Nice CNN video on Google's Free Music Offering China

I blogged on this crucial development here; and just found this video to share.

8 key trends and some foresights for the next 5 years

Every now and then I get tempted into actually formulating some fore-sights. This time, the preparations for my upcoming speech on "New Media Futures" at the RSA in London have egged me on to share a few key points with you:

1) We will soon see the emergence of many different kinds of iPhone-influenced Netbook-like devices; some will be Apple-made but most will not. These devices may be 2-3 times the size of an iPhone and will connect to the Internet in every conceivable way, i.e. 3G/4G, LTE, Wimax, Wifi etc.  They will be touchscreen, zoom-interface enabled, cloud-computing, speech-controlled, location-aware, mobile-money equipped, socially hyper-networked, always-everywhere-on, HD-camera equipped and possibly project images and audio or even support basic holography.

In addition to the high-end, fully-loaded and perhaps still rather expensive versions that many of us in the so-called developed countries will gobble up, low cost and more basic editions for the developing markets will be sold in the 100s of millions (think India, China, Indonesia...). These smart gadgets will have very low energy consumption and therefore extremely long battery life, may even sport basic solar-power options, and may ultimately cost less than 30 USD, or even be 'free' (why bother to sell the box if you can make a lot more $ with selling services.... Nokia?).

It is these mass-market yet very smart and networked devices, together with cheap or free wireless broadband that will really revolutionize reading, newspapers, books and education; not to mention our music, TV and film consumption habits. Content commerce will be completely redefined as a consequence. As BTO told us a loooong time ago: "You ain't seen nothin' yet"

2) Very cheap or free wireless broadband - at fairly high speeds, i.e. at least 2MB / sec - will be available in most places, particularly in the booming new economies of Asia, India, Russia and South-America, and a bit later, in Africa. Funded by the likes of Google and by the future 'telemedia' conglomerates, governments, cities and states, wireless broadband will probably reach 3-4 out of 5 people on the globe within 5-8 years. User-generated & derived content (UGDC for those of you that must have an acronym ;), virtual co-production, mobile editing and instant network sharing will explode by a factor of 1000, making control of distribution a very distant concept of the past. UGC or UGDC may make up to 50% of the global content consumption by 2015. Consumers will be (co)-creators, marketers, sellers and buyers, and come in a hundred variations, from totally passive to totally active. Then, indeed, filtering, culling and curation will be the key to success.

3) Collective blanket licenses that legalize and unlock legitimate access to basic content services via any digital network will emerge, and are likely to take over as the primary way of content consumption, around the world (but in Asia, first). Just like water or electricity which is readily available when moving into a new home, the basic access to content will be bundled into access to digital networks, i.e. via ISPs, operators, telecoms, portals etc. This shift is starting with music (as already done by TDC in Denmark, and Google in China), and will be quickly followed by films, TV, books and newspapers. Access may often - but in local variations - 'feel like free' to the user but will in fact generate 10s of Billions of $$ via blanket licensing fees (yes... those pools of money), next-generation advertising and branding, data-mining & sharing, up-selling, re-packaging and many other new generatives. This topic will, btw, be the gist of my RSA presentation tomorrow - if you can't be there in person, you may want to listen to the live audio, via this link.

I think that governments around the world will call for and / or support the implementation of collective content licenses that wil finally legalize content usage on the Internet, similar to how governments pushed for the radio and broadcasting licenses  approx. 100 years ago. Whether these blanket licenses will be voluntary or compulsory remains to be seen - in any case the only alternative is to perpetuate a severely dysfunctional telemedia ecosystem that criminalizes almost all users and stifles innovation while generating virtually zero new revenues for the creators.

4) Fuel-cells and other next-generation mobile energy sources are a certainty. A serious increase in mobile device power (and therefore, its use) will be achieved by employing next-generation technologies such as fuel cells that could provide for up to 500x the usage time that we have today. This is likely to become a reality in 3-5 years and will revolutionize how we use - and how much we rely on - our mobile devices, especially in countries where there the fixed-line power infrastructure is much less developed or non-existent.

5) Completely targeted and personalized advertising, delivered largely on totally customized mobile computing & communication devices, will turn the the $ 1 Trillion USD advertising and marketing services economy upside down. Behavioral targeting and user-controlled advertising will, of course, become an even hotter potato and a much discussed challenge, but the good old deal of 'I give you attention & personal data and you give me value e.g. content' will be even more pronounced on the Net. In fact, advertising as we knew it is already more or less outmoded and will, during the next 2-3 years, be completely reinvented. Privacy and Trust are the #1 issues here.

