Get the free PDF of my Music 2.0 book - just pay with a tweet or Facebook post!

Attention is the new currency is one of my favorite memes. So: simply tweet about my 2009 book Music 2.0 (even if you already have it, in print or as PDF) and receive the link to the free download. Use this link to PAY WITH A TWEET and spread the word.  If you really must get a dead-tree edition, the print version can be ordered via my bookstore at Lulu.com

About Music 2.0 (from the free mobile site): "This book was self-published in 2009 and is an edited collection of my best essays on the future of the music industry, and continues the work I presented in my first book, The Future of Music, co-written with Dave Kusek. It further describes what I think the next generation of music companies will actually look like – hence the term Music 2.0, a description derived from the now increasingly popular “Web 2.0.” I have been writing and blogging about digital music and the next generation of the music industry for almost four years now – in airplanes, taxis, trains, busses, hotel lobbies, conference halls, and at home. In Internet time (and it certainly feels that way to me), this is almost forever! In many ways my message and my opinions may have evolved a bit but the bottom lines and visions have not changed a whole lot.

Looking back at some 1,000 blog posts and over 20 essays it is evident that by far the most often covered subject is indeed what I (and many other people – I make no claim to having invented this moniker!) have come to call Music 2.0, the new principles that define the next iteration of the music business. All of this is also closely connected with a few other terms that I have co-coined and have come to be associated with: Music Like Water (MLW), the Flat Rate for Music, Feels Like Free (FLF), the Usator, Friction is Fiction, and the People Formerly Known As Consumers. In this book, I aim to just fine-tune the best of my writings from the past four years, while not altering the content too much, in order to preserve the timeliness and context of when it was actually written..."

You can also read the book on pretty much any mobile device just by going to MusicFutures.com.

Also, be sure to follow my music-business specific tweets via @music2dot0. To see all my blog posts on the Music 2.0 book (and the topics covered in the book) please go here. For the music-business specific videos, visit my Youtube channel. Slideshows are here.

 

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

Here 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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The future of media: re-boot and enjoy.

(Note: this piece was originally published as introduction to the Wiggin DES annual entertainment report, see pdf, video below, or here)

We certainly live in challenging and exciting times. Disruption is a constant companion; permanent beta the default. Tablets, now-ness, social commerce, alternative currencies, multi-platform story-telling, augmented reality - every week something new may end up remixing our business plans.

Globally, telecoms and mobile operators are moving up the food-chain into media and advertising (someone coined this development 'TeleMedia':)), and social networks are quickly becoming the next global broadcasters – but without owning the cables or the satellites.
 
Soon, most of the world's Internet traffic will be generated by a huge variety of mobile devices instead of computers, and 'the other 3 billion' users aka consumers in the BRIC countries are coming online at a very fast pace. Remember: 10% more broadband and / or wireless equates to 1% growth in GDP – but also a 1000% percent increase in disruption:)

 

Give it another 3-5 years and it's very likely that almost 5 billion people will be connected with fast and very cheap (if not free) mobile devices - and they will not 'consume' media and so-called content in the same way that we did when renting a movie still meant getting a piece of plastic that embodied it, or becoming a faithful and constant visitor to the quite beautiful but nevertheless super-walled iTunes garden.  

Most importantly, these digital natives, those pesky millennials, the inadvertent micro-pirates of our cherished digital files, are people of the screen, not people of the book, as Kevin Kelly right summa-rises. To them, the world looks and feels different and many pre-screen, pre-networked rules seem hopelessly antiquated - they won't buy if we don't change how we sell.

To add to Kevin's meme, I think 'people of the screen' are people that increasingly prefer access (i.e. not copies); they are people who want total and unfettered control over when and how they use their media and who they share it with, and they are people who often co-create and participate, as well.  

