I was delighted to be invited to make a contribution to the RSA Journal's July 2009 edition, the printed version of which was just send out I believe, and the online edition that just went up on their website.
The complete title of my piece is: "The price of freedom - reinventing the online economy: Gerd Leonhard explains why ‘free’ content can still pay in the long term" and I really enjoyed writing this for them.
Following my last presentation at the RSA, in April 2009, on 'The Future of Content and Creativity' I have had many good conversations about this topic. The audio track from this event is here, btw; and the video is embedded again, below. Enjoy. And RT;)
I definitely recommend that you check out the other great features in the Juy 09 RSA journal, as well, there's some great gems in there.
You can read the entire thing on the RSA page, so here is just an excerpt:
"Free information, free music, free content and free media have been
the promises of the internet (r)evolution since the humble beginnings
of the World Wide Web and the Netscape IPO on 9 August 1995. What
started out as the cumbersome sharing of simple text, grainy images and
seriously compressed MP3s via online bulletin boards has now spread out
to every single segment of the content industry – and even into
‘meatspace’ (real-life) services such as car rentals. Without a doubt,
‘free’ has become the default expectation of the young web-empowered
digital natives and now the older generations are jumping in, too.
On
top of the already disruptive force of the good old computer-based
Web1.0, we are witnessing a global shift to mobile internet – a WWW
that is, finally, so easy to use that even my grandmother can do it.
While five years ago, we needed a ‘real’ computer tethered to a bunch
of wires to port ourselves to this other place called ‘online’ and
partake in global content swapping, now we just need a simple smart
phone and a basic data connection. With a single click of a button,
we’re in business – or rather, in freeloading mode.
As users,
we love ‘free’; as creators, many of us have come to hate the very
thought. When access is de facto ownership, how can we still sell
copies of our creations? Will we be stuck playing gigs while our music
circles the globe on social networks, or blogging (now: tweeting) our
heart out without even a hint of real money coming our way?
Daunting
as it may seem, we can no longer stick with the pillars of Content1.0,
such as the so-called fixed mechanical rate that US music publishers
are currently getting ‘per copy’ of a song ($0.091). Nobody knows what
really defines a copy any longer when the web’s equivalent of a copy
(the on-demand play of that song on digital networks) may be occurring
hundreds of millions of times per day. No advertiser, no ISP and not
even Google has this kind of money to pay the composer (or rather, the
publisher), at least not until the advertisers start bringing at least
30–50 per cent of their global US$1 trillion marketing and advertising
budgets to the table.
Traditional
expectations and pre-internet licensing agreements are exactly what are
holding up YouTube’s deals with the music rights organisations such as
PRS and GEMA: this is what the rights organisations used to get paid
for the music that is being copied, and this is what they want to get
paid now. This impasse is causing significant friction in our media
industries worldwide. Yet, below the top-line issue of money, there
lurks an even more significant paradigm shift: the excruciating switch
from a centralised system of domination and control to a new ecosystem
based on open and collaborative models. This is the shift from
monopolies and cartels to interconnected platforms where partnership
and revenue sharing are standard procedures. In most countries,
copyright law gives creators complete and unfettered control to say yes
or no to the use of their work. Rights-holders have been able to rule
the ecosystem and, accordingly, ‘my way or the highway’ has been the
quintessential operating paradigm of most large content companies for
the past 50 years.
Enter the internet: now the highway has become
the road of choice for 95 per cent of the population, the attitude of
increasing the price by playing hard to get is rendered utterly
fruitless. Like it or not, a refusal to give permission for our content
to be legally used because we just don’t like the terms (or the entity
asking for a licence) will just be treated as ‘damage’ on the digital
networks, and the traffic will simply route around it. The internet and
its millions of clever ‘prosumers’, inventors and armies of
collaborators will find a way to use our creations, anyway. Yes, we can
sue Napster, Kazaa or The PirateBay and we can whack ever more moles as
we go along. We can pay hundreds of millions of dollars to our lawyers
and industry lobbyists – but none of this will help us to monetise what
we create. The solution is not a clever legal move, and it’s not a
technical trick (witness the disastrous use and now total demise of
Digital Rights Management in digital music). The solution is in the
creation of new business models and the adoption of a new economic
logic that works for everyone; a logic that is based on collaboration,
on co-engagement and on, dare we mention it, mutual trust – an
ecosystem not an egosystem. Once we accept this, we can start to
discover the tremendous possibilities that a networked content economy
can bring to us.
