The Battle Over Music

Nobody can deny the profound impact the digital age has had on the music industry yet I can’t help but wonder if my predications toward it are justified.  I like many seem to share the collective consensus that the labels are pure evil and that the internet has freed music and artists.  But is this really the case? The truth is often much more tenebrous. To start I began thinking about my reasons for hating the labels.  From the absurdity of the RIAA in prosecuting suburban housewives and grandmothers that wouldn’t know a torrent from a tortoise to the promoting of manufactured pop stars with little talent and homogenized bubble gum songs I still find it hard to be easy on any major label.  Yet despite my obvious reasons for loathing them I also try to remind myself that some of their evils are just personified in my mind through the recent proliferation of choices and methods of consumption now available to me.  All which have raised a level of rebellion in me that wants to scream from the rooftops “You can’t tell me what to listen to anymore or where, when and on what device either!”.   The idea that the music belongs to the artists and fans and not the labels provides a level of comfort for purists.

But on the other side of my mind I have to consider the fact that the labels have done some good and are simply protecting their business model while trying to promote brands.  Their unscrupulous methods for saving their business are are well documented but the denominator is simply a desire to cling to an older business model in a world where the new model changes daily and often hasn’t yet been discovered.    And as much as I get annoyed by the Brittanys and latest boy bands the truth is they are powerful brands and it doesn’t matter how terrible they are (and yes I hate the fact that I often find myself singing along to something catchy).   Think about it through the eyes of other brands.  You rarely see a public outcry against other consumer products or brands even though many of the product offerings aren’t the best.   I don’t see people writing blogs about how much they hate Hershey’s just because they are angry the better chocolate brands aren’t being recognized they way they deserve.

So despite the dialog over the labels, what has the digital age done for music or done to hurt it?  One thing radio and the labels did for years is aggregate our experience with music.  While it might have been shallow and limited in span but it was effective.    Even though I have every possible method of discovering music today I still find it difficult to discover the next artist I might like. Have too many distribution methods simply diluted are experience too much to the point we don’t know where to turn?  The Pandoras and Last FMs of the world are great but I have yet to replicate the experience of my youth.   Remember the days of hearing a song on the radio, then going to the record store to buy the album and talking to the super cool music aficionado working in the store? You would tell them you want … album and they would introduce you to a few other artists you might like? You came home with an album or two and while you listened to the entire album as you mused over the album art, read the lyrics and grew to enjoy the emotional journey it took you on?  What do we have today? You hear a song you like and you buy that song for your iPod.  The story the artist intended for you through a series of songs is no longer easy to deliver.

I think the internet has done just as much to hurt music and artists as it has to help.  I love music and always have yet I find myself struggling to be excited about it as I once was.  Maybe someone will figure out how to deliver the passionate experience of the old days through the freedoms of distribution we have today.  Solving the riddle of how to win the internal battle of “my way” vs “feed me what you will” is difficult as my desire for both changes with the tide of my desire to see technology progress while not losing anything experientially in the process.

At least bring the art of the album back somehow.  I miss that the most.

Set Disruptors to Kill!

I was thinking about disruptive technologies.  You know, the ones that change industries in the way MP3 players, the internet and Ipods transformed the music business or even way back when the automobile changed transportation and I began thinking about some industries I wouldn’t mind being disrupted.

To me the first and most deserving of disruptive whiplash is the television or cable TV industry.  Here is why they annoy me.  First they still cling to many of the same principles of the music industry and don’t think through the eyes of a consumer.  We are still not to the point where I can absolutely cancel my cable subscription and watch content streaming or downloaded 100%.  The only two reasons I keep cable at all.  The first is because they make my internet more expensive outside of the bundled services and second and most importantly is live sports.   The second the NFL and other major sports offer me an online package for streaming that provides good quality I would switch off my cable.  I honestly want to watch my content on my terms, period.

