What this headline should say is, "What you don't read in the papers in one place but do read in another..."

This morning I stumbled on this story in The Guardian newspaper:



The story, as is evident from the headline, details the water shortages in the most southerly city on the Australian mainland. And for many people around the world this may just be another climate change story from the dryest continent on earth, and therefore not surprising.

But for me, sitting in New South Wales, where it is very dry too, by the way, what was really disturbing was that there has been no reference (that I have been aware of, anyway) to this story in the local newspapers, nor on the nightly TV news. And I am a pretty avid consumer of mainstream news along with exploring some of the more alternate news sources online.

I wonder if someone in Canberra has had a quiet word with the Editors in Chief at the big news outlets and said in effect, "The powers that be in Canberra would really appreciate it if you could play down the whole water shortage thing in Adelaide. People are feeling very concerned about water, and with the NSW government now more on the nose than ever before, we think that it would only spook the horses if we have a lot of speculation about water shortages..."

And God only knows, in NSW at least, there seems to be a sense in some of the media at least that they have to bring down the state government before worrying too much about anything else.

People are starting to join the dots though. We are all starting to understand just how interdependent all organiazation are, and the people who work for them.

There is a lot of discussion in the local Australian media at the moment about CEO salaries.

There is criticism that some of them get paid too much.

Now, having been the CEO of a public company, I reckon that the legal responsibilities that go with the job are extremely significant, so CEO's should be paid well. And if they don't deliver what the shareholders want, they find it difficult to get another gig. So in some ways its like being in a pop group. You get a couple of hits and then the styles change and suddenly no hits and no gigs. So you had better make as much hay as you can while the sun shines.

There is a big problem in focusing only on CEO remuneration though. It isn't about what they get paid. Its actually about how much we all pay.

Think about this from the point of view of the content business and prices.

During the days of vinyl and videocassettes there was a considerable amount of cost that was inherent in the manufacturing and shipping processes that needed to be considered in setting a retail price. When CDs and DVDs were introduced manufacturing and shipping costs were all substantially reduced once the original costs of equipment had been recovered. Then along came digital distribution and the cost of manufacturing and distribution became near zero.

But the cost at retail didn't go down to reflect this. The cost at retail for a digital download stayed pretty much on par with the cost of physical goods. So this means that the margin going to the companies that release the product has increased quite substantially.

Now think about the margin per unit that is going to the companies that release the content and understand that they are now making much more and their profit is coming from each one of us buying content in one form or another.

This number is much more significant than the amount paid to CEO's. CEO's are answerable to their shareholders. But companies are not answerable to their customers.

Every time you purchase a digital copy of a piece of content and pay a price that is equivalent to the retail price of a CD or DVD you are contributing at a usurious rate to the profitability of the company concerned.

It may not seem a lot to pay a couple of cents here or there, but its like taxes, it all adds up.

I have been a subscriber to Ken Rutkowski's "Ken Radio Report" for about four years now and he always sends out to his subscribers fascinating metrics.

In my mail box today I received a report on the impact of social media on corporate spending. Now a lot of people may dislike marketing from corporations and how it tries to manipulate people into spending money, but that, ladies and gentlemen, is capitalism...

Having spent a (relatively) large amount of time over the last couple of years telling clients (those that listened to this advice were fewer than I would have liked) that they needed to talk directly to consumers if they wanted to build their businesses, it is interesting to see that finally corporations are starting to get it...

And the truth is that there are now quite a lot of corporations quietly studying what is going on right in front of them. The tools to do it are easy to use. Some are free and some are delivered with a lot of bells and whistles. (thinking Brandtology who do some fairly nifty analysis of what people are saying in the comments sections of blogs, as I understand).

I have experienced this and blogged about the calls that I have had variously from Telstra and more recently from Tim Pethick, the CEO of Salty Sally (and by the way Tim, I got the replacement samples of chips in the mail earlier this week so thanks).

The point is that savvy executives are watching what is being written about them and reacting when they need to. Having read the survey results that Ken has mentioned, I sense that there may be more watching of the blogosphere than I had previously thought. But the thing I don't get is that there are still so many businesses that I come across who don't do it.

So what does this mean? Are there some companies that just have a lot of blind faith in this area and are prepared to wait for the results, while the ones that aren't actively involved in the conversation are still selling but have not noticed that the reason that their sales are slipping is not because of the economy but because of their own inactivity in the space....?

Ken reports some of the highlights of an e-tailing group study on his website/blog which indicates the following:

The top three concerns of marketers and merchandisers related to social media:

Brand degradation fear - "people can trash my products in front of large audiences"?

Competence fear - "I am using outdated marketing/merchandising techniques"?

Competitive fear - "customer's inclination to leave their site to find a more socially-engaging site"

These motivators, which drove the last wave of social media adoption, will also be driving the next wave in the coming year, says the study. Over the next 12 months, study respondents say they plan to adopt:

The study also found the primary goal for adopting social media was:

Customer engagement (39%)
Mobilizing advocates to drive "word of mouth" (30%)
Increasing brand loyalty (21%)

Bob May was a guest on The Science Show a couple of weeks ago. Or Lord May to all of us plebs.

He was born in Australia and has variously been Chief Scientific advisor to the British government, President of the Royal Society, and a host of other titles too many to include here but available on wikipedia. The bottom line is that this is a very credible scientist, well respected and pretty damned intelligent.

Now here is a direct quote from the interview with Robin Williams on the Science Show where Lord May was talking about how humans are going to evolve in a climate change environment where we may not be equipped for the kinds of changes that we are going to face:

"Is the trajectory that we are on, which doesn't look very hopeful at the moment. Its looks like a trajectory that at best is going to go to the world of the cult movie, "Blade Runner" and more likely to "Mad Max".