Free, feels-like-free and freemium
Much
has been written on the persistent trend towards free content on the
net. It is crucial that we distinguish between the different terms so
that we can develop new revenue models around all of them. ‘Free’ means
nobody gets paid in hard currency – content is given away in return for
other considerations, such as a larger audience, viral marketing
velocity or increased word of mouth (or mouse). I may be receiving
payment in the form of attention, but that isn’t going to be very
useful when it’s time to pay my rent or buy dinner for my kids. Free
is... well, unpaid, in real-life terms.
‘Feels-like-free’, on
the other hand, means that real money is being generated for the
creators while their content is being consumed – but the user considers
it free. The payment may be made (ie sponsored or facilitated) by a
third party (such as Google’s recently launched free music offering in
China, Top100.cn); it may be bundled (such as in Nokia’s innovative
‘Comes With Music’ offering, which bundles the music fee into the
actual handsets) or the payment may be part of an existing social,
technological or cultural infrastructure (such as cable TV or European
broadcast licence fees) and therefore absorbed without much further
thought. Feels-like-free could therefore be understood as a smart way
to re-package what people will pay for, so that the pain of parting
with their money is removed or somewhat lessened – everyone pays,
somehow, but the consumption itself feels like a good deal...." Read on. PDF: Download RSA - The price of freedom Gerd Leonhard July 2009
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?
I have blogged about this before, but here's a quick reminder that you can now read my best 2008 blog posts and essays on your iPhone, online or offline. Just get the great Instapaper reading app (there's a free one, and a premium one which I very much recommend), register with Instapaper and add this page to your 'read later' list. Then, sync your iphone to download the content so that you can read offline. Great stuff! Instapaper reduced my printing costs by 90% already. If you want to download the PDF, instead, please go to my Free Content page.
If you saw my presentations at MIDEM and MIDEMNet 2009 here in Cannes, and would like a free PDF of my Music 2.0 book, here it is: Download Music20book_hires My slideshows on this topic are all available on Slideshare.
A lot of people have asked me to post my Christmas gift message (LinkedIn, Facebook etc) to my blog, as well, so... here it is. Share!
Here is my humble Christmas gift to my readers, followers, digital & real-life friends, feed-receivers, LinkedIn peers, and connected fellow travelers: Free Premium Content. Loads of it.
Enough to keep you reading, listening and watching for most of your Christmas holidays, and then some...
28 free slideshows on the future of media, content, advertising, telecom, marketing, copyright...(via Slideshare)
Many other PDFs, including all of the 2007 End of Control preview chapters
29 videos on the same topics (stream or download via iTunes), on Blip.TV, streaming-only via Youtube
My entire Futuretalks DVD (late 2007), with fellow futurist Glen Hiemstra, moderated by Ralph Simon, 222 minutes, for download or streaming, via my Drop.io sharing account (please use the guest password: future), for more details and free audio podcast versions of the DVD please go to IT/Media Conversations / Futuretalks.com
Approx. 500 photos and illustrations via my Flickr page
All content is free and Creative Commons Non-Commercial & Attribution licensed. Please feel free to re-use, with reference to Gerd Leonhard and link to www.mediafuturist.com
Enjoy!
Please note: if you feel like spending $2.50 on the PDFs - just for the sake of showing that some content is worth a few $ - please feel free to go to my Lulu.com page and order the PDF from there (they take Paypal, too). Lulu also offers the actual dead-tree books for less than $10, nicely printed on-demand and send anywhere in the world. For the Best of 08 book please be sure to select the correct version (not the letter size). The Music2.0 book at Lulu is $17.75
Lulu rocks! I just created a 92 pages 6"x9" b/w book that comprises my best blog posts and essays from 2008, along with various illustrations. I thought that a very-low-price, on-demand book likes this makes perfect sense for everyone that does not have the time to keep up with my daily writings on this blog or otherwise - and a lot of people told me that they would like to read my stuff in a different way than via RSS or PDFs.
