Why I FAILED

Screenshots from Amazon MP3

As they are won’t to do, Lifehacker as assembled a terrific set of screenshots from Amazon’s new MP3 download store.

Check ‘em out here.

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Failure Friday - 12 Investing Mistakes

I simply HAD to share this post with you because the title sounds like my book’s: 12 Investing Mistakes I’ve Made (and what you can learn from them). And in addition to giving useful financial advice gained through experience - someone else’s - it also fits in my my theme for Fridays: learning from failures.

Note: The post is from Get Rich Slowly but is in fact a guest post from Pinyo, author of Moolanomy, a personal finance blog about money, wealth, investing, and more.

“Not investing soon enough” was Pinyo’s first mistake and it reminds me of something I read from drummer Paul Leim. His number one career advice for musicians was “pay yourself first” and this is what he meant. It’s advice I didn’t heed either, so I join with Pinyo and Paul in encouraging you to start investing immediately.

With that foundation, here are my two favorite “mistakes” from the post:

2. Not knowing the basics— When I finally began investing, my first move was to give my money to a full brokerage firm to invest for me. I didn’t know anything about stocks or mutual funds. I just knew I should invest money to make more money. This was a big mistake since each trade executed by my broker cost a lot of money. Also, the mutual funds they picked weren’t good, and were very expensive.

11. Investing without a goal — Not until recently did I define a real goal for my investment — among other things, one of my investment goals today is to build a $1 million investment portfolio by 2017. This is my main retirement portfolio. Other goals, which I am still defining, are investing to subsidize my kids’ college expenses and my parent’s retirement expenses. Without a clear goal, I was chasing short-term performance and was prone to act on market swings.

The subject of Financial Literacy, the basics of money and investing, is tragically absent from schools. In its absence, the banking and investing industries have been more than happy to play teacher. And their lesson has been that we can’t possibly understand money so we should just trust them to know what’s best.

There are two takeaways here: first, you can - and must - learn about money. Make this a high priority that you work on daily or at least weekly. It’s not difficult, but it does require effort. And don’t be afraid of the numbers and math. Third grade math skills will cover anything and everything you’ll ever encounter with money.

Second, find financial advisors - paid and unpaid - that encourage education and partnerships. Seek people that understand you are working together to manage the second most important asset you have - your money (time is your most important). It’s that important because you can’t live without money (hunting and gathering is out of vogue these days) and the final exam on this subject is 10, 20 or 30 years out. Failure is not an option. You must get your money act together.

Which leads to financial goals, or better yet, life goals. What in the world are you working for? Even with a cool career choice like music, we’re still talking work and money. What is that you are spending all this time creating? What do you want now, and in the case of investing, in the future?

Money is a tool. Make sure it helps you build the right life.

Music & Money Monday - Advertising and Sponsorships

Joe Wikert has another post about an alternative revenue model in the book industry that I suspect we’ll soon see applied to music - if it hasn’t been done already.

“Shanghai-based Bookgg is exploring a new advertisement-powered free book business model. The consumer selects the book and then selects the sponsors with their placement in the book until the price of the book drops to zero. The book is then printed and posted.”

There’s a kind of ‘Perfect Storm’ brewing for things like this. On the one hand, consumers have varying degrees of resistance to paying outright for content. On the other, you have advertisers desperately trying to reach consumers in the age of TIVO, useless banner ads and intense message clutter that grows everyday. Put those two together, and you get Bookgg and SpiralFrog and what I suspect will be a growing list of other ad supported music delivery ideas.

So, what about you and your career? Put on your thinking cap and see if you could take advantage of this trend. And don’t roll your eyes, advertising and sponsorships are nothing new in music. Can you even recall a tour or concert that didn’t have the brand name of a company or product in the title? How ’bout venues? The stadium and concert hall in Nashville have each changed names several times in the last few years as the sponsorship rights have been bought and sold.

I’m sure you’re thinking “well yeah, of course 50 Cent can attract sponsors, but I just play local clubs!” True, but think about the sponsors themselves. Just like there are only a few music acts at 50 Cent’s level, there are only a few companies that can afford to sponsor him. There are thousand’s who can’t, particularly local businesses in your area.

Consider partnering with one or more of them. You could have them on your website, on your mailing list fliers, on T-Shirts, whatever. If some of that strikes you as lame, fine, you don’t have to over do it. You can agree to do and not do things as part of the agreement. And keep in mind your partners will have their preferences too.

If you’re a freelance musician, don’t despair, this can work for you too, you just have to be really creative. It’s likely your still in the public eye a lot and that’s all that matters.
The way to get the ideas flowing, whether you’re a band or freelancer or whatever, is to think from the perspective of the businesses. What are they after that you can help them get? Exposure? Customers? Sales? Leads? Chances are, you have SOMETHING they need and they might be interested in paying you to get it.

