New video: Music 2.0 - The Future of the Music Industry (18 mins)

I made a very short video on the same topic last week (90 secs) and a lot of people have pinged me to make a longer version - so here it is, in 2 parts (thanks to Youtube's really annoying 10 minute limit).

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Music 2.0 - the future of the music industry - in 18 minutes (narrated slideshow)

Alright then... you don't think "Music 2.0 in 90 seconds" is enough.  You don't think 3 minutes really do it, either. You liked the PDF but you want the talk. I heard you. So here is the full 18 minutes of Music 2.0, in 2 parts, thanks to the ingenious Youtube limitations (but hey... it's HD now so why am I complaining?).

Here is a link to the MP4 file (410MB) if you want to watch on while biking in the woods;) Plus: remember that you can get it all for your iPods and iPhones by subscribing to my GerdTube.net / Blip TV iTunes feed (except for this one, though - for some reason the encoding just won't work for this file).

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New video: Music 2.0 in 90 seconds

This is probably a world record: In this short Flickr video, below, I am illustrating my basic Music 2.0 concepts in a snappy 90 seconds. Yes, I know that's way to fast to read much of it while it goes by, so here is the PDF, too: Music 2.0 in 90 seconds gerd leonhard singles (7MB PDF, creative commons licensed)

The entire Music 2.0 book can be downloaded (yes, for free), here, or you can order it from Amazon.com or even better, on-demand-printed by Lulu. You can read it on the iPhone, too, using the cool Instapaper app. And yes, you can download this snazzy video via Drop.io. Music is provided by SlicerXXL via TribeofNoise.com - thanks! Still need more? Check out my Music 2.0 slideshows on Slideshare.com.

And if you really need more than 90 secs - here is the 3-minute version

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The Future of Media: Open, Mobile, Connected, Collaborative (presentation at MPJC 2009)

I was invited to give the opening keynote at the Mediapark Jaar Congress in Hilversum, Holland, today (June 23, 2009). The PDF can be downloaded below (creative commons licensed, as usual - feel free to re-use non-commercially, but please give attribution). Mediapark Jaarcongress Hilversum Gerd Leonhard Future of Media Public (PDF 20 MB)  Check out the #mpjc2009 Twitter Buzz (mostly in Dutch, all MJPC 2009 tweets google-translated, here). I always love speaking in Holland btw - great people! Update: the Dutch Cowboys Blog has a good summary of my presentation (in Dutch)

The Future of Media: Open, Mobile, Connected (MPJC Hilversum 2009)

View more Microsoft Word documents from Gerd Leonhard.

Update: here is the audio podcast from my speech

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My "Music 2.0" book is now available in Croatian language - free PDF, too!

  The amazing power of online networking and collaboration, open platforms, creative commons licensing and crowd-sourcing (whew... that's a mouthful!) has manifested itself once again: for the past 9 months, the tenacious and dedicated Zvonimir Dusper (Dus) from Croatia (LinkedIn profile) has been hard at work translating my entire Music 2.0 book into Croatian language (see the English book site here, download the English version as a PDF here, buy the dead-tree version or U.S. letter size book PDF at Lulu, here, visit the Amazon.com book page [incl. reviews] here).

The book is now available as a free PDF download and in a print version via Zvonimir's Glazba2.0 site - check it out and please forward this post to anyone that may be interested in reading Music2.0 in Croatian  (you can use the tools provided, below)

 To receive the free PDF please use the email box on the left site of the Glazba2.0 site (see here >). Enjoy!

