customers they've never had before, and a revenue stream they've never had before."

USB Drives Aid File Sharing

ClickZ stats reports
Interesting trend --- more fuel on the fire?

more on the new Rhapsody (Real)

music like water... happening everywhere.   here

Open Media Network launches

Red Herring:  "The Open Media Network, a free video and audio content distributor, was launched Tuesday by Netscape veteran Mike Homer’s not-for-profit Open Media Foundation.  “It’s like PBS for the Internet,” said Mr. Homer, whose for-profit, peer-to-peer content distribution company, Kontiki, will provide backend services for the network (see 10 Digital Tech Startups)"   Sounds like a great idea.

DCIA powerpoint: Proposed Business Models for Digital Distribution

some juicy powerpoints here (html version)
ppt here

my presentation "Indies & Technology" at M4Music 2005 in Zuerich

Note: this one is in German. This presentation has moved to my password protected site. Please go here
to get free access to this site (newsletter registration required). Thanks!

Netzwelt.de on my "Future of Music" book

Review in German

Future of Music Interview with LesEchos France: I received a cease & decist letter from these people for posting a piece of a story about ME

Les Echosn° 19391du•page27 INNOVATION  INTERNET

Internet, ou quand le musicien s'émancipe des labels...........

UPDATE:  this is one if the most bizarre things that ever happened to me: A few weeks ago, I gave an interview to a reporter from LES ECHOES, about my Future of Music book, and they did a story on it which is available on their website (can't link to it - they may get REALLY upset if I do).  The story is only available to subscribers so I posted most of the text on this blog, with a link, so that my readers could check it out. As far as I am concerned this is fair use given that the story is about ME, my co-writer and the book (but even if it wasn't - what better promotion can you ask for?).  But sure enough, today I received a fax warning me that I was violating their intellectual property by doing this. Here's my response for the powers that run LES ECHOES:   1) I will make sure that I will never give an interview to LES ECHOES again, ever  2) I will make sure to never link to any page on LES ECHOES again  3) I think LES ECHOES is living in Les 70's - thwarting my intention to send traffic to them by not allowing an excerpt of a feature ABOUT ME that is behind a registration page has got to be the taking the 'mini-tel' of publishing price. Congratulations Les Echoes - you have successfully silenced me.

towards universal DRM

from EContent: "An international forum aimed at standardizing digital media and copy protection technologies is set to achieve a major milestone in its drive toward creating interoperable Digital Rights Management. This month, the International Digital Media Project (DMP)—which brings together more than 25 member companies across the digital content..."  let's take a look ;)

Music Business Journal of Berklee College of Music

some real good stuff here

The Future of Music: Milano, Italy, April 20, 2005

  (pdf 1.5 MB, bw). Really love it in Italy, btw - great people!  NOTE: This presentation has moved to my password protected site. Please go here to get free access to this site (newsletter registration required). Thanks!!

Update April 21 2005

more speaking dates. I will be at:

Digital Entertainment & Digital Home Forum  Tel Aviv Israel  May 18 2005
Association of Independent Broadcasters Annual Meeting Montreal Canada June 6 & 7 2005
Association of Independent Music (AIM) General Assemby in London, June 21 2005 (Keynote)

Contact me if you are interested in having me as a speaker

A bigger pizza makes more slices – and why the music industry is heading towards lower prices and higher values

U.S.Here's another bottom line: The real problem in the music industry is not file-sharing, piracy or lack of consumer interest in paying for music. Rather, it’s that the industry is WAY too slow in baking a bigger pizza. Rather, many incumbents are still obsessed with snapping up the same slices from under each other’s noses as quickly as possible. The bottom line is that we need to create a larger market, all-together – a market that has 9 out of 10 consumers buying music, not 2 out of 10 as is the case in the U.S.today.

And how would we do that? The answer is simple yet, of course, its realization is not: lower prices and higher value. Look at the airline and travel business, or at banking: the customer is truly becoming the uber-king, and demands constant value-upgrades for less cash. As I said before (even though I did not invent this catch-phrase;): content is king, customer is Godzilla, and service is King-Kong! If the music industry ‘leaders’ would finally get on with this we would see a significant lowering of CD and download prices (i.e. license fees!), and a flood of additional content that the users would get ‘for free’ – SonyBMG has started doing that with the dual CD / DVD idea, lately (but hey – where it goes wrong is that they want a higher price!!!). Imagine this scenario: if a CD costs $9 / Euro 7.50, and downloads cost between 10 cents and $1 (yes, sorry – liquid pricing is a MUST), who would bother with limewire, grokster and Kazaa? Better yet, if we could get 98% of all consumers to buy into a ‘basic music’ subscription on any and all digital channels (TV / cable, satellite, radio, net, mobile, wifi…) for only $3 / month we would all of a sudden have a HUGE pizza that would have more than enough slices for even the hungriest record label, music publisher, producer, agent or artist. Music Like Water, once again. Do I hear you mumbling ‘pie in the sky’… dream on?  Well, I don’t agree: consumer electronics companies, internet service providers, telcos, advertisers, and wireless companies will make this happen sooner than you may think – their combined market power is 150:1 if compared to the music industries. And all of this will be great news to the artists, writers, producers and composers since exposure always leads to discovery which always leads to revenues, dime after dime. And then, we can finally and for good shed the idea that making-money-making music simply means selling copies of songs (whether physical or digital) – there is a lot more to this business than that. Think branding, sponsorship, licensing, advertising, merchandising and of course performance royalties.  And finally: “I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones” — John Cage

You're going to be taxed for music and love it!

A review of my book."The Future of Music" by UK Register. I kinda like it...."For those of you averse to such hyperbolic language, don't fear. The Future of Music has below average utopian garble for a technology book, especially one with "future" in the title. Instead, you find a lot of concrete goodies..."

Good feature on Online Radio

here. "Internet broadcasting has grown in popularity to the point where it's become a significant alternative to traditional radio, and an appealing venue for major advertisers. Thousands of people share the affliction, thanks to Internet technology that lets anybody with a little money set up an online "radio station." Now tell me --- where's the money??? I have some answers on that... stay tuned