... take a look and let me know how you like it:)
Entries categorized "Digital Music"
November 05, 2012
October 31, 2012
October 23, 2012
October 11, 2012
Join me November 28 2012 for an important public debate on the future of digital music in Switzerland, and the proposed music flat-rate (in German)
Cross-posted von Rote Fabrik Zürich
Vorstellung eines Modells einer öffentlichen digitalen Musiklizenz, Stellungsnahmen und Diskussion
Präsentiert vom Konzeptbüro Rote Fabrik gemeinsam mit Dock18 - Institut für Medienkulturen der Welt.
Unterstützt von Digitale Allmend
Der Eintritt zur Veranstaltung ist frei.
BITTE UNTER FOLGENDER ADRESSE ANMELDEN:
http://diemusikflatrate.eventbrite.com/
Die These:
Musik fliesst heute überall, jederzeit und auf allen Geräten, egal ob
wir einen Download oder einen sog. Stream wollen. Der Unterschied
zwischen Anhören und Besitzen ist bereits fast vollkommen verschwunden -
und genau das ist die Herausforderung für die gesamte Musikwirtschaft.
Wir brauchen dringend neue Geschäfts- und Kulturmodelle die diesem
unwiderlegbaren Trend Rechnung tragen.
Programm:
18.30:
Eröffnungsrede / Begrüssung
18.40:
Präsentation: Eine neue Internet Musiklizenz und die Musik-Flatrate: was, wie, wer und warum?
Gerd Leonhard, Autor, Musiker, Futurist und CEO TheFuturesAgency (Basel)
19.00:
Stellungsnahmen zum Thema:
Acht eingeladene Gäste, u.a. Tim Renner / MotorMusic Berlin, Poto Wegener / Swissperform.
Zusätzlich werden eingeladen: Vertreter der SUISA, IFPI, Musikschaffenden, Parteien, IGE.... etc.
Teilnehmer werden nach Zusage umgehend bekanntgegeben
20.00:
Öffentliche Diskussion und Debatte
Update: ein kurzes Video von Gerd
Resourcen zum Thema
Diskutiert wird auf dieser Facebook Page
Twitter Hashtag ab sofort:
#musikzukunft
Vorschlag zum Thema Musik Flatrate, Gerd Leonhard 1. Juni 2012
Das PDF mit dem Vorschlag
Replik der SUISA, IFPI, SwissPerform, Musikschaffende CH et al 'Untaugliche Schnapsdee' vom 6. Juli 2012
Gerd Leonhard's Antwort auf die Replik der SUISA IFPI et al
Tageswoche: Billag für Musik aus dem Netz
Musikmarkt Magazin Deutschland Bericht über die Schweizer Flatrate
Diskussion
September 06, 2012
The Future of the Music Business - a new Ecosystem (the ultimate slideshow)
July 15, 2012
In German: my reply to the Swiss music industry response on my music-flatrate proposal / Das Lamentieren der Ewig-Gestrigen: meine Antwort
Sorry for posting this in German-only; I will provide an English translation soonest! For now, here is a somewhat OK Google translation :)
Am 1. Juni 2012 habe ich einen Vorschlag für eine neue digitale Musik-Lizenz (die in Konsequenz eine sog. Musik-FlatRate ermöglichen würde) an die Schweizer Regierung und die Musikindustrie veröffentlicht, siehe hier (blog) und hier (Facebook Page) und hier (mein deutsches 'DerFuturist' blog); das PDF ist hier.
Am 6. Juli erhielt ich dann schliesslich eine Replik von SUISA, SIG, IFPI Schweiz, Swissperform, Audio-Vision Schweiz, und von Musikschaffende Schweiz (via Poto Wegener / Swissperform), mit der Überschrift "Musik Flatrate - mehr Schnapsidee als Segen!". Leider gibt es die gesamte Replik wohl nur als PDF - deswegen habe ich den Text unten nochmals angehängt.
Liebe SUISA, SwissPerform, IFPI Schweiz, Audio-Vision Schweiz und Musikschaffende Schweiz:
Zunächst möchte ich vorausschicken das ich mit eurer (* ihr / euch / eure bezieht sich im nachfolgendem dann übrigens auf alle Unterzeichner der Replik) Stellungnahme wirklich sehr enttäuscht bin - es gibt in eurer Replik nicht einen einzigen positiven Ansatz, nicht ein 'Ja' zu irgendetwas, sondern nur ein grosses 'Nein'. Schade. Ihr reiht doch tatsächlich wieder uralte Floskeln, Schubladen-Antworten und verstaubte Angst-Phrasen aneinander und stellt dann meine vorgeschlagene Lösung auch noch als Weg in die perfekte und legale Piraterie dar...
Mehr lesen ... read more here or here (via my new German blog 'Der Futurist')
May 31, 2012
My proposal to the Swiss government and the Swiss music industry: Die Musik Flatrate - das Schweizer Modell (in German!)
Update: Friday June 1 5pm EST: we now have the whole thing online (in German, for now), here, and the discussion is starting on this brand-new Facebook page.