Bonus idea: 128MB MP3 players cost about $15.00 these days. What if you bought a bunch, pre-loaded them with your music and sold them for $20 or $25? Expensive start up costs, right? What if a local business paid you $5.00 a piece to have their name imprinted on them? Access Uniforms does work like this and there are hundreds of others.

It’s a win/win if it’s the right sponsor.

Failure Friday - The Enclave Tagline

I’ve decided to begin devoting Friday’s to failure. Call it reverse psychology if you’d like, but if my other posts showing successes aren’t working, perhaps failures will.

First up? Marketing the Buick Enclave.

Buick is busy launching the Enclave, their new entry into the growing crossover market. Being in the car business myself, I’ve seen early press on it for some time and it’s getting good reviews. I’m also mindful of the challenges faced by GM and the importance of a successful launch for Buick.

And then I read this: “Buick Enclave, the finest luxury crossover ever. Starting MSRP $32,790″

Oh really? Buick makes finer luxury crossovers than Mercedes, BMW, Lexus, Acura, Land Rover and the many other custom coach builders in the world? Please. What brilliant ad agency thought of this? What brilliant person at GM gave the approval?

Whether or not the Enclave actually is the finest luxury crossover or not doesn’t matter, the tagline simply isn’t credible. We already know who makes the finest luxury vehicles in the world and we know that the finest luxury vehicle ever has to cost more than $32,790.

But the problem goes beyond credibility, the ad creates negative emotions. The result of the mental gymnastics I just described (think about luxury vehicles, who makes them? Buick? No. Can I buy one for $32 grand? No.) leaves me thinking “no”. And no is a negative. In five words and a sticker price, GM has succeeded in associating a negative emotion with their vehicle.

Brilliant.

Oh, and one more thing. The words are empty. What does finest mean anyway. How ’bout luxury? Ever? In addition to everything I’ve discussed, the reality is these words say nothing. The whole thing is a mess.

So what about you? What are you saying about you? Is it credible? Are you creating a positive or a negative? Are you saying anything at all?
Buick would have been much better off just being true to who they are and what they do and then telling us about their new vehicle. And the same is true for you.

Brick-and-Mortar Music

I read a lot of blogs with topics ranging from automotive to music, self-development to marketing and business headlines to Donald Trump. One that consistently gets my juices flowing is Joe Wikert’s Publishing 2020 Blog. I read a book related blogs for two reasons. One, I’m writing a book. But second, and more importantly, I find that the publishing industry has much in common with music. They have similar business models, those models are falling apart and therefore, there’s a bunch of innovation going on in the sector.

I particular like Joe’s because he is concentrating on where publishing is going next (A Book Publisher’s Future Visions of Print, Online, Video and All Media Formats Not Yet Invented) and how writers can build careers - much the same as what I do here. His posts always gets me thinking and The Brick-and-Mortar Bookstore of Tomorrow is no exception.

Joe envisions three components to his bookstores of the future: fewer books/smaller footprints, printing on demand and kiosks/web terminals. I agree with him and look forward to his vision coming to pass and I also think his vision applies to music stores.

Fewer Music Products: as music becomes a service, music stores will carry less music. Instead, their product mix will skew towards related products such as swag, players, books, magazines, etc. In this way, music stores will be more about the experience surrounding music rather than the delivery of music - think community. Some may even be small concert venues. I agree with Joe that book stores will be smaller, but considering all the stuff related to music and the possibility of a stage, some music stores could be quite large.

Music on Demand: there’s no question that downloading will play a huge part in these stores. But, why would you go to a store to do what you could do at home? Two reasons: community and access. Future music stores have the opportunity to be gathering places. Places that foster an atmosphere of magic and discovery in a way that can’t be duplicated online. And with the arrival of the always on, ubiquitous internet, you’ll be able to access everything you have online and add to it from anywhere - like at the music store.

Printing on demand also makes me imagine buying fully loaded players too. With the cost of technology always going down, I can envision buying a disposable player pre-bundled with music for under 50 bucks, maybe even $20. THAT could be cool and again, the community atmosphere of the music store would lead me to choosing that bundle.

One last thing, isn’t downloading a pain? One song at a time, etc., etc.? Walking into a store and walking out with music sounds attractive to me. How ’bout you?

Kiosks/Web Terminals: the first two components will be empowered by the presence of tools to access music and the internet. Period.

So, as you think about your career, be thinking about how what you do would support the business of a music store like this. After all, that’s how it works - they’ll gladly help you as long as you’re helping them.

Me? I’m thinking I should open a music store. Quick.

Always On Music

Earlier in the week, in a post about music as a service, I wrote about the rapidly approaching era of always on, ubiquitous internet connectivity. I talked about the fact that it’s not about the technology though, it’s about the platform that the technology provides.

Here’s an example.

In a post entitled When Is Windows Not Windows?, Genuine Curiosity points us to AjaxWindows. This Ajax technology based service allows the operation of a complete Windows like environment - writing, spreadsheets, e-mail - all within a GMail account. All accessible from anywhere in the world via the internet.

