See ya tomorrow at the Hotel Kabuki, 1625 Post, San Francisco for San Fran Music Tech Summit.   We’ll be there tweeting live from twitter.com/contentnow as long as Twitter doesn’t go down.  Follow #sfmusictech.  It’s going to be a party!  Here’s the guide:

9am, Brian in conversation with Adam Zbar, CEO, Zannel (Home to Dane Cook’s backstage pass).
9:20, Zahavah Levine, YouTube, David Leibowitz, Gotuit, Jeremy Welt, WB Records…
10:30, Cecily Mak, Rhapsody, Joe Kennedy, Pandora, Mike Huppe, SoundExchange… (hold the tomatoes, as we heard at EconSM, both sides expecting a reasonable resolution, not the 2010 3 cents per listener per hour)
11:30, Justin Timberlake’s Matt Morris performance
12, Lunch Break
1, Demos, Ted Cohen, TAG Strategic, James Lamberti, TopSpin, Peter Yared, iWidgets…
2, Geoff Ralston, LaLa, Ali Partovi, iLike, Chuck Fishman, Cisco, Joyce Williams, Zazzle..
3, Snack Break
3:30, Bob Kohn, RoyaltyShare, Stephen White, Gracenote, Ge Wang, Smule (Ocarina), Darryl Ballantyne, LyricFind, Rob Pegoraro, WaPo, Bart Decrem, Tapulous (have you tried Tap Tap Coldplay??)…
4:30, Schmooze Break
4:45, Ian Rogers, TopSpin, Fred von Lohmann, EFF (sans ponytail), Charlie Moran, Ad Age…
6-8, Cocktail Party sponsored by LyricFind (karaoke singlong??)

Beastie Boys were an intricate part of my musical evolution. I remember being in 5th grade (I think???) and browsing The Wall (the CD store) for the one copy of Ill Communication that didn’t have the Explicit Lyrics sticker on it, so I could convince my mom to get it for me for being on the Honor Roll that month in school. And to be honest, I hadn’t thought about them for over a year until I read this post Ian Rogers wrote on the Topspin blog about Paul’s Boutique.

After I finished, I kept thinking, “well what’s my Paul’s Boutique?” In other words, what band, album, or musical entity got me so into music that I had to make a career of it for myself?

Part of me wants me to say it was listening to Less Than Jake’s Losing Streak in 6th grade. I always prided myself in diverting from the mainstream and being ahead of the curve in musical taste. A lot of my friends give me shit for hating things that people like or that are popular in general, but there’s something about being part of something small that makes it special. I’m not saying Less Than Jake are the best band ever or that Losing Streak in any way comparable to he quality of Paul’s Boutique, but it’s “my” Paul’s Boutique. It made me passionate about music for something more than a hobby and knocked over the first domino of musical curiosity and exploration.

So now my question for you is, what’s your Losing Streak?

I just got back from a really fun (and delicious) lunch with Peter of Pantless Knights, who is in LA working on a hilarious new video, and one of the main things we discussed was the idea of Entertainment-as-a-Service. The term is a reference to the concept of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), which is a business model generally contrasted with the conventional packaged or ’shrinkwrap’ software model. Essentially, SaaS is a subscription business and packaged software is a retail business.

The entertainment industry is a retail business. Books, movies, tv shows, music are almost universally sold as one-off purchases. But, those things are just the packaging and the people selling them to you are just middle-men. The business of entertainment (not to be confused with the entertainment *industry*) is fundamentally a marketplace of attention between fans and content creators — fans have a finite supply of attention for which content creators are competing. So, then what is the entertainment industry? To use a very relevant analogy, it is the collection of intermediary businesses (i.e. publishers, studios, networks, labels) that have been acting like investment bankers, taking the raw materials of talent and creativity and packaging them up in a form they know how to sell (i.e. retail) and commanding a big slice of profit along the way. Entertainment doesn’t want to be a retail business, and that is the fundamental essence of the disruption the Internet has unleashed on the entertainment industry.

[Clarification: For the sake of this discussion, I'm using the term 'content creator' to represent those who add unique creative talent to the production process. As my dad pointed out, content creation is rarely a solo effort (most notably in film production, which can involve hundreds of individual contributors) to which studios, networks, labels, and publishers often contribute substantial value. But as those contributions are opaque and thus interchangeable as far as the consumer is concerned, I am excluding those who make them from the class I refer to as 'content creators' in this post. Otherwise said, even though the sound engineer plays a crucial role in creating the album, no one buys it based on *who* the sound engineer was.]

When you think about what elements of the entertainment business technology has really undermined, it’s nothing more than the packaging — the time slots and release dates and viewing windows and region codes that are artificial constructs of these middle-men trying to slice-and-dice the content into as many tranches as possible to squeeze out every last cent of profit. Just like the investment bankers and their CDOs fragmented and obscured the connections between investors and their investments, so have the studios, networks, publishers, and labels introduced complexity into the connections between content creators and their audiences. While that complexity, and the companies who created it, may have been a necessity in an era of technologically inferior marketing and distribution systems, they are simply market inefficiencies in the Internet age.