So what is going to help us finally achieve this?  A combination of things but one of the most hopeful is the ability of seamless switching of different picture resolutions based on our connection speed.  What do I mean? Simple, imagine watching a television show, video blog or any piece of content on your iPhone.  When you are on the 3G network the resolution may be lower due to the limitations of 3G.  But then you walk into an area with a fast wifi network and seamlessly the picture quality gets better because the phone and content recognized the wifi network was faster than 3G and could deliver a better quality without buffering or hiccups. Then imagine sitting down in front of your home computer connected with a LAN cable, faster yet and with a push of a virtual button the content stops playing on your phone and instantly launches and plays at the same point you left off on your computer screen.  Take it one step further, the ability to push a virtual button  during content viewing on your phone and instantly your television takes over via communication with a set top box or built in networking.  The ability of content to switch to and from different quality levels depending on your connection and what device you are on is the first step in making my world a brighter place.

It is coming, rest assured and hopefully soon because I don’t want to have to wait for the connection speeds in the U.S. for both broadband and wireless carriers to get to reasonable speeds consistently everywhere.

Now, lets say they do perfect these technologies, will the content providers fight it? This scares the hell out of them, of course they will.  They will fight it the same way the music industry fought to keep CDs the dominant music source and we all know how that turned out.   If they were smart they would be funding the development and deployment methods of this type of technology and give themselves some skin in the game and opportunities to explore new revenue and subscription streams.  I imagine what we will get is a bunch of providers just trying to figure out how to insert more advertising for us to ignore into the model.   Heck, I would be happy with a sort of Hulu like experience everywhere, on any device but only if it truly has a seamless and hiccup free stream.   I wouldn’t even mind keeping my cable if they could build an anything I want, on demand, current and  on any device I want service into my package so I am not tethered to anything live a DVR or time slot.

I really love to see technologies or innovations that make life easier for the consumer and force the competitors to deliver products and services at a level they should have been delivering all along.  The Apple App store is a recent example.  Look at all of the other phone providers and platforms that are advertising and marketing applications now that the iTunes store has driven the experience to a new level.  This kind of thing should have been happening 10 years ago on Windows mobile but they just didn’t care.

I like to believe that given a better system and experience that customers will embrace it and popularize it.  It doesn’t always happen but it certainly is nice when we all benefit.  What do you predict will be the next disruptive technology, I am dying to know.

What would Apple do?

Shouldn’t almost every company in the consumer electronics or consumer products business be asking this? I see so many companies that just don’t get it. The reason they should ask the questions “what would Apple do?” or “what would Google do?” is because there are solid reasons these companies are on top right now.  They are good at exploring the chess board and planning several moves ahead, they innovate, they plan, they look at the world through the eyes of their customers and deliver best in class products and results.

I have seen first hand the dysfunction of a companies that get in their own way and stifle success.  You probably work at one of these companies.  You watch helplessly as products and services are launched with half baked plans and then fail to reach the expectations set by senior management.  You work hard to drink the Kool-aid and believe the compromises made due to interdepartmental disputes is healthy for the success of the product.  You are brainwashed into thinking it is acceptable to improve the consumer experience over time and upgrades as your company scrambles to fix it’s infrastructure and operations after doing the minimum to push the product out.   You know deep down inside that what they are doing is the worst thing for the customer but the culture of having to satisfy the internal needs of each department is overwhelming and of course you don’t want to be labeled as disruptive because job security matters in this world today.

Sound familiar? Of course it does.  Now I am not saying that Apple or Google doesn’t have problems, of course they do.  The point is they are several levels above how most companies operate and they have tremendous leadership with vision.   I love to speculate on how a company would change if Steve Jobs or Eric Schmidt ran it.  Companies need bright leaders that have full control with a true passion to drive success.  Good leaders don’t compromise quality for sake of the internal mess.  They know their core customer and future customer and deliver to their expectations.  They understand that the company they run today should and will look very different in a few years.   Imagine where Apple would be if they didn’t innovate in the late 90′s when Jobs returned.  If they just stayed in the computer business and didn’t have vision to see what technology was doing to the music business and then harness it with the iPod and iTunes.  Imagine if later they decided not to enter the mobile phone business because it wasn’t part of their core beginnings.  My point here is that most companies, especially technology companies cling to business models much too long in a world where your revenue streams need to evolve and innovate constantly.

