A tip of the hat to Steven Noble for sending me the link to a video by Gerd Leonhard about Music 2.0.

Gerd has a really interesting take on how the music industry needs to focus on what the consumer wants to buy and how and where she wants to engage, rather than the music industry focusing on how they want to sell their products to the consumer...

The problem that remains of course is that the ecosystem in the music business is much more complex than people generally realize. And the key area which is not easily understood is the role of the songwriter. The songwriter assigns his or her rights to a publisher and often the publisher assigns some limited set of rights to a collecting society. Somewhere in there one of these organizations license the record producer to enable the production and replication of the master recording. Its at this point that it becomes seriously difficult, and nowadays more than ever.

The reason for this is that when the music business was young and pre-digital, there was a significant cost associated with manufacturing, warehousing, printing, distributing product. With the advent of digital that cost goes virtually to zero. But the regulatory structure that is in place means that publishers (and through them, songwriters) are still being paid as if the record company had all that overhead.

The result is that the margins going to the record companies have increased massively. The publishers - I imagine - want a bigger slice of the cake....

The reality of course is that they should all move their focus onto how to make a transaction easier for the consumer. And that is the focus of the video and book by Gerd. Definitely worth looking at.

There is a heightening awareness of what may become a cost to society of our reliance on technology. An article in New Scientist explores the issue.

It is only available to subscribers, so I googled the headline to try to find out who might have posted it. Within nanoseconds I had found a full version of the article at this blog which I then blogged about at the GRMP blog.

Isn't it remarkable - the very technology that makes things so easy to find, also makes it incredibly easy and perhaps inevitable, that the material that is available by subscription is available free. And I think that it makes the point that the business model of subscription is one that is at risk because of the googleization of media.

But the important point of the article is that the more complex systems become, the more potential there is for system failure.

This is the question that the LA Times posed in a story about the writers strike.

First the music industry was disintermediated by the internet, and now the movie and TV industries are waking up, courtesy of the writers, to the fact that the only game in town is Google.... and perhaps Microsoft.... or Apple.

These are the companies that make money out of free content, where of course 'free' is a proxy for ad supported.

I was in the music business for 30 years give or take a year. And I left the business partly because there was no sense of magic anymore. Back when I first was signed to CBS Records in the UK in 1967 and then when I came to Australia and joined the business side of the deal there was a fine sense of madness about what we did. The people who had the zany ideas for the promotion, for the song, for the record, for the gig... these people came to the fore.

Then as adult supervision took hold, the business was dominated by marketing metrics. And out of marketing metrics you get a monoculture of profit now at any cost.

I remember saying here in the early 90's when the record companies were resisting the government's efforts to have them drop prices, that the internet would do for the record business what the ACC failed to do. The fact that the record industry thought that they could hold back the tide was an act of supreme arrogance. The same thing is happening to the other parts of the content industry in Hollywood now. It is a sad indictment on the intelligence of man that some people think that they can control price points in a world that wants content to be free, and now is able to make it so.

That is the legacy of digitization.

Google is in control. Essentially by saying, "we don't want to be in control of anything... except the ad insertion".

Facebook is a brilliant way to virally distribute memes.

I was invited to install an app called How Should I Vote

It was created by Get Up and is really a totally brilliant product for everyone in Australia going into the election.

What it does is to filter your beliefs via a number of questions and then matches your answers with the various candidates in your electorate.

The result is that you are provided with your optimum match which means that you get past the clutter of ad spend and rhetoric and get to what would be best for the country according to you!

This is the sort of thing that gives you hope for democracy. And it mush drive the major parties totally mad.

Here is a thought:

Media and religion supply the white noise that interrupts our ability to think with clarity.

And now because of the incredible power of YouTube the option is ther to find material that will enable clarity. This has got to keep a lot of people in politics up at night trying to figure how to harness the power of YouTube.

Ross Dawson's Web 2.0 event was, by all accounts, a tremendous success. Well done, Ross!

And you can see a whole lot of video from the event as his blog. One Minute World shot individual pieces with each of the presenters.

Here is Brad Howarth from the conference:

Tivo had a rocky start as a company. Great technology that not enough people used. But they're changing. Recognizing a world that wants to make entertainment and the Internet easier Tivo have pushed idea after idea that builds off fast broadband, wifi and the Tivo box. Personal photos, movies, podcasts, info, games etc etc.

Some things are still rough. Download from Amazon, view a movie and 24 hours later, the movie is deleted. Why? "Rights-holders demands" Tivo says. But wait. That's not the way people live. Two or three different in a house or family might watch at different times and different ways.