We must embrace the reality that we are at the beginning of a global shift from copy to access: many of us will be happy with just having access to content, anytime, anywhere, on the best screen available, rather than wanting to 'own' (i.e. download) it. If 'the cloud' proves that it works we will make the switch - just like we switched from printed maps to navigation devices. Sure, it may take longer if you don't live in a major urban centre, but we are going from broadcast to broadband - or better, plus- broadband, from wired to / plus mobile, from 'the network' to / plus 'the networked' - and our world is no longer linear, it's not yes or no, it's… an ‘it depends’ world. Fragmentation, aggregation, curation - but not mere distribution.

This shift is impacting all media, starting with music (see Spotify, Simfy, Rdio etc), movies and TV shows (see Netflix, Amazon, Youview etc), to books, newspapers, magazines, games and software. This 'from ownership to access' trend is even visible in the physical domain of ‘stuff’ such as in the rise of car-sharing, home-swapping and 3D printing: if we can use it why do we need a copy of it, for ourselves?  I believe that the switch from 'owning to accessing' will be an extremely lucrative turn of events for creators and their various middlemen and industries.

Once we have overcome the need to package media in expensive physical formats we will see tremendous growth here.  In a digital world, our costs will be much lower, marketing will be done via those that love what we do and are yearning to tell others, and many new revenues will be generated via many new combinations of I Pay, You Pay, They Pay (to quote Shelly Palmer). We just need to allow it.

Be ready: value is shifting from distribution to attention, and while this is happening we are also swiftly moving into a complete reboot of advertising, i.e. to with-vertising not @vertising, to engagement rather than interruption, to conversation rather than yelling.  I predict that between 30 - 40 % of the entire global advertising, marketing, PR and promotion budget (currently approximately $1 trillion) will merge to digital, mobile and interactive means of reaching consumers: advertising and marketing (and selling!) are being reinvented along with media. Exciting times.

In a totally networked and always-on society, skills, creativity, curation, filtering and expert-ship will be more important than ever before - and if we keep our eyes on what the 'people formerly known as consumers' really want rather than follow our own assumptions and outmoded orthodoxies, the media business has a great future. 

Engage, or become irrelevant!

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

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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Good read: Rolling Stone Australia: albums - the next generation (quotes Gerd)

Jason Treuen from Rolling Stone Australia interviewed me for this piece. Best quote from me, imho:

According to leading music futurist Gerd Leonhard, such diverse approaches are just the start of the “complete fragmentation of the music format”. With the convergence of audio, video, graphics and gaming via the net, he predicts the album will soon be eclipsed by the music ‘experience’, embodied in any combination of apps, interactive videos, augmented reality apps or a 3D television concert using interactive controllers like Microsoft’s Kinect. “We’re going back to the understanding that playing music is about an experience, not about a download for the cheapest possible price,” he explains. ”With apps and websites and 3D, I’m given an interface which makes it easier to immerse myself in the experience… You can’t copy that. If you can get immersion from your fans, you have their wallet.”

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New video: conversation with fellow futurist Ross Dawson: The Future of Music

Yeah, I know... just can't see to get away from the digital music stuff:) But this is quite good and succinct so... spend the 7 minutes:) 

I did a whole series of videos with Ross Dawson on my last trip to Sydney - be sure to follow him on Twitter and Youtube to get the latest updates.

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Bakers not Eaters: the new music industry (short video for MIDEM)

MIDEM just published an exclusive video with me: check it out below.  "In this exclusive video post for MIDEMBlog, media futurist & CEO of The Futures Agency cites Guy Kawasaki's notion that we should be "bakers, not eaters," or contributors to an "ecosystem", i.e. a collaborative economy, as opposed to an each-to-his-own "ego system". Food for thought!

http://www.thefuturesagency.com

http://www.guykawasaki.com/enchantment/

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New video: Telemedia Futures: how open technologies will shape the future of business, media and communications (USI 2010)

I just ran across this video of my 2010 talk at USI (Paris) and I think it's still quite relevant, so check it out, below. The topic of my talk and presentation is TeleMedia, one of my most popular memes and speaking topics - see the links below.  From the USI event page: 

"Fast and powerful mobile internet devices, social media, real-time search and location-based services are bringing major changes to how we communicate, connect, interact, share, consume, buy and sell, and learn. The disruption has only just started. Telecoms are poised to move up the food-chain, into content, services and experiences, while TV is quickly and totally converging with the web, and mobile devices will become the way most people will experience the Internet. Soon, data is the new oil, and 'the cloud' is the oil-well.

