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16 posts categorized "Creative Commons"

April 09, 2012

Jeff Jarvis: consumption now is creation, too

Jeff Jarvis said in 2005 (!): "In fact, the act of consumption is now an act of creation. There are so many examples. When I search on Google, I am finding stuff for me but when I click, I am adding to the wisdom of the crowd that makes Google more effective for every searcher who follows me. When I create my iTunes playlist I am also programming my personal iTunes radio station, which I can share; that’s still individual. But when my listening habits join in at LastFM, I’ve now contributed to a collective and that collective pays me back with recommendations (hear Fred on this). When I consume content and want to save it on Del.icio.us or other such services, that’s an individual act. But the tags we create together yield amazing wisdom of the crowd that can be useful in helping people discover content, in organizing the web around topics again, in improving search results, and even in improving ad performance....

via www.buzzmachine.com

very good points, here, and so true, today: look at Facebook, Google, Twitter: their value is not (just) in owning the data but in aggregating, mining, filtering and repurposing it.

Users are content too and curation is kind

March 17, 2012

Must watch video: Rob Reid at TED: The $8 billion iPod (hilarious Copyright Math)

BRILLIANT video by comic author Rob Reid, showing how ridiculous the calculation of economic losses due to content 'piracy' is. Absolutely amazing how he strings the facts and hypotheses together - must watch for anyone in the content industry.

Read more here: Comic author and Rhapsody C-Founder Rob Reid unveils Copyright Math (TM), a remarkable new field of study based on actual numbers from entertainment industry lawyers and lobbyists. Rob Reid is a humor author and the founder of the company that created the music subscription service Rhapsody.

Snippets from the transcript:

"The recent debate over copyright laws like SOPA in the United States and the ACTA agreement in Europe has been very emotional. And I think some dispassionate, quantitative reasoning could really bring a great deal to the debate. I'd therefore like to propose that we employ, we enlist, the cutting edge field of copyright math whenever we approach this subject. For instance, just recently the Motion Picture Association revealed that our economy loses 58 billion dollars a year to copyright theft. Now rather than just argue about this number, a copyright mathematician will analyze it and he'll soon discover that this money could stretch from this auditorium all the way across Ocean Boulevard to the Westin, and then to Mars ... (Laughter) ... if we use pennies.
 
Now this is obviously a powerful, some might say dangerously powerful, insight. But it's also a morally important one. Because this isn't just the hypothetical retail value of some pirated movies that we're talking about, but this is actual economic losses. This is the equivalent to the entire American corn crop failing along with all of our fruit crops, as well as wheat, tobacco, rice, sorghum -- whatever sorghum is -- losing sorghum. But identifying the actual losses to the economy is almost impossible to do unless we use copyright math. Now music revenues are down by about eight billion dollars a yearsince Napster first came on the scene. So that's a chunk of what we're looking for. But total movie revenues across theaters, home video and pay-per-view are up. And TV, satellite and cable revenues are way up. Other content markets like book publishing and radio are also up. So this small missing chunk here is puzzling..."

February 22, 2012

Audio podcast of Radio New Zealand interview with Futurist Gerd Leonhard: the opportunities and friction of ultra-fast broadband (and the future of paid content)

Screen Shot 2012-02-22 at 13.56.30This short interview on my last trip to Auckland was fun - check it out. The interviewer is Kathryn Ryan (and she really knows her stuff!). Thanks for having me, Kathryn.

