So Apple came out with its revamped Ipod range. Many are calling it a bit limp with the biggest news being that Steve Jobs is back at work and healthy. However I think a mild repositioning has taken place.

What was new then? Ipod Nanos were given a ton of functionality from cameras (video) to pedometers. Apple are trying to make them a lifestyle product which happen to play music. They increased storage capacity on the old school Ipods and upgraded the Itouch to similar internal specs as the Iphone but without the camera. Thats right, without the camera.

Whats goings on here? Its simple; ever since they launched the Iphone it was expected that at some point there would congestion and overlap with the Apple product portfolio. Hence Apple have clearly decided to give with some products but take with others. Want an Ipod that has a camera but can’t afford the phone? Your option is the Nano. Want a touch Ipod but do not want the phone, get the Itouch, but it won’t do everything you need. Each product is either reaching out to specific consumers or are designed in such a way as to infruite them and hence force them to own multiple devices or continually upgrade!

Now on the music front, there was no demonstration of a Tablet, and hence my prediction for what it might mean for the music industry is still out there. Whatch the next 6 months for that story to continue to bubble as it won’t die down. However they did launch their new version of the LP. A download that includes a lot more artwork, interviews, lyrics and other content. Itunes LP is what they are calling it, and Im not going to say that for the cost to produce that content, ‘it won’t work’. Im sure it will bring in extra revenue for the labels and publishers and should be welcomed. However don’t for a minute jump to hyping this to a return to the ’shared experience’ of all of us buying an album again.

Id like to see them sign some exclusive album or content deals and only sell them in this format. It would be an interesting experiment. If the content was compelling enough and sold at the right price would the LP format harm, boost or make no difference to sales?

Recent other developments, in Europe at least, are that Apple has approved a Spotify app, which means you can now get music onto your Itouch/Iphone devices from places other than Apple. A lot has been written about how major this is. Its not. Not really. For quite sometime we have been able to buy music from Emusic, Amazon and many others and place it on our Ipods and Itouch devices. So this is just a wee bit different as its an integrated app, and hence feels much more embedded into the device.

Maybe Im pushing for Apple to move into a space they will never move into, but whether it be the tablet or new functionality for the Itouch and Ipod range, I feel that at some point they will have to embrace music interactivity. Its not as if they are  unaware of it, Garage Band is a key free product with their Macs, but perhaps they have not yet joined up the dots and seen its value as a lifestyle element for their lifestyle products as well as their computers.

At Music Research Consultants, we often discuss and urge acts to become more interactive and to allow audience participation. 

Sometimes this translates into participation in the creation process, and other times, such as with Guitar Hero and Rock Band it means the fans can play along. Indeed good old merchandising can be viewed as a simple mechanism which allows fans to feel like they have in some way contributed to the development of an act. By buying the t-shirt they know (or hope at least) that the money which paid for the clothing will further fund and empower the act. Additionally, by being branded by the act (by wearing the t-shirt) it makes you feel like an extended member of the family, the ‘groupie’ element which has now been firmly commercialised as an experience.

Other acts go further by crossing into the audience’s world in cross product advertising, such as supporting PEPSI or a tv channel - even a charity. For example, U2 and Apple ‘worked together’ to bring out a unique IPOD. Well it was a different colour and had their signatures on it or something daft. 

50 cent went one further. He had a whole computer game built around his ‘image’ and ’story’. Im sure he wasn’t the first, but in this age of big production games, it was the most recent and large scale. In many ways it completely back fired, as it was awful. Along with his failure to win the battle of the albums with some other Hip Hop act (sorry, not my scene!) it helped to create a mini implosion in the world and brand of 50 cent. Sometimes you can do too much, but in reality its not about how much you do, but the quality. Indeed when you are inviting people to live out the fantasy of being part of your world, even if its just part of your make-believe world, then that experience has to be great.  

However, in the entertainment industry you are only as good as your last project, and 50 Cent looks like he is coming back with another game and this one might just be good. The story and setting are completely looney but that doesn’t matter. In the game the player becomes 50 Cent, and if the player feels good being him then there is a chance that they might just want to hear and see the real thing. Im sure his music will be embedded into the game, so if delivered right, its a whole new platform for certain acts to look into.

Certainly, 50 Cents background story has always involved action and violence, so its easier for him to slip into a videogame persona than for some other acts. However, acts have always used music videos to play characters, whether it is Robbie Williams pretending to a spy/footballer or another act being chased by a mob down a street - fantasy is not new. If this game is well received and sells well, we could see other acts become the targets for videogame developers and publishers to be the face of a new IP. Its a win, win - grow your fan base, include music and possibly even video footage of your act and help to tell the story of the act.The developers meanwhile can tap into the pre-existing fan base already out there. 