CEO’s should be pushing their products and services toward a vision of being best in class.  There is a reason I own an iPhone and Mac computer vs a Blackberry and PC.  They simply provide me with a better experience and more importantly the experience I deserve for my money.  I refuse to purchase a product or service that is the result of chipping away at the vision by the lane jockeying of a company’s internal fiefdoms. I would rather buy a product that is the result of a non compromise approach toward being the best in class.

Consumers expectations are getting higher and they now have voices that are heard at a level that didn’t exist ten years ago.  Feedback is instant, brutal, honest in most cases and very public.  Shouldn’t your company be led by a team that solicits the very best?  I for one am very pleased when companies like Apple create far superior products and laugh as the compromising competition try to catch up knowing they have the next moves already planned.   Look at what the iPhone did to the industry.  Every mobile smart phone manufacturer is trying to emulate and copy it.

So if you are listening CEO’s, CMO’s and EVP’s of companies.  Fix it, now.

Looking to the Clouds

The future can’t get here fast enough for me.  I am so ready for two major things to really happen in a meaningful way.  The first is quality cloud computing.  Baby steps have been made yet we are still dealing with slow connections, low Wifi saturation and wireless networks that aren’t fast enough to make the experience what it needs to be.   For example, I am a mobile me user but other than for sync and posting photos or hosting iWeb sites it is useless.  I want all my media to also live in the cloud and be accessible from anywhere on any machine or device.  The same goes for my software.  It drives me crazy that I have to spend time refining my media selections for syncing to my iPhone or that I have to choose which computer I can plug my phone into.  They still haven’t cracked the code for making this a truly useful consumer experience.  I would love to be able to take a week long business trip and be able to access all of my media, files, software and data from the cloud anywhere.  It all comes down to one metric that is really keeping it from happening, speed.  The U.S. is simply not fast enough, not saturated enough and currently has too many politics in the way of catching up.

I was in awe of the speeds when I was in Tokyo last year.  I was getting 100mb down in my hotel room and at least 50mb wirelessly most everywhere I went. To make it even better, the wireless (cell) networks were blazing on my phone.   It is sad that in the U.S. we are one of the highest web accessing countries but are one of the lowest in speeds.

I am excited for the day when we “get there”.  When speed and saturation are good enough so I don’t have to tether myself to anything hard loaded to have the experience I want.

I find it amazing how many companies don’t see the writing on the wall when it comes to the future of computing, the web and software.  Especially companies that offer technology or related services.  Software as a service is growing today and in my view should be the focus of big providers like Adobe, Microsoft, Apple, etc. At the very least they should all be in the long term vision and planning for what this brings to the future.  Imagine one day if you didn’t have to load the Adobe creative suite on your computer at all because it all operated online exactly the same with the same experience.  Adobe could simply change their business model to a subscription based program with access to software based on the plan you choose.  Think about it, never having to deal with loading the software on your machines, the messy licensing process, the constant downloading and installing updates, all gone.  Adobe would totally bank!  Again though, it comes down to speed first then of course the advancement of browsers, html 5 and beyond, and saturation of access.  Adobe is one of the companies that I think is heading in this direction already but shouldn’t they all?  Seriously, if your company can’t answer the typical interview question “where do you see yourself in five years?” of themselves then they need to evaluate their leadership.

I am fascinated about the upcoming evolution of computing and the yet to emerge countless business models.

And of course I can’t wait to jump into the thick of it develop a bunch of them for myself and others.

A Handful of What Ifs

All of these are random “what ifs” I often think about.  They are in no particular order and while some may provoke thought the chances are that many will just seem strange.  Have fun!

What if we actually had flying cars like all of the futuristic movies predicted?  Is anyone even working on it?

What if there was a Dr. Sues themed casino in Vegas? Wouldn’t that be awesome? I think about this one a lot more than I should due to the fact it is hard to run out of fun ideas for a place like that! Imagine, green eggs and ham at the buffet, what would the cocktail waitresses wear? The shape of the pool, the shows, a super funky night club,  crazy slot machines, it goes on and on.

