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Folk Tunes: How the Music Industry May
Provide a Model for Developing Commercial Weblogs |
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31 May 2004 |
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A spate of news flashes from
USC Annenberg OJR,
The New York Times and
Reuters are highlighting the
power of weblogs as both an expressive medium as well as a
body of commentary that has become a potent force for
shaping main\stream journalism and corporate operations.
What's missing is a viable business model for monetizing
weblogs effectively beyond their current status as folk art
in the raw. Using old channels of distribution for text
content is not likely to harness the full commercial
potential of weblogs, though. For the answer to tomorrow's
weblog monetization, take a stroll down to your local night
club and check out today's star "DJs" laying down the
mixes. Will tomorrow's lead editors of weblogs be "BJs"? |
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Nothing is
terribly new about weblogs, when you boil them down to their
essence, yet the volume of attention that this simple
publishing mechanism generates as it is embraced by
serious-minded people continues to grow. In the space of one
week we've seen the
USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review note
significant contributions by weblogs to the integrity and
sourcing of news in leading newspapers,
The New York Times [REGISTRATION] chronicling the rise of "blogaholics"
who live to keep their weblogs alive even at the expense of
their bill-paying endeavors and
Reuters picking up on Bill Gates' commitment to supporting
weblogs as an integral part of the fabric of business
information. Weblogs have moved from the province of a handful
of sputtering fanatics dishing out a mix of trendy opinions and
choice gossip to a mainstream communications tool producing
content that forces even the most venerable of institutions to
take note of what webloggers are saying. Microsoft's move to
have weblogging stitched into the upcoming "Longhorn" version
of Windows codifies that weblogs are a form of content that
must be harnessed for long-term success on many fronts.
This mainstreaming of weblogs is still at
a very early stage of development, though, with many rough
edges yet to be worked out. Monetization of weblogs is still a
sketchy success story at best; most standalone and
portal-aggregation schemes make no profits or at most nominal
profits via advertising support and some limited subscription
access. Accomplished webloggers can shake major media outlets
into action and can gain their own followings that occasionally
transcend cult-like devotion, but few if any have devised the
editorial breadth and gravitas to completely replace
established papers and journals in any particular marketplace.
As with the Web itself ten years ago, weblogs scream of promise
and expressive freedom but remain largely a simple
communications technology that bypasses most established
content channels to reach audiences who like what they read and
don't really care about how it got to them. Like troubadours
wandering the streets of Madrid for all to hear their songs,
webloggers are creating folk art that people enjoy and may take
seriously but is not too often resulting in many pesos falling
from nearby balconies. Love of the art still dominates more
than love of the trade.
Yet this very model of broadcast folk art
may be the thing that places weblogs on a viable footing for
the long term as a communications medium that moves both people
and profits. The popular music industry grew out of capturing
folk songs in mass communications media, adding distribution,
marketing and polish where it was needed to increase its
appeal. Distribution is no longer a key advantage for the music
industry, as file sharing networks have demonstrated, but
cultivating and channeling independent talent profitably
remains a staple concern for the entertainment industry. Here
are a few specific ideas as to how today's electronic content
marketing environment may be harnessed to create great
opportunities for talented webloggers:
- Turn over weblog product
development to the content experts. There are a number of
noble attempts to create businesses out of weblogs, but for
the most part they are half-hearted efforts modeled on old
"new" media aggregation concepts that have been largely
displaced by the peer-to-peer power of personal publishing.
Aggregation of weblogs is largely in the hands of users and
their publishing technology almost insignificant, so this is
as pure a content-oriented medium as has been invented to
date. As such, it's important for content experts to be
reaching in to this nearly limitless supply of folk art to
identify and develop content sources that can resonate with
commercial-scale audiences. To date bIoggers both raw and
polished have been lumped in together with little editorial
discrimination. This is part of the inherent appeal of
weblogs, but it is not a scenario for successful product
development. Instead of the most talented webloggers burning
themselves out for no good reason, smart content marketers
will adopt them and nurture them as part of a stable of
"artists", much as music production companies have done since
the inception of recorded sound. Their time may come and go,
but while they are hot they will have the opportunity to
profit from their talents.
- Dare to create more robust content
channels based on weblogs. For the most part weblog
syndication technology is used to replicate either individual
voices or existing editorial streams from major outlets.
There is little movement as of yet towards packaging
independent webloggers into focused editorial streams with
the breadth and depth of a topical magazine or newspaper. The
ability to tune in specific authors via weblogs helps users
to create their own version of the news, so it's doubtful
that tomorrow's "blogazine" will be taking in exclusive
rights to weblogs; the role of "blogazine editor" is more
likely to resemble a star DJ from a night club acting as a
"mix master" of various weblog and non-weblog sources that
come and go as need be to provide a fabric of content well
suited for specific audiences at specific moments. Getting on
as many "playlists" as possible with "BJs" will become the
goal of webloggers seeking recognition and gain from their
efforts. The Associated Press of weblogs, if you will.
- Put in place the infrastructure
that allows individuals to profit from weblog monetization.
In clinging to the fantasy that they still controlled content
distribution, music companies let their industry creep away
from them with hardly a whimper - until Apple decided to take
rights management seriously and treat digital content objects
with some respect. The winner in weblogs monetization will be
the one who does the best job in popularizing rights-secured
content syndication and re-syndication via weblogs, so that
individual content creators will be free to manage their
craft via whatever commercial distribution channels make
sense at a given moment.
While the music industry as a whole is
still adapting itself to the notion that individual artists can
have some control over their product's monetization, the
nascent weblog industry has the potential to be founded on that
very premise almost from its inception. The love
of the art may keep individual webloggers from doing much to
change their current situation, but you can bet a tortilla or
two that today's weblog troubadours will be finding some more
comfy digs in which to ply their trade before too long - if the
right talents fall into place.
-
John Blossom
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