Digital Distribution

Georgia Wonder is Stephanie Grant from London and Julian Moore from Portsmouth. We got to know each other via Andrew Dubber’s blog and Twitter. You’re searching for a pop/rock/folk band serving beautiful tunes and a brilliant female voice - buy their tracks. You can even choose if and how much to pay for downloads. Or you may order a physical copy.

Julian Moore and Stephanie are never short of clever ideas to add to their marketing. And they are really running the marketing themselves. Blogs, videos, Bandcamp, iTunes, We7, Twitter, homepage, mailings (email as well as snail mail), Facebook etc. - it is time consuming but they’re constantly connected to their fans.

Continue reading "DIY-Marketing #3: Georgia Wonder Serving Fresh..." »

I started this article two days ago (which isn’t quite correct because I started writing it about a week ago), though I have yet to come to the main part - the lessons themselves. Hope you enjoy, have your read.
Continue reading "Music Business: Lessons In Free Strategies From..." »

If talking to independent musicians about the benefits of distributing content for free you most certainly will come across four arguments in monolithic defense.


Please note: I won’t discuss copyright issues in here. But no matter if you give away your song for free to billions of people or if you sell a licence to one company - your copyright in your song remains unaffected. Please keep that in mind.

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On 4 June, BBC Trust provided its conclusion following the first phase of consultation on Project Canvas, BBC’s joint venture with ITV and BT. Trust issued a statement that the decision on the future Project Canvas will be delayed. Hence, one issue objected by several stakeholders has been adjusted. According to the tight time schedule, the final decision was to be published on 24 July.

Due to many stakeholders addressing missing information on the concept of Project Canvas, the BBC Executive has been approached by the Trust to provide more details. Additional information resulting from this inquiry as well as a revised time schedule will be published before commencing with the second consultation phase.

During the first consultation, the Trust received more than 800 submissions by stakeholders and license fee payers that in most part were in support of the project.

I’m looking forward getting to know more about the concept.

As you may remember, once there has been a Kangaroo that was destined rather not to have a fulfilled life.

By the end of February, we had to say goodbye to BBC’s joint venture Project Kangaroo which involved ITV and Channel 4. The Competition Commission’s decision set an end to mutual plans.

One obvious alternative even entered the scene before and rose to fame right afterwards: Project Canvas. This time, the BBC was about to be joined by ITV (again) and ISP British Telecom. They envisioned an open video video-on-demand solution, open to any content provider and content source, including internet.

If you were interested in how Kangaroo would have done, you should have been excited to see Project Canvas develop.
Continue reading "BBC & Project Canvas: Will the Digital..." »

Michael Masnick revisits the shutting down of SpiralFrog, putting emphasis on the fact that however a new idea in online music business gets hailed, there still is at least one predominant reason for failure. To succeed, you have to offer more than what you can get for free using bit torrents. As I mentioned before, quite along the lines of Michael Masnick’s Reznor case study, you need real added value. It’s what Masnick calls the "reason to buy". Add something to the product (= music) to be obtained nowhere else, be it quality, quantity or core competence.

Learn from history or fail to succeed.

4th February 2009 saw a sudden death to promising Project Kangaroo, the BBC's joint venture project in digital distribution along with partners ITV and Channel 4. Regulation had been expected, maybe a halt due to various reasons but certainly not the one issued by Britain's Competition Commission.

The basics of Project Kangaroo had been sketched as early as of 2004. BBC started out developing an IPTV solution for video on demand (VoD), aiming at recycling content. Despite some minor drawbacks, the Integrated Media Player (later known as iPlayer received a warm welcome and enabled a successful entry into digital distribution. In November 2007, the joint venture between BBC, ITV and Channel 4 was announced.

In the British Competition Commission's (CC) news release, CC chairman Peter Freeman calls the project a "threat to competition in this developing market" which "has to be stopped".

Why?

The CC argued the concentrated power of three out of four terrestrial broadcasting services would dominate smaller content providers, creating an online monopoly. In an attempt to urge all participating members to keep their role as competitors, aim was to support the user’s benefit.

