 |
| MUSIC SPECIALIST |
My best friend and I speak just about everyday, one of the subjects that has surfaced in the past few days is people wanting to get paid to divulge information, music or film that they may have on any given subject. This is the classic “The game is to be sold not told” strategy and millions are saying that I need to get paid before I can share with anyone else.
I believe that this idea is antiquated, and the continued adoption of it will destroy your business.
Almost everyone reading this article was trained to believe that you make an entertainment product, look for a major company to sell it to, allowing that company to own your masters, publishing, copyrights, artwork, etc. These companies give you an advance then market & promote (charging you) collect all sales and have a portion of all performances, merchandising, endorsements and anything else associated with the project. One company owns many products, and tells the public how they can access and utilize these products.
Today I am telling you that this business model has changed entirely.
People are interacting with one another at an alarming rate, passing information, audio, video and business files around without any funds being transferred globally. The ability to reach your customer directly is causing a new business model and governments plus private industry are adapting rapidly while many in the public sector continue the 1980’s practices.
Russia is now scanning, cataloguing and placing ALL of the books found in their library system online. This is not only Russian literature, but English, French, German and more. Africa, India, China and other third world countries within a few years will have major penetration on the World Wide Web allowing access to their collective banks of information and knowledge. Effectively this will mean that the world’s knowledge will be OPEN to anyone that has an Internet connection for FREE.
We once knew that you had to have a distributor to sell your products. We put up with paying distributors to ship, house, and even communicate with our companies. We signed contracts with distributors allowing them to make advance money from our projects if they became a hit and were “picked up” by major labels. This was what we accepted and allowed as normal business operation.
The world’s largest distributor of audio & video projects today is FACEBOOK.
In years past creativity was extraordinary, each individual writer, musician, singer, dancer, film maker, painter, designer and more worked on their craft and fashioned their distinctive individual style. A few collaborations were developed but for the majority of the entertainment products these collaborations were small (2-3person) units.
The majority of today’s creativity comes from the ability to hear, see and read ideas from other people globally. We originally called it “sampling” or “biting” but now it is the way of education world wide. Most of what I write about comes from ideas already circulating on the web. Being an avid reader I am in tune with many different people from different countries all speaking the same inferences. We have become “people of the screen” and millions of followers are looking at their screens daily. In todays market if you do not have a website, can be Googled and have a positive social media score than you are not to be trusted or to do business with. This is not my call, but the direction that society has taken. If you see a person online with negative Google comments concerning their business or service, with no visible web presence or with dislikes (thumbs down) on their Facebook account you leave them alone. The public has the power to make or unmake anyone just on the “thumbs up” rule.
The concept of Piracy has now changed into a new concept called Motivation meeting Opportunity. If I have a copy of your movie and you decide that only the people that pay you should see it, then I now have an audience (MOTIVATION) that wants your product and since I have it available (OPPORTUNITY) I can send it to them for FREE. A few readers just got mad, but this is file sharing at its lowest level and millions of people are doing it daily. There is now an entire generation of teens and young adults that will always believe the Internet is the source of FREE information, video and music.
For years the idea of copyrights has bothered me, I know that it is an archaic regulation. I have only seen it work when you have money and power to use it . I have watched the major labels, publishers, performing rights organizations and other groups make BILLIONS of dollars, Euros, yen, pounds, marks or whatever your countries currency is called based on copyright infringement regulations. Very few original songwriters or original publishers make a portion of the huge profit being generated by copyrights. The Internet is changing the entire structure of copyright law worldwide, causing problems and many different fixes.
The new school of thought expands of the concept of “User Licenses” instead of mandatory copyright rules that the public ignores. A user license is an agreement between the purchaser and the licensor for the right to use the product. This makes so much more sense when dealing with the Internet and the download and uploading of files. In particular the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA) is becoming more and more popular among originators of entertainment products worldwide.
Today’s business needs open communication between users for the flow of information to travel while the concept of keeping the information until you get paid is DEAD. Many of you will continue to think in this antiquated way, as for me I’m opening up my business to interested people for FREE. My open hand will receive more than your closed fist everyday. I never said that I won’t get paid, but I won’t wait to exchange information, files and business acumen on a perceived payday.