http://www.flickr.com/photos/39534445@N00/385954000

In a recent NY Times piece, I chanced upon an article that described the increase in the purchase of second hand vinyl records.It describes how for some that hunt in record stores and town hall second-hand sales they are, in some subtle fashion, seeking cultural connections.

We seek authenticity, and we still need the visceral nature of things. Seeking authenticity (smlxl posts)

The Cure backstage pass

Do Tent in the background aka Ted in a tent

Last year I had the privilege to speak at The Do Lectures (my review here) (more Do stuff), and though I will not be able to make it this year, I wanted to share my enthusiasm for the 2010 event. There is a great speaker line up - which is designed to do what it says on the tin – to inspire people to go and do something with their lives.

Also I might add – The Do Lectures is an event that is cross disciplinary, and brings in my view an alternative view of how we make business, art, love and life in this networked world. And it is this diversity that makes the experience so rich and rewarding. It is the rule of No Straight Lines vs. the straight line one. As Proust said, the real voyage of discovery is not to seek new landscapes but to look upon the world with fresh eyes.

So from the future of publishing presented by Craig Mod, to John ‘Jay” Burton Rogers from Local Motors, Maggie Doyne building schools in Nepal – these are people as Ivan Illich says are leading a life of action. So unlike other events, if you want inspiration, and hang out with some great people, where speakers sit and have breakfast with you, lunch with you and dinner with you and chat, where you talk to others that have asked the question, ‘why?’ what comes next? What is the alternative, where you will be moved – then Do is the place for you. You can by tickets here. Don’t just stand there, Do something.

http://thedolectures.co.uk

In the car that drove me down to MLove two young women were sat in the back of the car with me, feverishly chatting to each other and writing in a notebook. I struck up and conversation, enquiring what they were doing? Songwriters, ahhhhhh I see songwriters going to conference about mobile….. er of course you are. So I asked why were they going to a mobile conference in the middle of nowhere?  Because they were performing stupid! Doooh.

Sophie Madeleine, left and Hannah-Rei, right, form the duo that is known as Rocky and Balls. As you can see these are demure looking ladies – let that not fool you – and although they both sing like angels, there is craft, humour and more sauce in their song writing than you would get in 10 Heinz sauce bottles.

Armed only with a Ukulele, and a Kazoo, well in fact we all had Kazoo’s, we were regaled with the Beard Song, (now I have to grow one, and live in hope) and two of my favourites, I heart you online, and Love Cake a Baking Song – apparently.

All these songs were touching and achingly funny. So Sophie and Hannah, I heart your songwriting and performing skills. And recommend that more people come and look you up, listen to your music, buy your music and book performances – the world needs you. Here is my fave song for your delectation. As separate artists, they also cut the mustard to a high standard.

Check them out on their YouTube Channel

Digital natives vs. digital immigrants, digital marketing and communication strategies.

And I guess that was a necessary phase – but now its time to move on. Its time to recognise that if companies continue to worked in a linear fashion, and talking about digital this and that, which is exclusive to the online world – rather than talking about how do we create the most compelling customer, audience, peer to peer experience that we can – companies and organisations will continue to struggle with this wired up world.

They being: Howard Rheingold, Douglas Rushkoff, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Gerd Leonhard, Timo Arnall, Carlo Longino, Katrin Verclas, Atau Tanaka, Alan Moore, Marek Pawloski, Ajit Jaokar, Nicolas Nova, Inma Martinez, Tony Fish, Jonathan MacDonald, Willem Boijens, Carlos Domingo, Russ McGuire, Raimo van der Klein, Michael Breidenbruecker, Robert Rice, Steve O’Hear, Ted Morgan, Martin Duval, Andreas Constantinou, Fabien Girardin, Matthäus Krzykowski, Rich Wong, Andy Abramson, Ilja Laurs, David Wood, Stefan Constantinescu, Henri Moissinac, Kevin C. Tofel, Enrique C. Ortiz, Felix Petersen, Tom Hume.

So I would also like to share it with you. Thank you Rudy for inviting me. If you are interested in taking a deeper dive into mobile go here Mobile: my remote control for life

Writes Peter Preston

Radiohead did no have such a good time financially as when Nine Inch Nails released their album under a CC+ licence

Companies, record labels that is, are starting to find ways of mining the back catalogue. Reading Prestons piece for me its all about context – something that SMLXL explored with a major record label a few years ago. But the pain was not enough right then for them to think the unthinkable.

