There’s fascinating quick blog post from PSFK summing up the state of the music industry and the way it's marketed and it leads on (I'm still in the middle of reading it) to this long NY Times article about Rick Rubin, the new the boss of Columbia Records but it’s the underlined last paragraph in PSFK post that's interesting.
All the old ad models aren’t working and as I've written in the past, WOM (word of mouth) is coming to the fore. The consumer has to be converted, persuaded or made to enthuse a brand, product or artist, so naturally becoming an evangelist. Putting Rick Rubin in control of a huge record company is an inspired choice but could be quite very dangerous too. Sony have put a true creative in control, and perfectionist by the sound of things, to cause that evangelism for music. Although, as I have said before I don't think it will bring music back to the power it once was. Today there are just too many different forms of (interlinking and meshing) entertainment and technologies for music to compete or blend with. Disposable income is spent on and more spread around than ever before; mobiles, computers, games, DVDs etc.
We need to look at the online business success stories and analyse the different ways those businesses have exploited novel marketing techniques and succeeded online. Take Apple and the secretive way the company goes about marketing, generating so much gossip blog noise and having the arch creative evangelist in Steve Jobs spreading the sermon of the Apple brand twice a year. Then there’s Google's different approach to online marketing to keep it's search engine dominant, giving away all it's other services for free, all linked through an email address, all easy to use, making us use the brand online and offline, now trumping Microsoft. This leads me to say that all content should be given away free and earn its revenue back through ancillary means. The big question is how?
The music, film and ad industry (and clients) are beginning to take note of some of these online marketing techniques like WOM (this is a great post from Forbes on critical 1% influencers) and make them more prominent or central to their future media and marketing plans. In reality most of us sit in front of a computer screen three or four times longer per day than any TV screen. More of us, especially the youth, are even watching television while we are on our laptops and actually on our laptops. Maybe it’s because music (and video) is so easy and cheap to produce now it has an inherently cheaper value. We’re witnessing, through technology, the democratization of music and now video. Anyone can produce music or film and distribute it on their own dot com for next to nothing causing an explosive fragmentation (the long tail) of the mass media models of the 20th century. There’s no scarcity of channels anymore only an abundance of choice so it's important to develop new (or very old) techniques online and it's trust, relationship and influence that make up the essential elements of successful word of mouth and ultimately whatever you’re promoting it has to be worth it, have value, be entertaining and you want to pass on (usually for free - that's the problem). That’s why Rick Rubin is in control and why I think more creatives or evangelicals will be given control in other media industries but how will they pay for it and will we want to pay for it?
UPDATE Rubin intends to bring back the subscription model and post articulates the near free revenue model to access all Sony's music - theregister and this next PSFK post on Rubin, subscription and his plan to use his new WOM dept to turn Paul Potts into a star stateside.