The traditional EGOsystems are becoming ECOsystems and the big Networks must now deal with 'The Networked'. Where is the future going, where are the biggest opportunities (and for whom, and where), and how can we start to adapt to the future, today? Futurist Gerd Leonhard will present the key trends and foresights as well as the most likely scenarios in technology, media / content, communications and advertising, for the next 3 years..."  You download the PDF with my slides here, btw.

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Must-watch video: CNET roundtable on the music industry (with chief disruptor Michael Robertson)

CNET's Rafe Needleman and Greg Sandoval (2 people whom I follow closely and whose work I really like) have cooked up a smashing 33 minute roundtable (video) with the notoriously tenacious music-business disruptor Michael Robertson (MP3.com founder, MP3tunes creator, now CEO of the very interesting music / radio cloud-recorder service Dar.fm).

The video covers just about all angles of the music industry and provides a great overview of everything that's wrong (and could be righted, I guess) in digital music, and Michael sure has all the right answers to some pretty tough questions. In fact, for most of it, I couldn't have said it better myself:).  Check it out. Michael and me do have a few things in common, as far as the message goes, I guess...

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Monetizing music in a networked society (presentation at Berklee alumni event in Nashville)

It was a pleasure to give a talk for my alma mater, Berklee College of Music, in Nashville (TN) yesterday, on the topic of monetizing music in a networked society (see the Facebook page). You can now browse the entire thing via Slideshare, below, or download the low-res PDF directly from here. Provided under creative commons attribution non-commercial license, as usual. Feel free to share and re-use.

Monetizing Music in a connected society (Berklee alumni event in Nashville)

View more presentations from Gerd Leonhard

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New presentation: Context - The Future of Music (Eurosonic Groningen)

It was a great pleasure to be back at the annual Noorderslagt / Eurosonic Event and Conference in Groningen (NL) and present a 60 minute talk on Context, Copyright and the Future of Music, in addition to hosting and moderating a panel called "Is Copyright the Devil" (whew... juicy headline...). I really tried to dig in even deeper as usual, and describe a plausible way forward for the music industry. Hopefully I succeeded... you be the judge of that.

After my talk, I had a spirited panel / conversation with Hans Bousie (copyright expert and cutting-edge Dutch lawyer) and Arda Gerkens (former Dutch parliament member for the Socialist Party) and really enjoyed it (and hopefully, so did the audience, see the tweets).

In my preso, I touched on quite a few topics including the Networked Society, the future of copyright, the need for a public digital music license, the shift from copy to access, and the new revenue streams for musicians, artists and composers.  Check out the slideshow, below, or download the low-res PDF from here:  Gerd Leonhard Context Groningen Music 2.0 LOW RES 6 MB PDF

Context: The Future of Music (Presentation at Euroslagt Groningen NL Jan 2010)

View more presentations from Gerd Leonhard.

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2010 brings further decline in U.S. recorded music sales, time to face it: access will indeed replace copies.

Nielsen has just published an interesting report on 2010 recorded music sales in the U.S. Before I comment on what it all means here are some of their factoids:

• Overall Album sales (including albums and track-equivalent album sales) declined 9.5% over 2009
• Total album sales declined 12.7% over 2009
• There were 240 million physical album sales in '10; a decline of 19% over '09
• Digital music accounts for 46% of all music purchases in 2010; up from 40% in 2009 and 32% in 2008
• Most importantly, in my view, while CD sales are (of course) declining further, digital sales have slowed down to a crawl i.e. there was only 1% growth from 2009 to 2010. 