Now there are several things that are really interesting about his insights.

The first and the most obvious is that neither of those scenarios sound too attractive to me! But this is what the ex-Chief Scientist of the UK believes is where we are heading.

Second is that he uses popular culture as the reference point to communicate an idea. If you haven't seen either of these movies, then it might be worth getting hold of a copy and checking out the world of the near future.

The other thing that is interesting is that Lord May talks not just about Climate Change, but about a whole raft of things that are in flux and likely to change the way that life will be conducted in the next few years. He also approaches this topic with the wonder that only an eminent scientist can bring to the equation. He is interested in whether these societal changes are something that any civilization may go through on any planet. He goes on to wonder whether what we are experiencing is part of the normal evolution of a species or whether our experience is one that is aberrant.

This, then is where the debate really is now.

The governments of the world all have scientific advisors who are all, I imagine, communicating a similar message.

But in the meetings of government leaders no one wants to be the first one to blink and give the other side an advantage.

So what happens is that we keep on moving ever closer to the brink.

Just read the letters page of the Sydney Morning Herald on any day. (And I imagine that other newspapers in other countries are not too different). The general theme of the letters is that people are totally pissed off with our state government, because they do nothing. They feel let down by our federal government because they have reneged on their promises to really get active about climate change.

And why do these elected officials do nothing?

Because the corporate leaders know that there is no benefit in telling the shareholders the truth: the truth being that the business that they are invested in can only operate profitably in an ecosystem where there is cheap energy and people consuming, and the possibility of something other than that is too dreadful to contemplate.

And yet there is hope.

One investment banker that I know, who is super aware of the problems the world is facing, absolutely will not think about the possibility of social or financial breakdown. Her attitude is that it is the job of people like her to find the entrepreneurs that will pull society and the planet back from the brink. So you have to be optimistic and positive.

I agree with that, but I think that the key problems that we face are very much of our own doing. They can be fixed, but they require a significant change in thinking at the very top.

We actually need to change a whole lot of laws to the direct opposite of what they are right now. Ok, some people are going say that this is anarchy. But its not. Man makes laws. Man can change laws.

Here are some that need to be changed:

We need to decriminalize the use of all drugs and make the trafficking in drugs the crime that demands punishment. That would mean that the police wouldn't be spending a lot of time chasing down people who smoke a joint or do a line, or whatever people do these days. (In my youth in the 60's we smoked pot and dropped trips). People are always going to want to get high on something, so let them. Prohibition just makes profit margins go so high that there is enough margin to bribe people all over the place, thus introducing corruption into the system.

Decriminalize file sharing for no profit and introduce a levy on blank media. There is no benefit to society in locking people up or fining them for that matter for having a piece of content on a hard drive. Back when I was a kid, I had a reel to reel tape recorder and used to record music from the radio. Was that a crime? Should I have been locked up for it? It was fifty years ago so maybe it is past the statute of limitations. I don't see what the difference is now with regard to file sharing. As things stand now, telcos make money out of file sharing by selling the bandwidth; lawyers make money out of file sharing by filing law suits and by inventing ways to sue people; device manufacturers make money out of selling storage to people who want to store their movies digitally (some of which they have presumably downloaded) - and on and on. It may be true that the artists and writers don't get paid for the download or the stored movie copied from a DVD to a flash memory device. All this can be fixed simply by putting a levy on digital storage and then paying a disproportionate amount of that to local talent. That means that you prime the pump and get more creative stuff generated.

Stop quarterly reporting as the primary way of reporting a company's state of health. Instead institute a system whereby a company has to show that its stated plan over 5 years is being met. And have every company register its business plan (as amended) every year where its aims have to include being sustainable ecologically as well as economically. If you did this every company in the country would have to invest in R&D to meet the ecological guidelines over the target period. Fine the CEO's if they don't hit their objectives. If they are going to get the big bucks, better make sure that they know they are also going to get caned for non-performance in the social milieu.

Obviously we need to cut out corruption in government. By this I mean campaign finance reform. Stop big corporations driving the way that government creates and then exercises laws. How do you do this? First - and only a beginning - generate a trailing benefit for people who sell land to developers so that the previous owner gets part of the profit of the entrepreneur who gets the rezoning certificate, gets the development application etc. Then everyone is going to want to see the developer succeed - but the developer has to pass on some of his profit, preferably a significant amount, to the person he bought it from.

Encourage local communities to support themselves in terms of services like schools and hospitals by giving everyone in a local community a direct tax benefit if they contribute money to a local school or hospital. It just cuts out the government middleman and a whole lot of handling, and gets the community involved in managing the money and the things that they want.

These are things that we are going to have to face in either of the scenarios that Lord May sees for us all, so we might as well start thinking about it now, and doing something about it.

I bumped into Tom Kennedy the other day.

He was telling me that his company owns the DVD rights in Australia for a TV program called "Madmed". Its a great show, by the way.

He told me that his company had released the DVD of the two series way before the program was broadcast in Australia. It had sold respectably. And then the broadcast started. And the program took off. DVD sales increased out of sight and iTunes downloads took off like a rocket. So this is empirical evidence that visibility generates sales, even though, as Tom pointed out to me, the broadcast represents the ability to access the content for free whereas the DVD requires a purchase. In other words free access does not inhibit sales, it increases them.

Now remember, Tom's company owns the rights to release at retail, not the broadcast rights, so they don't have any control over the timing of the broadcast nor do they receive any revenue from it.

