Diary of a Madman: Digital Media Guru

Losing your Individualism and Personal Expression – or just Learn, Play & Perform?

2009-04-15T03:48:00.001-07:00

After listening to a member of London Symphony Orchestra on BBC Radio 3 last week about the stress and pressure that the musicians were under as part of the LSO, it got me thinking about how as a musician, and specifically either a session musician or member of an orchestra (which in essence is a glorified session musician - however being part of the LSO or SFSO is always seen as a more prestige gig rather than being session musician for George Michael, Roger Waters or Rob Thomas) would feel the pressure and strain of what is in fact reciting and replaying someone else's music? As well as the lady talking about the pressure and strain of performing every night!!

As a past musician and live performer I found this quite a weird statement - the joy of playing live in front of an audience where you never know what the reaction will be, how they will gel with your sound and how they will react to your songs. As the main front man and occasional guitarist it was in my control (even power) to either step up the tempo and pace of a gig or slow down and calm and over active audience down. At the same time we could, as long as the rest of the band were "with me" start some improvisation and start to change the shape and structure of our songs by extending into some fractal display of virtuosity and live "jam session" or as I recall back in the late 1980's had a tendency to run songs over 8mins long - so we could cut off tracks and wrap them up in quick smart time - especially good if playing in a packed out pub and the landlord has called time as we start playing the final encore that is supposed to last 11mins but cut that neatly down to a more compact 3min 30sec!

And that is when I sort of twigged it - surely it can't be the thrill and excitement of performing to a live audience - but the expectation that is bestowed on them, not as individuals but as a single unit.

Ready to perform and play and interpret pieces of music in a specific way, specific style and specific manner. This will either come from the musical director, conductor, art director, musician - and not the individual.

So using a couple of examples here lets take my Radio 3 lady - let's say that she plays violin as part of the SFSO - they have a tour of West Coast and have 30 dates in 40 days just over a performance per night - heavy going but nothing too bad (remember Elvis was doing matinees as well as evening performances in Vegas to keep the Colonel happy!! They have a varied repertoire but mainly Mozart & Beethoven.

Our violinist although proficient and technically a good player - is not a lead and is neither a virtuoso - so she is part of the 20 strong orchestra fronted by their superb Director / Conductor - who has spent the last 10 months preparing and adding his own take and unique style into the program for the tour. Our intrepid SFSO violinist has also spent months learning, interpreting and in some cases changing a specific style. She may already be very familiar with the pieces that she has to perform and probably learned these as she crafted her skill and musicianship. Talented she probably also read the music and interpret her own thoughts and feelings around what is a very passionate and moving experience - the playing and performing of music. So our trusted and respected director thinks that elements of the piece should be aggressive, fast paced and challenging - whilst our violinist actually thinks that the composer would have wanted the movement to be more profound and meaningful rather than aggressive - then she is immediately challenged to curtail her own personal expression and curtail her own interpretation - which must be hard to perform in this way night in and night out. I'm sure that the endless rehearsals and practice sessions would have knocked her into an almost robotic and hypnotic state by the time of the debut performance.

However now I start to empathize with her and her stress and almost "torture" of the performance that she does not get lost in the music and drift off into her own and valid interpretation of the piece. To some this may sound simple way of listen, learn and play - but as a real musician who is passionate about music, its emotiveness and the power that it can bring - this really is a tough gig for her and by the time the 30th and final date rolls in she probably has had to suppress her desire and individualism 29 times already. So now I get it!!

The same could be said for session musicians as well - but perhaps on a lesser scale. These guys and girls will be chosen and picked by the lead artist, lets say Rob Thomas, where he needs a backing band for a handful of dates for a solo tour. The first element is to learn the songs from his solo album, and how Rob wants these interpreted from studio to live. Rob maybe open to suggestion - but as an artist who has crafted these songs he will know himself how he wants these to sound and appear to a live audience. Then there is the selected tracks from his Matchbox Twenty albums - that after selling millions will be in the heart and minds of both Rob and the fans - but also the sessions musicians may well be fans and as per the last example - have their own thoughts and views on the catalogue that they are about to perform. However as this is a solo tour - Rob may want to change some of the well known songs into different arrangements - while exciting and great to be part of this - again there is a constant urge to either perform what they already know from the recordings or how they would interpret the songs...

Session musicians and members of orchestras will enjoy and love the live performances and even though they are suppressed in some ways - the trill of playing live should always overcome any loss of individualism - and what you will find is that they will in most cases work doubly hard as to express themselves fully - by either performing in their own ensemble or band - as well as their own writing...

And in reflection of writing a pure Blog post that didn't really cover anything in my work life, but mostly in my past life - I started to think that there are some similarities in what I do day to day as a Consultant as I no longer tread the boards of live musical performances!

How?

Well I have a “stage” as such normally a board room or small meeting room (occasionally a nice big stage!) to perform on - I present, talk, discuss, share and passionately explore ideas and solutions to help my clients, and prospect clients. However sometimes during this process I am part of a bigger "ensemble" and team that must deliver a set piece that actually I or the rest of the team may not agree with nor conform to - as it may be part of another's interpretation of what is being delivered or asked for - or some sort of compromise that we actually don't agree with. This means that we, just as the musicians in my example, must play to a different tune and suppress the individualism and personal expression while still delivering some great results!

These are the challenges of life I guess and its not just musicians or consultants - but very recently I was allowed to perform not within any constraints and with a great team with me (well one - he knows who he is MM ;) and wow what a feeling and result! But just as the edge comes off a great performance there is rumblings in the horizon that is now asking us to play a different tune, band another beat again, but at what cost? We can perform again, change the tempo, follow, play and suppress - but who really misses out the professional performer? or the audience? That same audience that sat through the original 4hr performance and was sold on the idea, sold on the original performance, bought the t-shirt, album and program and already set up for the next performance??

Let’s be careful out there – The world is watching…Social Media Etiquette

2009-03-26T15:20:00.000-07:00

I’ve been concerned about this for a while – and recently I guess certain elements and the stars aligning made me realise that in fact we all must be careful about what we do in the fast moving social media space. We’ve all read and heard stories of potential employers checking out peoples Facebook to see what they get up to in their private life is not only a violation and invasion of privacy – but what does it matter what they get up to in their own time. However lest address that last point “violation and invasion of privacy “ in actual fact – it probably isn't – if someone has a Facebook / MySpace / Bebo or whatever account and they have it open to the world to see – then at what stage is it violation of privacy laws vs a nosy and snooping employer? Or is it just a curious employer that is genuinely looking to see what kind of person the potential employee is?

So how does it look if that person comes across as vivacious, bubbly outgoing and friendly – then on Facebook either has but 3 friends and enjoys collecting rare and unused stamps? The reflection of that persons social space – based on the bias of the employers own perception of that person based on some social media output. Notice so far I’ve not mentioned anything about the persons ability or experience as I assume these are already a given since that person attended an interview. Everyone is always interested and some what a voyeur aspect – why would so many follow Jonathan Ross or Stephen Fry on Twitter if they weren't so voyeuristic in knowing what these people are doing in their daily lives – just he same as you and me but because its them there is that fascination. They would never add their Twitter followers onto their Facebook or add them into their iPhone address book – so to them its a good ego boost as well as self promotion – more importantly its just great fun!!

Back to the example above and then pushing this a little further – what is the correct etiquette for social media and current or potential employees and employers? I mentioned a potential situation above, that has been raised on numerous occasions even to the point that the employer found it appropriate to mention an individual who in his interview said that he was very active in social media and had hundreds of friends on his MySpace and Facebook accounts – only for the employee to check – saw that he had but 6 and they were his family and nothing more. The guy never got the job, branded a bulls****er and then, thanks to the stupid employer, went round the web as one of those “funny Facebook stories” that showed the guy had no friends and only family and didn't actually do anything even though he claimed to be a massive influencer. The result was classic – he was a prolific user, influencer and had 1,347 friends and ran groups – however his account that the employer found was for the purpose of his family only – to chat and find out the goings on within the family unit – his real account he protected himself with an ALIAS that backfired on the employer – and a million dollar suit for the employer followed…

So here we stand on this abyss of being swamped within social media and information is everywhere – which is fantastic and scary. I was prompted to write this after reading a post by Len Devanna who asks the question “Blurring the lines of life & work” – however that is not quite the case.

If it were as easy as that then the blurred lines would or could be disassociated. Len is a blogger, twitterer and is Director of Web Strategy for EMC. However It’s what information you put out there, where and under what guise? Len talked about two “fictitious” scenarios about a client which was a good read - Len then finished off by saying “So where are the lines? Do we need lines? Am I over analyzing this? Do I, as an individual, have every right to say what's on my mind regardless of the possible ramifications? Or is the conservative approach the right one?” But using Len’s example and his twitter account – lets say he had a meeting with FOX to do some web strategy around Family Guy – but using Len’s example in his post we find that in one of Len’s tweets he said “1st season of Survivor was mildly fun.. Then downhill. Bachelor, Biggest Loser - It's all part of FOX's plan to take over the world." Fox could if they used that example – as a slant against FOX and their global strategy!

I would say not and Len is entitled to voice his concern / opinion / comment to his hearts content – but as he is using his name, and linked to EMC you could say that there is a link – no matter what disclaimers say – but that is the points isn’t it?

Google have finished the work that is bringing the tweets from Twitter to the fore and delivering the entire 140char text – which means all those ramblings, drunken tweets, and offensive backlash items will be there for the Googling world to see – link that back to your work and you have an issue…

So perhaps the way forward is for work – create your own work persona – talk, discuss, blog, share and tweet about specific elements and challenges that you face. Have an alias where you can have the mundane and celebrity following to see if @stephenfry will upset anyone today – and if your going to post pictures of your stag night with a bevy of topless dancers – then expect your future wife, mum, employer to be having a quiet word in your shell like…

Amazon: from e-tailer to the worlds first e-shopping mall?

2009-03-23T02:20:00.001-07:00

I’ve been talking about the state of the high street for my last few posts and of course will continue to discuss and debate the future and where there could be some light at the end of the tunnel (looking specifically at the launch of Wellworths - a great well done to Claire Robertson and her team or re-invigorated and re-invented retail takes a step close to the high streets rebirth in local towns up and down the country. With Simon Douglas also trying to re-invigorate a handful of his ex-Zavvi stores this is a small retail revolution...

However amidst all this and looking at online - people and even other pure play e-tailers have always held a light up to Amazon (me being one of them) at what they have achieved over their 10 year stint at the top of the e-commerce pile - however I have been following as well as using their other services.

Amazon web services has been such a great breath of fresh air for SME businesses and start ups that can use various tools, cloud storage, payment gateways (EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon CloudFront) all at a very inexpensive and reasonable price point as well. Recently Amazon has done deals with IBM, Microsoft Windows & SQL which led me to think that in the current state of e-commerce how and where can Amazon actually grow?

There is really only so much that they can punt under the Amazon umbrella really and of course we have seen more additional partners and resellers come on board to Amazon to provide new product ranges and increasing Amazons overall SKU count. Which led me to think that if you start to build out your business back end that offers other e-tailers the chance to use your services and payment gateways then in effect that is merely one step away from being a “landlord” as such in a virtual digital world!

Look at it this way - if you compare Amazon to the new Westfiled Shopping Mall where the owners found some land (server space) built the empty shell of a building (infrastructure) started to create unit sizes (web templates / rack space) and then started to tout for retailers to fill those empty units with a base package of rents & rates (erm.. same rents and rates but rather than be based on electricity and water.. Amazon charges the e-tailer based on data usage, storage, bandwidth and level of SLA and OLA etc.) So now Amazon become what most people thought about back in the late 90’s of how this could be achieved. Some even tried by building recommendation / comparison tools - but these were weak and lacked any credibility. Amazon has the brand, the knowledge, the expertise (no denying that being 31 online retailer of countless years) It also helps them start to drop some of their costs by protecting their EBITDA by off loading a lot of the usual drainage of costs such as theft, lost packages, damages etc... by dropping some of the lines that they moved into but actually cost them margin in shipping / tracking and return costs.

I can sort of see why and how Amazon would look to do this - Amazon start to take a back seat on certain sectors and product lines just now - introduce digital catalogues for the new breed of digital entertainment (Amazon MP3, Kindle, Video on Demand..) - as well as start to deliver essential storage solutions for homes that need and require these services. Amazon suddenly do what a lot of retailers on the high street are thinking of doing and e-tailers are attempting do - which is offer more services rather than just products - only this time Amazon are in effect putting these into practice and just as some would write them off as an old tired e-commerce site that is looking fat and haggard from the outside, bursting at the seams - inside there is a fighting spirit very much alive with Jeff Bezos at the helm pushing the business through new challenges and delivering better and stronger results as AWS grows from strength to strength.

Never underestimate what Jeff & the Amazon team have lined up - they are only beginning their next 10 years - and I’m already signed up for the ride!

Digital Britain: Built on Rules & Regulation?

2009-03-11T08:09:00.001-07:00

My continuing blog posts about the Governments Digital Britain will continue up to the point that the final document is completed by Lord Carter. Probably go on beyond that – but some news and initiatives trickling out last night – really got my back up (as some of you would have seen!) and its here that futurists and strategic thinkers that look beyond the here and now and delve further into the future into a landscape that is very different to the one that we see today – so the indication that the Government will set up a “rights agency” for the web really started to make my blood boil. Not really with the fact that here is another Government set on regulating the web – but actually not getting the point of it at all and why file sharing will continue way beyond the pathetic laws that they are planning.

Firstly – here is a snippet from the Guardian that alerted me to the plans from Lord Carter to create a “digital rights agency” and how does he plan to actually police this? We have seen regimes and countries try to clamp down on access and limit the amount of data that their citizens can see / read / watch / access… – but these are Communist states that want to control the flow of information that their Citizens consume. Now last time I checked we were a democracy (in the loosest form of the word these days)

Quick background check…. So in essence there is still a need to go all out to prevent the Music industry in particular, from being crushed by the powers of the illegal file sharers? However in this current climate – apart from Pinnacle – how are the other music labels holding up at the moment? Are they asking for huge hand outs from the Government for aid before their business goes to the toilet? Nope! Why – because they are making a huge amount of money from their digital sales – which are increasing by around 25% YoY – not making up the shortfall in CD sales I grant you – but again – this is now 2009 – times have moved on and consumers have moved with the times. So gone are the heady days of the 70s, 80s &90s where multi-million album sales and single sales are the norm. It just doesn't work that way anymore. This has to be the first lesson for them – just as the banks are being reigned in again – the music industry needs a slap in the face that wakes them up to the reality.

Next slap in the face must go to the artists that seem to be demanding bigger royalty payment based on their “stature”, “success” or catalogue! Again the times have changed – the next breed of consumers Gen Y & Gen Z are very different animals and see and perceive music and its consumption in a very different way – and I keep sounding like a broken record here – but these are the fundamentals that need to be addressed and understood before we can actually move forward. Look at the sheer greed of some artists thinking that they should be paid more on You Tube – even though this is now a way that users discover music and artists – just as radio used to in the past – but this time the attention / consumption is very different (as well as the quality) Billy Bragg, Robbie Williams, Blur all meet today at their FAC (Featured Artist Coalition – or Fading Artists Cry) Summit where Blur’s Dave Rowntree said "YouTube's row with the PRS is the most recent example of just how fast the music industry is changing." – What you’ve only just realised that!! Now that may sound harsh – but the You Tube example and what Billy Brag said about the whole You Tube affair with talk of Artists Unions etc.. I think that artists need to look at themselves and importantly their labels – that own their copyright and publishing rights. If you have signed your life away to your ecord company for a fast buck in your early careers – and now see your video on You Tube and get a few pence for it – then ask yourself what is my record label getting from that – and actually what is my video on You Tube really worth in todays market? What is Artists Market Value in the social media world of 2009. Perhaps answer those questions first internally before shooting Google down! Hope that is on the agenda today!

So how does this tie into what the Government regulation and rules? Well with the announcement of the digital rights agency (proposed) what value will they bring and is this just about music or other formats and types going to be covered by this agency. ISPs will monitor the flow of P2P traffic and under legislation decide to target, trace and monitor torrents that are delivering illegal content! That all sounds great – now we know that ISPs can (and should have been) following the P2P traffic for a long time – what is contained within them is another matter! I guess if your Torrent is tagged or labelled as “Beatles_White_Album” then yes I would say that this is an album containing the Beatles tracks – you could go further if the torrent contains 30tracks and is around 210mb – then yes you are going to track that one down… well done {claps hands} What if the entire Beatles catalogue was on a Torrent labelled as “CM3u0yKuF” zipped up into chunks – Secure Zips are tagged as HolidayFiles_France_88: is there smart technology that knows how to get around that?? If there is then – fantastic - but then if we have level of penetration detection on networks then is it not more appropriate to after that technology to go after the trap doors and hidden doors into the seedy underground world of child pornography – where although not costing an industry any financial hardship – its something more important – children's lives! I’ve talked about this before – where its always a subject that is hard for people to talk about openly but none the less there should be a task force beyond what we have to ensure that if we are going to monitor internet usage then – surely this should be one of the first port of calls?