Back catalogues go back to when time began but its all about connecting people to context. Something that I implored Nokia to do with their ‘Comes with Music’ offering. Its no good just offering up FREE – one has to find and create the context and the context of value.

EMI’s Beatles mono box set goes for £199, but has been flying off the shelves as fans covet their own special collection of hand-glued sleeves and mini-vinyl CD replicas.

Contexualise music for me, link, filter, bundle and aggregate, point to link to

Some of the issues that arose from said record label were these:

1. Everyone tends to be involved in everything. People tend to approach stuff (despite their own expertise, and lack of expertise in areas outside their specialism) with an open mouth….
2. Within 3 years the physical market will have halved in size (that was a year or so ago)
3. Our current approach, structure and skill-set are minimising our effectiveness
4. Decisions get made in spite of our approach, structure and skill-set
5. There is a certain amount that our division can do on its own
6. There’s a lot of effort expended making the proscribed  alliances work
7. Often silo-holders priorities trump co-operation
8. Our work is currently skewed towards music (there is a lack of broader business experience)
9. There are “pockets” of potential support in other divisions/departments

If a young person (around 15 years old) looked at us, they would see:

1. A place full of old people who don’t understand me
2. A company that doesn’t make enough of the music that I love
3. They would be surprised how far away from the music we are
4. They wouldn’t understand how much effort it takes to do well (or not!)
5. “A business environment”, that doesn’t feel like a community

The label admitted that the label, the artists and the audience were 3 separate entities and realised that finding a solution to that problem was pressing. This was serious organisational stuff. We talked about being the first major socially networked entertainment company..

We did discuss

1. Simplify music discovery
2. Recommendation of other music – for instance via “Rock Family Tree” structure (not just artists, but producers, instrumentation). Consider kick-back to recommender, like the USync model.
3. Story-prompted song selection
4. create channels of interactivity

Yet none of this was implemented – if you can’t contexualise then you cannot find the meaning in things – as I mentioned earlier today its about: attracting, linking, pointing to, contextualising, aggregating, sharing, embedding, filtering, its a blended reality of offline and off.

And there is a long list of the nostalgia business at record labels  in full swing in Preston’s article, but as he says,

Yet for all the ways of using great recordings, there are concerns that even the dependable catalogue part of the music industry is set for tough times eventually. Paul Williams, editor of Music Week, notes that a focus on the old over the new can only hold up so long. There is a risk of neglecting A&R, he says.

SMLXL archives on music

5 Sites That Tap the Music in the Cloud

Fizy
This Turkish site compiles audio from around the Net into a database from which you can curate your own playlists. It’s fast as blazes (for now, anyway) and boasts a fat catalog.
Wired Simple profile pages facilitate playlist-sharing. Reports recently played songs to FriendFeed, RSS, or just your profile. Shuffle function.
Tired Bare-bones user profiles limit social utility.

Muziic
Developed by high schooler David Nelson with help from his dad, this upstart accesses the songs on YouTube via an iTunes-like interface.
Wired Makes the music on YouTube feel local. Sharing feature helps you add your own MP3s to the cloud.
Tired Requires Windows XP or Vista. Seizure-inducing design. Catalog limited to what’s on YouTube. Special software installation necessary.

Songza
Songza wraps the music of imeem and YouTube in a sweet, simple Web interface, the work of Scott Robbin and Aza Raskin—whose father, Jef Raskin, sired the Apple Macintosh.
Wired With a click, Play, Share, Rate, and Add to Playlist tools unfold like a clover. Can use services other than imeem and YouTube. Playlist appears on profile page and RSS feed.
Tired Only one playlist per user.

Spotify
A P2P streaming architecture lets users in supported countries create collections from a massive in-house music archive.
Wired Fast, free playback through an efficient interface that rivals iTunes. Smooth, robust streaming. Live tech support. $14 per month removes ads.
Tired Currently restricted to Europe (a US rollout is being negotiated). Requires software installation.

Twones
Prefer to use iTunes or other downloadable software for your local playback? Twones has you covered. It also tracks your activity on multiple online services and offline players through a single Web interface.
Wired Small-fry sites can sign up to be included in the search, theoretically giving you access to a wider variety of tracks.
Tired Limited playback on the site itself.