PREDGOVOR HRVATSKOM IZDANJU
Tematika “2.0” u posljednje vrijeme sve više okupira medije (nove i stare :-), pa smo, osim već razvikanim Webom 2.0, sad bombardirani i Novinarstvom 2.0, Marketingom (komercijalnim ali i političkim!) 2.0, Ekonomijom 2.0, Sociologijom 2.0 i drugim raznim inačicama tog fenomena, među kojima nas, ljubitelje glazbe i/ili glazbene pr ofesionalce, najviše zanima upravo tema ove knjige – Glazba

2.0.  Riječ je o promje ni iz sustava kojim je dominirao princip “od-vrha-prema-dole”, u sistem “od-dole-prema-vrhu”, u kojem korisnici/potrošači svojim sudjelovanjem u interaktivnim online mrežama grade tkivo budućih socijalnih ekosistema. P ažnja je postala nova valuta, a poslovni princip vrlo jednostavan – ako je privučeš dovoljno da se posuda prelije, višak možeš lako pretvoriti u novac. Kako god to zvučalo jednostavno, živjeti u 2.0 svijetu znači imati hrabrosti za radikalnu promjenu svojih  navika, i odustajanje od tradicionalnih očekivanja i (nerealnih) projekcija budućnosti.  Budućnost ne dolazi, ona je već tu, samo je neravnomjerno raspoređena – da citiram Johna Cage-a (taj sam citat, naravno, “pokupio” iz ove knjige :-) ....

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My response to the French vote on the HADOPI / 3 Strikes Law

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The Road to Music 2.0 - my presentation at Creative Capital / Future Music Lab in London

This is a public version of my presentation from today's Creative Capital event and Future Music Lab / Sandpit here at Canary Wharf London. Really enjoyed the sandpit discussions in the afternoon, btw - will have some pics and vids from that soon. A short summary of what I talked about:

1) We are in the middle of a switch from Egosystem to Ecosystem - a better business model for a new music industry will need to be build on deep collaboration and mutual respect - there will be no strong, new revenue streams without all pieces of the ecosystem (telecoms, brands, content owners, CE / device makers...) collaborating 2) The development of New Generatives (yes, a la Kevin Kelly / The Technium: Better than Free - a must read!) is crucial - most traditional revenue models based on unit sales and push-marketing will crumple more or less completely. This includes packaging, personalization, timeliness, authentication, curation, filtering, alt-outputs etc (see more, here and here)  3) The only way to monetize the use of music on digital networks is to license the music via a collective, public, open flat rate - like we licensed radio. If Google can achieve a 'private flat rate' in China... then we can do something similar here! 12 MB PDF  The road to Music 2 Gerd Leonhard Creative Capital London

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The Future of Content & Creativity: Video of my speech at the RSA in London (April 8, 2009)

Finally, here's the video of my speech at the RSA. The lighting did not work out so well so it's not the best quality, but still, I think you'll like it.  Please visit my GerdTube.net site for more videos (this URL is just a door to my Blip.tv channel), or subscribe to my videos via iTunes (great for offline / iPod viewing).  And... please retweet!! 

This is a video of my speech I held at the RSA as part of an event on April 8 2009, entitled "New Media Futures: what next for content and creativity" Topics: The internet is radically disrupting most of the traditional content distribution and selling models, starting with music and games, followed by TV, film, books and print publishing. Once everyone is always-on, mobile and hyper-connected, and everything is available everywhere, how will content be created, distributed, marketed, consumed, and paid for? Who will do what, for whom, and how will the traditional players such as broadcasters, record labels, publishers and distributors adapt? If new players, starting with telecoms, device makers, advertisers and brands, indeed move into the content business, what will be their challenges and opportunities? Given the challenging financial climate, how do we reconcile the need to reward enterprise and secure sustainable revenue streams, with the expectations and demands of the “freeconomics” generation? What kind of legal, regulatory and cultural framework do we need to ensure that this new eco-system of creators, consumers and intermediaries generates more benefits for all involved?

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Nice CNN video on Google's Free Music Offering China

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

Why Google's free music deal in China is so important, and what it may really mean

Image via CrunchBase

I have mentioned Google's music-related activities in China a few times during the past 2 years; and just yesterday this topic seems to have heated up considerably. I think these developments are crucial and need further exploration.