So now, courtesy of the ingenious folks at Lulu, you can order a nicely printed 'real' book for a very low price ($9.95 USD) and read it using the good old 'dead tree' interface. A PDF is also available, for 1/4 of the price of the book ($2.50 USD) Please note that I will keep revising this book (Lulu makes that very easy), i.e. I will of course add my best posts from Nov & Dec 2008, as well.
UPDATE: My "Best of 2008 Blog Posts & Essays" are now available via the iPhone, as well (yes, for free). Follow the instructions below, and add the "Read Later" bookmark for this html file.
A lot of people have contacted me about wanting to read my last book, Music 2.0, on the iPhone. Since a 7MB PDF will not be so hot to read in your email or within Safari, I have put up the book's html file on my typepad server (yes, I know, no images yet, sorry), and then used Instapaper's READ LATER function to convert the entire book to the Instapaper txt format which makes reading it very easy - much better than a pdf. And it's all free!
So this is what you need to do to read the free book on your iPhone (perfect for those long airplane trips since it actually works offline, too):
Download the Instapaper app to your iPhone (or iTunes), via the app store or via the Instapaper site. Note that there is a free version and a paid version ($ 9.99 USD, which is well worth it because of the cool tilt scrolling!), but both work very well
Install the app, sign up / register and - on your computer this will be easier -, go to Music 2.0 book html page, here, and / or the Best of 2008 Book html file, and add it to the Instapaper +ADD box. It will now save the file and sync it with your iPhone the next time you open the Instapaper app and update it.
I have been using my mobile devices (iPhone, Nokia E61, Nokia Internet Tablet etc) a lot, lately, and really like it when bloggers offer mobile versions of their sites - it just makes it so much easier to scroll and read the posts or columns without that having to always zoom back and forth with 2 fingers (particularly if one is driving... ehem...). So I decided to set up a mobile version of this blog, as well, here - and it looks decent I think. Another hot tip for actually reading longer stuff is Instapaper, a great add-on to your iPhone that allows offline reading of webpages - very useful.
A lot of people have asked me to compile what I think are my best posts from this blog... so here they are, starting from April 2008 to today (and yes, I will try to keep this updated). Enjoy & Share. 1.5MB PDF
Thanks to all of you that wrote to Amazon to stock the book - we are now taking orders at Amazon, here If you already have the book, or the 'paywhatyouwant' pdf (more details here), please feel free to go to Amazon and love a glaringly positive review ;) Thanks much. View the book reviews and recommendations to date, here
Here is the official press release that is going out right now.... Enjoy. And spread the word!
March 30, 2008, Basel, Switzerland. Futurist Gerd Leonhard releases timely new book: "Music2.0" now available as pocket-book and as pay-what-you-want PDF
The Wall Street Journal calls Gerd Leonhard one of the leading media futurists in the world. Gerd has been an activist, pioneer and thought-leader in digital music for the past 10 years; in addition, he has served as Co-Founder and CEO of several startups such as music widget provider Sonific. Many of his predictions on the future of digital music have come true: among others, the death of DRM for music downloads, the advent of digital music flat rates, and the fact that social networks are now in fact becoming the new broadcasters.
As Co-Author of the influential music industry book "The Future of Music" (Berklee Press, 2005) Gerd has helped to launch and popularize the term "Music Like Water" (originally coined by David Bowie) which has now become synonymous with the much-discussed digital music flat rate.