Tivo, moving fast some ways, needs to explain how the real world is today; if it is indeed "rights-holders". Then their push to make the technology consumer friendly and in tune with the times will really gain the traction it deserves.

Mark Bradley is one of the leading podcasters in Australia. And he really knows technology. Mark has just announced that he is moving from ATP Innovations, the early stage investment company that has been his main gig. He has started a company called APTUS. The company is going to be providing strategic advice on how to use the web for more effective corporate communications.

Tivo signed up with Amazon to provide movie downloads. Amazon via the internet to computer then wireless to Tivo. Finally. An easy not the Blockbuster experience. I hate Blockbuster. They must have the worst customer service. Doesn't seem to matter which outlet you go to either.

Now I don't have to leave home. And because the first step is the hardest, getting people signed up crosses a major hurdle for the companies.For Tivo it makes them relevant as a home entertainment hub. For Amazon it takes them deep into entertainment territory.

New things are always slow. But Tivo/Amazon have built foundations for growth.

It's no surprise we like video. It's the future. So good news. Today we announce a heavyweight contender launching into the video arena. We know it remakes content on the web. Why? Chris Gilbey founded it with a very fine technology thinker, Silvia Pfeiffer.

The company went public today in Sydney and Santa Monica. Read the release. Remember the name.


Sydney, Australia/Santa Monica,Ca

Australian start up video search, socialization and advertising company, Vquence, commences business today at the heart of the Internet hotspot, video, promising to remake the web experience.

“The Internet is now driven by video. The video quotient of any business or consumer communication: the VQ:is becoming the key factor of success” said co-founder and CEO, Chris Gilbey,

“Vquence helps solve revenue problems for content owners. We make finding videos easy for consumers. We hasten content distribution.”

Vquence provides a one stop shop for content owners to monetize video to consumers under one seamless umbrella. Vquence has a patent pending for an instantaneous approach to clickable video.

“Vquence’s technology and business model turn today’s video assets and costs into online reach and revenue. Consumers, publishers and content owners are united by Vquence” Gilbey noted.

The basis of Vquence is a technology leading video search engine. Users easily discover relevant video content. An authoring toolset then permits easy creation of a playlist of thin sliced videos (or ‘vquence’). The vquence is presented through a specialised video player. This playlist will play in any Web page. Users can cut and paste the code for their vquence into a blog or web page. Dynamic insertion by Vquence places ads into the vquence, based on relevance.

“Vquence boosts social networks.” Gilbey said, adding “Consumers find and aggregate video, then share it widely. They get paid. Content creators and publishers are rewarded from embedded ads in the vquences their communities share.

Initial seed funding to establish Vquence came from Information City Australia Limited, a Melbourne innovation incubator.

“This changes the market dynamic. Consumers become legitimate distributors of the video asset rather than pirates. In contrast, old school DRM brakes distribution” Gilbey said, continuing:

“Vquence gives consumers the ability to opt in or out of ads. Advertisers are getting smarter and making their messages more personal. Passive consumers no longer exist. It’s a community driven outlook now – with the emergence of almost a hive mind. The wisdom of crowds is a powerful market force.”

Vquence was formed in July 2006 by Gilbey and Dr Silvia Pfeiffer, a former CSIRO research scientist. Gilbey is a long time entrepreneur in the content and technology arenas, a former CEO of Lake Technology who consulted to Dolby Laboratories for two years on a global basis.

Dr Pfeiffer is a leading authority on Digital Media Analysis. During a seven year stint at CSIRO she led the team that developed Annodex, an open source platform for video distribution, and her continuing research over the last decade has deepened industry’s understanding of how to apply algorithms to analyse and mediate video content.

“Vquence takes the World Wide Web immeasurably closer towards a Web of Videos, where people build communities around video content published anywhere on the Web. But, uniquely, Vquence guarantees the original content owner will not lose an audience or their content.” Dr Pfeiffer noted.

“Video is the centre of the internet’s next big leap forward. Vquence will be one of the key accelerators.” Pfeiffer said.

The Vquence R&D team is internationally spread and headquartered in Sydney. The company expects to announce a slate of initial customers that includes media and content companies in both the US and Australia.

“Vquence lets consumers click through video and go beyond. Previously, all you could do was click to a video. Vquence is transformational. Vquence gives media publishers the powerful tools of comprehensive, easy search of all their video assets, and then super-distribution.” Dr Pfeiffer concluded.

About Vquence. Vquence is a video search, socialization, and advertising company that has a comprehensive model of monetizing video for content owners to consumers. Demonstrations of the technology are being conducted under NDA. The Vquence website has more information on the company. www.vquence.com. The company has offices in Sydney Australia and Santa Monica Ca.