The Long Tail

Bob Lefsetz on the power of free

Nearly every day, Bob Lefsetz winds himself into a full-on rant on the state of the music industry. Sometimes two of them. It's gotten the point where I have to brace myself to simply read his emails. But he's right about the big themes and he's fascinating to watch, in a car crash sort of way.

Here, in today's email (also on his blog), he confronts the majors with their real problem: the free music that they're competing with isn't pirated; it's willing given away by musicians who are playing a different game.  

I'm positively stunned at the blowback from business regulars about that chap [I actually don't know which chap he's referring to--maybe this one?] giving his music away for free. Oldsters can't understand the economics!

I'll clue you in, THERE ARE NONE!

This is your worst nightmare. People who can follow their dream on sweat equity. Who with their computer and the money from their day job or mommy and daddy can compete with you. It's like the North Vietnamese, all our military might couldn't defeat individuals who would fight to the death. Same deal in Iraq.

It's an eye-opener. That your model is IRRELEVANT!

YOU need to pay the mortgage. YOU need to go on vacation to the Caribbean. But the new musicians? They're willing to sleep on the floor and eat ramen. Hell, they're in their twenties, they're not on the corporate track, they've got different ambitions!

The Microsoft Memo: Some choose radical transparency, some have it thrust upon them

So our grand project in Radical Transparency has hit the streets. It's the cover package of the April issue of Wired, which went on sale this week. The cover, as you may have heard, is a technically ambitious exercise in mylar-craft featuring Jenna Fisher ("Pam" from The Office) in a business suit carrying a sign that says "Get Naked and...". Lift the mylar sheet and she's taking her own advice.

One of the feature stories in the package is a case study by Fred Vogelstein of Microsoft's blogging initiative, which is something I've been really impressed by. Today the company has more than 3,500 bloggers and its corporate messaging has gone from mostly press releases and scripted executive speeches to more of an authentic conversation in public between rank-and-file employees and customers. It's a fascinating shift in culture for a company that was once known for being fanatically obsessed with trying to control its image and messaging. The case study tells the story of how this happened in the most unlikely of places (okay, Apple would be even more unlikely, but you get the point).

Yet the old company culture is not gone, as evidenced by an executive briefing memo from Microsoft's PR firm, Waggener Edstrom, that Vogelstein was inadvertently sent in the body of a scheduling email. At nearly 6,000 words, it's an amazing document and a telling counterpoint to the laissez-faire spirit of the open blogging initiative. Because it so aptly illustrates the parallel open vs. closed cultures that now exist at Microsoft, as in any big company trying to evolve a command-and-control messaging process to an out-of-control age, we decided to post the whole thing online in the spirit of transparency.

The memo coaches the executives on what to say and what not to say. It talks about Vogelstein's interviewing style and possible biases (also how he's "tricky" and "digs for dirt"--the memo cautions the executives to avoid certain paths and to watch out for traps). Here's an example (emphasis in the original):

"He is digging for tension where it does not exist. We have to be hard core on this point and communicate in no uncertain terms the level of executive commitment and support for Channel 9 and 10 [Microsoft's videoblogging efforts]"

On a personal note, it's kind of freaky to read the memo describe how I was wooed (even manipulated, if you want to think of it that way) into commissioning the piece:

"CharlesF met with Chris Anderson during his fall tour in '06, placing the idea that Microsoft is thinking differently and creatively about its outreach....Dan'l Lewin met with Chris Anderson in October and also emphasized the company's work in the arena, pushing the story further...Jeff Sandquist traveled to the Bay Area to meet with Chris and his editorial team. They were highly engaged in Jeff's conversation..." 

And so on. By the way, as far as I can tell, everything in the memo is accurate. I also think the executives were very well served by the document; they did indeed stick to their message and they got pretty much the story they wanted. This was also, as it happens, the story I wanted--or was it just the story I thought I wanted because I was so effectively spun by Microsoft's PR machine? The mind reels... 

You can read it all here.

[UPDATE: Read Waggener Edstrom's Frank Shaw on their side of the story here]

[UPDATE2: You can read Fred Vogelstein's reaction to "reading my own FBI file" here]

Music in an abundance economy

Interesting to note that Bruce Lehman, who as former commissioner of patents and trademarks architected the DMCA, now says we're entering a "post-copyright" era. He believes that much of music will inevitably be free to consumers, subsidized by other things. Here's an excerpt from the TechDirt coverage:

He describes the basis for what he, and others, were trying to do with the DMCA. That is, he earnestly believed that such a law was needed to create the framework for economic benefit from an information economy -- and like plenty of others, he felt that the need to do so was to create artificial scarcity to create the right incentives. However, it's turned out that he wasn't just wrong -- but disastrously so.

