Update: my new book "The Future of Content" was just released on the Kindle
I want to start 2011 in a renewed spirit of generosity and sharing, so here are the complete PDFs of my last 3 books, for free; provided under a Creative Commons,non-commercial, share-alike, attribution license (see below). If you still want to buy the dead-tree versions of these books (or donate something for the free PDFs - yes, that's an option, too;), you can visit my Lulu Store, or go to Amazon.com, or check out my 'Paying for Gerd' page. You can also return the favor by blogging or tweeting of Facebook-liking my stuff. Thanks, and enjoy, and have a great 2011.
Pay with a tweet: Music 2.0
Pay with a tweet: Friction is Fiction
Update: my free videos (50+ keynotes and presentations) are here, the iTunes podcast feed is here (just subscribe to download all videos to your iPod / iPad / iPhone, or computers), and my free slideshows (90+) are here, on Slideshare :)
I am delighted to be able to share this brand-new translation with all my friends, tweeps and colleagues that speak Portuguese. The essay was kindly translated by Paula Neves, Analista de Marketing Digital at Approach (Brazil); be sure to visit her blog or Linkedin profile.
Gerd Leonhard: Conteúdo 2.0: ‘proteção’ está no modelo de negócio e não na tecnologia (pensamentos sobre o futuro da venda de conteúdo).
Abastecido pelas agitações na indústria da música e, finalmente, com a transformação muito rápida dos livros para o formato digital, há bastante debate em torno do fato das pessoas compartilharem habitualmente isto é, redistribuírem conteúdo digital sem que os usuários paguem por isso. Como se pode monetizar o conteúdo se a cópia é gratuita? Essa pergunta é uma questão chave em todos os sentidos, seja com a música, com livros digitais, noticiários, editoração, TV ou filmes. Há o medo, claro, de que a partir do momento que um item digital foi comprado por uma pessoa, ele pode ser facilmente encaminhado para qualquer um se estiver num formato aberto, assim reduzindo significantemente a possibilidade de que outra pessoa pague dinheiro real por ele também (claro que o mesmo também é verídico para conteúdo digital supostamente trancado ou protegido – só demora um pouco mais). Não ter mais controle sobre a distribuição = não ter mais dinheiro. Certo?
Apesar do simples fato da GDD (Gestão de Direitos Digitais, ou Digital Rights Management em inglês) já ter se mostrado desastrosa no mundo da música digital (e agora já é praticamente o passado), medidas técnicas de proteção ainda vêm sendo investigadas como um método plausível de se garantir o pagamento, especialmente no efervescente setor dos eBooks. Isso me preocupa muito porque medidas técnicas de proteção são caras, atrapalham ou previnem a adoção em massa, encurtam ou matam o compartilhamento social, o que derrota o marketing usuário-usuário, normalmente limitam drasticamente o uso honesto, e são geralmente inúteis no combate aos piratas reais, isto é, os que têm intenções maldosas e criminosas de roubar conteúdo e vendê-lo para outros.
Não somente conteúdo – Contexto! A meu ver, o pensamento de que a distribuição de conteúdo tem de ser controlada para que haja qualquer forma razoável de pagamento é fundamentalmente equivocado por causa dessa percepção não-tão-futurista: numa economia aberta e enredada (nota: estou falando sobre hoje e não amanhã!) editores de conteúdo têm de oferecer seus bens de uma forma que não mais considere a distribuição como o fator central. Não deve-se vender (somente) o conteúdo (ou seja, meros 0s e 1s) e sim também o contexto, os valores agregados, os vários outros itens em torno do conteúdo. Venda o que não pode ser copiado.
A tendência irrefutável é que a janela de oportunidade de se ‘vender cópias’ (isto é, iTunes, música digital, Kindle, etc) está rapidamente fechando, pelo menos na maior parte dos países desenvolvidos. A próxima oportunidade, e já muito presente, está na venda do acesso e serviços de valor agregado, e no fornecimento de experiências ligadas ao conteúdo.
A partir do momento que abarcarmos que os usuários – as pessoas dantes conhecidas como consumidores – não podem ser reduzidas a meros ‘compradores de cópias’, poderemos investigar como eles gostariam de pagar por todo o resto também. Por exemplo, ao comprar um eBook os usuários não deveriam pagar meramente pela autorização da distribuição, ou seja, a cópia legítima das palavras, e sim também poderiam ganhar acesso a comentários altamente especializados, amigos e colegas que possam ler esse livro, avaliações, explicações, apresentações de slides, imagens, links, vídeos, referências cruzadas, conexões diretas com o autor ou o editor e assim por diante. Sim: conectar com fãs + motivos para comprar (como o Mike Masnich do Techdirt já resumiu sucintamente diversas vezes)....
