It's SXSW Voting Time

from the if-you'd-like-to-see-me-speak dept

It's that time of the year again, where the SXSW PanelPicker opens up for public voting. This year, I just pitched one session, for SXSWfilm, which I'm pretty excited about if it gets chosen. Rather than a typical panel, it's going to be an open brainstorming session for filmmakers, trying to come up with cool plans to better "connect with fans" and give those fans a "reason to buy." I'm really excited about the team that's ready to take part in this workshop, as they've got a ton of experience and smarts in this field, including filmmaker/author Jon Reiss (who beyond his long career in film has also written books like Think Outside the Box Office and regularly holds similar workshops), indie film marketer Sheri Candler (who is also writing a book with Reiss entitled Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul) and filmmaker/consultant Ross Pruden, who (among other things) runs the #infdist panel on Twitter, which is an ongoing conversation on how to better connect with fans and give people reasons to buy. If we get picked, it should be a blast.

Separately, while I didn't organize it, Alex Wright was kind enough to add me to his panel on Creative Business Models Beyond Copyright for SXSWinteractive. The idea behind this panel is to get people -- especially smaller businesses or those just starting out -- to think outside the box about alternative business models that go beyond just relying on copyright. Once again, I imagine it'll be a fun discussion. If you'd like to see me speak at SXSW, please vote for those two panels. Thanks!

Some other potentially interesting panels (I have no association with any of these, they just looked interesting scrolling through the list):

• Surviving Lulz: Behind the Scenes of LulzSec (this one looks fascinating)
• Set Your Content Free (It's Harder Than You Think)
• The Systematic Undoing of Copyright Trolls
• Appetite for Enforcement: IP Policy Evolves
• 3D Printing: Not Everyone Will Be Excited
• Hey, That's Mine! Who Owns Content?
• Thank You, Wow & Done: The 3 only metrics you need
• "Now there's music cloud, where's movie cloud?"
• Tricking People Into Reading Again
• The Revolution Will Be Published (by Richard Nash, who you should be paying attention to)
• Can Free Streaming Music Survive and Thrive?
• Everything is a Remix, So Steal Like An Artist
• Vote4Geeks: Why Techies Should Run for Office
• Promoting the Innovation Economy (Rob Pegoraro is always interesting)

I'm sure there are plenty of others, but those are the ones that caught my eye...

Filed Under: panels, sxsw, voting

Vote On Whether Or Not I Get To Speak At SXSW

from the popularity-contests dept

Well, it's that time of year again, where SXSW gets everyone to vote on potential speakers/panels. This year, we submitted two proposals (one for interactive and one for music). I also know that a bunch of other folks kindly included me in their proposals to be on various panels and such (and others have told me that I'll be included if they get in). So, it seems like there may be a variety of ways to have me appear at SXSW (or, of course, for those who think I should shut up -- you know who you are -- you're free to vote me down as well).

First up, in the music part of SXSW, we proposed me doing an update on my Success Stories presentation, entitled The Secrets Of Success For An Internet-Age Musician.

Then, for the interactive part, we pitched a panel discussion about What Would Copyright Look Like If Created Today?, and proposed a variety of speakers for that panel who would present varying views on the topic. I actually think this could make for a really interesting discussion, so hopefully it gets approved.

Among other panels that people have told me I've been included in proposals for, there's Martin Thörnkvist's suggested panel for the music part creatively titled Love Has A Lot To Do With It, about how to "create sustainable careers for artists today." There's also Ross Pruden's Profiting From Piracy: Selling Your Digital-Age Content, which is a part of the film part of SXSW. Also in film, VODO and Bittorrent have proposed a discussion on Can P2P Save Filmmaking, which they've asked me to participate in.

There are a ton of other great suggestions for panels and talks that are probably worth voting for as well. The EFF has their own list of their proposed talks, all of which look fantastic. Public Knowledge has proposed a Legal Workshop for Music Bloggers and a Howto: Connect with Fans Online, Reap the Benefits, which is based on a project I'm an advisor to.

Some other proposals that caught my eye (and, no I didn't go through them all) as well. In film: How Interactive Screenings Will Save Cinema, Film Funding and Distribution: Past, Present and Future, Zero budget? Video projects using only open-source tools and Sell your Film for Free and Make Money. In music: Multiple Streams of Music Income, New Metrics for the Music Industry: Which Matter?, Why the Technology Industry No Longer Matters, FUTUREHIT.DNA - A Conversation With Jay Frank (which is a great book, by the way), The Collaboration of Artist & Fan: Music's Evolution, Download Illegally, It's The Right Thing To Do and Copyright Criminals. The Interactive session has so many proposals that I haven't had a chance to look at yet, that I'm not even going to recommend any from there just yet, but feel free to point out any interesting ones you find in the full list in the comments here.

