MediaFuturist

Video of 2010 Zuck Interview: some very interesting Facebook context

I just ran across this video in a very well-written Atlantic.com piece called the Ballad of Mark Zuckerberg, here. This is a must-read and must-watch.

"Zuckerberg, Jeff Jarvis has declared, "sees Facebook as a next step in the net's evolutionary scale toward humanity." And so the young CEO has become a kind of evangelist for the future he is helping to create. "To get people to this point where there's more openness -- that's a big challenge," he told David Kirkpatrick. "But I think we'll do it. I just think it will take time."

Related articles

• EPICENTER: Mark Zuckerberg's Letter to Investors: 'The Hacker Way' (blogrunner.com)
• Viral Video: Farewell to the No-IPO Mark Zuckerberg (allthingsd.com)
• Facebook's Filing: The Highlights (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
• "Facebook has a bright future," as long as it can stay "human and open," contends Gerd Leonhard,..." (futureof.biz)
• About Facebook - and their upcoming IPO (io9 piece and nice infographic) (mediafuturist.com)
• New video: the Future of Content, my Keynote at Colombia 3.0 (SPANISH) (mediafuturist.com)
• Mobile advertising must be content-based (review of my talk at MMA Forum in Sao Paulo (mediafuturist.com)

Bakers not Eaters: the new music industry (short video for MIDEM)

MIDEM just published an exclusive video with me: check it out below.  "In this exclusive video post for MIDEMBlog, media futurist & CEO of The Futures Agency cites Guy Kawasaki's notion that we should be "bakers, not eaters," or contributors to an "ecosystem", i.e. a collaborative economy, as opposed to an each-to-his-own "ego system". Food for thought!

http://www.thefuturesagency.com

http://www.guykawasaki.com/enchantment/

Related articles

• VIDEO: Do bands need the internet? (news.bbc.co.uk)
• Monetizing music in the digital age: meet me in Nashville on March 1, 2011 (Berklee Alumn event) (mediafuturist.com)

Muxtape relaunching soon, in the service of bands (it says)

An update on Muxtape was just published on their site: Muxtape. My previous Muxtape-related posts are here. It totally amazes (but not surprises) me how much Justin's story is similar to my own experiences with Sonific, my last digital music startup, and how much it matches with the stories I keep hearing from dozens of brave if maybe somewhat 'fresh' digital music entrepreneurs every single day: you bring golden ideas to the record industry and they will act like it's dirt - simply because it means they will need to share the control. Most of the major label execs will eagerly suck up all the information you can give them only to then a) drop all communications and reverse-engineer what you do b) present you with terms that would make Stalin look like an altruist. Muxtape draws the right conclusion: start from scratch, directly with the artists. But - how will they retain a sizable audience with just that?  This is the Sonific, Jamendo, Reverbnation problem... Also see my post on the MidemNetBlog, on Muxtape.

Legal digital music is commercial suicide says Michael Robertson (The Register)

If you are interested in the digital music turf (well, yes, ehem.... is there any other?) this is a must-read: Legal digital music is commercial suicide | The Register. Michael Robertson gets it exactly right when he writes:

"Go legal and die
The internet companies I talk to don't mind giving some direct benefit to music companies. What torpedoes that possibility is the big financial requests from labels for "past infringement", plus a hefty fee for future usage. Any company agreeing to these demands is signing their own financial death sentence. The root cause is not the labels - chances are if you were running a label you would make the same demands, since the law permits it. The lack of clarity in the law is the real culprit - and it's the huge potential penalties that create an incentive for the big record labels' law firms to file lawsuits. Without clear laws and rulings from the court about what is permissible, every action touching a copyrighted work is a possible infringement, with a large financial windfall if the copyright owner can persuade a Judge to agree..."

If you want to know more, read what happened with my own company, Sonific, here.

A final comment on Sonific

This pretty much says it all (and, well, who should know better than him?): "I've come to the conclusion that revolutions aren't profitable." Kevin Kelly on the demise of Suck.com, a hotwired off-spring, 2001 (found here)

All together now (Dealscape)

Interesting if somewhat circular story about music widgets and... Sonific: All together now (Dealscape). Some nice quotes about me;)   [ignore the spelling of my name thru-out this column... it's LeonHard indeed]

"While some site developers say major labels are more receptive than a year ago, the industry isn't necessarily embracing the concept. Last week, Leonard announced he would unplug on May 1 Sonific, his music-related social network. In a statement on the site, Leonard rails against the labels, calling them "certifiably dysfunctional" and accusing them of making outrageous demands of "very large cash advances," "free equity" and imposing "utterly bizarre usage restrictions" in return for licenses..."