So what is happening? Here is my read:

1. The industry's digital carrot (*very small) & stick (*very large) strategy is failing. Most people won't buy units / single tracks / downloads / copies any more - they want unfettered ACCESS,  total choice and user control (ouch), utter ease of transaction while limiting their costs, and above all, fair and irresistable deals. Not that any of this is new, really - but maybe this message can start to arrive, now?
2. The only legal game in town that really works as far as music is concerned, is iTunes, and that model has made Apple into the undisputed king (some would say, emperor) of digital music - software, hardware & devices - but less and less people are actually buying music this way, i.e. by-the-unit and at a significant individual price point. Plus, most of those kind souls that have indeed purchased  something this way eventually stop buying as they reach certain spending limits (in my case, approx. $800). iTunes essentially punishes interest in new music because it makes us pay to download tracks we may not know, yet - hardly a model that will work for kids with tight budgets, and also a major reason why the much discussed longtail concept has not really panned out yet, as far as music sales are concerned.
3. Just like - sadly but again very predictably - we are seeing with the iPad, once the initial 'wow' factor and geeky excitedness is fading, only a very small fraction of the users will continue to buy content in the 'pay per unit' way that Apple is enforcing and that the record labels, studios and publishers have been clinging on to religiously.
4. The future is - as I have said many times in the past - in providing ACCESS to music, not in selling copies of it: unrestricted, unprotected, most likely flat-rated or bundled (think: ISPs and telcos.. and Facebook!), possibly feels-like-free or freemium i.e. ad supported (for a basic starter-level, at least), highly curated, socially hyper-connected, mobile, location-aware, nicely packaged (appified), with loads of extra values and upselling offers (think: downloads of live concerts, HD versions of streams, 3D etc), cross-media and multi-platform.

Let's face it, guys: there is loads of new money here, people are spending money on digital content. All you need to do is to let go out the idea of controlling distribution, selling copies and running your nice little empires that can tell 4 Billion connected consumers what to do, how to behave, and how to spend their money. You need to license the likes of Spotify, Simfy, Mog, Rdio and Google, globally, and help them turn bundled access to music and 'the jukebox in the sky' that Napster 1.0 was already hinting at, into new revenues.

This model needs to be co-created, not funded by VCs - and your strategy of milking innovative new ventures and entrepreneurs for a quick cash fix is killing the future before it even has begun.

The future is music (and most other 'content') in the cloud, where streaming will equal downloading (ouch... I can hear the lawyers are moaning), where branded content rules, where really smart / mobile / social advertising will pay for a lot of 'free' content (like it always has, btw) and where you can upsell all kinds of other music-related products to 80% of the 'people formerly known as consumers'. Not only that but you'll also save a huge amount of marketing money since you'll know who they are, where they are, what they like, and what they think (by communicating with them).

And it gets even better - they may even start to like you again.

More resources:

• My free books, Music 2.0, Friction is Fiction etc
• Mobile version of Music 2.0 book (also free)
• Search for "Music Like Water" inside of The Future of Music book
• My talk on "Compensation not Control" (video) (Midem 2009)

 

 

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Is traditional content licensing fit for the digital age?

It seems like every single day I read about how Internet and mobile companies are struggling to obtain the rights for what they want to do, whether it's about music, videos, TV shows, films, articles, text and images.

Here are some quick examples:

• GoogleTV just can't seem to get the TV studios seriously interested in allowing them to even search their online offerings, while...
• Netflix seems to have been more successful at tackling this wicked problem of content licensing, at least  to some degree, by - as cnet aptly puts it  - 'building relationships in traditional means' (I guess this means playing nice with Hollywood? Read the article - those are good, old-fashioned golf-club paradigms I'd say)
• Spotify is a fantastic music service, no doubt; very much along the lines of what Dave Kusek and me envisioned as 'music like water' in our 2005 book 'The Future of Music', and subsequently expanded on in my follow -up book, Music 2.0 (free PDF here). Spotify is not officially available in Switzerland but I have been successfully using it via a UK paypal account (after trying simfy.de and not getting anywhere with their really awkward and crash-prone iPhone app). Unfortunately, Spotify just can't seem to get the music labels and national rights organizations to bless their launch in many other territories, including the U.S. (read this Slashgear piece for more details ). All of this - you guessed it - because the record companies and the music publishers have not agreed on the licensing and deal terms for those countries, yet, and despite the fact that Spotify is already spending most of its VC money on paying for the music licenses. The fact is that there are no compulsory licenses available for on-demand streaming and flat-rate access services so unless these deals are negotiated nobody can touch it. Read about it here, or here (my Spotify-related blog posts), or via my July 2009 blog post on specifically why I think Spotify is unlikely to survive, or peruse the Zemanta-enabled links below for more enlightenment by some smart people