The fact is that we now have empirical evidence that the ability to access content for free drives the sell through of the same content. It is a counterintuitive thought, but it is absolutely factual.

And if we take the hypothesis one step further, the ability to access content on P2P networks does exactly the same thing as broadcast. It offers people the ability to "try before they buy". And more importantly, in the case of really good content, such as "Madmen" it help build the word of mouth.

It is true that a lot of people don't like to download stuff without being able to pay for it. These people are absolutely paranoid that if they download something they may be accused of stealing it, so rather than have to deal with that concept they would rather pay for it and have a legitimate version of the content - even though it may possibly be legal to download a version of the same piece of content. Imagine it: people want to pay in order to feel that they are 'doing the right thing'

Amazing how well programmed people have become, isn't it?

Unashamed Commerce Division (I am a director and shareholder in Vquence)

Vquence has just launched  a new product.

It is a low-touch Online Engagement Platform. It helps VIPs to kick-start their engagement in online social networks and make the most of it for their career.

With this product Vquence is initially targeting politicians, who want to gain followers online. Vquence is using some of the strategies that Barack Obama employed during his election campaign. This has significant relevance right now as the campaigns in NSW heat up, regardless of the timing of the next election, and also federally.

The Online Engagement Platform offers VIPs a setup service to kick-start their career in social networks including the most important sites: a blog, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and RSS feeds to syndicate content. The main focus and differentiation of the service is that it is set this up so that sites can be controlled from one central location without the need to engage on every site separately. This makes it a low-touch service - something very important to the busy lives of VIPs and their minders.

Metrics are delivered through the central control platform making it simple for VIPs to keep track of their increased visibility and Vquence analysts will create quarterly reports with recommendations on how to improve on the engagement impact.

Vquence is also including a training session to help VIPs and their team be successful from the start.

The service is described in more detail here:

The service is provided with Robot Parade providing the blogging and integration platform and Vquence providing analytics.

Well, at least in Australia.

The Technology offered by some content distributors is making File Sharing look like the poor relative.

Re-broadcasting video content is legal in the USA.

Viewing rebroadcast sites in the USA is legal from Australia.

The re-broadcasters are getting content faster than the file-sharing seeders.

 

---

HOUSE M.D.

House is Back, and was posted within hours of its debut.

 

---

Posted: Tue Sep 22, 2009 5:57 am 

 

Season 6 (HDTV)
House.S06E01.E02.Broken.HDTV.XviD-NoTV.avi  [699.87 Mb]
Season 6 (720p)
House.S06E01.E02.Broken.720p.HDTV.x264-CTU.mkv  [2.19 Gb]

 

---

Of course Australian Broadband users will be limited to the lower quality, however, the bonus is that it comes advert free, so that’s always nice.

 

For those in countries whose Governments are not run by Telstra, you can click on episode 1, 2 or 3 below and view the content legally via streaming video. (But yes it uses an awful lot of Bandwidth.)

 

---

House - Season 6

1. Episode 1 - Broken
2. Episode 2 - Epic Fail
3. Episode 3 - The Tyrant (And there it is – Episode three….. before the P2P community have it.)

---

So let’s discuss the merits of downloading House, series six episode one and episode two.

 

Yep, the return is a two hour House lovers extravaganza.

 

When will House be back on Channel 10?  Probably during ratings period, about February 2010.

 

Why will it take them that long to get it on there?

 

Because that’s the way the content industry works. Local content to local channels first with International distribution waaaaay down the list.

 

Are we second class citizens that deserve less attention than those people born in the USA?

 

Ask Rupert Murdoch, he negotiated the content deals that we are currently operating under.

 

But we love house. We want to see those episodes now. Why can’t we?

 

Because the previous (Liberal) Government passed two sets of laws.

 

One allowing Telstra to monopolise our telecommunications infrastructure regardless of the economic damage it caused to the rest of the country.

 

Why did they do that? Because the few billion dollars raised from the ASX sell-off, when plonked on the balance sheet made Australia look financially stronger.

 

Geez, Koltai – you said you always told the truth.

 

OK – ok, you got me. It was so the politicians could be re-elected.

 

What was the other law?

 

Well that was a ratification in 2006 of amendments to the outdated 1969 copyright legislation which essentially took all of our copyright provisions and threw them out the window replacing them with a set of laws so medieval, that Frankenstein would have died of fright if he had been forced to read them.

 

And why was that Koltai?

 

Basically so that President Bush would shake Johnnies hand (which as we all know he didn’t).

 

So Koltai we threw away our copyright citizens rights for a handshake that never happened?

 

Um, yep. Just goes to show how truly irrelevant Australia is as far as the Yanks are concerned.

 

So Koltai, what are you going to do, download the file-sharing version, watch the free online streaming version or wait until February so that you can watch the version with 20 minutes of advertising in it?

 

zzz…  Does not Compute! Programming error! Warning, Dumb Consumer Alert! Danger Danger Will Robinson, Australia’s IQ just dropped 25%.

 

Sorry Tom, that was one of those stupid questions wasn’t it.

 

Duh huh.

 

But the fact that that the streaming version is available online now, and the fact that in Australia time-shifting is legal. I would hazard a guess that even though the law is lagging behind the reality of the available technology, it probably isn’t actually morally wrong to download the P2P version any longer.

 

Besides, for the 32% of Australian that do not have a broadband connection or a computer, channel ten will still have to buy the series; they will still air the series, and they will still receive advertising revenue from the series. So actually, even if 68% of Australians watch house via the free online streaming website or download it via P2P, House MD, series six will return exactly the same amount of revenue to the creators as it would have if file sharing didn’t exist.