So in final ranting fashion what are we saying – P2P is in fact a dying breed and the shares already know this – what you find is that the ones that are left and being charged are not the hardcore that need to be brought to task here – and by that I don't mean some lengthy prison sentence. The technology has moved so far away that I have seen and tried out the new breed of illegal file share sites – as they finish the UI and monetisation (these guys that set up Pirate Bay & KaZaA etc know what they are doing) and you know what in a seamless silent world there is over 5Tb of media on there just now in some of these sites – with the latest Hollywood blockbusters (US cinema releases such as Watchmen..) that come over the wire under the noses of the ISPs with no detection – because they have moved away from Torrents and into a whole new venture. I’m not going to name any names or anything like that – also doesn't really work like that anymore is all I’m saying.

So once the Government, UK Music, Lord Carter and ISPs finally agree to take action – it will be a barren wasteland of dead empty torrents and a few people who stumbled across it while trying to find a music video that used to be on You Tube until the greedy artists decided they wanted more $ from Google (because they can afford it?? argument from artists!)

Big Brother will be watching – but what exactly will it be watching….?

Why ITV can’t deliver 21st Century TV

2009-03-05T08:02:00.001-08:00

So is that a statement or is that a question? Either ITV can not deliver a channel in the 21st Century or why can’t they do it? They have Michael Grade at almost £1million per year at the helm – surely he has the vision, experience and balls to shake up ITV as he did so early on in his career?

And with that opening statement you should see where the issue lies quite heavily - “early on in his career” – Back in the day when he was an innovator and forward thinker around television content with Channel 4 and BBC – his aim was simple and blunt. Create a channel that has an output to cut above the noise of others, drive eyeballs to it and start to knock down barriers and boundaries! You know what he probably did that in spades and earned the respect and trust of his peers and fellow broadcasters while doing so.

However – zoom forward a couple of decades and here we are in 2009 – the world of television is a very (actually must emphasise that a bit more) VERY different place. Advertising has been on the decline for years, and just as my take on the value of eyeballs of the internet is somewhat a skewed view based on perceived value of those eyeballs – this is the same on television. Back in the day when Grade was making a name for himself the naive nature was as such that television has an audience of XXmillion and this in turn is worth £XXXXXXXXX per 30second slot – and so television advertising became a main stay in campaigns and marketing plans – because of all those eyeballs glued to the screen while their programme was not on the screen! I have always been very cynical of this approach no matter what medium – perhaps due to the fact that I do not feel the need to go and buy a sofa from DFS because they say that their sale has been extended or that a couple of kids with annoying CGI eyebrow movements makes me go and buy chocolate. This is the same with the internet – mass coverage of banners back in the 90s were a main stay across the web, pop ups (remember them both) however it soon became apparent that this blanket approach was not working and before you know it a search engine realised that if they start to actually target ads based on what an internet user was searching for then that would become “targeted” advertising. Google Ad Words was born and at the same time pop up blockers and ad blockers were the norm – the noise was turned down and in most cases switched off all together… The rest is Google history and everyone has been trying to catch them up ever since..

Now lets use that same example above and specifically with TV and directly at ITV. At the moment there is no exact number of audience figures for programmes and what those behavioural patterns are – so a blanket approach is still used today – and the Advertising Standards Agency ensure that there is no “unfair” advantage so while watching CSI Miami Amazon would not be allowed to advertise the latest CSI Box set – as that is too targeted??!! Excuse me… isn't that the whole point Amazon would quite like to target the people who are watching the programme that they are advertising. So companies would pay money for ad slots from ITV based on the BARB viewing figures from a base of 5,100 households!! What!!! 5,100 – we are a country of over 60million (of which there is 30million TVs) and the viewing figures are based on this small subset based in regions!?!?!

So let me go back to an earlier point… “PERCIEVED” value of the eyeballs – at least with the web you have stats to say that Facebook has had 24million views yesterday – these are facts that are based on fact and actually we know where they came from and where they went off to next. So did it really come as a surprise to Michael Grade and ITV when they saw revenues fall off a cliff – where smart advertisers were putting their money on web advertising r- which could be targeted and actually get a report based on number of eyeballs and how many converted to either browse the site or in the end purchase. TV could not hold that up as it was still based on what 5,100 households were doing. Once the UK moves fully digital I would hope that we can stop this incredibly expensive (for the advertiser) guessing game – but can you imagine if in the cold light of day we suddenly find that Coronation Street actually only pulled in 3million viewers while Shameless pulled in 11million viewers!! I think there would be some cause for concern if there were actual true representations that skewed these figures. However the truth must out – and once we are back on a level playing field and we have an actual true picture of the viewing figures then I guess advertisers will start to move back to the television – especially when we can use technology as a pair & matching looking at what Samsung are doing with Internet@TV with Yahoo…

How does this effect ITV and Grade’s immediate future – apart from commercial suicide, has he not learned from his current ad revenue drop – that advertisers are not spending as much on ITV as they used to?? Surely he and his team knows this and can see it?? So if your ad revenue is falling off a cliff – how would you plan to attack that and start to get some monetary value back into your business.

Well we know what Grade has announced.. and to plough more into his reality shows that prove big ratings wins…

..and lets stop right there!! Closing down local regional areas of the business, axing studios and long term drama shows… In a time where we are very much global as well as local centric and aware regional (I’m also not going to talk about Friends Reunited – apart from WHY!!! and what a bad decision to make to buy that site – and yes we were all saying that when they bought it as it had already outlived its stay on the web!!)

However I just wanted to finish of with some final points on how you should go about generating that revenue… Creating monstrous rubbish such as I’m a Celebrity.. X-Factor and other such reality shows – especially those that enlist the “Z-List” of celebrities that may well flank the pages of OK Magazine in the UK – outside of our little island no one cares or gives an ass about who these people are. If your lucky they may get a slot in 10sec clip of the most disgusting thing done in a closed space type show in Australia – apart from that your resell, syndication, distribution, RSVS feeds diminish into £0. These shows especially the reality shows cost very little to produce compared to a drama or sit-com that takes a great deal of investment – but also generates additional and continued revenue. Look at the Friends brand and its revenue and syndication rights continue even today – BBC paid over $22million for Heroes Season1 – and that's just one country.

So as a parting shot across the bow – why can’t ITV deliver 21st Century TV – because the thinking is still stuck in the latter 20th Century and when you are convinced that the advertisers will come back if you produce (perceived) large audience programming the advertisers will return….

…not if they have already spent their money elsewhere on the web with Yahoo & Google as well as Lulu or other online studios that have direct content traffic conversions – while others such as Fox continue to flourish because of continued revenue from syndication rights and license deals of their shows, as well as embracing them online with various multiple distribution points that are tracked and delivered…

Unless the ITV board realise that there needs to be new thinking – ITV will be switched off from out television screens by this time next year….

Mobile Apps – The digital media future is in their hands

2009-03-02T09:14:00.001-08:00

In my last post I touched very briefly on the Games and Movie industry and where the D2C opportunities are heading. These are inevitable – however there are more pressing issues at stake just now and the as 2009 is THE year of the emerging mobile (we all knew it had potential but here it is at last it starts to come of age and will be very dominant for the next 3 years) device and of course those apps that are either very useful and handy to have or – if you like the Zippo brand you can have a pretend lighter that no matter how hard I try I can never get my cigarette lit!

So this week those covermounts that were of course according to some “the saviour of the music industry” we were told were no longer going to be part of the Mails make up any more “senior executives at the newspaper believe the use of covermounts is a costly exercise, prompting a significant spike in circulation, but not luring in long-term readers.” So bang goes that idea then…

So what's next? That of course is what everyone is trying to scramble about and try and come up with the “next big” thing! Well i would hope that after all this time we are now at a stage where the old models no longer work and actually you need to have a much more open approach to how you stack up a business model for digital media. You have the potential of a worldwide audience, you have multitude of delivery options to you – stream, download, side load, D2C, B2B… the list goes on and as such there is different models for each of those – and each will have a differing value based on the delivery and consumption.

However there really needs to be a take in the ground that does not label, or pigeon hole the end user because they decide to consume the media in whatever format they chose.

With this I have been talking about the big wins in mobile this year and the year of mobile of which we as consumers, and we as strategists and technology futurists have been talking about the power of the converged device and the power that it will yield when it arrives. I had been battling for years earlier saying that it was coming but not yet, I was a naysayer and then at the end of that year, just go back and ask “did mobile revolutionise the world, or did we just send more txt messages?”

So with 2009 in full swing and Apple & Google in full throws of their Apps – what can we learn from them and relate that back to the entertainment industry? Well on the iPhone part of the SDK is that you can not topuch or intefere with the iTunes library – that's Apples and no one is touching it!! Quite right too it is one of the biggest USP of the iPhone – which makes it such a good music player as well as a phone – but another of my favourite applications from Tapulous showed a slightly different approach where – the iPhone comes in 8Gb & 16Gb – (sure that this summer we will see the 32Gb version) so it was then feasible to write an application with content wrapped inside it! You could in effect wrap an album in there and avoid “touching any part of iTunes”…

This got me thinking then – rather than just iPhone what if we could package up a subset of items and start to make an interactive and changeable experience that at the same time gives you the chance to sample and enjoy even more music for example?

So the Music App was conceived – and sure that there are other variations on a theme here – but lets have a look a a couple of examples of how this could work from a users part and then how this can work as a business idea and start to translate what in essence is a template for digital media on portable / mobile devices…

Lets take the brand new U2 Long Player: No Line On The Horizon. U2 delivered various formats of the alum from CD, Box Set, Vinyl, digital & digital deluxe editions. Although that is a very traditional way of delivering such a long awaited album – you noticed that after the single came out there was a scramble for U2 catalogue – as always happens with massive bands – and something that the labels are keen to see in a larger scale, but there's not many U2’s, Metallica’s etc.. left that has that sort of impact.

What then if part of UMGs drive they delivered the U2+ App. This is an app that caters for most new phones and as the album, plus the digital booklet and hell why not throw in a sample of the Corbijn video to tantalise. Then as this is an App – deliver 2 other sample Albums of U2 – say Boy & Best of 80 – 90. Suddenly you have just delivered to the end user a total U2 experience that goes beyond the usual download and play. Now we can start to get somewhat clever with this – the App is the U2+ No Line on The Horizon (the “+” being key here) where you can then update your 2 bonus elements and say swap out Boy for October and listen to a sample of that album. Of course you can directly link off and download the entire album ( that's the up sell or just listen to half the album that is embedded within the application – and there is your security aspect of dropping 3 albums within 1 app) so in essence you have just created a mini U2 radio / sample package that you know – as the user had to download the application and connect to deliver any updates.

The really clever part is that once the user has the application on there – the possibilities to then cross sell and deliver U2 news, tour, merchandise, bonus tracks is simply breath taking – you have a direct relationship with the consumer that you never had before (as previously this was done either with iTunes or retailers..)

Then take this idea one stage further and deliver TV content and start to deliver an episodic subscription delivery where the application will deliver the latest episode 1 at a time – suddenly using a DVD Rental formula where you have a queued list of TV shows that you are keen to watch and have in your queue – as the example above start delivering TV content direct to the device and update the application as the user is finished one episode – and again the great cross sell opportunity is that if they have subscribed to a show like Family Guy – for example – whilst waiting for the next episode to air or become available – give the user a number of additional options to consider. It could be an older episode that they may have missed, a related show such as American Dad either way you have an opportunity to target and deliver a better experience for the end user than ever before.

Not only as the Apps for these new devices saved the mobile industry – in terms of the end user being able to personalise their mobile experience – but may have just delivered another way to enjoy digital media on the go… and although I’m not going to say save the music industry – but at least we can start looking at the huge possibilities that we have available using an app as an initial delivery tool and from there – start thinking about ongoing value to both the user and to the rights owners…

(PS apologies for the crap images – I’m NOT a designer and these were knocked up – quite literally - to show what could be possible… with a decent designer I bet they’d look even better…)

Mobile Apps – The digital media future is their hands

2009-03-02T09:13:00.001-08:00

However there really needs to be a take in the ground that does not label, or pigeon hole the end user because they decide to consume the media in whatever format they chose.

(PS apologies for the crap images – I’m NOT a designer and these were knocked up – quite literally - to show what could be possible… with a decent designer I bet they’d look even better…)

Stop Wishing it all away – Inspire the Wishlist for 2009

2009-03-02T07:07:00.001-08:00

Started this Blog as a sort of step and thoughts for the forthcoming Luxury Interactive (e-Commerce) event in London on 16th – 18th March details here… I have been asked to attend – and got me thinking about the Luxury market and how it is handling the current recession. Not hearing anything from Dior, Gucci or Dolce & Gabbana that they are down to their last dollars – due in part to the pure strength of their brand and the vast array of A-List celebrities, famous advocates and cat walk & red carpet inspirational pieces of couture revered around the globe.

It is beyond this where the next set of fashion followers will look to Gucci or Dior style icons pick up from the heady level of someone like Claudia Schiffer in her next D&G outing – this is where a D&G £2000 coat will be paired with a tasty Primark pair of disposable heels or something equally throw away as we continue the democratisation of fashion – and this is where the key lies for these luxury brands in times of trouble and worry…

Firstly the website should be as equally awe inspiring and jaw dropping dripping in the brand that has led the average consumer to the haloed entrance of Gucci or Dior. This is window dressing in its extreme – lavish the user with inspirational and aspiration touches of sheer luxury and genius. There are two trains of though here – you either are a fully functional e-commerce site that has all the brilliant basics that allow consumers to shop with ease and without any hindrance; or you are a pure marketing / brand site that has such rich immersive detail – well it is about the brand experience after all.

Wishlists | Saved items list | Saved Basket – all sounds very web 1.0! Nothing new or innovative in that. However in the current climate of consumers watching their pounds and dollars there may well be a need to suck it and see. Same analogy that I am hearing from CTOs, CIOs & SVPs of IT – that have had their 2009 budgets all signed off and and are set to continue or start their development work this year. However even though the money is in the “bank” so to speak – they are sitting tight and looking at the market conditions and where its heading – any capital spend or investment is being held back until the market starts to show some sign of bottoming out or flattening . In the interim steps they are asking for assistance, guidance and consulting on future strategic direction and where best to deliver maximum impact for their business – whether this is in business intelligence / reporting / CRM etc.. either way they are planning for a post-recession boot and to be in the best possible position..

Same here with wishlists | saved items – ensure that these are done to give the user a sense of “I’ll keep that for later” or using the CTOs analogy “I’ll save that until I know that everything's going to be a bit better” Now most will do this on some shape or form – but what do they do with that? Is it just a “SAVED ITEMS” list – think of what you are selling and use it appropriately. Such as incentives to deliver a more personal experience “My Secret Stash” or “The Naughty List” something that inspires the user to feel that although it may well be a £800 pair of shoes – and cant really justify it right now – there is nothing to say that that little self indulgent treat you can never have – but have it set as a cheer me up or motivation tool?? Let them make it more relevant to them – and then the key point – help them by encouraging them to go from prospect to purchaser – HOW??

By ensuring that you encourage (see I used the word “encourage” rather than “must”) your user to sign up to receive information or related to their “Secret Stash” could be as simple as an email or message to their Facebook – simple Tweet to their twitter account – a TXT to their mobile to let them know that the “to die for” Gucci shoes are now £100 off – and buy within the next 24hrs use this coupon and get a further 10% off – go on you’ve earned it!! In its simplest form this is just bloody good CRM basics – but the old fashioned Wishlist has always been confined as an afterthought and something that has not converted to a sale for some reason – well now is you chance to convert and encourage. Reward and entice thy have put the item in their for a reason and finding out how you can convert them to buy it by various means is a way to release the potential of that “list”

I used luxury items as an example – and of course to tie in with the Luxury Interactive event - however this will work in other e-tailers.

Think of some of the bigger indulgent items such as TVs, dishwashers, etc… unless the old one has completely bust – there may well be elements of doubt to actually replacing the dishwasher just now - “wash up by hand just now” – but where is the element as above for fashion where we class them as “Naughty but Nice” lists same here – but actually with some more intelligence you can get a similar effect – help the consumer with a list of “Top Home List” – Again make this more interesting than just a bland list, allow them to rank them in order of what they want, need or aspiration – and why not then give them some comparisons of more expensive models (to show that the model that they have chosen does everything that this one does but for £250 less!!), financial incentives? perhaps throw in a free 3 yr warranty. Also look beyond what you as an e-tailer sell and deliver some insightful information: perhaps using a dishwasher once a day saves on energy and water bills? or More family free time by loading up the dishwasher and off out to the park!

Slightly cheesy I know but these are some of the points rather than leaving the item to sit somewhere and fester – in these times you need to ensure that every part of your site is working 110% to maximise those conversion figures – and that includes those ‘under the sofa dust ball’ moments that are sometimes referred to as the Wishlist….