So, what is the difference between retail and subscription when it comes to entertainment? In a recent post on my personal blog about SaaS vs shrinkwrap software, I wrote:

The business model of packaged software invites feature bloat, because it’s upgrade driven and you need to continually find ways to justify why Thingamajig 2009 Pro Edition™ is so much better than Thingamajig 2008 Pro Edition™. Software as a Service businesses have a much different (and arguably greater) challenge, they need to continue to create value for their customers month after month….So, you end up with a much more customer-centric product…and a vendor who is truly interested in addressing your customer needs.

The first priority of a retail business is to maximize sales, building brand loyalty and repeat business may be means to that end but they always take a back-seat to whatever else will drive more sales. Whereas in a subscription business, customer retention (and thus customer satisfaction) is always top priority, even above new customer acquisition. So if a studio believes they can get a lot of people to see a crappy movie by spending more on marketing and less on quality, they will (and do, again, and again, and again…). Because all you’re buying from them is the packaging, they know you aren’t really paying attention to whether it’s a Fox or Warner Brothers or Paramount film (do you buy your cereal based on who made the box it comes in?). But, a director would rather disown a bad film than endorse the studio releasing something that doesn’t meet his standards and his fans’ expectations. This is because the director knows that his relationship with his fans is a subscription business, and if he disappoints them he will be unable to continue exchanging his content for their attention in the future. The studios understand this too — they don’t give Tom Cruise $25M (plus a cut of the gross) per movie because his acting skills bring $25M of quality to the screen, they do it because he has more than $25M in ticket, DVD, and merchandise sales worth of fans. 

Entertainment is naturally a subscription business, and the Internet returns it to its natural state. The content creators who thrive online are those who understand this and focus on the ongoing satisfaction of their customers (see Ze Frank, Michael Buckley, Chris Leavins). The level of customer satisfaction these creators deliver is really only possible on the Internet because they can go direct-to-consumer without need of the middle-men and their packaging. These creators publish in all forms — video, photos, blogging, micro-blogging, music. They do not see themselves constrained by the legacy dividing lines of the entertainment industry, their goal is to entertain their audience by any and all means available. There is no distinction for them between primary and ancillary content, they are 360° entertainment brands. The other thing that has made these creators so successful online is their direct interaction with their customers. The best your most engaged fans can do offline is give you their personal attention (and the money that comes with it) and try to recruit others to do so as well. But online, they can interact with you and become part of the show. Empowering your customers is the surest way to make them even more engaged. As I wrote in another recent post on my personal blog:

Bringing your customers into the product development process has the dual benefits of helping you build better and more customer-centric products and making your customers your most passionate sales people (because after all, it’s their product too).

So, the Internet enables these creators to spend more time listening to their fans and creating new content they’ll enjoy while outsourcing the marketing to the community for free. This is the exact opposite of the offline retail model in which the studio takes money out of production budgets to put it into marketing campaigns. The ability to establish deeper relationships with their fans also allows online content creators to attain higher average attention per customer (ARPU) than is possible in the retail world, thereby making it easier to build more value by going deeper with a smaller audience. 

To be clear, I’m not trying to say the only business model for content on the Internet is a recurring subscription fee. The ’subscription business’ to which I’m referring is more the theoretical exchange of value between content creators and their fans, which can and will take many forms — including selling packaged goods. I’m also not saying that the online entertainment market is solely the domain of Internet-only content creators. In fact, I believe the Internet is most powerful as an entertainment marketplace when the quality and reputation of a historically offline content creator is freed of the constraints of the legacy packaged goods business model. Take for example Josh Freese, who gets extra points for using this freedom precisely to illustrate the absurdity of the conventional retail approach.

And now, I leave you with the profound product of the coming entertainment revolution:

P.S. Hat tips to Ian Rogers for the marketplace of attention thinking and Umair Haque for the marketing vs quality dichotomy.

(Tomorrow, by the way, I will talk to Australia’s Number one board, Zhao, so do drop by for that.)

My brother, Chris Depasquale, who has played in a couple of Olympiads, pointed out to me when I asked him what he thought of the new scoring changes, that it did provide some dramatic differences from the old method:

I guess for us old fuddy-duddies, at least Armenia won the thing whichever scoring method you use, but Bulgaria were bronze medallists under the old system and they finished 14th, while Canada actually scored more points than anybody except Armenia, but they finished 28th!!! Of course, if the scoring was under the old system the pairings would have been different and Canada would have had a tougher field…. Because they lost matches 2.5-1.5 to India, Scotland and Iraq in the first half of the event they only played one team that finished in the top 50!

Gaining nothing of consequence for a 4-0 victory – ie the same 2 points as achieved for 2.5-1.5 win – had a detrimental effect for Australia at least once, when they achieved the blitz and then had to play another team of the same ilk for the same result. I am pretty sure everybody would have preferred a challenge.

I wanted to know what Ian Rogers GM thought about various aspects of the Olympiad and Australia in the world of chess. As it happens he is eternally in my debt and could not say no.

Ian Rogers, GM, What do you think of the new scoring method (a) in general (b) from Australia’s point of view?

Awful – there are simply too many teams and not enough score groups with match points. (This could have been predicted, but FIDE admitted that they did no simulations before changing the system. (See Shaun Press’ blog), Also, it discourages fighting in all games since 2.5-1.5 is almost as good as 4-0.

