It’s the day after. The day after an after party DJ gig and a very inspiring Media Evolution event with Chris Anderson and 13 prominent panelists. “I’m lying in my bed, watching my….” notes “..thinking it could be the two of us”. In many respects all of those new ways of thinking and doing digital business is evolving now now now, right in front of us. Making us all contributers to contemporary theorizing. That’s exiting. But to me Mr Anderson is the star with smart and beautiful ways of interpreting what’s going on.
Yesterday it struck me how few music business representatives that where in the building (I saw three label representatives, including myself, and three service providers). To me this kind of event is the place to get inspiration to develop models for large, small or medium sizes catalogues of music, aka. cultural treasure. My suggestion, and hope is that for the rest of the year I will hang out with music people at Reboot and Re:publica instead of Popkomm and Musexpo. We have to get out of our boring fairs that is all about how make the most of old revenue streams. We have to look at what others are doing. Listen, look, communicate, get inspiration and gain self confidence again.
This time I was kind enough to write down some well-formulated quotes:
The reality check:
“waste music to let people figure out what it’s for”
“price is what people are willing to pay (Adam Smith)”
“in a competitive market price falls to the marginal cost (Econ101, Bertrand)”
“you will compete with somebody that will make it free”
The “solutions”:
“if you’re adding value to the internet edition people will pay”
“it’s really easy to keep costs low”
“you can try something in a weekend and fail”
“it’s hard to make money on eyeballs, you have to develop freemium and understand your customer and their behavior”
“you have to make people open their wallets for the right reason”
Also Rasmus Fleischer made a comment on the difference between free as in $0 on a price tag and just free which I thought was really interesting and haven’t been able to get out of my mind. It’s on the same topic I spoke to the scholars some days ago about - “Value vs. price”.
We are getting somewhere. It’s exiting, scary and ridiculously fun.
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1 Ray Monner wrote:
“you have to make people open their wallets for the right reason”
2 Ray Monner wrote:
“you have to make people open their wallets for the right reason”
I hate to sound like a simpleton… but, I’ve got to say it:
There is at least one good reason for people to open their wallets…
that is: To support Content Creators.
My feeling is that fans are pretty happy.
1. free music
2. unlimited selection
3. unlimited access
4. all the different listening options
is it worth talking about whether or not fans are happy? of course they’re happy.
Let’s get back to this “right reason”. I think that is a discussion about the ethics of commerce. This is laid out nicely in a book titled “Systems of Survival: A dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics” ~ Jane Jacobs
Paraphrased in the extreme, there are two systems of survival, “Taking” and “Trading”.
Surrounding music, I will simplify and say that there are two key players: A-The content Creator B-The Consumer
Right now, I think one could argue that content creators are being taken from. That is, consumers aren’t necessarily offering any goods or services to the content creator.
We are witnessing new models of generating income from content, ie. Adverts on Spotify. But, how does this get back to the content creator? Is it meaningful for the ContentCreator? Does the Consumer feel as if they are “Trading” with the artist, when they listen to a commercial. Or this an instance of “Taking”.
I believe a more significant method of “Trading” between artist and fan will exist in the future.
It seems obvious: The right reason to open your wallet, as a consumer, is to directly support a content creator. Direct Support!
Trade, don’t Take!
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