 

So Koltai you’re advocating wholesale illegal file sharing?

 

I didn’t say that. I’m advocating that our legislators look at the basis of the current legislation and understanding that it was the media lobbyists to the last Government that created the current FUBAR legislation,  consider holding a senate committee hearing into copyright issues in Australia.

 

Especially where the content that is being used to criminalize Australians is available from alternative legal sources.

 

 

The Indelicate Imbalancing of Copyright Policy 3 v.2007.11.16

illustrates the growth of the general U.S. copyright term over time, including the retroactive effects of various statutory extensions.

(Note the dog-leg retroactive portion of each ensuing copyright legislative amendment.)

 

 

I’ve used the US legislation because quite frankly, I am not sure how to pictorially represent the Australian legislative copyright terms.

But I assure you dear reader, once I have devised an understandable graphic, you will be the second to know about it.

 

 

References:

 

Escape from Copyright: Market

Success vs. Statutory Failure in the Protection of Expressive Works, 69 U. CIN. L. REV. 741, 780-87 (2001). Portions also came from Copyright as Intellectual Property Privilege, 58 SYRACUSE L. REV. __ (2007) (invited) (forthcoming), and Indelicate Imbalancing in Copyright and Patent Law, in COPY FIGHTS: THE FUTURE OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY IN THE INFORMATION AGE at 1 (Adam Thierer & Wayne Crews, eds 2002).

The Disagreement about Blogs

 

---

There are two point two new Blog sites created for every second of every day of the year. (around 175,000 per day.)

The blogosphere doubles every 236 days! Presently, there are around 77 million blogs,
It has been predicted that within three years, 50% of all content online will be user-generated.

---

One viewpoint is that :

From TNS Global website

NEARLY A THIRD OF OUR LEISURE TIME IS SPENT ONLINE

 

LONDON. December 8^th 2008: New figures released today reveal the staggering amount of time Brits now spend on the internet in their spare time – with the league table topped not by students, but by housewives.

 

And from Blogher

The majority of people consider Blogs are rated between somewhat reliable and highly reliable as sources of empirical data and product purchasing  advice/recommendations.

 

Blogs as a Source of Information

 

Source: The BlogHer/Compass Partners 2008 Social Media Study P15

 

And contrarily, from a leading Psychologist:

 

Now we discover people don't believe blogs - so stop blogging...!

 

A major survey of over 27,000 people has discovered that blogs are the least credible source of information online. Coupled with similar research on the trustworthiness of blogs, this most recent study suggests the end is nigh for blogging.

According to the study, we believe "word of mouth" over and above everything else. The TV news comes next, then online news with newspapers just a little bit behind. Blogs are way down the bottom, with only one in every ten people believing them.
  

And another contrary opinion - this time from Businessweek, headlined:

 

Only 16% Trust Corporate Blogs: Are They Worth Doing?

 

The response from Forrester Research is it depends. But the bottom line is that based on survey research the firm released a report today, it’s time for some rethinking of corporate blogs. (To get the report you have to hand over some contact data).

Forrester found that 16% of the people who read company blogs trust them—less than every other form of content they asked about, including print media, direct mail, even corporate emails.

 

So we understand that half the experts say Blogging is not worthwhile and the half saying it is.

BTW, the half whom claim that blogging was worthwhile seem to represent the female population rather strongly. This is inline with our discovery over the last two months that a great majority of the game players in Zyngas Facebook based Farmville game were averagely aged as being 27 year old females.

Because of our experience in online data usage (since 1987) we believe that wherever the girls are – the boys are sure to follow and that observation can now be confirmed with our recent stats collection on Farmville player sexes.

 

Chris and I both blog on this website, Our backgrounds are not dissimilar except that I entered the computer field once I completed uni and Chris entered the music business. We then both spent a considerable period of our lives being extremely entrepreneurial with some success and a couple of failures (on my part).

So Chris is our expert social networker and I am our spreadsheet guy.

 

You can tell the difference between our styles by reading some of the blogs. Chris is careful with his spelling, grammar and sentence structure, carefully hunting for the right balance of adjectives, verbs and nouns to present his views.

 

My online style is rather raw by comparison. My previous attempts at writing were always edited, so this new role of self-editing is obviously beyond my capacity.

The words flow and the fingers try to keep up, usually failing.

 

Chris is always asking me to be more careful with my presentation, grammar and spelling. And I respond (jokingly), “Do you want quality or volume?”

 

His reply is usually dismissive of my cavalier style but somehow we get through each of these editorial discussions and the Perceptric blog grows and grows.

 

During one of our “editorial quality” conversations recently I retorted to the repeated grammatical structure and spelling entreaty with an almost flippant, “It would appear that regardless of the poor layout and my bad spelling, we are doing better than the newspapers in retaining readers  attention”.

“We don’t have many readers (less than 100,000), but the ones that we do have are connecting with us in a more meaningful and much longer time than any of the major Australian Media sites do”.

 

“Are you sure?” asked Chris.

 

“Well, if you look at the time that the average reader spends on our little irrelevant blog and compare that to nearly anyone that has a few million bucks to run their blog – we appear to be creaming them. Do me a favour – pull up the Alexa ratings for Perceptric.com”.

 

“Yep, done”.

 

“OK, now add-in some premium media content – like ninemsn.com.au smh.com.au. afr.com.au and to balance the results include another Blog site like crikey.com.au, and then click compare and then Daily Traffic Rank”.

 

Chris and I then discussed the aspects of the different stats available on Alexa.

