The art of a decade

As we wrap up the first decade of the 21st century, there is some interesting (albeit inevitable) thinking about what were the trends that defined the last 10 years.

A very nice article in the WSJ highlights the “un-trend”, the lack of a single artistic trend that identifies, defines and shapes our dearly departed decade. The writer attributes this to the inability of a critical mass to form around a single thought or movement, similar to what may have formed in artistic centers this time last century…

The key factor in stylistic evolution was geographical concentration: One of the reasons that so many turn-of-the-century painters embraced cubism was that an unusually high percentage of them lived in Paris and knew one another, just as jazz took shape in New Orleans rather than Detroit.

Another problem is a coherent mass media that once helped define trends way back when…

Would Andy Warhol have become an art-world superstar if magazines like Time hadn't proclaimed that he "best plays the part of what a pop artist might expectably be"? I doubt it, just as I doubt that The Beatles would have taken America by storm without the help of Ed Sullivan.

I made a similar point about the lack of an authoritative voice in the mass media when I contemplated the next Cronkite

The main argument I have against this article is that it is too soon to make a judgment that there is no artistic trend to define Decade: 1, Century: 21. I suspect that the various romanti-cubi-surreal-isms that we assign other eras were only obvious in retrospect, after the decade had well passed-on.

The Economist makes the point that the real winner is the blockbuster, which is still able to corral people to one place around one screen, but these blockbusters do not a trend define. (Can’t find the link now, just go to Economist.com and hunt around for the link if you’re interested.)

We are living in an era of fractured audiences and fractured art. What will be interesting is that someday (maybe in this decade) someone will be able to present a huge big (and sustainable) idea across the fractured mediascape.

The word “sustainable” is important because right now we get a lot of huge ideas on our Facebooktwitteryoutube page, that are big, exciting but ultimately fleeting (Susan Boyle anyone… and yes, I know she has an album out).

So who will present this huge multiplatform idea that stays with us? I have no idea, but it will happen. Just as the universe expands and contracts, so will the mediaspace. Now it is expanding across different ideas, technologies and genres, and that’s cool. But some sort of cosmic gravity will begin to pull that together someday and the result will be a new way of consuming all the media we’ve created.

Until that time, I’ll leave the final word with the author:

That un-trend is the only identifiable one to have emerged in contemporary American culture. As every smart pollster knows, we live in a deeply divided country, one in which not enough people agree about anything to allow artistic trends to flourish. That's neither good nor bad -- it just is. And it isn't going away.


Technology and the End of Trend

Rupert, you're right about the media!

OK, if this isn't one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, I don't know what is but yes, on one point, I actually whole-heartedly agree with Rupert Murdoch.

Here is the apocalyptic point:

The key to survival, he said, lies in giving consumers content that they want in the form that they want it — whether that be on a computer screen, mobile device or e-reader — and then charging for it.

"We need to do a better job of persuading consumers that high-quality, reliable news and information does not come free," Murdoch said. "Good journalism is an expensive commodity."

Right! Give people the quality they want, in a form they want it in, at a reasonable price, paid for in a convenient way.

It's worked for other forms of entertainment and while this isn't the silver bullet to save journalism, but it is a good start.

Generating quality journalism is a difficult process and deserves to be paid for. If we're willing to pay 99 cents for a pop tune, we should be willing to pay a similar amount to maintain one of the key pillars to civil society.


Murdoch: Media must get readers to pay for online

News tries to Bing Google... may get Bonged

So play this WSJ/Bing drama out in your head (which is what I’m doing past midnight, so please forgive any fatigued leaps of logic)…

Bing pays NewsCorp some amount of money to be the exclusive search engine for its news properties, including the WSJ. It probably wouldn’t be a huge amount because Murdoch has it in for Google and being a thorn in the Googlers’ side is probably payment enough.

What happens next? WSJ traffic drops because about 75% of the searching population can’t find it? Maybe.

Or maybe other newspapers try to get a piece of the goods and start demanding either Bing or Google shell out some dough to search their sites.

If all the newspapers band together and demand payment for search from Bing or Google, that would be pretty powerful. That is a pretty big if, to assume that all media outlets would bandy together like that. Maybe the market would fracture and WSJ would go with Bing and NYT would go with Google.

