PR Event: Chinwag Live's Micro Media Maze

I piled in late to the Chinwag Live event last night, which took place at The Slug and Lettuce on Wardour Street, Soho. I managed to get a fairly good seat at the back though (complete with clear route to the bar), so got to catch plenty of the action.

The event was billed as follows:

"First the music track was decoupled from the physical product and the "long player" album, then the newspaper article was severed from the website. The same wave rolled over the blog post, the TV show, the photo, the vlog, and now the tweet...

It seems like everything's gone micro. As content is disaggregated into ever smaller pieces and syndicated and widgetised at accelerating speed, how is the media landscape being re-shaped, and who are the winners in this scenario?

Are media owners caught between a rock and a hard place? They've got to get their content out there, but context and branding work differently in the world of mashups and aggregators. In turn, the revenues they make from micro media pale in comparison to their staple money-making ventures (print, CDs, TV, DVD, film).

P2P culture is also firmly embedded, with iTunes and other digital retailers numbers' still dwarfed by ripping and filesharing. Now media giants like Microsoft and the BBC are using P2P technnology, but has their deeper modus operandi shifted? Are they fated to be outpaced and outgunned by innovative companies who play by different rules?

In turn, is the profusion of micro-content a recipe for meltdown, with information overload and competing "me-too" platforms delivering little but dumb aggregation which ultimately becomes a headache?

In this, the sequel to our groundbreaking Media Widgetised / Widget Week event in May 2007, our panel of experts will look at the issues and opportunities surrounding the explosion of micro media for publishers, brands, business, and culture more broadly..."

And the panel of exeprts were:

Umair Haque - Director, Havas Media Lab / Bubblegeneration
Umair heads up the Havas Media Lab, a new kind of strategic advisor that helps investors, entrepreneurs, and firms experiment with, craft, and drive radical management, business models, and strategic innovation. Prior to Havas, Umair founded Bubblegeneration, an agenda-setting advisory boutique that helped shape the strategies of investors, entrepreneurs, and blue chip companies across media and consumer industries. Bubblegeneration’s work has been recognised by publications like Wired, Red Herring, Business 2.0, and BusinessWeek, and in Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, to which Umair was a contributor. He also blogs as a discussion leader at Harvard Business Online.

Gerd Leonhard - Media Futurist, Author, Entrepreneur
The Wall Street Journal calls Gerd one of the leading media futurists in the world. Co-author of the influential book The Future of Music (2005, Berklee Press), Music2.0 (Jan 2008, self-published paywhatyouwant pdf available), and of Open is King (Fall 2008), Gerd's background is in music (he won the Quincy Jones Award in 1986) as well as technology and the internet (former CEO of LicenseMusic Inc; currently CEO of Sonific.com). His work focuses on the convergent sectors of music and content, technology, communications and culture. His clients include SonyBMG, RTL, ITV, BBC, France Telekom, German Telekom, Orange, LebWeb3, Financial Times, TribalDDB, the European Commission, and Nokia-Siemens.

Miles Lewis - SVP, European Advertising Sales, LastFM
Miles launched his career in media at Haymarket publishing in 1988, moving to a consumer magazine role with IPC Media for their Leisure Network. Shifting to Good Housekeeping, a 5 year stint at the National Magazine Company included various roles across Corporate Business Development and finally Director, Advertising Sales at Esquire. Miles then became the UK’s first Head of Agency Sales at AOL (UK) Ltd in 2001. Five years on, Blake Chandlee (now at Facebook UK) brought Miles into Yahoo!’s UK and Ireland operations as Head of Agency Sales. Then CBS’s Last.fm came knocking and now Miles is charged with the strategy, direction and monetisation of Last.fm across Europe, Asia Pacific and Australia.