As you may know, Google owns a good chunk (or all?) of the Chinese search engine Top100.cn, one of the biggest rivals of the Chinese super-portal and ruling search giant, Baidu. However, Google is still a more or less distant second in the Chinese search market (in 2008, Google had approx. 16.6% vs Baidu's 76.9%) and really needs its Top100 property to better compete with Baidu. The major issue here is - you guessed it - the availability of CONTENT- or rather, the simple displaying of links to millions of music & film files that those hungry freeloaders i.e. digital natives want to stream or download. Baidu allows this - in fact, thrives on it - while Google / Top100 does not (i.e. it filters and removes the links to the files). This is a huge handicap for Google, because the filtering of those content-links is basically driving away all of those 100s of millions of Chinese Internet users that are looking for just that.

Realizing that the real value of the users is in their participation and engagement, and then in paying-with-attention, Google has clearly pursued a strategy akin to the 'Music Like Water' model that I (and Dave Kusek, my partner-in-crime for  "The Future of Music") have also described countless times: Google will simply provide the platform where music can be turned into money, by connecting the user with the content they want right where they already are (i.e. the search page), while gradually but aggresively monetizing their presence and their clicks via 3rd party payments - and this does not mean just ads. Sounds simple but maybe this has not yet been financially feasible in the past - today, any new money for the music companies is welcome, I guess, so here we are, finally: Search with us and we'll give you Free Music. Kai Fu Lee Image via NYT.

Clearly, it is much better for Google to offer and develop a new payment logic and mechanism for the music that is being used, i.e. to somehow license and pre-pay for it (I call this 'being the lubricant of the ecosystem') until such time where the revenues from advertising, up- and cross-selling are big enough to pay for everything, and quite possibly beyond that, as well. And as far as the music licenses are concerned - otherwise a no-go minefield that few Internet companies have crossed in the past - China is clearly a very good place to start as most of these new revenues will be 'found money' for the record labels.

Total Telecom reports:  "Record companies will take roughly half of any revenue from banner ads placed on the page users see when they are downloading or streaming songs, with Top100.cn taking the remainder. Google could benefit from increased traffic on its Chinese site, and can sell its trademark search ads on the search page" The bottom-line? For all parties, it is better to deploy new kinds of ads (think mobile - that will certainly be key), sponsorships and affiliate links while the music is being used (fka consumed;) and to thereby fund the pool of music licensing costs, then not to get involved and leave the turf to all the other guys that don't play by the rules, anyway.

Now, Google has apparently licensed 350.000 tracks from all major labels (how long did that take... I am afraid to ask... *rant alert) and many leading Chinese record companies and artists, and if you are logged into Top100.cn, and based in China (sorry - no access from EU / US), apparently all the music is yours to stream and download.

So: Google pays for the music to get our attention for their ads - sure sounds like a familiar strategy. Radio and TV broadcasting, anyone?

Another interesting morsel is that apparently streaming and downloading is treated as pretty much the same thing (again, from the WSJ coverage, see link below): "Google's Lee said songs on the service are downloaded or streamed around 1.5 million times a day, and he hopes the number will eventually be many, many times that".  I believe I have mentioned this basic fact of Internet music a few times before, too: streaming & listening IS downloading, access IS ownershop, and that's that. The legal artifacts remain, I guess...?

Now, just because I won't want to agree with the major labels and their lobbyists too much;) - here are my big questions:

If this works in China, why not do this everywhere else? If this works for Google, why not for telecoms, ISPs and mobile operators?  If this works for music, why not - sooner or later - for music, TV, video, books and newspapers?

First: China does not have much of a business of 'selling units', i.e. there are no Billions of $ in selling CDs or single-track downloads. Therefore, any money that the rights-holders (i.e. the record labels and music publishers, and hopefully the artists) can actually get from anyone in China is probably very welcome; and that is exactly what the Google / Top100 deal will provide. And even though it would be a fair bet to guess that this deal is probably not coming cheap for Google China, it is probably still quite doable since the 'competition' of physical music sales is negligible and so-called 'cannibalization' of traditional music sales is not a major concern for the record industry in China. This would of course be substantially different in the UK or Germany where CD sales and the omni-present iTunes still generate Billions of Euros per year. But this is the lesson: someone had to put some money down. Congrats to Google / Top100. Next: the telecoms - within 6-9 months, imho.