How about a Gorillaz version of Little Big Planet please (or at least a Gorillaz level, specially commissioned)?!

After all, developing a story and experience around a musical act is not new and has been known to succeed. Anyone remember The Monkeys?

Hey Mr DJ, as Madonna once said, wanna put a record on? Or something like that anyway. DJs have been with us for some time and its become quite an art form. Loads of music lovers who are already musicians or who never got to grip with traditional music production have embraced this art form as way of making their mark on the creative process. 

The impact a DJ can have on a venue, due to the DJs taste in music and feel for the room is crucial to a venue or club’s success. Additionally once taken to a new level, completely new pieces of music can be born from the clever use of turntables and DJ equipment, from delays, samplers and the like.

Activision it seems loves DJing too. So much in fact, thats its next big music game, following Guitar Hero, will be DJ Hero! For me it makes total sense, more so than Guitar Hero. Over the last few years DJs have already been ‘mixing’ MP3s connected to controllers which didn’t actually have a record on them. You can even get a piece of hardware which takes the motions from a traditional set of decks and uses them to control MP3s.

Hence, there is no reason why the game can’t do everything these existing systems allow for the professionals. Except It will do more as its a game. It will be competitive, allow for Net play in some way and perhaps use the video and microphone elements of the consoles. However, what it will also mean from the perspective of the content owners, is that its a new download store. Thats right, if you have already bought music on Itunes, or Guitar Hero I bet youll need to buy it again in the new DJ format (mind you if you could use your OWN MP3s or Guitar Hero tracks that would be awesome). What would be available? Music videos I would imagine - it could actually reboot the market for music videos. In fact you could have a video mashup section too, which only worked with images.

Lastly, it would offer a much lower difficulty access level for wanna be DJs, and bring more people into music on a creative level, which cant be a bad thing. The new Nintendo DSi is already seeing this trend and embedding it into its design. The DS lite despite being a huge success, can’t play music (what can’t nowadays?!), so with the DSi upgrade Nintendo have implemented this missing feature. However, is it just another IPOD? No, Nintendo have also taken the DJ route. Its more of a creative tool than a ‘dumb’ player. Music can be slowed down, sped up and even have its pitch changed. Like Activision, Nintendo can see that people want to be able to do things with content, whether it be their own, or someone elses. 

So, it would seem we are now ALL going to become the DJ.

Wanna put a record on?

Once again its award season in the music business. In the USA well have the Grammies (which are a worldwide benchmark) and in the UK the Brits. Both award ceremonies are designed as marketing tools, to highlight the ‘best’ recordings and product out there. Following the high point of the holiday season where sales are at their highest, the award ceremonies help keep the music and acts in the public eye.

Columns and web pages will be focused on these events. The industry hopes, as always, that they will create a direct boost in sales for the nominated acts (and winners) and indirectly get people into record shops or online stores, where they might pick up other music whilst browsing. 

In the UK we seem to allow the story of how well our acts are doing in the USA  to dominate proceedings. It is similar to the Oscars. Even though we have our own ceremonies (the Brits for music and BAFTAS for movies) we still think that doing well at US ceremonies is key. Thats not a ridiculous position, in that the USA is a huge market. However, surely what matters just as much is whether those acts are funded by US or UK labels. Its possible to have US acts which are owned by UK labels, and in many ways its healthy to have a portfolio of acts from around the world. 

Additionally, perhaps we should be concentrating on how well UK labels (or acts) are doing in other markets, such as Russia, China, India and Japan. Clearly those are difficult markets and not worth as much as the USA. Japan, excluded, all those markets have major piracy problems, but the potential for growth there is huge. If UK labels don’t invest in those markets (accepting that in the short term they might loose money) then they will loose out. At some point a home grown market will emerge from those markets, and if not challenged will could then ‘dump’ content back on our market.

This is not an argument for cultural protectionism, but for cultural aggressiveness. Just as the UK strives to have its content do well in the states, a mature well developed market, it should also be making huge steps into these new markets. Finding great talent, and developing it. Perhaps adopting different business models for different markets. After all, how much music do major labels sell in Africa? Not a lot as they do not see their model working there. However there is a working model out there and there is money to be made, its just a different model to the one in the USA, EU, Australia and Japan. 

Of course these award ceremonies are built very much around the traditional model. The idea of having an album of the year award, helps market a bulk of work in one go, but how many people actually buy albums over buying individual downloads? How many people are now just streaming the odd song?

What happens if artists sell a subscription or membership to their channel and then drip feed songs. They might never be packaged as an album, but are just a stream of content released over a long period of time. We can still have song of the year, and Act of the year though. I would expect that as new formats take form, we will see a change to these ceremonies.