Digital Entertainment Direct to Consumer – DED2C The Future is catching up..

2009-02-26T04:32:00.001-08:00

I've talked a lot about the power of how digital media and direct to consumer will start to penetrate the mass market over the coming years – but for early adopters that time is most definitely here now.. If you are a retailer or reseller in the Entertainment sector – you better hold on to your boots and have some very smart thinkers helping you shape where you play a part in the Digital Future..

Microsoft's approach last week to release Grand Theft Auto – The Lost & Damned Episode 1 - as a download only to XBOX Live may have gone under the radar by most – but to me that was the discussion that I had with Sony’s Playstation division back in the days prior to the launch of the PS2 – where I talked to them about broadband penetration and when Sony could deliver a D2C proposition. Back then although we knew that broadband would penetrate – the idea of avoiding a retailer and delivering direct to the consumer over the internet was in someway a bridge to far. The games were GBs in size it could take days for it to come down the pipe. FFWD to 2009 and Virgin delivers 50Mb broadband speeds now – and technology is such that we can deliver a progressive download that delivers enough of the game for the user to start playing before its downloaded entirely. I had another challenge for Sony back then was – “Pay as You Play” I had thought that by that time would the kids of that generation really care about having a stack of games that cost them £50 that they may either play until their eyes bleed or – actually play a few times and then lose their money as they trade it back in – why not let them pay as they play – slicing up the game in such a way that they have 20% of the game for £10 – and as they complete they move on to the next step – I also showed them that in effect a £50 game would now become £60 actually costing more if the user ended up playing the entire game – as well as delivering hidden elements, community aspect, more maps and levels that – heaven forbid could be designed and adapted by other developers by opening up parts of the games SDK? (Look at Nintendo’s Wii Ware as a close example) – This was of course back in 1999!!!

So FFWD onto 2009 10 years later – and I tip my proverbial hat to Microsoft for entering this space with such a high profile game such as GTA – just as music retailers watch their physical formats vanish from their stores – and deliver direct to a consumers PC – the entire games industry is moving this way slowly and steadily. Next step I hope that we can work with the Movie studios to deliver Worldwide Premiers of movies direct to peoples homes – think of all the people that cant get out to cinema because of children, disability etc.. – as per the above business model – say to a consumer – pay £25 for a “Golden Ticket” and then deliver the Worldwide Premier of Batman – WOW what a compelling offer for the consumer – almost creating an “at home event” friends family around the 50” HD LCD then as its hits the cinema {{ BEAMED DIRECT TO YOUR TV}} – this would help the business model of the movie industry where they will start to see a diminished set of sales as we all move into digital movies – and as per my first example – why have a stack of plastic? – stream the movie and I’ll pay to watch it when I want to – therefore why do I need to purchase more plastic to watch it once or twice if I'm feeling that way inclined…

These ideas to some are futuristic and way off – maybe because in part its down to peoples perception and understanding on where these new business models are and monetisation – however the technology, ideas and a whole new host of business models are already here!! Albeit rattling around within frustrated futurists and strategists that are speaking but seems that no one is (or wants to listen)

Nano Browsing & Micro e-Commerce - IE8 Possibilities

2009-02-17T03:10:00.001-08:00

Whilst working and thinking around what new possibilities can be attained by the pending IE8 launch - wanted to try and push the boundaries of how and why we use Internet browsers - and from that in 2009 and what is the latest trend around e-commerce and web browsing.

Ladies & Gents let me introduce you to "nano-browsing"
Nano Browsing is a term that we have devised as an “extremely small” browsing experience - where you use tools such as the new IE8 web slice technology (Mozilla has a similar experience) and rather than having a simple cut or slice of the metadata tendered and saved - you start to make this much more dynamic and ultimately browseable. The user experience should not be compromised though and still deliver an experience no matter how small with the end user in mind allowing them to do the basic functions within this environment.

Add to the mix the IE8 "accelerator" and suddenly you can search based on a keyword, someone else's website - neat to a point - however use a spot of nano-browsing thinking and this simple comparison tool suddenly becomes a real richer nano-browsing experience. Start to delve deeper into the page that you are looking for comparisons and look for much more rich detailed metadata, such as the image itself or even the image itself with colour recognition (something like the Idée method) and you have an all together greater nano-browsing experience.

Looking on more detail of the "web slice" it will sit within the favourites on the browser bar - however have that in a concertina effect, dynamically update the slice when changes to that product ID are created and alert the user to the fact that there are changes within their slice.
How much of an experience is that for your customers that really goes beyond a traditional wishlist - and without visiting the website you are instantly aware of a price change, low stock or out of stock. The user can get into their slice and nano-browse their selection and the point here is to prompt, promote and push them into action "only 2 left, I'd better buy them now!!"

This leads nicely onto how the end user purchases the item(s). Tradition and current thinking is that you push the user back into the main website - allowing the user to run through the traditional means of e-commerce (log in or register.. etc..) WHY?
Just because we are used to this - time to move this much mooted and in a lot of cases clunky experience and bring micro e-commerce into play. We have discussed micro distribution a lot last year – and looking forward to more of this in 2009 - (just as an aside the recent move from MTVN to block their APIs and the embedded video player in peoples blogs, sites etc.. is somewhat confusing – they now want to push people to only MTV and not enjoy a video experience within the location where the user landed – goes against the grain of micro-distribution and as such a loss in terms of penetration and viewers) we will push the boundaries of nano commerce and micro e-commerce where we can start to deliver a checkout experience from within a banner size or simple DHTML flyout. Keeping the security elements as such that we can deliver a secure experience for both the consumer and the reseller. However this brings other challenges such as micro payments – why the need to pump your credit card into a site each time – the old adage around wallets will come out again – but thinking more around simple integration from PayPal, mobile number – this way keeping the amount of data to an absolute minimum – but at the same time allowing speed of transaction and convenience.

The example here would be something like I have arrived on a website that I found – however I know that just a single right click away I have a similar store set up to compare against. I right click the image which has both metadata as well as colour recognition – and delivers me a similar and comparable product that has been designed to show me price and stock availability. The company that delivered me the comparison also has micro e-commerce built in there as well. So I can buy it direct and with my mobile number short code (which I set up as I shop with them a lot) I have gone through a simple quick direct e-commerce transaction on a competitors website without ever leaving and going to my favourite store.

This can also be the same for micro distribution – lets take the Fox Family Guy example. Where I have arrived on my friends blog who is showing daily clips of Family Guy direct from Fox. I watch the episode snippet (normally 10mins or so) love it so much that my friend has also implemented the micro e-commerce functionality to allow me in a tasty concertina effect from one screen to the next – I can check out and have a link with reciept delivered to my email account. Where I download the content and using my unique ID unlock the content and enjoy. I am assuming that FOX has already put all the content in the cloud already protected – and can only be unlocked after a HEX Key is delivered – the file itself can be delivered either with or without DRM. The content storage is what is secure in the fist instance – so when a request of the dynamic URL is requested there already is a record of the transaction – then once the content is downloaded this sits with the content owner to either DRM or non-DRM. Not forgetting my friend who also got a nice kickback from eyeballs watching the snippet – he also gets a kickback from the transaction..

The world of nano technology has just arrived on the web – time to embrace it and reach an ever wider audience without breaking a sweat – as your biggest fans and advocates are the ones that are pushing and promoting your content. The micro e-commerce part is handled by the end user embedding the code into their site, blog or Social Network page… It just works…

Want to see an example? Post a link soon… ;)

Digital Britain (Just a couple of thoughts to start with…)

2009-02-13T08:14:00.001-08:00

While I applaud any government that has a digital outlook and digital strategy – I also have to look at why it is being produced, for who’s benefit and what the salient points are from it! I am very sceptical around Governments that have “Ministers for XXXXXX” that in fact have no real understanding of the issues, risks and dependencies. They will get in “experts” consultants to help advise and shape what the output should be. Ultimately there is then the element of self interest, self-justification and self-promotion – which within a Democracy such as ours – the Government should be for the people by the people.

The full Government document can be downloaded here however there are 5 key objectives for Digital Britain – they are:

Digital Britain: Five objectives

Upgrading and modernising our digital networks – wired, wireless and broadcast – so that Britain has an infrastructure that enables it to remain globally competitive in the digital world;
A dynamic investment climate for UK digital content, applications and services, that makes the UK an attractive place for both domestic and inward investment in our digital economy;
UK content for UK users: content of quality and scale that serves the interests, experiences and needs of all UK citizens; in particular impartial news, comment and analysis;
Fairness and access for all: universal availability coupled with the skills and digital literacy to enable near-universal participation in the digital economy and digital society;
Developing the infrastructure, skills and take-up to enable the widespread online delivery of public services and business interface with Government.

So let me begin by having my annual POP at the BBC and why in 2009 it MUST be broken up and given distinct roles or responsibility and commercial accountability. The BBC as the Digital switchover dawns can or should have such a monopolistic strangle hold on broadcast (in terms of radio & television) as well as it’s ongoing technical development and delivery. Also look at this objective..

ACTION 20
We are inviting the BBC to play a leading role, just as it has in digital broadcast, through marketing, cross-promotion and provision of content to drive interest in taking up broadband. With other public service organisations, the BBC can drive the development of platforms with open standards available to all content providers and device manufacturers alike.

So why do I still object whole heartily to the ongoing development, funding and technological advancement of the BBC? The document pours praise, appreciation and on-going support and justification for the Corporations dedication and commitment to the Digital Landscape – and ultimately a Digital Britain. However, as I have voiced in the past – as many other agreed / and disagreed with me – I am all in favour of a certain ratio that we have public service / funded programming that has objectivity as well as entertainment at its core. It must fall in line and protect the investment and quality of both its output and its diversity. Paying an individual a constant higher rate as it “benchmarked” against the industry and value / worth of such an individual. Not if its the BBC that is propping up the cost of such a “presenter” Equally diversification in content is also key – this means that although the cheap and easy win for the BBC is to churn out as many “reality” shows as they are seen as successful is neither a reason nor excuse to continue the onslaught of such programmes.

The technical issue that I have with the BBC and it’s continued investment and digital stranglehold on the commercial realm of others is quite simple – Reports that the highly successful and innovative BBC iPlayer actually took over 6 years and a range of costs (buried within certain areas) between £20million - £120million – depending on who you speak to! This is unacceptable and pushes out the fair-play advantage that say Channel 4 and Channel 5 face in delivering their on-demand service that will be fraught with issues and complications – that they commercially can not complete as they do not have the never ending supply of licence payers cash to prop up their development – especially at a time where ITV will either be bought out by private investment or crumble by the way-side. Channel 4 & 5 considering joining forces – Television broadcasting is changing forever with the advent of digital media and the consumers appetite for their own broadcasting and will watch what they want whenever they want it is fast becoming a reality. The BBC can not to continue to dominate and sail on through with Government nods, winks and leadership based on the licence payer (you and I) footing the bill for their continued development. The next phase of the BBCs investment, funding and technical dominance in this space codenamed “CANVAS” Not too much is being divulged at this stage as there are plans and discussions as well as contracts and NDAs all over the place forbidding people from talking about this – however with a failed Home IPTV service from BT (£200million with 200,000 subscribers) ITV on the brink of collapse, Kangaroo booted from this world by OfCom – then it makes sense then to combine an IPTV solution with all parties – compete against SKY, Virgin and others with a FreeTV offer!! Which is a slap in the face for Sky and Virgin that have been battling it out in investment, technical advancement, programming as well as working out a sound and solid commercial business model. To then supersede this with a FreeTV offer really does not inspire confidence in continued investment in Digital Britain as where is the common ground that each business competes on? SKY & Virgin will go head to head in bidding for rights to Sports, Movies, TV shows etc.. which in turn must make solid financial viability so that they can build their ad structure around this – also including on-demand services where they will look to wrap additional digital assets with this to create a create experience for the user – but also a robust finance model.

The same must be said for the ISPs and the Digital Music TAX that I mentioned in my last blog. Not only does the government talk of continued investment and growth of the ISPs service and delivery capability – it must also be guardian, police and prosecutor of the "WWW” (Wild Wild Web) Broadband will become like a utility – and so it should be. The infrastructure is sorely lacking – and the recent discussion around the £1.5 - £2 billion spend on the new BT Fibre infrastructure is of course welcomed – but be aware that the UK being as small as it is has a very very poor reputation in its ability to deliver big scale projects in the biggest of our cities – looking at the water, gas and electricity redevelopments that have been going in and around London over the past few years has been somewhat shocking to say the least. Leaving Local Councils – where some of the most infuriating and “jobs worth” people in society “work” today. We have seen so many failings in the past from all walks of the local council infrastructure (from child protection, planning, local support…) – that to allow these people lose on a Digital Britain – where not only do they stifle progression and development of technology (look at some of the 3G mobile mast decisions – both in terms of approval and disapproval of sites) these people are so out of touch with technology that to allow them anywhere near the vision of a digital Britain is somewhat worrying.

Elements of what is contained in this document (see Action 13) was hinted at by the CEO of UK Music at the recent MidemNet conference in Cannes (read my take on that here) With Feargal Sharkey announcing that the Government, ISPs and UK Music have a “plan” to tackle the illegal world of file sharing and how they can or should combat this..

ACTION 13
Our response to the consultation on peer-to-peer file sharing sets out our intention to legislate, requiring ISPs to notify alleged infringers of rights (subject to reasonable levels of proof from rights-holders) that their conduct is unlawful. We also intend to require ISPs to collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers (derived from their notification activities), to be made available to rights-holders together with personal details on receipt of a court order. We intend to consult on this approach shortly, setting out our proposals in detail.

I've discussed in many blogs in the past that the ISPs can indeed block specific and protocols from their service – even down to specific IP locations. Think of your Office corporate network – where you cant access social networking sites, porn, gambling or streaming music services…. so do people think that ISPs with their technology can’t do the same with customers?? Of course they can – and some have already started implementing blocking technology - “quick close the stable door…” springs to mind!! Then the cool kids at Google this week announced “New Google Tools Determine if Your ISP Is Blocking BitTorrent” so as soon as the ISPs decide to finally take some action on this the technology companies deliver a sniffer that can determine if your ISP has decided to prevent themselves from being taken to court by the copyright holders of the music industry…. The action taken and being proposed is all based around the Music Industry and what UK Music, ISPs and Government have been plotting to “fix” it. Classic that it takes almost 10 years to come up with a solution (that they could have implemented 10 years earlier) just as technology drives forward with even more advancements in data storage and transfer. Sorry its really not about the music – its about data that is being transferred around the world. The only hope just now is that people are using P2P and Torrents to enable this – but as we move into more advanced seamless synchronised services – detecting what is an illegal download and not a user who as decided to back up their music content in a cloud storage solution and syncs or downloads the content to another of his devices will be impossible to track.

However what everyone failed to look out for is that by installing a sense of fear in innocent people who are no longer sure what is legal or illegal while using the internet – as well as restrictions, what they have looked at and ultimately downloaded. Take a mum who finds a knitting pattern that is posted on a chat forum – she downloads the pattern and uses the pattern. Now with all the hype and scare-mongering from all corners the pattern was copyrighted and the IP belongs to someone – however an unscrupulous Nigerian gang starts sending blanket letters informing the householders that “illegal or copyright protect content has been downloaded via the users IP range” – they will use the common 192.168.1.X – to show that they know it is them (of course this is the default for wireless routers in most peoples homes – as well as its easy to find out BT, Virgin etc.. range of IP addresses) “and will demand that a payment of £800 and confirmation that they will no longer take part in illegal downloading of content” the scared user coughs up and suddenly the knitting pattern that she downloaded with her friends has just cost her £800!!! Don’t think that it wont happen – it already has!! There is also the matter of perhaps someone looking at Porn, Gambling, Images etc.. the letters will be worded in such a way that it will put fear into anyone who is unaware of what is happening – a scam.

It does however throw up that knitting pattern, it is someone's copyrighted material, as are images, JPEGS, photos, blogs… the list is endless - the internet is full of wonderful information – that copyright must be protected and respected – but at what cost and who ultimately pays the price for this? UK Music and the Government think that with Music the ISP should be liable in the first instance unless they levy a charge to their users where information will be passed to the rights holders to take action! Yes piracy is stealing and there is a core of users that will continue to kick against the norm and feel that it is their right to share everything for free – and when I mean a minority 1million in the grand scheme of the world wide web is of course a minority – torrents will start to vanish this year – and be completely gone by 2010. Governments, ISPs and lobbyists will pat each other on the back that they have succeeded where other failed in their attempt to curb this “disease” – Meanwhile the sharers will have multiple accounts set up where they will share even more content with even more vigour and speed than ever seen before.

However as before will the relevant powers that be wait 10 years again to curb this new way of file sharing – or will they come quicker to the people that understand this area better than the rights holders, Governments and other lobbyists who get so hung up on the passion – that its music, its art, its our creative industry – yes it is, but take a step back and realise that your problem is actually a technical one – as un sexy and unglamorous as it is – data is being copied and distributed – what that data is, is irrelevant to a technology company, they have the technology and understanding to fix the issue.

