Can't Stop The Music

It's All Fun

Too often we all take ourselves too seriously. In these crazy times it's fun to see artists understanding that they not only provide us with great music... a concert can be that much more enjoyable (and a stress reliever) when we get to be in on the prank. Hats off to Taylor Swift as she and Keith Urban "rock and roll all night" in KC culminating with K.I.S.S. a girl!



And hat's off to Paul at NashvilleHype for highlighting this news of the day.

The Power of LIVE Music!

My friend Elliott Cunningham of Westgate Marketing writes about the health of the music industry in his blog today. USA Today also covers the topic: Bands Warm Up for a Busy Summer on the Road. And the news of Michael Jackson’s death and the impact this has on the fortunes of the touring companies with his comeback tour’s cancellation and the possible addition of the Jackson family doing a tribute tour has everyone thinking and talking “LIVE!”

 
The Bonnaroo Bus brings fans from Indiana to Manchester, TN

 
Fans enjoy being part of the Moonalice Tribe (Moonaliceband.com)

Live performance is one of the healthiest segments of the music industry. Summer blossoms festivals of all types from Bonnaroo to Creation to Folk Festivals to country music’s CMA Fest and more. And the live music scene at clubs and other venues around the country is growing. A recording is great. Seeing the artists you love in person can’t be beat. And seeing them under the stars… priceless.

Which tours and festivals will you catch this summer?

Tags: Entertainment

Living in the Cloud - Part Two

I love living life in the cloud. Now that I have located my office here, as long as I have access to a Mac or PC, I can access all critical information for my personal and professional life. 

EverNote (http://www.evernote.com) - An amazing note-taking application that works on the web, PC, Mac and even the iPhone and Blackberry. I have over 3,000 notes in Evernote. It takes a fraction of a second to search my notes. Photos are automatically indexed if any text appears in them. I could go on and on about Evernote. It is one of my most used applications. It replaced Microsoft OneNote on my PC system. 

Jott (http://www.jott.com) - This innovative service will save you time and possibly even an auto accident. Simply set up an account. Call Jott when you want to write yourself a note. Speak your note and a transcribed version with the sound file will be sent to you. It gets better!... You can send Jotts to others. An iPhone application let's you do text and voice easily notes on the fly. An Adobe AIR application let's you access all your Jotts on a PC or Mac. Link Jott to Google Calendar and other services and you can call, speak the details of an appointment, and they are auto-magically placed on your calendar. The same holds for popular To Do and GTD applications and even an Expense Reporting system (Xpenser.com)... Jott is your personal secretary! These quick notes live in the cloud and sync across all your devices.

GMail - (http://www.gmail.com) - Mail in the cloud. Need I say more. You are probably using it already. If not, why not?

Google Calendar - (http://www.google.com/calendar) - Your calendar in the cloud. Layer in other calendars (holidays, events.) Share events with friends or others in business. Sync across your devices. 

Plaxo (http://www.plaxo.com) - Why type in all those change of address notifications you receive? Plaxo is your address book in the cloud. Applications to sync with your PC and Mac are available. And from your PC or Mac you can sync your other calendars.

Apple's MobileMe (http://www.me.com) - I use Apple's MobileMe service to bring my contact list together across all platforms I use.

LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com) - LinkedIn is networking for business on steroids. Like Plaxo, LinkedIn let's you stay connected with your industry and other professional relationships. It is an outstanding research tool. It is said that we will each have at least six careers in our lifetime (unlike the view of working life in the 50's and 60's where most people looked at a career as a lifetime place of employment.)  LinkedIn makes staying connected and tracking changes in the companies that matter to you easier than any alternative that  I know.  

Facebook (http://www.facebook.com) - Social Networking's winning app (so far.) I am continually amazed at the value of Facebook and Twitter in business as well as personal situations. 