Music2.0 presents an edited collection of Gerd's most popular blog posts, white papers, essays and talks from the past 4 years, and further expands on the key issues that were raised in "The Future of Music". Music2.0 offers 228 pages of hard-hitting yet engaging and inspiring views on what the new music industry will look and feel like, covering topics such as copyright versus usage right, the future of music marketing and promotion, user-generated content and the explosive rise of music social networks, viral music syndication and widgets, next generation revenue models, mobility, P2P, the logic behind the music flat rate, the culture of participation, the attention economy in music, and the future role of labels, managers and publishers. If you are interested in forging a new path and creating the music company of the future, this book is for you!
Gerd comments: "the Music2.0 book is very timely indeed, now that the future is finally within reach: the events of the last 3 months have clearly shown how quickly we are now moving towards an open and transparent music ecosystem. We are heading into a new era where both the creators or artists as well as the consumers are taking the power back from the middlemen that really have not served them well on the Internet; an era where most rules, traditions and paradigms of the past 50 years will be rendered useless, and where deep intuitive understanding of the new consumers and a focus on rapid innovation are crucial. This book aims to provide the road-map - read, think, digest, remix... innovate!"
True to two of his most popular themes - Open is King & The End of Control - Gerd is releasing the book in print as well as a complete PDF that is being made available under a pay-what-you-like 'Radiohead model' and creative commons license.
Apart from his work in music, Gerd has also worked with many clients in Radio, TV, Film, Broadcasting, Advertising, Marketing, Branding, Telecom, Search, Internet and E-Commerce, and is in high demand as a keynote speaker,presenter and think-tank leader, in Europe, the U.S. and in Asia. Clients include SonyBMG, the BBC, Nokia-Siemens, DDB, TribalDDB, Omnicom, France Telecom / Orange, ITV, Deutsche Telekom, and RTL. Order the book at www.music20book.com. From time to time, copies of the book will be offered on eBay (.com and .de) as well... give it a try.
Remember when, a decade ago, being online meant sitting at a large, loud, and ugly machine that was tethered to a wire that got you the digital juice? Now return to today, where the Net lives in our pockets, inside silent, slick, always-on devices that are getting cheaper by the minute, propelled by bandwidth and storage costs that are plunging as well. What a difference this is making to how we consume media! Zoom forward another ten years and you’ll see Control of Media faded in the rearview mirror, a tiny blip thousands of miles behind you.
You will also see Anglo-American media dominance fade: Recent Infonetics statistics show that worldwide, 47% of mobile subscribers come from the Asia-Pacific region; 36% come from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; and a mere 9% come from North America. Geographical differences, electrical power issues, and a lack of wired infrastructure mean that many people will see their first webpage on a mobile device, not on a computer.
So, first, two clarifications:
1. A mobile phone is a computer is a media device is a copy machine is a radio is a broadcast tower — here, today, now. This mind-jarring convergence of devices and previously separate realms of technology is already upon us, and will be even more pronounced in the future. And yes, there will be no single user interface, no single type (or brand) of device that will dominate, like the good old transistor radio did. Instead, people of different ages, in different cultures, and in different locations will buy many different types of devices, some bundled with content, some not. Fifteen-year old kids in America may buy slick devices that are interconnected but mostly not used as telephones, 22-year-olds in Asia will want online chat rooms, virtual worlds, and VoIP-calling fully integrated. But either way, this is certain: the days of the single-purpose, stand-alone (i.e., disconnected) media player are over, and so is any chance to control what content can be stored in it. Technology has already led the quest for total control into absurdity; now we have to be smarter to generate some trust-based “control” (what I have come to think of as Trustol★) in this new system.
“The handset will be the world’s Internet platform, and it will be open.” —GigaOm
2. There is no such thing as the “mobile Web” — no special place to go if you’re on your mobile, no special technology to use, no plug-in to install, no special way of accessing the Net. There are, of course, vast differences in design and user interfaces (driven by size, power restraints, and display types), as well as wide-reaching differences in user behavior. And therefore, different kinds of content will be successful in different contexts. But when we talk about mobile media, we can no longer assume some sort of separate realm that is cordoned off the overall Net. Therefore, any hopes that mobile media will not go where the Web has already gone — albeit in a mostly tethered, desktopped, crude kind of way — are not realistic. Moreover, any hope of “protecting content” (a pitiful euphemism for setting up hurdles to somehow wrest unavoidable payments from the users) now seem quite far-fetched. Far better just to make the content available and meter its use.