Ntn-Gerd Leonhard Interview Radio New Zealand

From Nine To Noon on Tuesday 21 February 2012

Gerd Leonhard has been dubbed "one of the leading Media Futurists in the World" by The Wall Street Journal. He is the co-author of the 'The Future of Music Music2.0' and 'The End of Control'. He is the keynote speaker at the Commerce Commission conference The Future with High Speed Broadband: Opportunities for New Zealand. Play (Windows)  Play (Other)

Download: Ogg Vorbis  MP3

October 24, 2011

Announcing my new Kindle book "The Future of Content"

FoC Gerd LeonahrdToday is a very big day for me. My new Kindle book "The Future of Content" just went online at Amazon, and is already gaining a lot of traction. You can view a very short video greeting about the book on my GerdTube channel (Youtube:) 

Of course I would be very happy if you would consider buying the book for yourself (only $3.90, Kindle-only) but beyond that it would be really great if you could help me spread the word via rating and / or 'liking' the book on the Amazon.com page, tweeting about it or just forwarding this mail to some friends that may be interested.

As you probably know, I have published my last 3 books as free pdfs (which are quite popular) but really wanted to try something new with this book; after all reading on the Kindle is a much better experience than reading a PDF, and thus is, to quote Kevin Kelly, one of those "New Generatives" :)

"The future of content" will also be available in dead-tree-versions aka print, via my Lulu store, soon - please stay tuned.    Happy reading!

Gerd Leonhard
(Media Futurist and CEO of The Futures Agency),
Basel /  Switzerland
http://twitter.com/#!/gleonhard
My public Amazon / Kindle profile
(sharing all my book highlights there)

 

Update October 25 2011: this nice review may be helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Increases brain power for content creators, October 25, 2011
This review is from: The Future of Content (Kindle Edition)

"I challenge you to expand your brain and read this book. What Gerd Leonhard is always doing is informing the global brain (or the collective brain) in ways that help us all get where we're trying to go. He builds the buildings in front of us.

This collection points toward several compelling answers for content creators. As a writer who is already swimming in the changing currents of "content," I found it intensely informative.  Leonhard shores up my courage to continue embracing a digital world without DRM, and ebook prices "for the masses." He makes the all-important concept of curation crystal clear. If you are providing any kind of content in print or on the web, it's relevant. If you want to stay on the front edge of content creation and publishing, it's basic. I'm making this book mandatory reading for my epublishing circles"


Amazon Kindle German Store
Amazon Kindle French Store
Amazon Kindle UK Store

ABOUT "THE FUTURE OF CONTENT"
Futurist Gerd Leonhard has been writing about the future of content i.e. music, film, TV, books, newspapers, games etc, since 1998. He has published 4 books on this topic, 2 of them on music (The Future of Music, with David Kusek, and Music 2.0). For the past 10 years Leonhard has been deeply involved with many clients in various sectors of the content industry, in something like 17 countries, and it’s been a great experience, he says. “I have learned a lot, I have listened a lot, I have talked even more (most likely:) and I think I have grown to really understand the issues that face the content industries - and the creators, themselves - in the switch from physical to digital media.”

This Kindle book is a highly curated collection of the most important essays and blog posts Leonhard has written on this topic, and even though some of it was written as far back as 2007 - “I believe it still holds water years later. I have tried to only include the pieces that have real teeth. Please note that the original date of each piece is shown here in order to allow for contextual orientation.” Leonhard’s intent to publish this via the amazing Amazon Kindle platform, exclusively, and at a very low price, is to make these ideas and concepts as widely available as possible while still trying to be an example of what digital, paperless distribution can look like, going forward.


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October 21, 2011

New video: the Future of Content, my Keynote at Colombia 3.0 (SPANISH)

Screen Shot 2011-10-21 at 11.44.31Here are both parts (90 minutes plus 35 minutes) of my keynote speech on The Future of Content at Colombia 3.0 October 7 2011 see http://www.colombiatrespuntocero.com

The panel discussion afterwards can be viewed here, as well (all in Spanish). Note: even though I am actually presenting in English the overdup is Spanish and very much in the foreground. I will try and get an English version, as well - stay tuned

files.me.com/gleonhard/gi5dw0 has the PDF with the slides using during the talk (i.e. most of them) Thanks to MINTIC for making this video available. For more context read http://www.mintic.gov.co/index.php/mn-news/469-20111008gerd