Take this thought process one step farther and you have Bing as the conservative search site and Google as the liberal one. This may be stretching the thought process a bit but if this happens, it would royally suck and instead of the internet being a free forum of ideas, it would be bifurcated into two enormous echo chambers. But I digress….

Anyway, back to earth …. So Bing and Google begin to recoup their additional costs by charging advertisers a premium for placement on news related.

Of course, then some cottage industry would spring up of mirroring stories across the Net so any exclusivity to Bing or to Google would really only last a very short while. Like 2 seconds. That would lessen the incentive for advertisers to pay premium ad rates for exclusive content that isn’t really exclusive.

Anyway, you could continue to game this out back and forth in your head until you’re exhausted (as I was, when I first started this ramble.)

Bottom line, content is still king. You can play around with these funny web restrictions but ultimately, it is hard to imagine how they will work in a scalable fashion. The music industry tried all sort of “too-clever-by-half” legal and technical means to try to stop music pirating. Ultimately, they came to the realization of “hey, why don’t we give the customer what they want in a form they want it?” (epiphany courtesy Mr. Jobs)

This NewsCorp/Bing deal has the same feel to it. Instead of giving people the news in a manner and format that is of value to them (ie, that they will pay for) large companies with more money than savvies are trying to come up with ways to restrict content in the online world, which inherently defies restriction.

But then again, Rupert has shown his online chops by making MySpace such a success….

Bing Tries To Buy The News - washingtonpost.com

Will there be another Cronkite?

VentureBeat asks the interesting (if perhaps rhetorical) question of who will be the Walter Cronkite of the blogosphere. The question makes us realize for what we have gained in “democratizing” the media through online publishing, we’ve lost in credible, authoritative voices. I put “democratizing” in quotes because although blogs allow many people to come online and report/voice opinions, it also makes it far easier to tune out voices and ideas that one may not agree with.

It may be a democratization of voices (anyone can contribute) but I fear more often than not it is a ghettoization of ideas; meaning that disparate ideas are kept in various corners of the blogosphere that are visited only by people who agree and support those ideas.

So will there be a new Walter Cronkite? Probably not, because at the moment there isn’t a single online platform that has the universal reach and authority of a CBS news (back in the day.)

It is kinda like asking if anyone will sell more records that Michael Jackson. The answer is nope, because no one is making records.


Who will be the Walter Cronkite of the blogosphere? | VentureBeat

India learning from Toronto?

This article on US media companies beginning to favor India over China in Asia reminded me of an earlier article on the success Toronto has had in multiculturalism.

The common thread here is how important it is to be open and welcoming to outside ideas. I don't mean this as a pitch for diversity per se (although diversity in its own right is a laudable goal.) But rather to highlight that encouraging a diversity of people and of ideas is good for business, helps grow markets and can actually contribute to social cohesion. Everyone wants to support society and its institutions because they feel directly vested in their success.

India is less onerous in its demands and regulations on foreign media and as a result is seeing a great influx of new media ideas. I'm sure it is no coincidence that the Indian media landscape is one of the most dynamic on Earth right now. India is currently the source for many pop-culture innovations from movies to music to fashion.

Why get something for free when you can pay for it?

Media to Google: Pay for our content

Google to media: Get stuffed, its free.

Maureen Dowd talks to Eric Schmidt about the media getting some of those Google riches for its own

He declines to pony up money, noting that newspapers could opt out of giving their content to Google free and adding, “We actually like making our own money for obviously good capitalist reasons.”

Yes, there is a crisis in the media but like so many other crises, this one is based on poor economics. Many people point to issues of the declining quality of content that is hurting the media. This is no doubt true, to a certain extent.

But more so it is because the media doesn't understand the economics of its own business in the new online world. They love Google because it drives content to their sites. They hate Google because Google, through its targeted advertising, is really the only ones making money in this transaction.

They give links to Google for free but then demand payment. Paying for something you would otherwise get free is not a wise economic decision and Google is not staffed by dummies.

For too long, the media has been giving away its content, which therefore has become increasingly commoditized. You can basically read the same story or opinion anywhere on the web. Most news sites have really very little content that is differentiated and therefore valuable.