A Third Dimension in Change: Time, Place & Location Shift
Mobility is now the major driver in media, and this trend will become even stronger. First the People Formerly Known as Consumers★ got used to time-shifting (via cassette recorders, TiVo, VCRs, and DVRs), then they came to like place-shifting (witness Slingbox, Avvenue, SongBirdNest, et. al.), and now they can get it all, anywhere, anytime, even while moving around — and for what feels like free★!
Media companies used to be able to control not just what and when we consumed, but also where: whether in front of the TV (i.e., the living room), in the car (as with terrestrial radio), or, more recently and in a already much lesser way, in front of that clunky, tethered desktop computer. In the future, most of these tried-and-tested means of control are toast: People will consume their media when they want, how they want, and where they want — and chances are it will be while they are on the move, with the only real distinguishing factor remaining their customized user interface, their personal media canvas.
Now put yourselves in the shoes of a major media company, and you’ll get a glimpse of the annoying headaches this immanent change is sure to produce. Just tell yourself, “Most of my users — the people formerly known as consumers — will start using mobile devices for their basic content needs within the next five years, and the harder I make it for them to get my content, the less I will matter to them.” Loss of mattering equals loss of audience equals loss of revenues. Are you with me so far?
Got Trustol?
Just like every phone now also has a camera (and if not, it is by design, not by omission), every mobile device and every phone will soon be constantly connected to the Internet as well, and we will come to think of them as those little boxes that can do pretty much the same things as our good old desktop computers. The only difference will be the interface, of course — and that is where some elements of what I have come to call Trustol★ (i.e., some element of user control based on trust) comes back in.
Creators and their representatives (managers, media companies, and rights organizations) must therefore act urgently on the basic fact that all media is rapidly moving to mobile devices rather than being confined to computers or traditional media boxes such as TV and radio. If you thought it was hard to control what people do with your content on the computer, you should think again: Mobile devices will make this look like a walk in the park, with media-sharing via those “boxes formerly known as computers” representing only the tip of that 1,000-foot iceberg.
The Default Media 2.0 Box is the Mobile
While only ten years ago mobile devices meant cell phones, PDAs, or MP3 players, today mobile devices are full-fledged computers. In many newly developing countries, in fact, many users will never even buy one of those Media 1.0 boxes. They will use mobile devices to listen to music, access the Web, connect to favorite social networks, watch TV shows and movies, and connect with each other at the same time. The previously disconnected media-playing device has now become part of the connected ecosystem — see the iPod Touch or Nokia N95. Soon, it will be hard to tell whether a device makes phone calls via the cellular network or via the Internet, connected through Wi-Fi or WiMAX. In fact, the very definition of “phone call” will likely be rewritten, since it’s not longer a phone making a call but just a mobile computer calling another mobile computer, “phone” UI or not.
Mobile Control-Stoppers
Let’s consider the crucial characteristics of mobile devices and why they are control-stoppers in the purest form:
They connect to high-speed data networks and the Internet.
They connect to the devices of other users, whether nearby or virtually local.
They offer instant communication and sharing with other users (as well as other computers).
They can do something on the go that used to require a fixed location, i.e., bookmark a song, image, or text; exchange tags or feeds; scan a bar-code; record and distribute a video; listen to digital radio; record and distribute audio, etc.
It is these endless combinations and possibilities that make mobile devices so powerful and habit-forming (and thereby impossible to control): All of a sudden we can read our customized, always-updated newsfeeds anywhere, anytime (including offline); we can identify songs we like, bookmark them and download them when near a broadband; we can pull up maps of favorite locations and send them to anyone on our buddy list; we can shoot a video and send it to our friends or upload it to a media portal; we can remix a ringtone and Bluetooth it to anyone in range.
