Andrew Grossman: Daily Content Comment: Music Industry

Freedom

May 4, 2009

From the first moment that a creative thinks of making a living through her freelance work, and thus be able to structure her time as she pleases, coming and going on her own schedule, working in a home office, on the bed, on the porch, under the tree in the backyard or at Starbucks, the internet becomes the key to freedom. Every step in the process is involved with the internet. What is the most secure place to write and store your work? The internet. What is the fastest and cheapest method through which to send your work to end users? The internet. What is the best way to do background research for your work? The internet. What is the fastest, most secure way to receive payment for your work? The internet.

The internet has leveled all playing fields for the freelancer. No longer is there the need for a middle man between the creative and the public. Those middle men have been known by various names in various professions over the years-publishers, syndicates, music companies, studios-but they have always offered the same dream: sign this contract, give me 90% of the future revenue of your work, and I will do for you what you cannot do for yourself. I will give your work to the world. I will make you famous and wealthy. I will handle the business of this business so that you can spend all of your time doing what you most want to do: create.

It's a good dream. Of the small percentage of creatives who have been offered the dream by a middle man, a small percentage have actually achieved fame and fortune. Of those, a small percentage did not eventually come to resent the control exerted over their careers by these production and marketing firms known as middle men. And then there are all the others whose careers were blighted by the old economy process. All those creatives who never really launched their careers because they could not interest a middle man in offering them a contract. Without a contract, the creative's assumption was that she did not have the talent to write or act or draw or sign for a living.

Most people do not have the talent, but the question of what appeals to the public should be answered by the public, not by the middle men. The internet brings creatives directly to the public. No longer are creatives enslaved by the opinions of production and marketing firms. Production and marketing firms do not take risks. They give their support to creative work that is as close as possible to a sure thing, which means they want books that read like books that are already best sellers, they want songs that sound like the songs that are already Top 40 and movies that are sequels or prequels to already popular movies.

The irony is that the most popular creative work is always groundbreaking. There was nothing like 'Harry Potter' or 'Star Wars' or 'Doonesbury' before these juggernauts came along. The public wants the new and the different and the unusual. The online channel flows directly from creator to end user. Your vision is alive on the internet, and reaching in real time the imaginations of tens of millions of potential fans across the world.

This column is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Category: Music Industry, Fiction Income, Cartoon Income, Online Sales

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or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted through the All Content Network at: andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Didn't You Used to Be in the Boer War?

-Andrew Grossman

April 30, 2009

YouTube content to this point has been dominated by clips from tv shows, concerts and movies, rather than the entire broadcast. This is because of YouTube’s desire to avoid copyright infringement suits from media companies. Although increasingly the content available on YouTube will be full length broadcasts, the short form has already had a large impact on changing viewer habits: small is better. Better for rapid viewing at your cubicle while the boss is in his office. Better for giving you all of the warm feelings you had at that moment in the movie theatre when you saw the entire movie. Better for providing a concentrated burst to the part of your mind that is satiated by romance or violence or beautiful music.

Unknown supporting actors and backup musicians are being recognized on the street now because something they appeared in twenty or thirty years ago, a show, a concert, that had not been rebroadcast since the time of release, is getting tens of thousands of downloads on YouTube. As with so much else online, a viewer begins looking for one thing-the number of casualties in the Boer War, for instance, by going to Wikipedia--which leads to looking for something else-what was that movie with the woman who was married to the guy in the Boer War movie, by going to IMDB-to finding something altogether unexpected on YouTube-wow, I didn’t know she was in a tv show with this actress whose name I couldn’t remember who used to sing with Air Supply.

The segmenting of creative work that began as an underground way for viewers to upload a few bits of beloved shows has grown into a preferred form for viewers. The preference extends to all long forms. Fiction, especially with the global hypertext features applied by Google for its 10 million book database, will become viewed in small snippets by readers, even with the option to read a book straight through. Novelists who write powerful short scenes will flourish, those who are superb at epic length, but not exciting in bursts, will diminish.

The connection between creator and audience has always been one of surprise, both delightful and dismaying. The meaning of a scene or a character or a line or a drawing is very different in the creator’s mind than is perceived by a majority of readers. In the offline world, this variety of interpretations was ultimately seen as a compliment to the evocative nature of a creator’s imagination. Eventually, the online world, in its far greater capacity to fragment and deconstruct and analyze and disfigure and miraculously expand a creator’s work, will come to be perceived as the same horrible beautiful process that begins when the ‘Publish’ button is pushed.

