Music
As some of you may have gathered music is something that I am passionate about. I've recently been called a MIG (music information guy).
I can't play music, one of my abiding regrets, but I love to listen to it.
This article is very interesting. You may not of heard of Rick Rubin, but you will have heard music he has picked and produced. He is responsible for Under the Bridge by the Chilli Peppers, he produced 5 of Johnny Cash's albums, he started Def Jam records, and resurrected Aerosmith. In short he has a very impressive music pedigre. And he is now the co-head of Columbia records.
He has some very interesting things to say about the music industry, which he thinks is in big trouble, and the way it might go forward.
This was his summary:
Columbia is stuck in the dark ages. I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today's world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm,but until the paradigm shifts, it's going to be a declining business.This model is done.
He suggests that a single pay subscription service would make sense, for a monthly fee you get all the music you want. I'm not sure about this, I like to own my music and I think this subscription idea has severe consequences for that, but as a way to go out and find new music and listen to stuff that you only want to listen to occasionally, I don't think it can be beaten. What it all means, above all however, is that the winds of change may at last be coming to the music industry, years after they have swept through the music listeners.
There was an interesting survey of a bunch of college age kids and their relationship with music, the results were:
The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool,but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands,everything.
Interestingly this ties in with a silly marketing book I am reading at the moment called "The Tipping Point". There is a nice little summary of the book on the wikipedia page, and actually reading it mostly provides a bunch of illustrative examples. It talks about three types of people who could be roughly categorised as "thought leaders" (a lovely piece of marketing drivel that actually has a core of truth in it) Connectors (the people who know people), Mavens (the people who know stuff, particularly about products, and will tell you about it), and Salesmen (the people who convince you to act on things). It seems that these are the sort of people that Rubin is talking about and is in essence trying to manufacture in his "Word of Mouth" department. I'm interested to see how this actually works in practice.
The book was written in 2000 and I feel that the rise of the internet community has made a difference to some of the conclusions, especially about the size of social networks, but I haven't finished reading it yet. Maybe I'll write something about this when I do finish.
Anyway, if you like music I recommend reading the article and seeing what you think of it. Forewarned is forearmed.
I'll finish with a few questions:
How often do you find new music?
Is it generally by new artists of by artists you already like (or their side projects etc)?
Where do you generally find it?
I can't play music, one of my abiding regrets, but I love to listen to it.
This article is very interesting. You may not of heard of Rick Rubin, but you will have heard music he has picked and produced. He is responsible for Under the Bridge by the Chilli Peppers, he produced 5 of Johnny Cash's albums, he started Def Jam records, and resurrected Aerosmith. In short he has a very impressive music pedigre. And he is now the co-head of Columbia records.
He has some very interesting things to say about the music industry, which he thinks is in big trouble, and the way it might go forward.
This was his summary:
Columbia is stuck in the dark ages. I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today's world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm,but until the paradigm shifts, it's going to be a declining business.This model is done.
He suggests that a single pay subscription service would make sense, for a monthly fee you get all the music you want. I'm not sure about this, I like to own my music and I think this subscription idea has severe consequences for that, but as a way to go out and find new music and listen to stuff that you only want to listen to occasionally, I don't think it can be beaten. What it all means, above all however, is that the winds of change may at last be coming to the music industry, years after they have swept through the music listeners.
There was an interesting survey of a bunch of college age kids and their relationship with music, the results were:
The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool,but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands,everything.
Interestingly this ties in with a silly marketing book I am reading at the moment called "The Tipping Point". There is a nice little summary of the book on the wikipedia page, and actually reading it mostly provides a bunch of illustrative examples. It talks about three types of people who could be roughly categorised as "thought leaders" (a lovely piece of marketing drivel that actually has a core of truth in it) Connectors (the people who know people), Mavens (the people who know stuff, particularly about products, and will tell you about it), and Salesmen (the people who convince you to act on things). It seems that these are the sort of people that Rubin is talking about and is in essence trying to manufacture in his "Word of Mouth" department. I'm interested to see how this actually works in practice.
The book was written in 2000 and I feel that the rise of the internet community has made a difference to some of the conclusions, especially about the size of social networks, but I haven't finished reading it yet. Maybe I'll write something about this when I do finish.
Anyway, if you like music I recommend reading the article and seeing what you think of it. Forewarned is forearmed.
I'll finish with a few questions:
How often do you find new music?
Is it generally by new artists of by artists you already like (or their side projects etc)?
Where do you generally find it?