For Australia it could have been great had our open team won our last match and moved into the top 20, since the yoyo effect is exaggerated. But overall the new system is worse for the middle teams who are all crowded around 50% and could finish anywhere.

At least under the old system you needed to lose 0-4 in the last round to drop dramatically – now a narrow 1.5-2.5 loss is enough to see you plummeting down the standings.

Is Australia standing still or dropping back in relation to the rest of the world?

The rest of the world is constantly improving. Our Open team is keeping up, barely, thanks to Zhao and Smerdon, but our women’s team without Irina really struggled (e.g. 0-4 v Venezuela).

Has the requirement for becoming a GM been lowered or do we have more GMs now because we have more players of a standard that that hasn’t dropped?

There may be more good players but certainly the standard required to get a GM title has been lowered because of many incremental factors plus the elephant in the room, rating inflation.

Given that Yuan goes from strength to strength, could you speculate on the difference it would have made to our team if you had been playing? What position might we have reasonably hoped for (ie with the usual some out of form players)? And, again on Yuan, it seems to me his solid performance on Board one was important in confirming his remarkable GM tournament victories early this year. Is that true, or were they proof enough on their own? Do you have hopes/expectations for Yuan and if so, what are they? What, if anything, is going to stop him achievement them?

Had I been playing I would probably have been selected on board two and it probably would have helped, but how much is anyone’s guess – it’s just speculation.

In Dresden Yuan scored his 6th GM in his last 7 events where it was possible. I don’t think he had anything to prove – he’s the real deal. How far he goes is dependent on his pharmacy and then perhaps medical studies. He has already been forced due to his pharmacy registration employer to pull out of Queenstown, which is not a good sign.

It seems to me that there are some players who rise to the occasion when playing for their country…and that such players might be considered for selection even if they are not in form at home. Do you agree with this notion, and if so, is there anybody you would have included in this team, and at whose expense? Ian read my mind on this one and mentioned two players I was wondering about.

No. Alex Wohl failed for years and then given a new chance was brilliant in Torino 2006. Terry Shaw, a dual medallist, failed in his final two Olympiads. Arianne was hopeless in her first two Olympiads for Australia. You have to select on current form and hope for the best.

I watched Australia’s board one woman play the Australian Masters some years ago and was astonished at her result (minor placing). Since then she has not nearly lived up to the expectations I set for her. Was that result an accident? Does she have the talent but not the will?

The result was not an accident – she had the talent but not the will. Since the Aus. Masters result, Arianne barely studied chess, concentrating on study and dancing.

Fortunately in 2008, Arianne was so stung by criticism of her play and Olympiad results that she put in some real work and played many games at close to her old strength. Going out with Aronian can’t hurt but it also cost Australia about 30 places when she spent the final round concentrating on Armenia’s fight for gold and lost her game without a fight.

What do you think about the other major change in the Olympiad, the board numbers for the Open and Women’s?

NO strong opinion, although from Australia’s point of view the change tends to expose our lack of depth in women’s chess – our lower two boards really struggled in Dresden, although Biljana pulled off some ridiculous swindles to finish with an OK score. But both she and Shannon were just outplayed in many games.

Were you asked to be Captain of the Open team?

Yes. I am glad I said no – it was hard enough to resist the temptation to sit in Yuan’s chair at the start of each round!

Everything You Need to Know about the Business of a 360 Deal

All about Muisc Licensing 2009

Almost Everything you Need to know about Music Licensing

How the Music Industry works–revenue and licence flows

A stroll through the history of recording devices

Island Records 50th with Chris Blackwell

Thought Provoking: Indie Rock and black music

History of Blue Note Records

Brief History of Fantasy Records

Profile of indie “Secretly Canadian”

Heavy Metal Band Names

Music Like Water

What the UMG digital guy thinks…

Topspin’s Ian Rogers said…

10 Disruptive Technologies

Everything you wanted to know about Roylaties–sort of

A point of view on Piracy

A industry overview from the Economist

Disputing the Long Tail theory

Marketing to your fans

The Beatles as marketers

More marketing from the Beatles

The Long Tail

Time magazine on the future of the Music industry

Cycles

What defines a hit in 2008?

Indie Label Costs

Top 50 Global Sales for 2007

Recorded Global Music Sales 2007

How pirates will change things..

Here is what Mark Cuban thinks about the future of the music business

In spite of the economy in 2009; college music programs flourish..

FINALLY So why are you going to college for a music industry education?

Noticed this over on Burgo’s Blog about the future of the music business.

Ian Rogers gave a keynote speech at the GRAMMY Northwest MusicTech Summit and he was saying it like it is- head over to Topspin to read the entire transcript along with the slides.  Very informative and this is just a tiny excerpt that caught my attention…

Again, there are only two players in the music business that matter at the end of the day: the artists and the fans. The rest of us either add value or get in the way. Don’t get me wrong, over the years labels have added a tremendous amount of value through financing, A&R, marketing, promotion, etc. I’m just saying that every player needs to either understand how it truly adds value or it needs to get out of the way, Topspin included. Our business does not operate on lock-in, ownership of copywritten work, or long-term contracts. We either add value today with a compelling service or we die. And I’m perfectly happy with that.

I’m inspired by a quote in Ian Roger’s presentation at Grammy MusicTech, by PE’s Chuck D.  The quote was related to music, here’s my take for Video.