Related: check out my new Kindle book "The Future of Content"

El suizo GerlLeonhard, líder futurólogo experto en modelos de comercio electrónico, medios de comunicación e innovación fue el encargado del cierre de la Primera Cumbre Nacional de Contenidos Digitales, Colombia 3.0, realizada por el Ministerio TIC entre el 5 y el 8 de octubre. Después de cuatro días de análisis en los que se reunieron emprendedores, inversionistas, animadores, desarrolladores de aplicación y representantes de la industria de los contenidos digitales del mundo terminó Colombia 3.0. En la cumbre participaron 30 conferencistas nacionales y 50 internacionales, quienes se reunieron en 14 eventos simultáneos.Las distintas actividades y conferencias fueron seguidas en línea en 23 ciudades del país y 15 países. De igual manera se tuvo la participación de Siggraph, una asociación mundial de animación gráfica y técnicas interactivas, espacio en que 19 expertos en animación compartieron sus experiencias exitosas en las firmas más importantes del mundo de esta industria. Bogotá 7 de octubre de 2011.En su intervención GerlLeonhard, realizó un detallado análisis de los cambios que han sufrido los medios tradicionales al migrar a los medios sociales como Facebook, Twitter y otras redes sociales. Además,Leonhard anotó que en la actualidad se vive una cultura de la banda ancha y son los “prosumidores”, consumidores activos, los que producen contenidos digitales.

 Mencionó el experto suizo que el mundo digital está regido por la relevancia y no solamente por la distribución, según Leonhard, los contenidos digitales deben ser depurados antes de ser distribuidos a los distintos públicos y subrayó que la nueva economía digital que se está viviendo en la actualidad debe iniciarse desde Internet y especialmente desde los dispositivos móviles. Anotó también Leonhard, que el usuario es quien genera los contenidos digitales en la actualidad através de distintos dispositivos móviles. En su intervención, señaló además que la tendencia actual se desarrolla a través de lo móvil, lo social y lo local. Ademásindicó, en este sentido,que para el 2015se esperaque 7.1 trillones de dispositivos móviles sean usados en el mundo.

 

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September 19, 2011

MUST WATCH: PressPausePlay Movie, related 9-minute excerpt of interview with me (future of music ++)!

Press Pause Play Film logo I am delighted to be involved with PressPausePlay, a movie about digital creativity, funded and promoted by Ericsson, featuring people such as Hank Shocklee, Seth Godin, ZeFrank, Sean Parker, Larry Lessig and Mike Mesnick. And it's finally out and available! Here is what it's all about:

 "The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent in an unprecedented way, with unlimited opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art or is true talent instead drowned out? This is the question addressed by PressPausePlay, a documentary film containing interviews with some of the world's most influential creators of the digital era"

You can download it via bit-torrent (free but painful) or iTunes US (paid but much swifter:)

From the blog:  "we have had so many people ask "Where can we see your film?" and this week we are very happy to say our digital distribution has begun! PressPausePlay is now available online in many countries around the world, with more coming soon. You can now find PressPausePlay on iTunes US, iTunes Canada and iTunes UK. You can also purchase PressPausePlay on Amazon.com, Walmart.com, Vudu.com, CinemaNow.com, Xbox, and Playstation. Or put us on your Netflix cue where we will be coming soon..."

Please RT and spread the word!!

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March 27, 2011

All creative work is derivative (video +)

Check out this really cool video by Nina Paley, setting forth the exact same thought that I expressed at TedXNewStreet in London last year (slides / post, video) in my talk on The Future of Copyright and IPR: in a networked society, all (...well, I said, almost all) creative work is derivative in some way or on another.

From Youtube: "Our second "Minute Meme," illustrating how all creative work builds on what came before. Photographed and animated by Nina Paley. Music by Todd Michaelsen ("Sita's String Theory," a Bonus Track on the soon-to-be-released Sita Sings the Blues soundtrack CD!). Photographed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. More information. High-res and Ogg versions...."

