Read about the need of rephrasing your role as middleman in the music biz and why I from now on entitle myself a Creative Administrator (CA).

Macroscope
When you try to understand the world today you recognise that either you’re to close to see the whole width and when you zoom out the whole becomes to thin to see. In that context Matt Webb talked about the need of a tool/mindset to see where we are and how we relate to everything else to be able to understand and respond to the reality. A Macroscope.

Un-framing
Lee Bryant talked about avoiding assimilation of the old. Not talking in the paradigm of the past and not accepting the absurdities from the 20th century as the norm. The previous century is a tiny part of the history that we need to un-frame by not asking for permission to participate in the old and instead create new stories for the future. By un-framing what you think is the norm you enable yourself to create new action.

New, old things
On a similar topic Tor Nørretranders in his talk touched on the ability of actually learn from history and (really old) initiatives. So learn but don’t adopt. Use history as inspiration to future ideas.

The reason for me finding this small pattern might be related to the fact that I explored something some weeks ago that was a relief for me thinking of new reasons for Moto Boy fans to end up paying for what his music does to them. I will write in more depth about it later on but the concept is quit simple:

The pricing model on all lips right now is Freemium. The concept of having a free part and charge for something that’s better or more scarce. Only problem is that it’s VERY hard to come up with something that’s better/premium than you’re core product. And in 2009 you don’t want to canabalize on the spreadability of your content, ie. doesn’t want to make a product that’s worse. So I started to think in terms of Freeningless. An idea of coming up with, if you look at them isolated, meaningless things to add to the core product.

Going forward I think that those tools/mindsets that help us understand the truth will be really important. We’ve always been in great need of them. Pablo Picasso once said that “art is the lie that helps us understand the truth”. Now we need tools that enable us to block obstacles and see the reality with clearer vision. Or in other words, use tools/thinking that lies to are brain in order to create a new actions.

It’s now 555 years since Johannes Gutenberg printed his first Bible in German Mainz, an event which may be seen as the beginning of the book’s broad growth and increased penetration. Since then, the book has been a unique and unthreatened product. A symbol of everything that modern society is based on; education and knowledge. A democratic symbol. A sales pitch has never been needed and the printed book as a product has never been questioned.

Until today.

Now the mass digitisation is knocking on the door. And it affects the book as a product, the publishers, the printers, the readers and everyone who in any way is involved in the process of how and why a book is made. Exactly how and in what way the impact will be shown is of course a bit difficult to say, but one thing is for sure – things will change. Fundamentally. And for every one.

It’s been said that everything that can be digitalised will be digitalised, and the book industry is now facing this. The Newspapers and the music and film industries have all already been forced to change. Not because they don’t want things to be as they’ve always been - but because they will run out of business if they don’t. The old product is simply not good enough any more.

And the printed book is next.

The digital tsunami will hit bigger, faster and stronger than the industry probably can imagine, or at least than they are prepared to.
And this will of course affect the printing industry. The book is, after all, the oldest and the most royal product in the graphic industry’s product range.

Recent events clearly show where we are going:

• Google has digitalised (scanned) more than 7 million books from libraries at Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and The New York Public Library. And the scanners continues to run day and night…
• The libraries and other collections of information will be digitised and soon be easily accessible.
• Loans of e-books in academic libraries in particular are on it’s way to pass the amount of loans of paper books. [Updated: It has now happen in Sweden, see Kungliga Bibliotekets web for more info (in Swedish).]
• The development of the e-book reader has reached a level where users accept it, and a global commercial breakthrough approaches. (Today over one million e-book readers has been sold in the U.S., which is one of the first markets.)
• E-commerce giant Amazon has over 250 000 books available through its e-reader Kindle. The user connects to the Amazon Kindle store and in less than a minute, the ebook has been ordered, paid and downloaded. (The number of available books is constantly growing and now Amazon says that up to 10% of their book sales are digital books.)
• Newspaper and magazine archives are being digitalised and easily accessed for readers.