While the cannibalization prevention is, of course, entirely reasonable (if you still sell units), it does beg the question: why do those lucky Chinese Internet users - many of whom may never had to worry much about potential copyright issues, 3 Strikes+Out ideas or MP3-server raids - now get a de-facto feels like free music service, while we - the  more or less faithful and compliant residents of 'The West' - still need to pay 1 Euro / 1 $ for each single download on iTunes, $3 / month for Last.fm (ouch) or run off to the record store, or order on Amazon.

This clearly does not make sense: it  feels a bit like we are being penalized for having actually paid for our music until now. So, some will surely argue, does this mean we should stop paying for music until such deal is being offered in Europe as well? You tell me - but it's sure worth a discussion, I think. It seems to me that this model is workable around the world now - and not just for / with / via Google - and that it should be pursued in Europe and the US, as well. Give us a licensed platform provides 'feels like free' music to the users, based on collective and public blanket licenses that can enable anyone that wants to offer music with what they do, while paying for the licenses with the traffic that those offerings, the added values, the platforms, will generate.

Here is another interesting quote from the WSJ: "I can't overstate how important the new Google service is, said Lachie Rutherford, president of Warner Music Asia Pacific, which is making its entire global catalogue available in China as part of the deal: until now, the online market in China has been completely un-monetized by the music business" 

This strikes me as a very interesting way of putting this: Lachie / WMG: isn't the entire Internet music-sharing economy (i.e. P2P, stream-sharing, drive-sharing etc) un-monetized, as well? And why is that? If WMG can do this in China because their is no previous unit-sales income worth mentioning, why not do it for the Internet, period? Why not license Google - and Facebook et al - and the ISPs in much the same way? Or will you just do this in places where nobody paid anything to begin with?

Techdirt has a very fitting comment, on this (see the link below):  "The fact that the labels are moving forward with this plan in China, given its reputation as the wild west of copyright infringement, undermine their contention that they can solve the supposed piracy problem with legal or technological means elsewhere. Furthermore, it exposes the reality that what's staring them in the face is a tremendous opportunity, not a problem" 

Not much to add here, except for my usual Lessig-esque mantra "Compensation not Control". Google + Telecoms - will you do that for / with us, please? This year?

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Compensation Not Control Music 2.0 Gerd Leonhard Midem Net 2009

View more presentations from Gerd Leonhard.

Marc Andreessen: "Not allowing your content to be used is entirely the wrong strategy" Me: IP Gridlock must end

Image via CrunchBase

Cross-posted from MidemNet blog (March 14)

I just finished watching a great Charlie Rose interview with the amazing Marc Andreessen (Founder of Netscape, now Founder of white-label social network platform Ning, among many other things). Marc is one the brightest people in this turf, and I definitely recommend that you check out what he has to say about the Future of Newspapers, and the Content / Technology space in general (Charlie Rose show link).

In the interview (see my short, slightly time-warped but still crucial excerpt below), Marc talks about the urgent need for all content to be blessed with an ok-to-use-license on social networks and social media. I totally agree with Marc on his key message: nothing can be achieved by removing your content, or by making the legitimate use of content so incredibly expensive and complicated that few companies can actually afford it.  Recent examples abound: WMG and Youtube, Youtube & the PRS, Amazon's Kindle2 versus the Authors Guild, Pandora's difficulties outside of the U.S., CBS and Boxee, my very own Sonific.com ... and the list goes on. When content is removed from sites that deliver audiences of 200 Million+, then it's the creators and the users that lose, flat-out - no buts and ifs. Why do you think Facebook (which is starting to drive traffic in exceedingly huge numbers) does not have a music or video service? You guessed it: there is no reasonable deal to be had with the representatives of the music, film, and TV companies.

