Just ran cross this via Digital Media Wire: "Southwest Airlines’ Rapping
Flight Attendant, David Holmes, explains Generally Accepted Accounting
Principles (GAAP) in a “GAAP Rap” at the 2009 Shareholder’s Meeting
held at the Company’s Dallas headquarters on Monday 20th" Really funny, and a very unique way to bring some really boring points across.
I just ran across this video from the NYT (below). This is another very interesting reflection of the strong trend towards content delivered as software. Just like bands and record labels deliver their music on iPhone apps (and even charge for it much like a CD), the NYT now delivers their content to any computer that can run Adobe Air - and I just love the way they put this - good going, NYT!
I already blogged about the Youtube / PRS show-down (hey - that's a great word for this) in the UK, earlier today. After reading, twittering and talking to lots of 'real' people about this today, this is my conclusion: This conundrum is not Google's 'fault' but still: Google needs to really, materially and boldly get involved with facilitating the construction of a new content logic and economy, and lead content creators, owners and representatives into a new ecosystem that will actually work for all involved parties. Because it can.
Conflicts like Youtube vs. PRS are unavoidable because the canyon between Google - imho still pretty much the primary driver of Net-fueled innovation and disruption- and the content creators (never mind the industry) gets bigger by the minute. And, in my humble opinion, Google isn't doing nearly enough to explain this to them, and to guide them more conclusively into this new domain where content isn't always king, and where it won't matter if it is or not (if it ever did).
I talked about this in my speech at Authors@Google in SF last week; hopefully we will have that video available soon. The bottom line is that this will take deep, serious, multi-lateral, honest and open collaboration between these (and other) key constituents:
Content creators and the content industries (in that order;)
Telcos, ISPs, mobile operators and other telecommunications companies
Advertisers, brands, and their agencies
Social media and social networking platforms (of course all Internet companies, other search engines and portals)
Governments and governmental bodies
Welcome to a new Data Economy, a new Advertising Economy, and a New Content Economy.
Your turn, Google.
I will write more about this, but here's a quick illustration (thanks to Kevin Kelly for the power-lines & copy pic)
Image via WikipediaIn my work on the future of media, technology and content I often run across related areas such as tourism, banking, energy and transportation; and I have recently ventured into some of those sectors, as well (in particular, tourism - more on that, soon).
So here is a short burst I want to share from the world of transportation: I think the Cars of the Future will become more like Social Objects. Of course, this will vary drastically from country to country (and cultures) but I think that an increasingly large percentage of cars will cease to be owned, maintained, paid and used by one party only. Instead, groups of people will have fractional ownership (as the brilliant Kevin Kelly calls it), i.e. use, share or access the car when and where they need it, and thereby using motor vehicles much more efficiently.
This will be true for plain-old functional cars ('just get me from A to B') as well as for fun, sports and other special-purpose cars. The obvious advantage of enormous cost and energy savings will make this concept pretty much irresistible - the only thing that keeps most of us from doing this now, already, is our reliance on the car as a status symbol and (indeed) as some weird guarantor of 'personal freedom' (yes...I am guilty, too). I believe that this will turn around within the next 3-5 years: if you DO own a car, just for yourself and your own enjoyment, people may well consider you hopelessly old-fashioned; and not much admiration will come your way any longer.
I also reckon that within the next 2-3 years many Europeans will not really enjoy individual driving that much any more, with lower and lower speed limits becoming a constant headache, mega-traffic jams and congestion charges and significantly increased chances of delays. This will lead to a much increased demand for high-quality public and semi-public (i.e. first and luxury class) transportation, which will be even further boosted by the fact that people will of course be fully connected anywhere and anytime they travel - and since they won't be busy driving they can take full advantage of this.
We will see steep increases in car-sharing services of all kinds (e.g. Zipcar in the U.S.), and the concept of self-driving electric cars will probably become a reality much sooner than we think - just click the icon on your mobile and the next available car will show up on your doorstep; hop-in and be driven to your destination without lifting a finger.
Driving yourself will increasingly become an exception rather than the default. Talk about change: 100s of Billions of $$, and Trillions of brain-cycles freed up. Think about what we can do with all that time we used to spend on driving. Tele-learning, networking, co-creation, crowdsourcing... here we come!
Image via Wikipedia
Jeff Jarvis is a leading thinker as far as the future of media is concerned; I have been reading his blog and his books for a few years already, and I can guarantee you: he's inspiration pure! So, I just ordered his new book "What would Google do" and really look forward to reading it - the topic is a perfect theme for anyone looking at future trends, obviously. Here is a short video with Jeff where he talks about the lessons we can learn from Google ("make mistakes and make them well")- check it out.