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January 03, 2011

A gift for you: free PDFs of my last 3 books: Music 2.0, The End of Control, Friction is Fiction

Update: my new book "The Future of Content" was just released on the Kindle

I want to start 2011 in a renewed spirit of generosity and sharing, so here are the complete PDFs of my last 3 books, for free; provided under a Creative Commons,non-commercial, share-alike, attribution license (see below). If you still want to buy the dead-tree versions of these books (or donate something for the free PDFs - yes, that's an option, too;), you can visit my Lulu Store, or go to Amazon.com, or check out my 'Paying for Gerd' page. You can also return the favor by blogging or tweeting of Facebook-liking my stuff.  Thanks, and enjoy, and have a great 2011. 

Pay with a tweet: Music 2.0

Pay with a tweet: Friction is Fiction

Update: my free videos (50+ keynotes and presentations) are here, the iTunes podcast feed is here (just subscribe to download all videos to your iPod / iPad / iPhone, or computers), and my free slideshows (90+) are here, on Slideshare :)

Music 2.0 book icons  

  Download 7MB Music20book pdf

 

 

 

Friction is Fiction book Gerd Leonhard

 

Download Friction is Fiction 6.8MB PDF

 

 

 

Eoc logo header FINAL

 

 

 

Download The End of Control Gerd 8MB PDF

 

 

 

And be sure to check out my free iPhone and Android apps

Creative Commons License   These free books by Gerd Leonhard are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on various works offered by Gerd Leonhard

 

 

Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu.

Support independent publishing: Buy this book on Lulu.

December 01, 2010

New: Portuguese translation of my essay on Content 2.0: protection is in the business model

I amComic 2.0 content icon delighted to be able to share this brand-new translation with all my friends, tweeps and colleagues that speak Portuguese. The essay was kindly translated by Paula Neves, Analista de Marketing Digital at Approach (Brazil); be sure to visit her blog or Linkedin profile. 

Gerd Leonhard: Conteúdo 2.0:  ‘proteção’ está no modelo de negócio e não na tecnologia (pensamentos sobre o futuro da venda de conteúdo).

Download the PDF (1.8MB): Portuguese translation  The original, english version is here.  

Excerpt (download the PDF to read the whole thing, ie 6 pages):

 

No longer own contentImage by gleonhard via Flickr

Abastecido pelas agitações na indústria da música e, finalmente, com a transformação muito rápida dos livros para o formato digital, há bastante debate em torno do fato das pessoas compartilharem habitualmente isto é, redistribuírem conteúdo digital sem que os usuários paguem por isso. Como se pode monetizar o conteúdo se a cópia é gratuita? Essa pergunta é uma questão chave em todos os sentidos, seja com a música, com livros digitais, noticiários, editoração, TV ou filmes. Há o medo, claro, de que a partir do momento que um item digital foi comprado por uma pessoa, ele pode ser facilmente encaminhado para qualquer um se estiver num formato aberto, assim reduzindo significantemente a possibilidade de que outra pessoa pague dinheiro real por ele também (claro que o mesmo também é verídico para conteúdo digital supostamente trancado ou protegido – só demora um pouco mais). Não ter mais controle sobre a distribuição = não ter mais dinheiro. Certo?

Apesar do simples fato da GDD (Gestão de Direitos Digitais, ou Digital Rights Management em inglês) já ter se mostrado desastrosa no mundo da música digital (e agora já é praticamente o passado), medidas técnicas de proteção ainda vêm sendo investigadas como um método plausível de se garantir o pagamento, especialmente no efervescente setor dos eBooks. Isso me preocupa muito porque medidas técnicas de proteção são caras, atrapalham ou previnem a adoção em massa, encurtam ou matam o compartilhamento social, o que derrota o marketing usuário-usuário, normalmente limitam drasticamente o uso honesto, e são geralmente inúteis no combate aos piratas reais, isto é, os que têm intenções maldosas e criminosas de roubar conteúdo e vendê-lo para outros.