Anyway – I will dissect the document (there are 86 Pages!!) in more detail – of which as I mentioned at the start of this Blog – more than delighted that we are shaping a unified digital vision – and know a few people that play apart in that shaping – who are very intelligent and smart people – however if there is any hidden agendas or other Lords who for a bung would, allegedly, change legislation – then the Digital Britain will not be as wonderful as us Futurists have been predicting!

How do you save the UK Retail High Street ?

2009-02-13T08:12:00.003-08:00

I have been asked a lot recently by friends, colleagues and others within the struggling retail sector what is the future and how can both large brands and smaller boutiques stores sustain and survive on our traditional high street?

I don’t have a magic wand or full raft of advice here to deliver the answers to make the UK high street take a hockey stick curve in the right direction – I do have my own thoughts (which i have been talking about for a while) and perhaps now is the time to start putting this into practice before we see another wave of high street brands vanish forever.

First off I think that the UK needs to review its own internal workings rules and regulations. For that you need the government to make some significant and momentous shifts in its thinking and understanding that the world - and in particular to this blog – the UK Retail High Street is a very different place compared to what it was 5 years ago. We all enjoy the convenience and benefits of online shopping and this is a trend that will continue to grow with the new breed of technology and consumer electronics making it even easier for consumers to shop, browse, compare and buy from the comfort of their sofa – why on earth would you need to venture out? There is of course a whole other conversation about online retail and where e-commerce moves into over the coming 12/24 months where again we will see a significant shift in that sector as well – I’ll keep that for another time though…

So what can the Government do that is not just a quick fix that we have to pay for eventually (I’m talking about the VAT cut) this has not really had the seismic impact that either Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling had hoped for – really? Plenty of people warned that when it was announced – perhaps big ticket items that a 2.5% cut in VAT would show a reasonable return for the consumer – but when consumers are spending less and watching what they do spend – the nominal VAT cuts they were seeing didn't have the same impact. A few pence here and if you were lucky a couple of pounds on the Christmas shop – but even then the consumer were cutting back some what on that so there is no real definitive argument for against the positivity that the consumers saw on their big Christmas shop.

We move into February with more unrest and threat of high street closures due to, and quite rightly too, the consumers lack of confidence in either the economy or their job security – so they will be more cautious of what they spend their money on. However we are in that never ending spiral that we must get out of quickly and make some positive steps to halt this and make the UK High Street a sustainable and vibrant place again.

How?

Firstly Government action – the continued (and often debated) archaic trading laws need overhauling NOW! BERR have always outlined the practice “Small shops with a floor area of up to 280 square metres (3,000 square feet) can choose their own Sunday opening hours. But they must be aware that staff who work on a Sunday may have special employment rights.” The limit of Sunday trading hours, sq ft size impact etc.. is unjust in this climate and in fact in 2009 is there really any other justification for the restricted Sunday trading. A complete overhaul would bring a more relaxed and sedate environment to the high street, as well as a longer time to browse and goodness knows even buy some goods. The BERR is headed up by Peter Mandelson and needs to address this sooner rather than later. I recall having fines from Local Councils when I was managing retail stores due to my store running over its allotted Sunday trading time limit! Why? I stayed open as consumers were still wanting to shop and spend their money in my store – so i wasn’t going to kick them out – every sale counted back then – as I'm sure it does even more so now. However as I recall there was some uproar from the Church leaders around Sunday trading – being “a day of rest” yes that may well have been the case in 70’s & 80’s when online retail wasnt invented and people couldn't shop 24/7 if they wanted to… So the Church argument in a multi-cultural, multi-channel UK does not stack up!

Next is the BCSC that helps shape the landlords and business unit holders with the retailers. This is a key issue as more and more high street and shopping centre units become vacant the initial reaction is to increase the rates or rent elsewhere to make up the shortfall. There has been an on going debate between retailers and commercial landlords around what is right and wrong in the current climate. However again I can only go on my own retail experience – where at the height of the high street in early 90’s there was a flip side where landlords would significantly increase their commercial rents and rates as the demand for space was so high that the old adage of greed crept in and an increase in rental would benefit the commercial landlords – as well as a hefty price hike in shopping parking spaces etc… This must be a key piece of work for Michael Green & Jeremy Collins to really work with Commercial Landlords, Retailers and Local Council to review the current state of the “High Street” and act appropriately, correctly and without the incessant need of “what's in it for me” If Commercial Landlords continue to increase rents, while local councils push up rates and town parking become astronomical then we may as well mourn the demise of the high street now. We need to act in a positive and pro-active manner to establish the high street as a place of community and commerce where big brands can and should sit comfortably side by side.

This is the final part of my own take on the Retail High Street – while we would love to see Pete’s Butcher Shop, Frank’s Fishmongers sit along side Tesco Metro & M&S Food Halls – there doesn't seem to be that level of optimism or opportunity for these types of stores to thrive and flourish. A number of causes for this could be a lack of confidence that how can they possibly compete with the might of Tesco or M&S etc… Rent and rates are too high, the only available unit / location for me is in the wrong area of town… all these are perfectly valid points and again this is down to local councils, town planning and rejuvenation of the local high street. I have spoken to a few local councillors and their inept and lack of understanding on this subject is somewhat shocking to say the least. These bureaucrats need to have a lesson on high street rejuvenation – that doesn't involve creating yet another out of town complex that the big named brands may or may not move into – again they will look at the “what's in it for me” issue again and make a poor decision based on their own thoughts and views. I must stress here that not all local councils are like this – but a vast majority are – and in part of the rebuilding of a successful and thriving high street it requires everyone to be proactive and take responsibility. So I think that over time the high street will become an almost desolate landscape during the final downturn of 2009 – however if all the points above are carefully thought through and planned and agreed we will see a new emergence of UK Retail High Street in 2010 that will be very much in the vein of what the high street was supposed to be “Community & Commerce” local being a key driver. Local in terms of support, jobs, produce and products and a sense of pride that brings the dawn of a new era to the high street and to retailers to bring that passion and sense of community back to the fore.

However – lets not forget that retail as we know it is changing and will continue to change forever - nothing we can do to stop or change it. We need to embrace and work with and ultimately its in a small number of peoples hands to start to turn things around – get these achieved correctly and you will start to see the UK Retail High Street turning in the right direction – and if they don’t……

Microsoft to launch “My Phone” at Barcelona

2009-02-13T08:12:00.001-08:00

Microsoft now seems to be following in the footsteps of Apple with their Mobile Me service – with their My Phone service. I can only cover my eyes in advance of what could or could not happen. One would have to hope that the powers that be use the great Live Mesh framework that I am enjoying (yes I do use and like some of Microsoft's technology) however looking at the list of what you CAN do – actually reads more like what you cant do:

What information can I back up on Microsoft My Phone?

If you have an active connection with Microsoft Exchange server (which is frequently used for corporate e-mail), My Phone will not synchronize your contacts, calendar appointments, or tasks.
If you have Windows Live installed on your phone, it will synchronize your Windows Live contacts with the Windows Live web site, and My Phone will synchronize your other contacts to your account on the My Phone web site.
If you have an external memory card and selected My Phone's recommended settings, information on the external memory card will not be synchronized.
If you store contacts on the SIM card provided by your mobile operator, My Phone will not synchronize these contacts.
If you have any documents stored outside the My Documents folder on your phone, My Phone will not synchronize these documents.

So great.. As the world of mobile and converged devices moves quickly into the realms of delivering applications that people would use across devices – Microsoft delivers yet another howler! Perhaps Microsoft don’t get the memos that the rest of the technology world gets and acts upon – look at Zune for a really bad execution of a CE MP3 player… and yet they still try to move ahead with DRM and the Zune experience

Oh yeah and the biggest stumbling block is that you must have a handset that is running Windows Mobile 6+ OS. Even though the last report showed that Microsoft were severely losing the battle to RIM, Apple (MS lost 3% growth YoY while Apple enjoyed a 300+% and RIM 81% increases YoY) – and with Google and Palm coming back harder than ever – I’m not sure that Windows Mobile really has a distinct future in the realm of the converged device. Steve Ballmer discussed the converged device at this years CES – therefore why push an application at a failing mobile OS – where you should be opening up the service to compete with Google and Apple – by making their service available on ANY handset. If in the end it is simply a secure website that is storing all your data (just as O2’s Bluebook as a poor example) should be as simple as synchronising data that is on your device – make it simple for the user to, at a touch of a button, back up all the data that they deem important to them.

Anyway – I will hold judgement on this until all the details are out – I’m sure my colleague JT will have his own thoughts on this – but first read through doesn't deliver any sense that Microsoft are getting the mobile space at all and what consumers really look for with their converged device – especially with a 200Mb initial “free” limit on data!! Goodness were into 32Gb mini-SD cards now – and as Ballmer talked about converged devices an initial 200mb limit isn't really going to cut the mustard!

Digital Britain? Not if it snows…

2009-02-13T08:11:00.001-08:00

I read, watched and shook my head in utter shock and despair at the way the Britain “coped” with the recent and continued snow falls of yesterday and today. I think that looking at the way the current infrastructure is set up – no matter if its snow, rain, heat or UFOs – the United Kingdom is stuck in a legacy that in comparison to the recent Digital Britain – really is cause for concern.

Firstly lets look at what happened in the early morning of Monday when the snow was falling? Co-Ordination, communication and updates should have been a vital part of that process. I would have to assume that ALL councils were on high alert gritting, salting and clearing the roads throughout the night as the snow fell? However was there any new technology on board these gritters that were plotting their path via Google Maps for example – routes agreed and mapped out in advance based on historical data, alerting and commenting on where there were real black spots (or should that be white spots!!) Where roads were cleared and stayed clear – would have given the local authorities the knowledge that the A310 was cleared and the battle with snow on that road had been won – however the A3 up to junction 2 had been cleared and good for use - however there is deep snow and icy conditions that require more work – this would have alerted the “base” that John on Truck H1 would not be onto his next route – due to extra work being required…

All this data would be sent back to base where this could then be mapped, and then sent around to any one who needed it – from local radio stations, television etc.. again share and update the communication.

Then we move onto schools and other local services – where was the vital information there? Where was the direct access and update if schools were opened, buses were running etc.. nothing… What happened was the power of social networks and great communication. Twitter, Facebook etc.. all posted updates and routes to avoid as well as areas that were clear – without the communication from your fellow commuter, traveller or family – there would still be big gaps in what was happening!

Then we saw the effect of a very poor web infrastructure where the websites of nearly every train and bus company just crashed! Where was the live feed updates, pull the home page and replace with simple up to date information on trains running – instead they all just crashed! Leaving commuters and travellers in disarray as they didn’t know what was happening. Again where was their “event” plan if some kind of incident – whether elements or disaster that kicks in when the traffic to the site reaches a certain threshold that means that the site must move into "incident” mode that delivers key data – move the site off to another branch of servers – say in the cloud so that the main site is in reserve – or vice versa! Either way this just showed the lack of planning by these companies.

Then we move on to the workers themselves – in 2009 there is still this stigma around “home working” in that its just a skive or an easy day. Never mind that there are millions of people who in these eco-aware and financial astute times – realise that they have the same abilities and connectivity to carry out emails, online meetings, VPN to actually be more productive that suffer a 6 hr commute in wintry conditions – that could well have put themselves and others at risk as they attempt to show employers that old fashioned resolve – as well as fear factor that we are seeing just now. Current economic climate is giving way to longer hours and pushing themselves beyond acceptable behaviour in order to secure their job. When this comes to dangerous wintry conditions this is just crazy – and doesn't help that the media jump on this with scare headline as £1.2billion lost as 6 million take the day off! – So based on the number of trains running, how many people couldn't get into Central London for example – some bright spark worked out that number of people missing x average daily rate = Lost business!! Good God!! how pathetic and antiquated – I know hundreds of fellow workers that were snowed in – and within minutes had re-arranged meetings, connected to my VPN, did a video conference on some software with others from around the world – and all this before 90% of my fellow commuters even made it in to London stuck on a jam packed train that took 3hrs to travel a normal 1hr journey! So actually the people that attempted to get into London were probably the ones that lost their companies money – and not us that fired up our laptops from home – but according to the media of course we were all having a “day off”!!

So then after that – you have to consider that the Digital Britain initiative that the government launched last week – connecting people at home to the internet is easy – changing how companies embrace technology and use it to the benefit of everyone is much harder.

Final anger and frustration at the media – the scaremongering in recent months with the economy and then today with the blast at people not commuting into work – again this is their ignorance of what home working has become in 21st Century – however these are the same companies that are seeing the death of the traditional newspaper and working out ways to deliver their content online – shame then that no one is reading their RSS News feeds – because they all have the day off playing in the snow…

MacWorld 2009

2009-01-07T09:41:00.000-08:00

Well here I am on my final day (of 2) at what looks like will be the final
MacWorld confrence. I say the final, sure the organizers would not agree with me on that one, but if you ask the exhibitors, as I have been doing, publicly all for MacWorld 2010, in private they're not coming back. No Apple at MacWorld doesn't mean too much to these guys! And youve got to agree. It's a bit like a Windows confrence without Microsoft turning up.
So was there anything exciting at the
final event?
Not really... iLife & iWork get a 2009 makeover with some really nice touches - but only if you are a hardened Mac user that uses these applications already- I don't see Office users dropping their PCs on order to switch to a Mac just to use these applications!
New 17" MacBook Pro. Great looking Mac ( apart from the awful black keys - I just don't like them makes it look somewhat cheap and nasty) but the price tag is quite heafty for the entry level unit - and in this current credit crunch not sure apart from hardcore Apple Mac users who will fork out almost $2800 compared to HP or Dell 17" which will come in almost $2000 less!!!
No Mac mini update, or Air update either. No mention of any iMac upgrades and of course no Steve Jobs, has made the MacWorld swansong a bit of a damp squib!!
iTunes AAC DRM free in April has strings attached and with Apples share price still struggling and Jobs discussing his illness (which for a very private man does smell like a story to help raise their Market value again) 2009 is shapping up to be a real tough year for Apple and will need all their cash reserves to weather this economic storm.

-- Post From My iPhone

Digital Nutshell: Issue 2

2008-12-16T15:25:00.001-08:00

Firstly some exciting news from January 2009 The Diary of A Madman Blog will also be available as Podcast of a Madman with the usual ranting's and good stuff, as well as a whole host of other media that I can only talk about, but the podcast you can also listen, watch and view some episodes - all be announced and then you can subscribe and keep up to date with my Diary Blog and the new Digital Nutshell...

Well, it may Christmas, but the outlook is not one of hope and cheer as we see more companies struggling with economic slowdown and credit crunch. And last week saw more casualties across the board as some companies either have one more roll of the dice and cut back on staff - or in the worst case collapse completely.

Quick look at the list so far...

The shock of Pinnacle filing for insolvency, flipped around 100 job losses - but that is only half of the story as there are still payments due to the indie labels distributed through Pinnacle.
One of my favourites Pandora, ended up letting go of 20 (14%) people from their 140 strong workers.
MTV let around 300 jobs go as part of Viacom's overall cut of 850 worldwide, as well as the Real/MTV Rhapsody America partnership which in addition cut a further 25 jobs.
RealNetworks themselves also posted an announcement that it will be "eliminating their positions" nice tone of voice there, of around 130 people or 7.5% of its worldwide workforce.
The media darling start up iMeem now looks in trouble and as well has it's feelers out for an immediate buyer has cut 25% of staff...

Yes indeed times are tough and could get decidedly worse before they get better, which is a worrying thought! However here are some of nuts cracked this week and the edible chunks look a bit like this..