This column is part of a larger article. To receive the full article, contact:

andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Category: Film Industry, Music Industry, Fiction Income, YouTube

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted through the All Content Network at: andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Individually Wrapped Chocolates

-Andrew Grossman

April 29, 2009

Creatives hate databases. The internet is a difficult selling atmosphere for creatives

because almost all selling is done from databases. When a whole bunch of something

is thrown together, the unique quality of each piece is undercut. Steven Spielberg

likes it no more than any other creative. He wants his movies to be sold one at a time,

with their own stipulations that honor his standing, and not sold as part of a massive

library sale to TNT or Hulu or any other broadcast company.

Each movie, each song, each novel, each article, each cartoon, was a chunk out of

a creative's life. If the work was successful enough to sell, it came only after many

years of struggle and paucity of monetary success. The creation came from the

unique mind and imagination of the creator, and the idea that it will be shoveled into

a massive trough of content for sale is objectionable. Many creatives will not let it

happen: they refuse to include their work into databases, except those they create.

The assumption has also been made, and supported, that database selling brings in

far less money per creative piece. Databases have become one of the three great enemies

of price supports for creative work online. Another is the internet tradition, going back

to the first exchanges of academic research papers in the 1970's, that content should

be as free as the wind blows. The third is the presence of amateurs online, who are

happy to sell their work for free because they just do it 'for fun' or because they believe

that giving something away is a precursor to getting paid.

The culture of free is changing slowly. The sales vehicle of databases will be unlikely

to change. Like so many other 'convenience' aspects of the internet, such as being able

to have sports scores and stats updated from second to second and being able to date

128 people at once, database selling is what the buyer wants. It has changed how buyers

view and think of content. In movie database searches, buyers typically base their keyword

searches on genre rather than an actor's name. The same is true in the fiction world.

Cartoon searches are made by topic keywords, not by cartoonist's name.

Quantify it. That is the dictum of the internet content buyer. The creative's sense of self

is shifting as the studio has been sucked into the box.

Category: Film Industry, Music Industry, Fiction Income, Cartoon Income

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted through the All Content Network at: andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Plugging Content Holes

-Andrew Grossman

April 19, 2009

For content owners and creators, the internet is a sieve. The holes through which free

content can be acquired are everywhere. Until those holes are plugged the content for

fee model, at least for non-business end users, will be difficult to implement. Why pay

when you can surf to another site and find the same content, similar content, or at least

a piece of it for free?

That question bedevils every online content provider from Viacom to professional

cartoonists and writers. Within that question are many others, such as: if I put my work

on the internet, will it be stolen without compensation? How can I compete for sales to

non-discriminating buyers when there are amateurs who offer for free what I am trying

to sell? And the existential: how can I continue to be a freelance creator in the new

online content delivery world?

The answer that has been tried by media companies is to identify certain end users

who are guilty of copyright infringement and go after them in court. Hearing of these

cases, the millions of web users who know that they also have been guilty of copyright

infringement by the old economy definition of the term, took to the forums and reviled

these 'overbearing' companies. The PR hit was large. The frustration that selective

enforcement had not stemmed the tide of illegal use led media to conclude that there

must be a better way to keep their industry from being bankrupted.

The new answer is to accept that the movie and music on DVD industry is dead. The

formula now is to accept that revenue from downloads may never reach old levels. While

this may be the case, the success of the itunes store coupled with the wild popularity

of the newest portable music players, has given the industry hope that many millions of

song downloads for 99 cents may someday equal less many millions of DVD sales for

$24.95. In the meantime, there are always concert ticket sales and merchandise.

In other words, the program of plugging the holes where free content leaks has largely

been abandoned by large companies. This abandonment is a complete disaster for individual

creatives, who are caught between the hell of rampant copyright infringement and the

heaven of the possibility of the internet for allowing individuals to circumvent the big

companies and control their own careers.

Someone else must plug the holes, one by one, case by case, culture change by culture

change. This long campaign will be left to the small creators. Their chance of success will

be dramatically improved if they can band together, work together as a unified force with

sufficient legal heft. It won't be enough to highlight a few of the guilty and hope that the

rest of the guilty will desist. That has already failed. What is needed is a uniform approach,

combining the minutiae of communicating through every internet form that stealing will

not be tolerated and a pr campaign that drives home the message.

