How Being More Open, Human And Awesome Can Save Anyone Worried About Making Money In Entertainment

from the make-it-happen dept

I've been pretty busy traveling and appearing at various conferences over the last month, including Midem, where I released our latest research report, The Sky is Rising!. I did so with a quick ten-minute presentation about both the state of the industry... as well as the fact that the challenges for anyone in the entertainment industry can be met by being more open, more human and (most of all) more awesome: It's basically a follow-up presentation to my 2009 presentation, which introduced the Connect with Fans + Reason to Buy formula. Either way, it was fun to be back on the Midem stage, and I was thrilled with the overall response to the presentation. I heard from a lot of folks at the show about how much they liked it and how it gave them a good framework for building out their efforts as artists or as labels. It's always fun to be at Midem and talk to people on the ground about what they're seeing in the industry as well. Two years ago, I had thought that perhaps the industry had reached the bargaining stage, but I may have been wrong (or the five stages of grief aren't really applicable here). There wasn't nearly as much talk about "evil piracy" at this year's Midem... but there was plenty of lashing out about "evil Google" and how it was to blame for everything. If anything, it seemed to be a slip back into the "anger" stage. As we've explained time and time again, this anger seems entirely misdirected.

So it was nice to see so many people at Midem respond positively to my "totally positive" message about where some key opportunities were, by having them focus on how being more awesome to fans and treating them as human really has amazing results.

Separately, while I was at Midem I also did a much more technical "Midem Academy" session that was designed to be a hands-on interactive discussion about specific strategies for alternative business models that don't rely on copyright. That session was 50 minutes long and didn't have the same "entertainment" value, as I was told I had to use their limited Powerpoint format, rather than do my typical style (as seen above). Still, I quite enjoyed that discussion, and ended up spending almost as much time as we spent in the session talking to people and answering questions after the session. For some reason a lot of people were shy to ask questions to the whole group, but wanted to chat afterwards. There was also a cool "open table" session I did at "Direct2Fan Camp" at Midem, where I got to talk with a bunch of folks who were interested in new business models. That was a lot of fun.

Finally, a couple weeks before that, I was in Washington DC for the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net event, where there was a panel discussion/debate over SOPA, which was recently put online as well. That panel has myself and Steve Crocker (head of ICANN) talking about problems with SOPA/PIPA... and the MPAA's Paul Brigner and the US Chamber of Commerce's Steve Tepp defending SOPA. The panel may seem out-of-date, but it actually took place the day before the mass internet blackouts that effectively killed the bills. So, when this discussion happened, the bills (even in reduced form, without DNS issues) were still very much alive. At this point, the debate might be more interesting in a historical context, rather than a present one: Either way the discussion was also fun (and, at times, a little heated). I also found it kind of amusing that we were told that there were to be no "opening speeches," and then everyone gave an opening speech. I don't know if it's a DC thing or what, but I had to create an "opening speech" on the fly, though I tried to keep it short.

Either way, it was great to meet many Techdirt community members around the globe at these various events as well, and I hope to see more of you at future events.

Filed Under: awesome, human, louis ck, midem, open, sky is rising, techdirt feature