My favourite Tap Tap is now back in the headlines after EMI have set up a bunch of their artists under a new banner "Tap Tap Dance" - which will feature Moby, Chemical Brothers, Digitalism, Daft Punk and Basement Jaxx. This follows the successful inclusion of other Artists such as Katy Perry, Nine Inch Nails and the poor dance remix of Kaiser Chiefs. Weezer continue their comeback and are adding some festive cheer with Christmas songs, however as always the case these days with EMI, the artists themselves must be responsible for the push. Cynthia Sexton, an EMI Music executive was quoted saying "Artists will promote on their Web sites and reach out to fans," "We're talking to them about ways of letting their fan base know through existing social networks." because EMI have such a wealth of experience in successful Social network promotions and marketing... What ever happens Bart Decrem (CEO) and his Tapulous team have a success that the major labels are lining up for, how the licence and publishers will see this is for another day.. "We are close to having a formula that the artists, labels, publishers, and Apple are all happy with," was Bart's latest comment....
We noticed at last that good old Qtrax (the Ad-supported music service) has recently added a licensing agreement with Sony Corporation of America (SonyBMG) to add the major label's suite of artists and catalogue to their site. With only Warners left to go - that is a good 10 months since the quite public announcement and then retraction of sorts that Qtrax already had the approval of all the Majors. We have no idea of the cost of the upfront advances - but judging by others who had a slightly less public dressing down - we think that there needs to be a hell of a lot of advertising needed to go through the site to start to make it back through the existing investment.
Shazam and their music recognition engine, has announced that it has recently added an additional 2 million tracks to its ever expanding database of tracks. Shazam has been doing some good deals and creating some great partnerships that means that the bursting database is proud to hold over 8 million tunes for you to discover - unfortunately I have tried the service every month for the last year - and still seem to catch it out some how - must be teh crap that I listen to... The Sound of Slayer Played on the Bagpipes seems to have passed them by!!
Interesting one this - watching how YouTube continues to monetise itself and start to get some of the money back that Google paid for it, we noticed that Rumblefish (the music licensing site) has also announced a partnership with Youtube. This should allow users to select music from their own digital catalogue and add it, using the site's "Audio Swap" feature, to their videos. Rumblefish's catalogue has around 25,000 songs taken from a varied set of genres (that's if you agree with genre classification that is - topic in 2009!!)
NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) delivered a paper aimed at the UK Government entitled Attacking the Recession: How Innovation Can Fight the Downturn.. interesting how it calls on the government to set up a self funded VC for UK startups in technical innovation - as the recession bites deeper it feels that innovation can and does suffer. However to get through a tough recession one can not neglect the need for continued innovation especially within our Technology sector - read it all here
Madman Live from CES 2009 - as part of some of the new features that I intend to bring to my blog in 2009 - one of the very first will be to give some insights into the exciting world of consumer electronics at its premier event in January in Las Vegas. I hope to bring some insights and information as well as some pictures of some of the hottest technologies that are being announced at the event. Look out for updates from 8th January..
In February this year, as well as the world being a very different place economically, I also did a post on the value of the internet and the worth of Facebook -read it here. So now only 10months later it now looks like the "perceived" value of Facebook has dropped by almost $14Billion - that's $14Billion!!! What has changed in only 10months? Well Mark Zuckerberg has increased his users to now 120million from around 100million 10months ago - so that's impressive!! However with that size of userbase the amount of $$$ being spent in supporting the application, no matter how lightweight, will not be cheap. There is the question around how the valuation and where my original blog was very critical of, was around web advertising placed on eyeballs themselves, and what was once described as the "once-in-a-century shift in the business of advertising." never really came to that did it - I remember saying that it would not work in the way that Zuckerberg said it would - it was all too... well wooly!!Facebook is not a public facing trading company - however there are shares and these are traded especially in The Valley and Wall Street - where I know plenty of friends that have them - and recent indications were that they were trading as low as $2.27 and $3.96 which gives an overall value of around $1Billion - which my learnered friends is less than a tenth of the price that Microsoft paid (sorry "Invested") its $240million only this year!! Just as the stock market feel to its knees and teeters on the "Minsky Moment" I warned that the Dot-Com bubble was set to burst again will stupid and unrealistic valuation of Facebook at $15Billion - Facebook will continue - but 2009 will see a whole new breed of more adaptable social networks and communication - that from the off-set will be, and discreetly, be built around a model of financial security and stability - which will mean only one thing - the further demise of the Facebook $$$ value and Mark Zuckerberg would have lost the potential to be one of the industries overnight billionaires - instead he could well have what we term as a "Friends Reunited moment"
Finally it is Christmas and this will be the final Blog post from me and the last issue of 2008 for the Digital Nutshell - so in true Holiday Spirit - here are the latest Apple ads t warm the cockles of your heart... Merry Christmas everyone (...and I'm a Mac!)

Digital Nutshell: Issue 1

2008-12-04T07:37:00.001-08:00

In a slightly changed format for my Blog and something that I will continue to do bi-weekly is give, in a nutshell, a round up of some of the key stories and developments within the world of Digital Media, Entertainment Retail as well as the Music & Movie industry...

So without further a do lets crack on with the very first DMN...

Labels News...

EMI - and Guy Hands still tinkering with what the company should look and feel like inside.. As my readers know I'm not a fan of Guy Hands, not from a business perspective, I admire him as a financier and business head! However EMI being a UK institution that spawned some of the countries best loved artists, is being driven into the ground and a lack of new talent and direction is turning the company into an unrecognisable business, rather than a record label. So what has happened now? Several Terra Firma senior executives, namely Chris Roling (EMI's COO and CFO), Ashley Unwin (COO for UK and North America) and Francois van der Spuy have gone! As well as Riaz Punja and Stephen Alexander who are meeting Terra Firma and Guy about their next move within the business. In a final and bizarre twist the deal that Terra Firma did with CitiGroup (£2.6bn) to fund the deal has now been rolled up into Citi’s $23bn leveraged loans portfolio, which was recently underwritten by the US government! So the ongoing twists and turns of the British institution could end up being bailed out and a liability for the already downtrodden US taxpayer.....
Taking the downturn and the ongoing music industry dilemma and traumas in a much more dignified manner is Warner Music Group. Who, unlike EMI, decided that they should not have such a severe knee jerk reaction by having a clear out internally or restructure the company in such a way that it becomes confused and unrecognisable! In fact apart from the odd market and industry analysis that keeps blowing the value of WMG further down, they seemed to be bracing themselves for the long haul and hope to weather the storm. WMG has taken the calm approach by cutting costs, acquired some companies, even invested in some new start up companies, followed suit into the digital initiatives that are sprouting daily as well as reviewing their artist portfolio and not going over the top to keep them (look at the cost of Madonna & Nickleback to Live Nation) WMG announced their Q4 and fiscal results, read here... and although net loss overall doubled to $56 million, I think reading between the lines of the report is that as long as they keep their nerve and keep what they are doing by investing, developing and enhancing their portfolio in a way that is representative of WMG - they are not for the scrap-heap just yet! Some of the key highlights.. recorded music down and weary, publishing, as you would expect, up and looking healthy, digital showing some signs of life but worryingly the growth is slowing already. The Q4 revenue dipped 1.5% to $854 million, operating income from their continuing operations dropped 20% and net income gained slightly to $6 million.
Onto some news from Atlantic Records which announced that it reached a digital milestone of 50% digital share - which when looked at the overall digital market is something to be proud of, however low the margin is.. Atlantic Records have said that over half its revenues now comes from digital - which compared to the previous news and parent company WMG, who's digital share was reported at 27%. Atlantic's milestone has been greeted with optimism and the fact that the digital revenue stream came from album and track downloads, ring tones, ring backs, satellite radio and subscription services! Julie Greenwald, president of Atlantic Records, did expand on how this was achieved "It used to be that you could connect five dots and sell a million records. Now there are 20 dots you can connect to sell a million records." So what WMG need to do is find some more of those dots and start connecting them up....
Never a week goes by than I am inundated with new services to try, new business models to review, new strategies and propositions that would like my opinion or view on! Will this be the killer Store | App | Model | Service (you delete as appropriate) So the latest one that arrived in my inbox from a journalist for me to review and feedback on is Finnish ISP operator DNA. Who have just launched yet another broadband-music download bundle - you will see so many more of these next year... This one costs the user €39.90p/m and is twined with downloadable music that it runs with.... UMG. Rob Wells is busy doing these deals - but at least Rob is trying out new ideas and models.
Sneaking onto UK shores without as much as a "cor blimey guvn'or" Amazon's long awaited MP3 store touched down in the UK today and with heavy discounting - as only Amazon can do! Just as the US service it is very simple to use and apart from having to manage the device transfer yourself - it will be a welcome addition to the UK MP3 market and will start to fight initially with Tesco, Play, HMV, 7Digital... before thinking of Apple - however Apple did have a nice price cut in advance of the Amazon arrival!!

Live | Concerts

The ongoing "adventure" of Live Nation has interested me since it began. I sort of got it when I spoke with Bob Ezrin last year - however now it looks like a rudderless ship that is drifting off into unknown waters and with the ongoing stand off with Ticketmaster, tying up massive deals with aging artists in an age where as we have seen with WMG, publishing good and recorded music is listless - what can Live Nation bring to the table? I have a few ideas that could springboard Live Nation into a worldwide player - but that's not for me to say or to instruct. So instead I will continue to look in aghast at what else Live Nation decide to do next... enter a 3 year deal to sell their tickets through...... Blockbuster!! Why? Only reason is that it is a sign of desperation for a footfall driver into Blockbuster stores as I see no other benefit for Live Nation?? Free popcorn with every ticket purchased??
Still on Live Nation - one of their jewels in the Live Nation crown is the Madonna Tour - recent reports just out show that the the U.S. leg of The Sticky & Sweet tour had a gross of $91.5 million based on 550,000 tickets. Using my calculator I make that an average ticket price of $166. However the average ticket price from her last tour 2 years ago worked out at was $183 slightly down, but what i don't have to hand is the merchandise costs where it is reported that the average (I do mean average as the top tier to see Madonna is $£50!! - but combined of everything.. t-shirt, drink, travel..) cost to a Madonna concert is $250!! I guess if your a big Madonna fan she is worth it. But looking at the Top 10 Concerts for last week in the US and you will see that Live Nation has 9 out of the 10 Promotion spots - with only AC/DC in Minneapolis going with Jam Productions.

...and Finally

At last my friends in San Francisco have reached the milestone of a v1.0 release of their open-source customisable music player. Well done Rob, Steve, Ethan and all the team... Anyone who knows me will know that I have been talking about the Songbird boys for a very long time now - and glad to see that they have reached that 1.0 milestone which always a great relief when you are on a start-up out the front door to the wider world and not just friends, supporters and followers. Songbird are creating a non-proprietary, cross platform, extensible tool that will help enable new ways to playback, manage, and discover music - and is under active development all the time. Download, play, share, enjoy, feedback and get involved - they'd love to hear from you!!

...every little helps! - The story so far...

2008-11-18T03:32:00.001-08:00

I have kept relatively quiet over the last 18months on this - due to the sensitive nature of what we, at Conchango, have been developing for one of the UK's biggest retailer!

So to help demystify, clear up and also show some of the innovation that Conchango and their retail partner is involved in, thought that now (seeing as they have just launched their Movies & TV areas of their site) that I would share a little insight into what is going on, where they are heading (without giving away too many secrets) , what we are going to do to achieve this and importantly why??

So quick background to begin with, our client had an “out the box” white label music download service. It began at the time when all retailers that had any music heritage needed to be in the digital game. They continued with this for almost 4 years until they decided that now was the time to do something about this. Either pull out as there was no apparent money in digital media or actually have a go at it and stay in the game, seeing as physical music and entertainment has a limited shelf life - that although may still be a while off - it will demise.

Conchango arrived in May 2007 to start what would become their Digital offering. Their very own digital download service that used Conchango’s DCP, but importantly would mean that they would become masters of their own destiny.

The first point of the over arching Digital Strategy is to look at initial ambitions of our client, share some real life scenarios and also help shape and show where the industry is heading - anyone who reads my blog will know that I have one or two opinions on this. This was everything from music, film, TV, printed media, devices and innovation in storage and delivery methods..

What became apparent is that after initial discussions and some market and growth patterns – is that currently making vast fortunes from retailing music at £0.79 is not going to make millions of pounds overnight, from a retailers point of view, not great - the P&L will look slightly lightweight to say the least in the short term. The future market place was shifting daily (as it does today) and our client needed to be sure that not only were they up to speed on these developments – but needed some radical new thinking about sustainable business models within the digital landscape. Speaking with labels and studios at the start was somewhat frustrating as there seemed to be no movement on what was a traditional business model - however the longer we progressed the more flexible and open to new ideas and concepts both the labels and studios were.

The 30,000ft view is that the “mass” market consumer is where our clients consumer sit (well as you can imagine from being one of the biggest retailers) and fundamentally a late adopter in the digital media landscape. Their customers may well be behind the curve in terms of gadgets, understanding and fear of not having anything tangible to hold, touch or feel. Digital assets are of course digital files that reside “somewhere” and some will have had poor experiences in the past when after spending money on digital content may have had this "lost" or just no longer working - normally after an OS upgrade and failure to back up those pesky DRM licences, as well as some of the early digital music casualties meant that they had a bunch of files that they could do nothing with. This time had to be different!

The mission was to demystify the digital landscape, give the consumer the reassuring hand of comfort that our client delivers in bucket loads elsewhere in their business – then help guide them through the minefield of acronyms, digital lingo and anything relating to what in effect is digital.

To break down the list and in some kind of order, in how they would deliver a digital offering went something like this:

DCP: Conchango’s own platform for the future development of their media offering.
MP3: Agnostic media format that is used and can be used across all devices. This was of course the trickiest element of the plan as when we started working there was "talk" and only talk of a full MP3 offering. So when the site was launched there was a smattering of MP3 - which of course was slated in the press and media as only having 1million MP3 tracks - I can tell you it was not for the want of asking and attempting to do the MP3 deals - more like the stubbornness of the labels to buck the trend and allow their music out there as unprotected MP3 files.
TV & Film: This traditionally used windows media format that had the digital rights management delivered with it. So they were in the same situation as music - however cracking the movie studios is going to take slightly longer and with more technological advances before we start to see Spiderman 4 unprotected (as such)
Streamed Media: To give the consumer the streaming experience direct to them without having a 1.5Gb file sitting on their hard drives (a la SKY, Virgin Media) Rental, On demand and Own – as well as portable.

At this point I could go on and share the other pieces of the picture that make up the next part of the strategy - but this is only the story so far, and I'm not one for letting the cat out of the bag!

Suffice to say that I have sat back and read with great interest and dismay the reports and journalists that see our client as another "me-to" play in this area. That they wouldn't really know or understand where the market is heading and how they would take on the mighty Apple. No matter what anyone does in Digital Media we are all held up against Apple (quite rightly though, what a bloody good job they did - whether you like them or their business model or not they certainly cracked it!) and although this is unfair to everyone (apart from Zune - who rightly deserve a comparison and poor one at that!) it will remain so.

So what happens now - you will just need to keep your eyes and ears on announcements and press releases on what happens next - and sure that The Madman may well comment again (maybe not in another 18 months)

Television Revolution....

2008-11-18T02:03:00.001-08:00

...be it a small and went relatively unnoticed - but change is a coming!!

I meant to post this as soon as it was announced - but never got round to actually posting it. So what is happening or happened ??

Take a relatively successful Sony Television programme that had its first 3 Seasons aired in the UK on Sky 1 - the suddenly not come back for a 4th Season (well on Sky 1 at least) the US network continued both Season 4 and planned to air Season 5 - However still no word on who would pick up the next Season if at all (as we know there are some great US shows that start in the UK and then for a number of reasons get dropped!)

I then had the added insight from my friends at Sony here in the UK - who told me that they have some exciting and innovative news coming for the next season....

What was that? What was he talking about? Who was going to get the next Season?

Then in October an announcement arrived that the next Season of Rescue Me (great US show about New York Fireman post 9/11 staring Dennis Leary) would be exclusively aired on......iTunes

Yes iTunes picked up the show, and released a "Season Pass" for the entire 4th Season for £9.99 (RRP of these Season is £39.99 normally sell for around £15)

So why so significant and revolutionary?

To suddenly see Apple in the TV space premiering shows is a big deal - its not just about resale of digital assets - their Apple TV is now becoming a TV station and starting to air new programmes that are not available on any other UK network at this stage. The user also owns the episodes and can at their leisure re-watch when ever they like. They get an email to let them know that the next episode has downloaded and is available to watch.

Forget catch-up TV - Apple have (as I said at the start very small steps) stepped into the broadcast arena in the UK - and if successful may well start to exclusively premier more new TV shows that you will only be able to see via iTunes...

New Digital Music Innovation...

2008-11-18T01:30:00.001-08:00

... or a complete rip off with no real value at all?

That is the question that is posed with the launch of the "revolutionary new way to buy music" Please welcome..... Datz.com

Revolutionary??? Really is it going to deliver me key recommendations? Work out my music taste - however ecliptic, and deliver me a new and exciting mix of old classics and the hottest new "unsigned" bands??

No sadly not??

This, for those that don't know or haven't heard about it is the pay £99.99 per year and lets you download as many tracks as you want from a choice of millions. Sounds good, but how, where, why...?

Here is the main hitch "Please note — in order to run Datz Music Lounge software you must have the secure USB dongle that is supplied in the retail pack. If you have lost this dongle or need a replacement please contact us..." I mean WTF???? It hails itself as a DRM free environment and can sync to your iPod - but is also not yet compatible with Macs.

But hold on a second - looking for a specific album we come across the traditional WMA DRM files - and upon checking the format information we see that the old DRM rules still apply with conviction (you will comply, you will only transfer 5 time, you must register up to 5 devices, no more or you will be taken to court and jailed for 20 years!!)

The UI and experience is not designed to set the world on fire - and a severe lack of any additional rich metadata or actually any other content at all. Less is obviously more!!

The business model and plan is that Datz.com allows the user unlimited access and as a subscriber get to download MP3s of any song on the site. There are no restrictions, no protections or so they say - however as just highlighted I've seen a few. You get to keep everything you download - so this is not the old traditional subscription / rental service that the DRM expires each month.

