The New Flatness

Warner’s move that they made with YouTube is the best deal the music business has made all year. This will go down as one of the first steps in an innovative direction that the industry has made. The most interesting thing to come of this is YouTube’s royalty tracking system. How does it work and does it work well? All of this cool stuff going on and what is the biggest record label doing with YouTube?…suing them!

picture originally uploaded by: me

I read a lot of Bob’s posts but this one stood out to me.  I was just having a conversation with someone about this same exact subject the other night.  At the root of the this issue, of making available copyrighted material on streaming sites such as YouTube and MySpace, is how to monetize it.  It is really very simple.  When in doubt learn from your piers in the same market.  What is the simplest way to make money on the web?  Advertising.  Wrap up the content in pre or post roll ads.  This will accomplish two vital things.  One being that the majors will start seeing some income from all their material they have available and two, it will at the very least be a step forward instead a lateral step or no step at all.  The music industry in particular, hasn’t made big steps in experimenting with monetization schemes.  These are times of trial and error.  But they don’t have to be that risky if you look around and learn from other’s mistakes.  Fred has a good post on his ideas for monetizing YouTube.  YouTube will look at Google for inspiration on how to make money.  Other industries should do the same.  The music business needs to pay very close attention to what services like YouTube and MySpace are doing because these services are the future of their content distribution.  There is no question that this is how content will be served up in the coming years.  All of these issues make me want to form a consulting team that would walk with music labels and other content owners as they navigate how to make money in an “everything is available all the time” world because its not going to come from the inside.  I should do that.

picture originally uploaded by: me

New York Times has moved mobile with the introduction of mobile.nytimes.com.

They are using Microsoft advertising too. 

MySpace is going to start selling music via their site without and DRM.  The interesting thing to me is that Snocap is involved.  I have been following what they have been doing over the past year and wonder what their niche is going to be.

photo credit: oh_no_whoa

Universal backs Spiral Frog.

Some are disagreeing with this because of its DRM usage. DRM isn’t the way to go.  However, it will fade out over time.  Who knows how long it will take though.  Look how long it took a major label to get hip to ad based revenue.
We’re out of the age of the rock star.  We’re in the age of quality production by anyone who is smart enough to make it.  No longer does it take a lot of money…the technology is available to everyone to produce quality material.

Eric joins the club. Just because its apple I included this link.

This article from Business 2.0 got me thinking a bit about the future of advertising within consumer generated content. This is such a new way for advertisers to reach the most passionate people. The article brings up a good point that the audiences of blogs are the the “cream of the crop”. The reason being is that the audiences of blogs are there because they want to be there and usually are passionate about the blogs’ subject.
There are 50 million blogs out there now. How many of those are able to generate any revenue for advertisers and the bloggers? You gotta have a niche in the bogosphere; otherwise you don’t matter.

Although read what John Battelle said here.

The entire ad market is changing so much right now. Its an exciting time for the industry. There is so much room for different types of experimentation.

UMG usually seems more ahead than any of the other majors labels when it comes to pressing forward into using using new technology…not to mention they’re ahead of the pack in revenue.

Universal stands out when compared to the other major labels.  They are the only major that is making steps like this and its such a good thing.

AnySong is a new mobile music search and discovery service being introduced in Holland.  Universal partnered with Targetize to provide the technology solution.  And, it seems like part of the revenue stream is going to come from advertising sales on the service.  This is the right direction for mobile content providers.
This is the beginning of what will be common place in a few years.  What needs to happen in the states is a mobile search service for MySpace, TagWorld and the other big social networks that use music as part of their service.  Helio is trying to do this…but Helio is closed system.  You have to use their devices.

The search and discovery service for something like MySpace needs to be an open service that can be accessed by any device.

Did you see Rupert?  Charlie always asks the right questions.  The interview was not ALL about MySpace but it was a big part of it.

Something that Rupert said resonated with me.  “Content is everything and…the focus must be on making it better than ever.”

With all the great and amazing things that are happening right now with the way you and I are aquiring our content; the content itself has to be better than ever.

No longer are the days where content is made for the majority.  It has to be built for everyone.  It has to have the ability to be customized for everyone’s world.

Rupert also developed Foxatomic.  Its a part of Fox that developes content just for 17-24 men.  The site so far has multiple partners including Jupcut which is a online video editing and publishing service.  This is the future…content provision has to be deep for customers to be loyal.

There has been a lot of talk about LisaNova…sure you’ve seen her around.

This is the state of things now. Its possible to have your material see and heard by everyone…everyone knows this. …although Mark thinks its boring.
I can’t help but think what it would have been like if these tools were available when Speilberg was making his war movies as a kid in his backyard.

What would that have been like? Were the internet availble then would it have made Speilberg, or someone that good, into something that he isn’t today?

Doubt it.

Even though there is the potential with the internet to break down walls of distribution and access, people still have to make the right decisions. The internet doesn’t help you make the right decisions.

When I say “right decisions” I’m talking about the question that Lisa must be asking of herself “now I have 75,000 views of my movie, now what do I do?” The best answer is to probably just keep on making the best content in the same manner. But the goal is to move forward and become a bit more than someone who posts funny movies on YouTube right!?
Here is the problem: How do you grow and continue to reach more and more people with progressively better quality content but do all of that without the help of old media concepts.

Brains always trumps technology.

I have yet to see a super star come from the likes of YouTube, MySpace etc. It’s possible and its going to happen. BUT, you gotta be smart, you gotta know how to do it, you gotta have a plan, you gotta know what you’re trying to do, you gotta know how to envision the end result, you gotta keep it goin’.

I was talking to my brother the graphic designer many months ago about advertising and how powerful it would be if a “new” way of advertising was developed. One that didn’t work in the classic manner of shoving a pitch to as many random eyeballs as possible.

PayPerPost is here. This is what I’m talking about. A lot of people seem to be shunning the concept. One of the things that stands out on the surface to me is that it enables more people with more products and services to reach more people. How can anyone think that when there is so much positive stuff to had from it…like lots of money. I know why. Because no one likes the feeling that they are being duped which is what can happen when reading a blog post that may have been written just for money and not for the just out of belief of what they are writting. A lot of the time the best ideas feel strange at first.

This concept goes for all sorts of content as well…video and music. Fred Wilson has a good post on the issue of content providers making it difficult for the consumer to consume.

Creators of the products and content aren’t going to have a free-for-all though. They will still need the dough to pay the bloggers, and the more ya got the more people are going to read about your product/service. The important thing is that this is just a better, more effecient and more effective way of advertising.

Does this mean we’re going to see the rise of the rich blogger?