"While some musical superstars now migrate from major labels to everything from Starbucks to their own Web sites for distribution, traditional music giants face an even more fundamental problem: the commoditization of the recorded song. "Copying a song is free to do and free to get," Leonard says. "And you can't build a business on the basis of a copy."

Sonific Calls It Quits, Citing Music Licensing Issues | Listening Post from Wired.com

Nice post fro Eliot van Buskirk - he gets it: Sonific Calls It Quits, Citing Music Licensing Issues | Listening Post from Wired.com.

In music, the LongTail still won't work without a head and a body: Announcing big changes at Sonific (Over & Out)

Update: Sept 10, 2008: Sonific is over, for good. Thanks for waiting.

My music widget startup, Sonific, just announced that it is going offline on May 1. Below are some snippets from my announcement, all other details are on Sonific's blog, here.  This obviously a tough development but we are hoping that while this door may be closing now another may open up.

Sonific.com will go offline on May 1, 2008  A message by Gerd Leonhard, Co-Founder & CEO

As a consequence of a the unworkable music licensing situation and the resulting lack of solid revenue modeling Sonific's founders and investors have decided to temporarily take Sonific.com and Sonific.net offline.  While we are looking for other ways to realize our vision we are also open to talking to any interested party that may have use for Sonific's user base, content relationships, technologies or distribution network (please contact us anytime to find out more). Together with some other partners, we may also investigate the concept of making Sonific a paid-for service that is provided to artists, record labels and other content providers on a white-label basis.

Here are some background details on our decision:

1) There are countless startups providing access to any and all music streams without any license whatsoever. However, when we approached the major record label decision makers in order to obtain licenses for some of the music in their catalogs we have routinely faced demands for very large cash advances and fixed per-stream minimum payments, pressure to give them 'free' company equity, and requirements of utterly bizarre usage restrictions. It seems that the industry's major stakeholders still prefer this turf to remain unlicensed rather than to allow real-life, workable and market-based solutions to emerge by working with new companies such as Sonific. This is not the way forward.

2) We therefore had to realize that a company that wants to provide interactive streaming music services must either a) risk the constant complaints of their users, due to the lack of hit content  b) proceed to use any and all music (this is routinely done by allowing users to upload their own MP3s) without the required licenses, and therefore be at the total mercy of the record labels at some point in time, and c) build a huge audience very quickly, based on having the content available - permission or not -, and then very quickly sell themselves to a large company that will take care of placating the labels while the money is plenty and the pockets are deep. 

Unfortunately we don't like any of these choices. 

The bottom line is that this industry is certifiably dysfunctional and that we do not see a plausible path to take at this time. We neither want to engage in so-called copyright infringement nor do we have millions of dollars available to buy our way in when it is abundantly clear that doing business under the existing rules of the major labels will simply amount to economic suicide.

Almost a billion people now use music to stream on their blogs, social network pages, home-pages and user profiles – this is indeed a veritable gold mine for music marketing and selling, and it can make serious money for artists and composers. Yet, the established players in the music industry are still looking to simply squeeze 'permission fees' from companies that want to serve this market, instead of building new opportunities together.  Maybe, just like Radio over 100 years ago, a plausible conclusion may just be that this must apparently be done without permission while the industry catches up - but we shall leave this for others to explore this theme.

We want to thank all our partners and the many artists, independent record labels as well as the few major label new media people that dared to try us anyway, and the leading music aggregators that have provided the over 200.000 songs that Sonific has offered until now. We also want to thank our faithful users that played our music every day, and the over 80.000 people hat have signed up for our service, and we apologize for having to pull the plug on you. We hope to return in a different incarnation; please stay tuned via our blog.

Gerd Leonhard
Co-Founder & CEO

Update: if you are looking for alternatives to Sonific, try this list

Attack Of The Music Communities (via Crenk)

Good list here, also a nice review of my music widget company Sonific: Attack Of The Music Communities | Crenk.

