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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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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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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I did an interview with the On iOn Communication people for a show on Balzac.TV(Barcelona) at last year's 'New Cultural Economy' event at Ars Electronica in Graz, Austria. Today, Balzav.tv published the interviews (which also included Creative Commons CEO and all-around thought leader Joi Ito, ARS CEO Gerfried Stocker, and Ronaldo Remos) online, and if you speak Spanish better than me I recommend that you check it out; the discussions in-between (with Gina Tost) are in Spanish, the Interviews are in English.
More details via From the OniOn blog:
"Hoy se estrena un nuevo capitulo
de Balzac TV, un trabajo realizado en cooperación entre los equipos de
ON i ON comunicación y de Balzac TV, y protagonizado por las
antagonistas “Gina copyleft” y “Gina copyright”. Con esta pieza queremos aportar una serie de reflexiones ajenas y
propias acerca de un problema actual que parece de difícil solución si
lo miramos sólo desde el lado del negocio: las limitaciones de la propiedad intelectual en la era digital.
¿Qué alternativas hay a la estricta interpretación del copyright,
Creative Commons funciona, y bajo qué condiciones, y hay modelos de
negocios viables basado en el copyleft?
A parte de la estupenda Gina Tost y sus alter egos, contamos con las aportaciones de Joi Ito (CEO Creative Commons), Gerfried Stocker (Director Artístico de Ars Electronica), Gerd Leonhard (Media Futurist) y Ronaldo Lemos (Creative Commons, Brazil). Os dejo con las Ginas peleonas…"
Balzac.tv: La belleza del copyleft
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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!
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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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I think 2009 will be a key year for the content industries, the creators, media companies, platforms, labels, publishers and other middle(wo)men.
In 2009, the value of content - starting with music and news - is being redefined for the Internet age. The gloves are off: the music rights societies want more money for each play, many journalists and writers are fearing a gloomy future as newspapers stop printing and shift to digital publishing around the world, and the book-authors guild is quarreling with Amazon about the Kindle2's robotic voice renditions of their works.
The bottom line is that the core logic and operating mantra that the 'Western' content industries have employed until now is becoming unstable and, economically speaking, increasingly unworkable. The Internet has severely disrupted the traditional value chains, and the promised land of advertising-supported free content has not yet materialized.
Let me outline these shifts and challenges a bit more:
A) Controlling the distribution of content - whether by technical or via legal means - is increasingly becoming an utter 'mission impossible' unless you want to adopt a seriously totalitarian Internet regime (as seems to be proposed in France last week I fear...)
B) Closed systems and walled gardens (yes, those of the telecoms and mobile operators, too) are leaking everywhere. Closed and centralized ecosystems are becoming very expensive and thus hard to maintain, e.g. Microsoft Windows versus the ever-mushrooming Google Web OS (soon to include voice communications), Android and Symbian mobile OS vs Windows Mobile, free streaming vs paid subscriptions such as Rhapsody, open API-based platforms such as Twitter and (now) the Guardian's Open Platform versus proprietary offerings such as iTunes or the WSJ, and so on and on.
C) On the Net, just about every mode of content consumption -aka listening, watching, reading- does in fact create copies, too, so the traditional legal distinction of 'free use/listen/watch but paid copy' is... well, toast, I would say. This creates significant legal uncertainty and pulls out the rug under the value logic of the traditional publishing industries.
I like to refer to this tectonic shift as 'The challenge of 21st Century Content Economics' (see a related swf movie here); riffing off a similar phrase I picked-up at Umair Haque's very inspiring blog.
First, here are some of the most common questions I keep getting about the Future of Content:
Here are some answers that I have been investigating (please bear with me for a few hours while I find the definitive solutions ;):
1) I think content can be both free or cheap, and very expensive. This sounds paradoxical, perhaps, but the reality is that in a system that is no longer based on selling units or copies (i.e. CDs, DVDs, books, single-track downloads, cable slots etc), the value of content is very likely to be constantly re-determined by a multitude of surrounding and incremental factors.