Mobility is blowing the top off the house of cards that was “controlled media”; it’s the final nail in the coffin of DRM, TPM and whatever other M’s were cooked up in those disconnected ivory towers. With a click on the button, we are now connecting via the cellular networks, via Bluetooth, via cable, via WiMAX, via HD and DAB chips...and that’s only the beginning. With the price of some high-end mobile devices already surpassing cheap laptops and desktop computers, it is not surprising that mobile device capabilities are exceeding computers now as well, with the next big frontiers being fuel cells and new display technologies.
Now, it’s no longer the mere access we long for, it’s to have someone solve the Paradox of Choice for us: too much, too quick, too-many-options media content will pose much more significant challenges than getting access ever did. (I’ll address this opportunity in my upcoming chapter on the Paradox of Choice.)
Digital Natives: Hyper-Powered by Mobile Media Devices
Just imagine these powerful mobile devices in the hands of those pesky digital natives, the download generation, the echo-boomers: Five hundred gigabytes of media at their instant disposal as they roam public places, eat in a restaurant, or sit in a subway car. Instant connections made with buddies and new friends, on the spur of the moment. Music passed around like personal greeting cards, music being remixed by several users simultaneously, and then uploaded to their favorite social networks. On-demand streams of music and video, provided by more than a billion people who mingle on thousands of social networks.
New mobile media applications will be developed that will make Shawn Fanning’s original Napster look like a Model-T Ford, with installs of hundreds of millions for the hottest apps not unthinkable.
This is, naturally, manna from heaven for the hardware manufacturers, the companies that make these devices formerly called phones: people who want to connect, communicate, share, listen, and watch — while on the move — everywhere on the planet. And once the already omnipresent digital content actually is blessed with legality, in the form of blanket licenses and flat rates, it will be a boon for the telcos, too. (I discuss this in my upcoming chapter “Telco 2.0: More Dollars with Less Control.”)
If we can say one thing for certain it is that any restriction that could possibly reduce the users’ power will be avoided like the plague. Competition will be fierce, and with sales in the hundreds of millions of units, the profit potential is significant and any impediment to fast user adoption would be suicide. In other words, no mobile device or handset manufacturer, or operator, will risk alienating their users with content-protection related malware or other software hurdles; rather, the enormous potential of mobile media will further accelerate the adoption of flat-rated content and connectivity models — starting with music. (See Chapter 4.)
Media Is the Mobile Lubricant
Now and in the future, media content is that crucial lubricant that drives the ever-increasing use and ever-faster adoption of new devices (and their related services); it’s the oil in the engine of communications, and the higher the performance of the device, the better the oil must be.
Looking at the first few groundbreaking devices that fit the “mobile computer” category, such as the Apple iPhone, Nokia N95, and Samsung F330, it is already quite apparent where this is going: more powerful means of media consumption and communication (which means more sharing, all the time), lesser restrictions designed to spur large-scale user adoption, and a seriously increasing pace of device convergence. Get ready to make Skype calls on your PSP, watch live television on your iPhone, listen to KCRW or Danish Radio or the BBC on your Oakley MP3 sunglasses, and receive RSS feeds on your wristwatch.
While Apple may, for now, try to cling to a tight control over what new iPhone and iPod applications can be developed and offered, I would already consider it a key “EoC Moment” when Apple concedes that it must actually open the iPhone platform to outside developments and make an SDK available. I predict that in the long run even their control concerns will fade. If indeed they want to become a truly dominant player in this turf and not just a cool, exclusive brand for individualists, they will have no choice but to open up their nicely walled gardens.
Watch for Apple to compete directly with Nokia, Samsung, LG, and Motorola for dominance in mobile entertainment and communication devices — and my bet would be on Nokia since it has the most longterm view of what it wants to do, the most balanced culture-vs.-business mindset, and the sheer tenacity that will be required to address a myriad of issues. But then again, there is Google....
Caveat Emptor: Will Mobile Media Promote a Blip Culture?
Clearly, mobile media will be subject to even more competition for attention than media consumed on those big boxes in our living rooms. While you scan the news feeds on your mobile device, a new text message may arrive, a Bluetooth-powered friend may want to connect, or some location-based service may make itself known — and all this while your customized Internet radio station is playing and your emails are coming in. The user’s attention will be seriously contested, and that may change the way that people package the content they send.