 

 

According to the Daily Traffic Rank it would seem that the field is dominated by Ninemsn almost neck and neck with the SMH with Crikey in third place, followed closely by the AFR and trailing invisibly at the back is Perceptric.

 

So if that’s all it takes to get advertising, then I think I will do a deal with Microsoft and get my name on the top of every Internet Explorer browser,

 

So now dear advertising reader, it’s your cue to ask, “But Koltai – how do we know they’re reading our ads”.

 

Ah, there’s another little tool in Alexa that allows you to see how long individual peeps stay on a site.

 

It shows a totally different picture.

 

It would appear the Perceptric is leading the pack.

Then, in daily page views per user, there is a battle royal for attention, but again with Perceptric gaining on the field..

 

 

So, should you, dear reader, spend your advertising dollar with Perceptric?

 

“Um, no, we don’t do advertising.”

 

But the evidence is clear that major media, while they have the initial attention of the consumer, also seem to lose it fast.

 

“Do you mean that people actually stay longer on the Perceptric blog than the leading Television and Newspaper sites of the land?”

 

“Well, yes. They do.”

 

“Why?”

 

Well this might be a reason….

 

“At Perceptric, we tell it like it is with very little spin. Neither Chris nor I have political aspirations. We have nothing to sell except our knowledge and we give away a lot of that knowledge for free.”

 

“But are you qualified?”

 

“You mean beyond our both being over 50, both entrepreneurs and our university studies?”

 

Yes. What qualifies you to broadcast your views to the world at large.

 

“Well nothing really. We don’t believe that one needs to be qualified to obtain user attention. If one however then gets users attention, then obviously one is giving the users what they want.”

 

“And what’s that, Koltai?”

 

“Read the Blog…”

 

Oh, and keep in mind, it doesnt matter if a site has 10 million users or 20 users. If the users only stay online long enough to leave, the user numbers dont really mean much.

Internet destinations that engage their readers/players/users for long periods of time should be your media buying target. (Per impression of course.)

 

Postcript:

 

We talked earlier about an article from Businessweek. Entitled, “Only 16% Trust Corporate Blogs: Are They Worth Doing?”

 

“It would appear that Businessweek, is up for grabs, according to http://www.dancewithshadows.com/business/bloomberg-among-potential-bidders-for-businessweek/

 

Bloomberg, the financial news agency, is considering a bid for BusinessWeek, the business magazine published by McGraw-Hill.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, the interest shown by Bloomberg in buying BusinessWeek has “further crowded” the field of potential bidders, and also indicates Bloomberg’s intentions in continuing to expand beyond its core business of providing financial data, news, and analytics to professionals.

Quoting “people familiar with the matter,” The Wall Street Journal reported that the other potential bidders for BusinessWeek included Bruce Wasserstein, the chief executive of the investment bank Lazard Limited and who owns the magazine TheDeal and New York Magazine; ZelnickMedia; Joe Mansueto, founder of Morningstar; and private equity firms Platinum Equity, Warburg Pincus, and OpenGate Capital.

The bids for BusinessWeek will take place on September 15, 2009.

In July 2009, the United States-based publisher McGraw-Hill, which owns BusinessWeek, had said that it was “putting on the block” its financial magazine and also “exploring strategic options” for the magazine.

BusinessWeek, founded in 1929, has a circulation of 936,000 copies in the United States. The magazine’s main competitors in the national business magazine-class are Forbes and Fortune, both of which are published bi-weekly.

 

So the company that depended on the Forrestor Research report that said that only 16% of the world listened to Corporte Blogs is now being sold. Possibly consumers don't really trust the big Corporations anymore.

 

We wonder if the following has anything to do with McGraw-Hills decision? 

 

 

PPS: That’s all folks, until the next badly written, badly spelt, atrociously laid out, irreverent Blog article. Thank-you and it’s goodnight from me, and goodnight from him.

 

(Two Ronnies circa 1970)

 

PPPS

Damn I forgot the all important title - where should you advetise?

We think you should take a couple of adverts on facebook - and our suggestion? Place them next to Farmville for maximum bang for your buck.

But with that said - this advice is only good in Internet time. Next week? It will probably be a different Game.

This gives you the greatest access to 34% of the female game playing population most likely to be aged 27 years old and a housewife.

And I'm sorry I published this because I guess Farmville will be now be one of the most expensive words on Google.

References:

 

ALEXA

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.perceptric.com%2Fblog

 

Digital Divas

http://advertising.microsoft.com/WWDocs/User/en-us/ResearchLibrary/ResearchReport/Digital-Divas.pdf

 

NEARLY A THIRD OF OUR LEISURE TIME IS SPENT ONLINE

http://www.tnsglobal.com/news/news-6A7B1D614B284E20B26AA3A75601275B.aspx

Youtube Video Promotion for StopBigMedia.com

http://www.stopbigmedia.com/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The problem with the Internet is that it’s full of lies and misdirection.

Some of those lies emanate from Media barons, some from Politicians. Hell, some even come from Bloggers. But when the misdirection is uttered by a music artist who is worshipped by the young and naive, then I feel that I have to respond.

On September the 16^th, Lily Allen published an article on her blog that she had purported to write herself. Since then Lily’s Blog has been removed. We saved it.

The problem is, it was one of the most ridiculous and misleading manifestos on file sharing that I have ever seen.

Whether they were her words or an industry shills (which I like to believe they were) is irrelevant to the damage her words have caused on a global scale, politically.

The apparent naive utterings of young starving artist apparently scared of being sent broke by the internet file sharers.