Filed Under: sxsw

The Economics Of The Music Industry: A Band Has To Work Hard To Get Its Part

from the i-gotta-get-mine,-you-gotta-get-yours dept

richw alerts us to a fascinating essay from a member of the band Fucked Up (different, apparently, than the band we recently wrote about going by the name Holy Fuck) explaining the economics of SXSW for bands. Actually, though, it's much more than that. It explains the economics of the music industry, with a single point underlined: as a band, you need to figure out how to get money, and stop waiting for others to just give it to you. The key point is made somewhere in the middle:

You may have heard that the music industry is sort of falling apart. It isn't really a matter of there being less money in the pool - just that the money people have to spend on entertainment (which will always be somewhat of a constant) is just being diverted away from where it historically has gone (record labels and managers). The music industry is by definition an operation invented to divert money spent on music away from actual musicians - the problems that the music industry is currently facing have specifically to do with the fact that the money that would usually flow directly to the bigger economic actors is now going somewhere else.

This is such a succinct and accurate example of what we've been talking about for over a decade, it's worth repeating. As we've seen over and over again in numerous studies, the amount of money being spent on the music industry (remember: that's more than just selling records) hasn't gone down at all, and, in fact appears to have gone up over the last decade. The "issue" is that it's going to many other players in the market, rather than the record labels. In the past, the record labels did their best to keep that money from ever going to musicians. These days, a lot of that money is up for grabs -- and the record labels are upset that they're not getting more of it. Instead, it may be going to others, such as Apple or an ISP or someone else entirely. But, really, it's up for grabs -- and that's why we see a lot of smart musicians figuring out how to take advantage and get their share. But it is a scramble. And if you want to succeed in the music business these days, you need to figure out how to get your share:

Sxsw should be an example of where some of that money is going. While labels are trying to figure out how they can get their piece back, the question sxsw should leave for bands is how to get theirs, or to at least not throw it directly at hospitality and energy conglomerates in order to get to Austin and see your fans money go straight down the throats of Mountain Dew incorporated instead of into your pocket. And again, just to re-iterate - it's not like these companies are inherently evil or vicious. I kind of like Mountain Dew. It's just that they are way better than you at figuring out how to get peoples money, and while your job as an artists should mostly be about making great art, it should also be a little bit about how to be smart at if not making money, then at least not throwing an undue amount away just so someone else can make money at your expense. This is the crux of the matter - there is a big pool of money out there that everyone is trying to get - the music industry is panicking because a lot of the money that used to go from music consumers right to them, is now going to companies that are posted just on the periphery of music, letting bands and labels spend money making music, and then swooping in with music related marketing strategies aimed at getting some of that relatively free money.

The realization is key: basically, there's a pool of money that people are fighting for, and you need to figure out how to get your share, not whine about others who are doing a better job of figuring out how to get their share. It's a recognition that you're in business, and business means competition. In this case, the band appears to have worked out a deal with a clothing company to help fund its performance at SXSW, as part of an effort to show that it could be done, rather than having to lose money and hope that someone at SXSW decides to just give you a big check.

And that's, effectively, all we've been talking about here for more than a decade. It's about recognizing that the market has shifted, no one is automatically owed a living, but in this period of dynamic change, there really are a tremendous number of new opportunities. In the past, if you wanted to be a success, you were much more limited, because you had to wait for one of the big gatekeepers to anoint you. Today, your fate is in your own hands. It doesn't mean that everyone will succeed. Just as in any industry, many will fail along the way. But sitting around demanding money isn't going to work. As Dave Allen put it last year, it's time for musicians to start "being brilliant" from the business model side or to just get out of the way.

Filed Under: business models, fucked up, music, sxsw

Heroes Producer: Honored To Be The Most Unauthorized Downloaded Show

from the recognizing-the-future dept

One of the talks at SXSW was apparently about "multiplatform storytelling," which fits in with a point that we've discussed here in the past. Content creators are realizing that they no longer need to pigeonhole themselves as "just musicians," or "just filmmakers" but can reach out and tell stories in very different ways. And, in the end, that's what every content producer is really doing: they're telling stories. It doesn't necessarily matter what the format is, and there are no rules that say you're restricted to telling your entire story through just one platform.

This talk was given by Tim Kring, creator of the popular TV show Heroes, and he made some interesting points -- noting that he's "honored" that Heroes is the most "illegally" downloaded TV show out there, because "we'll take audience anywhere we can get it." But he's not just sitting back. The reason he doesn't care if people are watching the show on TV or elsewhere is because they're really working on ways to connect with fans in much deeper ways, including creating a pretty complex and massive alternative reality game that had true fans of the show actively involved -- such that they knew about certain characters and important plot points way before they appeared on the small screen, and were made to feel like actual participants in the story. As he noted, "people want to participate in their TV shows."