Just got an email from Nokia, announcing the new sharing tools on OVI (Finnish for 'door' I believe). Here is a screenshot, below - I will dive in a bit more and see what it does (if you have tried it... let me know and post a comment below). On first sight, the most interesting part here seems to be the deep tie-ins with the mobile, of course. Nokia is (and has been) correctly realizing that sharing and user engagement is (and will be even more so) the #1 driver of web traffic and brand loyalty.(note / disclosure: I have done a few speaking engagements for Nokia - but this post is not related to that fact :).
A crucial post on Wired popped up in my reader this morning: After a Decade of Secrecy, Apple Reluctantly Tries Out Transparency | Gadget Lab from Wired.com. These paradigm changes at Apple are indeed a big deal since in my view Apple is pretty much the only market leader and 'cult brand' that still banks solidly on a Total Control paradigm - and the bizarre thing is that I like their stuff, a lot, regardless. So...Wired's Brian Chen writes:
"The tight-lipped corporate giant recently made a move toward transparency when it lifted its iPhone non-disclosure agreement.
The
unpopular policy prohibited iPhone application developers from
discussing
their coding techniques. Lifting the NDA may hurt Apple by exposing the
inner workings of the iPhone to competitors like Google and Nokia. But
increasingly open competitors and disgruntled developers may have
forced Apple's hand..."
This last sentence is important - this is happening everywhere: openness trumps closedness, trust trumps control, and increasingly so. Give it another 18 months, riding on the crest of the wireless mobile broadband explosion fueled by powerful mobile devices, and everyone will be busy showing us - the people formerly known as consumers - how open they are, and how much they will empower us and deserve our trust.
Look at this key sentence in Apple's explanation why -until now- they required NDAs for the iphone app store developers: "We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple
inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that
others don’t steal our work"
The fear of being ripped off caused them to want to control the people that worked with and for them - their biggest fans and most important users! Sound familiar? In the future, this is a risk that you'll just have to take - you cannot publish something and then build a remote control safe 'catch' into it. My prediction: watch for Apple dropping the DRM from iTunes in the near future, as well -because now, really, Friction is Fiction.
More from Wired: "So what gives with the openness? One
of the things that's happening to Apple is that it's less able to keep
secrets than it used to be, because it has a broader supply chain and
broader distribution," said Roger Kay, an Endpoint Technologies
analyst. "And because it's dealing with parties that need plans --
partners as well as some customers -- they need to disclose their
plans. Kay explained that Apple isn't alone anymore; the
company is now working more closely with partners, such as iPhone developers, mobile
carriers and so on. That inevitably forces the company to open up..."
In other words, you can't go it alone anymore, you can't keep the lid on people that are adding value to your enterprise, and you can't dominate a de-central ecosystem - anymore.
An update on Muxtape was just published on their site: Muxtape. My previous Muxtape-related posts are here. It totally amazes (but not surprises) me how much Justin's story is similar to my own experiences with Sonific, my last digital music startup, and how much it matches with the stories I keep hearing from dozens of brave if maybe somewhat 'fresh' digital music entrepreneurs every single day: you bring golden ideas to the record industry and they will act like it's dirt - simply because it means they will need to share the control. Most of the major label execs will eagerly suck up all the information you can give them only to then a) drop all communications and reverse-engineer what you do b) present you with terms that would make Stalin look like an altruist. Muxtape draws the right conclusion: start from scratch, directly with the artists. But - how will they retain a sizable audience with just that? This is the Sonific, Jamendo, Reverbnation problem... Also see my post on the MidemNetBlog, on Muxtape.
At my recent speech during the Ars Electronica Symposium in Linz / Austria [note, the podcast is here - in English], this (below) was one of my points. Quoting Google China's fairly brilliant Kai-Fu Lee "... mutual interest, rather than monopoly, is the key to sustainable growth".
This statement, I think, encapsulates an essential point: if the large players in the creative industries - and in particular, the music industry's used-to-be giants, the big independents and their new organizations such as Merlin- do not let go of their desire to continue to rule as monopolies that can dominate by force, or not play at all, then we won't have a sustainable future.
This is simply because of the well established mindset that the Russian President Medvedev (and lately, this writer...) has called Economic Egoism that is quickly becoming impossible to maintain in this age of transparency and 24/7 rivers of information. Update: a good review of Medvedev quotes on this is here.
Big Media's role as the sole authority, the controlling entity, the gate-keeper, the market-owner is no longer a given.
