innovation

The Christmas wishlist

December 3, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Normally the list of what I’d like for Christmas would be a 50-50 split between technology and entertainment, but the responsibility of being a new homeowner and a new parent in the current financial climate means the end of the gadget list.

Instead, I want to list some of the things I’d like to see happen – some of which I could actually play a part in catalyzing. (Although, if you do want to gift me a gadget, I’ll accept: smartphones,laptops,netbooks, a flip mino, digital slrs, or digital video cameras!).

Health and financial security for my family – One most parents would subscribe to, and why I’m quitting smoking right now.
Increased speed and data limits for UK broadband without raised costs – Everyone loves the BBC iPlayer until they realise going over their limit cost them £200 last month. And everyone would love to download a good film quickly. But unless you’re with a decent ISP (I’m with Zen Broadband – 20GB limit per month), you end up with enough to watch one video. Slowly. If the Government wants technology and innovation to help get us out of a recession, superfast broadband is an essential resource.
More innovation in the media and entertainment industry – It’s starting to happen, but only in isolation. If not, the music industry might as well bow to Steve Jobs now, whilst text, image and movies will be the toys of Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Successfully quitting smoking: After about 14 years, I think it’s long enough – at least until the child has left home and I’m too old to worry about impotence or my breath smelling. (Can’t wait to see the ad google places next to this post!)
More success for my friends and people I respect: My social networks really have made true the idea that the success of my friends benefits me in some way – better quality back links if nothing else!
Twitter monetisation: We’ve talked about it for long enough, and all I want to know is how the plans will affect my usage of Twitter.
Developers who have spare time/desire to do new things: Like most people in digital, I have various ideas for services and applications which may be successful. Also like most people in digital, I’m not in a position to pay for development work, and although I know that a developer working for a revenue share shoulders most of the work and risk if it fails, I’d love Santa to find me one or two who fancy risking some time and effort.

There’s probably more, but that will do for now! I’m quite intrigued to see what some other people would wish for, so I’m asking Dave Cushman, Chris Brogan, Jonathan MacDonald, and Neil Perkin.

Will this be the Christmas of the MP3? Or could convergence save record shops?

November 25, 2008 By Dan Thornton

With some time to kill before a meeting, I took the chance to browse round the Oxford Street branch of HMV, looking for inspiration for what to buy with a gift voucher I’ve had kicking around, and also to get ideas for Christmas presents.

Aside from reminding me how difficult it can be to find unusual items in even the largest stores (in fact it’s usually easier in the small secondhand record shops I spent much of my music budget in), I also felt something a bit different about the experience. I’m not sure whether it’s the credit crunch, the success of online retailers or the rise of the MP3 but the shop felt slightly emptier than I’d have expected – and the average age seemed slightly older than usual.

The only major exception was the ever-expanding videogames section. Could this be the fact full console games are still viable as a physical product? (Not many options to download a full game, and the filesize would be bigger than the monthly data allowance for a lot of people!) Certainly I got the anecdotal impression that without the videogame section, the average age of the shoppers would be 10 years higher than I’ve ever seen – or maybe I’m just noticing more…

Coincidentally, via PaidContent and Media Guardian comes the news that 32.1 million MP3 players were sold in the UK last year. Jemima Kiss points out, quite rightly, that the title is a bit misleading – 75% of the sales included were MP3 capable mobile phones – but the important point is that 90% of mobiles sold last year were MP3 capable. Whether or not they’re actually being used for MP3 consumption is almost secondary – the point is that a huge mass of people now have the opportunity to be converted at any moment.

I’m not sure that CD player sales dropping to 8 million last year is necessarily related – after all, CD players have been around long enough to have reached saturation point – but if the money drops out of manufacturing CD players, and sales are growing in those little devices that make phonecalls, take pictures and video, surf the web and play MP3s, it’s another challenge to providers and retailers of physical content.

Why would I pust through a packed Oxford Street to experience agoraphobia in a massive store populated by those 10+ years older than me, and then fail to find my ideal purchase without ordering it – particularly when its so closely linked to lifestyle?

Funnily enough, I have seen a packed record shop recently – in Malmo in Sweden. And I wish I’d grabbed a picture, because it wasn’t just records – it was the 50’s style in store cafe.

I realise this has been a bit of a meandering post, but perhaps the takeaway conclusion is this:

Mobile phones are a triumph of convergence to provide value. Convergence is also increasingly happening with living room technology and online applications. Perhaps in a time-starved culture, more retailers need to look at how they could use convergence to build engagement and loyalty in the real world, as much as online? After all, it’s a reason why supermarkets and department stores have continued to have cafes instore. So why can’t record stores look at food and drink, live events, introducing art, photography, specific genre nights, or other ways to hook into the tribes who don’t have a reason to support them anymore?

A good plan these days is hard to find…

November 12, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Apologies for the title, which references Feargal Sharkey’s 80’s pop hit – I couldn’t face linking to it, so I went with the most famous track from his days with The Undertones.

Much better than reading his thoughts on stopping music piracy reported by the BBC, where his thoughts as Chief Executive of umbrella organisation Music UK made me wonder if he’d had a Teenage Kick to the head at some point.

“Who would have ever predicted five years ago that there would have been such a thing as iTunes, which now has an 80% global share of all downloads,”

Well, since MP3s became widely available in the early-to-mid 1990s, I’d have said it was pretty obvious it would become a dominant force in changing music distribution. And having witnessed how record companies responded (e.g. Jammie Thomas), I’d have also put my life savings on a tech company becoming the dominant solution.

