There are any number of people highlighting pop music superstar Madonna's jilting of her contract with Warner Bros. Records in favor of events producer Live Nation, the loudest of recent label signoffs that include pop bands Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails. Music publishers have been squirming desperately to keep consumers from dropping their habit of purchasing copyrighted content from them with lawsuits, DRM and any other types of mechanism they can manage, but sadly they have been unable to overcome the key factor in today's media: distribution is dead and relationships in the right venues rule.

To me the key factor leading up to this move was no doubt the bellweather Rolling Stones tour that recently completed with a record USD 500 million-plus in the bank. When creaking, croaking rock stars can pocket half an extra-large by filling arenas with little more than name recognition, why do they need allegiances to plastic disk distributors to reach people who love them?

I am reminded of our definition of content posted on Wikipedia in this regard: "Information and experiences created by individuals, institutions and technology to benefit audiences in contexts that they value." Events are content by any measure under this definition. We are seeing artists whose primary value comes to life in venues in which they can develop relationships with audiences discovering that music publishers are failing to help them build those relationships effectively in an era of Web-based content distribution. By focusing on protecting the unit sales of copyrighted materials music publishers lost the opportunity to negotiate a compelling position for themselves in the relationship building business that is at the heart of today's Web-powered content industry. Events producers know how to build a crowd and work it for maximum profit in the venues that matter most to an artist's audience.

This contextual approach to profiting from content is as old as artistic performance itself and one that is the dominant factor in the music industry yet again. Online venues such as social media sites that help artists to merchandise themselves to their fan base through videos and downloads and sponsored appearances help them to profit from relationships in valuable contexts as well. While the labels crow aoout six-figure copyright infringement suit awards and try to sue people for listening to someone else's radio at work these punitive actions only seem to decrease the value of their brands as credible venue sponsors that could build the marketable value for their artists.

Relationship marketing is all the rage on many levels of the publishing industry, including B2B trade publishing. B2B publishers are discovering that where once their events marketing was the tail on their revenue dogs increasingly events marketing and marketing through Cost-Per-Action pricing is putting more emphasis on conversational content and collaborative marketing efforts. Social media venues that are becoming increasingly popular in publishing add to the mix of content-as-a-marketable-venue plays that have little to do with yesterday's mass production publishing culture. It takes a different kind of producer to succeed in producing this kind of revenue mix - a factor that both music publishers and other publishers need to adapt to as quickly as possible. You can always make money selling copyrighted content, but today's money is in marketing what cannot be copied - the unique venues and the relationships that they foster built around valuable content.

Labels: CDs, downloads, events, labels, madonna, music, publishers

It seems kind of silly beyond a certain point to call Amazon's launching of an MP3 store news, but with about 2 million audio tracks available for 99 cents or less and reduced-price album downloads it's at least significant that major content vendors are beginning to offer what consumers have been creating themselves for years. The delay in both music publishers and content distributors accepting that cross-platform, DRM-free music distribution via the common MP3 file format was already the de facto standard of the music industry from a consumer's perspective has to be one of the most monumental strategic blunders in publishing history. After years of struggling against MP3s with lawsuits, DRM schemes and other ineffective techniques to persuade the marketplace otherwise it took Apple's proprietary lock on music distribution via its own DRM scheme to awaken at least some music publishers to the need to let consumers be customers and not just licensees.

The real enemy of the music industry is not music copying but consumer attention. With social media, games, mobile devices and online video capturing more of the music industry market's attention span it no longer pays to limit the ability of consumers to move their basic content to where it's valued the most. MP3s enable music and other audio to move quickly and efficiently into to social contexts that are most likely to create consumer enthusiasm for a product quickly when it first gains attention and popularity and enables "long tail" content to get the exposure that it needs to allow consumers to get enthusiasm that will lead to purchases. Amazon's recommendation system is ideal for such purchasers, enabling content that would otherwise be obscure to become immediately relevant to a browser turned on to an artist that they had not known previously. From that point on out it's up to music producers to become more intelligent about how they merchandise the talents and following of an artist to maximize revenues, but singles sales are a great starting point.

With Microsoft and others investigating audio watermarking capabilities it won't be too long before the ability to distribute audio content without DRM and with appropriate audit trails for copyright abuse becomes the industry standard across the board - a factor which should enable music companies to begin to take full advantage of the Web's radio-like ability to broadcast enthusiasm for artists effectively. As to whether the leaders in music publishing will remain the ususal suspects remains to be seen, but by adopting MP3s as a default distribution medium for radio-quality audio they stand a chance on reinventing themselves in time for the next generation of music lovers.

Labels: amazon, apple, DRM, MP3, music

We all know those catchy jingles that companies like Microsoft and HP come up with to get us thinking about them as innovative companies, but what's an up-an-coming content company to do if they want their own tune? Well, they could try "Whatdoyouwannaknow," an upbeat tune from NLX Music. NLX is one of a number of indie music acts promoted by online music channel Harris Radio, founded by Pete Harris, a financial content industry veteran with a bent for great local music acts in NYC. The following clip of the song gives you an idea of the kind of energy that the song can invoke, you can contact NLX to arrange for your own cut of visuals or other tweaks as desired. I think that it's the type of tune that can play across a number of generations, so listen to it with an open mind - you, too, could have the next hot marketing anthem...

Labels: marketing, music, video, whatdoyouwannaknow