So, as if there was a doubt, the digital book world is waiting around the corner. “When?”, “how soon?”, “how big?” are still questions that are being discussed in Sweden and Europe today -  and we can of course continue to discuss that if we want to - but in the meantime it happens. Soon your neighbour will be sitting next to yo on the beach with an electronic book reader with access to almost all the books in world ever published. And he will look at you and smile - nostalgically - about all the paper books you have carried with you on your vacation.

Future? Well, think of this; less than 10 years ago digital music was still very underground - today the mp3 files is mainstream and spread all over the world - over 200 million iPods have been sold and the physical CDs are being marginalised.

Is the same thing happening to the paper book? Most certain.

So, how should the publishing and printing industries react? They must of course do what the music biz never did. Realise that this will happen - no matter if they welcome it or not -  and then take the driver’s seat. Invent, act, listen. Talk to users/readers, and be a port of the development of the new book models rather than running away from them. Help new players, new investors, new business. Because they will not wait for you. Google, Amazon and other digital players don’t care about you, and not the consumers either. They just want to read the way they want - just like the music fan wants to listen to the music how, when and where ever they want.

Publishers and printers need to act now to stay relevant, they need to team up with both traditional and new distributors, and create solutions that the users/readers want. They need to embrace the new situation. Search for partnerships to create exciting solutions in which the e-book and paper book can be a complement to each other. And if you play your cards right, promote the paper’s benefits wisely, maybe the readers will find value in the printed page even after the digital tsunami.

But the printing industry - is there still a future? Well, yes. But they need start to think a bit different. Most importantly, they need the courage to test new things, dare to find new ways of work and sell their unique product - and not just sit passively and observe books reject the printing presses.
With the right context, framework and accessibility, the printed book will probably always be able to attract, educate and inspire people - even 555 years from now.

But it will be significantly more difficult to motivate readers why.

Last time it was conference with super stars as speakers in town What’s Next and Digital Renaissance arranged a pre party. People came from all over the country to discussed internet AFK at a high level.

So, on Wednesday (the day before) at 19 it’s Meetup again. We changed the hotel bar to Rasoir this time.

Nothing complicated, just to show up. Bring your friends.

And don’t forget to follow the blog race that set the pace for Moving Images.

Alrighty. The future. This undefined scope of time with a divine shimmer around it. When it comes to the future of music I’ve always consider myself an optimist.

For one I’m certain that musicians and music fans has a prosperous future ahead of them. That’s because music is the single most important ingredient in the music business soup and music is of course a result of an artists creative minds. And it’s when musicians interact with listeners that a window for business is opening. Not before, and not just because some A&R person, marketeer or CEO open their wallet. That the relationship between musicians and fans is the foundation to the business is the single most important piece of knowledge that we all have to submissively recognize. This is the key to the future for the middle men we call record labels – we have to encourage the interaction and realize that it will live without us.

We as middle men have to remember that we always need to convince our customers (musicians and fans) why they should engage with us. Music on plastic discs or plain mp3s just ain’t enough anymore. Competition is hard and consumers doesn’t take bullshit anymore. If they love something you don’t offer they’ll go create it themselves.

So, how will most record labels cope with the fact that they have less power and have to dance after somebody elses whistle? Hm. Tough question. Based on what we’ve learned from the recent 10 years theyprobably won’t do very well on the 5 to come. Many labels are like oil tankers trying to turn around in Øresund.

But that’s the major part. I’m sure we will keep see more innovative ways of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy (Mike Masnick ™) popping up here and there. Many more will experiment with new models where power is given away to the fans and where the recorded music is used as the great messenger of feelings it was constructed to be.

Music people also need to study other businesses closer. To begin with the ones that is closest to us — media, film, literature and games. We are in need of inspiration. (I’m actually in the middle of a that process, writing a book with some of the smartest people in each of those businesses.) I would like to the area of inspiration a bit further. For example I’m really interested in finding out more about how drug dealers relationship with customers look and is being maintained. Wouldn’t it be great if we can get listeners in for free but charge on the way out?

In the future closest to us Davids will continue to challenge Goliaths. The game will continue to change. And that’s good. At least it’s good for musicians and fans. The core. How the middle men in the business navigate the new map will define how well they succeed. How well the major players are at adopting change is the single most important factor on how well they’ll succeed. Change is hard, culture is hard, Davids are hard. My simple message is: When you see something new rise let the problems that come along with it lead the way to possibilities and solutions.

