christian jung beta

While i’m starting to work on some music related web project, i stumbled over this 96-page e-book from Andrew Dubber from Birmingham City University. A very well done and very savvy sum-up of web thinking for the music business. Quotation:

“The old model of music business is dominated by the sale of an individual artefact for a set sum of money. The new model is about starting an ongoing economic relationship with a community of fans.”

Sounds like a blueprint for my upcoming work.

How much is it worth? I paid 2 GBP, that equals 2.88 Euros plus transaction fee. Why? As far as i know (and my former boss Willms wrote in his thesis), artist’s share from the price of music is around 12%, producion is roughly 8%. The rest is for the labels, marketing and distribution. Assumed that a download on iTunes would have cost me 9,99 Euros, paying 3 Euros leaves 1 Euro for radiohead’s own distribution channel. I think this is fair. Some people estimate the same value, Richard MacManus pays a lot more.

Remarkable for the download site: it is a very simple piece of software. There is no prelistening of the music, nothing but payment and download. And it’s got the coolest shop basket ever seen:

If i would work at Sony BMG, Universal Music, EMI or Warner Music, i’d start looking for a new job…

UPDATE: The Listening Post says, the average price is $6, according to ComScore

In my ongoing search for contemporary definitions of what design is, i am currently reading Making Meaning by Steve Diller, Nathan Shedroff, and Darrel Rhea. Making Meaning is about Experience Design – an approach to the conscious creation of meaning in products and services, according to the authors. I bought the book because i have great respect for Nathan Shedroff’s work and got a lot of inspiration from him in the past.

Although i don’t like the book in particular – too much self-praise for their consulting firm – i think it’s worth a read. In chapter 5 the authors share their understanding of design. Quotes:

When we speak of design, we are talking about a mechanism for consciously creating value based on truly understanding customers as people and, ideally, caring about, having empathy for, and being compassionate towards them […]

This broader definition of design should not be confused with invention, which does not require the production of value to customers […] Inventions are often demonstrations of capability […]

(p.58)

This is the interesting thought that design can be distinguished from other creative roles by the goal of understanding the customer. Consequently, design is – amongst others – an internal communication task:

Design [is] the shared language for collaboration

(p.64)

I like this! It’s true, i can tell.

Tagged:design rethink

I like this interview with Erik Spiekermann. Thank you for reminding me:

• You always have to tell the same story
• (we) never do unpaid creative work

Great quotes, good advice for my own business.

I’m a friend of getting good inspiration from best practices, but this goes way too far.

Sources have passed along an image what appears to be the european iPhone announced for December this year. Remarkable details: it has a physical keybord! It has skype pre-installed! They got rid of the ridiculous weather application! It has a finder icon, that probably means you can install own OSX applications! Thanks, Steve, finally this rocks totally.

UPDATE:
Someone had the same idea. Yes, of course, the screen should rotate when the keybord is pulled out.
Via Bruce Nussbaum

“Adapt or die” (Stowe Boyd) is also a good advice for XING, although not a new one. A social network without open APIs will be just blown away – if not from facebook then somebody else will do. It would be a pity.

Just watching the videos from the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston this week. David Weinberger gave a talk about everything is miscellaneous. Since i nearly finished the book, i already knew the story, but it was worth listening to him anyhow. Especially because of this slide, it’s wonderful:

Now i’m a bit jealous. I should have gone there.

The best novelty at this year’s reboot are the micropresentations. 15 slides 20 seconds each equal 5 minutes for each speaker, and this is very tough. But its also a fun game, and it is perfect to cram a much information in a slot as possible. I loved it!

This experience leads to the thought: why not having only one track of short talks in one room instead of two? We conference visitors are always in fear of missing something important in the room next door.

Another idea – courtesy to Alexander Ljung – why not starting the day with micropresentations of all talks? This would be like presenters pitching for their slot, we would get a great overview.

I have been writing some thoughts on LastFM here, and i just felt like photoshopping a bit. Just an experiment, comments appreciated.

In my view, the neighbour radio (or better: loved tracks radio) is the most interesting and powerful feature, and LastFM should focus on. The site is packed with functions, and for novice users it is really hard to find out the value. My intention is to make LastfM easier to access and show these users where the fun is.

What if the dashboard (your personal start page) would look something like this (click to enlarge):

The left part is yours, where the current playing radio is located and where you can see your recently scrobbled tracks. At the top, there are the buttons to start your personal radios.

The right part is where your neighbours are. Not only all-time neighbours, because they change not frequently, there could also be neighbours of the last week or so. There is a pulldown at the top where you could select the time range (in this case it says “recently”).

The thumbnail row doesn’t need an explanation, i guess. It works like an endless Macintosh dock, you could scroll through the images to the right and the left. Maybe it would also show the users’ most recent shout in the balloon, that would help.

By clicking on one of the images, it shows what this person likes (loved tracks) and what he currently listens to. There are buttons at the bottom that would start the radio at the left hand side.

What do you think, good idea, bad idea?