What if Twitter was only 70 characters? Would we just Tweet more frequently?

What if Microsoft’s marketing department or product development teams suddenly “get it”?

What if WiMax actually happens nationwide?

What if the USA stops caving to the carrier companies and is allowed to catch up to internet speeds with the rest of the world?

What if the Red Wings done win the Stanley Cup this year? Answer: I will be completely distraught.

What if the large content providers finally embrace technology and figure out other ways to make money than embracing a 1950′s business model?

What if Google actually does something useful with Google Voice? I have the service, love it but hate that I can’t invite anyone else since they took it over from Grand Central.

What if you could have a virtual address you manage online that is tied into the post office and other delivery services? Just think, you wouldn’t have to change your address on a 100 different things if you move, just update where your stuff routes to from your virtual address by changing it online.

What if internet speeds get fast enough and wireless has enough saturation to make cloud computing a useful reality? I tell you, I would love it.  all of my content available all the time from anywhere and from any device? Ah YES!!!

What if new babies were born with Facebook profiles and Twitter IDs instead of social security numbers?

What if smart people actually designed the boarding process for the airlines?

What if it were illegal for the airlines to “oversell” a flight? shouldn’t it be? Think about it. If I sold the same used car to three different people I would get thrown in jail but if the airlines sell the same seat to 10 people it is perfectly acceptable? Unreal. (Can you tell I have been flying a lot lately?)

What if auto makers finally got smart  and just put an iPhone dock in the dashboard? Apple just does it better, why spend all the money developing crappy navigation systems and horrible interfaces when the iPhone does it all and does it right?

Well, enough what ifs.  I could go on forever with these.  Maybe I am better off actually answering these questions instead of simply posing them.  Hmmm, food for thought.

Surfing The Google Wave

I just finished watching Google’s early preview of Google Wave for developers.  The concept is very cool and is built on the question “what if email were invented today?”  All I can say is WOW!  This thing is so robust and an amazing way of revolutionizing communication, collaboration and web site integration.  Even if you aren’t a technically oriented person I encourage you to watch the video at http://wave.google.com.

Here is what I think are the awesome implications of this innovative product.  First of all it does a nice job of poking fun at how inefficient and poorly constructed today’s email system and behavior are.  Of course years ago I doubt anyone could have imagined all of the ways we interact and communicate today with email, social networks, twitter, blogging, sms, chat, VOIP and others cluttering up our lives.  But Google is asking the right question, what if email were invented today? At first glance Wave looks to answer the complex question aggregating in real time everything we struggle to keep up with today.  We are so over saturated with communications in various forms I find people are starting to give up on keeping up and are choosing their communication “style” and forcing people to conform.

How do you answer the question “what is the best way to get a hold of you?”  I know when I ask people this question I get a wide variety of responses like send me an email, call my cell, friend me on Facebook, text me, and combinations of all of them.   You will even have people tell you things like “I only communicate by email”.   We have become so cluttered with communications tools we are getting frustrated to the point of just choosing one we feel comfortable with and trying to make everyone conform to it.

This is what Wave is attempting to solve and in doing so found solutions to other collaboration and communications problems facing individuals and companies today.   The thought of pulling it all together in a digestible and collaborative methodology is unequivocally compelling.  Gmail was a strong step for email with it’s search ability, conversation threading and other tools but it is only one piece of the communications puzzle.  The ability of Wave to collectively edit, update and serve up content in real time by all at the same time should be quite scary and/or exciting to enterprise software developers of collaborative applications.

From the little I have seen of Wave and the open source nature of the architecture we could very well see the birth of the next generation of not just email but maybe all of our messy web communications and real time content management issues.

Now, lets hope it gets adopted and takes off enough to accomplish this lofty goal instead of just landing in the tall scrap heap of abandoned Google projects.

Taking New Media Seriously

I spend a lot of time visiting and evaluating corporate marketing plans, retail strategies, and Ecommerce programs and the one thing I find is consistent about all of them is how obvious it is that the companies behind them have no clue about new media.