Oh, I almost forgot. In five years a hard drive available to ordinary consumers will carry 35 TB of data. Data = music. 35 TB = 2.5 million songs. Watch this development closely. It’s easy to get blinded by Spotify, but imagine when file sharing on the street means transferring the entire music history. At least it is a wild card. Anyhow it seems that we will have to work on better ways of charging for music than 1 dollar a song. Don’t you think?

________
Check out the other contributions in the blog race:
PM Nilsson at Newsmill: “Kommer journalistyrket att dö ut?”
Björn Jeffery from Good Old: “The future of internet consulting”

This song is summarizing the period from 1920 to circa 1999 when record labels were the best/only entity to distribute recorded music. It’s a kind of rise and fall story. The lyric is written by a label executive with good memory. He remembers a time when musicians where worried that music put on a record meant the end of their “career” — when music could be listened to without the presence of a musician — and eventually the end of music. That didn’t of course happen. But the good news is that rules are changing again and it’s the musicians that is gaining power — all to the labels demise.

The song starts off with the label guy telling us that the end has come and that the musician has left for the fans:

“I’m all outta luck but what else could I be?, I know he’s yours and he’ll never belong to me again. I did him wrong. So don’t brag, Keep it to yourself. I did him wrong.”

The label goes on and is telling us how he tried to adjust to a new digital reality but never succeeded:

“I was never no, never no, never enough.”

The moral of the story is that you should remember that:

“Change is hard, I should know. I should know. I should know.”

So, always be open and try to adopt new ideas and possibilities.

Stream from Spotify.
Download on iTunes.
Get the album CD from CDON or Amazon.

Watch on Youtube:

General Johnson his group The Showmen made this very clear to us already in 1961 in their “It will stand” (Jonathan Richman has also made a brilliant recording):

“You take some music music, sweet flowin music, a little movin and groovin’ and rock n roll will stand. You take heart beat stone beat, finger poppin and a stompin beat a little dance that looks so neat you see why it will stand”

Music is easy. Music is natural. Music is a necessity. Unfortunately some think there always have to be something more to it count.

“But folks don’t understand it and that’s why they don’t demand it they’re out tryin’ to ruin, but forgive them they know not what they’re doin”

Their argument for music is easy but sharp and stronger than nature itself:

“Allright, hear those guitars twangin’, sharper than lightnin’, hear those drums beat, louder than thunder”

The Snowmen know that whatever happens, music will forever stand:

“Don’t you misname it, in fact you might as well claim it, it’s swept this whole wide land, rock n roll, forever will stand”

Stream it from Spotify.
Download from iTunes.
Buy a compilation CD from CDON or Amazon.

Watch on Youtube:

This post is a part of our series of songs that we translate as comments to the contemporary music biz. Here are the others:
Warren G Told The Truth In 1996

I heard the classic Warren G cover/remake of “What’s love got to do with it” the other day. It was better than I remembered and to my big surprise was a great testimony of a greedy music biz.

First he is setting the scene by telling us about his first meetings with the music business and how they started to care only when his music started to sell:

“There’s dollar signs in your eyes and a smile in your face. You wanna live fat, all for my sack. You got more drag than a low lo-do, cut the act, ‘Cause back before ‘92 and ‘93,
You didn’t give a damn about Warren G, but now that I’m slingin’ platinum LP’s, all of a sudden, you on my N.U.T’s. /…/ It’s all about the dough, so what’s love got to do with it?”

The amazing original chorus sung by Adina Howard repeat the “What’s love got to do with it?” line. Then in the second verse Warren continues to talk about how his label is trying to screw him and concludes with: “ain’t no love involved, because it’s all about the chips.”

Then in the third verse he is telling us the whole truth:

“Now for these labels tellin’ fables, makin’ the messed-up deals under the tables. You think that you smart, but, fool, I’m the smartest. You can’t make no money if you can’t keep an artist.”