So in essence what else does it do... well not a lot really to be honest - you can have a look if you really know what you're after for tracks, albums and artists via the search box - and then you have the hassle of downloading one track at a time. The catalogue cannot be viewed, browsed or grouped - in context quite messy really - which will of course scare you average Sainsbury customer (that are selling the USB dongles) If you then move in to the uber sounding "Datz Music Lounge" here you may uncover or surface exactly what you are looking for - but this area really is for the hearty and less time conscious - rather than type, search, see , buy and download...

So far Datz trumps almost 1.5million tracks - roughly the same amount of tracks that iTunes, Napster, Virgin & HMV had back in 2005. The site has a lot of the traditional POP tracks - but only a selected few - more deeper catalogue (here we go in the "perceived value" or not of the long tail again!!) which means that in the end the site is not really aimed at the mass mark later adopter - but the very same digital music freaks that for them a one-year subscription would indeed be well worth the £99 in probably 2 days of downloading - and when the year is up - will no doubt have cleared the catalogue of all perceived value to them - and in turn that business model has just in one simple business model reinforced that in fact the music industry still has no idea on how to fluctuate and embrace their own long tail!

Mobile Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

2008-11-10T06:21:00.001-08:00

Just as the George Lucas sci-fi classic ran for years and years - such is the space for mobile devices - and the Mobile War that will undoubtedly erupt over the coming years I'm sure that the "Empire (may well try to) Strike Back" however with the latest glut of new touch phones arriving on the scene such as the Samsung Omnia which although has "elements" of touch, the overall user experience has been severely let down by Windows Mobile 6.1 - and really should not be allowed within a touch phone environment. so much so that you either need to carry the stylus around with you or use the rather wonderful "mouse" feature on the phone. Either way a poor mans excuse for a touch application. Samsung do try and have a great entry screen into their available features and functions but once you go through the magic door of Incantations... well that's really the end of that - you no longer have the will or the impetus to carry on.

No I have been a big fan of both Apple and Google and what they are trying to do within this space in terms of delivering a great experience to the user. The iPhone still is the best phone on the planet. Yes it may have some little foibles that to some will mean that it does not live up to the hype that people like me and others have been lauding over the iPhone since launch. Google have delivered their app on what has to be described as an ugly phone - but that's not the key here - I have never really like the designs from HTC and the G1 is certainly not the sleek sexy beast that we had hope would arrive - but maybe that is the key here...

Lets us think ahead somewhat and see what the Mobile War will take on...

Both Apple and Google have run with their mobile operators to get their products out to market. Apple have already launched their 2nd version of the iPhone with some initial tweaks and some very obvious omissions (such as front facing camera, Intel Atom chip..) and Google is still shiny and new and will no doubt be looking at what they deliver in their next handset in 2009.

So lets say that I am running Apple or Google's mobile arm of their business (what a lovely thought!!) What are the key elements that I want to achieve?

Well a great platform that means that I can attract the most avid and creative developers to design, create and upload their work to my platform. They get recognition and $$$ in return for their applications selling and my store and customers get some of the most innovative applications on their device.

I create a handset that is as desirable as any iconic device out there - I make it such a must have device that from kids to the older generation must be seen with one. (At this stage and I'm Google I would have engaged some of the designers that were behind the iPod / iPhone and any other iconic piece of CE over the last few years and be busy working away on Google's own device)

I want to get people using my device and understanding all the possibilities (as well as limitations) to what it can do for my users and keep pushing the boundaries of innovation...

But then perhaps I no longer need or want to have the mobile carrier as my main connectivity for the device. I may decide that that the best move is to be part of a VoIP mobile client that I can then start to run and support my users data, media, and voice calls over the VoIP network. This could also mean that I leverage my advertising platform effectively giving the consumer free calls with their mobile handset for the sake of some ad messages, that would be delivered via video, text, mms or voice. There are so many ways to start moving the advent of free into mobile phones that it becomes almost too easy - consider some LBS (location based service) target advertising where the user may be using, or just used some data on a VoIP and LBS knows where you are as well as the NFC within the device knows that you have just exited Oxford Street tube station and you are directly outside the Nike store - a powerful message for Nike could be that that a targeted message / promotion / coupon / NFC discount where the user only needs to turn around to enter the store...

So why does Apple and Google need to have a deal with a mobile network anyway? Well using Wi-Max as the vehicle for VoIP delivery on a mass scale - but this will never reach the level of penetration that the mass market needs - so there will be a role reversal in that the mobile providers will become the fail-over when the VoIP fails and this, depending on the location and tariff, will depend on the users usage and location on what price plan they would need to sign up with the mobile operator - so get tied in with an operator just now and maybe even one that has a great wi-fi business just now (such as T-Mobile) so that the jump to VoIP is a seamless transition...

So while we have now arrived in a brave new mobile world - this is only the beginning and will see what comes from the giant that is Nokia (they are a mobile manufacturer first and foremost - lets not worry about Comes with very little) and what Microsoft will do about their mobile platform surely it's got to get better...

Let the battle commence...

The Art of Strategy...

2008-10-31T05:36:00.001-07:00

In a world of economic instability around the world, some of the easiest things that businesses do is cut staff, cut advertising, extend payment terms as well as contractors, external companies and of course, dare I say it, consultants etc... anyway they can to help sustain their cash flow and cut their immediate monthly outgoings. All this is simple enough in terms of the balance sheet and P&L statements that then show an almost immediate impact and shows that the state of the company actually has a more healthier outlook.

In those troubled times CFOs and other Directors can feel confident that their short term goals of sustaining their business have succeeded. This is only the start around a sustained plan for growth and development. There are so many facets of a business that require analysis, development, structure and importantly strategy.

I say "importantly" as this is an area that I work within for EMC / Conchango - helping shape, devise, deliver longer term objectives and goals. This is also an area that EMC / Conchango excel in although perhaps not the first area that people think of. Conchango built its reputation as one of the leading systems integrators and development houses in UK - but now known for Interactive Design, Creative and a wealth of Business Consultants with experience through a range of vast disciplines.

This is where amidst the worry, confusion and cost cutting that the real Art of Conchango is worth it's weight in gold!

Looking at what is required and what Conchango do with our clients when looking for a strategy - especially one that is required for sustained business model beyond initial economic and social pressures. After speaking to a number of potential prospect clients - and giving them some initial free consultancy and help shape their thought process - I decided to replicate this here and share some of the Conchango best practices - that although may seem simple and logical, are the fundamental building blocks to creating a well rounded and flexible strategy for a business. flexibility being the key point of notice here.

Example, prospect client asked me about who and what company or partner that they should work with in order to meet their very short term directives and as such "a problem". I don't like to use the word "problem" as this means that there is something fundamentally wrong - when in reality there is not. There will be a need or requirement that in turn has created an opportunity to explore and discover new ways of working. This however was only part of the issue and process, as I moved away from their current need and looked at their entire requirement in some detail, I realised that in fact this company had only been "firefighting" any arising issues for the past 3 years. There was no overall solution, no overall goal, short term gains and no absolute strategy. This meant that the prospect client arrived with what they perceived to be a solution to overcome their adverse situation - where previous consultancy firms had pointed them in the direction of a "fix" and not a solution that would meet and exceed their overall absolute strategy. The short term goal can be easily achieved - that is the easy win anyone can deliver that (and judging by my conversations with them) and did.

However the prospect client had a bigger issue that needed some work and development - what was the business goals and ambitions with this service? That was the stumbling block and suddenly the inherent internal issues started to come to fore. Its not nice, pleasant and often messy - however in order to move forward a company must first look within themselves and agree as a cohesive unit what the direction and business goals are, how they plan to achieve these, what tools do they need, what are the stages to getting to that utopian situation, and where the juncture points are in terms of flexibility and what the outlook deliverable will be. Consultants will move in to help resolve situations such as these, they are not uncommon and in fact are quite wide spread. Most consultants will tend to move in and work with the key stakeholder almost in a unified confrontational position to "get their point home" to the rest of the internal squabbling team - I have seen this happen on a number of times and the result is that in 9 out of 10 times the stakeholder will win through via almost bullying tactics, however the "battle" may have been won, ultimately not the "war" - and when the stakeholder has gone (on average 12 - 18months post winning the "battle") the generals (including the consultancy firm) will be ousted as well.

The war and battle in this case and in most cases that I witness is normally around power and control; "my idea is better than yours" or "this is the way that I think we should move forward" key words there is that amidst the grapple for power and control - the classic "what's in it for me" scenario will crop up time and time again!

A good strategists approach, and one that Conchango delivers on time and time again - is that the overall business needs, requirements, longevity and growth has to form the strategy - and not the egos and fortunes of a short term "glory grabber"

Look at the past, the present and future of your industry.

What has been successful in the past and why?

Who is leading the way in this field and why?

Where are their weak points or weakness that could be exploited and used against them in the short term?

In times of pressure and uncertainty for lots of businesses - a good consultancy can come in with fresh eyes, clear perspective and some future knowledge that may just be the lifeblood and oxygen that a company needs to see them not only through troubled times - but in my example above - get them onto a path with a sustained strategy and development curve that will shape their future from perhaps a bleak and uncertain one to a flourishing and forward thinking business of the future.

Although it's not a black art as such, it is an art that Conchango deliver on time and time again!

2009 - The Virtual Year?

2008-10-29T04:11:00.001-07:00

So after a rather somber and sobering post around "recession retailing" and what that means for the consumer, retailer and other businesses in this current economic climate - I thought I was also time to look at some of the exciting and pushing the boundaries in 2009 - However I have another Blog where I will look at some of the new developments that will not hit the mass market until 2010 or so - but the technology is here now and will look at applications and delivery innovation.

So what will you friendly neighbourhood Madman be doing / hoping to do / blogging / tweeting... about in 2009!

As always with my rantings and raves is that what I talk about - is in effect what I end up doing and working with clients around the world on. So at this stage Conchango may or may not have clients lined up to do some of this work - but as always - feel free to contact me as you have continued to do throughout this year and see what is possible.

So {drum roll............} 2009...

m-commerce / Mobile Commerce / Mobile Retail / Mobile Innovation

One of the biggest winners and gains in 2009 will, at last be the humble mobile. Not so much humble but the converged device that can and will deliver work, media, games, LBS, commerce, apps, widgets, TV, VoIP... all great advances and opportunities abound. Mobile Networks will look more into media and community on how they can leverage some of the LBS (Location Based Services) as well as the old favourite RFID - or now known in the industry to get away from that aging tag - NFC (Near Field Communication) - I talked a lot about it this year - but only a few actually started to move with it (O2, Barclays TfL). Google & Apple will continue to grow with their mobile applications and great quick wins into the consumers hands via retailers, media providers or community aspects. Combine NFC / LBS with social apps to become a "Teenage Finder" keep track of your child's location??? Anyway maybe too big brother'ish - but if you have kids in this day - you are always keen to ensure that you are able to find them - and as their mobile is their device of choice...!

Retail / 360° Retail..

Still passionate about retail and the high street. However I want to see better standards, more drive and commitment and much more Retail Theatre. If you want to get people back into the high street and spend )(no matter how much or how little) you really have got to get back to basics and give the consumer a complete experience - a 360° experience. 2009 I will continue this theme and maybe publish the whole "bible" on where 360° Retail fits into other areas such as marketing, advertising, analytics, multi-channel, delivery... Retail will also have a fall out post Christmas 2008 - there will be a lot of failed retailers - but there will also be retailers that will have survived and need to bolster their online presence, look to report and action correctly - they will have limited budgets, definitive ROI and KPIs so I will aim to continue the Open Source Platform and other vendors - as well as how you can add and grow your business in a cost effective manner.

ISPs

ISPs are looking to new ways to carry their business models forward as broadband penetration gets to the tipping point where growth is minimal and therefor capturing existing broadband customers with better, faster, more choice, more content no limits and no letters around illegal downloading ;) from their competition will be key to their continued success. Look for the mobile industry incentives coming here such as Free Laptops, Free Wireless Media Storage Routers, and of course Free Media Content! Free was the big buzz word of 2008 and in 2009 we will start to see how this can be utilised in a formulated business case. Here at Conchango we have developed a number of these for our clients and will see these to appear in early 2009. So what does that means for the you and me the broadband consumer? Well look for longer tie-ins only natural that they need to hold on to your £ for longer! The promise of gifts, free content and faster speeds.. Broadband on the move lined to your account with access to your virtual store is all in the pipeline. Mobile VoIP the list will be endless - more a case of who will be first out with a compelling offer that will lock in the customer for 24months...

Newspapers

The demise of printed media continues - news & media aggregation and distribution, where the media comes from | how it is managed and delivered | how is this then monitized Affiliate / marketing strategies to help run the online advertising. There are a great number of ways that this can be achieved. However Newspapers will look for loyalty in this sector - but where is loyalty unless the news is relevant, upto date, accurate, well written and has images (whether that be pictures, video) the user will be more willing to get their information updates from that. The real wins for the newspapers has always been on the rich journalism and commentary. People from specific political and liberal views will chose to read a certain newspaper in the past because of the way, tone and spin that has been put on it. How can this then be digested in a digital world? Very similar apart from the user now has the choice and control. Perhaps they would like to comment, add pictures, add video, link it to their blog - the new way that we use the media is going to become a reality in 2009.

IPTV

Great challenges and development in this area. Working with our clients in OTT delivery (Over The Top) and how this is then distributed to the consumer is one key area that has been discussed in 2008 and will move into 2009. More and more companies will look to deliver their own version of IPTV from dedicated sports and lifestyle, to entertainment and recreation. We will have a mix of both retailers and content owners looking to deliver a similar service. IPTV gives a much greater reach for the advertiser and will be interesting to see how OfCom, ASA and other approach this level of direct targeting to the consumer. Delivering a live stream of content across an IP network has a much greater chance of conversion than say a blanket ad spend. Look at how bad ITV have come in the past year - ad spending has never been so low since 1992. Times are changing and advertisers would rather spend on a direct and as such interactive model than watch as their ad is delivered within a plethora of other messages vying for the consumers attention. mIPTV will also come into play (again) in 2009 - although I am not expecting anything too groundbreaking in this area until 2010 having the BBC iPlayer on a Nokia phone may be a good start but lets see what else will fall out onto the mobile device in 2009.

Surface

After seeing this at its very early stages and coming up with some new innovative ways to use Surface. Conchango worked with one of our clients this year and delivered a fantastic wine application with our partners in the US. This is just the tip of the "surface" no pun really... but I can see more application next year in this area using surface as a selling tool for services, hardware etc.. again the list is almost endless really down to how and what you can think of in terms of delivering a touch experience - as well as reducing stores head count and increasing conversion - more innovative delivery - travel centres, mobile stores, banks (what's left of them), restaurants...

Macro & Micro Distribution

Mr Reuben and myself have been "bigging" this up at this year with a number of our clients and potential clients and with how this can work for businesses's, groups and individuals. How the whole eco system of distribution and syndication becomes blurred and more exciting. How your products services, media can be shown, sampled, distributed, delivered and managed through a variety of new channels and with champions of your brand or products pushing them to a wider audience that you may have previously not been able to touch before. This is something that we will look and continue to pursue with our clients in 2009 and have some great examples and case studies of where and how this can work for your business.

Wi-Max

I have been talking about Wi-Max since its first announcement back in 2005 and where and what the potential was for it. I have looked and discussed with various people the ways that it could enrich and help some of the areas in isolated areas in Africa, Middle East and start to deliver communication and data services to people that could use it without the expansive and cumbersome satellite infrastructure. I know and spoke to companies out in the middle east that were developing Wi-Max infrastructure plans and how to deliver a managed service that could deliver the data, VoIP, media and access controls across the region on a free for all basis. We also looked at how we could create an African infrastructure that could deliver vital data and communication services to villages and people in medical and education which to me was much more than a business plan but a vital link to the outside world to help and push the availability beyond the developed world where we take it for granted. There are companies that have started to create a "blanket" over London for 100% wi-max broadband coverage - which Google will be happy with for their continued Android phone development! With a potential range of 30 miles in open areas (ie great for that Out-Reach Project in Africa etc..) has average of 4 - 8 miles in built up areas VoIP & Wi-Max great for non mobile carriers to get involved in - services can be tied and linked to the apps coming from Google and Apple blanket coverage of say San Francisco could be controlled by a mainstay portal or municipal to ensure no abuse of the access this should be free and needs to be monetized.

So these are only a tiny snippet of what is going on within the technology space as well as some of the great stuff that is coming to and strategic nods and appreciation as well approach for our clients. However one final point of caution. I love technology and gadgets and new innovation - however what is vitally important is how or why this is good for the consumer or end user and where we can make a difference.

Conchango has and will continue to be, honest and open to our clients and deliver solutions and strategies that we build end to end that fundamentally will always have the end user at its core. User Centred design as well as user focused innovation...

Retail Christmas 2008: Will this be "Recession Retail?"