Não somente conteúdo – Contexto! A meu ver, o pensamento de que a distribuição de conteúdo tem de ser controlada para que haja qualquer forma razoável de pagamento é fundamentalmente equivocado por causa dessa percepção não-tão-futurista: numa economia aberta e enredada (nota: estou falando sobre hoje e não amanhã!) editores de conteúdo têm de oferecer seus bens de uma forma que não mais considere a distribuição como o fator central. Não deve-se vender (somente) o conteúdo (ou seja, meros 0s e 1s) e sim também o contexto, os valores agregados, os vários outros itens em torno do conteúdo. Venda o que não pode ser copiado.

A tendência irrefutável é que a janela de oportunidade de se ‘vender cópias’ (isto é, iTunes, música digital, Kindle, etc) está rapidamente fechando, pelo menos na maior parte dos países desenvolvidos. A próxima oportunidade, e já muito presente, está na venda do acesso e serviços de valor agregado, e no fornecimento de experiências ligadas ao conteúdo.

Ubiquitous ContentImage by gleonhard via Flickr

A partir do momento que abarcarmos que os usuários – as pessoas dantes conhecidas como consumidores – não podem ser reduzidas a meros ‘compradores de cópias’, poderemos investigar como eles gostariam de pagar por todo o resto também. Por exemplo, ao comprar um eBook os usuários não deveriam pagar meramente pela autorização da distribuição, ou seja, a cópia legítima das palavras, e sim também poderiam ganhar acesso a comentários altamente especializados, amigos e colegas que possam ler esse livro, avaliações, explicações, apresentações de slides, imagens, links, vídeos, referências cruzadas, conexões diretas com o autor ou o editor e assim por diante. Sim: conectar com fãs + motivos para comprar (como o Mike Masnich do Techdirt já resumiu sucintamente diversas vezes)....
 

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October 22, 2010

New video: my talk at TedX London: the future of intellectual property and copyright

It didn't take long for the TedX NewStreet (London) people to put the videos online at the TedX Youtube channel - great! Unfortunately my own talk got started while the wireless microphone was still on 'mute' so for the first minute or so (while I am doing my introduction) the audio recording was quite bad.

Therefore, I edited the video and scrubbed  those 60 seconds; the result is below (using my own GerdTube / Blip.TV channel  *you can get the iTunes podcast feed here). The original TedX Youtube version is below, as well, as is the slideshow, from my previous post. I think I really touched on some very important issues here, and I would be delighted to hear your thoughts on them. Fire away via Twitter, or Facebook, or comment below. And spread the word. Thanks.

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October 16, 2010

The Future of Intellectual Property & Copyright (presentation at TedXNewStreet, London)

Tedx_newst_logo_cropped It was a great pleasure to speak at TedX New Street in London yesterday (tweet flow is here, btw) I was allotted the usual 18 Ted-minutes to speak about the future of intellectual property and copyright - a piece of cake!  Here is my presentation, below - let me know how you like it. Hopefully we will have a video on Ted.com pretty soon, as well. If you want a quicky download (rather than the high-res slideshare version, below), you can try this low-res PDF: Future of IP and Copyright Gerd Leonhard Tedx London LOW RES

 

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May 09, 2010

Get ready for PressPausePlay: an important film about the Future of Creativity

Picture 34 8 months ago, I was interviewed by the House of Radon people for a movie called PressPausePlay, a really promising film that is presented by Ericsson and is scheduled for release some time later this year. I have embedded the trailer below (yes, it includes my 15 seconds of micro-fame) and really look forward to seeing the whole thing when it's ready.

Kudos to Ericsson for sponsoring a very powerful film about the huge changes in production, distribution and consumption of creative works - this is a crucial topic that is, of course, very close to my own work (see here, here, here and here). Eric Wahlforss (SoundCloud's Founder) is involved, as well, btw.