Currently, this drastic paradigm change is the main stumbling block to figuring out just how this new, open, connected and networked content ecosystem will actually work. It's not like it's a huge and unanswered question whether Attention-based income streams and overall revenue sharing scenarios can be more lucrative than the traditional copy and paid-per-unit model - the answer is a clear and resounding YES - the costs of distribution and marketing are much lower, and with an advertising market of over $750 Billion per year (2012 estimation by EMarketer) there should be enough juice in the pipeline to pay for quite a bid of content.
The single most important issue here is CONTROL, not about money (and then, of course, closely followed by the issue of who actually who gets the money - the creators or the middlemen ;). Thus, my new book. Soon, I hope.
Nokia has announced that it is launching their Comes with Music (CmW) offering in the UK, Engadget reports. With 2.1 Million tracks from 3 of the 4 companies 'formerly known as major record labels', DRM'ed but without expiration date. Regardless of the obvious bummers (where are the indie labels, and why DRM?) I find this offer to be a very interesting step-up-the-ladder towards the Music Flat Rate that I have been describing for the past 5 years (lately, in my new book, Music 2.0... download the free PDF now!).
In a way, just like Google is doing in China, Nokia is using music as the social glue, i.e. to make sure people stick with their Nokia devices and receive lots of added value which imho is a really valid marketing strategy for Nokia - but of course not an overall solution to the vast music ecosystem problems; that will require the controling entities to get with the program, first. In reality - even though the handsets will be a bit more expensive than usual I would guess - it is Nokia that will pay for the music so that people will in turn love them (and their phones) even more. Music Like Water paid for by the Faucet Makers, so to speak. Let's see where this goes!
Businessweek has a good feature called "Book Publishers: Learn From Digg, Yelp—Even Gawker: Book publishing could keep itself vital by taking a page from Web 2.0 technologies, but it has a long way to go..."
The first amazing thing they mention is this: "Amazon (AMZN)
is laughing now. The Kindle, a device that lets people download, store,
and of course read books in a digital format, could become a $1.1
billion business for the company next year, accounting for 4% of sales,
according to a widely read Aug. 11 note by Citigroup..."
So Amazon has succeeded of building a nice new business by making something that was fixed, physical and controlled by scarcity into something that is LIQUID and can flow easily. Once the Kindle's display technology improves, some of the (no doubt publisher-mandated) security provisions are loosened, the design is improved, various little bugs are ironed out, and it works worldwide (3G/4G, Wifi, Wimax?), it will be huge, no doubt. Yes, of course, that's quite a list, but Bezos will do it!
And then, what's next: maybe a flat rate for digital books (ha: books like water..?), both paid-for in cash and paid-for in attention (i.e. next- generation advertising) - and there will be many variations of such a flatrate depending on location, culture, legal frameworks. But just imagine a digital book flat rate in China - just like Google is making music 'free' in China, as you read this, maybe Amazon will make books 'feel-like-free' in Asia, as well.
Sarah Lacy at Business Week offers some more good input for publishers to stay relevant:
Muxtape was another service that allowed people to upload and share streaming versions of their music library (10 tracks max I think). Cool idea, nicely done, but been done before, been sued before, been killed before. So this is just what happened to Muxtape a few days ago, see below. We all knew this was coming but... when will the labels ever learn? This is your AUDIENCE. Your USERS. Your LIFE BLOOD.
Fans are the record companies. Ownership of the song does not lie with the artist or the label or the publishers, but rather the consumer.
Artists are brands. They may not like the word but
that is essentially what they are, and in order to succeed you have to
focus on ways of building the brand.
Amazing technology is available and we should embrace it, build online communities and create opportunities within the digital world.
We should be selling digital tracks cheaper (the tipping point)......possibly 25 cents. This will dissuade people illegally
downloading and you end up making more of a profit from selling a lot
of cheap tracks than a few higher priced tracks.
Make use of metadata (search tags). We are now a society of searchers.
Explore the concept of feels like free and don’t be afraid to try new things.
Getting fans involved... Make stems of artist recordings available
for fans to create their own versions of artist’s songs. Let fans
create band merchandise. Allow fans to make videos and have a
competition to see which is the best which can be used as the next
music video…Getting fans involved builds the brand and the connection
with the artist. It’s economical and extremely beneficial.
Legislation is not the way to solve the problem. Suing consumers wont make the problem go away.
Understanding the concept of tribes, millennials have their groups
or tribes and within these tribes they will like the same music,
clothes etc. Getting early adopters in the tribes liking a band will
build exposure.
In China IP is looked at in a very different way. There music is
part of their culture and should be enjoyed by all and not guarded by
the creators. They have found ways other than selling CDs to make money
from music in Asia, such as live shows, merchandise and ring tones.
Mobile is a big area that needs to be explored. Asia and India are
miles ahead in their mobile technology so are able to consume content
differently to Europe and the US.
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