The core reason new media is poorly implemented by most companies is due to executive leadership not taking it seriously or understanding how to really embrace it.  Many of today’s corporate leaders have grown up in the old school of offline and other traditional marketing and generally picture new media as a small and barely significant part of their marketing right now.   Of course they recognize how quickly it is growing and changing yet none seem to be ready to dedicate to it.  Isn’t it time they accepted the future and invested in it by dedicating staff and resources to developing, executing and managing new media strategies?

Most everything I see is implementing web video, social networking, blogging, twitter, etc. as an ancillary accessory to their marketing campaign.  They are still bringing in the masses by the old spray and pray of old media and just tagging their new media program in it.  They are missing the biggest part of what new media has to offer by starting from the inside out and rallying consumers to help grow your brand or product.  I have seen it first hand inside organizations and reviewed some of the most short sighted marketing decks you could imagine.

It usually happens something like this- A brand manager or team gets handed a campaign to build and they immediately begin with the old school methodology of building logos, tag lines, a checklist of publications, websites, radio and/or TV of which to spread their message and branding.  They then go through all of the work to build the program and somewhere in the middle of a meeting someone says “we should have a myspace page and facebook profile for this” or “ooh, maybe we could have our corporate blog to promote the launch”…. Then the brainstorming continues with how they twitter, use youtube and so on.  The new media elements get added on mid stream as shiny bling to what they consider the heart of an effective program.

This is the heart of the problem.  The entire logic is flawed, seriously.  The above process doesn’t embrace nor make effective the beautiful tools that new media provides a brand.  Now picture the right way to do it by actually utilizing new media to build and become the backbone of the campaign.  What happens can be magical.  Instead of the handful of marketing people or an agency making a decision in a vacuum about which messaging, colors, logos, tag lines and campaign elements will generate the best consumer response you can actually shape your campaign by actually talking to and interacting with the audience directly to make these decisions.

The long time process of finding a need an filling it can thrive better than ever today.  Never before has there been so many ways to ask people exactly what they want directly, instantly and honestly yet only a select few marketing executives get this.

One of the other problems is that many companies have really talented, smart and savvy new media people on their team but have a culture that doesn’t allow them to shift the marketing direction of the company to their adapted way of thinking.  This has to happen from the highest levels of an executive team.  For most companies lets hope this happens soon.

Marketing With Web Video

Not all products can create a quirky and catchy viral video campaign like “will it blend” from Blendtec but most could benefit from utilizing web video in their marketing efforts.  The production & labor costs to create a solid program are at an all time low per minute price tag.  Yet most companies simply don’t have a clue how to approach the content to properly reach the consumer and convey the message.   Most marketing VPs are thinking “we need online video” but they really don’t have the thought process as to scripting, staging, progressing and spreading the content in order to make it meaningful.

It really all starts with your product or service and defining the value proposition, features, functions and benefits.  I would hope that most companies already have done that as part of their product positioning planning but either way these are the core things that define what you want your customers to know.  The hurdle is how to pack all of that into a visual that should only last a minute or two.   And while this is the hardest part, it also presents a fun laboratory for your brand.

One of the best ways to to use web video is to embrace the the conversation with your fans, customers and followers.  Why depend on a few internal brand managers or marketing directors to present the perfect solution when you have a world of honest and creative help at your fingertips?  Let these people tell you what gets through to them, what type of content would make an impact and their best ideas for presenting your product.   The Blendtec campaign was effective because the audience was involved and part of the content creation.  They said what they wanted to see blended and it happened and the collective creative hordes spread the brand like wildfire.

This is one of the areas where a company can use it’s blog, social networking program and web survey tools to collect honest data and structure their web video content with informed perspectives to be effective.  Imagine giving customers an online video experience that immerses them in your brand and value proposition quickly and effectively with a clear call to action and path to it.   This is what most brands aren’t providing.

