Check out Dominic Basulto’s slide deck on four business trends:
(1) Social Data
(2) Micro-Payments for Online Social Experiences
(3) Content Mashups
(4) “Live” experiences (that really aren’t “live”)
What’s interesting to me is that they are all related to Social Networking, which I believe to be the big mega-trend today. They also fit squarely into any business model a musician or artist should have today.
Don’t let the doom-n-gloom of the industry news fool you, people want to be entertained. It may appear that the “hows” of entertainment are a mess right now, but I would argue that they’re not. As I’ve said before, I argue that the selling of products that contained music was the anomaly – what we’re seeing now is a return to normal. For thousands of years, people went somewhere to hear music and probably paid to do it. For the past 100 years, people bought music and took it home. That’s not going last – at least not the same way.
Which is why I like this list as a guide for musicians and artists. Are you doing something in or with or creating or manipulating or sending social data? Are you offering stuff cheaply – micropayments – that give people experiences? How ’bout mashups? Could you create or offer pieces of stuff and let your fans go nuts with it? Where could that lead? Lastly, what are doing about “live”?
Back to my point, isn’t music ultimately about live? Even “fake” live?
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