internet

Will Britain become a rural backwater online?

May 2, 2009 By Dan Thornton

Although I already knew the difference in broadband speeds around the world, seeing the direct comparison in a BBC article on 100Mbps broadband really lept out at me.

‘The upcoming Digital Britain report is expected to outline plans to give the UK population universal broadband access at the modest speed of 2Mbps by 2012.

In South Korea, the government is aiming for speeds of 1Gbps by 2012, up from the current average speed of 15Mbps.’

Now I know that companies will be able to justify the additional cost for the faster speeds available, but in an online world where everyone is networked, what’s the cost for entrepreneurial individuals if they’re stuck on 2Mbps competing with someone on 1Gbps?

I’m thinking about people like my son, who will probably start using computers and games consoles around 2012.

And about businesses which will always aim for the majority market – globally in the case of the digital world. If you’re running a service in 2012, will you build it for those on 10Mbps? 20Mbps? Or the people on 2Mbps?

The other major problem doesn’t seem to have been mentioned anywhere – in the U.S. for example, there’s uproar about the introduction of data caps at 250Gb…in the UK I’m doing fairly well to have a data cap of 20Gb!

Competing with 1/12th of the information, data and capacity available seems like a bit of a handicap.

What’s happening to rock stars and Hollywood actors isn’t new…

December 18, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Something has struck me about one of the major challenges facing entertainment celebrities – along with the though that maybe many more ‘normal’ people have faced something very similar over the last century.

In the past, people with in skilled manual occupations spent years learning their trade and craft, served apprenticeships, and worked their way up to a point where they had experience that gave them security – until in many cases machines were able to offer lower cost solutions which put them under threat.

Now actors and musicians who have worked at their craft for years, and been fortunate enough to have built long enough careers to become established face technology which mean that the skills they’ve built up alongside their talent – finding management, working with record companies and film studios, etc, suddenly gets challenged by the fact anyone with talent can produce a song and distribute it digitally, or create a film for a relatively low cost and release it via the internet.

I’m just wondering if other people think that this is one reason why some celebrities are taking the hugely proactive step of writing a letter to The Times complaining about the fact that internet piracy is apparently threatening the fact that the creative sector, according to the letter ‘comprises 7 per cent of the total economy, and is growing faster than any other sector.’ A bit of a paradoxical argument if ever I heard one.

Behind the music…

October 14, 2008 By Dan Thornton

Sonata Music by jrossol on flickr (CC licence)

Apologies as I’m a bit tired, and this may descend into rambling, but I wanted to keep the music debate going, especially after some interesting comments on my first post, on why ‘Recording companies are really screwed‘.

I appreciated the comment from Michael, who rightfully pointed out that the most common examples of bands using social media and giving their music away for free are those who have already built a following – while I agree this is the most common case, these are still new tools and new revenue models, and there are some examples of bands coming through the internet – e.g. Soulja Boy. And the precedent comes from the underground hits of pirate radio and dance music, or the spread of 1960’s Stax Atlantic and Motown in the UK, which was mainly provided by soldiers and sailors from the U.S.

What forced me to respond was Eaon‘s valid questions about challenges and options beyond ‘big labels vs internet’. He’s right in saying that major labels are an easy target (not that this means we shouldn’t continue to targte them), but I don’t think he’s right in putting Murdoch’s Myspace against traditional record labels. This isn’t about a social network replacing a record company – it’s about social networks as a distribution mechanism, along with email, forums, blogs, podcasts, video streaming, and every other method of delivering music and entertainment in an electronic format vs the attempts of the traditional industry to retain models and methods that served the physical format.

Busking: Pic by joeszilagyi on Flickr (CC Licence)

Eaon also said that the broad strokes of my previous post didn’t work for him, and I can understand that, but I’m a big fan of reducing things to their most basic, and starting with the essentials. And that tends to result in the broadest picture, but also the clearest view of what’s really necessary. So to take that to it’s ultimate conclusion:

Music is created. Either recorded or transferred into a digital format.
Music is published on the internet. Possibly with a video to accompany it, or a blog, website, Myspace page, Facebook fan page etc.
People who like the music download it, and if they like it enough, share it with friends and contacts via email, social networks, blogs. More mainstream media will gravitate towards that which gets a significant following.
The creator is rewarded with an audience of some size. Monetisation could follow with a physical release, gig tickets, merchandise.

That’s about as simple as it gets! Speaking as someone whose music career was limited to messing around with a 4-track home studio and a couple of sessions in a ‘proper’ studio to record a couple of EPs which never saw the light of day to my knowledge (perhaps fortunately), I’m hoping the more musically experienced will take a look and point out anything I’ve missed, but this seems the simplest, most direct, and most robust music creation, distribution and consumption model.

And I know it’s easier to say in a blog post than to achieve, and that the music labels still retain enough pull and advertising budget to be able to theoretically make every stage easier, more polished, and potentially more far reaching through their ability to book advertising in mainstream media and invest in the physical media and distribution with ready cash – but increasingly those days will fade. There’s no need for me to track down a rare vinyl album to establish my musical credentials with my peers as we pore over the cover and inner sleeve – unless I’m DJ’ing, it’s quicker, easier and just as good for my reputation to email an mp3 or a link to someone obscure or new. And whether you believe in influence, or emulation, if the conditions are right, that content will continue to spread, with or without support.