....

He recognizes that other business models will have to come into play, and many of them sound like the business models that are already starting to show up. He points out that plenty of other industries need music, and will pay for its creation -- suggesting, for example, that companies like XM and Sirius might "commission" songs. He notes that even the record labels are realizing that the money isn't coming from the music directly, but from merchandise and concerts and are negotiating new contracts to make sure they're included in the profits from those non-music sales.

Or, as I've put it before, "give away the music and sell the show".

Lego autopilot, step 2

Just a few more crossposts with GeekDad before I compartmentalize properly. This weekend we got the official gyro sensor and mounted the Lego autopilot in a proper "avionics platform", which is what we're calling our big-ass trainer. You can read more here.

GeekDad posts

Just another note to remind readers of this blog that I'm also posting at our new Wired blog, GeekDad. If you want more robots, R/C plans, Lego and the like, subscribe over there.

Recent posts by me and other GeekDad authors:

• Turn your kids' drawings into videogames
• Sci/Tech summer camps (including AstroCamp)
• Proving the theory of relativity in a minivan
• Building a biplane in your garage

Google's case against marketing

I'm reading a galley of Seth Godin's latest mind-grenade, The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), and came across this fascinating quote from a conversation he had with Sergey Brin:

"We knew that Google was going to get better every single day as we worked on it, and we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it. So our feeling was that the later you tried it, the better it was for us because we'd made a better impression with better technology. So we were never in a big hurry to get you to use it today. Tomorrow would be better."

All that is totally rational and smart, but one can't help but notice what appears to be an extraordinary leap of faith: "we knew that sooner or later, everyone was going to try it." It raises all sorts of questions: How long into the project did they "know" that? What would they have done if take-up had slowed? Did their investors share their confidence and disdain for marketing in the early days?

The problem with extrapolating marketing lessons from once-in-a-lifetime success stories like Google and Apple is that most of us aren't Jobs, Brin or Page, nor can we count on the luck that played a role on all of their successes. Products that market themselves are ideal, of course, but there aren't many of them. And even those that are don't always reveal themselves as such at the start.

For every Brin, who became a billionaire by waiting for the world to beat a path to his door, there must be countless other entrepreneurs who assumed the same thing would happen and were wrong.  

BTW, Seth's book is absolutely delightful, combining his wise aphorisms and anecdotes with Hugh MacLeod's darkly brilliant business-card cartoons. It's also the sort of thing you can read in an evening, which is something more business books should aspire to. (I will surely fail at this with my next one.)

Introducing GeekDad

Those of you hoping for more robotics, Lego, drones and other incredibly geeky stuff from me and some likeminded souls will be delighted to hear that we've just launched GeekDad as an official Wired group blog. For a sampler, check out Kevin Kelly's awesome post about the dad who tested the theory of relativity in his minivan. 

Our mission: "Cool toys and fun projects you and your kids do together."

Those of you hoping for less of the above and more themes around the Long Tail and my next book TBA will also be delighted by this news, as it means that we'll be returning to our irregularly scheduled programming here soon. I'll probably crosspost a few more geek dad items, and then fork my projects cleanly.

We'll be looking for additional authors for GeekDad soon, so ping me with a link or two to what you're doing if you'd like to be considered.

One size aggregator doesn't fit all

Barry Ritholtz looks at Amazon's new "Blowout" store for deeply discounted classical music albums and wonders what the profit-maximizing price for music is. He cites a New York Times article that says Amazon's move makes sense, "since classical fans actually buy, rather than steal, their music." And targeting this market seems to be working:

Mr. May said Amazon’s classical music sales last year grew by more than 22 percent, making it one of the fastest-growing music genres on the site (Amazon does not break out separate revenue figures). The Blowout store will seek to feed that trend by offering most titles at 30 percent of regular prices.

But I was interested in Amazon's classical music store for another reason: classical is a genre that the one-size-fits-all music aggregators such as iTunes don't handle particularly well. They're oriented around pop music, with its artist, album, track data format. Meanwhile classical music organizes around composer, conductor, performer, soloist, etc.