Twitter (http://www.twitter.com) - Twitter answers the simple question What are you doing right now? in 140 characters or less. Some call it "micro-blogging." I call it ingenious. I have Twitter linked to my Facebook feed. It also updates my Plaxo Connections. It also updates my blog. Follow the right people and you can get industry relevant and timely information in a more effective way than the traditional newspaper. Thank you to Mr. Tweet for helping find the right people here (http://www.mrtweet.com.) Twitter's direct messaging feature is a great way to text message people from any device. 

Gist (http://www.gist.com) - New tools such as Gist promise to add a connecting fiber across services like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. Forget reading the morning paper... how about a custom feed of information from the people and companies you care about? This is one to watch.

Basecamp (http://www.basecamphq.com) - This service of 37 Signals is part of a growing suite of online cloud applications to manage projects. There are times when email is not enough... You need an online system for each project to track deliverables, milestones, files, contacts, etc.  Basecamp does this with ease.

What hasn't moved to the cloud yet in my suite of "core applications"? 

Mindjet MindManager (http://www.mindjet.com) - Mind Mapping, invented by Tony Buzan, is a critical part of my toolkit. I use it daily. I have found no way to communicate and organize a volume of information as effectively as a well done Mind Map. In fact, I just completed a 50+ page document this week that came from a series of meetings where we developed and then refined a MindMap. It is particularly effective in a live session for brainstorming, organizing or getting a team on the same page. MindMaps richly and easily integrated with Evernote - that would be a killer-app.

NEO Pro (http://www.emailorganizer.com) - This work horse sits on top of gigabytes of email archives, letting me find needles in my email haystacks (PST archives) from years of Exchange usage. I look forward to being able to move all of my PSTs to the cloud when an application can offer me the richness of NEO Pro. There is a cloud version of NEO Pro, yet nothing that I am yet aware of for handing the volume of data I maintain. Storage is cheap, so I expect this will come sooner than later. NEO Pro takes the headache out of complex filing systems for email and lets me search and locate necessary information with minimal effort. 

But wait... there's more!

I use online banking, online travel booking, and many other cloud-based services in the course of my daily life. It is amazing to think about how fast the transition is now going from applications based on your own computer to cloud-based applications, tools and services. There's no going back once you've headed down this path. You are liberated to use your data how you want it, when you want it, and where you want it. Microsoft articulated a vision for "information at your fingertips" years ago. Cloud computing is delivering exactly that today.

Come fly with me in the cloud. After a few flights you'll never want to be stuck on the ground again. Let me know your favorite cloud applications. This space is changing so fast, I'd appreciate your help in continuing to surf this wave of innovation.

Moving My Office to the Cloud

Over the past several years I have been moving more and more of my life into the cloud. Not familiar with the term?... The "cloud" is the Internet. Hosting applications and your data on servers that you will probably never see versus an internal IT department or computers in your home is living in the cloud. 

The term "cloud computing" has been growing in popularity in recent times. And with good reason. Just a few years ago the risks and downside of moving your data and applications to the cloud out weighed the benefits. I believe that has now changed. And I believe the "winner" of the movement to the cloud will define the next super company.

IBM did not make the move to the PC as successfully as new competitors and lost its entire hold on the computing market to Microsoft as a result. Microsoft, my alma mater from March 1985 - February 1993 and again in late 1994-1995, faces the same risk of being unseated.

Who is the prospective heir to the throne? In my mind the top contenders are Google and Apple.  Both have been taking several successful steps in advancing cloud computing and getting consumers to move their life to the web and into the cloud. Amazon is also in the hunt for software applications moving to the cloud with IT and developer services like EC2 and S3.

And Microsoft? Microsoft is playing catch up with Live Mesh and other solutions. I am baffled as to why Microsoft's strategy is to look at its belly button and buy back its own stock at a time when Google is threatening its crown jewels and is snapping up new leading technologies... Android is a serious threat to Windows and Google Docs is a serious threat to Microsoft Office. Google is experimenting and enhancing its footprint with new cutting edge services like Google Voice, Google Calendar, etc.  I know more and more companies moving from Microsoft Exchange to Google's GMail platform. OWA is not a valid response to Gmail. Exchange is feeling less and less nimble when compared with GMail. And Google Gears should be sending shivers through Redmond, letting users work offline as easily as online with the Google Docs suite of applications. Just try collaborating with Microsoft Word and then try the same thing with Google Docs. Now do the same with Excel and then Google's spreadsheet. You will quickly see who is in the lead.