So the correct answer to that key question of 'what's the value of content' should probably be a solid: 'it depends'. As much as that may make the job of getting remuneration so much harder, I think it is also potentially quite liberating that we will no longer need to worry about controlling distribution so that we can sell more copies. Instead, as would be the case with the flat rate for digital music that I have been pushing for for the past 7 years, we could then shift our entire focus to getting and keeping Attention and Trust - 2 factors which now are the very foundation of any commercial success. In fact, I would argue that because of the de-emphasis on copies most content marketing and promotion tasks will get a lot easier (and much less costly) since we can now use the content as a marketing tool, itself.
Image by gleonhard via Flickr
2) So what are those future value-determining factors? Here are a few from a long list that I have been compiling:
3) For the very same reason that content can be simultaneously worth a lot or very little (i.e. because of its disembodiment and the shift from selling copies to providing access), it follows that many rightsholders and their agencies may no longer be able to get fixed fees per copy, or even per use of a piece of content. Simply because if they continue to do that they will make it impossible-by-design to comply with their rules and legally use their content in all but the most highly subsidized cases, because most of the time a fixed fee will not be obtained on the other end (i.e. the users), either.
Youtube simply cannot pay a fixed 1 cent per stream - even with Google's deep pocket behind it - because the Youtube users will not pay 1 cent (or even a fraction thereof, for that matter) per stream, and advertising revenues that would support these kinds of license fees are not within reach yet (because, just like content, the web's advertising and marketing logic needs to be reinvented first, as well !). This new business needs to be build together, from the ground up.
We are seeing this hairy issue creep up everywhere: GEMA (the German copyright organization) reportedly wants up to 12.9 cents per music video that is played on Youtube in Germany; the reason being - and this is my personal guess - that they probably treat each video-play as an on-demand performance which would be charged almost as much as an actual copy (i.e. a download). And of course, the reality is that those digital natives are in fact using Youtube as virtual jukebox - watching my 15-year old son hang out in his room I can certainly attest to that.
So GEMA's (and PRS') point is as correct as it is pointless: these on-demand plays are very much like a download, in terms of how the users are using the content. Access is replacing ownership.
But here is the tough part that cannot be avoided no matter what: it's not the users, or Youtube (or Last.fm or Pandora or Hulu or Miro or Boxee etc) that are at fault here, it's how traditional content industry entities such as GEMA and PRS define the value of music (and other content). For them, a piece of content still has its fixed and minimum value, and if you want it, you'll need to pay up according to those rules.
As I am investigating more alternatives I will keep you posted so... stay tuned!
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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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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:
Need more food for thought? Watch my video from MidemNet 2009 "Compensation not Control" (pdf, too).
And: TALK BACK!
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SonntagsZeitung | Artikel Detailseite : In German language. «Den Musik-Flatrates gehört die Zukunft»
Medienfuturist Gerd Leonhard plädiert für einen Neustart im Musikgeschäft
Von David Bauer und Barnaby Skinner: "Das Web hat die Musikbranche auf den Kopf gestellt. Sie sehen Parallelen zum Radio vor 100 Jahren. Welche? Das Radio war in den ersten zwanzig Jahren auch illegal. Die Rechteinhaber wehrten sich dagegen, dass ihre Musik kostenlos verbreitet wird. Fakt war aber: Alle haben hingehört. Mit staatlichem Druck wurden schliesslich Lizenzen eingeführt, die Künstler proportional entlöhnten, wenn ihre Musik im Radio gespielt wurde. Die exakt gleiche Situation haben wir heute im Internet - nur fehlen geeignete Lizenzen.