"Sonific - is a social network that offers a great way to promote your music, if you are an artist. It lets users put a free music widgets with your music on their sites and promote it to their own audiences, for free. In exchange, Sonific users get free music to use and listen to (download is not permitted) and make their site look cooler - while you get free advertising for your music."

Breaking the Law To Get a Break (via Washingtonpost.com) - Sonific's challenge of making it work with 'legal' HIT content

Link: Breaking the Law To Get a Break - washingtonpost.com.

"...For many other start-ups, it's a tough trade-off to become legitimate. Like Imeem, Sonific, an online service that allows users to stream music to blogs or personal Web pages, is trying to strike licensing deals with large record labels to expand its music library, which now has about 250,000 tracks from smaller, independent labels. But Gerd Leonhard, the site's founder, said it cannot get the interest of labels because of its relatively small pool of 100,000 users. "Our major hurdle is that we're trying to do it legally," he said. "You're either forced to use the music without the proper permission or you just don't get your audience."

Nice to see that that Kim Hart (the Post writer) got this right. I have written about this a few times before: right now law-abiding startups like Sonific are essentially penalized and severely handicapped by the lack of clear licensing procedures and the major labels' outmoded business strategies.

Here are some more thoughts on this:

While there are countless startups providing any and all music catalogs under some 'fig-leaf' licenses or without any permission whatsoever (whether using streaming widgets or other means... nope, sorry, no names here;) the major record labels still manage to choke any intention to license their catalogs by demanding exceedingly large cash advances, insisting on fixed per-stream payments, asking for ‘free’ company equity to get deals done, and on top of it all want to impose bizarre usage restrictions. Mission impossible.

Clearly, they seem to prefer this turf to remain unlicensed rather than to allow workable market-based solutions to emerge. This behavior is killing a very powerful newly emerging ecosystem because one cannot operate a music-based service with just the 'longtail' content - a dog without a head simply does not walk, yet.

A startup such as Sonific that wants to provide interactive streaming 'music widget' services - and that will clearly need a large audience to be relevant - must either a) live with being constantly criticized by the users for the lack of hit content, and therefore not attain a sufficient audience b) proceed to use music without the required licenses, and therefore be at the total mercy of the record labels at some point in time, i.e. when they feel like dropping the ‘copyright infringement’ hammer c) build a huge audience very quickly, based on having all content available - permission or not -, and then quickly sell themselves to a large company that will take care of placating the labels while the money is plenty and the pockets are deep.

I don't know about you, out there, but none of these choices sound good to me.

Almost a billion people now use music to stream on their blogs, social network pages, home-pages and user profiles – this is indeed a veritable gold mine for music marketing. Yet, the established players in the music industry are still looking to simply squeeze 'permission fees' from companies that want to serve this market, instead of building a new market together. 

So... what do you think? Feel free to comment below!

PS: as far as some labels go there are notable exceptions to this behavior - check out Natasha Beddingfield on Sonific

Sonific announces MusicAPI, connecting Record Labels and Artists with Social Networks

This is a major announcement for us - you saw it here first ;)

August 21 2007, San Francisco, California

Sonific’s MusicAPI connects Record Labels with Social Networks

Sonific LLC, a leading provider of music applications and widgets for online communities and social media platforms, today announced that it will open the first release of its Music Application Program Interface -the Sonific MusicAPI– to both record labels and music companies as well as to social media platforms and services, later this year.

Sonific’s MusicAPI will, at zero cost and simultaneously across all partner networks, allow any interested record label, music publisher or artist to ‘talk to’ and connect with 100s of social networks and online communities, and opt-in their music catalogs for the streaming use on social network sites. Ecommerce functionalities will be provided by Sonific affiliates such as iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, Wippit and many others.

Content providers (such as record labels) will share in advertising revenues, and will be able to take full advantage of using a single channel to achieve viral exposure on all key online communities and social media platforms around the world, such as Facebook, Wordpress, Myspace, Friendster, Hi5, Xanga, Orkut, Typepad, Vox.com, Livejournal, iGoogle, Google Gadgets, Netvibes, Blogger, AIM Pages and Live.com. With a single mouse click, music  companies will soon be able to connect to 100s of platforms and present their music on what has become the next iteration of Radio: Social Networks.