Mitch McAlister - Product Director (Europe), MySpace
In his current role Mitch defines and lead European product strategy and architecture to address market demands, revenue oppertunities, and user growth, identifying and building relationships with potential technology partners to enhance current product offering. Prior to Myspace, he was Project Lead at Universal Music Enterprises. With over 8 years experience in the internet industry Mitch's focus has been product and marketing, specifically on the social media side of things. He has built eBay stores, runs a weekly podcast, and has been working with MySpace for three years.

Neil McIntosh - Head of Editorial Development, Guardian Unlimited
Neil McIntosh is head of editorial development for Guardian.co.uk, where he has led the launch and development of innovative blog, audio and video services since 2004. He lives in London, supports Swindon Town FC, and blogs about it all at completetosh.com



CHAIR: Steve Bowbrick
Steve is one of Britain's most experienced Internet managers and entrepreneurs. A fifteen year veteran of dot.com boom and bust, of web site design, online marketing, technology strategy, capital raising and people management. Steve advises media owners (Channel 4 and the BBC), startups (Rememble.com) and consumer brands (King of Shaves) about social media and digital strategy.


Here's the skinny on what I managed to jot down whilst balancing a notepad on one knee and a hard-earned pint on the other:

Micro-media and social issues:

• We still see widgets as games, largely due to Facebook
• Last.fm and Myspace revolutionised the music industry, solving a problem along the way
• But there are more serious global problems, such as world poverty, health, education, rising food prices
• We are under an illusion, especially in London, that media is entertainment, but the media also educates and can be used to solve social problems
• Widgest and micro-media can offer a way to help solve these problems
• But you have to create value before you can capitalise on it, you have to have a purpose before you can profit from it
• Umair Haque's challenge for micro-media developers: how do we solve social problems and add value at the same time?

The media's control of micro-media:

• The media is starting to move to a model where they are collaborating with their audience
• The key is where they choose to loose control and where they choose to keep it
• The stakes and the risks are high for media organisations, but if they don't take these risks then it's game over for them
• If these "old dinosaurs" don't change their business moidel to address social problems then they will become extinct

How will revenue be generated?

• Media comapnies control billions of punds of spend
• But this money is being spent on where the audience is migrating to
• They are putting it into TV and search, which works for some companies but will not reach the right audience for most
• Old media won't die, people will just use it in different ways
• People still watch Eastenders, but they'll watch it on BBC's iPlayer rather than on their TV
• People used to pay for music, but now they get it for free by clicking somewhere
• The same has happened for software and phone calls
• No one knows where the next success is, the next "Google", but this is where we should be investing, not in traditional media

Brand Messaging:

• There is an assumption that brands will have to piggy back a message onto their widgets
• The CEO of Kellogs can't go to traditional media and say "Well, we've turned Crunchy Nut Cornflakes into a listening brand - what more do you want?"
• Micro-media is a slower process of engagement with a brand's audience

What does this mean for our culture?

• The BBC can't commission big budget dramas that people like to watch, e.g. 24, The Sopranos
• We must think carefully which content and functionality we push out into micro-media
• The BBC like to think that their content is good enough to push out to YouTube and iTunes, through which they can create a global voice

Last.fm have already created value - what percentage of your reve=nue comes through affiliates, e.g. ticket sales?

• Can't give percentage split of revenue streams
• But Last.fm is the world's largest on-demand jukebox
• The future will be taking data to agencies: how can data on listener's music tastes fit into a brand's efforts?
• For example, if dishwasher powder buyers like Madonna, and the advert plays a Madonna song, at what point does this affect sales?
• Listeners have been giving Last.fm their music tastes, but the challenge for Last.fm was to build a platform to keep this data safe
• But now micro-media will take this data away from the Last.fm site, which raises the problem of data security
  
• Some data is too personal to Last.fm - they are purely a music silo that benefits users when they give more data to the site
  

What financial incentives could there be for users creating content?