2008-10-28T05:40:00.001-07:00

Retail readiness... Retail is in the detail... Christmas is coming..READY??

For retailers that have checked, double checked, reviewed, written post-Christmas documents around key learning’s from the past year – and how to ensure that next Christmas is even more successful that the one just passed.

The teams then go into overdrive around campaigns, stock, web and stores schedule how this should be implemented and executed with military precision!

Then – something that although was always in the back ground since the start of 2008 – an imminent recession!

The impact of this across retail and other sectors is significant. However as retail rely on a huge amount of their business at key holiday seasons - Christmas & Easter - then the continued viability of some retailers can hang on a single successful Christmas period – of which if you are not prepared could ultimately cause the demise by the time the needles have dropped off the tree and turkey has been gobbled up.

What to watch out for during a recession

PRICE – PRICE - PRICE – so crucial that I named it thrice! Indeed with wallets being tightened within an inch of their very being price will be a major factor in deciding what and where to shop. There are other factors that are effecting this recession, such as high petrol prices – so here are some pointers on the behaviour patterns:

Stock & Campaigns

Price is the focus here – so ensure that your best offers are communicated across the marketing and advertising channels that you are using. No point in having that ultimate gift on a key display point – if the consumer is always thinking about the price and cost of goods. Don’t make it look like a tacky sale point – it takes a few scared retailers to scream SALE and this always has an a negative effect on all retailers – as the consumer thinks that the January sales have suddenly hit early and will ultimately look for even cheaper bargains and offers. So stay clear of SALES – use your messaging and pricing as key indicators that you are aware of the credit crunch and your prices reflect what is happening out there. Keep the Christmas spirit alive and keep upbeat – this is time where although “penny pinching” will be in full effect – entice them into a warm and inviting environment that is price conscious, well staffed, happy to help and assist and get the best out of the consumer who ultimately will leave a happy shopper and you as a happy retailer – if you have done your homework.

Web and other channels

The web has similar properties – but is faceless to the point that consumers could, and do enter your store at any point in the day or night to do a spot of shopping or price comparison – so make sure that your site is well maintained and available! (downtimes should always be kept until 3.00am) Deliver crystal clear messaging around P&P, shipping, estimated delivery dates – think of worst case scenarios, because if you use Royal Mail for example – you will be competing with the millions of packages per day that they will need to handle and process and deliver – so be realistic and your customer will reward you with returned loyalty – over promise and under deliver (or fail to deliver) then you will become victim of the consumers wrath.

360 Retail

The 360 Retail that I have been talking about for the past few weeks is key here, in that if you have a high street or just a bricks and mortar estate – make sure that the same principles apply on the channels that you sell through as well. Be this website, kiosk, mobile, catalogue, floor space within a department store even to the point that you have a small stall in a shopping mall with a supporting website – all areas here are critical that you deliver a fully rounded experience from entry to exit. As simple as local paper advert to national TV advertising – whatever was the entry point ensure that this a clear concise message that the consumer can relate to and is greeted with when entering the retailers point of contact with the consumer. Let’s face it if you have attracted then thus far and enticed them to come and visit you – don’t let them down with irrelevant offers or conflicting messaging – For example if you advertise that you have a flat panel 32” LCD TV that is half price – make sure that you have this item as a key focal point either in your store, online etc.. I may sound simplistic and almost Retail 1.1 – however I have seen so many retailers fail to keep their marketing promise and the offer that they enticed the consumer in with is no longer there or has been replaced with a slightly more expensive (or higher margin) product that will ultimately annoy the consumer and almost immediately leave. You can cross sell, up sell and co-promote other offers and suggestions but learn the 360 Retail rule by delivering what you are promising from beginning to end.

Out of Town Complexes

Some consumers will look to some of these retail outlets as a key opportunity to get all their shopping in one fatal swoop. So expect a horde of shoppers that have travelled there for a one hit visit – a list as long as...well Santa’s list! They will not want to leave until all the names on the list have been ticked and checked twice. They may decide to plan the entire day there to be sure – kids could be at Nans or even a babysitter booked to ensure a pure focus on shopping. So retailers have to be ready at this point to cater for the consumers and to some point – look toward the channels that they have available to them. If what the consumer is looking for is no longer on the shelves, not arrived yet, failed to appear in the last delivery – size the opportunity – do not let the consumer out the store without trying all available avenues to you to be sure that you have secured that sale and not your rival / competitor. This could be as simple as taking their order, and telephone number to call the customer when it arrives and then arrange an over the phone transaction and send the item to the customer. If you have a website – check availability on there and help them create an order there and then to guarantee the customer will receive their goods before the big day. Give them options, alternatives speak to them understand what they are looking for and entice information out of them – see my last post around Operations – to engage with consumers – they don’t bite and do prefer face to face communication. This will be one of the biggest threats to retail this year – staffing – easiest element of the business to keep low and ask the staff that are there to “push harder” – but if your staff are talking, advising, dealing with your customers – who is ringing through the transactions? Never underestimate the staffing value

Traditional High Street

In that same light due to petrol prices and other factors some will avoid these and opt for the traditional high street (that after my earlier blog in the Summer showed that things are not great there) where they can “pop” in to their local high street to do their shopping in comfort of their own surroundings or closest town to do their shopping. Again the key factors are the same as the out of town experiences – but more so as I know of a few key traditional high street retailers that are on the brink of collapse and will need a really good Christmas to survive – so complacency has no part in this Christmas trade. I fear that this Christmas we will see a good deal of these retailers fail to meet their targets and vanish off the high street for good – they will blame the web and online – but I think that looking at their proposition, location, stock and effectiveness to compete ion 21^st century retailing will be the factors here and not just the web.

Exchanges, Returns, Refunds...err!! (ERR)

Is that not the normal response that consumer face in today’s retail climate when they ask for an exchange or refund? Sales Assistant first words “err....”

This is the time of the year that retailers will see consumers that for the other 51 weeks of the year have not been to your store / site. To ensure that you are not immediately alienating these new consumers and that if they are unsure that you are the best or correct fit for their Christmas shopping needs – you may have completed or about to complete your transaction due to following all the above steps – but just at point of purchase the “err” question arises – “if this is not suitable, not the right one, not the left one... can I.....”

The high street has been awash with reports and research that consumers have not been best pleases shall we say around some of the latest “ERR” positions of retailers. This will be due to return rates, impact on their bottom line, speed of turning these returned items around and a whole host of other issues (especially in Entertainment Retail where piracy has led to a massive push back on consumers) However looking at the 360 Retail model again – if you want loyalty and a return customer – do you really want to alienate them?

Summary

So what has been unearthed from these words of wisdom? Nothing revolutionary I guess (one would hope) however where retailers are trying to get everything in place for the beginning of Christmas – perhaps some of these key points have been overlooked or not even on the radar. So quick coffee break moment:

Reload, Refresh, Review: at your forthcoming Christmas line up – does it still hold value and a comprehensive offer that is aimed at a much more price conscious consumer

eCommerce, e-tailing, e-store: the web will grow even bigger this year with industry experts declaring an estimated 20% lift on last year – which will place strain and endurance tests on even the most robust eCommerce platform. Get ready by evaluating your platform NOW! Invest in some load testing, analyse your analysis’, ensure that you have enough bandwidth available – speak to your hosting company about your previous peaks and look to have additional bandwidth or burstable bandwidth.

Tailor your campaigns, offers and Christmas strategy around the current climate around financial instability and uncertainty. Consumers will look to give themselves a feel good factor at Christmas – but not at a cost that could cripple their finances.

Analysis, Analytics, Action: Look at your stats (this covers both web and physical stores) they will give you an ideal picture of what has happened in your business over the last 9 months – in the run up to the peak trade moment. What are your like for like sales showing? How are you figures year to date? Budgets – achievable or are you way out on these? Re-forecast to ensure high levels of productivity within your business by showing newly defined targets and goals that could, must be achieved. Amazing what realistic targets can do to a team!

Inspire: your consumers and potential consumers by delivering an inspiring Christmas that looks after their finances by delivering value for money and quality – but inspire with products and service that will leave a permanent impression post-economic slowdown. It may well be a time to watch the pennies, but there is no need to make everything look and feel that it is on the cheap side.

Listen, Look and Learn: we all need to continue to learn and grow. Look at what your competition is doing both right and wrong. Compare that to what you do rightly or wrongly. Ask for help and advice – what you already know and have used previously may no longer be relevant or current in this retail space. That could be as little as 12 months ago. Back to basics – 360 Retail is a great way of establishing your entire offer – from Entry > Exit > Return

Although you will read, see and hear that Christmas 2008 is a “belt and braces” time, yes it will be a tough ride, following some of these rules and guide notes will ultimately leave you post-Christmas ready for the immediate challenges that lie ahead in 2009 – but at least you may well be one of the retailer winners that get to face 2009!

Have A Merry & Successful Christmas 2008

Divorce or Counselling?: Retailers next move in eCommerce

2008-10-21T01:16:00.001-07:00

What to do? You spent months pouring over your choices, listened to internal concerns and external advice. You raised your CAPEX over 5 years for your businesses eCommerce / web platform - and that was in 2003! Now as 2008 fast approaches it's finale - IT Directors, eCommerce Directors.... now look at what to do next? Review their KPIs and decide "Divorce" from my current platform - or seek advice and "counselling" to work through what has been a difficult time for most in the glorious marriage of eCommerce and Retail!

The great divide? What will your businesses next move in eCommerce be?

So what will retailers, e-tailers and most companies that have a commerce related business in 2009 look to do (assuming of course that you have just finished your 5 year plan of eCommerce development and you have to decide what to do next!)

So first set of questions, would be something like: How was it for you?

Looking at the start of this blog, business leaders already went through the process to get your business into a "Live" eCommerce environment - so:

Did you achieve the results that you were looking for?
Did you hit all the KPIs that were agreed as part of the investment?
Did you eCommerce Teams work and deliver efficiently as they could?
What were you key pain points? but also...
Where were your best wins? (let's celebrate success!!)
Was the integration that seemed straight forward back in 2003 - as straight forward as you expected?
Anything still outstanding from your development path that you feel you missed some key opportunities?
In house skills - have these developed and adapted?
Are you ready for the next 5 years?

Enterprise |Robust | Scalable

These are the key words that we, as consultants, use with our clients - and in return are these are the same words that our clients and potential clients use when describing their requirements, wants and needs for their next e-commerce platform.

The list below (in no particular order!) is a small snapshot of what has been discussed in terms of Enterprise ready, Scalable and Robust eCommerce platforms available to retailers, all in addition have a selection of tool sets and applications to keep the most adventurous e-commerce team busy for years:

Elastic Path: One of my current favourites just now. Nimble, agile and cost effective. They have a great deal of flexibility when it comes to integration and adaptability. This cost effective Java eCommerce platform suits a wide range of businesses and with its customisable business logic that allows very simple shopping cart checkout procedures or even more complex ones is a key consideration when it comes to the consumer being able to checkout quickly however the complex nature of the basket algorithm. As it’s a Java/J2EE framework, it can be expediently integrated with most existing data stores and even legacy applications as well as accounting, ERP, CRM, and SCM systems.

ATG: a robust, flexible, scalable e-commerce software platform designed and tuned for top performance and maximum uptime. ATG installations have supported over 10 million visits and over 100,000 completed orders per day, and over 300,000 concurrent users. The ATG Platform is a complete e-commerce Internet solution for business that reduces risk, cost, and project duration with no sacrifice to flexibility or future expansion

WebShphere: WSCommerce provides companies of all sizes with a powerful customer interaction platform for cross-channel and online commerce - supporting all business models. WebSphere is designed to set up, operate, and integrate e-business applications across multiple computing platforms using Web technologies. It includes both the run-time components and the tools to develop applications that will run on WAS.

MS Commerce Server: is a Microsoft tool for building e-commerce systems. It helps businesses to create e-commerce solutions and Web sites with high-performance, familiar tools that simplify setup, management, and administration tasks. Full-featured Web business applications and extend your business across networks, while allowing you to integrate e-commerce solutions within your existing infrastructure and B2C and B2B opportunities as well.

DCP: Conchango’s very own commerce platform based on Commerce Server 2007 - but with added functions and features making this application an out of the box ready proposition for e-tailers. DCP will provide retailers with greater flexibility over their online content. The DCP can be integrated within retailer’s back end systems to create a scalable solution that allows retailers websites to be easily managed and a great platform to develop in the future.

Amazon: Winning clients such as M&S, Toys ‘R’ Us and using the 10+ years of the Amazon heritage within e-commerce – with the benefits that this bring with their additional developments in consumer centric features and solid robust framework that drive clients to align with such a powerhouse of a brand in e-commerce. The commerce platform is a multichannel solution that empowers retailers to quickly and easily enable a unique, branded customer shopping experience, providing an unprecedented choice in how customers discover, order, pay for and receive products across store, web and phone channels.

However the costs associated with e-commerce development, delivery, licensing and on going management and support - never mind new feature sets and enhancements to keep up with the latest changes in the way that consumers use and interact with the web - and most important of all - purchase products from!

The above list of e-commerce partners, platforms and software gives the client the security and reassurance that the software that they are licensing has been devised, built, maintained and supported by a crack team of developers and business architects that will continually release the updates that the client needs. This is why of course they pay their annual, monthly or quarterly license fee? They also look for technical support and advanced technical support that only the creator of the software understands fully - and again - this is why in some cases these fees are set with a premium.

I have spoken to a few IT Directors and e-commerce Senior VPs that have been tasked with either a "divorce" or "Counselling" but with even more stringent KPIs and deliverables - as well as a head count cut to keep the profitability as high as possible - as margins get squeezed out even more to compete on the world wide web. So the old adage "one bitten, twice shy" seems to make sense here.

These companies - are no longer looking at e-commerce "blind" anymore but instead looking at hard and fast figures in order to plan how they execute their next 5 year CAPEX and deliver some real tangible and actual year on year results - which will be based on actual deliverables and pre-requisite features and functions that their business has now either grown into or developed via their usage and web statistics. To some of the already existing platforms this could have an impact on timescale, licensing, complex infrastructure changes or additional changes to their business practices that although defined - may need to change to accommodate the platform rather than the platform adopt to their business practices.

Open Minded to Open Source

It's to this end that more and more larger companies are now looking to the Open Source community and associated platforms and software that is available for their e-commerce requirements. Once regarded within the business community as a place "only for hackers and geeks" as well as "not for enterprise standard software" - as time change so do peoples mind set with what the Open Source Community can bring to the table in terms of a flexible, open platform that delivers

To this end I have been looking at what Open Source ‘alternatives’ to the ATG, DCP, WebSphere, MS Commerce Server... etc.. platforms that come with a high degree of ‘tools’ and ‘scalability’ but also come with a lot of integration, development and licensing costs that push the price tag beyond a lot of mid-tier and successful e-commerce businesses. - that starts to look beyond the traditional heavy duty licensed platforms and see that the Open Source Community also has some very good, solid and robust platforms - but with an easier price tag and great flexibility for these type of business.

Final thought on scalability, which is always a concern that I hear from clients, when you look at Open Source and PHP for example - always good to keep in mind that one of the biggest websites in the world, FaceBook, is built and developed on Open Source PHP and can sustain over 70million users! Now that is scalability on a grand scale!

Below are a pick of some of my favourite Open Source e-commerce Platforms that could be considered in a cost saving and inexpensive deployment for the retailer that may have neither the budget or inclination for the platforms mentioned earlier.

osCommerce is the leading Open Source online shop e-commerce solution that is powered by a dedicated, strong, and ever growing community, and is released under the GNU General Public License.

Everything you need to get started in selling physical and digital goods over the Internet, from the Catalogue front end that is presented to your customers, to the Administration Tool back-end that completely handles your products, customers, orders, and online store data.

As expected from a platform such as this it is rich in features:

· Supports unlimited products and categories

· Multicurrency support

· Support for physical (shippable) and virtual (downloadable) products

· Object oriented PHP back-end | Web Browser Install and Plugin support

· OsCommerce is a popular platform and with that has gained a larger support base, and forum for help guidance and ongoing support.

Freeway is the most advanced Open Source eCommerce platform and Freeway offers selling methods only previously available in enterprise class or niche bespoke systems. Without having to purchase a commercial system and then paying a developer to build a custom installation, Freeway does what you need out of the box. Of course Freeway is great for selling products but it also sells events AND services AND subscriptions. From appointments and time based bookings to event ticketing and subscriptions Freeway is the eCommerce platform for how we want to sell!

· Sell Service, Events, Subscriptions and Products

· Single page checkout

· Super easy installation

· Call Centre back-end

· Search Engine Friendly URLs

· AJAX driven Admin tool

· Simple Template system

· 2 Level CMS

· Affiliate programme

· Multiple shipping and payment options

· Promotion codes / Gift certificates

· SMS Marketing

The Magento eCommerce platform combines the flexibility of open-source technology with industry-leading features to provide merchants unprecedented control over store operations

Versatility and Freedom - Control every facet of your store, from merchandising to promotions and more.