For now though we are sometime away from that reality, so lets sit back and enjoy the fact that the Brits are back in town. Again.

As demonstrated here, it seems that the UK will not get tough with those who download music (mainly) and film (secondly, with games following on from that) illegally. Other countries, lead by France, will be (or have) legislated on this issue.

However, despite France’s very aggressive laws, it will be interesting to find out how many people France will be pursuing through the courts on this issue. They are adopting a three strikes and you are out (disconnected from the net) system, which is what the BPI in the UK would like to see.

I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point a human rights organisation took a test case to the European Court for Human Rights to fight for our basic human right to have access to the democracy of all technologies; the internet. So we may find that this new law never really gets into ‘gear’ anyway. After all, when someone commits a driving offense, you can take away their right to drive, but not to access roads. I know thats not the strongest legal analogy/comparison, but you get the indicative point I’m trying to make. Hence, if the UK is not going to legislate, and if France’s efforts will be undermined via the courts, how do we move forward? How do we stop piracy?

Well, as discussed on our podcast (music industry news), the main two methods which are immediately available to us is education and changes in business models. However, our approach to education should not just explain that its ‘wrong’ (which is often counter productive and patronising). Instead, it should be a form of education that explains who is involved in making content so that consumers or non-consumers can start to relate to those who are losing out.

The second method is to bypass it altogether. FInd new income streams, whether they be ‘real world’ (such as tours etc) or changing the link between the person, or persons paying for the music and the actual consumer of the music. For example companies which are setup to offer free music (streamed or downloaded) but which is paid for by banner ads etc.

However, surely the future is about tagging all audio with metadata, and then making sure that data is read by all major OS platforms. Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, NXE, Sony XMB etc etc. Just as with the game consoles and mobile phones, its becoming normal for users to have to input credit card details into their machines so that content can be bought and accessed all the time. Well, if we had a working, fully supported metadata system, then as a piece of music or film was played, money would automatically be taken and delivered to one’s local collection society (to be shared amongst the named creators and IP owners). Does this mean we would be paying for everything we listen to or experience?

It doesn’t have to. Some sites would offer ‘free to listen/download’ experiences as they would have purchased a global license (paid for via advertising for example) and the consumer would not be charged from downloading on that site. However, should the consumer wish to pass the file onto the web, then anyone downloading it would activate the metadata contained within it (as it would ‘know’ it wasn’t a direct download from a licensed site) thereby causing the OS to charge the users credit card/mobile phone bill.

What happens if someone wants to transfer content from one machine to another? As long as the OS could recognise it was a machine to machine connection (similar to HDMI being ‘aware’) then it would allow it at no cost.

This might sound very complicated, but I doubt its more complicated than the current ‘lack of system’. Also its designed to make the rules clear, and provide an income for everyone. What stands in its way?

1. Hardware/software companies continuing to support their own files and formats to help boost a certain type of platform.
2. Collection agencies not working together. Something which is not getting better. Europe has a plethora of them, which in 2009 is looking very outdated. If the whole of the USA has only a handful, how come Europe has agencies for everyone country, with some countries having more than one?!!?
3. Civil Rights campaigns, complaining people are being charged to access information on the web. Someone will need to tell them that content owners, and creators have rights, copyrights, which need to be respected too. No one ever protested about having to buy a book or even pay a small fee to borrow it from some libraries (via a joining charge or local/national tax). 
4. We now have millions users with ‘old’ hardware and software already out there, which would not be compatible with this proposed system (without a software update - not possible on all devices). The longer we wait to create the system, the harder it will be to implement it without disenfranchising large members of the audience. Trying to service both audiences, would be similar to the effect of having DRM in files whilst still selling non-protected audio CDs.

If a system of metadata is not going to work, or cannot be implemented then all is not doom and gloom. However, what it means is that we will have to rely on education and alternative business models (alternative from just digitzing the traditional record label model, still pursued by many) exclusively. Not a disaster at all, but it will mean that the debate on the rights and wrongs of piracy and more importantly, the monitory value of music will never end.

Our first podcast episode of 2009 is now online. HERE

We are pleased to welcome Simon Young back to the show. Remember to subscribe at Itunes, OR with your RSS reader. Lastly remember you can email us at podcast@musicresearch.com or make contact via this blog.

Steven

Web User is reporting that many of the music retailers, who sell music downloads which are not encrypted with DRM, will be adopting a universal logo to highlight this fact. It will be a ‘MP3 compatible logo’ and will make it clear to the user that the files purchased from this store can be used on any digital device without restrictions.

Now we have discussed the issue of DRM many times before on our podcast. We recognise that IF as a label you fear the internet, then yes it does offer a degree of protection. This in turn makes it easier for you to bring your content to the marketplace, which is good for the consumer. However, taking into account CD has no protection, the question is why have the fear in the first place? Yes, it is easier to copy a file than a CD, but not that MUCH easier. 