“There’s nothing wrong with the video storytelling business, the problem is with the TV, DVD and Theatre business…”

Where to go to watch the Olympiad:

Chess Olympiad TV is something you can download. I can’t comment on whether it is worth doing so.

The official Olympiad site looks a shambolic mess.

Chessdom looks a more useful site and it will be frequently updated every day along with links to live games etc.

Chessninja could also be a handy site to visit.

With the Olympiad just hours away from starting, what are the chances for our teams? What a disappointment that Australia’s number one female player, Feldman, is not available. Caoili takes her place as first board and one can only hope she is able to produce her best. I watched her phenomenal performance in the Australian Masters some years ago – it promised much for the future – but so far she’s failed to deliver. It would be great to see Dekic perform well. She’s a real worker at the table so let’s hope that translates into points.

As for the Open team, it is hard to believe we are sending a team without Ian Rogers in it. I happened to be in the team in 1976, the year of his Olympiad debut. I can’t help recalling not only is Rogers no longer playing, but two of the 1976 team are dead: Terrey Shaw was hit by a ferocious prostate cancer that killed him at age 51. And just a few weeks ago Serge Rubinraut died.

The biggest excitement for our team is Australia’s new GM on board 1, Yuan. The story of how I more or less singlehandedly take responsibility for the dazzling career of this young man can wait for another time.

For now I will simply remind you all that he not only got his title earlier this year, but broke a world record in the process. NOBODY, not Fischer, not Kasparov, not any of the other bright young things that are around these days has done what Yuan did. He won the first two GM tournaments he played in. It was in such fine style that he qualified for his title. Here’s hoping he can pull something special out of his bag of tricks over the next couple of weeks.

Our teams:

52. AUS (RtgAvg:2488, Captain:Weeks, Manuel)
Bo. Name Rtg FED
1 GM Zhao Zong-Yuan 2567 AUS
2 IM Smerdon David 2470 AUS
3 IM Solomon Stephen J 2470 AUS
4 GM Johansen Darryl K 2446 AUS
5 IM Xie George Wendi 2403 AUS

54. AUS (RtgAvg:2122, Captain:Andras, Toth)
Bo. Name Rtg FED
1 WIM Caoili Arianne 2170 AUS
2 Nguyen Thu Giang 2101 AUS
3 WIM Moylan Laura 2114 AUS
4 WIM Dekic Biljana N 2103 AUS
5 WFM Oliver Shannon 1942 AUS

Go teams, go!!!

Topspin Media, a startup launched by former Yahoo Music General Manager Ian Rogers and widely regarded as digital-music maverick, has raised a new round of founding from Denver Boulder, Colorado-based VCs at The Foundry Group. The news was announced on the Foundry Group blog by partner Ryan McIntyre, but the funding amount wasn’t disclosed. The company recently came out stealth and was featured in Billboard magazine. Topspin also raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Redpoint Ventures.

So why are VCs all hot and heavy about this company? The shift to downloading music has boiled away the fat in the industry. Now all you need is an artist, a recording studio and an audience willing to pay for the artist’s music. But someone still needs to handle the marketing and distribution of that music across the web. That’s where Topspin comes in: The company is creating an enterprise-class software platform to track, analyze and monitor music sales and fan response.

As Hypebot, an influential music industry blog notes, “Topspin appears to be breaking through the clutter of disjointed widgets and apps.” And that makes selling easier.

Topspin officially emerged from stealth mode last week to unveil their technology platform that aims to help music artists build their business and brand directly with fans – without the help of a label.  There’s not a lot of public information on the product itself other than it sounds like a Salesforce.com (CRM) for the music industry – a suite of tools designed to help artists build relationships and distribute music directly to fans. 

What’s great is that Topspin is not trying to brand this product to consumers.  It’s completely B2B, which means artists will be able to incorporate Topspin technology into their own websites and social networking platforms.  Reportedly artists like David Byrne and Dandy Warhols are already using the technology to offer a subscription model to fans that will give them access to a host of content either exclusively or before general release.

While the direct-to-fan model is not a new concept – think Radiohead, The Raconteurs and supposedly the forthcoming Beck album – not every band has had the longevity or popularity of groups like these to implement such a strategy successfully.  That’s where the beauty of technology like Topspin comes in.  As Topspin’s new CEO, Ian Rogers, stated in this month’s Billboard interview, it empowers the middle class of artists – those either past their commercial prime or too new to enjoy the marketing support of a major label.

It’s a paradigm shift either way you slice it, for both artists and fans in terms of how music is distributed and consumed.  I can’t wait to see how it all plays out. I just hope Topspin plans on launching a similar platform for the film industry too!

Read more at TechCrunch.com

4 Peeps Hangin’ Out in 1976

Upper left: Louis D. Statham, the famous patron of the Lone Pine super-Swisses. Upper right: ex-WC Tigran Petrosian, winner of Lone Pine 1976 (the 6th LP incarnation). Bottom left: OK it’s not a beautiful woman. That title was simply meant to trick you to this site. It’s British GM Tony Miles, co-winner of the 1976 National Open in Las Vegas. Bottom right: the other co-winner, future IM Ed Formanek. Carl Budd took both photographs.

Tigran Petrosian Tidbits

We learn some interesting tidbits from Petrosian’s interview in this issue (interview conducted by stalwart USCF official Ed Edmondson – he had a cool name).

1. Tigran Vartanovich Petrosian Factoid #1: He was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, but was 100% Armenian.
2. Tigran’s dad was a refugee from Turkey.
3. Tigran left Georgia when he was 17.
4. Tigran journeyed 160 miles to Yerevan, Armenia.
5. Before she got married to Tigran, Rona was an English teacher.
6. Tigran had two sons, Mikhail and Vartan.
7. Petrosian also enjoyed checkers, cards, and an Armenian backgammon variant called Nardy. He also played ping ping and billiards.
8. He liked to watch ice hockey and soccer.
9. He was a supporter of club “Spartak” and played first board for Spartak chess team.
10. His main hobby was philately (stamp collecting) MG Note: just as it is Anatoly Karpov’s! He liked to collect art stamps and chess stamps.
11. He used to attend the opera regularly.
12. He was awarded the honorary Master of Sport title [MG: relatively late?!] in 1960.
13. He was chief editor of “64″ chess magazine when this interview was conducted in 1976.
14. If he won a prize abroad, he could keep some of it and give some of it back to the state (the USSR).
15. He was impressed by young Seirawan at Lone Pine 1976. Apparently young Yasser managed to beat Tigran in a friendly skittles game (one of several they played) although Tigran pointed out “I was not serious, I was having fun.” MG Note: You wouldn’t see Fischer very light-hearted after a skittles loss.
16. He reiterates his belief that “… in chess there is nothing accidental. I believe only in logical, correct play.”
17. On Fischer: “[he] tries to make the opponent play something other than the best move, than he – in turn – does make the best move.”
18. “Everything in chess is rather wooden – wooden pieces, wooden problems, wooden decisions.”
19. Petrosian in 1976 rated Ljubojevic’s chances of becoming a world championship contender as higher than Mecking’s, although both GMs were at that time young superstars. He also mentioned Ulf Andersson and he stated “I hope he will awaken one day.” (!)

Readers will enjoy this mind-blowing Petrosian victory over former World Champ Garry Kasparov.

I also learned from Wikipedia that Petrosian received a PhD in 1968 from Yerevan State University (is this something like Georgia State University?) on the topic of “Chess Logic.” Write what you know about!

So Many Tigran Petrosians

There’s a modern-day (young) GM Tigran Petrosian, apparently unrelated to the WC unless somebody knows differently?.  But did you know there’s a third Tigran Petrosian running around, quite literally – a professional soccer player!

More Lone Pine: Not for the Faint of Heart

On the principle you can’t get enough Lone Pine photos, here I am playing GM Lev Alburt at Lone Pine 1980 with Steve Odendahl (nice hair!) in the back. Lev, who had only recently defected to the USA, had cool Soviet-style slightly tinted dark glasses that he wore indoors.

Postscript: Princeton Graduation Drama in 1980

Since the above Lone Pine photo was from March 1980 I only had 2 more months ahead of me of the undergraduate life at Princeton. Woo-hoo! But there was drama. I overslept a required final in Genetics administered by the non-too-happy Professor Tom Cline (we called him Tom Clone). I was able to get a re-test supervised by a proctor in some administrative building a few days later. Guess what, I overslept again. I was 75 minutes late for a 2 1/2 hour exam. I wound up getting 43 points out of a maximum of 200. On one essay, the grader drew a red diagonal line through my babble and simply wrote “Sorry”, awarding me a 0 out of 50 on that question (involving an asteroid that crashed to Earth with some genetic samples; I had no idea what the question was talking about). After this debacle, Prof. Cline called me into the office. “This exam”, he exclaimed, waving it around, “is not just an F. It’s a K or an L. But I’m not going to fail you, I don’t want to see you on campus next term. So I’m giving you a D minus. Now get out.”

Amusing Post-Postscript

Ian Rogers has popped up on the blogosphere. But it’s not the Grandmaster. Instead, we apparently have a media baron who recently departed the ‘troubled’ Yahoo company.

Merlin is a very cool company that is succeeding with a new model for success as a “major label.”  Unlike traditional labels, Merlin actually represents a huge number of indie labels under a single banner (via ArsTech):

“Merlin isn’t a “real” label in the sense that it doesn’t do business the same way. The group negotiates licensing arrangements on behalf of its members so that small labels can get the benefits of a more sizable organization, but Merlin does not take any control of copyrights and does not do marketing or promotion.”

This is a great example of building a business model in response to current conditions.  Instead of desperately trying to hold onto the old model where making money was about selling albums, Merlin saw a need a provided a solution.

The Majors could learn a lesson from them…but they probably won’t.

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Gestern bin ich bei der Erstellung dieses Posts auf Topspin Media gestoßen. Topspin ist ein kleines Startup, das deshalb in das Visier der großen Medien geriet, weil Ian Rogers, bisher Musikchef von Yahoo, seinen Arbeitsplatz dort einnehmen wird. Insofern eine spannende Sache.Wer sich ein bisschen auf der Webseite des Unternehmens rumklickt stellt fest: das ist eine geile Geschichte. Mir ist noch nicht 100% klar geworden, was das Startup genau macht, aber genau so stelle ich mir die Zukunft der Musikindustrie vor: ein Merger von Tech-Mentalität und musikalischer Kreativität. Ähnliches kennt man ja auch bspw. von Last.fm. Faszinierende Unternehmensideen in einer zusammenbrechenden Industrie. Leute, die dort arbeiten, sind für mich die Zukunft und auch die Hoffnung der Musikbranche.

Wenn ich da höre, dass sich große Plattenbosse trotz Rekordverluste immer noch dicke Gehaltssteigerungen genehmigen, dann kann man sich denken, dass diese Generation der Label-Funktionäre aussterben wird, ja, aussterben muss. Leute wie Ian Rogers oder der jetzt neu angetretene Präsident von EMI, der von Google kommt, kündigen an, dass die neue Generation der Musikmanager eine andere sein wird. Zugeben, die alte Garde hatte schon auch ihre Charme. Dieses völlig übertriebene Hummer-Champagner-Koks-Rolex-Geflecht (ein Bild davon konnte man sich bei dem kürzlich ausgehobenen Wespennest bei EMI machen, wo ein Posten von 200.000 Pfund für »Fruits and Flowers« entdeckt wurden – damit waren Drogen und Prostituierte gemeint!) hatte schon eine solch übertrieben Eigenwilligkeit, dass der Glamour der Inhalte auch auf die Manager der Firmen zurückfiel.

Aber das ist eben vorbei. Zukunftsträchtige Musikmanager kommen weder mit der Harley Davidson, noch im maßgeschneiderten Anzug zu Vertragsverhandlungen. Dafür stehen sie abends in Wuschelfrisur und Röhrenjeans im Club, twittern ihre Eindrücke vom Konzert, haben einen vollgepackten iPod und keine Berührungsängste mit neuen Technologien. Diese Leute sind Geeks. Und das meine ich positiv. Sie haben eine Passion für Musik, aber sie haben auch ein liebendes Verständnis für Technologien, Netzwerke und das Internet. Doug Morris, CEO von Universal, soll angeblich bis heute keinen Computer im Zimmer stehen haben. Stattdessen lässt er Email-Antworten diktieren. That’s not the future. Topspin, Last.fm und andere sind drauf und dran die Musikbranche des neuen Jahrtausends zu prägen.

PS: Eigentlich hatte ich diesen Post zuerst für Boogiezitty geschrieben. Da er aber inhaltlich so gut passte, gab’s eine Parallelveröffentlichung auf COMMENTMUS!C….

 Está más que demostrado que el éxito de internet pasa por una buena gestión del crowdsourcing. Este término acuña la práctica de delegar la creación de contenidos en los usuarios finales, en lugar de un cuerpo editorial centralizado, y gestionarlo de la mejor manera con la tecnología llamada Web 2.0. WordPress, blogspot, La Coctelera, y otras muchas redes de blogs permiten a los usuarios subir sus posts (artículos), de esta manera, se suman muchas visitas de curiosos, y las empresas que proveen las plataformas bloggeras venden la publicidad o servicios de valor añadido. En Last.fm, los usuarios colaboran al contenido publicando las canciones que escuchan, en myspace, se publican blogs y canciones, en flickr, fotos, en Youtube, vídeos, y en wikipedia, se colabora para lograr la enciclopedia más completa que jamás haya existido.

En la industria musical, esto no había pasado. Es más, las discográficas, y las entidades de gestión de derechos de autor han concentrado todos sus esfuerzos en eliminar las masas de fans que se estaban formando mediante descargas P2P u otras formas de intercambio.

Ian Rogers (la diapositiva anterior le pertenece), desarrollador de Yahoo Music, cuenta en su blog la demanda existente de hacer llegar a cada fan la música que él quiere, y no la que le venden (o sea, RIP a la fórmula discográfica tradicional). De ahí su definición Web 2.0 de calidad. Además, hace incapié a otra realidad. Mientras muchos contenidos existentes en internet han encontrado un estándard, la música no. Los covers de los álbums han desaparecido en la red por no existir un formato estándard, y los fans los echamos de menos, las playlists no se pueden compartir entre usuarios, la estructura de datos de los usuarios en un portal musical cambia… Sin embargo, hay que ver qué bien funciona el estándard de Youtube para compartir vídeos. Ante esta carencia, han lanzado la iniciativa Openmediaweb.org de Lucas Gonze, para la búsqueda de estándares web en la industria musical.

Normalmente, por el crowdsourcing se entiende reunir los recursos de usuarios para crear que éstos encuentren lo que necesitan. En la música, esto va un paso más allá, porque no son usuarios, SON FANS. Si el crowdsourcing tiene fuerza normalmente, los fans tienen el doble.

DJSanRoman ha logrado muy buenos resultados reuniendo editores con intereses comunes, en un blog, tanto en el blog DJSanRoman, como en Retromusica – aprovecho para anunciar mi colaboración en este último, y de muy buena gana -. En estos blogs, el cuerpo editor somos sólo fans a los que nos vuelve locos la música. Nvivo mantiene su agenda de conciertos a base de reunir a fans, salas de conciertos, y artistas. Son ejemplos de cómo empezar pequeño, pero con el instinto necesario para triunfar en internet.

Este futuro es cierto para todos. Músicos, si queréis aseguraros un buen futuro, debéis buscar opciones que os pongan en contacto con vuestros fans. Contacto no es “llegar a muchos fans” – eso es antiguo. De hecho, de comenta Ian en su blog que el equipo de Sony BMG encargado de lanzar estrellas como Sting, ha desaparecido -, sino interactuar con los fans. En este blog se publican muchas alternativas de este tipo.

I’m wondering if Yahoo is slowly getting back into the game. They have incredible amounts of traffic to their sites but never seem to be able to convert it into great services and loads of revenues, when compared to a company like Google.

I am not wondering about that because Yahoo might be joining OpenID, which is great.

I’m not wondering about that because they are finally starting to innovate around probably one of their biggest assets, email, with Yahoo Life (not a great name, but I understand it is under construction. I think it is a very smart move. I have always questioned why so little innovation takes place in the biggest interaction thing around since last century (yes, I’m referring to e-mail). I wrote a post about that earlier, called “Dear Yahoo, Microsoft, Google e-mail: Forget about Facebook, start innovating”.

I’m not even wondering about that because right now I’m listening to a song by Dizzee Rascals – Sirens, which is not on my computer, but it’s embedded in a new browser based MP3 player Yahoo released just now. It allows you to listen to music on web pages without having to download software, which is kinda cool and useful.

I’m wondering if Yahoo is slowly getting back into the game because it seems they have some great people on board. Remember, great companies start with great people. Jim Collins wrote in his excellent book “Good to Great” that great companies first get great people on board before they figure out where to drive the bus. I wrote a bit about that here. Yahoo’s Ian Rogers falls into that category (picture taken from his blog).

I wrote about a presentation he gave last year in a post called “Advice to the record industry: Go from distribution of music to distribution of emotions”.

I posted 5 advices there,and I think it is pretty cool that at least four of them are now being worked on by Yahoo. I said:

1. Stimulate fan interaction. Provide the fan with a platform in which he can access the music content and mash it up into something new and exciting.
2. Focus on additional content. If the music is free, why not give it to the fan for free? But lock him in with additional merchandising stuff, exclusive pictures, video’s, tickets to live concerts, contests, live chats with the band, etc. And while you are at it, combine that with the excellent branding opportunities it provides. And make damn sure it is easy and convenient for the user.
3. Think interaction. People love to interact, and a fan is more than willing to pay for it. That is why they go to concerts and listen/sing along to the music. Add the mobile platform to this.
4. How about providing the user easy ways to record and distribute his own music.
5. Provide the music for free and across any platform the fan uses. Think iPod, think mobile phone, think stereo set at home, think computer, think p2p etc. Make distribution even more convenient than it already is, and make a living of the emotions.

With the release of their browser based MP3 player Yahoo is now creating the technology to make distribution easier. They are clearly thinking about user interaction and creation, additional content. In other words, Yahoo is looking at the experience of music, not the distribution of MP3’s. And that is why I am a fan of Ian. He just wrote another excellent post as a followup to last years work.

He is acting on the assumption that the previous walled garden the music industry has been build upon has set back that same industry for over 8 years now. I like Ian’s personal mantra

“I will not invest in futile attempts to create digital scarcity. I will always leverage scale”.

Ian turns out to be a visonair in this industry where he openly discusses previous failures and now promotes an open system in which the focus is to create user value. Not just for record or distribution companies, but for everyone in the ecosystem.

Ian might get some difficult questions regarding revenues, return on investments, etc. but I’m betting that he is going to kick start a change in the music industry, and to go along with that, within Yahoo too. A change where the focus will not be to leverage scarcity, closed or walled gardens. But to leverage user value, with open systems and easy to use tooling. Ian is added to my list of  people I admire and follow for what they are crying out to the world. These people all embody leadership that ultimately will lead to a next revolution in developments and thinking.

I read this on Digital Music News two days ago but didn’t report on it then, I’ve come across it again and it makes bloody good sense so here is Ian Rogers (Vice President and General Manager of Yahoo Music) talking about his frustrations with content owners (read: music majors): “In the end you get what you pay for,” Rogers expressed during an executive presentation last week at Digital Music Forum in Los Angeles.  “I won’t spend another dime paying engineers to build false control, making listening to music harder for music lovers. I will put all of my energy into making it easier and making the experience better.”

He went on to explain that he doesn’t feel the subscription model will work and blames labels and content owners for the ridiculous access restrictions they put on their music: “Yahoo didn’t want to go through all these steps,” Rogers explained. “The licensing dictated it.”

Story on Digital Music News

Read Ian Rogers very entertaining and insightful blog here

With all the jittering and twittering on Google buying Jaiku some interesting posts might not get the attention they deserve.

First there is the excellent post by Ian Rogers (Yahoo Entertainment) on  8 waisted years in the music industry.

Then there were several more announcements (here) after Radiohead took the lead in letting the fans decide what to pay for their latest album. I already wrote a piece on the disruptiveness of that measure here.

Sounds like we are going into an exciting new phase of the music industry. If anyone can alter the worthless defensive strategies the industry came with from the inside it would be the bands and their fans!

I’m pretty excited about this. Music is a powerful emotions, communication and community driving factor. Let’s see what services will pop up in the next few months. It wouldn’t surprise me that the illegal downloading of music can be diminished to a small factor by creating the services people actually want, instead of treating them as thieves who cannot be trusted.