From the film's web-site: "A new generation of global creators and artists are emerging, equipped with other points of reference and other tools. The teachers arenʼt certified schools anymore - itʼs web sites, discussion forums and a “learn by doing”-mentality. We see the children of a digital age, unspoiled or uneducated depending on who you ask. Collaboration over hierarchy, digital over analog - a change in the way we produce, distribute and consume creative works. PressPausePlay is the first film to capture this new ecosystem. We meet the creatives at the frontier of production, the technical enablers of collaboration and distribution, the artists, the pop stars, the film makers, the business men, the visionaries and the ones left behind. Itʼs a story from the smallest molecule to the largest corporation. Itʼs a snapshot of today, but at the same time predictions of a near future.

Weʼre not creating a documentary in the classical sense of shaky cameras, bad lighting and unbearable sound. Although we have a small budget, we got big aspirations. The film will in itself be a proof of the evolution story weʼre telling, shot in digital 4K and finished at the end of 2010. Ready for both the big (cinema) and the small (mobile) screen. We will release rough edits and interviews as well as the final film free for anyone to use, broadcast and distribute. PressPausePlay will be an observation, a testimony and a tribute"

Don't miss this film.

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September 12, 2009

Carta Abierta de Gerd Leonhard a la industria de música independiente: Spanish translation of my Open Letter to the Independent Music Business

music 2.0 gerd leonhard compensationImage by gleonhard via Flickr

Once again, the power of networked communities on the web has been a great benefit for me: Carolina Botero from Columbia ran cross my 2007 "Open Letter to the Independent Music Industry" and I guess she liked it so much that she decided to translate it into Spanish, which must have been quite a serious undertaking given the convoluted English I sometimes lapsed into;).  I have pasted some excerpts below, to read the whole thing please go to Carolina's blogDownload the English version (Pdf). Check out the French version. Try a bit of Portuguese. Related: my Music 2.0 book:  Lulu store (for dead tree version), or download the free PDF.

Basilea, Suiza, 1 de julio 2007

El 29 de junio de 2007, mientras estaba en London Calling, fui invitado a hablar a un pequeño grupo de líderes de sellos independientes en su reunión anual AIM / WIN en Londres. Aproveché esta oportunidad para dar un vistazo a lo que debe suceder para que las compañías de música independiente realmente puedan sacar provecho de la nueva economía de la música que se está desarrollando en estos momentos. Así que … algunos de mis pensamientos se comparten a continuación.

Hoy quiero presentar mis opiniones sobre lo que me gusta llamar “Música 2.0″ – la próxima generación de la industria de la música que se está creando en estos momentos. Este nuevo modelo es radicalmente diferente. Muchos de las viejas formas de hacer las cosas, muchas de las relaciones anteriores y muchas de las viejas tradiciones no pueden y no van a sobrevivir.

Quiero seducirlos, a ustedes los líderes de la industria de la música independiente, a recorrer este nuevo camino conmigo, para dar un salto, para dejar algunas de sus presunciones y sus ‘religiones’ a un lado, y hacer jugadas audaces – porque esto es lo que se necesita para darle la vuelta a este barco. Scott Fitzgerald, el famoso novelista, dijo: “La prueba de una inteligencia de primer orden es la capacidad de tener dos ideas opuestas en la mente al mismo tiempo, y todavía tener la capacidad de funcionar”. Este claramente es el desafío de la industria de la música para avanzar!

Las innovaciones técnicas y económicas durante los últimos 10 años han despojado de muchas tradiciones, jerarquías sociales y económicas y monopolios a la industria de la música, y si hubiera una cosa que pudieramos decir con seguridad creo que sería que ahora es tiempo del show, que finalmente la industria de la música ha llegando a un punto de inflexión importante: 10 años después de que la primera empresas .com sacudió la tierra. Le tomó mucho más tiempo de lo que todos pensamos pero la está golpeando mucho más duro ahora: las ventas de CD han caído entre un 20 – 40% en lo que va del año, y las ventas digitales no están haciendo la diferencia en el corto plazo – y la carrera de un solo caballo que es iTunes claramente está en un callejón sin salida.