I just finished this open letter to the Swiss government and the music industry, proposing a new, standardized digital music license, and a digital music flat rate of 1 Swiss Franc per week per user, paid by the retailers or telcos or the users.
Note: The PDF is in GERMAN until I get around to translating it: http://db.tt/IfIYAS3U
The blog post on my German site is here: http://www.gleonhard.com/2012/05/die-musik-flatrate-ein-schweizer-modell.html
More very soon!
Gerd
PS: This video says it all, really, and in English:))
May 04, 2012
Resetting the music business (good review of my keynote at SPOT festival)
Wired UK's Duncan Geere has just published a really astute summary of my keynote at the annual SPOT music conference in Arhus, Denmark, see below. It's not that I haven't been saying this for the past 10 years but I think I may have phrased it all a bit bitter:) See the slides below; and feel free to download my Music 2.0 book, here.
"At the Spot music conference in Århus, Denmark, musician and futurist Gerd Leonard discussed a series of possible futures for the music business. Leonhard isn't a fan of how the record industry has been run over the last decade or so. "The whole economy of music is based on big companies owning the rights. It's unsustainable," he said, comparing the major record labels to big oil companies.
"Do big oil companies represent nature?" he asked. "Of course not. Do the big record labels represent music? Probably not." Leonhard sketched out the reasons why people pirate music, blaming high costs and a lack of legal alternatives, and he also argued that cracking down on filesharing doesn't benefit artists. "We had 52,000 people sued in Europe over copyright infringement," he said. "That earned nothing for the artists. Only the lawyers."
But Leonhard is optimistic, arguing that music is simply migrating into something larger. "The business model of merely selling 'copies' of music is over," he said. "Let's redefine the meaning of selling. No-one knows what it means." Leonhard is a firm believer in the power of access models over ownership ones. Models where you pay a small recurring subscription fee to gain access to an enormous jukebox in the sky, just like Spotify (which he says he's a big fan of).
Leonhard claims that it would only require each person in Europe to pay two euros each month to generate revenues larger than the global music industry. That's not necessarily a practical thing to demand individuals to do, but companies have begun to roll subscriptions of this nature into other products, making this music tax more palatable. Telecoms providers have begun to bundle music subscriptions into their contracts, which is a way of making music "feel like free" to the consumer.
But that's not quite enough, he said, projecting a list of hundreds of legal music services from across the world onto a screen, compiled by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). He claimed that most of them are dead or dying: "90 percent of the legal music services are bankrupt, or there but sorta not doing anything," he said.
To fix this, compulsory licenses, like radio licenses, are needed. "The free markets won't fix this problem. They won't work. We need must-license provisions, public oversight, regulation for the common good," Leonhard said."In 2017, we'll have five billion connected devices," says Leonhard. "75 percent of that will be mobile, accessing 50 or so platforms of content, sharing a €250 billion ad market."
To capitalise on that potential, Leonhard says, music companies are already diversifying beyond simply selling records. Labels have begun taking a chunk of all sorts of revenues -- merchandise, touring, premium content, sync licensing (getting music on television, and in adverts and movies) and other sources. "We're going to make money in 50 different ways. The first music business was a grand illusion."
Ok... so far so good. There are 2 things you may want to look at in this context:
My slideshow from today:
From Ego to Eco: the future of the music business (Futurist, Author and Keynote Speaker Gerd Leonhard)
View more presentations from Gerd Leonhard
My 2020 video on Music Like Water (via Ericsson)
My most popular video on Youtube: Music Like Water (Ericsson 2020 Shaping Ideas)
Check it out. Thanks to Ericsson for the nice production work.
See more videos at http://www.ericsson.com/campaign/20about2020/.
"Music used to be a product that we bought piece by piece. Now it is becoming a public utility, says media futurist Gerd Leonhard, who argues that we will soon be constantly connected to an infinite library of songs. And when music is like water or electricity, our friends become the new music critics..."
April 12, 2012
Cloud-based music streaming trends: told you so!
From a new eMarketer post (and related report), here are some interesting snippets:
"In a sign of how important online streaming and subscription music services have become to the recording industry, trade publication Billboard recently updated its weekly Hot 100 song chart to include data from Spotify, Slacker, Rhapsody, Cricket/Muve, Rdio and MOG. The revamped methodology went live in March 2012, after several months of testing that showed a rising curve for audio streams, from 320.5 million in the first week of 2012 to 494 million during the week of March 4, 2012. By comparison, digital track sales during that period decreased from 46.4 million to 27.1 million, according to Nielsen..."
This is, of course, totally obvious: as good as it is, iTunes is essentially an inadvertent punishment for being interested in more music, since every desire to listen to aka 'consume' new music results in having to spend another dollar on downloading the track. Cloud-based services don't have that problem - and clearly I won't pay $ 20.000 to fill up my iPod with Apple's music, while I have no problem saving 2000 Spotify tracks on my iPhone anytime I want to (and for $10 / month). I have been talking about this for the past 10 years, but here it is again: access is replacing ownership, like it or not (and I don't see a reason not to like it, as user or as creator). We can wish for this to be different, but it's not. End of story. Participate or become insignificant.
