Ten years ago, music consumers went on strike. They decided en masse that they no longer wished to consume music bundled in the form of albums. The result: sales of recorded music today are 64% lower than their peak in 2000.
The leaders of the television industry should take a long careful look at
this analysis of the music industry’s demise on Business Insider.
It’s hard to get rich selling one item at a time. The entertainment industry always makes its fattest margins when entertainment titles are packaged into a bundle: songs are bundled into albums, TV shows are bundled into channels, and cable channels are bundled into bouquets when they are sold into cable systems. Even movies are packaged into bundles that are force fed to distributors.
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Merchant Joe Wanamaker’s famously groused ”I know that half my advertising dollars are wasted but I just don’t know which half!”
The age-old promise of the web is to eliminate inefficiency in ad spending by targeting users with precision, but for much of the commercial web’s 15-year existence, that hasn’t been easy. Most display advertising on the web was bought and sold on an impression basis just like traditional mass media.
That’s changing now, and it has big implications for all media. Wanamaker’s complaint is about to be answered.
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I spent today with Kathy Eldon, the founder and President of the Creative Visions Foundation, at her spectacular beachside home in Malibu.
Since 1998, Kathy and her small team have accomplished something pretty impressive: they’ve fostered more than 75 activists who are committed to making change in a variety of places around the world. They’re getting results. And they are growing fast.
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Humanity+ is living up to the mission of raising awareness about the next frontier for information technology: human biology. But is the organization ready to take the next step in its own evolution?
This weekend’s
Humanity + conference at CalTech was satisfying, especially if you’ve been craving a hefty serving of scientific research combined with imaginative vision, polite debate and open speculation about the future of humanity.
At H+, speakers from a variety of fields share their perspectives with a highly empowered audience that doesn’t hesitate to challenge a point or gently correct an inaccuracy. During the coffee breaks, the lively dialog continues in the corridor. So the conference achieves a major goal, which is to stimulate the exchange of ideas and information in a respectful and convivial way.
I gave the opening talk on the subject of Information Transformation, which was
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I would welcome advice from you, dear reader, about how best to record a presentation and put it on my
blog.
During the past six months, I have given a series of speeches that track the way that modern society was shaped by technology. These talks were pretty ambitious: my recent talk at Merging+Media covered 500 years of technology in a whirlwind survey.
Lately, I’ve received several requests from people who would like to
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After receiving several encouraging messages from female readers who liked my 2010 Guys’ Gift Guide, I thought I’d follow up with my holiday gift suggestions for women. Herewith, a preview of the goodies I am considering placing under the tree for the lady in my life. Some of these are pure concept, not available in stores yet, so I am still on a quest to
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Each year at this time, people ask me if I have any suggestions for cool holiday gifts. Without further ado, allow me to present my very own version of “My Favorite Things” for the world-traveling technology lover.
$700 or less online
Smallest most powerful camera that uses interchangeable lenses. Half the price and half the size of an SLR with comparable picture quality. Giant 14 megapixel CMOS sensor is the secret to
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This week I interviewed
Pranav Mistry onstage at the
Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma City. Pranav was catapulted to fame last year by virtue of his
talk at TED, titled “The Thrilling Potential of SixthSense Technology.”
His formal title is “r
esearch assistant and PhD candidate” in the Fluid Interfaces Group at MIT Media Lab. That title is a spectacular understatement. It’s like calling Thomas Edison a telegraph operator, or Albert Einstein a patent clerk.
Tags:collaborative creativity·Conferences·good ideas·innovation·MIT·pranav mistry·remarkable people
During this week’s
Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma City, I met
Bill Anoatubby, the Governor of the Chikasaw Nation. The tribe was one of the leading sponsors of the Forum.
Governor Anoatubby’s role in making the Forum possible was hailed by several civic leaders in OKC. So I was keenly interested in learning more about him and his achievements. It’s a remarkable tale.
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Tags:Conferences·good ideas·innovation
I’m not referring to your web browsing habits (there is already a
multi-billion dollar industry of tracking your online behavior). I’m talking about your daily activity in the city where you live.
Tags:1984·bad execution·debate·orwell·security·social media·social software·spyware·surveillance
