Marketing Pop Culture

Time.com's 50 Best Web sites

Fellow blogger David Berkowitz reached out to me on behalf of Time.com 50 Best Web sites.  Definitely an interesting list.  I say that because I don't recognize most of the sites.  The one site I use regularly is Imeem (#31), and I just added TinyURL (#8) to my toolbar after seeing it on the list.  I visit UrbanDictionary (#9) only occasionally.  Interesting that MySpace isn't on the list.  Like Max, I, too, found it noteworthy that Google isn't, either.  However, I think that has more to do with Google's ubiquity vs. any lack of popularity.  What I mean is that (almost) everyone uses Google, so we think about it as much as we think about how cool it is that light comes on when you flick the switch.

So, if I'm not on most of these sites, where am I, you ask?  Here's my (partial) list:

• The Daily Swarm (great music news aggregator, so it's my homepage)
• Google (Gmail, Reader, Feedburner, Analytics)
• Marketing Pop Culture (via the Typepad platform)
• Bold As Love (my other blog on Black rock)
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Remember The Milk
• Del.icio.us
• LinkedIn

Where do you hang out online?

Internet Porn

GOOD Magazine: Internet Porn Transparency

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An entertaining video on Internet porn--go ahead and watch it, 'cause you know you want to--produced by Good Magazine.  This is a good example of cleverly using the conventions of a genre to attract attention and, at the same time, to convey information.

Speaking of statistics, as of this morning, the video--which was posted on May 8--has been viewed nearly 500,000 times on MySpace.

Save Internet Radio

Those of you who know me are aware that I’m a huge fan of Internet radio.  Sites like Somafm, Pandora,  Bassdrive, WPS1 and Soul Patrol are not only some of my favorites because of the great 24-hour music they offer, but because it’s a great way to escape the mind-numbing crap that’s on terrestrial, commercial radio.

Internet radio is under attack in the form of a new bill that will effectively raise the royalty rates to levels (some estimate an increase anywhere between 300% to 1,200% of current rates) that will effectively put most Internet radio broadcasters out of business.  Fact is, most Internet broadcasters are barely surviving, since they rely almost exclusively on listener donations and a trickle of revenue that comes from advertising.  You can learn more about the issue here.

In the meantime, SaveInternetRadio.org is helping listeners make their voices heard, and they make it easy to write to your elected officials to urge them not to support this bill.

Good news is that a counter-measure has been proposed.  Please ask your representative to co-sponsor it.  Here’s how.

Web 2.0 defined in less that 5 minutes

One of the latest buzzwords that's being thrown around lately is "Web 2.0"  But what exactly does it mean?  I could point you to the Wikipedia definition that describes it by employing such words as "network as platform," "architecture of participation," or "Web-as- participation-platform".  All of this may or may not give you a better sense of what's being talked about.  In many respects, it doesn't answer the original question. 

So, I point you to a video produced by Kansas State University Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology Michael Wesch.  In addition to being a powerful visual document, it suggests that Web 2.0 will redefine the way we think about things such as privacy, governance and the ways we relate to one another.  It's less that five (5) minutes long, so take a look.

Hat tip to Daniela Barbosa, a member of the Media 2.0 Workgroup, who hipped me to it.

How Not To Do New Media

Funny how the “old media” industries rush to absorb new upstarts.  Case in point is an article in today’s NY Times on David Lehre, who achieved success by directing his own comedy spots that were posted to YouTube.  Fox has signed him to a development deal.  Of course, the question on everyone’s mind is: Will this work?  Will he be able to make the transition from down-and-dirty YouTube videos to the high production values (not to mention the pressure!) of the 30-minute television sketch comedy format?

But this is less about David Lehre.  Rather, it’s about old media’s approach to new media.  It seems to be the entirely wrong approach to think that by simply putting more money behind David that his success on the Web will translate to success on the Fox TV network. 

Seems to me that a smarter move would be to house him under the Fox Interactive banner.  This way, he’s not being taken out of his element.  His audience isn’t used to seeing him on TV.  They find him on the Web.  What about new audiences?  They’ll find him on the Web, too.

Note to the TV people: You’re not really doing anyone any favors just because you can throw money at them.  People like David have created content and amassed their own audiences long before you showed up.  They’re doing you a favor by being in business with you. 

Content is not king.  Attention is.