The media will not make money by giving away content, even if it makes up for it in volume.

Apple tells music retailers how to behave

Here is a great example of a market leader signaling to its competitors the rules of engagement. So Apple is the market leader in downloading music, right? So when it raises its prices, what should the competition do? Lower their prices in order to win over users and gain marketshare, right?

Wrong?

They just follow right along and raise their prices too! Apple goes from 99 cents to $1.29 and so does Amazon, Rhapsody and others.
The concept is simple and is illustrated so well by Bruce Greenwald and basic economic theory.

Apple rules the market for downloadable music and every competitor knows, Apple could credibly take them on if it really wanted to. So who wants to launch a margin-busting price war with Apple when you could just imitate their prices and maintain your own comfortable share of the market.

Because of its dominant position, Apple is able to set prices for the rest of the market and everyone follows in proper obedience.

This example is a great counterpoint to the magazine industry that is fragmented, without a clear leader, and totally unaware of its own value.

Rather than the industry raising prices to protect their own margins, magazines are on this destructive race for the bottom in a vain attempt to attract subscribers. In the end they just end up commoditizing their own business because they are now unable to spend in order to innovate, and they create the perception that their product is cheap and replaceable.

Evolution of the newspaper

Currently it is very trendy to talk about the "death of the media" but I think a more sophisticated discussion should rather focus on its evolution. Yes, it is painful for those involved and yes the result may be a media product that is quite different than what we've been used to in the past.

But then again, find me one industry that has essentially remained unchanged over the past 100 or so years (the auto industry immediately springs to mind.... great model they turned out to be.)

Hyper-local sites like the one starting in Seattle may very well be the next step in the evolution of the local paper. There are already some excellent models out there, most notably in San Diego.

Admittedly, these are non-profits at the moment but hopefully these will evolve into sustainable for-profit models. Whatever business models these non-profits may eventually come up with will probably be better than some of the questionable management decisions that are currently plaguing parts of the media industry.

The micro of magazines

Basic microeconomics 101, when you’re competing on price, you are now in a commodity market. That’s great if you sell copper, it is not so great if you sell content.

If a magazine is trying to attract subscribers (and therefore advertisers) by slashing prices, it is a commodity magazine. Basically you’re telling the world that your content can be replaced by any other content out there, but so you’re willing to offer it cheaper.

This race to the bottom may explain part of the media’s ills. Positioning your product as a commodity is a terrible message to send to advertisers.

But it seems that people think they can rely on commodity pricing but still position themselves as a differentiated produce.

Interestingly, whether consumers pay $5 or $50 for a subscription does not affect their perception of the magazine, according to a study conducted four years ago by the media consultant Rebecca McPheters for publishers including Time Inc., Condé Nast, Hearst and Meredith.

“There was no difference between the engagement of those who paid less and those who paid more,” Ms. McPheters said in an interview.

I guess the debate will come down to how you define the word “engagement”. Maybe lining your birdcage with BusinessWeek is considered “engagement”.

Given those findings, the price a consumer pays should not matter to advertisers, since it does not affect the reader’s attitude toward the magazine, said Robert A. Sauerberg Jr., the group president for consumer marketing at Condé Nast. Mr. Sauerberg said that prices were constantly tested, and “the fact is, the pricing comes as a result of what the consumer is willing to pay.”

Or, in other words, how much they value your content. If you’re attracting subscribers only on price, there is clearly a problem with how readers value your content.
This lesson on the perils of a commodity existence isn’t lost on all publications however. One would hope that one called “The Economist” would get it right.

Even though The Economist is relatively expensive, its circulation has increased sharply in the last four years. Subscriptions are up 60 percent since 2004, and newsstand sales have risen 50 percent, according to the audit bureau.

Although, apparently you don’t really need to be that smart to figure this all out:

The subscription price for People has risen about 5 percent, to $104 a year, in the last four years. The cover price has risen 21 percent, to an average of $4.09 (including special issues, which cost more). In that time, People’s subscription and newsstand sales have both increased slightly.




In Switch, Magazines Think About Raising Prices - NYTimes.com