With astounding growth rates of 50% to over 400% per year, social networks are quickly becoming crucial attention generators for music companies, soon to be rivaling online portals and search engines. Social media is not only exploding in the U.S. but also reaching a truly global audience, with a high percentage of users in Europe, China and South-East Asia, South America and India. According to a recent Comscore report, Myspace’s UA (unique audience) rose to 61 Million people in July 2007, while Facebook’s was 19 Million. Blogger.com scored a unique audience of 30 Million users, Typepad.com almost 10 Million, and Wordpress.com 8.2 Million (Sonific offers widgets for all 3 platforms already).

Sonific’s research indicates that the total unique audience on all social and self-publishing networks already exceeds 220 Million people – and music is the most often requested feature, across the board. According to a recent Olswang UK study, 2 of 5 social network users (and 65% of teenagers) have embedded music into their profiles, approximately 70% do so to show off their taste and half do so to reflect their personality. Social networks also have significant impact on music buying habits: 53% of people confirmed that they actively surf social network sites to discover new music and artists.

Sonific therefore believes that a standardized and constantly maintained interface between record labels and social networks represents a major business opportunity that goes way beyond the current music widgets craze.  “The recent developments in the digital music space and the tidal changes that are finally happening among the major record labels means that we will without a doubt see every single record label (small or large) sell music in non-DRM formats by the end of this year. As predicted for some time now, the music business is getting ready to switch to an open-access policy, and this will lead to an explosion of tremendous new opportunities, with the most lucrative turf being Music on Social Networks. Any site, portal or community can now become a music retailer, without having to add costly and ubiquitously hated copy protection measures, and therefore online communities stand to become even more important, very soon. In fact, I would predict that Social Media will become as important as Radio was back in the old days of Vinyl and CDs, which is why Sonific is gearing up to become something akin to the Music Operating System for this new turf”, comments Gerd Leonhard, Co-Founder and CEO of Sonific LLC.

Gerd continues: “If music companies want to be successful in this new ecosystem they urgently need a flexible yet fast and very low cost way to funnel any or all of their music into social media networks, while receiving a solid share of the advertising revenues, in return. In addition, music-related ecommerce opportunities will explode and very powerful market-feedback data can be provided by the platforms that use the music. Sonific’s MusicAPI will soon provide a one-stop solution for all involved parties: platforms and services will be able to plug in Sonific’s MusicAPI and instantly avail themselves of licensed music catalogs as well as make use of Sonific’s technology solutions; and record labels and other music rights holders will be able to opt-in any musical work, and make it available to the entire social media landscape - all in one go. Real-time usage information and other data will be made available, and advertising revenues will be shared – Music2.0 is finally becoming a reality.”

Sonific estimates that, based on the current growth rates and the continued global trends that see cheap broad-band access proliferate everywhere, the number of social network users will triple within the next 18 months, to almost 750 Million users, creating the biggest new audience opportunity that the music industry has seen since the introduction of the CD, back in 1983.

A crucial component of Sonific’s MusicAPI will be the integration of advertising into the widgets and the API, itself, allowing the content owners to instantly participate in new revenue streams without having to individually re-invent the wheel and spend precious resources on building those tools themselves. In addition, Sonific will also make its MusicAPI available to outside developers, allowing the music widget ecosystem to unfold even faster.

MyMusic.dk Interview with Gerd Leonhard: Er Sonific fremtidens radio (in Danish)

Link: MyMusic.dk Interview: Er Sonific fremtidens radio

Interview: Er Sonific fremtidens radio... Sonific SongSpot er et nyt gratis ...j til implementering af musik ... personlige profiler. Ideen er oplagt men hvad siger Koda og de andre rettighedsorganisationer.

Sonific now has Soundeffects: add streaming audio sound effects widgets to your websites!

And many more to come soon!
Link: Welcome to Sonific : Sound Effects.

Yeah - try this one

Edublogs - education blogs - now using Sonific SongSpots music widget for blogs

Another nice endorsement for Sonific... it's spreading quickly ;)

Link: Edublogs - education blogs � If music be the food of love then ….

Sonific at New Music Strategies

Andrew Dubber writes about Sonific; includes a short interview with me.  Thanks for your support Andrew! Link: Sonific at New Music Strategies. And after that, listen to this: