I spent the past four days at a conference in Helsinki called Is This It. 150-odd music industry people charged with coming up with 100 or more new ideas to invigorate and reinterpret the business. A conference that put music back into the music industry. A place for learning, creativity, networking and genuine reinvention.
I decided to live-blog it via Twitter – and as soon as I started doing so, a pattern began to emerge and I started to have one of the most important, meaningful and eye-opening experiences of my music industry analysis and consultancy career.
Before very long, (and without a shred of sarcasm or cynicism on my part meant here at all) Is This It turned into my best conference ever – and I’m so genuinely grateful to the organisers for holding it. Not just because it was inspirational (and in truth, going back over my notes, quite a lot of it was) – but also because so much of it was just so utterly and unbelievably horrifying.
There were, for me, three main positive messages from three of the key speakers. And these were interspersed with such unmitigated bollocks, the people following me on Twitter thought I must have been making it up for comic effect.
Interesting, thought-provoking and practical
The first person to make good sense was Saku Tuominen, a creativity consultant and television producer (yes, you can do both). Here are some of his choice quotes as reported on my Twitter stream:
“Whatever you think the future will be, it will always be something different.”- Buddha
10 years ago – Google beta. No Facebook, no YouTube, no Spotify, no MySpace. How on earth can we predict 10 years from now?
“The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas and throw the bad ones away.” – Linus Pauling
Off to a fantastic start. Coincidentally, I’ve been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book The Black Swan for the second time on this journey, and some of these themes connected really well. Good advice and all very promising.
Worrying, but forgivable…
Next up, veteran Australian promoter, Michael Chugg endeared himself to the crowd with a hilarious “Morning, wankers!” start to his speech, before dispensing the advice that the internet might be worth paying some attention to.
You see, once, whilst sitting on the toilet, he had encountered a magazine ad for a Sigur Ros tour that only had a URL on it – and not dates or venues.
His response at the time was, and I quote “Who fucked this up?!”
And despite the fact that he managed to shoehorn a disparaging remark about Invercargill in within 3 minutes of starting his speech, the moral of the story was internet = good, and we should seek to tame it, even if it frightens us a little bit.
A little wide of the mark – but he was certainly heading in the right direction there for a bit.
Surely not serious…
Chugg was followed by renowned music industry expert, Korda Marshall late of Warner Records and the man to blame for bringing James Blunt to the attention of the world. Not much I can add here, so I’m just going to lay out some of his gems for your edification:
“What would a record company look like if it was in Blade Runner? Or Logan’s Run?”
“Listen to everything. Make a decision. If you can’t, just toss a coin.”
“In the future, you won’t just be watching one TV, you’ll be watching 15 TVs at a time.”
To be honest, I’d have been appalled at the inane and pointless witterings that this clearly successful and otherwise (I’m assured) intelligent man had tried to pass off as wisdom – had his comments not been utterly eclipsed and rendered mere distracting frivolities by what was to follow.
Hand me a brick
It was the turn of Peter Ruppert from Entertainment Media Research. After inexplicably showing us a still from that scene in Blade where the unsuspecting underground clubbers dance under a shower of blood (I think it was meant to be illustrative of a different message than the more sinister one I took from it), he then went on to explain how music business is a matter of sophisticated Excel spreadsheets, colourful graphs, hit prediction, and metrics.
The graph above, for instance, represents Britney Spears’ music career mapped against some tabloid-worthy events in her life. From this, it seems we can forecast the success (and value) of her subsequent records based on forecasted emotional responses of audiences.
Apologies for the language here – but fuck off.
Words cannot express how much contempt I have for this man’s profession. It’s bad enough that these monsters have screwed radio playlists so completely and utterly. Now they’ve infiltrated A&R.
Attention record labels: this is NOT progress. Anyone who tells you this stuff and shows you these kinds of charts is a liar and charlatan, whether they’re aware of it or not.
Especially when they round it all off with a ham-fisted misquote from the bible.
This is not science. It’s outright bullshit and you should completely ignore it – or if you must listen, then at the very least do completely the opposite of whatever they suggest to you. Most importantly, you must never give them money. It only encourages them.
You’ll note, incidentally, that this particular presentation attempts to completely contradict all of the basic tenets of the first one. You know – creativity, the unpredictability of the real world, genuine surprise and the value of ingenuity.
It all reminds me of the story from The Black Swan, in which, for 1000 days, a turkey’s general well-being and all-round satisfaction with life is mapped on a graph – and on Christmas Eve, he looks at the chart, admires the upward curve and thinks about how wonderful the next day will surely be.
Coffee and a chat
From the keynote presentations, we went on to the round-table discussions. These were a highlight of the conference, and although they were just as rich a vein of blinkered nonsense, old-school protectionism and plain old ignorance of the workings of the new media environment, there were also some real gems, fascinating people and engaging conversations to be had.
