How many times have we heard the idea that music consumers or fans should be persuaded to always buy music? That by campaigning, shutting down P2P sites and making an example of a few people illegal downloaders will become more sympathetic to our music industry plight and start buying music like they did in the glory days. There was a time when people would queue all night to buy the latest hot release in music. It is a sign of the time however that this no longer happens for music online or offline, but guess what? It happens for Apple. Think on that one.....

P2P is being taken over by streaming as the playback method of choice and until we can stream from our mobile devices the only downloads we will be using are the ones we want to carry with us. I for one (and I'm sure I'm not alone here) have way to much data on my computers. I want to declutter. We are increasingly mobile, the world is getting smaller so it makes sense that we want to travel light.

Now, don't get me wrong I don't think that music should be given away for free but I do think that we should be giving the fans what they want. If someone doesn't want to buy something they just wont buy it. Full stop. There is no amount of persuasion, cajoling, convincing, imploring or nagging that will make them do it. That's what some of us like to call terrible sales technique. Fans are smart and educated and have abundant choice. They will go to their preferred service for music and if that doesn't satisfy they will click off and on to somewhere else. It's a bit like having a high street with music retailers all selling the same thing and half of them giving their stuff away for free. You can't compete on price here and I guarantee that appealing to their better nature isn't going to work because they have no sympathy for the fact that the music business is losing revenue.  Changing people is impossible, all they will do is resist you. If you want to see change, you must be the change. Create a new and different industry that contributes. 

You cannot control music fans and consumers. They are people. Trying to change their behaviour is like trying to cup ants in your hands. The ants will just crawl all around you. 


Find out more about my book "The Fan Experience" here

And more about me at www.leenasowambur.com

“It's a small world, but we all run in big circles.”  Sasha Azevedo

In the early 18th century Great Britain was still agrarian. This meant that in England, a traveler from the North arriving in the South would find themselves in largely foreign territory.  There were even time differences in durations of minutes between some counties. The Victorians however had a need for speed and with that the railway and the steam train arrived. The steam train made the Victorians limitless by comparison. Where they were local they were now national. Communication was stimulated as was connection. This is turn affected music with Victorians travelling from villages to towns to experience live music hall entertainment. Similarly it would also seem that our need for connection via the Internet has stimulated the live music sector today. There have been numerous reports to suggest that the sharing experience of music via the Internet has developed our live music appetites.

Is it a case of swings and roundabouts? Perhaps. In the Victorian era another technology was born. It enabled us to talk to each other across vast distances, it used code, new types of crime emerged from it, romances blossomed in chat rooms, businesses practices were flipped on their head and whilst the some sought to control the this brave new medium others predicted utopia and an evolved global consciousness. We are of course talking about the introduction of the telegraph. But doesn't it sound remarkably like our Internet? The point that I want you to remember is that there is no original thought. Everything has been created and everything we experience today is simply an improvement on that original wheel.

So is streaming music is old news? Well yes, it used to be called the "wireless" or as we now call it "radio". When radio arrived it was boycotted by the recorded music industry, after all who would buy records they could listen to the wireless for free? As it turned out the recorded music industry greatly benefited from the radio with the introduction of licences. Copyright as we now understand it was established. Radio gave music a wider reach, and a wider reach meant an expanding audience, and an expanding audience meant supersonic record sales. We had entered The Golden Age.

Beyond radio our next disruptive technology was TV. Radio lovers bemoaned the loss of the radio star. We know, however, that video didn't kill the radio star in fact video created another type of star and another type of experience with megastars such as Michael Jackson pushing the envelope of the medium with the multimillion dollar "Thriller". So now we have YouTube stars. Internet stars with billions of views on YouTube, reams of comments and millions of friends and followers. Internet stardom is a decisive factor in any artist obtaining a record deal or for a record label securing radio and TV airplay.

Let’s not forget the sheet music industry. The sheet music industry boycotted the recorded format. The argument was this, why would anyone buy sheet music if they could simply buy the record and listen to it. Nevertheless, the recorded format took over regardless. Today, people all over the world obtain tracks and make them their own. They put their own take on the original composition. We have mash ups, remixes, fan made video and presentations. Not unlike music fans back in the sheet music era who took their copy home and improvised with it to the delight of their audiences at home.

So what's next? Well our forthcoming technology in music is cloud storage. Cloud storage means that we can share out data and then access that data anywhere globally. Like water or electricity. This means that our music can be streamed from anywhere to well … anywhere. It might give us total mobility. A world without wires. A world where there is nothing to tie us down and we can be on the move with the information we need to share at the tap of our fingertips.

So, there have been a few technologies that have made progressively made the world smaller. The Internet is not the first and it won’t be the last.

Sometimes we need to reference from the past in order to learn and move on. There no problem that we have that hasn't been already solved on some level. So sometimes looking at the stories of the past can teach us about the future as we can see patterns and trends and attempt to plot a loose trajectory. No one can predict the future, but it is wise to plan for the best and prepare for the worst and consider every scenario possible  and perhaps even make some future recommendations.

Just to freshen up for Jan 2011 and the new book content coming - new custom designs will be commissioned in due course!

I've just done the first edit of my book sampler - so should be available for 1st Jan 2011! There will be some promotions to accompany the availability of this perhaps free coaching/consultation, future book previews, webinars, teleseminars or perhaps a real seminar for those UK based. However, nothing is decided yet!

Remembering the time I took a YouTube report to a label boss & suggested they have a conversation after the mess with MySpace, YouTube was still young. Report comprised of all stats & predicted growth was told by boss that people would never have an internet connection powerful enough to play video, my thoughts were "what makes you think you know better than the telecoms companies!"
Things to learn...

1. Your boss doesnt always know better in fact sometimes they know nothing at all (this guy didnt know what an mp3 was when he went for his job interview at the time I was working at Peoplesound!)

2. Listen to your gut then risk assess, plan and take action yourself - sometimes it is better to be proven wrong

3. If your boss dismissed your idea it could be a really really good one!

4. It is always worth having the conversation you can always say "no"

5. Who knows what other opportunities that conversation could lead to?