Herd - the hidden truth about who we are

The future of music (redux)

Nice (if not entirely earth-shattering) piece in yesterday's Observer highlighting the need for the music industry to move on from the mass-production/rights enforcement gig that the likes of (poor old) Feargal Sharkey is forced to defend.

As Billy Bragg points out, it really is a matter of rethinking how artists & businesses earn money in this space

I've recently recorded half a dozen new songs – and I gave them away on my website. Meanwhile, I've got six different types of T-shirt that I sell for about £20 a time when you add in postage. I have to say I sometimes wonder what business I'm in.

Chimes squarely with what artists like Trent Reznor have been doing and what commentators like Gerd have been banging on about for ages (also, handily with some work we're doing at the moment with a bunch of groovy cats...more soon)

Put simply:

So you make music or help others do? How are you going to earn money, assuming that much of the recorded stuff is going to be accessed for free? And - btw there's no simple or single answer.

 

UPDATE: John W's got a nice rumination on this subject here (and link to a good shoe-ing of Bain & Co's analysis on the subject)

Big Shorts love (live)

Fingers crossed: next Tuesday eve (weather and viruses various permitting)

For those who like their Christmas slightly less Dickensian and more in-a-Camden-stylee, looking forward to seeing you. Dresscode: as you are (although Fez's always look good).

And yes (c/o @Saramarshall) we've got a new way (see above) to share the Big Shorts love....(it helps fans recognise each other....)

Predicting the unpredictable

It's easy to imagine that things are predictable if you could only the right stuff about them. The market research industry's methodological armsrace is predicated on just this thought.

In the music industry, the ability to predict the future has always had real and tangible value (spotting the successful and signing it before it gets to be successful is a sure fire way for labels and managers to make cash).That's why the labels constantly refer to A&R folk as "the guy/girl who discovered/signed X..."

This piece about the UK's Xfactor (whose final was last night) from Hitwise which turned out to be precisely wrong is a case in point: Matt won.[HT @Dancall1]

But it's the thinking behind the approach that's nonsense: we've known for a long time that the way music spreads through a population is not based on the quality of the music itself but on the jumbled interaction of the agents involved (aka random copying). We don't buy/download/vote independently in the real world (online or off-); we do what others are doing - so what assume otherwise?

This distributed form of social learning creates patterns of great volatility that make it genuinely impossible to predict what will win (as in be most popular or most voted for etc). Unless of course, you find yourself (by chance) the winner or runner up (the reason why these kind of competitions do such good business for the labels afterward is that being the winner acts as a shorthand for popularity to everyone else - for at least one release). For most contestents, then, the best bet is probably "horsemeat".

If you really want to improve (but not beat) the odds, then you could do a lot worse than talk to these lovely peeps. Using the power of "We-research".

Nite Klub too sexy?

 
HT Alex

For those of you who haven't been out (at all/ever/much recently) here's a piece of research which reveals that nightclubs are in fact venues for sexual display.

Download Hendrie_etal_2009

"Data revealed that more than 80% of people entering the nightclub did so without a partner and so were potentially sexually available. There was also an approx. 50% increase in the number of couples leaving the nightclub as compared to those entering it seen on each occasion this was measured, indicating that these congregations are for sexual purposes."

Well, I never...I just revel in this kind of profound revelation into human nature, don't you?

Can I also commend the technique for calibrating the amount of exposed flesh (fig 2 p.1336) and the highly detailed chart on p.1343?

More from the University of N(o) S(hit) S(herlock) shortly

Free gift: Nite Klub live

The Joy of Making Music together

 

Pic courtesy of John "shortlisted" Griffiths

I don't know about you but I've had a rubbish week. Not sure next week's going to be much better, either!

But we're going to end it on a high note: making music together. Almost as old as humanity itself and a surefire way to lift the spirits!

"First night nerves and one-night stands", my arse. We're going to have a wild night in Camden

If you're in London on Friday 23rd, do come and join us for a raucous evening of glam and ska (and, I suspect, quite a lot of beer).

Now (as Newy famously says in HERD),...1-2-3-4....

Doing it together better than doing it alone

 

Intrigued by the headlines of this research which suggests that collective "flow" activities are even more valued than individual ones. Singing, team games etc...

Not news to me, but I guess, this will be a surprise to those who think our curiously hairless species is something other than a  Super Social Ape!

PS Can anyone send me a copy of the paper?

The Real Value of Content

 

Gareth's done a nice post in response to this piece on where the money is going in the Music Industry from the Times Lab in an age of downloading.

The real decline is in money earned by the labels on recorded music. As G says "if your business model is purely one of content distribution it's perhaps time to exit.

Of course, I heartily endorse his comments about the fundamentally social nature of music (and linklove) " this is perhaps evidence of the fact that we tend to enjoy doing stuff together.  Perhaps music is the ultimate social good, rather than the private good record labels would like it to be"

But maybe what we're also seeing is some kind of re-adjustment of business models. Did a great interview with the awesome Lance Weiler recently where he suggested that Hollywood and the music biz need to go back to a time when only a small part of the value lay in the story being told and rather more in the telling and retelling; less in the song being sung and rather more in the singing and its resinging; it's less the content created, packaged and protected by IP and more in what the audience does with it. 

Great content is fine but it's only the start...it's a social object, folks

Irony alert: nice to see that this comes from the lovely people who've been a. telling us that quality content deserves proper payment b. scraping blogs for free content to pass off as their own.

Just one song

  

Fantastic experience at the Mott The Hoople reunion gig last night at the Apollo, some 3 and a half decades after their (infamous) last one.

Much of it was entertaining enough (in that rockblues stylee) but it took off when Ian Hunter took to piano to lead the gang in a bunch of glam classics like this one

Entirely different level of enjoyment - from band and audience alike.

Of course, we'd been prepped (and prepped each other) but this might be one of those times when the thing (and not just us) is important

Made me wonder what it must feel like to have made one song that has that effect. Just one.