Hence we have been applauding those companies pushing content without DRM, and I want to applaud this initiative, as not enough people know that there are alternatives without DRM out there. In fact why not have a logo that says, ‘legal, paid for and DRM free’. That way we have education about why people should pay wrapped up into the message too.

Talking of which; I saw the new Bond movie the other night. A lot of fun it was too. However, preceding the movie was not the normal ‘dont copy or you will go to hell’ message, but instead a very very short video of Daniel Craig asking us not to film it (with our camera phones!) because without people paying to see the movie, all of ‘these people’ would not get paid - with a video of all the real people behind the movie playing as he spoke.

What a great idea. More of this please. Its not a battle between us and them. It should be much more about regular communication and education of the public. Let the public see the faces behind the product, not just get the corporate letters threatening to sue them.

Recently Nokia has announced its Comes With Music range of products. This is where you get one of their handsets and can then legally download an unlimited amount of music via their service for a year onto your newly acquired phone. 

Now when we say ‘unlimited’ that always means ‘within reason’ or that which could be ‘reasonably’ listened to by an individual in a year. 

The point is, this is slowly becoming a mainstream model. Sony Music is launching its own version (it has in scandinavia already) along with Sony Ericsson. I think we can expect that a similar deal will eventually work with the PS3/PSP platforms (at least for Sony content) and EMI recently went into a joint venture with Warner Music, not tied to a piece of hardware but allowing ‘unlimited’ downloads for a one off fee. 

Now in many respects these deals with labels add REAL value to music. The labels will get paid a slice off the hardware price or package fee (as with the EMI platform). The customer values music enough to want it and pro-actively download it, but they have lost the sense that they should pay individually for each track/album. Yet this way they are still paying for it, without feeling that they are - and then the money is distributed through to the labels and appropiate artists/songwriters etc etc. 

The flip side is that it could be perceived as the nail in the coffin of the traditional value system. The system which says:

‘That an artist or collection of artists and skilled individuals spent ‘x’ amount of time on this track/album. By purchasing it you are supporting them directly (and not the label - even though must of the money used to go to the label) and making sure they can continue to make music to the same high standard.’

Also it could be a way of blocking off the long tail. I.E. if an individual or band cannot get with a content aggregator.  They may also find that these new services only push material from major labels, as by associated with material with high cache levels adds value to the hardware and is a win, win; for the labels and tech companies. 

Does this squeeze out the individual, semi-pro? If they are left to ’sell’ their music, it would put them at a perceived disadvantage in the market place compared to the labels who have their ‘price hidden’ in the cost of the phone etc etc. 

Times are a-changing as they have been non-stop for the last 10 years. However, is something fundamental happening in front our eyes? As labels panic and seek to find an income (something which is kinda important for a business) are they undermining, further, the very product they wish to make money out of? Or, are they smelling the roses and leveraging the content the best way they can, today, making sure there is money to invest into the music of tomorrow.

Also does this mean that it will impossible to have a complete music collection in the future? Might we see a situation, as with movies and Blueray, that certain acts can only be listened to on certain playback devices? I’m not too sure thats ‘bad’ as its the norm for videogames and as I said, movies. However it would be a complete change for the consumer. 

Discuss……

As rumored earlier today and then commented on us, todays press conference has confirmed that there will be a Beatles music game. However, as we predicted and commented on, it will NOT be a ROCK BAND game in itself.

The Beatles NEVER leverage their content across brands and hence this will be a standalone product which will only play Beatle Content.

What this means in practise is still to become clear. I’m sure the hardware out there will work, but as opposed to downloading new songs into the pre-existing game it will probably be a new piece of software offering its own portal to the Beatles Digital Store.

We’ll report more once it becomes clearer. This is a bold step for the parties involved in the Beatles IP. It’s a coup for EA games and MTV, the publisher and owners of Rock Band.

Read some more about it HERE

Its being reported by the Wall Street Journal and on various industry sites that the beatles are at last bringing their music to the world of the download. However the story is that its NOT with Apple’s own Itunes. According to the Wall Street journal its rumoured that a selection of songs will be availble to owners of EAs Rock Band 2 videogame. 

Regular listeners of our podcast Music Industry News will know we often talk about this product and Guitar Hero as proof that their is still a very valuable market out there, its just being leveraged in a different way. This would seem to be evidence of the transition. 

It should be pointed out that except for the Number 1 album the Beatles have NEVER had their music licensed onto compilations. Now this is not a compilation but in many ways it is a change of policy as it would be a situation where their music was sitting as part of another product. 

So would you buy Rock Band 2 just to play along with the Beatles?

Check out the story HERE