I am honored to have the pleasure of working with Ericsson on a few of their pretty cool future-oriented activities, including the 2020 ideas project and the PressPausePlay movie. Here is what Ericsson says about the 2020 project:
"...Broadband connectivity and mobility are changing the way we live, the way we work, the way markets function, and the way societies operate. At Ericsson, we need to collaborate and get inspiration from people outside our business in order to adapt to these changes - people that take a stand, and that want to share and work together. which I think is just fabulous. In 2020 – Shaping Ideas, we ask 20 thinkers to share their view on the drivers of the future and how connectivity is changing the world. They describe a future where a growing population faces never before seen challenges and opportunities; where digital natives will shape their lives and the enterprises they work for, and where technology could create a global golden age...."
Naturally, there is a ton of stuff available online, on the Music Like Water riff, but if you want to start somewhere, check out my follow-up book Music 2.0 (free online / mobile version here), my MidemNet 2009 video "Compensation not Control", and my various slideshares on related topics, here (one of the best ones is 'making money with music when the copy is free')
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.
Last year, I was interviewed by Consumers International's Luke Upchurch for this really powerful film, during the 2009 TACD / Paris Accord meetings (see this presentation on the Future of Content), and a couple of snippets actually made it in here. Along with a few juicy snippets (incl. one by John Kennedy / IFPI), this film outlines the latest developments in this space really well - in fact, it's outright scary what is happening here - watch this movie!
To coincide with the second annual publication of
Consumers
International’s IP Watchlist, CI is launching this short online film,
looking at the renegotiation of the relationship between copyright and
consumers. This is a film about how copyright has become one of the most
important
consumer issues of the digital age; why corporate lobbying risks
criminalising the actions of hundreds of thousands of people; and what
the future holds for the fight for fairer copyright laws. When Copyright Goes Bad is for anyone interested in how copyright
is
affecting consumers.
Apart from my 20 own seconds of micro-fame, the movie also features: Fred Von Lohmann - Electronic Frontier Foundation;
Michael
Geist - University of Ottawa Law School; Jim Killock - Open Rights
Group; and Hank
Shocklee - Co-founder of Public Enemy. @Shocklee @michaelgeist @sunil_abraham
@eff
Please share, embed and pass on.
For a variety of
film formats,
blog commentary, language versions, additional footage and more, go here.
Everyone in the content industry should watch this demo, below, of what the Wired guys are working on - it's fantastic food for thought; exciting stuff. And just gotta love Scott's Matrix-dude-like, gravely voice in beginning;). Well done, guys.
4 'IF' comments: 1) If the publishers can and will provide very addictive, immersive and interactive experiences at LITERALLY no-brainer prices or via bundled services (big 'if' here) 2) If the media companies and 'rights-holders' decide to get rid of all that crippling and legitimate user-insulting DRM and other technical protection models (remember, Protection is in the Business Model) 3) If the advertisers and brands are really going to fast-track their support for these kinds of new platforms 4) If everybody can finally resist the temptation to make this yet another 'walled garden' competition, albeit with prettier flowers....THEN indeed, we just may have something here. I'll be watching (+).
