Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll

Nothing sells like a good story: Radiohead's In Rainbows

I don't often comment on major news stories here, even when they're reasonably related to my interests and my book. You won't read me reporting on things like Amazon launching a DRM-free music download store, because my guess is that people don't come here for breaking news. Other sites do that better and cover such stories more comprehensively and consistently, so I'd be unwise to try and compete with them. And I especially didn't write about In Rainbows last week because, well, everyone was — and I don't much like Radiohead. But perhaps because no one was talking of anything else last week, my publisher asked for my angle on what was going on. This is what I wrote.

It's very unlikely that Radiohead's In Rainbows will be seen, with hindsight and in the cool light of day, as playing a major part in the overhaul of the recording industry. But in its fan-friendly yet commercially unorthodox presentation (in case you hadn't heard, downloaders are invited to choose how much they will pay for the new album), it is a marketing triumph. It eclipses even the rock aristocracy of Paul McCartney, who sold his latest album through Starbucks, and Prince, whose album was given away with the Mail on Sunday, for the amount of buzz generated across the broadsheet media and the blogosphere. Can there be anyone in the chattering classes, who make up Radiohead's target audience, who could have possibly missed the fact that their new album hit the web last Wednesday? And the advertising spend to achieve this blanket coverage in an era of fragmented channels? Virtually nil. Artists like Sandi Thom showed the power of a good story, weaving together Cinderella's virtue and struggle with the fairytale consummation of a new, more intimate connection with an audience. In the murky forest of record industry woes, Radiohead have spun another tale where we all get to go to the ball while the ugly sisters (major labels) are sidelined for the moment. And boy do we all like telling it!

It will be intriguing to see what major label deal Radiohead are able to strike, as apparently they are seeking to do, in the light of reports that they have already shifted 1.3 million paid-for downloads and a further half a million unpaid filesharing copies. When Prince distributed three million copies of his CD, his label's response was to shelve plans to release the CD officially. Radiohead's case is different because they haven't yet produced a CD version of the album, but how many copies need to be out there before the labels consider the market to be saturated?

The New Seekers: article in The Spectator

My article, The New Seekers, is the lead in the Arts Section of this week's Spectator. It begins,

In Version 2.0 of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston Smith will have a 'preferred customer' gold card for Googlezon, the corporation that results from the merger of the internet giants Google and Amazon. Google has completed its mission to organise all the world’s words, images and sounds and make them easy to find; and, once you've found what you want, Amazon sells it to you. By recording everything you purchase, look for, look at, listen to or read, Googlezon comes to know your tastes better than you yourself do. It serves you a personalised programme of recommendations and targeted promotions, all of these backed up with patented One-Click™ ordering. You need never again use your initiative to track down new favourites: the privatised Ministry of Information has anticipated your every need. [read on]

As you may recognise, this scenario, and the image above, are taken from the famous EPIC 2014 film. The article covers some of the same ground as the talk I gave at the RSA today — the podcast and slides from which will be on the RSA's site shortly. [Update, 12 October: Andrew Collins has blogged some great comments on our RSA discussion, dig those links.]

Meanwhile Jon Sobel has posted a meticulous review of Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll for BlogCritics magazine. He's mostly favourable (and indeed generous) but takes me to task for ignoring "political matters like net neutrality, privacy concerns, and censorship". He's justified in pointing that out. This latest article doesn't fully address those matters, and could still be accused of having a "sunny disposition" (oh, if only you knew me!) but maybe engages just a little more with the political dimension. See more reviews.

The Radio Times of the future

This is the second of the excerpts from the first full draft of my book that I think it is worth rescuing from the cutting room floor. As I explained for the first one, there were a bunch of fictional scenarios that I devised imagining possible futures for consumers and for media organisations of different kinds. Some of them, including this one, were written in the form of interviews with media professionals.

This one is for a TV listings service. I was thinking specifically of Radio Times, which must be one of the longest-established services (see the Wikipedia entry) dating back to before the days of television, but now offers a website with radio and TV downloads as well as interactive listings software for your PDA. Andrew Collins, with whom I'm discussing digital discovery tomorrow, is its film editor.

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You started out as a listings magazine — what are the most significant changes you've seen in recent years?

Since long before I took this job, we’ve been seeing ever-increasing competition in providing the basic listings service which is at the core of what we do. And the listings were once a fairly comprehensive menu of the entertainment and information you could get in your living room. Now the range of what’s available is so vast that it makes it impossible for any browsing-orientated menu to cover it, so we already have a potential editorial headache in terms of what to include. That's one big change.

Full line up for my talk at the RSA on Thursday

At the very end of last week, the RSA told me that music and film journalist and broadcaster Andrew Collins (left of the three pictures) had accepted their invitation to give a short response to the talk I'll be giving there in a few days time. That completes the line-up, which also includes a response from unsigned (or should that be unlicensed?) singer-songwriter Claire Tchaikowski (right), and is chaired by Paul Hitchman (centre), co-founder and managing director of Playlouder MSP.

I've created pages for the event on Upcoming and Facebook, but the only one that really matters if you're interested in attending is the RSA booking page. Currently this says the event is full, and you can only join the waiting list. I find this surprising, having seen relatively little publicity for it myself, so I'd encourage you to join the waiting list: if there is sufficient demand, I guess the RSA may move it into a bigger room (I'll check this on Tuesday and update here). [Update, 8 October: the RSA page has now been updated with all speakers, and is no longer showing as fully booked.]