I didn't start down this path on my own. I walked into a conference room in our offices and saw five of our team, all in their 20's, using Google Docs as they worked together on a project. I asked why they were not using Word and they looked at me in disbelief, showing me in a few seconds how they could collaborate and do things Word could not do. We were paying hundreds of dollars per employee for a Microsoft Office license. Google Docs is free. That was some time ago. I have long since been a convert. And it is getting easier and easier to be one as Google enhances the platform. The economy and the move to lean business practices will force those who have not considered looking at relocating to the cloud to do so.

Google, Amazon, Microsoft and many small and nimble companies are working to get your attention with their cloud applications. Which ones have my attention and have become staples in my daily computer usage? More on that in my next blog.

10 Lessons Learned in the Rear View Mirror

History is not a definitive predictor of the future. At the same time, we can learn from history - ours and others. Let's start the dialog on moving forward by first taking a look in the rear view mirror...

In 2001 and 2002 the consumer was already speaking. They wanted their digital music to be easily accessible across their devices. They wanted MP3 files. In fact they were screaming, "I WANT MY MP3." in full parody of Dire Strait's "I want my MTV."  Napster had opened pandora's box. The record industry's plans for SDMI (secure digital media initiative), an early version of DRM (digital rights management) had failed miserably. So it seemed obvious to many that the issue would be devising distribution models that worked with MP3 files. Who would have thought it would take until 2008 and 2009 for the industry as a whole to stop fighting the consumer and to offer MP3 files everywhere digital music is sold. Not me. And not most of my friends. We were all wrong. Old dogs didn't want to learn new tricks. Most had to fade into the sunset or be put down before their companies would listen to their consumers.

Lesson 1: Listen to your customer.

Lesson 2: Your customer is not your enemy.

Apple got off to an early lead in 2003 by buying up an 18 month supply of new tiny hard drives from Toshiba. Following this brilliant strategic move, Apple extended their lead by buying up huge quantities of newly minted larger flash memory sizes, giving their iPod platform a continued and growing lead over the pack of media players from every other consumer electronics company. And during this time, the stroke of genius was buying player technology from a third party developer to deliver the iTunes + iPod knockout punch. Most beautifully, iTunes + iPod simply worked. All technology should be this beautiful... plug it in and it works. No need for a call to tech support.

Lesson 3: Simple is beautiful. Real technology is magic. The best technology is invisible.

Lesson 4: Strategic marketing is more than just messaging. It means taking bold moves to understand the key drivers and critical success factors in emerging markets. Southwest Airlines did it by buying futures on airplane fuel, allowing them to operate profitably in the gas crisis of 2007-2008 while all other airlines started collapsing under the weight of simply flying their planes. Apple's strategic moves were equally brilliant.

Apple's iPod was an exception to the DRM rule. Even though Apple's files all came in the AAC format with Apple's proprietary DRM known as "Fairplay", consumers didn't care. iTunes + iPod worked. It would take years before the cry of the more technical users reached enough volume to demand the removal of DRM so the files could play on all devices. And, even with this consumer demand, Apple chose to deliver "DRM free" in the less popular AAC format, continuing to extend the "walled garden" approach of iTunes + iPod even longer.

Lesson 5: Simple lets you change the game. Elegance is rewarded - your customers will let you get away with things they will not let your competitors get away with (at least for a period of time.)