I would argue that the contemporary moment of transmedia has heightened our awareness of these earlier moments of authors unfolding stories across media, much as the rise of digital media more generally has led to a revitalization of the study of “old media when they were new” or the history of the book. We certainly want to understand what is new about our current push for transmedia entertainment, which to me has to do with the particular configuration of media systems and the push towards a more participatory culture.

Tolkien, Lewis, Baum, and Smith all sought to model contemporary fictions on the dispersed, episodic, yet interlocking structures of classic mythology — creating a folklore for a post-folkloric society. And so, yes, there are going to be many resemblances to be drawn between transmedia stories, informed by these creative figures, and traditional religious or mythological works.

And perhaps what resonates with my argument that all businesses and organisations including governments must “engage or die”.

I’ve long ago given up trying to separate the creative and commercial motivations of transmedia entertainment, but then, all popular culture, no, all art depends on a complex balance between the two. From the start, most transmedia has been funded through the promotional budget rather than being understood as part of the creative costs of a particular franchise, even where it has been understood as performing key world building or story expanding functions. This was a central issue in the Writer’s Strike a few years ago. Indeed, in so far as Hollywood has grasped transmedia, it has been in the context of a growing awareness of the urgency of creating “consumer engagement” that has been a buzz word across the entertainment industry in recent years. This is why the transmedia chapter in CC follows so closely after the discussion of “affective economics” and American Idol.

The chapter called “Engagement” in Communities Dominate Brands begins,

I hear you knockin’ but you can’t come in, is something as customers we say to brands on a daily basis, consciously or unconsciously. Yet businesses need to grow, revenues and profits increased. And this book is ultimately about how you do that in a changing world. This is not the time for nostalgia or for the board to sing just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. So the question we presented ourselves with is how do you overcome the problems caused by technological change in society and in business? We have explored how customers change and how a new Generation-C is emerging. We explained how communities act as a counterbalancing force to branding and advertising power. Now it remains for us to expose the way to capitalise on the dramatic change in business. We call it engagement. Now some people may say that yes but all communications is about engagement. We don’t think it is.

The important bit in Henry’s quote is this,

Indeed, in so far as Hollywood has grasped transmedia, it has been in the context of a growing awareness of the urgency of creating “consumer engagement” that has been a buzz word across the entertainment industry in recent years. This is why the transmedia chapter in CC follows so closely after the discussion of “affective economics” and American Idol.

SMLXL produced its own paper on Pop Idol which you can download here In which we made several important points.

[1] Pop Idol was an incredible economic success – globally. Why? Because of its ability to “engage” its audience

[2] It inspired 30% of people in the US to send their first ever text message in the 2nd US Pop Idol

Its no accident that the X Factor is a derivative of Pop Idol.

Out of this we deduced that by engaging an audience, using multiple communication technologies, Pop Idol uncovered an important insight into participation (I+We and the placing of both within a space in which we can all create and participate), and more critically the economic need for engagement. Something that many brands have consistently overlooked, because they are still is unable to integrate properly all communication / media channels into a compelling idea. Beholden to media companies that are gate keepers to brand spending all $3 trillion of it. Its why SMLXL is more interested in “engagement” per se, preferring that approach which is more in keeping with aspects of transmedia storytelling than social media, with some of our initiatives. Sociability is a core component of engagement – but we believe there is a much bigger prize to be had. The hot media of; co-creation, networked distribution, participation, and the economics of attraction and attention are important issues to address, understand and to apply. The short hand is the 4C’s: Commerce+Culture+community+Connectivity. The origin of wealth in the networked society is contextualised by the idea of networked economics – this is different to mass media economics – and as Henry says we are in a period of transition from a world of analogue economics to a world defined by what we call blended reality. There is no offline and online, digital vs. analogue there is only blended reality. This is the age of engagement. Where through storytelling (think compare the Meerkat) across media platforms we create deeper context, deeper context creates greater meaning, which this correlates with the economics of attention and how brands, business etc., that have  a commercial agenda can survive and thrive in the networked society.

Henry finishes up

On another level, I’d say we are still at a moment of transition where transmedia practices are concerned. Each new experiment — even the failed ones — teach us things about how to shape a compelling transmedia experience or what kinds of tools are needed to allow consumers to manage information as it is dispersed across multiple platforms. In some ways, the transmedia stories may need to be conservative on other levels — adopting relatively familiar genre formulas — so that the reader learns how to put together the pieces into a meaningful whole, much as the first jigsaw puzzles we are given as children take shape into familiar characters and do not have the challenges found in those designed for hardcore puzzlers.