Behavior and Expections

It’s become a truism that one of the big trend drivers is technology, specifically the fact that technology is putting the means of production and expression in the hands of regular people.  It’s not just the conglomerates that can create content or galvanize and attract an audience.

But how do we know for sure that this is having an impact on the overall culture?  To answer this, there has to be a discussion of what the anthropologists call the “formal properties of culture.”  According the Wikipedia definition, culture is generally understood to be comprised of four (4) elements: Values, norms, institutions and artifacts.  The entry further explains:

Values comprise ideas about what in life seems important. They guide the rest of the culture. Norms consist of expectations of how people will behave in various situations. Each culture has methods, called sanctions, of enforcing its norms. Sanctions vary with the importance of the norm; norms that a society enforces formally have the status of Law. Institutions are the structures of a society within which values and norms are transmitted. Artifacts—things, or aspects of material culture—derive from a culture's values and norms.

It’s the first two elements that strike me as most relevant here.  The accessibility of technology impacts our ideas and sense of what’s important, be it time or expression.  But that, I think, isn’t enough.  Key is that it changes our behavior, institutes new codes and expectations for how we and others can, and will, behave.  For example:

• If you’re of a certain age, the assumption is that you have access to the Internet.

• If you have an e-mail address, the assumption is that you check it regularly

• Those of us with digital cameras shoot more pictures because we’re no longer worried about wasting film.

In fact, noted under the definition for “technology” Wikipedia notes that the “implementation of technology influences the values of a society by changing expectations and realities.”

Certainly, these definitions could apply to other, non-technology  areas that are also impacting behavior and expections.

What are your thoughts on this?  If you have other examples, I’d love to hear them.

New Computer Interfaces

Rewind the calendar almost 12 months, and you could’ve seen Jeff Han, a research scientist at NYU, demo a multi-touch interface that gives a glimpse of the possibilities embodied in the iPhone’s touchscreen.  See the presentation he gave at the 2006 TED conference here.  It's pretty incredible.

Separately, John Moore over at Brand Autopsy points out a key difference between Apple and their friends in Redmond.  Microsoft is about fulfilling customers’ needs, whereas Apple focuses on their desires.  I guess Apple works hard to remind its employees that purchasing is not an entirely rational act.  Check it out here.

Hat tip to Chris Anderson at TED for both the post and for pulling this video out of the archives.

Analog to Digital to Connected

Reaching, originally uploaded by Uh … Bob.

 

Technology will have a huge impact. . .There is really a transition that is not only analog to digital, but digital to connected.

--J Allard, Microsoft

No matter what you think about Microsoft’s entry into the portable digital music player arena you have to admit that they’re onto something. The most exciting feature of the new Zune player is its WiFi capability, which has lots of potential for viral exploitation—both the good (really effective viral campaigns) and bad (real viruses ) kind.

Marketers should begin to give some serious thought to what it will mean when we’re “always on” and connected in a way that enables file sharing. When it’s as simple as pressing a few buttons on a portable digital device, when you will be able to share files with complete strangers as Microsoft suggests, where will the bar be in terms of creative that prompts consumers to take that action? Perhaps an even higher premium will be put on having “the big idea.” That’s okay, since I believe viral done well will fulfill this need.

Other questions:

• Will music take on greater importance as a brand platform, since it's a reasonable assumption that consumers may be more likely to share music than other forms of content? 
• Could it be that music sharing trains/conditions consumers to the ease of sharing content, something that didn't really happen via mobile phones?

See the New York Times article from which this was drawn via this link.

On the trail of new (or not so new) music

There are two services I'm really excited about and recommend:  LaLa and Pandora.  While they sound like willing participants in a guy's fantasies, these flirty-sounding services help make discovering music online manageable.

LaLa is an online system for trading CDs.  It works like this:

• You list the CDs you have and choose CDs you'd like from a list of over 1.4 million.
• Ship the CDs to another members who's indicated that they want the particular CD (LaLa does the matching for you!)
• You get CDs from your list from other members, all for the low cost of $1.49.

A cool feature of this is that the service kicks back 20% to the artist.  And, like any good social networking site, the more you share, the more CDs you'll get.  While I can't control the order in which I receive CDs, it's kind of a nice surprise when they get arrive.  At the very least, it's something you requested.  And, if I really don't like it, hey, I only spent a buck fifty.

