One of the advantages of spending the summer in a big tech company is meeting writers / singers / miscellaneous interesting characters who come to talk to 30-100 of us at a time.  These people are like exotic specimens in the fish tank at the dentist’s office… which is why we call these presentations “fish bowls”.

A couple of weeks ago we met Marie Digby. Marie who? Marie the very talented and beautiful singer… that’s who. After she sang for us, she broke out of her shell and handled some Q&A. It turns out that Marie spent a full year recording her album in 2006. Her label, however, wasn’t inclined to release it, mainly considering the marketing efforts needed to promote an anonymous singer. Marie was kind of desperate, she had heard of other singers with albums never getting released. As this industry works, she can’t take the album elsewhere. That is when the proverbial friend told her to put some songs on YouTube. Marie’s cover of Umbrella, which has 8 million views to date, received Jay-Z’s praise when he told her that it was the best of the 200 covers he had heard. The label, now with a heavy dose of viral marketing, decided to release her album last April and now she is touring. The rest is history (still to be made).

Where the hell is Matt? Harding, spent an hour with us sharing stories from around the world. If you missed him, Matt is the guy dancing his geeky, silly dance on every corner of the globe. The video he released in June already has 7.5 million views. Matt was originally a game developer who liked to do his goofy dance. His first video was published before the YouTube era and got enough attention to connect him with Stride Gum, his sponsor until this very day. His second video has almost 11 million views, and his third was just released. Matt works on these projects full time. If you think it is a lot of fun going all over the world and dancing, you are probably right. But Matt actually spends typically no more than a day in each destination so I guess he spends most of his time on air planes.

To me it’s amazing how a medium that didn’t exist a few years ago is already responsible for the creation and promotion of new artists. If it wasn’t for YouTube these artists wouldn’t be where they are. Video on the internet is disrupting the way art is created. We decided that our next >play conference will be about disruption. You should be there.

I attended a meet-up today on the Open Media Web during which the presenter from Creative Commons commented on the irrelevance of whether record labels stay in business. Time will tell how many musicians will manage to make a living from music as a primary source of income, but, with the unlimited shelf space of the internet and the draw to making music, it seems certain there will be no shortage of music for us to enjoy.

As the WGA strike carries on, does the same logic apply to Hollywood? There’s certainly an abundance of video on the web. As the industry loses “share of attention” (and revenues) to web video, where does independent film-making fit into all this? Does a union still serve a purpose? Seeing as any video can find its way onto the unlimited shelf space of the internet (and our mail from Netflix), can working with producers willing to fairly compensate writers provide an attractive alternative to union bargaining with studios? (Despite the career benefits of striking reported on by Marketplace: the opportunity for less-established writers to network.)

For a humorous take, I enjoyed this inside report on the negotiations between screen writers and studios (as well as the text at the very bottom of that blogger’s site). My favorite line: “Bunch of smelly hippies, stealing our intellectual property is what the Internet is.”

(Some back and forth on Derek Powazek’s blog got me thinking about this.)

There is a not so subtle battle going on in the iPhone relationship between AT&T and its arguably dominant partner Apple. When Apple announced capability to buy music from iPod  Touch and iPhone, they were very specific in calling the service as “iTunes Wifi Store”.

1. Why would they brand such a generic function after an access technology?
2. Aren’t applications access agnostic? All these need is an IP connection to run over any access link.
3. Following this branding, should they then call their current iTunes store as “iTunes Wireline”?
4. Since most people who access iTunes store from their computers access the Internet through Wifi, isn’t iTunes store, by Apple’s definition a Wifi store?
5. Some of the branding tag lines like, “GetiTunesNow or iTunes on the Go” are taken ( ignore for a moment that these don’t come close to Apple’s standards). Yet, Apple could’ve easily branded the new project in more generic terms than as Wifi Store. Why didn’t they?

It leads one to believe that Apple’s relation with AT&T is strict about what Apple can offer on the “Revolutionary Internet Device”. From AT&T’ side, it announced that it is now offering Pandora music service to its mobile subscribers. It should be noted that Pandora service is not like iTunes in the business model, the former is subscription based and the latter is a music store.

AT&T will charge $9 a month for the Internet music streaming service from Pandora. While the AT&T’s goal is create more users for its data services through services like Pandora, it probably also will get a cut from Pandora. If they had offered iTunes store on iPhone, Apple wouldn’t have offered them any cut from the 99 cents. Apple also won’t support Pandora on their iPhone. The relation between Apple and AT&T clearly is a one up event and not based on future possibilities.
So there is iPhone which can access iTunes Wifi store only through Wifi connection, even though AT&T is the only mobile service provider for iPhone.

There is AT&T’s Pandora offer to non iPhone subscribers.

If these are not the symptoms of a relationship on thin ice, what others would you look for?

It turns out most people chose the option of paying nothing for the RadioHead album. I did too.

 Free beats fee for Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows’

Of those who downloaded Radiohead’s digital album, In Rainbows last month, about 62 percent walked away with the music without paying a cent, reported ComScore, an Internet research company.

I know others have said about how music is not about rationality but it turns out not all share that minority opinion. There sure must be an handful who paid much more than the album price. But in the end, it turns out most people after all are rational and chose Free.

