The above said, do these videos also disclose something unfortunate about a distant-yet-mediated society?

I don’t really know.  You decide.

The Big Question: Is a Network (blanket license) Worth Doing? from david touve on Vimeo.

A video of the (now updated) presentation slides (without an audio overdub) is embedded at the bottom of this post.

Importantly, the number of files downloaded through pirate channels, which is the more popular metric spun in the news, was not what I was interested in.  Instead, I wanted to guesstimate how many times downloaded files are heard (in the case of music) or viewed (in the case of video) and compare these numbers to those listens/views that occur through radio and television.

Furthermore, its common for internet sources (like Mininova and even YouTube) to release global numbers, if only for the dramatic effect of really big numbers.  And so, I needed to pull together various estimates of national radio/tv audience sizes, ending up with an aggregate, global estimate—the result being really really big numbers.  Because advertising is primarily bought and sold on a national level, the use of global media data seems rare.

In short, I estimated that Mininova accounted for approximately 0.02901% of global media experiences—i.e., unique listens and views.

At length, below are the numbers, the sources, and the assumptions.

Mininova
Number of torrent downloads from Mininova = 10,000,000,000 (2005-2009)
Assumed average number of listens/views to each torrent download = 5
Total number of unique media experience attributed to Mininova = 50,000,000,000 (2005-2009)

Radio
Estimated global active radio audience = 2,210,093,834 (1/3 of world’s population)
Estimated weekly listening hours per lister = 21.8 (according to rajar)
Number of music tracks per hour (40 minutes of music per hour) = 12
Weekly aggregate tracks heard = 578,160,546,851
Aggregate tracks heard, 2005-2009 = 150,321,742,181,376

TV
Estimated global television household audience (free-to-air + pay) = 1,720,973,000 (according to Informa)
Estimated daily TV viewing hours per household = 5.4 (a function of global 2007 date from the OECD)
Assumed number of shows per hour (2 @ 1 hour, 4 @ 1/2 hour) = 7
Total number of shows viewed per day per household =  12,046,811,000
Total number of shows per household, 2005-2009 =  150,321,742,181,376

Combined
Total Radio listens plus TV views = 172,307,172,256,376

Mininova unique media experiences (listens/views) as proportion of total = 0.02901%

In short, the future business model for the media industries may indeed be Access.  But this business model simply looks like the one from the past; We are going from Access to Access.

Importantly, the media industry’s past was dominated by the business model of access.  This complete domination of access almost, that’s almost, faded around the turn of the century as consumers purchased a pile of DVDs and CDs.  This moment in time was wrinkled however, and the trend is your friend. Video games are the outlier, however, the industry was previously dominated by sales over access.

In the early part of the 20th century, movie studio revenue came from theater showings. Then came the TV, and both the free-to-air and pay- options.  Oh, and the lase disc. Sales of recorded movie media passed theater receipts in value sometime in the mid 1990′s.  However, pay and free TV, combined with video on demand and other access-based income consistently pushed the access model over the top in the complete portfolio of consumer spending.

Recently, the British Screen Advisory Council released the 2009 numbers for movie revenues in the UK (PDF link).  The BSAC update shows movie sales accounting for roughly only 1/3 of total consumer spending on moving pictures.  Cinema, pay TV, pay and subscription rentals, and VOD (cable and internet) accounted for roughly 2/3 of consumer spending in 2009 on movies.

The music industry revenue distribution looks quite similar.  In fact, we only saw this distribution differently because the phrase “music industry” was wrongly defined as simply the record business.  When you include live music and broadcast environments within the music industry, the predominance of access-, or service-based business models becomes clear.  In the UK, according to research from the PRS for Music (PDF link), live music revenues likely equal recorded music revenues even when the latter includes service monies (licensing for film, broadcast, etc.).

The future business model of the media industry may indeed be one of access.  However, access was also the predominate business model of the past.

In other words, the future for the media industry may simply look a great deal like the past. We are going from Access to Access.

In the wake of this announcement, Eliot VanBuskirk over at Wired.com suggested YouTube viewing now tops network prime time viewing—at least in the US.

Recently at the Telco 2.0 conference, I tried to put YouTube viewing in context and made some estimates and conversions so I could compare YouTube to the World of Television viewing.

Daily YouTube views = 2,000,000,000
Average length of YouTube video = 4.3 minutes
Average time US household watches TV each day = 5.4 hours
Household TV viewing hours converted to YouTube views = 75.4 YT views

US household daily TV viewing converted to YT views = 19,355,665,442
Global household daily TV viewing converted to YT views = 389,019,943,256 (high)
Global household daily TV viewing converted to YT views = 311,215,954,605

——————————–

YouTube views as a percentage of global TV viewing = 0.514% low estimate
YouTube views as a percentage of global TV viewing = 0.643% high estimate

For a video of these data as presented, just follow this YouTube link

The reasoning seems to fit with what people expect, but just to re-iterate the three major (imagined) factors):

Part of this outcome is the shift to many-to-many media—many users able to access many works (a broad catalog of music).  The catalog of available works increases, effectively surfacing a “tail” of media that previously was not easily seen.