Since this lyric was written loads of positive change has taken place. Musicians doesn’t have to go thru a label to release their art and when they do they usually already have a crowd, gained from Myspace etc, and therefore is able to make a better deal with a bigger slice of the cake. Also, initiative like the Featured Artist Coalition is for the first time interrupting and taking the artists side in negotiations between the musicians and record labels. Artists are clearly a winner of the last 13 years of internet development.

Stream from Spotify.
Download on Itunes.
Get the CD from CDON or Amazon.

Watch on Youtube:

“I’m looking forward to an accurate internet chart that is transparent with what it’s measuring and what services is ranked the highest. The chart should be revised along with the rapid changes of the internet culture. Along with better music services this can really make a difference and forever change the main way we distribute, value and explore music. And, from a music labels point of view, change the way of being serious.”

Since then BBC did a trial with their Sound Index which is now over. Happily there seems to be a service that is taking this track again. We Are Haunted is presenting the 99 most popular songs online in a nice and handy way. And it’s also a neat way to explore new music.

“We Are Hunted is the Online Music Chart. We aggregate social networks, forums, music blogs, Torrents, P2P Networks and Twitter to develop a daily chart of the 99 most popular songs online.”

I’m looking forward to follow the Moto Boy attention. And is hoping that We Are Hunted is going towards more openness and transparency and let us know exactly which sites they scrape from.

[via Wired]

I come back to it all the time, but it bears repeating. You must adapt to reality. It is doomed to fail to slavishly follow a map with roads that no longer exists. Even worse is if you miss the news that a highway was built next to the old gravel road you are driving on. Or, as in the case of music, at any price continue to produce and carry out lobbying work for the waggons to horses when customers want to drive cars or better still travel by public transport in modern high-speed.

As a business you must develop and change when the reality does.

The best thing with The Pirate Bay is that it’s the worst music service. For me it is absolutely incomprehensible how the industry can raise the rhetorical question “how can we compete with free.” I am completely convinced that it is possible to be better than free.

One of my standard phrases have become: I rather have 100 000 listeners and 100 buyers than 100 listeners and 100 buyers. For much of the music biz that is to stick out your chin. It argues that it’s morally wrong that anyone listens to your music without having paid for it.

Believe me, there is a willingness to pay for music even if, or rather beacause, there is an option to get it for free. Of course it is harder than when you had a monopoly on distribution and competition for entertainment was less. But new requirements also means opportunities for major improvements. We need to stop taking peoples willingness to pay for granted. We must show credibility, be open and argue why people should give us their preciously earned money. You don’t do so by crying to the politicians for tougher laws, sue your fans, or put claims against the site that meets the needs you can’t meet yourself.

For me that kind of claims are evidence of a lack of confidence not to see opportunities in the new technology that the digitization of music and decentralization of distribution meant. The real problem lies in that the record industry have seen the sound carrier (vinyl, cassette, CD, etc.) as its product. Obviously, Of course it’s the music that is at the heart of everything we do and we need to acknowledge that as the core of our business. If you do that, and believe in the music you work with, you can look forward to bright and shiny business.

We must stop treating recorded music so damn stepmotherly. Recorded music is not first and foremost copyright; recorded music is our main carrier of emotions (as Terry McBirde said at Is This It?). That is where its power lies and that’s what we must highlight. We do that by ensuring that the spread is as wide as possible and then offer the fans something that is a reason to pay for.

Today’s ruling has only one positive aspect. I look forward to the music business investment in new services that were promised when the “copyright issue” is resolved. Up to evidence, out with you on the dance floor and show what you can do. Release control of your catalouges and let the service developers that are the best test their wings, instead of the one that currently can give you the biggest advance.

Of course this is not the end of the juridical process. The appeal will come as fast as it takes to download a torrent. But in my dream world the record, film and computer games companies withdrew their claims and instead spend all their money and creative energy to develop what they are actually best in the world at. Until then, Peter, Fredrik and Gottfrid have my full support in their dreams of a free internet.

Thank you, The Pirate Bay for putting a blowtorch in the ass of those who own 80% of all music ever released. Your work will ultimately lead to the re-recognize value of its core bussiness and the will to sanction better services to restore music as the best provider of emotions.

It hurts when old business models to burst, but in this case the grass is really greener on the other side – not least for musicians and music lovers.