The New Flatness

Google has made a deal with XM to provide targeted advertising over the XM radio network by using Google’s dMarc platform.

Where would Google be if it weren’t for advertising.  Google is in such an amazing place right now that is unique to them for the most part.  Having the opportunity to make incredible amounts of cash from advertising and using that cash to develop new technologies couldn’t be a better position to be in.

How long can this last?  Can Google keep selling ads forever?  They are going to have to continue to make AdWords better and better to overcome click fraud which is beginning to become an issue with Google.

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’.

Thinking about the importance of being in a niche.

Reading this article by Chris Anderson got me thinking more about niches and the importance of catering to “a” or hopefully “your” niche.   When its broken down, a niche is where you have to start when trying to bootstrap any situation.  Think about your favorite band or your favorite entertainer, musician, artist and then research how they’ve gotten to where they are.  The level of “where they are” may be megastardom or it may be a smaller but one thing that I can bet is that they’ve found a niche for themselves and they have spent their careers working hard to cater to that niche.

The essence of what I’m getting at is that in the entertainment world; anyone that has the goal of longevity needs to start with a few people and a core audience.  For any sort of longevity it needs to start there.  Trying to appeal to the masses from the enception of an artist or band does not and will not evolve into longevity or timelessness.  If you are trying to reach big goals then pay attention to who you’re appealing to and who your audience is not to who YOU want to appeal to or what YOU want your audience to be.  Its not about you, its about everyone else.

A few examples come to my mind.  One is Utada Hikaru and she is a pop singer in Japan.  Now, Hikaru is not like anyone else in Japan.  Her music is original and unique but still concidered pop.  Some would say she invented what is called j pop today AND you can tell that she doesn’t pay much attention to musical trends in a way that most people do by copying them.  By doing this, and staying true to what she thinks and believes with regards to her musical vision, she created a niche for herself and fans gravitated towards her.  Seven or eight years later she is the biggest thing in Japan ever.  Trying to copy someone else’s niche doesn’t lead anywhere.  Do what your vision is and work hard at finding a niche for that vision to live. Don’t let anyone hold it back.

I’ll save “finding that niche” for another post.

The importance of creating a web presence today is huge.

Parents, don’t let your kids grow up to be nobodies on the web.

Kids are living on the web in ways that are becoming more and more intricate and they are going to continue to live on the web more when they grow up.

It is important to have an identity on the web beyond a myspace profile. Although that is a start, it is only a start.  The future will bring much more conversation and collaboration over the internet.
So instead of parents being scared of sites like myspace where lots of specific information about an individual is revealed to the world, parents need to understand that this isn’t going away. It is only going to get richer and richer in the amount of deep content about people is available to the world. The best way to deal with this is to learn how to create a presence that is designed to last a lifetime…not block it.

What happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas anymore.

France is making some headway on the law to end DRM usage.

Their disagreement with DRM is a very valid point. In the physical world its the same as having proprietary CD players.

It is going to take time for creators and consumers to figure out how digital rights management is going to work best and most effeciently simply because it is totally different than the way things work in the physical world.
When the industry moved from tapes to CDs everyone had to reinvest in their collection and buy their music catalog again. This is what is still happening with DRM. Michael Roberts has good post that got me thinking. Material that is sold with a DRM is not what it seems.

Technology sped things up so much that formats can change so fast. So really what is happening is that the music player is changing again and again with every new DRM technology that comes out. What this is is the industry trying to incorporate old media practices into this new media environment. Even Apple, a unusually forward thinking company, is stuck in this old ideal. I think they are actually smarter than that…they are more concerned with selling the iPod music player than selling music. Selling music doesn’t make Apple any money but selling iPods sure does. So while Apple is being hailed as the saviour of the business it is only indirectly this.

The big picture issue is this…how to monetize, track, and retrieve digital files on the internet without being trapped in the old model where something physical, (CDs) is sold to be used on another physical something (CD player). We’ve become so accustomed to buying CDs and playing them in our CD players that that is how we expect it to work with digital files. The internet is open. Those proprietary walls don’t have to exist on the internet. By using DRM on music a wall is being put up between the creator and the consumer. These are the things that innovators need to be aware of.

YouTube made it simple for the a la carte video watcher.

Its interesting that the BEST clips from TV shows or movies can be found there. Forget all the other stuff no one cares about. The user is so in control that she is essentially telling the content creator what is favored and what is not when she puts choice clips on YouTube.

NBC is getting smart.

Doing business with something as powerful as YouTube is the best move.

It makes sense that TV networks are adopting this easier and quicker than the music business has because TV is an ad based business model. YouTube can easily facilitate that.

The revenue stream for the music business comes from CD sales…or at least they want it to.

How can music be part of an ad based model?

Advertising creates a huge platform to work from.

How can the music business wrap its content with advertising. Its a much better, and easier way to pay the content creators.

To shareholders of major labels it makes the most sense to turn to ad revenue as the primary source of income.

More revenue=happy shareholders=an environment to create

Music giants bid over each other in what looks to be even more consolidating of the industry.  Its gonna be down to three major music entities trying to decide what is worth marketing to you and I.

Analysts on the street say “the combined entity could generate $200 million to $300 million in additional cash flow by laying off employees and reducing the number of artists…”

Rupert Murdoch had the forsight.

He made the decision to aquire what is obviously a power player in this new media landscape.

If other industries haven’t been making moves to cement themselves in this wave of new media innovation then…well.

Is it possible to run out of acts that draw big numbers to concerts?

What will happen in 10-15 years when the top grossing acts like U2, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Elton John aren’t touring anymore? Who is going to fill that hole? Are young acts today being sculpted into lifetime performers and entertainers? Some are, but most people don’t want to live in the margins.

This is not the end, its just the beginning of a change in how it works. Times change and this is the beginning of a time where people won’t pay insane amounts of money to see a rock show.

“The same show will be on the internet sooner or later, why not just watch it then?” Regardless if this attitude is good or bad, right or wrong, this is how younger generations think.

Know the customer.

Think like the customer.