During this same period, Creative Labs delivered MP3 players that also played Microsoft's WMA format files with DRM. And for over a year the first thing a consumer would see when pulling their new Creative Zen from its box and turning it on for the first time and connecting it to their PC  was a message stating that a firmware update was needed. Are you kidding?? Creative was too lazy to update their existing inventory and fix this problem. They had strong patents that showed they had pioneered in the digital media player space. It didn't matter. The poor consumer experience and lack of marketing prowess to take on Apple by Creative and others proved fatal to many players in the market.

Creative then decided to release so may different flavors of its MP3 players that even its employees couldn't explain why you'd want one over the other. Compare this with Apple who reduced the number of options in the market. "Would you like the Baby Bear, Mama Bear or Papa Bear size of porridge?" Keep it simple.

Lesson 6: Laziness is death. If you see a major problem, fix it. In this day of social networking, a slow response is no response and will be broadcast from the highest mountains to all of your prospects. Respond strongly. Tell your customers you are sorry. Turn a disaster into a win.

Lesson 7: Simple is better. (I know I said this earlier. It is worth repeating and deserves multiple places in this top ten.)

Who, in 2002, would have bet that Microsoft and its army of OEM's and ODM's would be totally ineffective at playing in the digital media space. Not me. And I am a fan of many of the things Apple has done over the years. None of my Apple friends predicted that Apple would, even 7 years later, maintain such a dominant market share lead.

Lesson 8: Past success is no guarantee of future success. When I was at Microsoft (1985-1993 in sales and marketing and then 1994 - 1995 in product development) we took on IBM and won. They were entrenched and the saying was "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM." You must keep re-inventing yourself. Nokia used to be a tire and oil company.

Lesson 9: If you call something "Plays For Sure" make sure that it does. Your consumers are smart enough to see through the marketing.

Lesson 10: Continuing to repeat the same steps and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. Many players in digital media space are guilty on this one.

A key to success is to learn and grow as we move forward. The creator of the Dockers line of clothing for Levi Strauss failed on his first two clothing line creations. Edison is said to have tried 99 different options before he found one that worked, creating the lightbulb, and changing the world as a result of his persistence. I am totally optimistic for digital media's future. We have learned so much. Time to apply what we've learned as we look ahead.

What lessons have you learned as you look in your rear view mirror? And, more importantly, what will you do next as a result?

Looking Forward

This is a great time to be looking forward. Over the coming weeks I want to share some of the insights and opportunities I am seeing in the marketplace with a focus on technology, music and media. I am also going to present new changes in technology that make the way in which we connect and communicate more effective than ever before. And, while we're at it, I want to draw attention to new enabling technologies coming over the horizon that promise to further enhance our capabilities.

The economy has effected virtually everyone I know in one way or another. Unlike the dot-com bubble burst, it has impacted virtually all sectors. And the impact has been global. A benefit of all of the upheaval and change - it has brought great focus and clarity for many. And, like all change, it is forcing decisions. I hope sharing my personal toolkit and experiences and highlights will be helpful to you and the decisions you face.

In the coming entries I hope to stir thought and engage in a dialog with you. What technologies and industry changes are driving you in a positive direction? Which ways of the past are you leaving behind? What tips are you finding helpful in moving forward?

Onward!

Hungry

In these challenging economic times, Seth Godin published a “deep” blog posting. I recommend reading it. I was made aware of it as I read Shaun Groves’ “Schlog” blog – “It’s a crisis. Oh, look, an iPhone!” I recommend them both.   

Twitter Tips

Several people commented online and offline on the Twitter article last week. To those “veteran” Twitter users, the question has been raised, “Where do I go to get advanced ideas regarding Twitter?”  Michael Hyatt sent out a link in his Twitter feed this weekend that led me to a winner… TwiTip. Edited by ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse, TwiTip is a wealth of ideas and software tools for Twitter aficionados. I reviewed several suggestions that have appeared here and found TwiTip to be a great inspiration. Check it out.

Darren is a writer with ProBlogger. For those of you looking for professional blogging tips, you will find ProBlogger to be one of many great resources.

If you have other great sites for Twitter tips of professional blogging tips, please leave a comment below.

