conradbuck » Music Industry

Gerd Leonhards presentation “Music 2.0 – The Time is NOW”

conrad — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:04:01 +0000

I’ll be honest, I don’t connect with many of Gerd Leonhard’s opinions on the music industry and where the whole music landscape is going but he does have some good snippets in many of his presentations. This is one of them from this presentation:

“The first question is not: shall I pay money for your music. The first question is WHY shall I pay attention to you.”

The above resonates with my previous post on how fans connect and follow artists and that just liking your music is not a good enough reason.

Why don’t I connect with some of Mr. Leonhard’s predictions and suggested solutions? Because many of his opinions are of a futurist, and futurists are continual predictors of supposed and wished for directions and solutions that rarely happen or are unrealistic to execute in time and space. The consumer will ALWAYS be ahead of the online marketing, social media and digital music industry. It’s easy to say that the walls surrounding copyright and pay-for-music should come down and that the future of music is free and paid for by advertising. But we all know that this isn’t sustainable and the ad revenue model doesn’t even work. Continually predicting what should be done always “tomorrow” doesn’t bring us any closer to executing solutions that deal with today’s issues, no matter how out of date they are.

The Archive

conrad — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:27:09 +0000

Watching this video makes you realize what the music industry came from, and to what it is now.

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Music fans don’t want to just listen, they want an experience!

conrad — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:01:07 +0000

Last night at the Montreal Jazz Festival I met up with my business associate and friend Arnold Schwisberg, an entertainment lawyer based in Toronto. Arnie and I have worked together over the past eight years on various projects and always end up dissecting the music industry whenever we meet up. Having dinner with him overlooking the throngs of people milling about, watching and dancing at the Jazz festival, gave us front row observation seats to how people interact in the physical presence of music.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ilker/721462049/

The gratification of buying music in a physical format along with it’s percieved value has almost been diluted with the rise of digital distribution. Music is available on demand. The consumer controls how and when they are entertained. Entertainment is from the bottom up and no longer the top down. The record labels no longer pull the strings, and the consumer doesn’t just dance to any tune. So what was really interesting to observe out on the street tonight was that just the musical attachment and significance to such an event as the Jazz festival was enough to satisfy Jazz aficionados, music fans of all genres, families, children, teenagers, retirees, vacationers and even pets! From the hundreds of Jazz Festival logo merchandise items that were flying off the shelves, to the 200,000 or so people that crammed themselves into the main stage area the previous night to watch Stevie Wonder perform live (and for free) to the throngs of event goers cramming themselves into the Archambault music tent that was selling thousands of Jazz CDs (yes CDs) It was obvious that a music experience is still a bigger promoter, captivator and marketeer than the humble single or the declining album. Even the radio industry is suffering but yet thousands of people come from all over the world to experience the experience that is the Jazz Festival.

From looking at the atmosphere there tonight, it was hard to believe that the music industry was going through such a (for some companies, tragic) change and that there is an impresssion that music is just another throw away commodity that has been devalued. What other genre of music can attract so many fans who just sit and listen and soak up the music and the atmosphere? I believe that whatever genre of music you like, from Reggae to Blues to Rap to Classical to Rock, Jazz music has something in its genetical makeup that satisfies everyones ears. It could just be a riff, a beat, a rhythm or a tone. Whatever the magical formula is, it was alive here tonight and for once the atmosphere gave music and all who create her a encouraging slap on the back. Maybe music fans have changed their listening habits but the experience and the atmosphere that goes with it can never be reproduced online.

If you don’t adapt you will die

conrad — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:00:22 +0000

Entertainment is food. Consumers are hungry. They are open to more genres, styles, artists, actors & technologies than ever before. They have money. They willingly graze seeking out greener pastures. They want to pay what is economically fair; fair to them, after all, the customer is still the backbone of the entertainment industry.

Music fans, TV/film viewers and internet users are not commodities. No more do they wait patiently for weeks to buy the latest releases. No more do they pay over the odds for “imports.” No more do they wait months for film titles to become available in an accessible format that suits the distributors marketing and revenue strategy rather than the customers lifestyle and technological needs.

If record labels, artists, film studios & television networks do not make their content available on a worldwide non-exclusive basis, their potential fans and paying customers will turn against them and will resort to P2P networks. Therefore the assumed value of entertainment continues to decline and the tables are turned. The entertainment industry is the commodity, easily disposable in a throw away fashion.

The worrying trend of zoned entertainment HAS to stop. Consumers should not be restricted to watching online TV shows and other content simply because of their geographical location. “Due to licensing rights, this content is not available in your area,” is utterly unacceptable. If you treat your customers like cordoned off, compartmentalized drones, many of them will turn to whatever sources are available to consume content. This is already happening in countries where P2P downloading of TV shows is rife. They are the same countries where potential paying customers are unable to easily access the same TV shows through legal means due to a walled-garden approach.

If you continue to deliver low quality content as a last minute scrabble to get anything and everything up online, you will continue to label entertainment as a low quality, low price disposable item. Then releasing the same content at higher quality at a higher cost only distances you from your customers and fan base even more. Broadband is everywhere. There is no excuse to continue to deliver poor quality content without utilizing high quality audio and HD video.

Much of the current paradigm shift is relevant to the ‘old school’ mentality of the entertainment industry, however, despite advancements in social media, web technology and digital delivery of entertainment, there are many new players in the digital delivery sector who continue to hold these old school values while hiding behind new technology. We have reached a new low when online streaming video of TV shows out to the global internet carries geographical restrictions. Consumers don’t understand licensing restrictions, partnership deals, syndicated arrangements. They shouldn’t have to. If someone wants to listen to your music or watch a TV show or film, it should be there available to them coming out of a swollen pipe bursting of legal content. Sadly, the legal content offering is a stop/start trickle whereas the swollen pipe as we know, is P2P.

How did this happen? How did we get to a point where customers are culturally turned into “criminals?”

The entertainment industry’s complacency, bad approach, a willingness to sit tight and keep distributing CDs and DVDs and see what happens. Believing that the physical format will always be there to prop up the majority of the industry’s income. Scared to admit that record labels, once large corporations with thousands of staff on a global basis, can now be run with single digit people and laptops.

CD distributors are either dead already or dying. DVD distributors will thin out and will eventually die. Major labels, if they adapt and survive, will close their global office locations and will downsize to a centralized physical location in one city with global satellite agents working for them out of home offices, Starbucks, college campuses.

College campuses will house their own virtual independent labels, acting as a starting block for college orientated bands and artists. The artists will be automatically plugged into the campuses P2P network that will inturn share their music will other connected Colleges around the country, all sharing upcoming college acts without label restrictions or lawsuits. This exposure will form the basis of an artists nationwide appeal and will create campus touring demand.

Wild ideas? fanciful predictions? No, this is happening right now, right here. The industry is changing, your industry is changing. Adapt or die.