For instance, Youtube phenomenon OK Go had already achieved success via a major label and broadcast appearances – but did that do more than the $10 video released without record company knowledge that got seen 9 million times? Or the follow-up, which has now been seen 40 million times on the official profile on Youtube alone?

For a more recent, homegrown example, check out Ben Walker’s Twitter Song and the story behind it.A fun ditty aimed at Twitter users as a bit of a social media experiment gets viewed 272523 times at the time of writing, and leads to interviews on national radio!

And from a financial point of view, I’ve tried to find the quote that stuck in my mind as an aspiring musician, from guitar legend Joe Satriani. He revealed that although his major label albums had brought him more fame and publicity, it was his independently recorded and released records that brought him the income he needed.

I don’t think the record companies will cease to exist this week or this month. But I think the angle of decline will increase to terminal velocity pretty soon, and I can’t see any label making the moves needed to avoid it or even flatten it out. Instead I see sites like Slicethepie, Amie Street, Sellaband etc. And there’s the romantic notion that it revisits the idealised days of Stax Records allowing people to come together for the music first and financial rewards second. After all, the people with access to recording booths and vinyl pressing plants have had the power for long enough. If they don’t offer consumers and artists anything of significant value, they become redundant.

So who’s going to help me keep shaping this into a more in depth vision of the music industry? Where is the future taking us, and are there more examples of internet delivery and fame creating new success?

How I found music – and how that’s changed

August 28, 2008 By Dan Thornton

When I was a child and teenager, I was as obsessive about music as it was possible to be. I combined aspirations of becoming a professional musician and DJ, with the compulsive behaviour of a serial librarian and collector. So you can imagine how many music magazines (NME, Melody Maker, Metal Hammer, Kerrang, Record Collector, Mojo, Q etc), and how many records and eventually CDs I consumed – just to make it clear I’m not completely over the hill, CDs came into circulation when I was about 11 or 12 I think…

And just as my interest in videogames and comics have both waned during early adulthood and resurfaced now due to meeting likeminded people online, my interest in music has seen a healthy resurgence. In the meantime, I still listened to all my old purchases, but I rarely found anything new. That’s changed a lot thanks to the internet.

There are basically three sites I use for all my music needs (although for the moment I still only have a radio in my car!)

Blip.fm – There’s been a lot of buzz around Blip recently. In fact, I even suggested it shows the best method of monetising Twitter, as it’s essentially a cross between a microblog, and an annotated John Peel show. You simply tell people what you’re listening to, and if it’s available on the site they can listen as well – and that’s all filtered by who you follow, with the option to buy MP3s if you like something enough. It’s perfect for a quick blast to find songs I’d have never heard about, or listened to, unless it was recommended by a trusted source.
Last.fm – It’s essentially the only real option at the moment if you’re outside of the U.S. We can’t access Pandora (but founder Tim Westergren has stated it’s close to closing anyway), and Meemix seems to have focussed on extras rather than a reliable player.
Myspace – Yep, it’s hard to believe in the age of Facebook dominance, and open source Muxtapes, but if I hear a bands name, and I want to hear their songs really quickly and easily, I tend to end up going to Myspace even before last.fm – mainly down to speed. It’ll be interesting to see if that means I use it more when the Myspace streaming radio finally appears. It might replace last.fm, but only if it offers a stream of my favourite choices without a need to subscribe

And that’s about it for music. I very occasionally catch a music show on TV (I’ve been looking at 4Music as it’s co-owned by Bauer Media where I work, along with Kerrang). I hear the radio for about 10 minutes in the car (and that’s only until I replace the stereo so I can listen to podcasts), and my only real radio use is to listen to live football if I can’t watch it. Three online services, and the recommendations I receive have replaced pretty much all my other musical inputs.

And incidentally, all my latest CD and MP3 purchases have all been songs that I would never have heard on the radio, were all things I generally struggled to find in most music shops, and once again persuaded me how much easier it is to find music online.

Will the internet reputation ever regulate companies?

August 4, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I recently noticed several missed calls on my mobile from a number I didn’t recognise, so decided to Google it in a spare moment, and discovered that it’s a well known nuisance cold caller, LBM Marketing. Luckily there’s a page with plenty of information with what you can do if you’re called by them: ‘LBM Direct Marketing – nuisance calls‘.

While I was happy to find that information before I got cornered by an annoying cold call, I started wondering about how much of an effect the internet has really had in convincing companies to become more honest. Obviously there will always be bad apples, but the complaints on that page go back to July 2006. And despite details of complaints to the likes of the Telephone Preference Service, and Ofcom, the calls are still continuing for new targets.

It made me question how many people did any research on these numbers after being cold-called. With over half of the UK on broadband, if everyone researched who was calling them, it should soon make it unprofitable for LBM to continue the way they have – and yet they seems to be still able to continue as normal.

The question is how to improve the information available online, and help to inform as many people as possible about the options available to them, or how online information could help regulators.

(And it’s not just companies creating problems, after the confusion caused by the @ExxonMobilCorp account on Twitter, which was perceived as an official source, and has since been revealed as a fake.)

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