One hop back…

I must admit, I was surprised to see the project completely stopped. The most obvious reason the BBC has to get digital is straight forward: Triple play and media convergence have been touted long since. Strategically, broadcast - and this means any broadcast service – has to stake its digital claim threatened by web services like Hulu, Joost, Apple's iTunes and YouTube.

The ubiquitous ease of mobile use can’t be achieved with old skool TV. It is not just for local ubiquity: Any content is available at any time. More importantly, as Trent Reznor does with his audience, it is a must to get interactive and get involved with viewers. The only way out is: go digital, get online and offer a sheer wealth of content otherwise lost in the archives.
Continue reading "BBC: R.I.P. Project Kangaroo - Along Comes Open..." »

Jamendo is the world's first B2C music download service offering all tunes under the Creative Commons license. At least that is Jamendo's claim. Also, I do not know about any other one either. If there are small ones or large ones out there handling their business that way – please contact me. I really would be interested in your experience.

The Land of Digital Milk & Honey

Most importantly, any music offered on Jamendo is legally free for download. This is rather surprising to say the least. Yet all of us should have been prepared since OpenSource software like Linux is something we take for granted. But music? It feels like the Holy Grail being one-way used in a fast food restaurant and thrown into the litter box right afterwards.

Continue reading "Can artists make a living without ASCAP et al.?..." »

At SIIA Industry Summit 2009, Pearson CEO Marjorie Scardino described the framework for Financial Times' digital and pricing strategy. Financial Times is published by Pearson.

Sardino, referring to print content, stressed the difference between generic content such as news and the value Financial Times provides by quality analysis. Apart from the brand value, it is in particular the supplier generated extra content which defines the product's market value.

But where is Ralph Lauren?

The newspaper's price has been increased which led to an increase in number of readers too. Now this is what Scardino calls „The Ralph Lauren Effect", in marketing more commonly known as snob effect.

Certain target audiences have a need to "feel" quality and identity of a product by price. Customers expect exclusiveness and social prestige in buying. You might compare it to car enthusiasts buying a Porsche's sound, or like the fact a vacuum cleaner has to be noisy to be efficient. It is about feeling the product and consumer’s identification with it. Lower the price or reduce the noise – sales figures will go down.

This phenomenon works well with exclusive goods. The price indicates the quality of product.

Print vs. music media

So can digital distribution in print media be compared to music in terms of pricing and product structure? Is it possible to transfer the Ralph Lauren model?

Let us start with one premise: The basic situation to be analysed here differs in print and media. Scardino refers to standing the competition within several print outlets. The core issue in music business is not based on rivalry. It is about 1) Upon which sources do I generate revenue? and 2) Is there a way to beat piracy?

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On MidemNet Blog, Peter Jenner shares his "Thoughts on the deal between DSPs, Content Industries, and Government for Next Generation Access". Actually, his thoughts might have their origin in a news flash from last year.

Sorting it out...

The story's beginning has to be set in March 2008 when Warner Music Group hired business veteran Jim Griffin to develop a new business model to build upon. In early December, the result hit the public. Selected universities were approached to prove if the business model would work: Students would pay a small fee, and in return they were allowed to access and download all music available via internet for free - legally. According to Eliot Van Buskirk on wired.com all major record labels apart from Universal agreed to be involved.

However, in a real world environment (outside the campus) the intention is to establish a (nonprofit) company to collect the fee in cooperation with the ISPs. With Warner's and Griffin's business model, this company ('Choruss') apparently turns out be registered by Griffin's OneHouse Digital.

Cure to everything?

Another well-known media strategist, Gerd Leonhard, announced on MidemNet Blog that at Midem 2009 he was about to show "[..] why we urgently need a new blanket license for Internet music (on-demand streaming, and downloading) that is similar to what we already have for radio & broadcasting (i.e. a collective or a compulsory license that is made available to anyone), why all the efforts of controlling music content online have failed to generate relevant future revenue streams for the creators (rather than just the lawyers), and what the alternatives will be."

Peter Jenner hails this idea as the one solution which fits the situation.

Continue reading "Pay a fee at your ISP, get your music for free..." »