I just re-discovered a video of an interview with me (see below), during Picnic 2009; posted by the European Journalism Centre. There are a few important points from the video that I want to share with you:
The new winners (with the possible exception of Apple;) are all pursuing open platforms; i.e. products and services that can easily yet deeply connect with others (I sometimes call this 'the cult[ure] of API'), companies that are ready to collaborate, co-create new business opportunities and share revenues (see Google, Skype, Twitter, SixApart, Wordpress, NPR, The Guardian, Salesforce.com, Amazon etc)
The switch from 'The Network' to 'The Networked' and from Broadcasting to Conversation is a shift across entire societies and cultures, not just in business or technology; this is further amplified by the simultaneous move towards radical globalization and increased localization
In an Open OS i.e. an interconnected Ecosystem (good examples include Google*for now, and the blogosphere) you don't compete with mere force or market-power, you compete on merit and trust. This is why I believe that once the system is more liquid and there are less hurdles to 'conversion from free', good artists / creators / producers / curators will indeed prosper more than ever before (call me an eternal optimist)
Pretty much every creator already knows it's not (just) about selling copies of his/her work, rather, in a connected and interdependent ecosystem it is about selling the brand, the perception, the experience. This is why the content industry's tradition of over-emphasizing copyright as the sole guarantor of future revenues won't work (at least not if you want to actually increase revenues rather than just maintain an illusion of control)
In an Open Content Ecosystem it won't really matter who copies what, but how much attention you get before and during the process, and how good you are in converting it into action and / or real monetary value (and this is as true for brands as it is for content creators)
In a digitally networked society, the value isn't so much in the content, itself, as it is in the context (see my previous post on the same topic)
Another brilliant post by Umair Haque via the Harvard Business Review - he spells out a lot of stuff that keeps coming up in my presentations, as well; so here's a bit of a remix of this juicy post, my comments are [...]
"On one side is the old high ground of the industrial era capitalism; on the other, the new high(er) ground of next-generation capitalism. The yawning chasm in between them is the gap between the 20th century and the 21st" [I call this the EGOSystem vs the ECOsystem, see more here and here]
"Currency intervention, breaking Copenhagen, crackdowns , collusion, corruption, coercion, and censorship: China's ongoing bad behavior as global citizen is, when we connect the dots, the gigantic elephant in the world's boardroom. What's driving it? The quest for monopoly, monopsony, and control" [I wrote about something quite similar in my 2007/2008 blog-book "The End of Control", check out the free online chapters here, and a related presentation, here]
"That's yesterday's high ground, and China's focused like a laser beam on it. China's moves are the textbook stuff of b-school's blackest arts. Through larger distribution, fiercer litigation, greater exclusivity, cheaper and faster production, a bigger cash pile, advantage is gained. But the high ground has shifted. The new high ground is an ethical edge. It's
not about having more; it's about doing better. It's not about
protecting exports, pressuring buyers and suppliers, price
discriminating against the powerless, and programming consumers to buy,
buy, buy — it's about making people, communities, and society
authentically better off. It's not about caring less — but caring more.
It's not about ruthlessness. It's about mindfulness" [Couldn't have said it better, myself; here are just a few things I would add: in this new ecosystem that Umair is describing, we will need to develop web-native economic models and entirely new metrics for evaluating them, friction will indeed be fiction (to a very large degree) and the importance of control will be utterly eroded by the steadily increasing power of trust, engagement and transparency]
"The old high ground was built for 20th century economics: sell more
junk, earn more profit, "grow" — and then crash. An ethical edge
operates at a higher economic level. It is concerned with what we sell, how profits are earned, and which authentic, human benefits "grow." It's a concept built for the economics of an interdependent world" [A key term, imo: an interdependent world, i.e. not a broadcast world but a connected and networked world]
"An ethical edge just might be the ultimate cause of advantage.It's
how better distribution, production, marketing, and pricing — all just
proximate causes of advantage — ultimately happen. Jim Chanos's
investment thesis says: without an ethical edge, new value cannot be
created — old value can only be shuffled around (hi, Wall Street)....So here's the single question everyone should be asking. The old high
ground is the new low ground. Yesterday's mountain is today's valley.
Are you ascending to the new high ground?"
There are a ton of really great kernels of wisdom and learnings in this open letter by Google's Jonathan Rosenberg. Be sure to read the whole thing; but here is the most essential part:
"Closed systems are well-defined and profitable, but only for those who control them. Open systems are chaotic and profitable, but only for those who understand them well and move faster than everyone else. Closed systems grow quickly while open systems evolve more slowly, so placing your bets on open requires the optimism, will, and means to think long term. Fortunately, at Google we have all three of these"
It was a pleasure and a privilege to be invited to the Telco2.0 Executive Brainstorm event in London, today, and to address a roomful of telecom & media executives that were - as it says in the conference tagline - looking for a way to 'reduce the friction in the digital economy'. After having to listen to some rather bizarre and, sadly, rather 'retro' justifications about why those pesky Internet users and Digital Natives (i.e. our kids) really do need to be threatened with disconnection from the Net if they don't comply with the rules of yesterday's game, delivered with great pathos by the usual lobbyists from UKMusic and Universal Music Group executives (see the list of panelists below), I tried to get down to the bottom line of what the workable alternatives to their Control & Enforcement paradigms could be.
Funny thing is, that in the subsequent vote most people in the audience seemed to actually agree that disconnection and punishment are not going to change anything and are not a suitable path to new revenues... I always wonder why there seems to be strong consensus if people vote (or talk) individually, but if you hear them 'in public' everyone always delivers the good old party line of wanting more control and protection. Why is that? Whose bread we eat whose song we sing... is that it?
I will post a summary here, shortly. In the meantime, here is the slideshow (download the PDF via slideshare). A
Once again, great stuff by Mary Meeker and her Internet team at Morgan Stanley, via the Web2.0 summit. The video, embedded below, is good, too, but in my opinion it's the the slides that matter most: every single page packs a punch and makes you think. Great mix of facts, statistics and some key foresights. A must-read (and then... digest). Techcrunch has some great comments on this presentation, here.
El 29 de junio de 2007, mientras estaba en London Calling, fui invitado a hablar a un pequeño grupo de líderes de sellos independientes en su reunión anual AIM / WIN
en Londres. Aproveché esta oportunidad para dar un vistazo a lo que
debe suceder para que las compañías de música independiente realmente
puedan sacar provecho de la nueva economía de la música que se está
desarrollando en estos momentos. Así que … algunos de mis pensamientos
se comparten a continuación.
Hoy quiero presentar mis opiniones sobre lo que me gusta llamar
“Música 2.0″ – la próxima generación de la industria de la música que
se está creando en estos momentos. Este nuevo modelo es radicalmente
diferente. Muchos de las viejas formas de hacer las cosas, muchas de
las relaciones anteriores y muchas de las viejas tradiciones no pueden
y no van a sobrevivir.
Quiero seducirlos, a ustedes los líderes de la industria de la
música independiente, a recorrer este nuevo camino conmigo, para dar un
salto, para dejar algunas de sus presunciones y sus ‘religiones’ a un
lado, y hacer jugadas audaces – porque esto es lo que se necesita para
darle la vuelta a este barco. Scott Fitzgerald, el famoso novelista, dijo: “La prueba de una
inteligencia de primer orden es la capacidad de tener dos ideas
opuestas en la mente al mismo tiempo, y todavía tener la capacidad de
funcionar”. Este claramente es el desafío de la industria de la música
para avanzar!
Las innovaciones técnicas y económicas durante los últimos 10 años
han despojado de muchas tradiciones, jerarquías sociales y económicas y
monopolios a la industria de la música, y si hubiera una cosa que
pudieramos decir con seguridad creo que sería que ahora es tiempo del
show, que finalmente la industria de la música ha llegando a un punto
de inflexión importante: 10 años después de que la primera empresas
.com sacudió la tierra. Le tomó mucho más tiempo de lo que todos
pensamos pero la está golpeando mucho más duro ahora: las ventas de CD
han caído entre un 20 – 40% en lo que va del año, y las ventas
digitales no están haciendo la diferencia en el corto plazo – y la
carrera de un solo caballo que es iTunes claramente está en un callejón
sin salida.
Nos estamos acercando rápidamente a un punto donde nos vemos
obligados a sumergirnos en lo que me gusta llamar “Music2.0″ – un nuevo
ecosistema que no se basa en la música como un producto, sino en la
música como un servicio: primero se vende el acceso, y sólo entonces se
produce la venta de copias. Se trata de un ecosistema basado en la
ubicuidad de la música, no la escasez. Un ecosistema basado en la
confianza mutua, no el miedo.Como dice Don Tapscott, en su gran libro “Wikinomics”, podemos
pensar en Web 1.0 – la “antigua” web – como una especie de periódico
digital, mientras que Web 2.0 es un lienzo que permite que la
información sea presentada, compartida , modificada, y remezclada. Se
trata de la interactividad, las opciones de envío y recepción lo que la
hacen útil y «especial». Y sobre todo en la música, que siempre, desde
el principio, ha sido acerca de interactividad, de compartir, de
participar – no de vender-vender-vender...
Welcome to Content 0.0? I am in beautiful Sydney Australia for a keynote speech at AMBC, the Austral-Asian Music Business Conference; for a keynote on Music 2.0 and the Digital Music License tomorrow (August 21, 2009). AMBC is a great event and I am very happy to be here, but for the past 30 minutes we were subjected to one of the most bizarre, desperate and - sorry to be so frank - ...mad schemes of how to turn digital content into money on the Internet - and of all people, by one of the original Kazaa guys, Skype investor, and CEO of Altnet and Brilliant Entertainment, Kevin Bermeister. I have recorded some of his speech on my iPhone voice-memo recorder, and may make it available later, but here is, in a nutshell, what Kevin and his company, Altnet, seem to propose (and be sure to read their recent press release on the relaunch of Kazaa):
Put a Cisco 'Copyrouter' into the network of each ISP, everywhere
Have the Copyrouter (ouch... that word alone gives me the chills) look at all traffic that is based on or runs on certain P2P protocols, and define what's being shared via the unique hashtags that each file represents. Deep packet inspection... go!!!
Block all traffic with hashtags that have been flagged as 'unauthorized' (i.e.... all?), and replace them with files that are DRM'ed (yes... really) and that can be downloaded only if you allow a charge to be levied by your ISP.
I won't even attempt to delineate what I think is wrong with concept because there are so many issues that they would fill this blog for the next 30 days. But the mere fact that this kind of scheme is being presented in a keynote at a leading music industry conference is, frankly, making me feel quite hopeless on the future of digital music. But maybe I am wrong... you tell me (comment box below)
Anyway, first, Kevin seems to want all our traffic to be deep-packet inspected (i.e. monitored) so that a automatic determination of it being lawful or not-lawful can be made. That, in itself, is a bizarre and utterly unfeasible concept has already been rejected by the European Commission and almost all governments around the world (except for France), because it only points in one direction, and that is towards CHINA's version of the Internet. Police-states, Censorship and severe lack of freedom of expression and speech. Are you serious, Kevin? Is this what you want so that the major labels and studios can keep or shall I see regain total control over distribution of content rather than to license it to everyone, and share in revenues (as is, strangely enough, happening with Google and the record labels in China!)? I hope not.
Second, Kevin seems to want to have the illegal files (again.... that means all files, really) be automatically replaced with copy-protected files (did you think those were retired, too...?) that must be purchased by the user, via the ISP.
In other words, let's just re-insert Total Control back into the system, and force every Internet single user to a) pay whatever the price is (without having any say on that) b) use ONLY approved devices that can play back the DRM'ed content. If that's future of digital content... count me out (along with 98% of the online population I would say). Put that Content under the rock again!
This scheme is too painful even to just contemplate; I mean it's so far out that it hurts... so, over to you guys, for comments, please.
My final thought: this reminds me a lot of the recent Onion video ('Google Opt-out Village') that makes fun of how you can regain 100% of your privacy on Google. Watch it and make the connection;). More on this, soon. Update: Read GigaOm's take.
I was delighted to be invited to make a contribution to the RSA Journal's July 2009 edition, the printed version of which was just send out I believe, and the online edition that just went up on their website.
The complete title of my piece is: "The price of freedom - reinventing the online economy: Gerd Leonhard explains why ‘free’ content can still pay in the long term" and I really enjoyed writing this for them.
Following my last presentation at the RSA, in April 2009, on 'The Future of Content and Creativity' I have had many good conversations about this topic. The audio track from this event is here, btw; and the video is embedded again, below. Enjoy. And RT;)
I definitely recommend that you check out the other great features in the Juy 09 RSA journal, as well, there's some great gems in there.
You can read the entire thing on the RSA page, so here is just an excerpt:
"Free information, free music, free content and free media have been
the promises of the internet (r)evolution since the humble beginnings
of the World Wide Web and the Netscape IPO on 9 August 1995. What
started out as the cumbersome sharing of simple text, grainy images and
seriously compressed MP3s via online bulletin boards has now spread out
to every single segment of the content industry – and even into
‘meatspace’ (real-life) services such as car rentals. Without a doubt,
‘free’ has become the default expectation of the young web-empowered
digital natives and now the older generations are jumping in, too.
On
top of the already disruptive force of the good old computer-based
Web1.0, we are witnessing a global shift to mobile internet – a WWW
that is, finally, so easy to use that even my grandmother can do it.
While five years ago, we needed a ‘real’ computer tethered to a bunch
of wires to port ourselves to this other place called ‘online’ and
partake in global content swapping, now we just need a simple smart
phone and a basic data connection. With a single click of a button,
we’re in business – or rather, in freeloading mode.
As users,
we love ‘free’; as creators, many of us have come to hate the very
thought. When access is de facto ownership, how can we still sell
copies of our creations? Will we be stuck playing gigs while our music
circles the globe on social networks, or blogging (now: tweeting) our
heart out without even a hint of real money coming our way?
Daunting
as it may seem, we can no longer stick with the pillars of Content1.0,
such as the so-called fixed mechanical rate that US music publishers
are currently getting ‘per copy’ of a song ($0.091). Nobody knows what
really defines a copy any longer when the web’s equivalent of a copy
(the on-demand play of that song on digital networks) may be occurring
hundreds of millions of times per day. No advertiser, no ISP and not
even Google has this kind of money to pay the composer (or rather, the
publisher), at least not until the advertisers start bringing at least
30–50 per cent of their global US$1 trillion marketing and advertising
budgets to the table.
Traditional
expectations and pre-internet licensing agreements are exactly what are
holding up YouTube’s deals with the music rights organisations such as
PRS and GEMA: this is what the rights organisations used to get paid
for the music that is being copied, and this is what they want to get
paid now. This impasse is causing significant friction in our media
industries worldwide. Yet, below the top-line issue of money, there
lurks an even more significant paradigm shift: the excruciating switch
from a centralised system of domination and control to a new ecosystem
based on open and collaborative models. This is the shift from
monopolies and cartels to interconnected platforms where partnership
and revenue sharing are standard procedures. In most countries,
copyright law gives creators complete and unfettered control to say yes
or no to the use of their work. Rights-holders have been able to rule
the ecosystem and, accordingly, ‘my way or the highway’ has been the
quintessential operating paradigm of most large content companies for
the past 50 years.
Enter the internet: now the highway has become
the road of choice for 95 per cent of the population, the attitude of
increasing the price by playing hard to get is rendered utterly
fruitless. Like it or not, a refusal to give permission for our content
to be legally used because we just don’t like the terms (or the entity
asking for a licence) will just be treated as ‘damage’ on the digital
networks, and the traffic will simply route around it. The internet and
its millions of clever ‘prosumers’, inventors and armies of
collaborators will find a way to use our creations, anyway. Yes, we can
sue Napster, Kazaa or The PirateBay and we can whack ever more moles as
we go along. We can pay hundreds of millions of dollars to our lawyers
and industry lobbyists – but none of this will help us to monetise what
we create. The solution is not a clever legal move, and it’s not a
technical trick (witness the disastrous use and now total demise of
Digital Rights Management in digital music). The solution is in the
creation of new business models and the adoption of a new economic
logic that works for everyone; a logic that is based on collaboration,
on co-engagement and on, dare we mention it, mutual trust – an
ecosystem not an egosystem. Once we accept this, we can start to
discover the tremendous possibilities that a networked content economy
can bring to us.
Free, feels-like-free and freemium
Much
has been written on the persistent trend towards free content on the
net. It is crucial that we distinguish between the different terms so
that we can develop new revenue models around all of them. ‘Free’ means
nobody gets paid in hard currency – content is given away in return for
other considerations, such as a larger audience, viral marketing
velocity or increased word of mouth (or mouse). I may be receiving
payment in the form of attention, but that isn’t going to be very
useful when it’s time to pay my rent or buy dinner for my kids. Free
is... well, unpaid, in real-life terms.
‘Feels-like-free’, on
the other hand, means that real money is being generated for the
creators while their content is being consumed – but the user considers
it free. The payment may be made (ie sponsored or facilitated) by a
third party (such as Google’s recently launched free music offering in
China, Top100.cn); it may be bundled (such as in Nokia’s innovative
‘Comes With Music’ offering, which bundles the music fee into the
actual handsets) or the payment may be part of an existing social,
technological or cultural infrastructure (such as cable TV or European
broadcast licence fees) and therefore absorbed without much further
thought. Feels-like-free could therefore be understood as a smart way
to re-package what people will pay for, so that the pain of parting
with their money is removed or somewhat lessened – everyone pays,
somehow, but the consumption itself feels like a good deal...." Read on. PDF: Download RSA - The price of freedom Gerd Leonhard July 2009
"U.S. universities are getting a glimpse at a plan that would build a
small music-royalty fee into the tuition payments they receive from
students. If successful, the model — proposed by digital music
strategist Jim Griffin on behalf of Warner Music Group — could be
expanded to make ISPs the collector of such micropayments, eliminating
some of the most irksome and contentious issues dividing the music
industry and its customers...Many experts believe the
original Napster represented a major opportunity for the labels to
monetize file sharing in a manner similar to the way performance
royalties are collected from restaurants or radio stationsand avoid
further alienating their customers by hauling them into court..."
I am, of course, delighted to hear that this is happening, not just because Jim Griffin (now working at WMG) is an old friend and fellow digital music industry catalyst, but also because this kind of a deal - even though it is still very early and a 'covenant not to sue' is not the same thing as a real, voluntary or even compulsory blanket license - can really show the way towards solving the 'problem' of what those pesky digital natives want as far as their music consumption (better: engagement) is concerned.
If anyone can do this, and work with both the major labels and the students / fans and universities, it will be Jim Griffin! Naturally, the Net is now buzzing with comments such as 'this is a music tax' and other, similar misunderstandings, so I hope to be able to join this debate in the next few weeks.
A similar discussion will happen at MIDEM, one of the leading music industry conferences, in Cannes / France (January 17-21), and I will be presenting on this topic during the annual MidemNet event (details here, Midemnet blog here). My Music 2.0 slideshow, below, is embedded again, for your perusal and download - but please talk back, or tweet something.
Techdirt's Mike Masnick has a comment on this topic, here, btw, saying that this conversation should be public - I like that idea, as well (but realize where the problem with that lies, too ;)
One more snippet from Wired which is important:
"A Wired.com poll showed that approximately 70 percent of readers would pay $10/month for legal access to all of the music on the internet, and we understand that Choruss would call for a significantly lower fees than that. Its detractors might be underestimating the consumer appeal of an inexpensive, unlimited and unrestricted music network"
Now, juxtapose this with an interesting stat from eMarketer, below and ... thinking cap on!
Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist
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