• The overhead for running user generated content is tremendous
• Myspace has 100s of people checking photos that are uploaded to the site
• Running this outweighs whatever revenue could be giving to content creators
  

The end of the night was the best bit, with plenty of good chat/banter, ideas developed and new introductions made, all lubricated by a healthy amount of alcomahol.

Among the crowd were Jonathan Hopkins (@jopkins), Claire W (@claire_w), Amanda Rose (@amandita), Dom Whitehurst (@domw), Katy Howell (@katyhowell), Robin Grant (@robingrant), and Will Mcinnes (@willmcinnes) - so a big hello to them!

I'm already looking forward to the next Chinwag Live event, but in the meantime I need to start building that micro-media application for this blog that will solve world hunger...

Update 1: Jemima Kiss blogged the Chinwag event at The Guardian's PDA blog.
Update 2: Jonathan Hopkins also adds some great insight into the event.

Pandora-monium

A phoenix seems to have risen out of the flames of the Pandora debacle.

A new site called Global Pandora (recently written up by TechCrunch France) apparently allows you to access Pandora from anywhere in the world.

But, as soon as this post went live, it appears as though Global Pandora has been shut down… deadpooled until further notice.

Rubbish.

It seems that yesterday's post was quite timely, as Media Guardian announced today that owners of digital music players will be able to copy music for their own use, according to government proposals.

Music falling on deaf ears?

First, Radiohead released their latest album on a pay-as-much-as-you-want basis. Now a top violinist is to release her latest album free of charge.

But then I received an email this morning from Tim Westergren, CEO of Pandora, informing me that their free internat radio service was beiong forced to stop broadcasting to UK-based users:

"As you probably know, in July of 2007 we had to block usage of Pandora outside the U.S. because of the lack of a viable license structure for Internet radio streaming in other countries. We did however hold out some hope that a solution might exist for the UK, so we left it unblocked as we worked diligently with the rights organizations to negotiate an economically workable license fee. After over a year of trying, this has proved impossible. Both the PPL (which represents the record labels) and the MCPS/PRS Alliance (which represents music publishers) have demanded per track performance minima rates which are far too high to allow ad supported radio to operate and so, hugely disappointing and depressing to us as it is, we have to block the last territory outside of the US.

It continues to astound me and the rest of the team here that the industry is not working more constructively to support the growth of services that introduce listeners to new music and that are totally supportive of paying fair royalties to the creators of music. I don't often say such things, but the course being charted by the labels and publishers and their representative organizations is nothing short of disastrous for artists whom they purport to represent - and by that I mean both well known and indie artists.

The only consequence of failing to support companies like Pandora that are attempting to build a sustainable radio business for the future will be the continued explosion of piracy, the continued constriction of opportunities for working musicians, and a worsening drought of new music for fans... There may well come a day when we need to make a direct appeal for your support to move for governmental intervention as we have in the US. In the meantime, we have no choice but to turn off service to the UK."

A very good bit of PR from Pandora, having their CEO release a statement to all of its users explaining what has happened and what they are doing, or trying to do, about it.

But, as Duncan Riley argues:

"The stupidity of the RIAA continues to have little bounds, particularly when a decision like this forces a US company to stop streaming outside of the United States, and yet American owned companies based in the United Kingdom (like Last.fm) are free to stream music anywhere. The RIAA is costing the United States jobs and investment by regulations that will force innovative companies like Pandora in the future to only set up overseas, or never set up at all."

Whilst music artists are leading the music industry into a new and exciting era, innovating new ways of reaching audiences yet still retaining commercial success, it seems that the organisations that govern the music industry and the record labels themselves are failing to adapt to this new era, or at least not being willing to adapt if profits aren't immediately available.

Perhaps rather than losing the business or Radiohead et al to the digital revolution, the bosses of the major record labels need to work with these innovative artists in order to find a way forward.

Add to this that Napster has also joined the move away from copy protected music, isn't it time that the record labels faced the music?

Seth Godin also talks about the collapse of the music industry here.