The idea was that we’d talk for close to an hour around a theme, prompted by a few questions along the way, and then the group would be tasked with coming up with a bunch of ideas that could then be fed back to the room.
Our first theme was “finding talent”. Here’s a sample of some of the suggestions:
“As soon as you find that a subgenre brand is trending upwards, you should sign an artist in that subgenre…”
“Sign a band whose name is as insulting as possible in as many languages as possible”.
“Hire the kids of A&R people – they’re the best A&R people.”
“Consult a psychic for your next A&R tips.”
And yet – there was some sense amongst all of this. Mike McNally came up with this little gem:
“Hindsight is not research.”
And he’s right. There is actually good research you can do that would help you understand all sorts of things about what’s going on (well, I would say that – I’m a researcher) – but using the past as a measure for predicting the future is not going to work quite the way you might hope.
Falling into the trap
A break, and then a talk from Scott Cohen, Manager of both the Orchard (a digital distribution firm) and The Raveonettes (a band) – who is far more forward thinking than you might expect from the man whose business for the past 10 years has been mostly about selling music downloads as if they were intangible CDs.
Keen at spotting trends, and with all of the big behind-the-scenes insight you might expect from a man in his position, Cohen is a smart guy who can see what’s going on around him. Unfortunately, he falls into the common trap of describing the present, exaggerating an aspect of it, and presenting it as if he’s predicting the future.
His key message was that technology drives history (yes, he’s a determinist). The physical properties of 45rpm records made us like 3-minute pop songs; the storage capacity of a CD expanded albums to 70 minutes in duration, and so on.
But in the future, he predicts, the album will be dead, we’ll only consume individual songs, we won’t download them – they’ll all be in ‘the cloud’ and it’ll all happen on our smartphone.
I’m sorry – but refer previous:
“Whatever you think the future will be, it will always be something different.”- Buddha
10 years ago – Google beta. No Facebook, no YouTube, no Spotify, no MySpace. How on earth can we predict 10 years from now?
Sorry, Scott – love you, man – but you’re wrong. Absolutely, categorically and in every important respect.
I don’t know what ‘right’ is – but the simple fact that you’re calling it like it’s done makes you wrong. Innovation is not linear and we just can’t guess because the right answer isn’t one of the options available to us.
We don’t know what it is we don’t yet know.
The only thing we can absolutely count on is the unknowable, disruptive element and its unexpected consequence.
Part 2 soon. Yep – there’s more. It gets better – and much, much worse. Bur hopefully, you’ll also see why it was so valuable, and also why I enjoyed it so much.
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22 Comments
if all that came out of the conference was your tweets and this post, it was worth it happening. :)
Looking forward to part 2, and your thoughts on my post that’ll go live tomorrow morning….
Great insights. Thanks for sharing. I too distrust anyone who comes to solid conclusions rather than the Mystery.
Interesting stuff, looking forward to the next part. The metrics stuff had me twitching, how did you manage not to throw a brick at him?
I’m sure there were many head in hands moments, but I also hope there were many more gems, I’ll await your part 2 to find out.
Good to know these “analyst” types exist with their spreadsheets and such.
It helps to know what people to avoid!
wow, you really WERE at a music conference? I thought you were starting your new career as a comedian. That shizz is pure comedy gold.
Haha good one. Look forward to part 2.
re: the signing an upcoming sub-genre quote – major labels do this all the time as a way of getting in on a trend – and there is something in it – the majors have been ‘buying up’ swathes of what could be the ‘next big trend’ for years just in case it goes fully mainstream – and although it’s boring, I’m not sure I could blame a major label with buying power for doing it – unless the bands in question were total crap of course :)
…my post inspired by your tweets is live now here’s the link. Enjoy. ;)
Great post. It’s interesting to find out what these music industry people think qualifies as a good idea. My favourite:
“..and we should seek to tame [the internet], even if it frightens us a little bit…”
Good luck with that, Mr Chugg.
Ah man, I watched your tweets all weekend, brilliantly entertaining and yet scary at the same time, I await part two with bated breath.
There’s me thinking Twitter’s day had just ever-so-slightly passed, and I happened across a link to a link to your hashtag ‘isthisit’ stream. A genuinely mesmeric exposure of the true lack of ideas of any requisite calibre throughout the industry.
Let me guess, for the independent musician, the most excitable presenters espoused playing more live gigs, get fans emails, design better t-shirts, bribe taste-alert gatekeepers and copy your favourite renegade online artist (you know the one, they had a major label deal for ages and were practically ubiquitous a few years ago…) It’s all so simple, all so relevant, clearly.