In my opinion, we currently have a severe IP-Gridlock situation: content creators, owners and their representatives (and these are very often more of a problem than the actual creators, in my experience) are still basing their monetizing strategies on scarcity, on the right to refuse the deal, and on 50-year old copyright laws, regulations and traditions. These laws - as crucial as they were back then - afford the rights-owner the exclusive right to say yes or no to pretty much any kind of new Internet-based use of their music, films or TV shows, and therefore a common misconception is that - as it has been for the past 50+ years - more control actually equals more income. And it kind-of did - back in those days when refusal could sometimes be a very effective way of enforcing a higher payment.

Well, this was then, and the future is... already here. Adhering to this strategy of refusal and monetary revenge ('now that you're a big company we'll take all we can get', see Youtube vs PRS) is a huge mistake and will beyond a shadow of doubt devalue your content very quickly, in the next 2-5 years (depending on your specific domain).

In music, this pivot point has already been reached: if your content is not available (i.e. findable and listenable) on Last.fm, Youtube, Myspace, Spotify, Facebook, QQ and so on, it quite simply won't exist for the 1.5 Billion Internet users and the soon-to-be-online 3.5 Billion mobile phone users. That means you are losing out on reaching a huge audience, and on doing so in the most cost-effective ways. It means that new routes to monetizing - those so-called new generatives- cannot be tried and co-invented. It means that innovative and honest entrepreneurs are stifled and silenced while your content is still being dished up in other places, for free, anyway, and without your permission. It means that all the mad mole-whacking won't get you paid - it's just the lawyers that make a good living this way. It means that a new ecosystem cannot emerge because you are still insisting on doing business like it was done 20 years ago: with large advances, completely under your exclusive control, your way... or the highway.

So here is a wake-up call if you're still thinking that blocking the use of your content will get you more money: it simply won't work. Period. You can't fax a cat. Really.

As to the music business (recorded and publishing), this much is obvious: either the industry will start to dial back on Economic Egoism and their obsession with Total Control, or 4 Billion Internet users will simply route around them like a river routes around a rock. To make matters worse, governments will certainly step in to force an end to a clearly dysfunctional system that criminalizes 100s of millions of people while returning zero new revenues to the creators.

What will work is COLLABORATION, Trust and Mutual Respect in defining the new ways of how $$$$ can be generated for content creators - and there are plenty, once we question our  outdated assumptions.

Lastly, kudos to some companies and organizations that seem to be heading in a more positive direction:

• the new Featured Artists Coalition refused to be part of any scheme that penalizes Internet users
• the UK Guardian has launched an open API that makes all of its content available for 3rd parties

Need more food for thought? Watch my video from MidemNet 2009 "Compensation not Control" (pdf, too).
And: TALK BACK!

 Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io

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The End of Control and the Future of Content: new Video of my Authors@Google Talk in San Francisco

The Google guys have just published a video with my talk at Authors@Google, in San Francisco, March 2, 2009 (see the details here Pdf: The End of Control Gerd Leonhard at Google SF PDF *22MB). Due to some technical issues my fancy slides (i.e. the stuff on the screen) come across very nicely in this video while I am left a bit 'in the dark' - but if you use the HQ version on the Youtube site you can still get a much better idea of what my face actually looks like (I guess always wearing black is not ideal when the lights are bad;).  Anyway, I do think this is one of my best talks, so... watch the entire 55 Mins 22 Secs.  As far as the End of Control Book is concerned, I will have an announcement on my plans within the next 10 days...stay tuned.

