publishing

Saving print media- at least part of it

October 19, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’ve got a hunch that might develop into a theory with a bit of love and attention, and though it was worth sharing.

We all know that print media is in decline – ranging from slight drops to terminal free fall depending on the market. But does this mean print will cease to exist?

Or will there always be a print market as a niche of the digital world, in the same way as vinyl still exists as a viable niche within the music industry?

Ignoring the fact that an ageing part of the population will prefer print for a few more years to come, are there ways to ensure that people under 30 engage with print in some way? After all many vinyl sales over recent years are not aimed at an ageing population, but at a young, cool, DJ market who choose it over mixing with MP3s and CDs even now.

In this way, vinyl becomes remarkable, a talking point, and a Purple Cow. It signifies you’re a DJ, with either skills that require vinyl, or retro taste, and that you’re willing to go further to obtain a particular song in the format you want – whether it’s a new record, or a collectible classic.

I’ve been thinking about how print could become remarkable again, having achieved it as a medium for spreading the news before the arrival of mass radio and TV, and as a home of great content. Why, even in the face of decline, is there not more experimentation? For instance, with the impact of the financial crisis, why wouldn’t a broadsheet try printing a 5 page version, with only financial news, and selling it for a far lower price? (Perhaps the costs of printing and distribution etc might be overcome by mass sales and the publicity?).

Perhaps more titles need to look at the sales of anthology editions of certain brands – for instance videogame magazines Edge and RetroGamer have both published anthology editions which can command high prices on ebay.

Or a hand-printed, collectible newspaper? The Manual was actually distributed a week or so ago as an attempt to reawake the idea of print as collectible and powerful.

Empire magazine has always had some interesting cover ideas (Disclosure I work for publishers Bauer Media), like the 100 different covers for their recent rundown of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. As well as the famous quotes on the spine of the magazine.

Some magazines have experiment with size, mostly going to A5 ‘handbag size’ for the female market. (Male mag Jack failed despite writing which echoed the days when Loaded magazine had articles worth reading). But as the market is changing so rapidly, maybe there’s something more that could be tried?

Or considering a brand like Moleskine evokes a sense of luxury and culture in notepads, perhaps small runs of magazines could appeal to that market?

It’s late and my memory is failing me, so I’ll ask if anyone has any more ideas and examples of the extraordinary and remarkable?

Disclosure: I work for Bauer Media, which has a large portfolio of magazines in the UK. Nothing here indicates any projects that I know of. Any original ideas written in the comments remain the property of the author – however, if someone does come up with an amazing idea, it’s likely you might get an email from me. If you’d rather express your idea in private, please do email me at thewayoftheweb at googlemail.com

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?

The Twitter election and a glimpse of the future

September 26, 2008 By Dan Thornton

As an Englishman (albeit one with a degree in American Studies), I’ve followed the U.S presidential nominations with a fairly casual interest, and with a slight leaning towards one candidate, but not enough that I’m going to talk about it.

Instead, I’m going to proclaim this the ‘Twitter Election’, and the sign of how news and reporting is changing for the better. First up is Twitter’s own Election 2008. It’s fascinating to watch the opinions and messages appearing every second, although the fact that it seems to be based around the keywords of candidates names means I’m tempted to tweet about McCain oven chips and see if it appears!

What’s interesting is how public service broadcaster C-Span has integrated Twitter, Blog coverage, Video, a Debate timeline and a keyword list into the ‘Debate Hub‘. It’s a great example of how ‘aggregation of sources of information provides a starting point for a media company to add it’s own expertise and reason to provide something of value.‘ Sorry, thought that sentence was worth highlighting, although other people have been saying the same thing for a while.

I’ve talked in the past about Twitter providing a news mechanism that trumps mainstream media for events like earthquakes. And I’ve taken a look at what mainstream media needed to do to utilise the new tools available or become increasing irrelevant.

But events like the death of Heath Ledger, or the various earthquakes around the world had a much more striking effect for those that were on Twitter at the time than for the majority of non-microbloggers waking up hours later and being perfectly happy with the coverage they were broadcast – because they weren’t up at 2am to witness how radically different it could be.

This time, it’s an event which has been flagged up in advance, allowing the word to spread – and it’s increasingly being adopted by various mainstream media sources to a greater or lesser extent, allowing far more people to see the benefits of microblogging over traditional coverage.

And I predict we’ll see more and more of this in the coming months, even with controversies like the decision from an U.S. newspaper and website to Twitter live from a child’s funeral. Whether or not it was the correct way to treat that particular situation at the current time, it’s a sign that the boundaries are shifting, and going past simply acknowledging Twitter coverage. And for microblogging to hit the mainstream, the boundaries need to be a long way further down the road than the mass adopters.