One small problem with the service is that their category designations aren't so precise.  LaLa deals in broad categories.  For example, R&B contains a lot of black music, from contemporary R&B (R. Kelly) to soul (Diana Ross, Otis Redding), current hip hop (Ghostface Killah) to underground hip hop (Company Flow, Aceyalone).  Likewise, in the "International" category, you're very likely to find Maura O'Connell (Ireland), Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (Pakistan), Femi Kuti (Nigeria), and Ibrahim Ferrer (Cuba) all on the same page.  One solution might be to employ tags for the CDs, so that users can employ a more refined search.

A small digression here: One of the records I'm happy to pass onto some other deserving soul is M.I.A.'s "Arular".  I have to believe that her record got so much critical support (#2 on the Village Voice's 2005 annual "Pazz and Jop" listing) due to its political nature (her father was involved in Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, and she shouts out the PLO on the record), all of which got her visa application rejected when it came time to enter the States to record her next album.  However, from a musical standpoint, I just don't get it.  Subpar rapping and amateurish production is what I hear.  Believe me, I've tried to listen to it.  It's one of those albums I felt I should like because there was so much buzz about it last year.  Derrick in Minneapolis, it's on its way to you, and I hope you enjoy it in good health.

Pandora enables users to create their own radio stations.  Pandoria itself is an outgrowth of the Music Genome Project, the goal of which has been to capture music at its most fundamental level, i.e., to identify the distinctive elements of each song.  It then uses those elements to find songs from other artists that are similar. 

For example, if I set up a station called "Bad Brains radio", Pandora looks for songs that have "major and minor key tonality, repetitive phrasing, an aggressive male vocalist, unintelligible lyrics and prominent drums."  It took me from the Brains' "Banned in D.C." to "Run It" by the Replacements to "Live to Win" by Motorhead (purists will note that I'm missing an umlaut).  At this point, I gave this last one a thumbs down, and it moved back to the Brains' own "With the Quickness" and then onto "Vampires" by Strung Out, which I like.  So I've already discovered something new in the course of writing this post.  See, that's the good thing about Pandora, your input alters the selection.  After all, I could hear why it pulled up the Motorhead song, but that wasn't what I was going for.  You can bookmark your favorite songs into your profile as you hear them--as I did with "Strung Out"--and you have the option to buy them via Amazon or iTunes.

Now go discover new music: Check out Pandora here.  LaLa is here.

Tags: LaLa, Pandora, music discovery, Music Genome Project, Bad Brains, M.I.A., The Replacements, music marketing, digital distribution

Sparks: May 3, 2006

• The sleeping giant awakens? Myspace.com opens for ad business
  This bears watching, since the site, while boasting an impressive 70 million users, makes comparatively less revenue than sites with more traditional business models.  Expect more tension between the founders and their new bosses at News Corp.
• Soderbergh channels Chuck D: Burn, Hollywood, Burn
  The ultimate insider's outsider--or is that outsider's insider (let's ask Robert Altman, since he'd really know!) reiterated his take on the the movie business's broken revenue models.
• Microsoft Re-enters the Web TV business
  Today's just-announced partnership with reality TV top dog Ben Silverman calls for ten (10) 2-1/2 minute Web shows.  If any take off, Silverman can develop them into TV shows, with Microsoft receiving a minority stake.  Nice.
• Record companies go after big openers. . .and fail
  The record business has resembled the movie business for a long time, with its focus on having records open at or near the top of the charts.  However, many high entrants have subsequently fallen fast, according to the Daily News' Jim Farber, revealing most to be nothing more than products of record company hype.
• Accenture's Futuristic Interface
  Business travellers at Chicago's O'Hare--with JFK coming online soon--will be able to play Tom Cruise's John Anderton character from "Minority Report".  When I hear about stuff like this, I'm really looking forward to the day when David Polinchock and his partners at Brand Experience Lab get a break like this.
• Is Starbucks Diluting Its Brand?
  Laura Ries thinks so.  I disagree.  Starbucks is no longer a coffee brand.  It's a lifestyle brand, so extending the brand experience by operating in leisure/indulgence areas that are consistent with this position makes a lot of sense to me.
• Video Games Influenced by TV
  Usually, it's the other way around.  However, in the case of Atari's "Alone in the Dark," developers have take a page from the structure of such cliffhanger shows at "Lost" and "24".  See, gamer engagement can't be taken for granted anymore.

Tags: Myspace.com, Steven Soderbergh, 2929 Entertainment, digiwood, Microsoft, Web content, music business, Accenture, Minority Report, Tom Cruise, Starbucks, Laura Ries, videogames