The reason I’m increasingly lacking sympathy for the problems of traditional media is that the online world is still one of almost infinite possibilities. And yet the hand-wringing fear of not clinging onto the old way of doing things is what is hurting traditionalists – even when they’ve got access to funding, developers and research that should put them in a better position than a bedroom or garage start-up.
Take music an an example.
I’ve written before about Nine Inch Nails making themselves available via the internet and reaping the rewards. The free download of the previous album, Ghosts had already made $1.6 million.
Then you have technology like Songsterr, a great online resource for guitarists. If you don’t read a traditional music score, as a guitarist, you rely on ‘tablature’ – numbers and lines to allow you to play music, generally available in books and magazines. Songsterr not only displays the tab as music plays, but even allows you to slow it down to half speed, which is incredibly useful for the tricky bits. (Hat tip to Jonathan MacDonald). You can subscribe to new song updates, and see what else is happening on the Songsterr blog.
And to round off, what about a musician like Ben Walker, whose ‘Twitter Song’ has been viewed 209,201 at the time of writing, and who ended up on BBC Radio 5 due to his newfound fame. Handily, he’s blogged a lot about why the song was created, and also what has happened since it was noticed. It hasn’t made him rich, but it’s led to offers of collaboration, offers to appear at public events, and offers to write about how musicians can use social media.
Now Nine Inch Nails may be established, but they’re a band not a record label. Songsterr doesn’t seem to have any big backing, and Ben Walker is an individual bloke.
Now why can’t big traditional media companies find the time and resources to experiment, and be able to soak up the inevitable failure rate to find success through big ideas? One successful new media boss quoted me a 1 in 10 success rate for ideas, but said that 1 success generally pays for the other 9. If you can’t do that as a big, established company now, things are only going to get worse.
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