The implication is that if your data (within your specific sets of permissions and opt-ins)  is used to bring you perfectly synchronized advertising, than advertising really becomes more like content, too. Watch this play out in the mobile advertising space, starting this year, and quite possible boost the global value of advertising-content by more than 100% by 2015. Google will be the main driver here, plus Facebook, Nokia and yes... Twitter (soon to be = Google).

6) We will witness the more or less complete decline of most forms of physical media within 7-10 years. The very definition - and thus the core economic business models - of newspapers, magazines, CDs, DVDs and books will be completely re-written, and new forms of content packaging will rapidly emerge. We can already see a preview of how this may work in the current mobile applications boom: content as part of software packages; paying for the packaging, the curation, the bundling, the personalization - not just for the zeros and ones that are 'the copy'. This trend is important not just because it will reflect the users' (or better... followers') new consumption habits but also because because of the increasing need to save energy and material costs - and moving from content products to content services will certainly go a long way in this regard. The total decline of printing in people's homes, and for personal use, will commence, as well.

7) Paying for privacy will become a distinct option. Today we pay to go online and connect; in the future we may end up paying for the luxury to go offline, disconnect, enjoy the quiet, and give our brain some rest. Maybe if we don't want to share our click-trails and usage data, we will be able to make cash payments instead - and the more you pay, the more private you can be..?

8) Travel 2.0: alternatives to 'actually going there' will explode: immersive, 3D video, virtual rooms, holography. This is a key development that will nurture new forms of entrepreneurship, education and group working.

Please talk back!

Great read on "Intellectual Property and new Copyright Law" with some nice Media Futurist -ic Quotes (via Japaninc.com)

This is a must read: Intellectual Property and new Copyright Law | Japan -- Business People Technology | www.japaninc.com.  Best snippets:

"But are things really that dire? Some would argue that these industries are healthier now than they ever have been. With the spread of information at a never before seen level, pieces of journalism are being read more now than ever, music artists are able to reach a broader audience than ever (some by bypassing the record labels all-together), and movies are being watched by more people in more countries..."

"The issue is control, and the embodiment of that control is copyright. The music industry is perhaps most illustrative of the issue..."

"Currently in Japan, new copyright laws are being debated which could make average users subject to civil law suits from record labels or movie distribution companies. Within the walls of mega-forum 2-Channel and the Japanese blogosphere, debate has been raging over the laws and what they will mean exactly for the average user. Specifically the outright banning of illegal downloads—music, movies and games being the main points of interest—is currently being investigated by a sub-committee appointed by the central government. Presently, Japan’s copyright law makes an exception in the case of downloads for personal use..."

"The industry veteran [IFPI's John Kennedy] says he believes a large increase in resources will not be needed to govern the Internet—warnings and enforcements will just need to be carried out in a similar way to any other law. “People call the Internet an ‘Information Super Highway.’ Well like any normal highway, it can be governed. If someone is speeding you give them a ticket and in extreme cases you take away their license.” But how about finding them? “People sit in their rooms and think they are anonymous but they are not—their IP address says exactly who they are,” says Kennedy..."

"Media futurist Gerd Leonhard [Me] says that in a globally networked world, with an expected 3.5 billion mobile users and Internet speeds increasing exponentially within the next two to four years, the traditional Western concept of exclusive copyright must be reviewed. “It is the purpose of copyright to generate sustainable and growing revenues for the creators, not to prevent new uses of their works that may eventually result in those new incomes. He believes that in the future, “many of these models will be more like flat-rated or bundled access models, rather than unit-sales based models.”

***"A recent case involving Google may help provide a blueprint for content creators. In October, Google settled a dispute with authors and publishers over its scanning of 7 million books for digital versions of printed material. The company paid $125 million to publishers and authors and will, from now on, provide a percentage share of the profits from ads and downloading fees. Under the agreement, Google would receive 37 percent of revenue while publishers and authors would get the rest. The settlement could pave the way for similar agreements within other industries..."

"Ito continues, “While it is important to protect copyright and the incentives that copyright (and intellectual property) provide, it is important that we do not prevent many of the basic things that people want to do with content or prevent some of the potential new ways that people will be expressing themselves and sharing this expression.”

