MUSIC´S NEW LOGIC

Within some musicians there is a saying:”Playing Jazz is much more fun than listening”. There is a lot of sense in that, cause playing is higher in the Mashlow´s hierarcy than listening. A lot of today´s internet services are offering things to listeners but not for players or musicians. But who wants to listen music, which is similar no matter who makes it. The strategic differentiation is not coming from music any more, it is coming from ability to market ones brand.

There is nothing wrong with that, but I would like to listen to music which differs from other music. That is why niches are becoming important. And,thanks to internet, the critical mass for minimum revenue can be reached throuh net for nitche brands. I don´t know how you can find these band, but co-working band from Norway and Finland called Áigi (no, it is not my band) and finnish group called Lieto (it is not my band and my company has not signed it) are good examples of those kind of niche bands.

Music like water

Gerd Leonhard says that in the future music distribution is someway similar to getting water.  I think he´s right.  But there is something that is going to happen parallel with it.  When it was hard to get pure water it was as valuable as gold and one couldn´t spend it too much.  Now when we flush the toilet with water, its value is going down.  And when we want to drink something really good, we don´t drink water.  We drink Coke or wine etc.  …and we do flush our minds with music.

I think it is the same with music.  When one gets free music from everywhere, its value is going down. We think music is there anyway, we don´t appreciate it anymore.  The function of music is going to change.  It will have influences in the business side of music and making money with music.

2.4.2008
Pekka Suominen
http://www.thedirectart.com
http://www.twitter.com/pekkasuominen

Amazing things !

I think I should start to write in English because most of the buzz is written in English and happening somewhere else than in Finland (Isn´t that something)

In my company (actually is not mine, because there is also Jari Ravaska and Marko Kataja doing something – I don´t know what, drinking coffee and playing games or hussling in Facebook, I think) Direct Art Oy we are trying find out the meaning of twitter. And little by little it is opening. It seems that twitter is so simple idea and it´s so fast and the way of making networks is so efficient that you can´t make it easier.

As I mentioned earlier (in my earlier post, which was written in finnish), we are making a new kind of playalong series for classical music students and now we are trying to find out is anyone of those using twitter interested in classical music. Don´t know yet.

31.3.2008 Pekka Suominen