I would like to suggest that in some cases, the novelty and variety of methods to engage with people in the online space can lead to neglect of physical space. I want to explore the interaction of space and place within the context of Manuel Castells’ theory of the network society.

Manuel Castells is a mighty fine thinker within the Social Sciences. His theories cover wide ground, but for the purposes of this article I will focus on his ideas relating to ‘The Space of Flows’; this concept forming a part of his wider discourse on the Network Society (which I absolutely recommend- it’s very accessible for most readers with a sturdy noggin).

According to Castells, flows are streams of information that constitute the organisational logic of our networked society. Think of a face-to-face conversation as a flow of dialogue. With computer mediated communications, this dialogue is digitised, and thus becomes a flow of information, freed from the spatial constraints typical of a ‘real-world’ conversation i.e. the need to get two people together in the same location. Other things would include capital (transactions, virtual currencies), digital services, digital media etc.

‘By flows I understand purposeful , repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors in the economic, political, and symbolic structures of society.’ (Castells, 2004 p.442)

So what is the ‘Space of Flows’? The Space of Flows is constituted by three elements, as per Castells:

1. -the places where activities (and people enacting them) are located,
2. -the material communication networks linking these activities, and
3. -the content and geometry of the flows of information that perform the activities in terms of function and meaning.”

(Castells, 2004, p.36-7)

Castells ties the concept of space to social practices; spaces are articulated through the time-sharing practices which we as individuals (social actors) partake in. Space is the material support of these practices, a platform upon/within which communities are situated, e.g. a market square, a social network.

“ …space is a material product, in relationship to other material products – including people – who engage in [historically] determined social relationships that provide space with a form, a function, and a social meaning.“( Castells, 1972: p152 )

Places- tangible, ‘real world’ places, are not autonomous from information flows. In fact it is the concentration of flows of information which influences and articulates the presence of places for social activity and exchange e.g. University campuses, highly technologised centres of innovation such as our very own Silicon Roundabout, and most obviously, the cities of developed nations (London, Tokyo, New York). So, going back to the example of a client who isn’t having much luck building upon a pre-existing community, I would suggest that the role of physical places is being neglected.

Online activity needs to be balanced with offline activities and events. Online communities are fortified by their coming together in real space. Artists have it easy, as gigs tend to occupy a central position within a given campaign. But brands of course can also leverage physical places via experiential events, and this is actually a major benefit of partnering with a performing artist, music or otherwise. Brands can leverage affective experiences and thereby imbue their image (or that of their products e.g. alcohol) with the feelings associated with a given event (e.g. festivals).

Castells emphasises the dangers presented by dislocation between the online space of flows, and the tangible space of places, suggesting that a schizophrenic split between the two is possible, without due care and attention to both aspects:

“The dominant tendency is toward a horizon of networked, ahistorical space of flows, aiming at imposing its logic over scattered, segmented places, increasingly unrelated to each other, less and less able to share cultural codes. Unless cultural, political, and physical bridges are deliberately built between these two forms of space, we may be heading toward life in parallel universes whose times cannot meet because they are warped into different dimensions of a social hyperspace.” (Castells, 2010 p.458-9)

The take away: if you’re not gaining any traction with your various social media endeavours, question whether you’ve been neglecting the offline world; look to innovate ways of getting your online communities together in a place which encourages the nurturing of relationships between participants, and your brand.

Works Cited:

Castells, M. 1972. The Urban Question: A Marxist Approach

Castells, M. 2004- The Network Society

Castells, M. 2010- The Rise of the Network Society

US Trade Wholesale Electronic Book Sales:

(Chart from IDPF 2011 available at: http://idpf.org/about-us/industry-statistics)

As the book publishing industry becomes increasingly digitised (consider the growth of Kindle and tablet devices), authors are beginning to do more than replicate analogue experiences (i.e. reading a book) in the online space. J.K. Rowling’s ‘Pottermore’ is a perfect example of how the networked, social and multimodal online space can be utilised to offer fans compelling consumptive experiences.

The implications of leveraging a single brand across multiple media types results in the formation of an aggregate experience which is potentially far more valuable than a stand alone asset eg ebook, MP3 or photo.

As media converges in the online space, businesses and creators are afforded the opportunity to build environments of activity around their creations. In this way, the brand becomes the context and monetisation occurs either at the macro level via subscriptions to the entire gamut of offerings, or at the micro level via micro transactions for chunks of content (just suggestions mind you!).

If the book publishing industry can learn from the precedents set by the music industry whilst negotiating its impending overhaul, then …well…it could save a lot of angst to say the least.

You know things have turned sour when you go into a music store, and re-emerge with more clothes on than you started with, and a copy of Chaucer in hand. The same could be said for Waterstones, which has gone from selling books, to selling overpriced stationary and leather-bound flim-flam.

With the brokerage of a refinancing package, Simon Fox is under pressure to radically adjust HMV’s existing business strategy. And by-George, has he got a plan:

“We need to continue to invest in our stores. We want to continue to grow our share in games. We are going to increase in-store space for technology products such as iPads. We need to build our online and digital presence” (CMU, 2011)

This is course makes perfect sense, when you consider:

A. Argos posted a 9.6% decline in like-for-like sales over the last 13 week period, three quarters of which was attributed to poor consumer electronics sales. Video games specifically, were down 25%.

B. Electronics retailer Comet is planning to offload 22 of its stores (top performing ones at that) in a bid to reduce rent payments by approximately £5m, helping to bolster poor sales performance.

C. Game Group posted an 11.3% decline in sales across the 19 week period to June 11th, announcing a continued downward trend in the global PC and video games market.

