Month: October 2011

The Future of Content, by Futurist, Gerd Leonhard

Kelli Richards October 24, 2011

Gerd Leonhard is a media futurist, writer, keynote speaker and strategist with 25 years in the tech and entertainment industries in all major markets. Leonhard’s focus is on new technologies in content, media and technological convergence, and he’s just published his newest book on Kindle, “The Future of Content.” https://gerd.fm/focbook

Leonhard’s intent to publish this eBook via Amazon Kindle, exclusively, at this very low price, is to make these ideas and concepts as widely available as possible while still trying to be an example of what digital, paperless distribution can look like, going forward. Definitely a GREAT investment at $2.99.

Gerd Leonhard has been writing about the future of content (i.e. music, film, TV, books, newspapers, games etc.) since 1998. He has published 4 books on this topic, 2 of them on music (The Future of Music, Music 2.0). For the past 10 years, Leonhard has been deeply involved with many clients in various sectors of the content industry, in over 17 countries, and it’s been a great experience, he says. “I have learned a lot, I have listened a lot, I have talked even more (most likely:) and I think I have grown to really understand the issues that face the content industries – and the creators, themselves – in the switch from physical to digital media.”

This Kindle book is a highly curated collection of the most important essays and blog posts Leonhard has written on this topic, and even though some of it was written as far back as 2007. “I believe it still holds water years later. I have tried to only include the pieces that have real teeth. Please note that the original date of each piece is shown here in order to allow for contextual orientation.”

[audio:https://allaccessgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Gerd-Leonhard-Final-Edited.mp3|titles=Gerd Leonhard Final Edited]

You can hear my recent one-on-one interview with Gerd here.

For those of you who do not know, I’m part of The Futures Agency, an online industry think-tank founded by Gerd Leonhard. The Futures Agency is based on 5 key principles: 1. Knowledge grows when shared, therefore we share everything 2. Proudly find elsewhere (PFE) 3. Do what you do best and link to the rest (*Jeff Jarvis) 4. Spend less time being important and more time being relevant 5. The leaders of the future are connectors – not just directors.

I’m proud to be part of this stellar group, and encourage everyone to pick up Gerd’s latest eBook and to spread the word and support your own followers and colleagues with this great collection of Gerd’s work.

https://www.amazon.com/The-Future-of-Content-ebook/dp/B005XCZ28U/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1319115901&sr=1-1

Kelli Richards,
CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

The Pandora Box of Mobile – The Sky’s the Limit

Kelli Richards October 17, 2011

If you were at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco last week, you probably heard Pandora Founder Tim Westergren share that SEVENTY PERCENT of their usage is through mobile venues. Yes. 70%. And having created a super-successful digital space for themselves, Pandora doesn’t see Spotify, iTunes, or any other competition eating their lunch any time soon.

Tim Westergren shared the following about the portability of the iPhone and its impact on Pandora, “Overnight it transformed our business. We almost doubled our growth rate. It changed Pandora from being desktop computer radio to being like real radio.”

One can’t completely appreciate the enormous (and growing) impact of the mobile industry without really understanding its past. On my BlogTalkRadio series, I recently interviewed my longtime colleague, Anthony Stonefield, a leader in the mobile and digital industries, who literally pioneered downloadable song distribution in the 90’s and popularized ringtones worldwide in 2000 (creating today’s $8 billion ringtone market). Anthony also executive produced the worldwide mobile program for the Live 8 event, and the mobile charity part of Melissa Ethridge’s “I Run for Life” breast cancer campaign, among others. I asked Anthony Stonefield where he thought super distribution will take us in the next few yeas and to talk about SmartPhones and their broad effect on users.

“Smartphones put everything that you had on your PC into your hand… I think what’s happening now is that we’re unlocking the true internet. Until today, we have always thought that we are driving the web, but now, SmartPhones are reaching down into the emerging markets, to the next several billion individuals, and these people are creating revolutions, changing the face of the planet, because they’re getting their first real-time connection to the rest of the world, through SmartPhones. As these phones infiltrate emerging markets, we have a whole new world to embrace… this is changing the nature of the human being and the way we interact.”

“My experience is that entertainment media is always consumed on impulse. So the technical solutions are also part of this equation. 4G will eventually enable a distribution model that can scale, but until then, we face serious limitations of scale… 4G has a way to go before it can provide viable, reliable user experiences, but it does enable a way to discover and present media very rapidly.”

You can hear the entire interview here.

Getting back to the future, so to speak, Pandora’s founder explained at the Web 2.0 Summit that Pandora transformed from a simple desktop radio to a “real” radio when users started taking their iPhones and plugging them into their cars and living rooms. It’s important to realize that, conceptually, Tim Westergren does not consider Pandora competition to Apple, Spotify or other subscription music services. He considers it a streaming radio service, and does not charge for participation.

With revenue skyrocketing due to ad sales, similar to traditional radio, Pandora has forayed further into radio, actually developing programming and content – and perhaps even newscasts and “sports radio” broadcasts in the future, further solidifying them as the leader in this industry – at least for now. Like any great industry, competitors WILL show up. AOL, who could arguably be called the founder of online radio, relaunched its own product within hours of Westergren’s speech, with half of the audio commercials. (And AOL Radio already carries ESPN Radio and ABC News stations.)

It’s hard to know if AOL will be the biggest contender in the mobile war, but with Smartphones becoming the “transistor radios” of the future, Pandora’s box is definitely filled with opportunity.

A client of mine is about to launch her 2nd eBook. I’d like to change the price on her FIRST eBook on Amazon (and everywhere else it’s up). Could someone tell me how to do that? If you need to see the eBook for some reason, it can be found at: https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Crowd-Cloud-Industry-ebook/dp/B005H3ZK1Y

Kelli Richards,
CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

Celebrity Wrangling.