Attract and Convert: Key SEO features and user experience will attract and convert more qualified customers, leading to business growth.

Expand your Market: Reach more customers by creating targeted micro-sites using the multi-store retailing functionality:

· Integrated with Google Analytics

· Multiple Images with Zoom

· Add to Wishlist

· Send to a Friend

· Batch Import and Export of Catalogue

· One Page Checkout

· Multi Lingual

The Apache Open For Business Project is an open source enterprise automation software project licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0. By open source enterprise automation we mean: Open Source ERP, Open Source CRM, Open Source E-Business / E-Commerce, Open Source SCM, Open Source MRP, Open Source CMMS/EAM, and so on.

Apache OFBiz is a foundation and starting point for enterprise solutions, be they for one organization or one million. OFBiz can certainly be used out of the box. OFBiz is great for creating specialized applications for use out of the box by other organizations. OFBiz is also great for organizations that need more than what an OOTB application can offer in order to grow their operations, but find the deployment and maintenance costs of traditional enterprise systems that can handle such things to be unreasonable or unjustifiable.

Apache OFBiz offers a great deal of functionality, including:

· advanced e-commerce

· catalogue management

· promotion & pricing management

· order management (sales & purchase)

· customer management (part of general party management)

· warehouse management

· fulfillment (auto stock moves, batched pick, pack & ship)

· accounting (invoice, payment & billing accounts, fixed assets)

· manufacturing management

· general work effort management (events, tasks, projects, requests, etc)

· content management (for product content, web sites, general content, blogging, forums, etc)

· a maturing Point Of Sales (POS) module using XUI as rich client interface

Summary

This is only a snapshot of the Open Source platforms, companies and technology out there in the marketplace just now. This is also just a personal view of what I am seeing out there and that I like what I am seeing and hearing.

I am only thinking out loud (well on my Blog at least) that in times of an economic slowdown (whether that is implied or actual) , where e-tailers may have been “burned” in the past with expensive and expansive complex e-commerce platforms – that a lighter and more flexible offering maybe well be the choice for them in their next excursion on the web.

I also am strongly in favour of openness and collaboration – which the open source community delivers in terms of help, assistance, guidance, code and that single focus which is to help and assist in the overall quality of the end product.

So where will your business end up?

A Divorce or some Counselling?

Interested?

Drop me an email and get this in a readable PDF document.

The Long Tail in Digital Media

2008-10-21T01:07:00.001-07:00

I have talked enough about this topic in various blogs, presentations and events. Sometimes I try to be explicit in the reasoning and other times I add it as a point of reference...

So The Long Tail - as described throughout by Chris Anderson and others talks about - and here I am talking about the digital media Long Tail where unlimited breadth and depth of a digital catalogue and should become unlimited to the point that it is really only metadata on a webpage, application and a rack of servers that can deliver this content. Content can be amassed from anywhere in the world, multiple suppliers, with multiple digital assets and that the niche products further down the line will be available to all. Therefore catering for, so the assumption goes, every need, whim, want and requirement by the end user and consumer without the added headache of physical storage of that item.

Compare that to the early days of The Long Tail way before Chris published his book where traditional retailers and resellers fought in the late 80's & 90's to be the biggest, deepest and widest range of products housed under one roof (or at least able to distribute that to a physical store) This however did not work as a good business practice as the stock turn and stock holding figures exceeded the business forecasts. As traditionally the Long Tail product (being niche) would, could and did sit in warehouses, shelves and boxes gathering dust and in a lot of cases devaluing quarter by quarter - as to find that hidden gem or specific item that the consumer had been searching for may well be mis-placed, filed, located - not on sale - stuck hundred of miles in a warehouse in the Midlands. Which meant that window of opportunity was in effect lost for another 'x' months.

The result was huge stock write offs from businesses that attempted to re-address this during the late 90s. Core ranges and top sellers would be the core of the business as well as new lines. These would be defined based on the stock turn of each SKU and therefore a new product that didn't hit the stock turn figure defined by the business would be relegated and in most cases defined as a niche product never to grace the sales floor again. This of course made these stores look and feel very... well empty! From the halcyon days of stuffed to the ceiling of stock that could effectively have anything the consumer wanted - to only the real movers and in effect 10% of the entire Long Tail. These business needed to rethink what their offer was going to be - diversification was the key and winner for some (look at Tesco in their dominance - they would never had the same success had they stuck to grocery only) others would downsize and become a core niche play in their own right. Others found the stock write off process too much to bear and in teh end had to liquidate their assets to clear their books.

Then along came the Internet....

If you want to know and understand how the Long Tail and in effect Amazon championed this then read Chris Anderson's book - not new but great to read how these ideas have been structured in his book.

Now we are into Digital Media and where does the Long Tail fit within here.

Back in the early 2000's and the emergence of digital media and in effect portable music files - the strategist among us though that this was the perfect playing ground for the full long tail. Forget a few hundred of thousands products, even forget a millions SKUs - if done correctly the option to have a 20million SKU Long Tail would be possible and the value of that would be truly immense. Suddenly the race was on to build the archetypal platform that could access, serve up and deliver this untapped beast and the ultimate Long Tail would be the rich pickings for the winner!!

As we all know Apple delivered an eco-system that included device, software and content to the extent that they achieved the goal that other scrambled for. Yes their were lots of 2nd, 3rd, 4th placed companies. The consumer adopted Apple as their digital media safety blanket - but there was a problem. A big problem!

What was the value of the Digital Long Tail vs the "perceived" value of the Digital Long Tail? The figures never matched up. They failed to match up for a number of reasons... here are my key 10 reasons...

The top 20% of the Long Tail would deliver $ day in and day out without too much trouble or much marketing
The availability of the longer tailed items had not yet been digitised or made available
The metadata that was being delivered, matched or mixed together was either not there or in a lot of cases just rubbish
Apathy some of the mid tier long tail products in the past had been marketed, repackaged, republished, remanufactured and redelivered so many times that there was only so many times that the classic recording of "x" was going to be purchased. Especially when the digital price was now beginning to show a higher cost to the end user compared to the physical units that were now being pushed, heavily discounted or part of a multi-buy campaign to appease the physical retailer.
The excuse of "it costs more because of convenience and instant gratification" failed to wash
D R M (enough said about that)
Illegal P2P - if the consumer can't find it, cant see it, cant hear it or want DRM - then they will hunt it down themselves. Look at The Beatles and AllofMP3.com - demand for Beatles digital music - which at £3 for The White Album - non-traditional illegal downloaders went there, put their credit card details in and started downloading - they had no idea that this was illegally ripped content being made available to them - but again the demand was there.
The labels greed and their own continued fight for survival meant that they had to keep as much of a constant on price from the top tier of their catalogue vs the lowest point of their own individual long tail - why? their digital assets would then be revised as an asset and accordingly lose money of their share value if the word in The City was that $X was just devalued off their catalogue (something that would come back to haunt Warners in 2008)
Discovery and unlocking the content based on the users listening habits, purchase habits, mood, discovery, something different or just based on a factor that is human nature - these were few and far between. Where does these relationships live, how are they accessed and how are they then delivered to the consumer that makes sense and encourages more sales based on their experience that has been given. Enter companies such as Muze, AMG, The Filter, Last FM, Pandora to name but a few that would start to bring together relationships and common sense of all this data. Where the data was available that is.. Previously this was based on "customers who purchased X also purchased Y" - no reason other than that. Relationships borne out of Band A were directly influenced by Band B therefore if you like Band A you should like Band B - this kind of hit and miss would stimulate a small proportion of the tail - but nothing that would sustain or deliver a consistent increase and deeper penetration into the long tail that would hold the "valuable" assets
Ability to have a complete picture and available access via home > car > mobile > device > work > limitations from the labels and studios meant that there would always be a limitation placed on the consumer that only "x" number of devices, "x" number of activations "x" number of transfers. Now was the time that we as passionate muisc lovers that had a passion and engineering / technical background that could start to bring all this data of listening, buying, trends, influences etc.. all to bear to create the ultimate experience that ultimately would help everyone. Help the labels and studios start to stimulate and sell more products, help the retailer / reseller also start o influence the user by delivering more richer and immersive experiences that went beyond just the original product asset and into the diverse range of products that complemented - such as merchandise, tickets, documentaries, books, articles the list is in fact endless.

Now we reach a state of "FREE" - what is free? how can it be classed? why should it be free? someone has to be paid?...etc

All this and more - this is not coming from people like me and most of my readers. Nor is coming from the "Baby Boomers" that are currently in CEO positions of these large companies. This is coming from the next Generation (Gen Y) that have been let down by technology, access, experience, greed, expectations that the people in charge of the music and entertainment "understand" what they want and how they want to enjoy their music and how? It's not bigger, better and more packaging as EMI and others would like to think will stimulate the "kids" to purchase a physical copy. Nor is it laden down with so much DRM that the can not switch on their mobile before using up a licence. They want to be able to use, listen, share and send to their friends as my generation did back in the day - only now the kids have more technology and gadgets to play with that gives them instant gratification as and when they want it (or so you would think..)

I was of course compelled to kick off this blog (which I have touched on this subject before after I read a Blog by Eloit Van Buskirk "Does the Long Tail apply to Mobile" where in essence it is the same as above - its Digital Media and its the Long Tail - but as I have described above there are limitations to this. Nokia's service does not really go anywhere to address this as there is still elements of confusion around what it does. Yes "unlimited access to music" yes but not to own, transfer, send etc.. which is one of the reasons why kids just don't get it or want it. Own 10 tracks per month = 120 tracks per year which in essence is nothing really. With all the offers that phone operators have (free Wii, Free PSP etc..) they all work out about the same price. So there's nothing really new in that apart from its now music rather than a bit of games hardware. . full review coming of Comes with Music vs Music Station..

However there has been talk about eMusic and the Long Tail and how they do see a future in it. Well funny that seeing as eMusic's service until they started doing the major label deals was based on the long Tail titles. Titles that are in effect down the end of teh Long Tail. Artists, tracks and albums that are from niche artists or content from known artists that were out of major label contracts and produced albums that were never really promoted or marketed apart from the core fanbase. That is not the mass market or the mass audience. That is of course the Long Tail.

? So is their a long tail in Digital Media - YES

? Is being tapped into just now - NO

? Is it as valuable as it has been perceived or reported - NO / YES (both really if you start to thin the cost wedge out then you will start to see higher volumes. Higher volumes at a lower cost is ultimately better for the business than little or no volume at maximum cost.

? Can mobile enjoy a Long Tail experience - ALL areas of business can enjoy the Long Tail within Digital Media. You just have to understand how to deliver it effectively and remember the audience that you are aiming your service at, and how and why they would use it.

Get these elements right (as well as creating a better business model with the labels and studios) and the Holy Grail of the Digital Long Tail will be there for the taking....

However you better be quick, with 7million+ tracks, iPods, iPhones, iTunes and now Genius - Apple once again could end up showing the world that not only does digital music belong to them - but the Digital Long Tail just got that much closer....

Future of Mobile (well some applications at least..)

2008-10-17T09:06:00.000-07:00

I often get asked from people what is coming up next with regard to the mobile space... Well everything from m-commerce that we know will be a strong win for business in 2009 - and we will see a dramatic rise in applications and mobile stores next year, through to games applications and social gadgets...

Below I have compiled a small list of companies that are breaking through from their final round of start-up funding into full on applications with a solid enough business case to take them through to their next level of a Beta launched product.

You will find everything from LIVE You Tube style applications direct from your phone through to social mash ups

Take a look... have a play and see what you may have been missing out on!!

Qik.com - is an easy to use streaming portal that lets users broadcast directly from their cell phones. The service has seen its expansion quite rapidly and is being utilized from the common users to people sending images and recordings of sessions from the World Economic Form.

skydata.com - Access to all your business and contact data right on fingertips. The app does not simply provides fingertip access to all your contact data, it automatically syncs it with your phones contact list.What this means is that as soon as you find a business contact from LinkedIn you could just hit the call button to get on phone. Connect your LinkedIn, Facebook, Outlook, Google and Yahoo! Contacts / Access CRM data from Salesforce.com, SugarCRM, Microsoft, Siebel or NetSuite / Retrieve important news, business profiles, status and location of any contact / View data one "Quick Click" from calls, emails, text and calendar events / Deploy your information in minutes, safely and securely

JumpTap is a web-based mobile search portal that allows Advertisers, Publishers and Operators to intermingle with each other at the right time with a right strategy. It allows subscribers to find desired material while content publishers and operators can retain control of their mobile traffic. Advertisers finds great scope in the service as it allows them to target the right ad to the right user at the right time.

mpowerplayer.com - App allows consumers to play games for their mobile phones through an emulator. Big game makers like EA Mobile and Sega Mobile use the firm's technology to demo their games, which customers can then buy and download to their phones. Mpowerplayer says they'll use the funds to expand the service to other social networks. Right now they're only on Facebook.

belysio.com - Social mapping service that is going to revolutionize the mobile usage in terms of staying in touch with your buddies. The startup is using location based technologies, the one which notifies you when your contact is near. The service lets you send text to those friends and automatically updates the address book.

Shozu lets you connect and publish media to your favourite social networks – in one convenient place. The one stop mobile social network is a mobile download with official support for: Facebook, Photobucket, Picasa, Flickr, YouTube, Blogger, LiveJournal, Wordpress, Twitter and lots more. This is allows you to manage your social networks easily from your mobile.

Tatango aims to revolutionize group text messaging, thereby allowing any group the ability to send and receive group text messages from the web or their own mobile phones for free. In a nutshell they want to create yahoo groups for SMS messaging.

vuclip.com - New features added to what was blueapple are additional feature of searching for searching for any video using the website and sending it to your phone using sms. There’s no wait needed for any encoding of the videos as vuclip’s unique technology analyses your mobile phone and the connection speed as well the screen size and adjusts the video for optimal playback, and it does all this on the fly

The Meltdown: Minsky Moment

2008-10-10T12:55:00.001-07:00

Well a rather depressing debut post here for the Madman!!
After blogging in different parts decided that I need a more flexible platform to rant, vent, inspire and create. I will continue to post and publish on my other 2 blog areas diaryofamadman.co.uk as well as blogs.conchango.com/derekdunlop/ - but I have plans for the madman site that I will unveil later on here - and the other is my work blog so must ensure that there is relevant work content flowing!!

So welcome old and new readers - I will of course move back onto topic quickly but - fuck what is happening in the world just now. Chaos and mayhem!!! It's all kicking off and personally I'm looking at the greedy mutha fuckers that think that $250million is not enough and going to go for more - that ethos is for shallow low life scum and will trample, destroy and generally fuck anyone over in order to get their pound of flesh!

I mean what the fuck is that all about - yes Im all for a good competitive advantage, but would I really sell my soul, cut out another persons heart and piss on their parade just for my own personal gain?? Hell No!!
Ultimatley this greed will catch up with everyone and with over valuation and over priced worth will at some point create a cataclysmic meltdown or put another way create what is known as the Minski Moment!

Now I'm no financial whizz kid and I don't pretend to be one - I don't invest in the stock market as I don't feel the need to gamble my hard earned cash based on what analyists base a value or worth on - I strongly feel that we are at a tipping point where we can no longer progress as we are doing.

When there is such a divide and total inequality in the world today- why should some banker in Wall Street demand $1.5m a yearvas well as another $1.5m bonus - does he deserve that kind of money - what exactly has he done to get that kind of payday - takes a risk, plays the market, fucks anyone over that gets in his or her way on order to get that bonus and more!
What about the other side - for every winner their must be a loser - that person may just have lost everything and now realised that their life was in effect driven my the almighty $ and now sees that actually there is more to life than cash - I know a few of these leeches and wow what a difference in their outlook on life since giving up chasing the $!
Now in 2008 - we see £250billion wiped off the value of shares in one week - some peope have just lost everything - the innocents as well as the greedy. The difference being the innocent were investing for their future and retirement - the gamblers were out on their self belief that they are money gods and genuises that knew how to play the market. Well looks like they have failed - will they me dipping into their savings to bail out the market they so quickly and vivaciuosly took from - fuck no - that's "their cash and they bloody well earned it" they will cry and start to off load as much failing stock and shit to save their own ass followed by their company then finally you and not me I'm afraid- the more this happens then the bigger the impact and the swell gets to such a degree that the entire financial sector collapses in on itself - how can a financial institute such as a bank fail - it can if it has mis-managed it's investments and debt to the point that it no longer can sustain itself . A crash is always defined as anything that has a drop greater than 10% in one single day trade - in the UK that happened to some of the biggest banks Barclays, HBoS, lloydsTSB all dipped below 10% some even close to 20%

All this signals the beginning of the end on how we should live, work, trade and as human beings start to look around us rather that within

The Minsky Moment may just what the world needs to embrace the 21st Century and start again with a different base to value worth and purpose?

Or is that just some hippy bullshit!

Well see - until then hold on for one hell of a ride!

Until next time

See Ya!
The Madman

-- Post From the ether somewhere in the world!!