It didn't take long for the TedX NewStreet (London) people to put the videos online at the TedX Youtube channel - great! Unfortunately my own talk got started while the wireless microphone was still on 'mute' so for the first minute or so (while I am doing my introduction) the audio recording was quite bad.
Therefore, I edited the video and scrubbed those 60 seconds; the result is below (using my own GerdTube / Blip.TV channel *you can get the iTunes podcast feed here). The original TedX Youtube version is below, as well, as is the slideshow, from my previous post. I think I really touched on some very important issues here, and I would be delighted to hear your thoughts on them. Fire away via Twitter, or Facebook, or comment below. And spread the word. Thanks.
It was a great pleasure to speak at TedX New Street in London yesterday (tweet flow is here, btw) I was allotted the usual 18 Ted-minutes to speak about the future of intellectual property and copyright - a piece of cake! Here is my presentation, below - let me know how you like it. Hopefully we will have a video on Ted.com pretty soon, as well. If you want a quicky download (rather than the high-res slideshare version, below), you can try this low-res PDF: Future of IP and Copyright Gerd Leonhard Tedx London LOW RES
Lots of good stuff here - check it out. Food for thought, indeed. Thanks, Johanna. View the PDF of Johanna Blakley's TEDxUSC talk about fashion and IP.
The main shift is going to be away from the downloading of content and owning of CDs and more towards music in the cloud. That is going to happen with most media, starting first with music and then going into films and books. This is not just a music business issue. We are moving away from the copy to access. This is a very good model for the artist. In the past, most of the money was spent on the physical product – so the reproduction, packaging, shipping and retail store.
The artist basically got nothing in most cases. Skipping that whole process now means that the brand of the musician becomes the most important thing. This is very good news for the artist, the producer and the creator but less so for the industry as it’s much easier to sell a copy than it is to sell access. The idea that the artist just gets, say, 10% of the sold product is now out the window. Now the artist will give his agent or service agency some kind of fee – say 25% just as Nettwerk Records and other companies are already doing.
The issue is to get attention and clicks from consumers. If that attention is converted into a revenue share based on advertising, a subscription fee or an upselling process, then as soon as you have attention, you participate. We are still in the old system of counting on revenue per use. That won’t work in the future. The bigger your brand, the bigger the attention you will get and the more clicks you get, the more money you’ll make. I believe that consumers will ask for the access models to be free initially but then after they use it for a while they’ll be quite happy to pay so they can remove the ads or increase the quality of the stream for example. Music online will feel like free. There is plenty of money to be made from ads, but it’s just not there yet. It’s coming, though. We have seen that advertising just doesn’t work on the Internet.
It’s so easy to click away the ads or avoid them altogether. Advertising was essentially useless until now as today we are starting to see social advertising, such as on Facebook. Plus we have mobile advertising. Finally advertising is becoming more useful. The brands are no longer looking to spend 1% of their budget on social or mobile; they’ll be spending 10% or more. There is a total disconnect between the way a new business can be grown and how a lot of rightsholders perceive how the business will be paid for by Google or ISPs, for example.
That’s a very bad approach because it makes it impossible to legally grow a new model. You will be much more successful – like YouTube and Last.fm – if you don’t have the right licence and you just do it. That’s a real irony. I don’t think we’ll be able to support new services without a compulsory licence.
We need a compulsory licence for music use on the Internet so that companies like Spotify, MOG and we7 can use a licence rather than just bang their heads against a wall like they have in Germany and the US. A cloud-based model has to win out in the end, as the costs are so much lower, the sharing is so much easier. You can put all sorts of ads into cloudbased systems because you always know what the user is doing. There are lots of great benefits there. But the industry hates the cloud-based model as they lose control over distribution.
In July, I was invited to do the cover story for the International NewsMedia Marketing Association (INMA) and the latest edition of their Idea Magazine (available to subscribers, here), on the topic of how to monetize content in a digital, networked and mobile world. The magazine has now been published and INMA allowed me to publish my story on this blog, as well so.... here it is, as a PDF:
Download Gerd Leonhard INMA future of content. Enjoy and spread the word.
