Rock.Hard place.Music industry.

My friend’s little home studio where I recently recorded some music of my own. 
What a time to be alive ! 

The much embattled music industry complains about You Tube not paying them a fair share of the ad revenue that it makes from music videos. (Read here). As a lifelong music fanatic and a big You Tube lover - among other things, You Tube has put several lifetimes worth of music within easy access, after all ! - this puts me in a quandary. It's a tough one.

On the one hand, according to industry body the IFPI, the revenue per user going to the music industry from You Tube and other free services is a staggering 20-30x lower than from paid streaming services ($0.6 vs $18 in the chart below). On the other, You Tube et al deliver 5x the audience. Wouldn't the biggest distributor hold and exercise similar bargaining power anywhere ? And from the POV of music itself, You Tube are one of those at the frontlines of democratizing and leveling the field for whoever wants to give it a shot - an often unacknowledged cultural-good role that it plays. Could that be a worthwhile 'externality' (in economics-speak) ?

Commercially, one way of looking at it is to ask the opportunity cost of not being on You Tube. Who can tell for sure but one suspects it would be significant - going by what we see all around us across music or video or gaming , surely most of those being monetized by YT would not otherwise opt for a paid service ?!

All of which is not to say that artistes and/or creators should not get paid their due. On the contrary ! Certainly the reported 30x 'Value Gap' (read and download the IFPI Global Music Report 2017 here) seems excessive and should ideally be reduced. The point,though is that it's, well, complicated. The ground under 'due' itself has shifted dramatically thanks (or no thanks, if you prefer) to the massive tech-disruption that this particular market has been confronted with. 

There are just no easy answers.

It's heartening to read that the music industry has turned a bit of a corner recently and reversed years of decline to post a + 6% revenue growth driven by streaming (+60%). One hopes this continues and that all parties come together to find a mutually beneficial solution. Like most human endeavors, music (and art in general) relies on commerce to thrive ; but like only those few special endeavors, I believe it goes beyond commerce !

I for one will be watching this space. Or 'listening' to it ! :) Thanks for reading. Cheers !

Two empty boxes, one blank sheet - and several 'You Tube Stars' !

Resuming the work  on an exciting but very challenging project on integrating online and offline media planning - something that there isn't a whole lot of available knowledge to draw from -  I've decided on a formula to try and make some headway finally :  to start from the scratch of first principles

This after a couple of  false starts and  dead ends caused in no small part from the sheer overabundance of information that's out there. I've realized you need to create that mental space of stillness in the midst of all this movement to evaluate what exactly you're looking for, which bits if information cut it and which don't. 

So I am starting off now with nothing more than an end objective and two boxes (one each for online and offline) on a blank spreadsheet.The idea is to populate them with the information at hand , identify what's missing and then set about getting them. No guarantees it will work but I am cautiously optimistic ! It'll be my pleasure to report on a happy ending , though the ending itself will be obviously confidential :) 

Meanwhile the phenomenon of ''You Tube Stars' marches ahead. Here's a survey report that shows American teens ranking them ahead of 'mainsteam' celebs. But the whole point is that what constitues 'mainstream' itself is becoming more and more contentious !

Thanks for reading

Cheers

Questions : the next best thing to answers !

I just wrapped up a small project analyzing social media data on Ramadan TV programming in the region. (Ramadan , if you didn'tknow , is the holy Islamic month marked by a complete change in daily lifestyle and habits in Islamic societies. It's also the main / only seasonality in ME TV). Some of the findings were different from the public information available online. Now, the scale of the study was too small to base definite conclusions on one way or another. If anything , I'd discount it over the others.  But the moot point is that it threw up a couple of different perspectives or hypotheses to explore. 

And sometimes I think that's what's missing in our daily worklives amidst this deluge of information. It's often a lot of buzzwords and 'Have article, Will share' that completely substitues , instead of complement , primary research and the weighing of evidence. Metrics evolve but the fundamentals that those metrics are meant to measure remain valid irrespective of which era we operate in. The data era is about improving that , not erasing it. A data strategy is not the same as forwarding articles on data strategies ! :)

In  my area of TV and Video , these are some key 'elephant in the room' questions for our region that turn out to be more challenging than they appear 

1. Is there in fact a drop in linear / live TV consumption ?

2. If so , how much is it ?

3. Where is it going to specifically within on-demand  ?

(a) Catch up service on existing TV connections ? 

(b) Online streaming : You Tube ? Others ? 

(c) Online download : Torrent ? Others ?

4. Which of those are addresseable for advertising and marcom ?

5. What forms of communication are appropriate , efficient and effective ? 

   

What is a challenging ask anywhere in the world is compounded in our region by the absence of even basic data. So even something like 3(a) is not knowable without reliable estimates of Pay TV and IPTV penetration. Hopefully things will improve in the near future.

It's also up to each one of us to make a start by asking  !  

Too much of a 'good' thing ? DON'T skip ad !

Facebook introducing autoplay video is an interesting development (read here)

This has game changing potential for the industry. As COO Sheryl Sandberg says , in terms of audience sizethis could be like a Super Bowl every day !  It needs to be done right of course , both from user experience and advertising POV.

Personally I feel we may have taken permission marketing just a little too far , especially with video ad Opt Out's. The free internet began unwittingly during Web 1.0. It has since  gone on to become a one way street.

Efforts at monetization by charging for access have panned out unsurprisingly : 'quality' content  with high perceived value and scarcity, stuff like Business and Sports  , can be put behind a pay wall but in a limited way mostly. Where inroads have been made , hybrid, limited- free-access is the dominant mode.

As irreversible as the free internet process is ,  there's scope to extract  higher advertising value from all those eyeballs by easing off the self-imposed sanctions just a little bit. Would audiences really mind watching a 30 second advert before a You Tube video ? Or having a display ad take up half their Facebook screen for a minute? We know the probable answer. But a couple of things have to be in place.

First, 'perceived value' is the operative word.  Users need to be informed and reminded of the value provided to them for free. It's become a blind spot that's taken for granted. And they need to be told of the costs involved. And, yes, also reassured that it'll lead to an even better usage experience.

Which takes me to the second point. The wider industry has to get it right on their part too. Sites  should continue to improve the user experience in terms of features , minimize intrusiveness , maximize product relevance, optimize for access device etc all of which is simple from a technical point of view. Advertisers and agencies should maximize  ad 'quality' the best they can. 

Once the benefits are seen by all concerned - user, site and advertiser / agency - we'll find it to be a  much smoother  roll out than we may presume now. I suspect all this will start to happen soon enough.