Her stance on file sharing was of course ridiculed by critics globally, but I doubt  whether any of her claims were actually analyzed and properly individually dissected … or that the correct data was ever fed back to Lily.

After all without us old guys on the Net…. How do young ’uns know what’s right or what’s wrong?

So without more ado, my response to Lilly’s blog.

(Lily’s comments are in Blue and mine are in Black.

September 16, 2009 - Wednesday 

More Piracy Stuff, moi, Matt Bellamy and Bjorn Ulvaeus
Current mood:   focused

I've had a lot of responses back since my previous blog posting here.

You would Lily, P2P is a favourite amongst the majority of informed Internet users.

The long and short of it is, even before this economic downturn Piracy

Fist of all – lets talk about the word PIRACY.

What you’re referring to is not Piracy. Piracy is something that happens when starving Somalians’  want to hijack your boat for ransom.

File sharing is file sharing. It is not Piracy. Piracy is the removal of physical possessions.

File sharing is more like taking a picture of a physical object and showing the photo to your friends.

Think of file sharing as public relations and suddenly you’ll see that it (P2P file sharing) is actually a good thing. But hell, I don’t want to preach to you… after all, you are probably only repeating what your minders told you to say.

has been affecting all areas of entertainment, except maybe theatre.

That’s what the movie studios used to say until the Price Waterhouse report was released last year showing that their attendance records and revenues are growing annually at a compound 7.1% growth rate. Probably the largest of any legal business in the world.

CD sales, Film DVD sales, book sales , TV DVD sales, everything.

Woah, girlie. Each of those has a different reason for declining sales. Let’s break it up.

CD Sales – Old technology – nearly no-one has CD-drives in their computers, netbooks, laptops or phones. End of Technology – sort of like the 8-Track.

Film DVD Sales are actually increasing. I’m not sure where you get your statistics from, but I’m sure they don’t include the Walmart, ALDI or Woolworths numbers on the bundled catalogue titles.

Whenever I look through the DVD sale bins, in those establishments, I am never alone in my fossicking, there are usually at least a few people to see what “gems” Hollywood have demoted to deep catalogue this week. What is decreasing is the profit from each DVD, Whereas it used to be $50.00 profit per DVD it is now a more realistic 25% or about a buck.

Book Sales – well I’m afraid on this point you are undoubtedly correct. Young people don’t really read five books a week anymore because Television grew up in the eighties and started being 24 hours instead of the 5:00 pm to 10 pm event that it was in the ‘60’s.

Additionally, there are a lot more rock stars these days and a sh**load more concerts to attend than in the sixties or seventies. When I was a lad I went to every concert I could in Wellington (NZ) and that equaled a maximum of about ten per year. These days, there are five concerts a week. So yes, on book sales, I’m afraid that the younger people have grown up with more choices than just – um where’s my library card?

So obviously book sales would be damaged when there are so many competing entertainment options.

But I do have a question for you Lilly… Please give me a single meaningful statistical example of P2P downloads of books. I ask because I have been measuring P2P metrics for sometime and I promise you that whilst there are a few books on the P2P networks, most of them relate to university study material and not the latest best sellers. When compared to Music downloads, novels don’t even rate. Just as Music doesn’t rate when compared to video content.

Music Videos? Well, they’re in a separate P2P category all of their own.

TV DVD Sales That’s almost laughable.  I spoke to a DVD retailer a while ago in Adelaide who said his main DVD sales were for people in Italy, Greece and France because he had copies of the local foreign TV series DVD’s that were not available in their own country and people were phoning him from those countries pleased that they could obtain legal copies.

Lily, the problem with TV series downloads is not that they’re downloaded via P2P, it’s that the distributors are too dumb to get their act together and do a digital day/date release the day after the cable stations have purchased the content.

So, users RIP the cable content and share it with their less fortunate global peers. You know the ones – people from countries like Argentina, Ethiopia, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Kazakhstan; the countries who don’t have the benefit of  economically affordable Cable TV choice.

You see Lily, in the real world, outside of your advisor’s head, there are actually companies that don’t care what the population watches as long as the company can screw the population for the maximum with the minimum cost to themselves. And in Australia for example, the minimum cost to our one and only monopoly cable content purchaser, means that they (Foxtel) repeat everything 50 times a year.

If you had to watch repeats of everything 50 times a year, would you be satisfied Lily? I think not.

So the question should not be “Why do people download TV content for free?” But… “Why do the cable companies and content distributors force people to download content for free by not giving them any other viable options?”

One answer is laziness and habit – Content owners have sweetheart content deals that originated in the 70’s and 80’s when the cable companies had a monopoly on distribution. (This was before the days of DVD’s, Lily).

Those deals allowed the content owners to have long lunches and let their lawyers do the selling for them, who unfortunately also like to do long lunches so they limit the number of deals that they are willing to do…. so they can sell the TV series 300 times instead of 5 billion times. Yep – I think that 5 billion digital customers at $1.00 each is a far better customer base than 300 cable TV distributors at $25,000 per episode each. – Get your minder to do the math, Lily. I don’t have the inclination.

So it isn’t really that file sharers are ripping off the content companies. It’s more that the content companies are ripping off you, the artist, by limiting your exposure to potential new audiences by not making the content available ubiquitously. In other words, you’re either a member of the old school gang or you’re not. And if you’re not – it’s nearly impossible to join the gang.

Earlier today I blogged about the  panel of Media experts (which included News Limited people) when USC Annenberg put together a panel with "leading media architects" Peter Chernin and Gordon Crawford about the long view of the future of Media distribution.

In that video, “the expert” revealed that they would have “Digital Distribution” organized in about 8 years time.