(Foto de OceanFlynn, con algunos derechos reservados)

La folcsonomía es definida por wikipedia como un medio colaborativo por medio de etiquetas (tags) simples en un espacio de nombres llano, sin jerarquías ni relaciones de parentesco determinadas. En fin, para los que le suene a chino, folcsonomía se suele manifestar en una nube de etiquetas, tags, o palabras clave que nos facilitan la búsqueda de música, si hablamos de Last.fm, ilike, o Nvivo, de fotos si hablamos de Flickr, o de vídeos si hablamos de Youtube.

Ayer, a raiz de este post de Enrique Dans, conocí el blog de Fistfufayen (Ian Rogers). Ian ha adquirido cierta rimbombancia en la blogoesfera tras una presentación realizada en el Digital Music Forum – ojito al cartel de los asistentes – en la que de manera muy directa, critica las tonterías que la industria musical ha llevado a cabo en los últimos 8 años. Entiéndase por tontería dar la espalda al consumidor que ama la música, y derrochar la inversión en desarrollos absurdos como el DRM.

El análisis que Ian Rogers hace es bien sencillo, y creo que se resume con esta cita de su blog:

So we have media consumption experiences with no context (desktop media players) and an incredible, endless, emergent contextual experience where media consumption is a pain in the ass, illegal, or non-existent (the Web). FIX IT. Your fans are pouring their music-loving hearts into blogs, Wikipedia, etc and what tools have you given them to work with? Not much, unfortunately.

Como ejemplo para contextualizar la música, nos enlaza a este artículo de Business Week, en el que se resalta el papel fundamental que tiene la crítica de un prescriptor cualificado en la decisión de compra del consumido. ¿Compramos el mismo coche, a pesar de una opinión que nos pueda haber dado el gerente de nuestro taller de toda la vida? ¿compramos unos pantalones porque tenemos criterio, o porque se los hemos visto a nuestro primo, y “éste sí que sabe”, por tanto yo también me lo compro?

Joey Anuff ha materializado esta observación en Metacritic, un portal que busca críticas de ocio por todo internet, y las agrega. Todavía es demasiado anglosajón, en contenido e idioma, como para que nos sea útil a la mayoría de hispano hablantes. Ebay y Amazon llevan tiempo cuidando el tema de las críticas y prescriptores. Los usuarios cualifican a los colegas de la comunidad, y esa valoración se convierte en poder de prescripción y recomendación.

Discrepo de las redes sociales basadas 100% en folcsonomía por dos razones: 1) nunca es bueno abusar de una tecnología, pues tarde o temprano alguien la combinará con otra y conseguirá un mejor resultado que robe los clientes, es decir; no es una ventaja competitiva sostenible a largo plazo 2) la psicología humana necesita prescriptores, opiniones de referencia.

blv25

Enalces:

Metacritic

La cuestión no es si la intención al compartir archivos en Internet se hace con ánimo de lucro o desinteresadamente; el fondo de la cuestión no es si se trata de algo legal o no; tampoco si es moral o amoral. Las descargas “ilegales” son un fenómeno imparable hoy día y mañana día y existirán mientras existan las personas, los contenidos digitales y la sociedad de la información siga adelante. Ninguna ley ni sistema podrá deternelo, cualquier esfuerzo económico, legislativo, gubernamental, político es un esfuerzo baldío. La solución no es gastar el dinero en algo imposible, sino invertirlo en soluciones provechosas para todos.
Así lo ha entendido Ian Rogers VP de desarrollo de producto de Yahoo! que, ante un nutrido grupo de prebostes de la industria musical aseguró que su empresa no invertirá más dinero en sistemas encaminados a impedir el acceso de los clientes a los contenidos, ni adquirirá o distribuirá contenido alguno sujeto a este tipo de sistemas.
Tomo prestada parte de la traducción de Enrique Dans sobre las palabras de Rogers:

Hoy vengo a deciros que no volveré a caer en esa trampa. Si los sellos licenciatarios ofrecen su contenido a Yahoo! poniendo más barreras ante los usuarios, yo no estoy interesado. Haced lo que sintáis que debéis hacer por vuestro negocio, yo seré educado, daré las gracias, pero declinaré firmar ningún acuerdo. No permitiré que Yahoo! invierta más dinero en incomodidad para los consumidores (…)
Ocho años. ¿Cuántas oportunidades hemos perdido en esos ocho años? ¿Cuánta ingenuidad y arrogancia teníamos cuando dijimos ’si lo construyes, ellos vendrán’? ¿Cuánto hemos gastado? ¿Y cuanto hemos ganado? Ni hemos conseguido la adopción de los usuarios, ni tampoco su confianza, dos requisitos previos para el éxito en Internet.

Guerra abierta por tanto al DRM. Estamos de enhorabuena.
Fuente: TechnoCrunch

“How is it that a board set up by Congress would ask a growing business to pay more than 100% of its revenues in royalties? We’re all asking ourselves that question and, to be honest, still scratching our heads a bit.”

Yahoo Music general manager Ian Rogers, on his company’s abject failure to lobby for more profitable song-licensing fees, Yodel Anecdotal, 25 June 2007