“The music industry is often having to wait and see what works,”

No it isn’t. The music industry is choosing to wait and see what works because it’s scared of innovating and changing in the face of losing the reason for existing – physical distribution. Radiohead weren’t waiting to see what works, and neither were Nine Inch Nails.

“At some point, our song writers and musicians have to be treated with enough respect that they can at least carry on with some basic quality of life that will allow them to carry on creating and performing year after year.”

I’d suggest reading Kevin Kelly’s excellent post on how artists can exist with financial success in The Long Tail – 1000 True Fans. I’d also ask when respect started directly relating to being paid a living wage? And why my respect for a musician should be risked by a record company getting my Internet Service Provider to cut me off from what I consider a basic living requirement in the modern age?

Just like a Good Heart is Hard to Find, so is respect, because it is something which is earned – not an entitlement by releasing a record. If an artist earns my respect for their talent, then I’m happy to pay money directly to them – by going to their gigs, buying their T-shirts, buying their cds and constantly mentioning them. Like this chap for example.

And for some further reading, here’s my previous posts on the music industry: Behind the Music, More fuel for the record company bonfire, and Record companies are really screwed.

If the record industry wants to survive in one form or another, there are plenty of people who could lead it forward. Lawrence Lessig, Chris Anderson, or even someone with some professional musical experience as well as the vision needed, Jonathan MacDonald. Christ, offer me enough money, unlimited downloads and some gig tickets and I’ll come and sort it out for you. It’s pretty simple.

The current model will not be saved. Use the remaining profits to find the new model.
The size and power of record companies will never be the same. You screwed up by waiting this long. Get over it. I lost sympathy for you as a child when I read about how Stax was bludgeoned out of existence in the 1970s. Record companies will be much smaller, with fewer employees, and they’ll need to work harder. Like everyone else.
Innovate like crazy. Use the money you still have to throw 1000 quick and easy ideas out there. Give music away. Create better opportunities around live events and merchandise. Use ways to reach the truly passionate fans.
Embrace people that are pirating and sharing your music. They’re doing the same job John Peel did when he played an E.P made by The Undertones just as they were about to split up, and made them famous. If I found someone who was sharing music from artists with 1000s of people worldwide, I’d make him Head of Distribution!
Start hooking up with the people doing cool stuff without you – and hope you can bring something to the party to let you join. SliceThePie, Amie Street, Sellaband, Sonoma Wireworks, Blip FM, TheNextBigSound.

If I can find these sites as a music fan with a tenuous relationship to the music industry, what on earth are the people in your offices doing with their time?

Why I don’t have much sympathy for traditional media…

September 20, 2008 By Dan Thornton

The reason I’m increasingly lacking sympathy for the problems of traditional media is that the online world is still one of almost infinite possibilities. And yet the hand-wringing fear of not clinging onto the old way of doing things is what is hurting traditionalists – even when they’ve got access to funding, developers and research that should put them in a better position than a bedroom or garage start-up.

Take music an an example.

I’ve written before about Nine Inch Nails making themselves available via the internet and reaping the rewards. The free download of the previous album, Ghosts had already made $1.6 million.

Then you have technology like Songsterr, a great online resource for guitarists. If you don’t read a traditional music score, as a guitarist, you rely on ‘tablature’ – numbers and lines to allow you to play music, generally available in books and magazines. Songsterr not only displays the tab as music plays, but even allows you to slow it down to half speed, which is incredibly useful for the tricky bits. (Hat tip to Jonathan MacDonald). You can subscribe to new song updates, and see what else is happening on the Songsterr blog.

And to round off, what about a musician like Ben Walker, whose ‘Twitter Song’ has been viewed 209,201 at the time of writing, and who ended up on BBC Radio 5 due to his newfound fame. Handily, he’s blogged a lot about why the song was created, and also what has happened since it was noticed. It hasn’t made him rich, but it’s led to offers of collaboration, offers to appear at public events, and offers to write about how musicians can use social media.

Now Nine Inch Nails may be established, but they’re a band not a record label. Songsterr doesn’t seem to have any big backing, and Ben Walker is an individual bloke.

Now why can’t big traditional media companies find the time and resources to experiment, and be able to soak up the inevitable failure rate to find success through big ideas? One successful new media boss quoted me a 1 in 10 success rate for ideas, but said that 1 success generally pays for the other 9. If you can’t do that as a big, established company now, things are only going to get worse.

The Snarkiness of social media

June 24, 2008 By Dan Thornton

There’s a growing recognition that social media is still evolving from a fairly early stage of development, and there’s a way to go before it gains mainstream adoption and recognition – certainly something I agree with.

A great post by Will McInnes explores this idea with the Age of Control (the past), the Age of Dialogue (the future), and the current age, which he’s named the Age of Snark.

I think he’s correct from a business perspective, and from the perspective of people of a certain age. I think anyone of the infamous Generation Y is already well on their way to the Age of Dialogue without even thinking about it. They already gravitate to the conversation, without the hang-ups of the Age of Control. The limiting factor comes from the older generations, which still control larger businesses and strategies. But as the younger generation start to infiltrate the boardroom, they’re bringing the Dialogue with them, whether as a conscious revolution, or just something that makes sense. The only speed bump is how much of it survives the challenges of a structured, institutionalized business.