Wow - this was a marathon presentation on The Future of Media, in Rio de Janeiro, today (pictures of me at Corcovado to follow ;); 2 hours + on pretty much any topic related to the Future of Media: access versus ownership, egosystem to ecosystem, control vs trust, content flat rates, advertising 2.0, privacy, data is the new oil... and much more. There is a lot of good stuff in here, if I may say so myself;) Hopefully you'll agree. We will probably have a video available soon, as well, so... stay tuned. If you are interested in what else I have been doing in Brazil, more talks and videos are here (in particular the Roda Viva video). You can download the PDF via slideshare, below, or just use this low-res PDF version:
Download Future of Media Estacio Rio Public LOW
Below is a short Youtube clip from my presentation at CMC Dublin, June 11, 2010 (more details. and the PDF etc, are here). I also recorded the event on my own Kodak Zi8 but am currently having some trouble converting it into flash, so right now you can only watch it on my GerdTube channel (Blip.tv) in Quicktime, or just download the whole 800MB from there.
This is the complete, 75-minute video of my appearance on Brazil's most popular talk show on Public TV, called Roda Viva (on the TV Cultura channel). I was delighted to be invited to the show, and really enjoyed being 'grilled' by the super-smart journalists and Brazilian media experts in the studio. We could have talked forever! The show was originally broadcast on April 26 (on Brazilian TV as well as online, see the Twitter buzz here) but unfortunately the webcast did not work very well so this is the first time I have seen the video, myself, and thanks to Roda Viva / TV Cultura I am delighted to be able to share this recording with you, as well.
More information about the show is here. Duda Groisman made some great photos during the recording of this show, embedded below. Related activities on this trip include: my presentation for NBS Brazil "The Future of Communications and Business", and my presentation at Fundacao Dom Cabral (one of Brazil's best business schools) on "The Open Network Economy". Please note: the video is half Portuguese (the questions) and half English (my replies)
Next10 was nice event; lot's of good conversations there. In the morning (May 11, 2010), I gave a presentation on the topic of my last book, "Friction is Fiction". You can download the book's PDF via Lulu (for $3.99) or buy the newly updated black & white dead tree version for a smashing $19.99), and if you really are adverse to spending anything you can ask me for a free, low-res version of the book (via Twitter is best). Friction is Fiction explains how before the Internet (and mobile) it was possible to generate revenues by essentially forcing the users to pay, i.e. via scarcity, distribution hurdles, dominance. This no longer works (at least, in most cases) - Liquidity is what is needed, Trust replaces Control and the winners are lubricating the digital economy. Check out this slideshow - and please share it widely!
8 months ago, I was interviewed by the House of Radon people for a movie called PressPausePlay, a really promising film that is presented by Ericsson and is scheduled for release some time later this year. I have embedded the trailer below (yes, it includes my 15 seconds of micro-fame) and really look forward to seeing the whole thing when it's ready.
Kudos to Ericsson for sponsoring a very powerful film about the huge changes in production, distribution and consumption of creative works - this is a crucial topic that is, of course, very close to my own work (see here, here, here and here). Eric Wahlforss (SoundCloud's Founder) is involved, as well, btw.
From the film's web-site: "A new generation of global creators and artists are emerging,
equipped with other points of reference and other tools. The teachers
arenʼt certified schools anymore - itʼs web sites, discussion forums and a
“learn by doing”-mentality. We see the children of a digital age,
unspoiled or uneducated depending on who you ask. Collaboration over
hierarchy, digital over analog - a change in the way we produce,
distribute and consume creative works. PressPausePlay is the first film to capture this new ecosystem.
We meet the creatives at the frontier of production, the technical
enablers of collaboration and distribution, the artists, the pop stars,
the film makers, the business men, the visionaries and the ones left
behind. Itʼs a story from the smallest molecule to the largest
corporation. Itʼs a snapshot of today, but at the same time predictions
of a near future.
Weʼre not creating a documentary in the classical sense of
shaky cameras, bad lighting and unbearable sound. Although we have a
small budget, we got big aspirations. The film will in itself be a proof
of the evolution story weʼre telling, shot in digital 4K and finished at
the end of 2010. Ready for both the big (cinema) and the small (mobile)
screen. We will release rough edits and interviews as well as the final
film free for anyone to use, broadcast and distribute. PressPausePlay will be an observation, a testimony and a
tribute"
Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist
These free books by Gerd Leonhard are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Based on various works offered by Gerd Leonhard
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