Nos estamos acercando rápidamente a un punto donde nos vemos obligados a sumergirnos en lo que me gusta llamar “Music2.0″ – un nuevo ecosistema que no se basa en la música como un producto, sino en la música como un servicio: primero se vende el acceso, y sólo entonces se produce la venta de copias. Se trata de un ecosistema basado en la ubicuidad de la música, no la escasez. Un ecosistema basado en la confianza mutua, no el miedo.Como dice Don Tapscott, en su gran libro “Wikinomics”, podemos pensar en Web 1.0 – la “antigua” web – como una especie de periódico digital, mientras que Web 2.0 es un lienzo que permite que la información sea presentada, compartida , modificada, y remezclada. Se trata de la interactividad, las opciones de envío y recepción lo que la hacen útil y «especial». Y sobre todo en la música, que siempre, desde el principio, ha sido acerca de interactividad, de compartir, de participar – no de vender-vender-vender...

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August 21, 2009

Music 2.0 - the time is Now. My presentation on the Future of Music, AMBC 2009 in Sydney

Picture 27 Further to my previous post about the AMBC conference in Sydney, here is the PDF with my presentation on Music 2.0 - The Time is Now. Enjoy! Read more about Music2.0 gerd leonhard logo Music Like Water, watch some videos on this topic, or get the PDF with the free Music 2.0 book and more slideshows, here. Download the PDF: Download Music 2.0 The Time is Now Gerd Leonhard at AMBC Sydney
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July 03, 2009

The price of freedom: Reinventing the online economy (RSA Journal July 2009)

Logo-rsa I was delighted to be invited to make a contribution to the RSA Journal's July 2009 edition, the printed version of which was just send out I believe, and the online edition that just went up on their website.

The complete title of my piece is: "The price of freedom - reinventing the online economy: Gerd Leonhard explains why ‘free’ content can still pay in the long term" and I really enjoyed writing this for them.

Following my last presentation at the RSA, in April 2009, on 'The Future of Content and Creativity' I have had many good conversations about this topic. The audio track from this event is here, btw; and the video is embedded again, below. Enjoy. And RT;)

I definitely recommend that you check out the other great features in the Juy 09 RSA journal, as well, there's some great gems in there.

Update (January 10, 2010):

English Version as downloadable PDF: Download RSA Gerd Summer 2009

German Translation by Rainer Classen : RSA German Translation: Preis der Freiheit

Spanish Translation by Carlos Perez Vellila: Spanish Price of Free RSA

Italian Translation by Federico Ciappi: Download Il prezzo della libertà RC1

You can read the entire thing on the RSA page, so here is just an excerpt:

Free iStock Photo freemium "Free information, free music, free content and free media have been the promises of the internet (r)evolution since the humble beginnings of the World Wide Web and the Netscape IPO on 9 August 1995. What started out as the cumbersome sharing of simple text, grainy images and seriously compressed MP3s via online bulletin boards has now spread out to every single segment of the content industry – and even into ‘meatspace’ (real-life) services such as car rentals. Without a doubt, ‘free’ has become the default expectation of the young web-empowered digital natives and now the older generations are jumping in, too.

On top of the already disruptive force of the good old computer-based Web1.0, we are witnessing a global shift to mobile internet – a WWW that is, finally, so easy to use that even my grandmother can do it. While five years ago, we needed a ‘real’ computer tethered to a bunch of wires to port ourselves to this other place called ‘online’ and partake in global content swapping, now we just need a simple smart phone and a basic data connection. With a single click of a button, we’re in business – or rather, in freeloading mode. 

