Failure: The Secret to Success

An 8 minute video from Honda about not only the right to try and fail but almost the obligation to fail as a path to greater success. Excellent food for thought…

How Music Licensing Works – a good article

The following article gives a good broad view of the Music Licensing world. Licensing music is complex… unless you use Royalty Free Music where you only pay a very reasonable fee for excellent premium quality music. Typically you can license Royalty free Music online, pay for usage on the spot and download your music immediately.

Here is the article from How Stuff Works

Let’s say you are reading Rolling Stone magazine, and you find an article about an ad campaign that Phillips has launched. The ads feature the Beatles hit “Getting Better”. In the article you read this:

But according to the licensing expert, the company no doubt “paid a fortune” for the Beatles hit: an estimated $1 million. The source suspects Gomez made no more than $100,000.

This ad campaign is using the Beatles song as the theme music. It is also using the voice of the lead singer of the band named Gomez laid on top of the Beatles original. The speculation is that Philips paid $1 million to use the song, and that Philips paid the band Gomez $100,000. This is the world of music licensing — a world where the rights to use music are bought and sold every day. Click here to keep reading this article…

Twitter – Am I doing it all wrong?

I naively thought that following people meant I was really going to “follow” them and actually read what they write. But no – now I am learning Twitter is basically a way to acquire real estate space on the Web by having your name showing up on other people’s Twitter page. All along it seems I wrongly believed it was about networking, connecting and communicating – not real estate.

I thought I would choose to follow some people because I actually want to know what they think. But strangely this appears to be an unwise decision. I read you are supposed to follow high level re-tweeters (people who will transfer your own messages to their network of followers), that you should follow people with large groups of followers expecting they will follow you back and become your ambassadors. Again I have been doing this all wrong since I did not choose who I follow according to these criteria – nor did I expect them to follow me back. For example I am following @jowyang and @mitchjoel, and they are not following me back. Why should they? They write about social networking – a topic of interest to me, but I write mostly about our music business, a topic probably not of interest to them.

Unfollowing people – now that’s really wrong! I actually un-followed few people because I was not getting much out of their Tweets. I  even thought of unfollowing top guru @guykawasaki, a big mistake I am told. But why is that a mistake exactly? Most of his posts are just not grabbing my attention. And I am sure he’s never read any of my posts. Nothing personal – I just want to manage my social networking time as best as possible. But I am told I should never do this – that I should never unfollow anyone, that it is very rude.

I am also advised to never bother to read any tweets unless it comes in the form of private messages or @ messages addressed specifically to me. Otherwise I will waste too much time. I must only respond to Direct messages. So is it all about Me, Me and Me – and not Them or Us as a community? Ha! I have been definitely wrong here too. I have been reading many tweet messages from people I follow. Damn.

I have been using the private messaging option with some success only to learn it is a better strategy to reply always with @ because visitors will look at my Twitter page and will see I am an active community member if they notice lots of @ replies. But they won’t know it if I reply with a “d” for Direct which is private. Oh! I see. Arrrgh! Wrong again.

And one last thing… I read you should always use a picture of yourself as your avatar. People, I am told, want to see real people – not an organization logo. Since I signed up as an organization I thought I would use our easily recognizable logo and there would be no mistake in identifying immediately where the message is coming from. That would also eventually allow others within our organization to Tweet as well. But I must be doing it all wrong.

So what do you think? Is there any right way to do this?

My intention is to use Twitter as a useful and direct business communication tool, to respond personally and interact genuinely with individuals as a person, like I have always done in all my businesses.

Is Twitter a good option for this? Should one get 2 accounts – one for business newscast and one for personal interactions?

Twitter…
A networking tool or Internet Real Estate?
Should everyone follow everyone back or not?
Unfollowing – is it rude?
Private messaging – when is it most appropriate?
A human face or a logo for avatars ?

Thank you for your feedback,

Gilles Arbour
@premiumbeat

PS: See my previous post about Twitter

Marketing Products or Services Has Become More Complicated Through the Decades

A brilliant short animation film relating dramatic changes in marketing reality.

The Bird of Paradise Video by Brenda – Ovation TV Video

Talented Artist Bajidoo uses Premiumbeat.com music for her videos at OvationTV. The music used in this video: Dry Martini by Vinny Falcone one of our most prolific and appreciated composer.

more about "The Bird of Paradise Video by Brenda …", posted with vodpod

Digital Music Generated $3.7 Billion Of Trade Revenues In 2008

The world is going digital. But you knew that already…

Key stats from the IFPI Digital Music Report 2008

From Music Alley Blog http://twtr.us/FU

OVERALL FIGURES

- More than 1.4 billion legal single-tracks were downloaded in 2008, up 24% from 2007. The top-selling digital single was Lil Wayne’s Lollipop with 9.1 million sales.

- Digital album sales grew by 36% in 2008.

- Digital music generated $3.7 billion of trade revenues in 2008 – up 25% year-on-year.

- Digital now accounts for 20% of all recorded music sales, up from 15% in 2007. By contrast, the games industry generates 35% of its revenues digitally (but newspapers, films and magazines are way behind with 4%, 4% and 1% respectively)

- The IFPI estimates that more than 40 billion songs were downloaded illegally in 2008 – that’s 95% of total music downloads

GLOBAL BREAKDOWN

- The US accounts for around 50% of the entire global digital music market value, with 1.1 billion single-track downloads in 2008 (up 27% from 2007) and 66 million digital album sales (up 32%) – these are Nielsen SoundScan figures. Digital was 39% of the overall music market, revenue-wise.

- Japan sold 140 million mobile singles in 2008, up 26% on 2007. Digital was 19% of the overall music market.

- The UK sold 110 million single-track downloads in 2008 – up 42% – while digital album sales rose 65% to 10.3 million. Digital was 16% of the overall music market.

- France sold 14.5 million online single-track downloads in 2008 – up 20% year-on-year – and 1.4 million digital albums, up 27%. Digital was 12% of the overall music market. However, the number of album releases by new artists fell by 16% in the first half of 2008.

- Germany sold 37.4 million online single-track downloads in 2008 – up 22%. It sold 4.4 million digital albums, up 57% from 2007. Digital was 9% of the overall music market.

- An estimated 1.6 billion songs were downloaded illegally in Spain in 2008, compared to just two million legal downloads. That means 99.9% of downloads in Spain are unauthorised. Digital is 10% of the market.

OTHER STATS

- US broadband users spent an average of $12.50 on music in 2008, compared to $7.80 for UK broadband users, and a mere $0.60 for Spanish broadband users.