Category: Film Industry, Music Industry, Copyright Laws, Cartoon Income, Artist Rights

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted through the All Content Network at: andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Cost Cutting Through Repackaging

-Andrew Grossman

April 13, 2009

If you read an article in the daily newspaper or the online version of the paper and the text of the article sounds familiar, it is probably because you have read it before. Which is to say, you are reading repackaged content that has been reprinted by one branch of a media group-say, one of its community newspapers-into another branch. Repackaging costs less than purchasing new content. Editors know they usually have distinctly separate audiences for different publications. The content can appear fresh, even if it has already been published.

Publishers save money by repackaging content, if they already own all rights.. Typically, when the company first makes the purchase from the content provider, they ask for reprint rights within their own group. They also typically ask for the right to publish the content online with no additional payment to the creator. Seldom does the creative realize how much money is being signed away. These rights can result in many additional appearances of the content, such as:

1. repackaging of original magazine content into a book compilation

2. repackaging of music by an individual artist into a compilation of various artists

3. repackaging of music by an individual artist into a greatest hits album

4. assumption of 'download rights' when the original sale of a cartoon is for one-time rights

5. reprint of an article sold to a daily newspaper into all editions of the publishing group's weekly newspapers

All of this possible future income can be realized by the creative if the language is in the original contract, but seldom does the artist, especially if she is early in her career, have the knowledge to ask for a separate negotiation of subsidiary rights.

In the era of online publishing, when content is almost exclusively presented as part of a massive database, directed by a database administrator, a royalty for future sales is more valuable than a lump sum up-front payment.

Category: Music Industry, Newspaper Industry, Article Income

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted through the All Content Network at: andrew@andrewgrossman.net

Creatives Fight to Survive

-Andrew Grossman

April 8, 2009

The fight against unauthorized use of copyrighted content on the Web is not merely being taken up by large media outlets such as AP, which on Monday announced that they will pursue copyright infringement suits against web sites that use work from AP without permission. Individual content creators are also part of this life and death struggle for payment and control of how and where their content is used. Professional writers, journalists, columnists, cartoonists, illustrators, photographers and film makers are on the front line of this battle. What is at stake is their capacity to make a living from their creative work. In other words, their careers.

In the Old Media, freelance creatives in print media sold their work to magazines and newspapers. Some would eventually sign contracts with media companies such as United Media and King Features to distribute their work in return for splitting the profits. Others were able to forge successful careers by representing their interests directly in sales to print media. That success has now been made inestimably more difficult by the advent of the internet.

At first, when the internet was young, the sale of rights was made in a package-the primary rights, those that would allow media to publish the content in hardcopy editions, were what the publication was purchasing. Subsidiary rights, for online publication, were considered too minor to charge additional money for. Print media certainly treated online rights this way, since there was no prospect of generating additional revenue from online editions.

As the internet has matured, and as hardcopy publishing is moving rapidly toward near extinction, the online rights are now the primary reason for purchase. Print publication has become the subsidiary sale. That means that for profit creatives have been sucked into surviving in the internet world, and that means that individuals face the same daunting task as media companies-how do we make money in this new form? What complicates the formula is the tradition of the internet, back to the pre-dawn of web

history, for providing an open source culture. Open source essentially means that everyone shares and shares alike, no money changes hands.

Battling this online model is now the primary and formidable task of media and its content providers. The enemy comes in many forms: amateur artists who 'are just delighted to be published on the web'; bloggers who have never expected to be paid, since most of them approach their work as non-information oriented diarists; savvy creatives who have assumed that offering free content online will swell the audience for their work and thus make offline sales more likely; overseas creatives who look

at the internet as a chance to break into the American market.

They are all making one fundamental mistake-they do not realize that the internet will soon be the only surviving content delivery system. There will be no other forum in which to sell content. It must happen online or not happen at all. Given these parameters, the imperative of the new model has changed how to conduct a creative career: it is no longer of paramount importance whether the content is of highest quality (although quality is still a factor in become a professional). All that matters is name branding. All that matters is strengthening the perceived value of what you present electronically.

Category: Copyright Laws, Article Income, Cartoon Income

The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached

or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Andrew Grossman.

He can be contacted through the All Content Network at: andrew@andrewgrossman.net