virtualmusic.TV » TED

Collaborative Consumption…P2P Cars…Access.

Ryan Van Etten — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 04:10:14 +0000

Big ideas from down under: Rachel Botsman points out four drivers that are causing a fundamental global shift away from 20th century hyper-consumption (ownership) towards 21st century collaborative consumption (access). Sharing is “second nature” to digital natives—and it’s not just about files.

Collaborative Consumption describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping redefined through technology and peer communities. (collaborativeconsumption.com)

Short on time? Here’s the ultra-hip 2-min version:

Gaming For A Better Real World

Ryan Van Etten — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:30:59 +0000

Game designer/researcher Jane McGonigal asserts that collaborative videogames are the key to solving our real-world problems. In the video below, she outlines why she considers World of Warcraft to be an “ideal collaborative problem-solving environment.” She discusses four key factors in gaming culture that give gamers an edge at problem-solving—urgent optimism, social fabric, blissful productivity, and epic meaning. An underlying theme throughout the talk is motivation, and McGonigal’s research squares off soundly with Daniel Pink’s theories on motivation—namely the importance of mastery and purpose—and also with Will Wright, who in 2006 wrote that “the gamers’ mindset—the fact that they are learning in a totally new way—means they’ll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption.”

Excerpts From Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk
3/17/10 Gaming can make a better world

3:30: This is a problem that a lot of gamers have: We feel that we are not as good in reality as we are in games. And I don’t mean just good as in successful—although that’s part of it. We do achieve more in game worlds. But I also mean good as in motivated to do something that matters—inspired to collaborate and cooperate. When we’re in game worlds, I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as in takes, to get up after failure, and try again.

McGonigal’s recent videogame design: Urgent Evoke—a crash course in changing the world.
Image: flickr/avantgame

Multitouch—The Human GUI?

Ryan Van Etten — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:27:18 +0000

Multitouch may be next GUI—is there a doubt? For decades we’ve used the mouse, but as GUI technology improves we’ll find more limitations in a mouse-based system. Clayton Miller’s 2009 project called 10/GUI demonstrates the potential of multitouch. According to Miller, “the industry is now at a crossroads.”

Multitouch makes “sense.”

The idea of multitouch sensors has been around for years, but multitouch has yet to see wide-spread implementation in computers. I think it’s coming. I think a wave of multitouch operating systems is going to redefine how we interact with computers. But I think they’ll be touchscreens and gesture-based systems too. I mean after getting used to the iPhone’s touchscreen, I’ve noticed that I want to touch my computer screen sometimes to move things etc. Anyone else catch themselves doing that?

Touch by chrisevans

Computing needs to be intuitive.

Computing needs to be more intuitive. UI advances will address that. Our brain’s hard wiring is capable of a lot more that pointing a mouse—we need to give it the chance to be more creative and boundless. By using our hands differently, with more intuitive movements, we’ll be helping our mind work more naturally. It will make a better fit between the brain and the computer by way of the body. One day we might we have chips that connect to our brain energy, right? Our brain is a super computer, right?

It all relies on intuitive design. Pranav Mistry talked about intuitive interface design in his SixthSense technology presentation. It virtually connects us to the computer via our gestures. According to Mistry, “We are looking for an era where computing will actually merge with the physical world.” Think about the games and apps we could make with that. While not nearly to the extent of SixthSense technology, Nintendo’s Wii is somewhat based on gesture recognition but the player has to hold the controller which recognizes movements in 3 dimensions. The Wii is essentially a wireless mouse with an extra dimension—it’s fun but I wouldn’t characterize it as intuitive. Even still, it’s extremely popular.

Emotional Attachment To Music

Ryan Van Etten — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:26:46 +0000

Terry McBride—CEO of Nettwerk—talks here about imagination. He argues that with music, context trumps content because music creates emotional bookmarks in our mind. Simply, the song is an emotion. These emotional bookmarks are significant because they enable us to travel backwards in our memories to when we experienced the music. Consumers are in control of the music industry, and access rules:

Excerpts From Terry McBride’s TEDxVancouver Talk

04:25: We hear a lot of discussion about “content is king.” Well we have to have content, granted, but content comes from your imaginations. But it’s the context that is now king. I mean think of what’s happened withinside the music business where over the last ten years, through litigation, through legislation, the business has tried to change the behavior of tens of millions of teenagers. When are we ever going to learn we cannot change the opinion of teenagers? We keep trying it generation after generation and you’d think that we would learn from history. You cannot litigate behavior and you cannot legislate behavior. What you can do is listen to it, and listen well, and understand behaviors. If the music business could accept the fact that a song is an emotion, then they’d understand that the monetization of that emotion is the business.

09:53: The iPod’s over. Apple knew that. They created something new—it’s called an iPhone. An iPhone is about behavior. It’s not about owning content. It’s about behavior. And then when they opened up that app store to allow everybody else to put their ideas in, that’s when it really took off. I mean eighteen months ago that business didn’t even exist, and now they’re doing 6.6 million downloads of applications a day. From zero. All they’ve done is crowdsourced the imagination of the world. So let’s crowdsource the imagination of that world to save the music business.