Kelli Richards October 10, 2011

When it comes to celebrity wrangling, helping a corporate client or event organizer secure the right celebrity to support their event or product campaign is definitely more art than science. The most important part of the process is bringing my 25 years of listening and experience to a discussion about the objectives of the client. Is it a company celebration? Is the event or campaign about supporting their employees (internal) or their brand (customers)? Is it to thank their sales team? Or perhaps an industry conference with VIPs?

From there, we create a wish list of who they’d love to have stand on their stage or showcase their product or company, as well as what “type” of spokesperson or entertainer – for instance, a musician, a comedian, an actor or actress. Then we put together a prioritization and an outreach plan, something I’ve developed strong expertise in doing successfully after many years. We also create a list of gives and gets – is the celebrity or artist being compensated? Is the event so grand that it’s simply a win/win for them to participate? And then the back-and-forth between the client and the celebrity rep begins, and the process of creating a strong win for both sides unfolds.

The biggest impact in terms of having a celebrity or artist aligned with a campaign or event is what I call the “halo effect” – when an audience feels cared for and honored when a celebrity or artist that they trust is behind the company or the product. This generally results in a memorable experience and a long lasting increase in trust and credibility.

In addition, celebrity involvement can result in much greater visibility, acceleration, and traction for a start-up – and much greater exposure if you’re doing something on the web or in social media. It increases the attraction to the product or company like a magnet, based on the following and popularity of the celebrity and their brand. Finally, with the timeless nature of the web, this association with an artist will stand the test of time, being discovered again and again through a simple Google Search.

Not sure how a celebrity or artist might fit into your start-up, product or event? Reach out to me and ask. Kelli@AllAccessGroup.com

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“Kelli’s contributions as co-producer of ‘MusicBiz 2005′ have been essential. Her relationships and management of them, as well as her conceptual abilities have been a cornerstone of the business we have been developing. I can’t imagine that it (the conference) would have happened without her. For starters, she brings a tremendous understanding of the market, a stellar reputation, loyal relationships among the leaders in the field, highly developed written and oral communication skills, untiring work ethic, excellent team building skills, and total reliability….”
~ David Schwartz, Executive Producer – MusicBiz

“Kelli has proven to be an excellent resource for Red Herring Events. She contacted over 50 musicians and celebrities for our Herring on Hollywood event. Kelli is both professional and a pleasure to work with. With her assistance, we were able to book the musician Ice-T to speak on the music panel. We will definitely be using Kelli’s services for future events.”
~ Beth Curran, Event Producer – Red Herring Magazine

Kelli Richards,
CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

Billboard.Biz – “Music-Industry Characters You Need To Follow”

Kelli Richards October 6, 2011

Even with the best of intentions, in today’s hyperdriven digital age, it’s easy to use someone else’s article or lyrics and misunderstand how copyright and sourcing needs to be applied. And so, in addition to sharing some great insights around the global issue of copyright, on today’s blog I also want to thank Billboard for sharing their Twitter list of “Music-Industry Characters You Need To Follow” which was used, in large part, in my own social media eBook, “Taking the Crowd to the Cloud – Social Media for the Music Industry.”

Because she had made a few significant changes to the list, my copyeditor did not realize she should source the list and link it back to Billboard. I’ll certainly change it in reprints, and will source Billboard.biz in my webinars and teleseminars on the topic, but I also wanted to publicly acknowledge and thank Billboard and Billboard.Biz for being an amazing source of information and support to the music industry.

Copyright is definitely one of the greatest issues that has come to the forefront of the new digital age. Of course, it was always an issue. But when music and literature were hard pressed into vinyl and pages, and the middlemen controlled the product funnel, believe it or not, it was much easier to keep tabs on who owned what. With media passed around at the speed of light via digital distribution, solutions like meta-tagging and “watermarking” become an artist’s lifeline to their work. In our recent one-on-one chat, thought leader Thomas Reemer shares about the application (and implication) of watermarks and how they effect digital distribution.

(For those who don’t know, Thomas Reemer is the CEO of 88tc88.com – an online service that, among other things, translates western titles and artists, enabling access for Western Music to the vast Chinese mobile market, including direct access to China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom – the trifecta of the Chinese tech industry.)

Please click here to listen to my entire interview with Thomas, and if you’d like to be included on the MP3 distribution for my entire interview series (with industry leaders like Ian Rogers, CEO of TopSpin Media; Michael Robertson, CEO of MP3.com and DAR.fm; and groundbreaking musicians, such as David Pack, Musician, Songwriter and Lead Singer for Ambrosia; and Academy Award Winner, Irene Cara) simply sign up for “VIP Access” at the top of my website at AllAccessGroup.com.

Kelli Richards,
CEO of The All Access Group, LLC

PS: To get your own copy of my eBook, “Taking the Crowd to the Cloud – Social Media for the Music Industry,” and be invited to the exclusive webinar to support my readers on this topic, please click on the title.

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Month: October 2011

The Future of Content, by Futurist, Gerd Leonhard

The Pandora Box of Mobile – The Sky’s the Limit

Celebrity Wrangling.

Search Resources

Topic Areas & Guests

Join our mailing list

As Seen In:

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My Commitment to You

Now is Your Time

Month: October 2011

The Future of Content, by Futurist, Gerd Leonhard

The Pandora Box of Mobile – The Sky’s the Limit

Celebrity Wrangling.

Billboard.Biz – “Music-Industry Characters You Need To Follow”

Search Resources

Topic Areas & Guests

Categories

Join our mailing list

As Seen In:

Join our mailing list

Pages

My Commitment to You

Now is Your Time