The only growth market the retailer appears to be aiming at, is the tablet market. Will this alone, be enough to ensure HMV meets the terms of its financing package?

There’s actually a comedian named Simon Fox, who’s recently experienced an unattributable influx in ticket sales.

The industry will lament the day the inquisitive pooch with the Gramophone is turfed off the high street; one can only hope the strength of the brand will allow a new incarnation of the business to resurface.

Here’s a video of Simon Fox playing Beethoven’s 9th Symphony ‘Ode To Joy’ on a banjo…a suitable analogy of HMV’s decline into a bumbling hybridisation of its former glory…

Let me get one thing clear before I start, here at Good Lizard Media, we’re all Spotify Premium users, and are very much advocates of their service. To put it bluntly, we Love it!. However, a few things happened recently, and it got me thinking. Firstly, the disappearance of a couple of my favourite albums from Spotify, and I’m left with no explanation as to why they have been removed, no marketing reasoning, nothing. Secondly, all this whilst I’m burning my physical CD collection to HDD and selling them to Music Magpie.

With these online albums suddenly not available to me, the tracks no longer appearing in my playlists, it left me questioning the subscription service future we’re all waiting (hoping) for.

(Well, if you’re asking the albums were “Remains” by Alkaline Trio, “White Crosses” by Against Me, and “Strictly Rude” by Big D and The Kids Table.)

How can I possibly be excited about a future where the chance to hear the tracks I love can suddenly be taken away from me at any moment?

The emotional attachment to tracks is something that I’ve rarely seen discussed. In the eyes of subscription services, people just love listening to and sharing music, sure, that is true, but what about those tracks that you absolutely have to listen to, now!
The track that you had on when you first got a walkman (Travelling Without Moving – Jamiroquai), or when you first drove a car (Superman – Goldfinger), your first dance (No Woman, No Cry – The Fugees). As Terry McBride, from Nettwork calls ‘Our Musical Bookmarks‘.

How much would you pay to keep the memories of those songs? If someone said, you can never hear those songs again unless you pay me some money right now, how much would it be? It would definitely be more than 79p!
I’m sure the number would vary hugely but, the ‘emotional demand’ for a particular track is definitely a considerable market force, even as simply as nostalgia complications!

So where does that leave us, in a world where all our music is in the cloud (someone else’s cloud), we’re suddenly no longer in control of what we can hear (legally). If checking out new music, and it’s not available, you may simply just listen to something else, but for those big tracks that you absolutely need to hear, its only a short internet leap, across to YouTube, or perhaps even Grooveshark… However, suddenly then, we’re outside the subscription service pay structure for artists (YouTube ad revenue is very hard to account back to artists) and the ‘music as water utopia’ is over.

In a recent campaign, an artists catalogue was made available digitally “for the first time”, and it slotted nicely in to the marketing, however in order for this to happen, it had to be pulled down months earlier. Anyone who had downloaded it previously, via iTunes would have been unaware, however, the Spotify users would have been going nuts for a few months!

Right now, I’m not sure what the answer is, but I know what it isn’t (for me anyway) – I’m not about to go back to downloading, or buying physical product again, I love the cloud too much. Perhaps an ‘extra premium’ service should be made available, where it costs a higher fee per a month, and artists music is held with the subscription service for a minimum of. say, 5 years, kind of like a digital music ISA…and the user is guaranteed access to all the music for that time, without interruption. Transferring some of that control back to the listener, they are paying for it after all!

Lets not forget that it is still early days, and the bugs are being worked out, but I really do believe that this issue needs to be addressed, if the future is to live up to the music ‘free at the point-of-access’ dreams we’re all having!

NB:
Really wanted to call this post “Cloud Control” but there is a band who stolen the name, dammit.

Across blogs and industry websites the ‘solution’ to saving the industry is framed in terms of finding better revenue models, looking at ways to make paying for music palatable to consumers. What this discussion does though is mask one of the last and certainly biggest opportunities to actually save the music industry.

Digital marketing gives us all the possibility to reconnect music fans and consumers to a love of music. Through years of neglect and abuse, the recorded music industry has looted and razed the goodwill and interest of people who like music. It baffles me that an industry based upon a voluntary and appreciative consumer base would go so outrageously far to alienate them.

The opening of Topspin’s digital marketing tools to a mass market and the abundance of useful and incredibly good value for money services like Rootmusic, Fanbridge and nextbigsound enable every artist to communicate and reward fans simply. The act of every artist striving to create a good relationship with their fans and listeners will be the single biggest contributor to saving the music industry.

As ‘digital music revenues’ diminish to nothing in the near future, there will be more artists than ever before and only a handful of less important indicators of success than record sales. The big problem we face as the music industry though is not that there will be no money in it; it will be that there is no interest… Imagine if you will that it’s 2017. 20 million artists in the world all online in some shape or form and people no longer care; music is just another thing that exists in life, like fruit… who cares who makes it?

This is where we are heading… Spin back to 2011 and the land grab occurring at the moment where artists see the big ‘direct-to-fan’ goldmine, where fans become figures and figures become equations ending in big $ signs. Emailing a fanbase twice a year to flog another shit bit of merchandise, ‘become a roadie for the day’ for £400 or vastly inflated postage costs. This is killing the music industry at a time when it should be being protected and nurtured. So what should we be doing?

In my opinion, let’s just stream music for near free. Then spend the rest of our time engaging fans, treating them with respect and reverence and aim to make every interaction as targeted and personal as possible. With every artist striving to create a good impression and relationship with fans, music will become something that people will immerse themselves in once again. That’s how we save music… one fan at a time.