Part of this outcome is a “relaxation” in the consumer-facing model—from product to service, if you will.  The catalog of accessible works increases, as a function of “lower transaction costs” (subscription and free services lowering the effective cost of trying out new things).

Part of this outcome is the introduction and accessibility of new mavens and connectors (to employ Gladwellian terms).  The catalog of plausibly accessible works increases given the introduction of new technologies and social actors able to introduce us to new stuff—randomly, filtered collaboratively, ideologically, or automagically.

My personal opinion would be that there will always be a head-heavy nature of experience distributions, not because of market control but simply because (1) culture is something we share (i.e., have in common and transfer among each other) and (2) some creative works are simply by their nature general in their appeal (in the same way that khaki pants go with about any shirt you wear).

Don’t you think the PC to cloud transition is the type of radical change we witness rarely?

Honestly, I waffle on this one (go figure).  The cloudy movement seems like something both seemingly radical yet actually inevitable in that some dimensions of the transition are new, and other dimensions quite honestly are very deja vu (in that they already happened).

Here is how I think about it:  When everything but the screen and keyboard is located elsewhere, that is what I consider complete cloud coverage.  Everything else is a partly cloudy experience.  And in certain domains (e.g., email, money) we have been partly cloudy for quite some time.  Think about it… we store our money so far away that the physical dollar bills don’t necessarily exist.

As such, we are simply experiencing an expansion of the universe of file types, stuff and services that are capable of being hosted and that we are willing to host elsewhere.  That radical change is a fuzzy line——some parts of our bodies already crossed over, while other parts are holding back.

Will this shift affect some companies in radical ways?  Yes.  Is the shift itself radical… Probably not.  The shift to partly cloudy is just what working and living on a network naturally implies;  This shift is not a prediction, it just makes sense.

As far as the waffling:

On one hand, the general user moving what files (pictures, music, docs) they possess from a local machine to some foreign machine (or set thereof) on a network is a change—mostly behaviorally.  These folks grew up with desktops that became laptops (or laptops that become phones), yet without a ubiquitous internet connection.  As such, storing things “somewhere out there” seems radical.

On the other hand, storing things on networks seems rather instinctual to anyone for whom network access has been or has become a foregone conclusion.  Storing things “somewhere out there” seems like old hat—it is what we have been doing for some time.

Frankly, where computing started for most corporate and academic types involved working in somewhat more localized cloud formations—dumb terminals network connected to big mainframes upon which the computing and storing took place.  The thing at your desk was (for the most part) just a screen and a keyboard.  There was no hard drive within arm’s reach.

What do you think?

Unfortunately, the methods for and outcomes of mimicry often get conflated.  The result of this conflation is something we might call Best Practice Bingo.  A few people are starting to be concerned about the nature of this bingo game (Billboard, more), and these concerns are warranted.  We are in danger of confusing consequences for causes, attributing success to what really are outcomes while overlooking the far more complicated How and Why that led to these outcomes.

The basic equation for this bingo game are as follows:

SO + IF + E³ = BPB

(Study Outliers) + (Ignore Failures) + (Exceptions Exceptions Exceptions)
= (Best Practice Bingo)

Study Outliers

The first stage of best practices bingo involves studying outliers—i.e., successful firms (or individuals)—and describing either  the basic process of what these winners do or the basic attributes of these winners.  The appeal of this first stage is so compelling, quite frankly, we cannot help ourselves.  Winners often seem to success despite the odds, and condition that should immediately suggest outlier status.

When presented within the best practice argument for success the SO stage usually takes the form of case studies—rich stories that present the behaviors/attributes of winners as truly novel and or unique.  Importantly, these stories are told backwards.  They describe what the winner did from the beginning with the end result of these actions being success.  In truth, the winner succeeded and this success led the researcher to notice the firm and then attribute a set of behaviors/attributes to this success.

Ignore Failures

The second yet obviously related stage of this bingo game involves ignoring failures through the outlier selection process.  Ignoring failures is built into the study outliers stage, yet the presence of failures should be key to any test in search of what separates the wheat from the chaff, the winners from the losers.  By way of ignoring failures we turn off the capacity to tell whether what we see winners doing happens to be something truly unique to winners.  And by explaining the behaviors and attributes of only the winning outliers in arrears, we lose the ability to distinguish prediction from description. Losers in Bingo games never stand up and scream “we lost!”