I think it’s also the reason for Twitter moving towards grouping, as much as for users. It’s why I was interested in the previously posted quote by Ev Williams, saying that groups are coming. I don’t think it’s necessarily about just Twitter for enterprise as an inward facing tool. I think in Twitter’s case it will also be about groups and tools for outward facing use by companies, which is why they’ve been seemingly slow to respond to Yammer, Present.ly etc.

It’s about raising routes to monetise from enterprise, but also providing the tools to grow the userbase to drive significant revenue. Facebook does OK at 100 million active users per month – Twitter has about 2.5 million registered used. And that mainstream exposure could be the push it needs.

Newspapers can do the web if they want to…

September 10, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’d just finished reading a very good post by my colleague Dave Cushman on the death spiral of newspapers and how to avoid extinction in the online world. I think he’s totally on the money about the two key missed opportunities of the print industry (Missing the quality advantage and missing the R&D advantage), and I agree there’s a slim but closing doorway of opportunity for those brave enough to make the change in the face of falling profits and a global credit crunch.

And in a wonderful bit of coincidence, my RSS feeds pulled in Mindy McAdams moments later, pointing to the winners of the Society of News Design multimedia design competition.

Both of the Gold Awards (See full details of all winners) went to the New York Times for two pieces which really demonstrate the power of online reporting and design, and the advantage a different thought process can bring.

The Crane Collapse in Manhattan shows brilliantly how animation and design can really add to the understanding of an event unfolded, particularly for anyone not familiar with how cranes work. Meanwhile Climbing Kilimanjaro is beautifully simple, using graphics and video for a personal account with a real personal touch.

The lesson isn’t that online journalism has to always include amazing graphics and design (but they help!). The lesson is that a different approach and understanding of the online world leads to a huge amount of success. Something which some of my colleagues have started utilising with great results, and something which is the norm amongst the most popular content sites (newspapers, blogs, and anything else) on the web.

I want great writing. I want great images. I want great video. I want great conversations. But I only want any of those things when they’re relevant to me and the need I have at that moment.

Why external links are the only realistic answer

August 23, 2008 By Dan Thornton

There’s been some discussion on the practice of linking internally within a site, kicked off by this piece by Tim O’Reilly, and spreading to places like JP Rangaswami’s Confused of Calcutta. JP references the Cluetrain, and the idea that links subvert hierarchies, and break the broadcast model and walled garden approach.

Which is entirely true.

But I think there’s more we need to understand before we can cure the problem of non-linking or just internal linking, and I think some of it is down to ideas which are rooted deeper than even traditional publishing.

I think some of it is down to ambition and desire. There’s an interesting passage in the Michael Moore book, Stupid White Men, where Moore explains the lack of taxation and control of the rich in the U.S. as a product of ‘The American Dream’. The majority of people don’t want to heavily tax and control the top 5%, because the American Dream tells everyone that they can make it, with just the right amount of hard work and luck. And who wants to restrict their dream life before they’ve even got there.

Of course, it’s incredibly hard to accumulate that kind of wealth – Moore points to Europe as having a more realistic approach where people generally want to achieve a comfortable life, rather than one of incredible wealth. And while that may be a huge generalisation, the fact there’s a Swedish word, ‘lagom‘, which is used to sum up the culture and approach as being ‘just enough’ suggests there’s some basis in fact.

And the same division applies to websites.

If you believe you can cover everything on a topic, or that’s your ambition, then you’ll think internal linking is enough. Wikipedia limits or deletes external links (particularly to commercial organisations) – yet I know for a fact that thousands of people happily follow those links for more information every single day.

And unless you’re one of the big 1% of websites that can match Wikipedia, or the BBC, or even established names in relative niches like Techcrunch and Robert Scoble, you need to re-assess where your aims are taking you. It’s not impossible to become one of the top five tech bloggers in the world, but it’s highly, highly unlikely.

The best thing to do is to be realistic and accept that unless you’ve got a lot of backing, a lot of time, or are incredibly lucky, then you’re not going to become an overnight millionaire – and whatever success you have will take a lot of work. That means you won’t be able to quit your day job, or spend all your time organising a crowd-sourced army of contributors. So you have to be realistic about it, go with the strengths you offer in particular, and link to the rest.

Hence why I’d recommend some highly qualified people to talk about link journalism, like Scott Karp or Jay Rosen. And there’s the more grass roots approach of Pat Thornton (no relation). And there’s more on how journalism and publishing can save itself by linking and changing it’s aims from Howard Owens.

These ideas apply whether you’re an individual blogging alone, or a Mega News Corp, or anywhere in between.

There’s a great Stowe Boyd quote:

‘“I am made greater by the sum of my connections, so are my connections.”

So make yourself great by making relevant connections. Google will reward you for it, your readers will see you as a filter for all relevant knowledge rather than an annoyance when they have to search for the context of what you’re written, and the world will be a far better place.