Human Brain Connections by ethanhein on flickr

Fans Take The Power Back—RATM’s Facebook-Induced No. 1

Ryan Van Etten — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:36:48 +0000

Rage gets some air on stage during their encore at Lollapalooza 2008 in Chicago.
Image: flickr/revolute

“Killing In The Name” was the lead-off single from Rage Against The Machine’s 1992 self-titled debut album. The track became a major US hit, and RATM became an icon of 90s alternative music—their one-of-a-kind fusion of rap, rock, metal, and funk with rebellious explicit lyrics was addictive ear candy. I was in high school in the mid 90s, and Rage Against The Machine was a staple—you heard them everywhere. Killing In The Name reached no. 25 on the UK Singles Chart in 1992.

Fast-forward 17 years. 2009. Two RATM fans, Jon and Tracy Morter, decide that it’s time for X-Factor’s dominating influence on the Christmas UK Single to end. They launch a Facebook group and page dubbed ratm4xmas and amass half a million fans in a matter of weeks with a simple agenda: “Fed up of Simon Cowell’s latest karaoke act being Christmas No.1? Purchase Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name’ on Christmas Week as a protest.” They pull it off. Killing In The Name hits the no. 1 spot and it sets a record as being the first song to hit no. 1 through downloads alone. Compare back to 1992 when the single only hit no. 25 and realize that in today’s music world, the fans want to take the power back.

Bill Burton: “Sometimes we limit ourselves by what we believe we can do. We don’t even start. We don’t even try.” Burton delivered this powerful point in his TEDx talk last week, called How To Have A Christmas Number One Single, where, citing RATM’s rise to UK Xmas no. 1, he exemplified the boundless force of social media, and, through a storytelling memorization activity, he demonstrated the limitless—but often unrealized—potential of the human mind. Nothing is impossible.

Dec. ’09 Press

More than half a million people downloaded the band’s famously anti-authoritarian and expletive laden track “Killing in the Name” in what was seen as a broad protest against the increasing influence of manufactured pop music. It is the first time a non-X-Factor song has made it to Christmas number one for four years and represents a major snub to the show’s creator Cowell who angrily described the campaign to deny him another number one slot as “very Scrooge”. (The Independent)

Personally, I’d love RATM to get to No 1, not because I think it would be a victory for “proper” rock. I actually think a RATM victory would be a triumph for pop. The song might be old, but having a fan-powered campaign propel it to the chart summit against the might of an entertainment powerhouse like SyCo would tell you more about the democratised, downloadable and downright free-for-all nature of the pop charts in 2009 than anything else. (The Guardian)

MusicVita Interviews Jon Morter (excerpt)

MusicVita: This may be an obvious question, but why did you choose RATM as the song? Did you feel that the Xfactor is “the system,” and you “won’t do what they tell you?”

Jon Morter: There were a few reasons why I chose Rage. The main reason was that the tune ROCKS! And I felt how brilliant it would be not only to have the X-Factor single reach No.2, but to have it beaten by a song of this nature. When was the last time we had a furious rap/metal track at No.1? Limp Bizkit pulled it off in 2001…and Iron Maiden managed to knock off Sir Cliff’s seasonal chart-topper back in 1991…but generally this is the exception. The track itself has a fantastic defiant edge to it as well which helped. Many saw it as a rallying cry against ‘the machine’ of X-Factor domination, so yes ‘Killing In The Name’ was a great choice if I may say so myself!

MusicVita: What do you think RATM being Xmas Number One meant to the music industry?

Jon Morter: I think it woke a lot of them up. It showed that a large portion of music fans in the UK were fed up with being fed that particular musical diet. It also meant that social networking, if done properly, can really create waves that can’t be ignored. I’m hoping it will kick-start some other artists/labels to release things at Christmas again and to give the X-Factor a damn good challenge…David CAN beat Goliath, it’s just that nobody was expecting it to be us!

Music Consumption in a 180°—Terry McBride Interviews.

Ryan Van Etten — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:50:41 +0000

The interviews below featuring Terry McBride—CEO of Nettwerk—offer terrific insight to the digital era of music. Terry points out that the ways in which we consume music are changing rapidly—largely due to smartphones—and that the “emotional glue” between fans and musicians is the essence of music business.

With the smartphones coming, and all these apps coming, the music business gets one more kick at the can, and I hope they don’t fight this one, because there’s a huge opportune to grow the business faster than what they’ve ever considered. I think there’s a huge sense of optimism for the first time in about five years that this business can actually grow. –Terry McBride in his 2009 interview with tech reporter Matt Hartley [video above].

Music is becoming more of a service than a product and Terry believes that in these digital times, context trumps content, access trumps ownership, and customer service is as important as ever. P2P filesharing should cease to be an issue as listeners increasingly prefer instant-access streams.