Here is the official Google Talks description: The End of Control & The Future of Content:  The tough issue of control emerges, again and again, as the key contention point within TV companies, publishers, record labels, and broadcasters: How can a commercial venture that is based on so-called intellectual property thrive and prosper in an environment that seems to continuously and progressively remove control from the creators/owners/providers of content, and hands it over to the people formerly known as consumers (aka the users), effectively making them more powerful every single day?  But the reality is that every click inadvertently makes another case for the consumers ever-increasing rise in importance. Within all the conversations I have had about things like commercial content versus shared content, about the read-only or the read-write web, and about copyright versus Fair Use, the crucial question always seems to boil down to WHERE IS THE CONTROL HERE, i.e., questions such as Who will control this new media universe and How much control do I need to run a revenue-generating business?

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Youtube will remove UK music videos, no agreement with PRS - when will they ever learn??

Image via CrunchBase

The UK / EU web is buzzing with the news that Youtube (Google) has started to block or remove UK music videos because they have not been able to strike a new music licensing deal with the PRS-For-Music, the UK rights society which represents the songwriters and the publishers. I particularly like the coverage of this issue by TelecomTV.com, here, but a lot more links to other coverage can be found below.

As is my habit, at times, I want to quote and comment. Before I get started, though, I want to point that obviously I don't know the terms of the license that were suggested by either Youtube or the PRS, so therefore I cannot comment on whether either one of them is realistic or not. I just know from my own experiences (among many others, with the now defunct - RIP - Sonific) and from many other deals that I have observed, that very often the respective proposals are 20-50x apart, i.e. one party may suggest 1 cent per stream while the other party wants 20-50 cents - mostly, simply because they can; after all, the rights holders enjoy the protection of having the exclusive rights to license their songs. I would not be surprised if that was the case, here (my exact guess is something like 10:1)

Anyway, here we go, from TelecomTV.com "Yesterday YouTube  announced that it was going to take down all the premium music content currently available to UK YouTube users because it had failed to hammer out a new licensing deal with the UK's Performing Rights Society (PRS) for Music, a notoriously hard-line royalty collector. YouTube said the PRS wanted more royalty payment for each video view than YouTube could ever make from the ads situated next to each"

My comment: this points to the root of the problem, right away. Any deal between the mighty Google and the still-trying-to-find-the-right-$-model Youtube and the rights-holders' representatives has to be about sharing the revenues that are actually achievable, in the market, here and today, and jointly building a system that can generate more and more revenues, tomorrow and beyond. Again, as Larry Lessig says, and as I have proudly annexed from him, it's about Compensation Not Control!  To the PRS: NO, you cannot have both - and it looks like you just decided against Compensation???

Unfortunately, this detrimental mindset has become a default seeting: many if not most of the rights societies in the so-called developing world, and now apparently the PRS, too, have adopted one of these 2 strategies: a) if a potential licensee is still too small and economically insignificant to warrant their consideration, they will not offer any license at all, unless it neatly fits one of the existing templates b) if a potential licensee is large, juicy, popular and financially connected to an entity that seems to have verrrrry big pockets (see Last.fm, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook... maybe), they will ask for the moon and try take them to the cleaners. Even better if that entity has been previously in-breach of the existing licensing traditions and regulations - more leverage is always a good thing, right? Just study the mind-boggling story of my favorite web-radio service, Pandora. Never mind that this kind of 'it's my right and I will fully exploit it as I see fit' - thinking is also pretty much what has gotten us into this horrible economic crisis, as well - but that's another story.

None of this has anything to do with real, honest and open intention of building a mutually beneficial and future-oriented model, and everything to do with what I like to call Economic Egoism that is effectively set in stone i.e. law by some outmoded laws from over 20 years ago. As long as rights organizations -whose tasks it is to license music not to forbid its use - are pursuing this strategy we will not get to a point of 'peace' with all those new entities that clearly want to use, and pay for their music.