Video content is still the fastest growing segment on the web today and is poised to become fully mobile and accessible anywhere over the coming years.  Your brand is already a couple of years behind if you aren’t already planning and executing a strategic program for online video distribution.

Google Listened

Ok, well maybe they didn’t read my post on simply making the internet my social network instead of having to sign up for 5 difference sites like Facebook, Linkedin, etc.  But Google has taken a great step in making my vision come true by introducing Google profiles.

The skinny of it is you can create a public profile now on google using your good name that then becomes a prominent search result on google.  This is fantastic!  I love the fact that I can choose the information I want people to find quickly when they google me.

If you have been in the work place as long as I have or have moved around the country a half a dozen times then you probably have tons of friends, business contacts, and other folks you have lost touch with.  You also have that list of friends that are simply not engaged or have no desire to embrace the internet regularly.  These are the people that will probably never create a Facebook or social site profile, barely use email, they think twitter is a sound a bird makes and have probably never read a blog.   But they know how to do one thing on the internet, google stuff.

I want these people to be able to find me in some capacity and creating a google profile fits the bill.  I love the fact that this gives me a hub of sorts to lead people who google me to different destinations about me.  On your profile you can link to your personal urls, blog, list places you lived, basic interests and a photo of course.

While this doesn’t solve all of my issues of having to log in several places to “keep up with it all”, it is a great tool that at least solves one of my issues.

Now if I can figure out a solution to my social network fatigue.

Top Grading the Staff

It is sad and an easily observable decline of the service industry in the U.S.  Can you remember the last time you went to a retail store or a place of business and received exceptional service?  Shouldn’t exceptional service be the benchmark these days?  With so many people out of work why isn’t every business taking the opportunity to top grade their staff?  Think of shopping in the consumer electronics retail stores these days, it is pathetic that the 30 minutes of research on the internet I did before going to the store armed me with more product knowledge than the 17 year old hourly associate that was hired two days ago.

I think retailers and merchants in general have lost faith in consumer loyalty.  While I might agree that consumer behavior isn’t the way it used to be in the old days when consumers were less fickle I think it because bad habits have trained us to be this way.   We have learned to expect poor service, uneducated staff and poor buying advice from the places we buy stuff.  Therefore we take matters into our own hands and what seems to end up mattering at that point is price alone.

I buy a lot of stuff online but I generally have price threshold or set of rules I apply to myself when I do buy online.  Things like ‘will I ever need to return this?’, ‘what if I have a problem, can I get help?’.  So as it turns out I buy stuff I generally know I won’t return or I buy from a big name like an Amazon, Apple, etc. where I know the recourse is there if needed.   When I think about it though, what has forced me to be mainly an online consumer is simply a lack of trust that the knowledge I can provide myself is much better than the what the stores I would shop in can provide.

After spending many years in retail I find it utterly disturbing to see the state it is in.   I just don’t understand why retail leaders don’t recognize how important it is to build consumer loyalty through actually having trained, knowledgeable, friendly and communicative staff facing the consumer.  True consumer loyalty to your brand, store or service doesn’t generally come from some semi beneficial points program, direct mail discount card, or rewards club.  It comes from having a pleasurable and repeatable experience between people.

The long term benefits of creating a truly strong consumer oriented culture far outweighs the capital investment to achieve it.  I find it appalling how many companies actually try to sell their service as a strength yet the actual experience is far from what their leadership thinks is being delivered.

Many retailers make such huge mistakes by pushing all of their budgets to get you into their store and drive consumer traffic only to miserably fail at converting shoppers to buyers because of little or no investment in the people these consumers are actually facing.

The other problem I see a lot is retention of the best staff.  On the rare occasion I actually have a pleasant experience in shopping for something or eating at a restaurant and I decide to go back because of it, I find the person or people I had that experience through are no longer there.  The horrible thing is that these people were probably never recognized, paid or supported properly inside the organization so they left or were let go.  And it usually happens that the level of people I am exposed to the second time around just don’t get it.

If I were running a retail organization today or service oriented business I honestly think it would be refreshing to build a culture that delivers what the consumer deserves instead of what they have been forced to accept.