The second interview details the history of the Nettwerk Music Group as a DIY all-in-one company that developed by adapting to meet the needs of musicians and their fans. Towards the end he talks about joint ventures between musicians and non-music brands as being likely in the next five years.

I really think that the paradigm is shifting. I think within the next five years you’re going to have other brands inside the market signing artists. Brands will look at this going, well, we already use music within all of our TV, and radio, and, you know, internet media. Um, why don’t we just sign the artist? –Terry McBride, in his 2008 CMU-Tube interview [video below].

On my previous post, Musicians—Money Is Not Motivation, Dave MacDonald had commented that Terry McBride recently spoke positively about the music industry at TEDxVancouver in November 2009. That video isn’t available yet, but I hope they air it soon on TEDxTalks—I’ll keep you posted.

[homepage thumbnail photo: Flickr/stephen_dyrgas]

Musicians—Money Is Not Motivation

Ryan Van Etten — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:15:02 +0000

Musicians (artists) are driven by a fundamental need to create. Music is their art and their expression. Even in a world without money there would be music, and arguably there would be even more music (and other art) than there is today.

Science

In his above TED talk, Daniel Pink makes a strong case relating the science of motivation to creativity and business. The verdict is that money is not a primary motivator for people doing creative work. Sure, it does play a factor today as people need enough money to meet their essential needs. Once those needs are met, money is out of the picture. I look forward to reading his upcoming book, Drive.

Spotify

I felt compelled to deliver the point—money is not an artist’s true motivation—in response to the exorbitant editorial negativity surrounding yesterday’s news of Lady Gaga getting paid $167 for 1+ million Spotify streams. Where I live—in the US—Spotify is not yet available so I have not been able to try the platform. Spotify is a new service and its revenue model is understandably in a shakedown period where they are still determining what works, what data they have, and how they can best leverage that data to generate revenue.

Mr. Ek [Spotify CEO and Founder] revealed how the company has been working on making its advertising as personally tailored to an individual’s tastes as possible. “We have a lot of information about people. We know our users’ age, gender, location and even mood – which figure out by through BPMs [beats per minute],” he explained. Depending on whether a person has listened to lots of fast or slow music, Spotify is trying to make its mood analysis as accurate as possible – so it can serve highly targeted adverts for users to properly engage with—which should in turn, increase the amount it can charge brands to advertise on the platform. Mr. Ek said Spotify was “beginning to figure this stuff out”. (Spotify chief, Daniel Ek, rules out 2009 US launch | Telegraph)

It sounds like Spotify is on track to me. I like the ad-based model and there are many variations to explore. I brainstormed launching an ad-based free music service back in 2007, and I think Spotify is the closest service to what I would have done, but they’ll need to continue to evolve, as do musicians.

Whether it is really relevant to measure the success of Spotify in this way remains to be seen as it is still a service in it’s infancy. Much like Twitter, it is phenomenally successful in terms of usability but is still finding its feet in terms of making money. As it continues to attract users its appeal to advertisers will grow and so too will the financial returns. How this filters down to the individual artist is then probably more of an issue with the labels than with Spotify. (A Ga Ga approach to marketing? | The Naked Pheasant)

Industry

It’s smart business to think years down the road by expanding your fan base even if it doesn’t pay off immediately. I think Lady Gaga and many other artists see that. The long-term benefit of those 1+ million streams is immense, and I think many people are blinded to that fact—such a level of exposure leads to sellout shows and non-music revenue streams. The one thing I dislike about the situation is that the major labels still have major pull and they can afford huge production and marketing investments. But the need for heavy financing is down—thank you, Internet. In today’s connected, music-abundant world why does any one artist get so popular? Is it hard work, affinity, or talent? To me, talent is relative—it’s not what you can build, but rather it’s what you can build with what you have. It’s the Internet Age—indie musicians have the power to take the industry back but they must embrace change and creativity to do it—they must creatively leverage the internet and mobile apps.

The connection from the fan to the band, financially, has been broken. The fan knows that their purchase will hardly help the band, or more precisely that the marginal benefit from their purchase to the band is near zero, so why do it? The cost to the fan is much higher than the marginal benefit to the band, so the fan just torrents the damn song. (Why Music Is Broken – The Artist To Consumer Connection)

P2P rocks—it turned the industry up-side-down letting the label-lords know they had lost control. I see P2P as a massive benefit for musicians. Do they have P2P streaming yet? They will. With all that said, I believe that many music fans are as-motivated-as-ever to pay for music when they know their money is going directly to the artist. Maybe subscription services like Spotify can find a way to work this, or endorsement deals that fans would want to support, into their business model. I think that fans—and people in general—need to feel like they are part of something and they want to feel empowered.

Artwork: jahdakinebrah/flickr.

The fan artwork you see above is a creative visualization of Pink Floyd’s Money. The image squares depict the story of the song lyrics. What motivates you? What do you think motivates music fans?