Licensed for life

As I wandered through my home I spied a stray cd copy of Julian Cope's Peggy Suicide - all alone on a kitchen shelf. I thought: "how many different formats must I own that body of work in?"
I bought it originally as a cassette because that best suited my car-borne life at that time. Later as a CD, later still as a download.
It's easy to assume that now I own it digitally I can do with it as I wish, that I could store it in some vast secure portal somewhere and repurpose as I wish ad infinitum.
Trouble is there are already higher spec digital versions available. And you just know that the quality will only improve - and rapidly.
So how many formats of a body of work are you meant to own in a lifetime? Perhaps this nagging concern - at least for anyone old enough to have a loft full of vinyl - holds us back from buying music and dvds like we once did.
Isn't it time we were able to buy a licence for access to whichever format we want, whenever it emerges, to do with as we wish? That, I might pay for.

Selling content sucks - if that's all you do...

The difficulties facing yet another vendor of content marks another milestone (gravestone?) along the road to the new media ecology.
There are lessons for all of us who sell content. There may be lessons for everyone who sells.
Fopp - one of the UK's biggest music store chains - is the latest to be hit by what is reported by the mainstream media as an issue that's all about competition from downloads and online supermarkets:
"All specialist retailers of CDs and DVDs have been hit by growing competition from online downloads and supermarkets. HMV today reported a 70 per cent fall in profits. Music Zone’s demise was blamed on the same factors..."
Supermarket competition impacts at the mass end of the business. Smaller retailers can respond to this. It is not to go head to head with the high volume - top 50 sellers. It is to serve the long tail and respond to local (community) needs. It is to provide a very different experience.
When I was a kid the local record shop (and even the small town where I grew up had one) was one-part youth club, one-part information exchange and one-part market place. I could sell old records I no longer wanted, order something obscure (they couldn't carry everything!), hang out, load up on some vicarious cool, share what I thought, form a band, etc etc
How far removed is this from the experience of buying in a supermarket?
Online vendors of downloads have (where they succeed) replicated this far better than bricks and mortar rivals.
They have understood that communities form around music - communities who want to share (is that the new marketplace of buying and selling secondhand records?) information, recommendations - and just spend time together discussing what they love and why they love it - and marketing their favourites to each other.
But that's not to say a music store couldn't capture much of the same. And by facilitating the physical meeting of communities they could take what online retailers have discovered and make it still more engaging.
Perhaps they have to accept two things:

1. Turn yourselves into a music marketplace - where people can come together to exchange information, buy (and sell/share?), and be entertained (God forbid, perhaps they could even put on the occasional gig?)
2. Offer downloads. Seriously - it is the disaggregation of digital content (the ability to choose which tracks you want, rather than buying whole CDs), that's driving download sales. Convenience is important, price is important. But serving of long-term diverse choice is the biggest factor. And it's the part of the market that is emphatically NOT served by supermarkets.

Fop, HMV, chains in general... seem to have forgotten that the marketplace was always about much more than buying your goods.

Digital media predictions for 2007

This will be my last day in the office before the New Year. I will attempt to resist updating this blog until then (about as likely as resisting the temptation of more Christmas chocs, to be honest...). However, I thought it would be a good time to make some predictions about 2007 - all of which you are very welcome to contend, add to or dismiss via the comments below.

So, I say, 2007 will be the year in which:

1) Access to the internet via mobile will surpass 40% of all internet use (globally).
2) A UK national newspaper will close its print operation. And a series of one-time print only magazine brands will become digital only (pick a number between 25 and 100).
3) Broadcast TV on your mobile will become commonplace. Sky will offer it as a bolt-on upgrade to your home services.
4) Microsoft/Google/Yahoo (one or all) will launch a mobile phone.
5) All mobile operators in the UK will follow 3 and offer fixed price mobile internet access.
6) A mobile operator will seek the edge by launching a fixed price for all services (ie £40 a month for all-you-can-eat internet, voice, text, mms...TV(?)
7) More than 10% of internet users will blog.
8) A citizen-journalism TV channel made up entirely of video shot on and uploaded from mobile phones will launch.
9) TV on demand will revolutionise how you consume TV and send advertisers into a blind panic.
10) A slow-burn campaign for users to claim back their digital identities will turn to a riot of noise by the end of the year...

Hollywood and the digital consumer

Angus Farquhar points us at the videos you'll find here at DigitalHollywood
"All the top names in the industry discussing most of the stuff we are all currently talking about using in both advertising and consumer stuff," he tells us.

Subjects included in the conference videos include:

Hollywood and the Digital Consumer: How Technology, Content and Services Establish the Next Level of Consumer Entertainment Experience

Programmable Web, Podcasting & Blogging - is Transforming and Disassembling the World of Traditional Media, Communications & Advertising

Digital Music & its Transformation: Downloads and Subscriptions in Mobile, Broadband, Pods & Digital and Internet Radio

Strategies in Wireless Devices and Services - from Audio & Video to Downloads: How Innovation Drives Avenues for Subscriber and Revenue Expansion

Game Power - Entertainment as Franchise - Crossover into Music, TV, Cable, Movie, Mobile, Advertainment & Custom Branded Experience

TV & Interactivity: Evolving Content & Business Models: Content, Commerce and Branded Entertainment

Branded Media Marketing - TV, Film, Broadband, Podcasting & Blogging, Mobile, Music and Games – Reinventing the Commerce & Media Model

Internet Video, Advertising & Marketing: The Next Generation of Consumer Reach

Entertainment Expands the Digital Home: Networking, Sharing and Protecting


etc etc,




I'll no doubt have more to say once I've had a chance to watch them! If you get a chance to see them before me (or after, for that matter), by all means have your say by posting below!