Again, this is a point that has been made before -- but so many of the suits upstairs still seem to think that TV is a purely broadcast media, not one where people want to communicate and participate in meaningful ways (and, yes, that means a lot more than just calling or texting a phone number to "vote" on something). It's great to see the folks actually making these stories are understanding this, because eventually that thinking will begin to become more common, rather than seem like some crazy idea to appease "the internet folks." We're not there yet, of course. NBC, which airs Heroes is still freaking out about those illegal downloads and wasting tons of money and resources claiming that it must be stopped -- all while its basic network schedule has been a huge disaster. If NBC top brass listened to folks like Kring, and realized the challenge is to make people happy, rather than spending so much time trying to force them into "the way NBC wants things to work," perhaps the network wouldn't be in so much trouble.

Filed Under: connect with fans, heroes, sxsw, tim kring
Companies: nbc

Selling 1,000 Portraits And Building A Ton Of Goodwill Not Good Business?

from the seems-fine-to-me dept

Michel Gondry spoke at SXSW to a packed house; it was fantastic to see one of my favorite directors speak about his creative process. During the talk, he mentioned a project he did where fans could buy portraits of themselves, sketched by Gondry himself, for only $20. He did about 1,000 of these portraits before he ended the deal, saying that while some portraits took only 2 minutes, he started getting fancier and fancier as time progressed, and eventually he didn't think that was a good business to continue it. When he said that, a collective, sad sigh was felt across the conference room, since I'm sure I was not the only one in the room who wanted a hand-drawn Michel Gondry portrait -- and if $20 wasn't the right price to make sense, business-wise, surely there was an appropriate price point that would make sense (and, in looking at his site, it appears that he raised the price to $99.95 with a copy of his DVD). Now, while it is true that Gondry is a famous movie director, surely a few hundred dollars for minutes of work is enough to get him interested, especially when he considers that this portrait further serves to endear him more to his most passionate fans, who are incredibly appreciative that he would ever even think to offer such a deal:

It's amazing enough that Michel has the time to draw thousands of portraits a week amidst his incredibly busy schedule and his "Green Hornet" workload. Hopefully this commitment will urge other filmmakers to devote similar generosity towards their fanbases...

So, contrary to what Gondry thought, his portrait offer most certainly made good business sense and was a great example of an RtB deal, since it was soaked in his charmingly quirky artistic personality. Then again, perhaps another example of Gondry's unique understanding of the business world is with this strange notice that he sent out to the purchasers of the portraits, sometimes well after they had purchased the image, telling them they could not resell the image ever.

"By placing your sketch order, you hereby acknowledge... that the sketch is for your personal use only and you shall not have the right to sell the sketch for any commercial purpose whatsoever."

To ask this of his truest fans (especially after they have commissioned a sketch) is not only most likely unenforceable legally (case law here is still a bit messy, but courts have said that you can't just give up your right of first sale based on one side's declaration), it also serves to sour the goodwill and affection that Gondry's true fans have bestowed upon him. Now, that's bad business.

Filed Under: business, copyright, michel gondry, portraits, sxsw

Camper Van Beethoven Funds Their SXSW Trip By Letting Fans Sponsor Songs At Their Performance

from the that's-a-nice-rtb dept

American rock band Camper Van Beethoven is traveling to South by SouthWest this year without the support of a record label, so in order to raise funds, they're selling off the right to choose the songs that go on to their setlist for the 2 shows that they're going to play. The first 35 fans to pony up $102 get:

• A Santa Cruz Roller Derby Girl will walk/skate across the stage carrying a placard announcing your sponsorship of the song, within full view of the audience or cameras, to have the moment captured on film or video for all of eternity!
• You can have up to 4 names or one business on each placard.

Sounds like an excellent leveraging of a few of the scarcities that we've mentioned here before, in this case, attention, exclusivity and patronage. With the "Santa Cruz Roller Derby Girl," CVB's personality definitely shines through in this unique offer that should resonate nicely with their fans (in fact, I learned of this promotion via a friend sharing it through Google Buzz). So, once again, it's great to see yet another label-free band (who once was on Virgin, years ago, actually), explore new and creative ways to give their fans a reason to buy.

Filed Under: business models, camper van beethoven, cwf + rtb, sxsw

Have Your Say: Should Mike Speak At SXSW?

from the your-choice dept

The famed SXSW event is going through their annual process of picking speakers/panels/discussions and they decided that having me do one of my presentations on the music industry might be a good idea. However, the SXSW process involves getting the community to vote on who should speak. That process has just begun, and my talk is now listed for you to vote on. So, go and have your say in whether or not I get to speak at the event.

Filed Under: sxsw