Lily, you’re 24 years old. If you get busy on being a mom now, your first child will be seven years old before you can legally download a Digital copy of Fantasia or the Wizard of Oz for her/him.

You will be 32 years old.

Do you want to wait until you are 32 before being able to download the Wizard of Oz or the videos of your own music concerts so that you can show your children, legally?

I didn’t think so. And Lily, no-one else wants to wait on the dinosaur slug called the content industry either.

They (the industry) may have assisted you in “making it” but believe me, it was not for your benefit.  Like when you finally are able to download your own concert videos, I wonder how much you will have to pay to watch yourself.

Now, if people go on consuming at the rate they are and do not pay for what they are consuming, not only will the artists within all these industries be without jobs and unable to express themselves but the behind the scenes people too. Thats literally millions of jobs

Methinks someone is feeding you a line, yet again.

In Australia in 2005 there were the equivalent of 80 million 90 minute movies downloaded online via P2P. The population at that time was 21 million. So let’s round those numbers a little and say that meant four movies per person for the entire year.

I hardly think that qualifies for “millions” being put of work.

Actually Lily, I don’t even think that qualifies for one person put out of work. Please let me know if I’m wrong.

. . I know that a lot of you want to know that you're not being overcharged for a product and you want to know that your hard earned cash is going to the right places, a lot of work has to be done in order for this to happen. I think that paying 14.99 for an album is ridiculous, I'm with you on that, and that wont happen again, but piracy is not the answer.

Lets not call it piracy again, but let’s do talk about file sharing. I happen to think that file-sharing is the perfect answer, economically speaking. File sharing is forcing an industry that has been gouging artists and fans alike for decades – to revisit their pricing models and rationalise their policies to allow more people to obtain the content instantaneously (that means digitally), globally instead of day-parting the release to a ten year old formula that has been broken by the ubiquity of the Internet - and automaticall encourages file sharing.

What do you do if you need a loaf of bread and your local deli is out of bread? You go to the supermarket.

File-sharing was also the reason why so many of your fans can now listen to you on their iPods and phones. Without File sharing, Steven Jobs would never have (seconded) developed the iPod and subsequently would never have been able to start iTunes.

It's hard enough to get a job at the moment. People are being laid off in all areas and the record companies are no exception. My own label EMI laid off thousands last year. I don't care so much about the high-ups (and by the way they're always the last to go - what a surprise) but the people who are going out are the young ones, the life blood basically. They're the ones that go first, ,

Lily, this has nothing to do with file sharing. It has to do with the death of an outdated distribution model and the record companies failure to pull their heads out of the sand and see the developing trend.

I've seen it. And the same is happening in TV and film. Why do you think you are just getting Terminator 6 and Harry Potter 7 instead of exciting new voices?

Actually, I think we get Terminator and Harry Potter because they are a proven successful series. Lucky for you Lily, fans buy what they like. Your logic would tend to suggest that fans should only buy one of your albums and then buy other unknowns to expand the available artistic pool.

Um, I think you should think that one through before repeating it again. Whether you stay or go, your future revenues depend on the credibility and persona that you have built up as an artist. Every other artist that is “discovered” actually takes money from your future children’s mouths.

File sharer’s just increase recognition of you as an artist and increase the community desire to buy your T-shirts, attend your concerts or have you as the background music at their wedding.

Because the young voices are not there anymore. Do you care about that, or do you just want to watch and listen to the products of the last generation?

It’s interesting you should say that Lily. Did you know that before copyright was ever invented, people played music, wrote music and copied memes and themes from each other with no-one going broke?

In fact there are only two types of people in the world that copyright benefits. One of those is the lawyers and the other one is the people that can afford to hire the best lawyers.

So the contrary argument to “copyright assists in the creation of new talent “ is copyright destroys more new talent that it protects. (If you need an example Lily, search “Lambada”).

Or do you want a voice that is heard and can make a difference?

And that would be who Lily? I know we elect our Presidents mainly from amongst film stars, but I don’t think any musos have made it to 10 Downing Street yet. You see music is mostly irrelevant except as a small portion of our entertainment elective. Mainly listening to it whilst at the fish and chips shop, on the bus or tube with our iPods, or whilst talking to our friends at the local pub. So music is a social facilitator, just like alcohol or marijuana.

What I do know is  we have to invest in this sector of our country guys,

The people do invest Lily. Through the television licences that finance the BBC, one of the biggest creators of new and fresh content in the UK.

we are great film makers,we have incredible writers and authors, historically the best music makers, we cant throw it all away.

You’re not Lily. File sharing has done more for spreading the music, spreading the meme, than any PR exercise has ever been capable of achieving.

The internet is the most amazing thing, but it should be OUR thing, and ironically piracy is just playing into the hands of the corporations.  

Now this one is so ironic, that I could almost do a whole 20 page blog article about it.

Unfortunately, the Corporation that backed you, Rupert Murdoch’s News Limited, is the company that is being hurt the most by the Internet; so this statement in the middle of everything you have had to say on this subject puzzles me.

Although it could be a psychological ruse into convincing your readers that you really are naïve. If so, it’s a clever one.

What these artists and creators do, they do for the love of it,

They may do. But I always thought that people that signed recording artist contracts did so because they wanted fame and fortune.

The people that do it for the love can be found in little café’s and bistros or in barnyard sheds or garages jamming for their friends.

Let’s face it Lily, no-one would put up with the shit that goes along with becoming a star who really didn’t want to get filthy rich.

I know its hard because money is scarce but we have to inject money back into these areas.