 So here is the point I am trying to make: I don't think a purely free-market-driven and  unregulated approach will work, in the future. Many large, incumbent media companies, publishers, record labels and other traditional intermediaries (i.e. the 'industry' as opposed to the actual creators) have every reason NOT to be flexible or even slightly forthcoming with their licensing terms and thereby support the deployment of new cloud-based, access-on-demand and flat-rated services. This is simply because their very existence may quickly and  irreversibly change the entire playing-field, and may make it very hard for the incumbent rights-conglomerates to continue to effectively control distribution (and by extension, advertising prices) in the same way as before. These changes aren't for the better when you currently run the entire show, so why should you agree?

This is why Warner Music Group's Edgar Bronfman has said many times that he will not license any unlimited streaming-on-demand service, why Netflix - despite of (or because?) its vast growth - has been back and forth with the Hollywood studios on getting more content deals done, and why Hulu is losing steam because of the studios' concerns over future cable-TV  revenue streams. Clearly, this is all about controlling and milking the market (i.e. the 'people formerly known as consumers') as long as possible. Yes, sure, just like the big telcos used to do before they had to let competition in. This is not about 'getting the artists / creators paid' or about fighting digital piracy - it's about maintaining a comfortable and lucrative monopoly position for the longest possible time. Which is OK, too - if it wasn't for the criminalizing effect it has on every single Internet user.

Most large, international media companies (disclosure: many of which are or have been my clients in some way or the other) and almost all major TV, film and music rightsholders are used to absolute control over the distribution of the works (and artists / producers) that they own or represent, and this simple fact used to result in getting much higher license fees - the other party had no choice but to take it or leave it; no license simply meant no (legal) business. This may sound somewhat reasonable in a mostly offline world (i.e. until  just recently, when the mobile Internet started to take of), but on the Net, in a truly networked society, this kind of thinking plays out quite differently: refusal to license at a price that is affordable (and / or financially viable for a  new, potentially huge but legally unprecedented player) simply encourages and produces piracy, because the desired content will become available anyway, legal or not, one way or the other.  The reality is that there is no real control of distribution of digital content, any longer, and all models based on re-achieving that control will fail miserably. Witness the 100s of illegal movie sites that now stream pretty much any movie on-demand, or the many new IP-cloaking and re-routing services (commonly used to access locally restricted content services) that are currently flooding the market. Not licensing content  to new players on actually survivable terms simply lets other, parasitic entities prosper by offering it without permission. Everyone loses.

My thesis is that - just like telecom deregulation - we urgently need new, open and public mechanisms that first significantly encourage and then possibly even enforce the licensing of copyrighted works for new services that require a new and more experimental approach, and that may end up serving the consumers much better than the traditional services. A 'use it or lose it' rule may be useful to that end; and as far as music is concerned I have been proposing a new, public digital music license for a long time.

In any case, I think that a system that continues to be based on deriving future benefits ONLY for the largest and most powerful rightsholders (again, by that I do not mean the actual creators, but the industries that represent them) is, in my view, simply unsustainable  and socially indefensible in this  dawning broadband-culture and in a connected, networked and interdependent society. We need better and more transparent EcoSystems and less EgoSystems; less empires and more Open Networks.

Let me have your feedback please! 

Note: if there is some kind of problem with my comment box on this blog, please use Facebook or Twitter for comments, for now, or email me and I will post them.

 

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

I am 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):

 

Image 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.

Image 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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A new social contract for digital music (short video from the Future of Music conference in Dublin)

Here is a short clip from the Future of Music event in Dublin (June 2010) - best soundbite, imho: "It's about the creator and the user - period".  Enjoy and RT. More videos (incl. download feed for iTunes) are at GerdTube.

 

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