Diese fehlen, weil sich die Musiklabels quer stellen. Die ganze Musikwirtschaft ist von Monopolen und Kartellen geprägt, von den Rechteinhabern und Verwertern bis zu den Studios. Man blockiert, weil man glaubt, ein Vielfaches verdienen zu können. Aber wer im Internet alles kontrollieren will, ist auf dem Holzweg. Das Musikökosystem ist wie eine alte, marode Ehe. Wir brauchen einen Neustart, ein Pflästerchen reicht nicht...."
Funky Google translation to English here
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If you happen to be in London on April 8, 2009 (6pm), please join me and my fellow speakers for a talk and presentation at the Royal Society of the Arts. The evening is entitled: New Media Futures - what next for content and creativity? and promises to be quite entertaining;) Thanks to the RSA, this event is free of charge and seating is limited so be sure to register early. A few more details about this event:
"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? A panel of media visionaries convene at the RSA to predict the innovations in technology, business models and user behavior that will shape the media landscape in the coming decade.
Speakers: Gerd Leonhard, media futurist, author and blogger; Richard Titus, Controller of Future Media, Audio, Music & Mobile, BBC; David A. Smith, chief executive of Global Futures and Foresight (GFF). Chair: Ralph Simon, CEO, The Mobilium Advisory Group and Chairman Emeritus & Founder, Mobile Entertainment Forum - Americas.
Related stuff:
Plugg 2009 Video "Future of Media"
Authors@Google Talk March 2009
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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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As promised, here is the PDF with the slides from my presentation at today's eComm Conference in San Francisco (sorry for the delay in posting this - had to have dinner first;)
Download Future of Content & Telecom Gerd Leonhard @ eComm Conf 2009 PDF
Summary: " Imagine a world where unfiltered and limitless access to content is bundled directly into your access to the networks. A world where 'your cloud' holds all kinds of content, your social network connections, your community, and your context (i.e. meta-content), your meta-data and your interaction-trails, and where access to all of this is feels-like-free, legal, always-on and fully mobile, on any and all platforms. This is the future we are heading into, and telecoms, content-owners and brands / advertisers must forge entirely new partnerships. We are starting to see content creators and rights-owners aborting their long-standing quests for total control, and instead looking to build their audiences and share revenues. So where is this trend going to take us, what do we need to do in order to turn content (music, video, TV, news, games, books...) into a new and truly growing business that is really web-native, where are the big opportunities for telecoms, operators, social networks and rights-holders, and what will the new business models look like? In this context, Gerd will also address topics such as the flat rate for digital music, ISP/Operator + Content bundling examples in Europe and Asia, copyright 2.0 and the future of content commerce, the shift from control-economy to attention & trust economy, the latest developments in next generation advertising, and the growing economic power of those 'new generatives' (> Kevin Kelly)..."
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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
Image by gleonhard via Flickr
A god read: Across Irish Sea: two bold tactics against music piracy | csmonitor.com.
This is a good review of the Isle of Man plans to make music sharing on the Internet legal. I was asked to comment on this; here are some excerpts:
“The logic is quite straightforward: You find a way of creating a payment within the network,” says Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist and author...Although a similar idea failed in France in 2006 amid a fierce lobbying effort by the recording industry, Mr. Leonhard has long argued that if the recording industry licensed Internet networks with a flatrate for streaming and downloading music, then advertising and other subsidies would be able to cover the entire CD business. He doesn’t even think the Isle of Man’s tax is necessary.
“The payment of about €1 [$1.28] per week, which we have been debating in Europe as a flat rate, is entirely possible to raise through the ecosystem. The music won’t be free, but it will feel like free,” he says, in an interview from Austria. Business models like Leonhard’s are becoming more feasible as concert tours, merchandise, and endorsements become more lucrative than recordings. “When Prince gives away his CD away with a British Sunday newspaper, he knows that he will be guaranteed three sold-out shows. That is worth more to him than the recording,” Leonhard says...."
Author and futurist Leonhard says the recording industry is fighting an uphill battle: “The tactic of criminalizing users hasn’t produced any money. The industry needs to look for compensation, not control.”