"Futurist Leonhard says the key to making money in a post super-connected world is to embrace the concept of losing control. He believes that “a continued loss of control over IP and copyright and most other measures of restrictions is absolutely inevitable; and in fact, the less control we will have the more new revenues will surface.” Leonhard believes that “The future of creativity, content and media is bright, as it is the human creativity and its embodiments that will be even more valuable in a world of ubiquitous access and huge growth of output. It is the value and dollar system and logic that we need to rebuild and adapt—and the law is, of course, there to support this, and will therefore be adapted. This process is not new, just more drastic since the Web is often removing many old ways to get money out of scarcity while not yet offering the same profit in a plausible new way yet. This new logic needs more than 3 percent of the global population on broadband, and always-on, to generate increasing revenues from those new ideas. Another 24 months and we should have a much better take on this.”

This is really well-written and nicely researched, balanced column by Michael Condon - kudos!

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The Future of Media & Content: my presentation at the TIME 2008 conference in Istanbul

Update: Audio Recordings of my talk - stream or download the MP3s

Gerdleonhard1 TIME

Gerdleonhard3 TIME

Gerdleonhard2 TIME

Note: it starts in Turkish but I speak English after about 2 minutes

It was a great pleasure to speak at the annual TIME conference in Istanbul (Turkey). TIME is a yearly event that brings together several hundred people from the content, telecom, media, print, publishing, Internet and and advertising industries. I was invited via a Pho-List connection with Mehmet Guelez who works at Mueyorbir, the Turkish Music Performers Collection Society. The event was organized and sponsored by InterproMedia.  I had been to Turkey before (and had really enjoyed it), but had not spend much time in Istanbul yet, so this was a great opportunity to do so, and to check out the wide variety of people, cultures, music and food that Istanbul has to offer - I definitely enjoyed myself, and learned a lot, as well. Istanbul is definitely well worth a visit!

Here are some key points from my rather lengthy but hopefully still entertaining 60+ minutes talk (hopefully we can get the video online, soon, as well, so you can indulge in that, too): 

• Why telecoms and content owners have to work together to develop a new content business model (and what it could look like)
• The consequences of 3G- and Wimax- powered mobility on the content industries
• How Advertising 2.0 and the future of content are intertwined, and what role a new kind of advertising approach could play in content commerce
• How the traditional, western 'copy economy' is shifting to the access, service & sharing economy, and what the corresponding new business models could look like
• Why the flat rate for music and 'Music Like Water' is the solution for the current conundrum, what it means, and how it could work
• Why we (i.e. both the telecom industry and the content industry) cannot succeed by focusing on Control as the main factor of content monetization - and what else could be done, instead (yes... it's more than a few slides)

Here is the low-res PDF (6MB ~50 pages): future_of_media_and_content_gerd_leonhard_time_08_istanbul.pdf  Download the high-res version via Slideshare (below), or embed the slides in your blog!

The Future Of Media And Content Gerd Leonhard at TIME 08 Istanbul

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: turkey time)

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The Crowd and the Cloud = Our Future (video by Gerd Leonhard)

Yes, indeed. A CROWD of 1.5 Billion people on the Net, plus 3.5 Billion people on mobile phones. A computing CLOUD that allows endless storage of, and access to, content, media, data, software, MYStuff, at ever lower cost pretty anytime anywhere....

RadioTime Wunderground: Thousands of Radio Stations - new Phone App (via Hear 2.0)

Mark Ramsay's blog points to a new app for the iphone, offered by Radiotime, and Weather Underground: Hear 2.0: Thousands of Radio Stations - Now on the iPhone.  So we are finally getting there: via the iPhone, Internet radio is arriving in the CAR. What will this do to 'Radio 1.0' vs Radio 2.0? Now imagine an app hat saves the streams for a few hours (see the Pioneer Inno) [*probably already exists for the jailbroken iPhones] or get a wimax chip, and we'll have 15.000+ radio online radio stations available. Get Ready + we ain't seen nothing yet.

Mark has a good audio interview on his blog post, too, with the CEO of Radiotime. 

Also - given that spoke to the Trinidad music industry just yesterday - THIS is the kind of thing you need to promote your music: make a Trini music iPhone app that provides free streams. As Mark says "A distribution channel called the iPhone"