Whether this is for the better or the worse remains to be seen. But a real concern is that due to the level of “attention competition,” any content that is too deep, too ambitious, or simply too long would fall by the wayside — and that would severely dilute the quality of media offerings.
In the meantime: Be mobile, be liquid — or be gone.
Finally - my new book is now available online, for free. Just go here and subscribe to the feed, and a chapter a week will come your way.
Here is the official press release.
Author and Media Futurist Gerd Leonhard Releases New Book Online — for Free Weekly chapters of The End of Control now available at www.endofcontrol.com
Basel, Switzerland (October 1, 2007) — Media Futurist Gerd Leonhard, co-author of the influential book The Future of Music (Berklee Press, 2005), now seizes the future of publishing by releasing his new book, The End of Control, online. Interested readers can simply go to www.endofcontrol.com and receive a new chapter every week — via the website, email, RSS, PDF, MP3 podcasts, or online video — free of charge. Leonhard plans to release a printed version of the book only after all chapters have been released electronically.
Gerd Leonhard is widely known as a digital media visionary, a provocative speaker at leading industry events and in-house think tanks, an advisor and strategist, and as CEO of the leading music widget provider Sonific LLC (www.sonific.com). His Media Futurist blog is widely read in the industry, coining new terms such as “Music Like Water,” “Usators,” and “Friction is Fiction.”
The End of Control (EoC) expands on the key topics introduced in The Future of Music while escalating the debate out of the music realm and into media at large. EoC addresses the single most important issue underlying many debates about the future of media: who controls what, why, when, and where, and how can digital content still generate revenues when most of the traditional ways of controlling its flow (i.e., distribution) are no longer available. The book argues that in the future, controlling distribution is replaced with earning, receiving, and maintaining attention; that in media’s future friction is fiction; and that the “people formerly known as consumers” now literally run the show.
This radical shift, Leonhard explains, will require media purveyors to switch from a “push” to a “pull” approach. Pointing out ways to monetize digital content in the future, he reveals the bold new paradigm that has been dangling in front of our noses since the advent of the Web browser: By letting go of our obsession with control, we receive new streams of revenue and plenty of growth opportunities in return.
On his decision to publish his new book in this decidedly non-traditional way, Leonhard comments: “Recent technological and economic shifts convinced me that I needed to get my new book to market quickly, in order to help the decision-makers who need it most. I value my reputation, increasing the velocity of exposure, and another crack at thought-leading a lot more than generating marginal revenues from selling physical embodiments of my ideas — at least for this first phase. Even though my last book was quite successful and certainly looks nice on the bookshelf, I think that reading really focused content via RSS, blogs, email, or other electronic means is the way forward if you are primarily concerned with reaching a large, engaged, and global audience. Today, media is first and foremost about one-click access, and only then about hard copies — access comes first; ownership second. I hope my readers will enjoy reading my chapters in this way and I look forward to having many good conversations.”
The End of Control will also be released on video via Leonhard’s interactive Kyte.tv channel and via YouTube. EoC is edited by David Battino, co-author of The Art of Digital Music and audio editor for O’Reilly Digital Media.
Traditional
expectations and pre-internet licensing agreements are exactly what are
holding up YouTube’s deals with the music rights organisations such as
PRS and GEMA: this is what the rights organisations used to get paid
for the music that is being copied, and this is what they want to get
paid now. This impasse is causing significant friction in our media
industries worldwide. Yet, below the top-line issue of money, there
lurks an even more significant paradigm shift: the excruciating switch
from a centralised system of domination and control to a new ecosystem
based on open and collaborative models. This is the shift from
monopolies and cartels to interconnected platforms where partnership
and revenue sharing are standard procedures. In most countries,
copyright law gives creators complete and unfettered control to say yes
or no to the use of their work. Rights-holders have been able to rule
the ecosystem and, accordingly, ‘my way or the highway’ has been the
quintessential operating paradigm of most large content companies for
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