"Another indicator of the popularity of cloud-based streaming was a 50.5% increase in online music listening hours in 2011. According to a February 2012 report from AccuStream Research, US consumers spent 1.3 billion hours listening to music through internet radio and other streaming services in 2011, up from 865 million hours in 2010. The media spend associated with US internet radio and on-demand streaming services amounted to $293.7 million in 2011, according to AccuStream Research. This compares with $171.7 million spent on subscriptions to those services. AccuStream forecast that the total market would grow by 78% in 2012... Ad monetization is expected to grow at a healthy clip on the mobile side as well. eMarketer expects US mobile music advertising revenues to hit $591.5 million in 2015, more than doubling 2012’s total of $264.5 million. According to eMarketer estimates, the advertising component of mobile revenue is much higher with music than with gaming or video, largely because of the popularity of Pandora and Spotify on mobile devices..."
Yes, of course, streaming music currently makes much less money for the content owners and rights holders than downloading does - but the key to making this work is to get EVERYONE involved in streaming legally via one of the existing or future services and platforms, just like radio, i.e. starting with a more or less free / feels-like-free or freemium offering. The math is simple: if 200 Million people use Spotify or Simfy or Rdio - whether they pay 'with attention' aka advertising, via telco bundles, or with their own cash - then the rightsholders will see some serious money coming their way. If they can't allow this market to grow, then it won't be created (at least not in a legal way)
The bottom line is: the music industry has to monetize AROUND the music, not just WITH the music. Think advertising, bundling, added values... new generatives. There is no sense whatsoever in fighting the obvious trend of access replacing ownership.
April 05, 2012
My contribution to Mashable's 9 Bold Predictions for the Digital World of 2020
I recently was invited to chime in on this snappy collection of 2020-predictions done by Amy-Mae Elliott at Mashable, along with some of my peers and esteemed futurist colleagues such as Ian Pearson, Jim Carroll and Dave Evans. Take a look. Here is my piece:
Connecting the Cloud With the Crowd
"By 2020 everything will have moved into the cloud: content, media, health records, education. Connecting the cloud with the crowd will become a huge business. Related to this, access will replace ownership in almost all forms of media. Future media 'consumers' will simply have music, films, TV shows, games, etc. in the cloud, paid 'with attention,' i.e., advertising and data mining (Facebook cloud), subscription (Apple new iTV), and bundles (i.e., with mobile operators). Most importantly, many consumers will not pay for 'content' per se, but for all the added values around the content, such as curation, packaging, design, social connections, interfaces, apps, etc. Finally, all media that is not social and mobile will shrink; all that combines with their current models will prosper."
Thanks to Amy at Mashable - well done!
Read more on my content-cloud ideas. Check out my Future of Content book, via Amazon Kindle.
February 27, 2012
New video: MIDEM Academy 2012: Making a living with music in a digital world
This is the complete video of my presentation at MIDEM 2012 (Midem Academy), courtesy of http://www.midem.com/ and http://blog.midem.com/ touching on topics such as the future of music in a digital, social and networked society, the need for a public music license, why mobile is first, using social media to promote yourself, branding 2.0, the principles of inter-connected ecosystem of music, and much more. You can download the 20 MB PDF with my slides here.
The video is provided under license from Midem. Slides are provided under creative commons attribution non-commercial license by me (Gerd Leonhard)
AUDIO-ONLY Version:
Gerd Leonhard Futurist Midem 2012: making a living-with-Music-digital
February 24, 2012
New video: My Keynote on Broadband Futures (from the future with high-speed broadband conference in Auckland)
This nice video just went up on my Youtube channel: my entire keynote speech (67 minutes) from the Future with High Speed Broadband Conference in Auckland, New Zealand on February 23, 2012. Topics: Transformational Technologies and Creating new demand for ICT services - The Future of Broadband and ICT -, in detail: the coming telemedia convergence, the future of content in a hyper-connected society, social networks are cable TV without the cable, why open standards are crucial, why and how data is the new oil, how Control is being replaced by engagement and involvement, why sustainability becomes even more important, the shift from egosystems versus ecosystems, the new drivers of Innovation. The slides are embedded below, as well.
The Future of Broadband: Telemedia, Futurist Gerd Leonhard
View more presentations from Gerd Leonhard
Midem 2012: Understanding Marketing in a Networked Society (video)
This video just went live on the MIDEM Youtube channel, see the panel description here
"We now live in a digital society, networked, mobile, social and always-on. In this super-noisy, decentralised world of constant self-broadcasting, liking, sharing and networking, how will an artist, a manager, a label or publisher, or any other business get attention, and reach their audiences? If interaction comes before transaction, what does marketing look like in the next few years? How does one build a strong brand in this world..."
February 04, 2012
Gerd Leonhard
Keynote Speaker, Think-Tank Leader, Futurist, Author & Strategist, Idea Curator, some say Iconoclast | Heretic, CEO TheFuturesAgency, Visiting Prof FDC Brazil, Green Futurist
Recent Comments