The PRS published a very revealing statement when Youtube announced their decision to play hard-ball and remove the music videos - here is the nugget: "Google had revenues of $5.7bn in the last quarter of 2008". What does that have to do with negotiating the fair and equitable licensing rates for music? PaidContent.org has some great comments on this issue, interviewing YouTuber Patrick Walker, including this one:  "to suggest that, because Google’s a big company, we should just suck it and pay a ridiculous rate is not something that we’re going to stand by...it’s hard for new models to emerge when the starting point is a massive loss on a per-stream basis".

In fact, I believe that this kind of attitude from rights organizations, publishers and record labels will most certainly lead to government  intervention, sooner rather than later, since a dysfunctional market is not good for anyone - and clearly, this is what we have now, and it appears to be here to stay. I think... I have said it before:)

So here is my message to the PRSForMusic (as they are now called) and their members (hopefully they have a say in this, too): pleasssse get off this bizarre and decidedly Web 0.0 idea that Google should now be paying for everything that you think has been 'stolen' from you on the Internet. Instead, give YouTube a flexible, open, transparent and realistic license that gives everyone room and time to MUTUALLY develop this model, going forward. There is nothing to be gained by refusal! Start to cooperate rather than to try to dominate these conversations. COMPENSATION NOT CONTROL. And do it now, or have somebody else force you to.

More: Techdirt's ueber-brain Mike Masnick comments:  Google has simply pulled music videos down in the UK. Basically, Google is making the point to PRS: you need us much more than we need you". The UK Telegraph has a few nice quotes (even though I don't agree with their conclusion that Youtube has a lot more to lose than the songwriters)

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Compensation not Control - The Future of Music: video & audio versions of my presentation at MidemNet 2009 (*one of my best ;)

Finally, here is the video and audio version of my presentation at MidemNet 2009, in Cannes France. I put a ton of work into this presentation and, well, honestly... I think it's one of the best I have ever done on this topic.  Hope you enjoy it - and please comment, below, and / or spread the word!  Thanks to the Midem organization for providing the DVD with this video.

The topics: why the music industry needs to license the Internet just like it has licensed Radio (i.e. with a collective license), why criminalizing the users & fans will not work - and why those efforts should be re-directed to the creation of a new 'Music 2.0' ecosystem that actually produces growing revenues, where those new revenues will come from, and how the music flat rate - aka music like water - would work. See my previous blog post for more details and the PDF of this presentation. The MidemNet blog is here. My free book, Music 2.0, is here, btw;)

Youtube versions here.  MP3 file download: Compensation not Control Futurist Gerd Leonhard MP3

Audio via Soundcloud, below  

Compensation not Control Futurist Gerd Leonhard at MidemNet 2009 by gleonhard

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Marketing Music, 2.0: the declining importance of traditional Air-Play (Radio) versus Net-Play

Over the course of the next 5-6 years, the importance of getting Air-Play on terrestrial i.e. traditional, programmed radio will drastically decline, as people are switching to the Internet (and by extension, to each other) as the #1 way of sourcing music programs. We will see a drastic increase in fragmentation as people will do anything from carefully customizing each track in their lists to just listen to 'what's on' - and there will be 100s of permutations in between. From total engagement to total passive consumption, there will be offers covering each - and they will all be connected.

Because of the strong uptake in next generation mobile devices (fka cell phones), the explosive proliferation of social networks and the drastic increase in wireless broadband capabilities at ever decreasing costs (yes, not yet - but give it another 18 months) we will see people use their mobile devices as prime instruments of listening to radio-like music programs - there will be hundreds of radio/music apps available via the various app stores that each device maker AND operator will offer; some paid, most feels-like-free, some sponsored.

The other point is that as the car becomes fully connected and always-online people will shift their music consumption to Net-based offerings while on the road, as well (in addition to the already stiff in-car competition from iPods etc) - this will be a very very very serious challenge to traditional Radio (and TV) broadcasters. Local news, traffic, sports etc will be programmable to interlace with your Internet-based stations - the best of both worlds?  Talk about Change!

More resources: my slideshow on the Future of Broadcasting (NPOX 08), my slideshow on the Future of Radio (2007)

 

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