Take these screen shots (click on them to enlarge) of the same album, on iTunes and on Amazon.

First, iTunes, where I've highlighted some problems with the pop metadata orientation applied to classical:

 

 

And here's Amazon (I've cut out the review and some other extraneous screen clutter):

 

Amazon's listing is customized for classical music, while iTunes isn't.

However, neither of them does a very good job with Jazz, where the individual musicians are often more meaningful than the band. On Amazon's Internet Movie Database you can click on practically anyone in the credits and see all their other work. Why can't you do the same for the company's music listings, too? (That's a rhetorical question--I know the problem is the bare-bones metadata that comes from the music labels. But why not open-source the data collection, the way IMDB does?)

My conclusion from all this is that there are still many opportunities for vertical aggregators to compete with the one-size-fits-all giants. Just as Amazon competes with iTunes in classical by customizing the presentation of the music to suit the genre, so others could for jazz, DJ, soundtracks and beyond. In search, we now see a multitude of "vertical search" specialists  (from real estate to blogs) competing with Google. And in DVDs, Netflix now has niche competitors for Bollywood and porn.

As in culture, so in the business of aggregation: one size doesn't fit all.

Worlds's cheapest aerial video platform

Just a few more geek hobby posts before I fork that part of my life to another blog to be announced soon and return to more regular Long Tail postings (and postings on my next book, also to be announced soon). But first, this weekend's geekout:

We've got a hand-me-down EasyStar foam plane, which, along with being pretty close to indestructible, has a nice open equipment area in the front (open because we broke the canopy latch). Meanwhile, we've also got a Canon Digital Elph pocketcam with a cracked screen that we don't use much. Put them together with a bit of light plywood, a camera mount screw from an old tripod and some rubber bands, and you've got an aerial video platform:

 

The key bit in this sort of hack is keeping the center of gravity where it's supposed to be, which meant moving the plane's battery under that plywood in the back (this also raises the rear corner, allowing the camera to look down). Once you get that right, the plane flies fine--a bit more sluggish that usual, but nothing too serious.

Here's an aerial video we took with this setup this weekend at the former Alameda naval air station near Oakland. This is the south end of the runway and is the base of the Hornet Squadron R/C group (you can see other fliers lined up on the flight line). It's also a possible location for our proposed Aerial Robotics Contest.  

We're the group of three (me and my two oldest kids) on the flightline that you can see at the end and that's my eldest recovering the plane. Afterwards, we went and toured the nearby USS Hornet aircraft carrier, which was awesome (it fought in WWII and recovered Apollo 11 and 12). You can have sleepovers on it! 

Two words: Lego Autopilot!

So you know how I'm trying to build a UAV for less than $1,000? And you know how thrilled I was to see that HiTechnic is releasing a gyro sensor for the Lego Mindstorms NXT? Put them together and you can see where this is going.

Here's the world's first Lego autopilot, which I threw together this eve. 

I haven't received the gyro sensor yet, so I've got a light sensor standing in for it in the picture, but the mechanicals are pretty much in place. Cool fact of the day: According to Google, this is the first time the phrase "Lego autopilot" has ever been used. I own this space!

This autopilot only controls the rudder, keeping the plane flying level when engaged and returning to the launch area. While the autopilot is disengaged, the servo arm controls the rudder under manual radio control as usual. But when you engage the autopilot (a third servo presses the "start" button on the NXT controller brick), the NXT servo drives the gear assembly above to move the entire R/C servo back and forth, while the R/C servo arm remains stationary. The effect is the same as if the R/C arm was moving, but the rudder is under Mindstorm control, not R/C control.

This autopilot is a "return bot". When engaged, it turns the aircraft 180 degrees (thanks to the compass) to point back at the launch area and keeps the plane level until the human pilot regains manual control.  

Next step is to ditch the compass and add a Bluetooth GPS module (the NXT brick has built-in Bluetooth), so it can follow waypoints and be fully autonomous. I'm not quite sure how to control the vertical dimension--the altitude--with this setup, so right now it's best to trim the plane for level flight and engage the autopilot at a relatively high altitude. Any ideas on how to solve the altitude problem in a Lego-friendly way? [Update: I'm told that the standard elevation output of the GPS module may be good enough to use for maintaining level flight, even if it's not high enough resolution to navigate to a soft autolanding. Once the gyro sensor arrives, I can test that.