Music Business Spotify is financial death by a trillion streams Streaming will turn recorded music into a nickel and dime game, which will only work for multinational aggregated rights owners.
Publishing Seth Godin on author scarcity and souvenirs The future of books lies in amateur authors, together with the few superstars with a big enough tribe to earn significant advances and royalties.
Business Rethinking to-do lists We all have stuff that needs to be done, and keeping it together is clearly difficult enough to warrant the existence of a gigantic to-do list industry.
Marketing How the Buddha solved his marketing problem When you think of the Buddha, you don't think of marketing. But if we agree with Seth Godin that marketing is about spreading ideas, then you could say the Buddha was one of the greatest marketers of all time.
Year With No Beer 180 days down in my Year With No Beer #YWNB Today is my 180th day with no booze! It’s actually been really easy and so I’m setting a new challenge for the second half of 2011: daily exercise. I think it’s going to be much harder to achieve.
Publishing Ingram brings Print-On-Demand to Australia Ingram Content launched their print-on-demand biz Lightning Source in Australia today. It’s no small thing either and will dramatically impact how indie publishers run their national supply chain.
Publishing Seth Godin on game theory and free Very important blog post from Seth Godin today, The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap. It’s a must read.
Business Offices of work and Microsoft With business growth comes the need to find new office space. I am not so sure anymore. Why does anyone involved in the creative industries need to be confined to a cubical any more?
Music Business The recorded music biz 2000 vs 2010 Interesting series of charts from Digital Music News (love your work PR!) breaking down recorded music revenues by format. Here’s a couple of charts, and for the full set go to the DMN site.
Publishing Can a free book be a bestseller? Can a book given away for free can actually be a bestseller? Does the consideration for the sale have to be greater than zero?
Marketing The future of artist management The future of performing and recording artist management is global brand management using in-market expertise. We are moving into a disaggregated world and the gatekeepers are slowly losing their powering and influence.
Music Business Driving me crazy, and back in the music biz A good friend called me a week ago to help him out driving at a music festival. It was great fun driving artists and execs around. Happy days.
Technology A free Kindle? Unlikely unless you like ads Amy Gahran over at CNN says Amazon would be smart to give away the Kindle. Here's why she's wrong.
Creativity Ive's potential loss a bigger blow to Apple than Jobs' So not one but two eyebrows were raised at the news that Apple’s head of industrial design, Jon Ive, might be exiting the building.
Marketing Introduce the familiar before the unknown Most people, even investors, are relatively risk adverse. Most of us like safety. Investors want to know that your product is not that unusual.
Marketing Godin’s Purple Cow I belatedly started reading Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. An easy read, he has interesting things to say about marketing in the 21st Century.
Creativity Digital clutter: deliver quantity or quality There’s so much information around today that there's only one option when building your lists: quality over quantity.
Business The customer is not always right It's time to throw out the old adage that "the customer is always right." Finding the right type of customer is much more important.
Business Repost: pushing or redefining boundaries Children push boundaries: it’s how they learn. Adults live within them: it keeps them safe. Geniuses redefine them: and the world changes.
Business You're not that special, no-one is Business, even industries, like to think they’re special. That they're immune from the laws of business. The book publishing industry is no exception.
Publishing Territorial craziness, what the publishing industry doesn't get Now book publishers are whining about the ease with with the Kindle’s territorial restrictions can be circumvented. Here's what they get wrong.
Principles With our thoughts we create the world Whining is a reverse placebo. When you get good at whining, you start noticing evidence that makes your whining more true.
Principles Perfection is not what you think To most people in Western society perfection means flawlessness. Free from mistakes. Zero errors. Do you know anyone who never makes mistakes?
Publishing Will book retailers get what they truly deserve? Our sales department received another call this week from a potential customer who couldn’t buy one of our books from the big retailers here in Australia.
Music Business Books v. Music: retail smackdown Will the the fate of recorded music retail befall booksellers? If history is any measure, the book biz is not likely to rebuf the digital onslaught.