Back to Blogging. Continuing to Tweet.

I have been experimenting with Twitter and other social networking tools for some time now. And I have not been a frequent blogger for many months. In fact, Twitter serves as a “micro-blogging” tool, so I suppose I have been blogging… just nothing more than 140 characters at a time. Yet some thoughts require more than this, so here I am again.

With Facebook and MySpace and Plaxo and other social networking tools linked to my Twitter feeds, true “one stop” micro-blogging makes an update from my cell phone available moments later. At first I had a hard time getting my head around why one “tweets”. To those who feel the same I have one suggestion: use Twitter for one month and commit to tweet updates at least once a day. You’ll then be able to best decide for yourself if tweeting is for you or not. I am a convert.

To those wanting to know more about the experience, I recommend Michael Hyatt’s guide to Twitter. Michael is CEO of Thomas Nelson. He is also an active blogger.

When Michael started Twittering he highlighted four reasons to do so:

1. It allows family, friends, and others to follow your activity throughout the day and keep up with your life. You can even get these updates via your cell phone, as a text message. It's kind of like the Truman Show meets instant messaging.

2. It allows you to meet new friends, who tend to be on the cutting edge of technology. I am following several people that I would have never met otherwise. These are relationships-or potential relationships-that may prove very fruitful for the future. We'll see.

3. It allows me to experience first-hand a new technology that almost 1 million people are using. It may be a complete waste of time but it is free and the investment of time is miniscule.

4. It allows me to think consciously about my life. What am I doing now? What kind of story is my life telling? Is this really what I want to be doing? Could I-should I-be choosing something different?

Reason #1 has helped me keep in close touch with our children and with Susan when I travel and even throughout the day. I feel connected with our children even though we are often thousands of miles apart. This is especially true of late as Susan and I became empty nesters this past month. Jenn and Amanda are living in the Seattle area now. Sarah is studying in Australia. And Jonathon is at MTSU.

Reason #1 has also applied to our extended family and friends. I have been able to catch up and keep up with family and friends better than ever before. It’s a blast seeing photos more rapidly and more often than ever before as families and friends share their life journey.

And I personally like reason #4. It is a worthwhile question to ask… “What story is my life telling?”

If you want to "follow me," you can do do my joining Twitter.com and officially following me. You can follow Michael on Twitter here. It’s time to micro-blog!

Advice for Indie Bands

Benjamin Brannen has been working the indie band since since he was a teenager. It started when the indie band was his band! Then he started helping other bands. After graduating with a finance degree and working with Disney, Benjamin returned to his first love. Benjamin has personally managed Jonah 33, Bullets and Octane and others and has provided advice to those taking the time to ask. Check out the “About” information below. Benjamin is an impressive guy.

Benjamin has been a giver ever since the first day I met him. He shares information and, as a result, he has benefited from his “pay it forward” approach to life by also receiving great counsel from others along the way. Now he has decided to join the blogging world with advice for indie bands, smartly titled “IndieBandAdvice.com” – check it out!

Many blogs are dissertations. On Day Two of his blogging, Benjamin is already engaged in a dialog with over 8,000 visits to his site and many questions and comments coming in just a few hours following the first posting. Benjamin’s goal is one we share: benefit artists and fans. This is one to add to your RSS feed list.

About Benjamin Brannen

Benjamin Brannen is founder and owner of both BCM and Ares Records. After working as a financial analyst for The Walt Disney Company’s corporate operations and real estate department, Ben took a leap into a creative position at BMG Music Publishing. At BMG, Ben quickly moved from an assistant to Manager of A&R in 2 short years proving his talent for artist acquisitions and copyright exploitation. He was an integral part in building BMG’s Rock roster, developing new talent, and placing songs with recording artists; one of which received a Grammy award nomination. Ben successfully provided the guidance and insight that led 3 unknown acts to major label record deals. Passionate about artists’ careers, and noticing a void in their development, Ben left BMG to form Brannen Creative Management and Ares Records.