As users, we love ‘free’; as creators, many of us have come to hate the very thought. When access is de facto ownership, how can we still sell copies of our creations? Will we be stuck playing gigs while our music circles the globe on social networks, or blogging (now: tweeting) our heart out without even a hint of real money coming our way?

Daunting as it may seem, we can no longer stick with the pillars of Content1.0, such as the so-called fixed mechanical rate that US music publishers are currently getting ‘per copy’ of a song ($0.091). Nobody knows what really defines a copy any longer when the web’s equivalent of a copy (the on-demand play of that song on digital networks) may be occurring hundreds of millions of times per day. No advertiser, no ISP and not even Google has this kind of money to pay the composer (or rather, the publisher), at least not until the advertisers start bringing at least 30–50 per cent of their global US$1 trillion marketing and advertising budgets to the table.

Price of freedomTraditional expectations and pre-internet licensing agreements are exactly what are holding up YouTube’s deals with the music rights organisations such as PRS and GEMA: this is what the rights organisations used to get paid for the music that is being copied, and this is what they want to get paid now. This impasse is causing significant friction in our media industries worldwide. Yet, below the top-line issue of money, there lurks an even more significant paradigm shift: the excruciating switch from a centralised system of domination and control to a new ecosystem based on open and collaborative models. This is the shift from monopolies and cartels to interconnected platforms where partnership and revenue sharing are standard procedures. In most countries, copyright law gives creators complete and unfettered control to say yes or no to the use of their work. Rights-holders have been able to rule the ecosystem and, accordingly, ‘my way or the highway’ has been the quintessential operating paradigm of most large content companies for the past 50 years.

Enter the internet: now the highway has become the road of choice for 95 per cent of the population, the attitude of increasing the price by playing hard to get is rendered utterly fruitless. Like it or not, a refusal to give permission for our content to be legally used because we just don’t like the terms (or the entity asking for a licence) will just be treated as ‘damage’ on the digital networks, and the traffic will simply route around it. The internet and its millions of clever ‘prosumers’, inventors and armies of collaborators will find a way to use our creations, anyway. Yes, we can sue Napster, Kazaa or The PirateBay and we can whack ever more moles as we go along. We can pay hundreds of millions of dollars to our lawyers and industry lobbyists – but none of this will help us to monetise what we create. The solution is not a clever legal move, and it’s not a technical trick (witness the disastrous use and now total demise of Digital Rights Management in digital music). The solution is in the creation of new business models and the adoption of a new economic logic that works for everyone; a logic that is based on collaboration, on co-engagement and on, dare we mention it, mutual trust – an ecosystem not an egosystem. Once we accept this, we can start to discover the tremendous possibilities that a networked content economy can bring to us.  

Free, feels-like-free and freemium

Much has been written on the persistent trend towards free content on the net. It is crucial that we distinguish between the different terms so that we can develop new revenue models around all of them. ‘Free’ means nobody gets paid in hard currency – content is given away in return for other considerations, such as a larger audience, viral marketing velocity or increased word of mouth (or mouse). I may be receiving payment in the form of attention, but that isn’t going to be very useful when it’s time to pay my rent or buy dinner for my kids. Free is... well, unpaid, in real-life terms.

 ‘Feels-like-free’, on the other hand, means that real money is being generated for the creators while their content is being consumed – but the user considers it free. The payment may be made (ie sponsored or facilitated) by a third party (such as Google’s recently launched free music offering in China, Top100.cn); it may be bundled (such as in Nokia’s innovative ‘Comes With Music’ offering, which bundles the music fee into the actual handsets) or the payment may be part of an existing social, technological or cultural infrastructure (such as cable TV or European broadcast licence fees) and therefore absorbed without much further thought. Feels-like-free could therefore be understood as a smart way to re-package what people will pay for, so that the pain of parting with their money is removed or somewhat lessened – everyone pays, somehow, but the consumption itself feels like a good deal...."     Read on.  PDF: Download RSA - The price of freedom Gerd Leonhard July 2009

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