It (money) is (injected) every day via Youtube, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, Redbox. These companies in the last year have collected more from digital sales than the entire music and film industries managed to collect in any two years combined, previously. How can you say we aren’t injecting money?

It's not fair to steal peoples material,I know it's art and it has no physical value but even Shakespeare had shares in The Globe Theatre. People will lose their jobs, you'll be watching X-factor, Simon Cowell will be getting richer, radio stations will be churning out old back catalogues from people your dad or even your grandads age (vera lynn is No 1 this week)

No Lily. That’s what copyright has managed to achieve by claiming 50-95 year copyright periods. Public domain is what you are referring to. Not reality.

Besides, I think Vera Lynn is cool – if you remix her with an interesting backbeat and Charlton Heston as Peer Gynt – Great movie – brilliant soundtrack (even if it was a pre talkie movie). However you are right. Content has no physical value.

It has a time value; a relevancy value and a personal memory value. These are what economists call “hedonic value”.

Therefore the real value of content is the hedonic value applied by the consumer to the content.

i.e.: Person A may be a Lilly Allen fan and go into orgiastic enthrallment every time they hear your music. That person would be prepared no doubt to pay 50.00 per album of your songs.

 Person B on the other hand is a 75 year old strict Methodist who would run from the “wet patch” or “f*ck you” lyrics.

This has nothing to do with file sharing. It has to do with the personal hedonic value proposition.

 and the taxpayer will have to subsidize yet more unemployment.

Sorry. There is another aspect to this. What about the dole bludger that sits at home all day, so enthralled by your melodic tunes that they can’t be bothered to go to work?

Bull*hit you say? Well we agree, but the idea that file sharing is responsible for even one person being laid off is just as ridiculous.

Please, please, please go and see a film in the cinema instead of buying it in Tesco's  car-park , buy a c.d. or album off itunes if you really like it, and god help us, keep buying books . If we do this, i really think we can make a difference.     Anyone band, writer, author, musician, actress please feel free to contact me on this matter if you feel it is important

Wonderful sentiments. So tell me Lilly. Will the DVD or CD I buy tomorrow work in the machine of the future that no longer has a DVD drive? Or what happens if the company that created the DRM has gone out of business. Because I have about 100 mixed LP’s, and cassette tapes that regardless of what I try, just wont squeeze into my DVD drive.

You see the problem with your request is that the digital copy is portable. I can take that or send it to any device that I have.

Maybe instead of entreating the consumers, you could turn your attention to the big media distributors and ask them…..

“Hey guys, this Koltai character raises some interesting questions”.

“Why will it take eight years for me to legally be able to download any movie that I want?”

And Lily – if you did decide to turn quisling, and did receive a response, I can promise you that if you published that response it would get you into 10 Downing Street; but what you’re doing now, is unfortunately doomed to failure.

P.S.: Next time you want to rant in public about file sharing – send me the draft and I’ll be happy to point out where you might have just a few facts wrong.  

By the way, I love your music Lily and if you’re happy to hire me at my hourly rate as a PhD Economist…. – I’ll be happy to buy your next album. Although I expect there’s not much use for Economists in the music business. Especially radical ones that tell the truth.

Last week I was on a panel at an AIMIA conference which was about commercializing video.

Through the day there were presentations from a whole bunch of people, as you would expect. But as they were talking I started thinking, "This is a bunch of hogwash". Now there were some people there who presented some pretty interesting stuff, so I don't want to disparage all of them...

But the thinking led me to this conclusion:

The people presenting were all talking about themselves and how they make money, and none of them were providing any information of any kind that could be useful for anyone who wanted to get in on the game. Now that is probably all you expect at events like this.

Like the lawyer who was on a panel talking about rights issues. He was quite open about the fact that the way things are you need to have some very smart lawyers to understand the contracts relating to video exploitation in a digital environment, and how good that was for his profession. Nothing wrong with that idea - after all its just good old capitalism. But the reality was that he wanted to share with everyone how he was making money out of video by being a good lawyer, not how his clients were making money out of video by his work...

Now maybe I heard it wrong, but that is certainly the impression I had.

Then there was the guy from ABC Enterprises. He was pitching to all young film makers the benefit of getting the ABC to handle licensing - and giving them a big share of the revenue. Now I happen to think that this is a pretty good idea - a serious digital rights aggregation play that is.

Then there were the mobile operators. Their presentations were about how they were serving up video to people and writing cheques to the content owners. But it was actually all about them making money out of video - not about how they could help new media producers...

And then there were people such as the guy from NineMSN who bandied about how video was going to be the big driver behind NineMSN in the next year and well NineMSN was doing... While he was talking I pulled up the alexa.com numbers on NineMSN and what it looked like to me was that this business is on a slow downward trend in terms of page views, time spent on line and all the key indicators. So I'm not sure what growth means over there at NineMSN, but it didn't look too promising to me...

One guy on a panel talked about a rosy future when there would be devices that enable you to play content downloaded to your PC on your TV.... I was amazed that this was something that is going to happen in the future, because I have one of those thingies that Tom bought for me at Aldi for 99 bucks... Amazing how fast the future comes along these days isn't it.

When I got on my panel I talked a bit about how set top boxes were never going to be of consequence because people don't want to pay for yet another box unless it is really cheap, and how what people want is free movies and now, and how that is what they are already getting....

I talked about how content makers have to stop fantasizing about how to make direct revenue streams from video. And have to think about things in an holistic way, about what the overall entertainment offering is....

A good idea that captures people's attention is what makes exciting and successful content.

Making content free enables it to travel faster and further giving it the potential to create more excitement for its brand...