Exceptions Exceptions Excpetions

The final condition for the best practice bingo game is the ongoing introduction of exceptions, exceptions, exceptions.  In the event of any failing firm (or individual) that seems to otherwise display the attributes of winning firms we propose exceptions, usually based on some prototypical case or argument.  By prototypical I simply mean the process or attributes of winners are argued to stand as ideal examples of the process or attribute in question.  Failed firms may have something that looks like these processes/attributes, but they just didn’t do/have these things just right.  These firms are, therefore, excluded from the condition in arrears.  When you start hearing the word “but” all the time, be very worried that someone may be making as ass of you.

Best Practice Bingo

The result of this all-too-common three stage process is a situation we might call best practice bingo.  Upon learning about these behaviors and attributes of winning firms, other firms begin to mimic these features and the bingo game begins.  Some of these firms succeed, others fail.  The pundit excludes failures from the model for simply not doing/having it “just right .”  Successful outcomes are almost always accepted as de facto and are used to support the model.

Example #1: CWF + RTB = $$$

Circulating the network of pundits (examples here, here and here) these days is Techdirt’s recent proposition that the model for future business success can be phrased: (Connect with Fans) + (Reason to Buy) = $$$.  When presented in public (here and here), this proposition is pretty much always a function of case studies—Trent Reznor, Jill Sobule, etc.

Just about every presentation on the CWF+RTB premise involves studying outliers—winners who seemed to embody the ethos of this model.  These artists appear to be succeeding by way of this model, so what’s the problem?  IF + EEE.

First and foremost, failures are ignored.  Any number of artists, both now and in the past, have employed a method through which they aspire to connect with fans and give these fans a reason to buy.  In fact, just about every business on the planet is in the business of trying to connect with potential customers and give these customers are reason to open their wallets.  Some of these artists have succeeded while others have failed.

Finally, the exceptions are starting to roll in.  In order to workaround the bingo game, we are starting to hear about folks just not really connecting with fans, or just not given those fans are reason to buy.  And so, the big buts will begin.

Example #2: CWE + RTV = Election

Let’s be honest, a translation of the CWF model for politics would be: Connect with the electorate + Give them a reason to vote for you = Election to office.  CWE + RTV = Election

When translated to other markets, the model seems to offer less insight than description.  The winner of any election connected with the electorate and gave that electorate a reasons to vote.  However, these features were consequences not causes.

Here’s to a bingo-free lifestyle.

As a product meant to appeal to the Apple fanboy, the iPad appears to be a tremendous dud.  It does not have what the fanboy needs that we don’t already get out of the combination of our MacBook(Pro) and iPhone.  In fact, on its own, the iPad is inferior to both the iPhone and a MB(P).  Its a phone without a phone (but with giant numbers).  A laptop without real guts.

The iPad is the new Brick phone.

But even the Brick spawned a market for mobile phones.  And its toward the construction of a new market that the iPad (better named) could really do something interesting.

The Church of Apple should have developed and positioned the iPad like Nintendo developed and positioned the Wii — a revolutionary-in-its-simplicity product targeted at people who are not “in the market” at the moment.  For Nintendo, this market was people who might like to play video games, but don’t need the bravado of the xBox or Playstation.  With a controller that doesn’t require 6 fingers on both hands to operate.

With the iPad the market is people who would like to have a computer-ish thing, with a simple interface and nice screen.  These are humans who are now on the sidelines of the computer world.  These people simply need a device with which they can get their email, read some news, and maybe watch a video of their grandkid. The device makes even more sense to this fringe class when combined with a reasonably priced 3G/4G connection, thereby ridding this fringe the challenge of GeekSquad managed not-so-personal Wi-Fi networks.   These folks don’t need Word or Pages, they just need GoogleDocs.  They don’t have 120GB music collections.  A computer mouse is uncomfortable, and a laptop trackpad is frustrating.  A touch screen is simple.

In Apple speak, it just works.

We should also expect to see this object in hospitals and other settings where a not-so-bulky, but reasonably processor capable device can do all that it needs to do.  Surface some patient stats, scans, and other data when you need these data.

Badly named.  Over-hyped.  Perhaps not so revolutionary.

But some people don’t need a revolution.  They just need something that works.

Using the back of a napkin, you can easily arrive at upwards of one billion “impressions” of Susan Boyle online and offline—moments in time when viewers, listeners or readers were treated to or focused upon she who is know as SUBO.  In fact, this one billion number may actually be a gross under-estimate.

In the context of this many impressions, Susan Boyle’s reported 5 million records sold translates to no more than a 0.5% conversion rate—less than one half of one percent of these moments translated into a sale.

The rise of SUBO may in fact be the most significant and recent evidence of the absolutely massive number of ”impressions” that must now occur in order to move consumers from indifference to action in the modern market for music.