If you had paid much more than free, feel free (no pun) to post your comment on how wrong I am or how the music revolution started by RadioHead was nipped in its bud.

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I wanted to welcome another esteemed member to this year’s >play music panel.  Andrei Marinescu is the Director, Marketing and Business Development at MOG, an “online community where music lovers can discover people through music and music through people.”  In a recent blog post, Andrei lays down a few insights on what’s going on in the online content and media space–I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this at the conference on Saturday.  Welcome Andrei!

I thoroughly enjoyed an interview of John Buckman discussing Magnatune on Out-Law Radio. I enjoy John’s perspective on many subjects. Of note, pay-what-it’s-worth-to-you was tested long before Radiohead’s recent news. One thing I didn’t know: most of the money for (small?) bands is in licensing? Maybe the clarifying details were edited out of the interview.

I think John’s dead-on by identifying that people don’t want “ownership” of digital music to require a data back-up process that would make a Fortune 500 CIO proud. Heck, we can’t even manage to transfer phone numbers when we switch phones (unless you store them on your SIM card, part of the GSM standard designed for portability, only to be made unportable by U.S. carriers).

I’m totally confused what the interviewer meant by Magnatune has “broken every intellectual property rule in the book.” I’m not aware of a label that shares as high a percentage of revenue with its artists.

In related news, I also enjoyed what Ian Rogers of Yahoo! Music had to say about the ongoing battle between record labels and their consumers.

I see fans’ willingness to “overpay” for music as an indication of their desire to stimulate creation of more art that they like. Emotion, not logic, drives both the appreciation and creation of art and leads to both inelastic demand and supply.

An enlightening strategy by one of the major labels emerged today when Sony BMG Music reached an agreement with NewsCorp’s MySpace to stream music videos on the highly trafficked social network. In contrast, Universal Music Group last year filed a lawsuit last year against MySpace for allowing its users to share videos by its artists. Clearly one of these companies gets it, the other seems stuck in the stone ages, despite a nasty rumor that it’s executives are reaching out to the civilized world.

>play Music Panel will discuss the changing business models of digital music. I would like to ask the panelists, “Why should I pay any more than $0.00 for the RadioHead downloads?“ 

Are you going to be a >play to find out? >play is on October 27th, at Haas Schol of Business. Register Now.

Here is what people in LinkedIn world has to say to this question:

Radiohead like other Pop and R&R artists are reveling against
traditional recording business. If you are a believer of this new model
business you should address this initiative.

If the answer really is zero, then delete the files.

So I say, don’t agonise over whether to pay, just do the first thing
that comes into your head. If it thats to download for free, then do
it, if you feel you want to pay then do it. But don’t let anyone tell
you what to do.

The music panel features:

Moderator:
Kelli Richards – President, All Access Group
       
Panelists:
Vickie Nauman - Alliance Director, Sonos, Inc.
Andrei M. Marinescu, Director, Marketing and Business Development, MOG
Anu Kirk, Director of Product Management, Rhapsody at RealNetworks
Tom Conrad - CTO - Pandora, Inc.
J Gibson - Director of Operations - reapandsow records

Technorati Tags: music, business model, digital music, drm, radiohead, free music

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I’m sure the music panel at the >play conference will have fun with this one… BusinessWeek has a story about the Neanderthal record label Universal Music (though figurative, isn’t it fitting how we still refer to these organizations as “record companies?”) setting its sights on a new digital music service.  No, that wasn’t a typo… Universal is said to be reaching out to other labels to join forces and offer a super service at a low cost to consumers, with the fees built in to the hardware devices.  Sounds like a lot of moving parts to me, and a lot of negotiating with opposing forces.  Though Universal currently has agreements with Microsoft, Amazon and a few other notables to provide its music on their services, I find it hard to believe that the most important player (Mr. Jobs) will acquiesce to this zany new idea given the very public and personal ongoing rift between Apple and Universal.  Digital Music from Universal?  Industry harmony between old players and new?  C’mon already…

I remember the time when VH1 really played music videos. Any music videos I watch are on my iPod, I buy them on iTunes. When music is being given away for free does it make sense to produce those expensive videos and try to make revenue out of them. The music videos, when they first came out and were played on cable, served as marketing vehicle to sell album. If songs themselves are marketing vehicles for artists, should videos be treated as revenue stream?
In a recent interview with USA Today, Universal Music’s EVP Rio Caraeff says,

Clearly, the days of multimillion production budgets for videos has waned, but we’ve been able to do more with less. The budgets have come down, but the creativity has risen. With the challenge of doing more with a smaller budget, some of the best videos have come in with no budget, using Mac computers, high-def cameras and a small crew.

I even envision a world where music videos are created by the fan, and collaboration that exists in a digital, all-Internet world — the artist creates the song, and fans can go online, and make the videos. We’re going to see a lot more creativity. It’s no longer just about one big company publishing, it’s a two-way communication. This is completely new to our industry and something we embrace.

The contrived music videos will no more show up on iTunes or Yahoo!Music. Like classical music, it is now left to interpretation. They supply music, we supply video. I think Caraeff nailed it with this call. Do you?

Technorati Tags: music videos, user generated content, music video democratization