In case you didn’t notice, I called AjaxWindows a service. Sure it’s a software, but not in the sense we’ve grown accustomed too. Not in the sense of buying a disc, inserting it into your…hmmm, does this sound familiar?

So, AjaxWindows is delivering what used to be a product in the form of a service. A sponsored service at that. Do I know it will succeed? No. Do I think this is exactly what music needs to do? No and yes, but only time will tell.

What I do believe though, is that a web based productivity suite is very attractive to me for two reasons. One, I don’t like being tethered to one computer in order to accomplish my work. This is all led by my company of course, but none the less, I can only do certain things on one computer. But more importantly, I’m intrigued by what’s next.

Truth be told, I find the entire computer experience confining and draining. As much as it helps me do a LOT, none of it flows very well. I, like everyone else, have dramatically changed how I work and think because of the way computers work and the design of the interfaces we’ve developed so far. The always on web will change this although I’m not sure exactly how.

I’m excited and you should be too. Why? Because despite the doomsdayers in the music industry and despite the fact that they’ve all blown it, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Be ready.

Numbers

I came across two articles from LifeHack.org today full of tips I hope you’ll find to be useful.

In Thirteen Tricks to Motivate Yourself, Scott H Young says “overcoming the emotional hurdle to get stuff done when you’d rather sit on the couch isn’t always easy” and boy can I relate! But Scott goes on to offer a “library of motivational boosters to move us along.”

Here are my favorites:

• Habits. You can’t put everything on autopilot. But I’ve found putting a few core habits in place creates a structure for the day. Waking up at the same time, working at the same times and having a similar productive routine makes it easier to do the next day.
• Go for Five - Start working for five minutes. Often that little push will be enough to get you going.
• Get the Right Tools - Your environment can have a profound effect on your enthusiasm. Computers that are too slow, inefficient applications or a vehicle that breaks down constantly can kill your motivation. Building motivation is almost as important as avoiding the traps that can stop it.

Staying with the number theme, Tatsuya Nakagawa says “we often over-think and over-complicate the methods we use for achieving our goals. A great way to achieve our goals is to define a key number and use that as our motivator, measuring stick or target.”

Here are a few examples from her 10:

• Number 4: fitness – the number of exercise days per week.
• Number 6: television – the maximum number of viewing hours per week.
• Number 8: sleep – eight hours per night is best for most people.

4 work outs? No problem.

6 hours of TV? Let’s see, there’s me, my wife, our 16 year old son and 11 year old daughter. If we each get 6 hours, that means I can still watch 24 hours each week, correct?

8 hours of sleep? Yeah right…

Genuinely Curious About Personal Development

Many, many thanks to Dwayne Melancon at Genuine Curiosity (you’ll find it my blogroll too) for adding my name to a long list of distinguished bloggers. Picking up on an idea started by Priscilla Palmer, Dwayne added this blog to a Personal Development list she began on August 21st.

The concept is simple: She started by naming her favorite five blogs that cover topics such as the “law of attraction, goals, time management, physical fitness, education, motivation, inspiration and social skills.” She then asked the writers of these blogs to add their favorites too. I’ve chosen not to duplicate the list because you can link to the constantly updated (it’s turning into a LIST!) version above. Be sure to check it out.
And here are my five:

1. Gretchen Rubin at The Happiness Project
2. Eric Boehme at The Blogging Boss
3. Penelope Trunk at The Brazen Careerist
4. Donald Trump and others at The Trump Blog
5. Brett Farmiloe, James Whiting, Noah Pollock and Zach Hubbell at Pursue the Passion

Enjoy!

Car Selling/Buying Communities

Reading through my auto industry feeds this morning I found a story about service, connections and community. Hmmm, sound familiar to this morning’s post?

In Make Used Cars a Service Not a Commodity, EJ could just as easily be writing about the music industry when he says customers have “very little reason to buy used cars; in fact, they have reasons not to buy.

•    Most consumers dislike the process and want to avoid it
•    Car quality has improved so consumers own cars longer
•    Sales tax adds to the friction of frequent buying

Removing those objections through a program could expand the used car market by getting consumers to buy cars more frequently.”

Of course the details are different, but can you argue that today’s consumers like the process of buying music today? How about the quality of the product? I would suggest that people are much happier with CD’s - and the “older” artists that made them - than the DRM laden downloads of today. Then there’s the money subject - $.99 per song?

He then goes on to suggest a frequent buyer program, which I would also suggest for musicians or, from this morning’s post, simply providing music as a service for a fee instead of making all your money from selling a product.

Engage your folks. Build communities and connections, just like car dealers…

;-)

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SpiralFrog - Music as a Paid for Service

There’s lots of news today about the launch of SpiralFrog, an ad driven music download site. Seems logical to me - just like radio.

We’ll see how it goes and what’s next…

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