Andrew, hopefully you’re the kick up the backside these people need to focus on proper, do-able ideas.
This one really got me chuggling and laughing out loud in front of my screen. Great. Too bad bad I missed it on Twitter.
On a sidenote to give at least a bit of support to the metrics & statistics people: Conceptual clustering and data mining in general is working – and I presume the approach presented is based on one of these. But you have to be aware of their constraints.
First off, no one can exactly determine all attributes and patterns defining any (real world scenario) concept. This approach is artificial.
Second, you might simulate arrays of alternative developments at best (and then decide how to react if one of these scenarios becomes real).
Third, yes, in data mining it’s (mainly) algorithms that detect attributes and relations between entities. They detect patterns human beings rather can not see. You can make use of this resulting basic structure you found. But even if the algorithm considers each and every dynamic and hidden attribute it can’t consider unpredictability.
So, use it to get hints how a given scenario is structured. But don’t predict future. If this would work out, then why is there no marketed approach – I’d presume it to be too successful to be ignored.
It’s ok trying to find a grid of categories for music styles – it helps you browsing the masses. Yet, even within this environment it’s a mere tool to give hints (so don’t take it too seriously).
Yes, unpredictability rules.
Post of the (insert period) for me – well done for putting up with it without attempting to strangle anyone. Looking forward to part two :)
Very entertaining. Scary. Still entertaining.
Of those you mentioned so far, looks like Saku was the only one who properly read the brief.
Most of the others seem to be looking to the past (or 80′s sci-fi movies) to figure out what they should do. You can analyse the past all you want but it’s not going to help moving things forward. You’ll just be waiting for that Black Swan to come along and knock you off your err perch?
Try lots of things and stick with what works. Sounds like a better idea to me than looking to Marty McFly for inspiration (15TV’s BTTF 2).
I read somewhere, I think it was in an interview with the CD Baby guy, that Trent Reznor used this kind of trial approach early on. He had a few bands and music ideas all under different names. Turns out that NIN was the one that worked.
NOTE: Found that interview between Derek Sivers (the CD Baby Guy) and Tim Ferriss (the four-hour-work-week guy) its a good read: http://sivers.org/tim-ferriss
Very much looking forward to part 2.
Great entry as usual Andrew.
I’d like to say I disagree with the idea that the future of the music business is unpredictable.
Sure, maybe in the very very distant future it’s unpredictable, but certainly it is predictable in the next 10 years or so. Simply look from the consumers eyes – where is there weakness in service – example:
1) Music fans have always wanted access to large databases of music so there was always an opening for services like Spotify – and it was always going to happen – we just needed fast enough internet connection speeds. People with enough imagination were dreaming of Spotify the day to first record was sold in the shops – except they probably saw it in some other form – like a library with books.
2) People who use the internet needed a way to access data quickly and efficiently, so Google solved the problem. Google was always going to happen and was absolutely predictable. It just took some bright spark to make it happen.
The list goes on but I don’t have the energy to write it down. The thing is, there are so many variables to consider – technology, limitations, viability etc… it becomes an exceptionally hard to task to ACCURATELY predict the future of the music business.
So, what I’m saying is that there is too much focus on business side. People who try to predict the future of the music industry are doing just that, predicting. I say, ‘work out’ what the music loving public want and from that work out a way of offering a service which pays.
Brilliant report Andrew, can’t wait to read part 2!
Two different issues here, really. One of them is music BUSINESS, the other is music ENJOYMENT. The “business” part needs metrics, graphs and planning. The “enjoyment” part is purely inter-personal.
Trouble is, they intertwine because you get to hear what you might enjoy because of what the business end does, at least in the popular media. And neither is ultimately predictable, long-term anyway.
It’s a case of the cart before the horse. Music enjoyment should drive music business, not the other way around. As long as that is the prevailing model, everything will remain unpredictable and confusing.
The business folks overthink it. They lost the plot.
The best model is the simplest. Focus on music DISCOVERY. Enjoy it, have fun with it, spread the word, excite people about it.
The business model(s) will follow. All the process of “discovery” needs is just a modicum of organization and all of a sudden it feels like there’s FUTURE in music after all. Check out Fame Games if you doubt it.
Any other approach, no matter how counter-intuitive it might seem to all those business-heads, is doomed to fail.
Just a question, how many actual musicians were at this event? It’s just that, whenever I read about conferences like this, the creators of the content that support this entire industry ie musicians, never seem to get a look in, unless it’s as the evening entertainment. Just curious….
What’s so naive and silly about Korda Marshall asking what a record company in Blade Runner would look like? After all, the film took views on fashion, night clubbing, live entertainment, computer interactivity, telephone calls (no mobiles!) and interior design among other things tangential to the storyline…sounds like a reasonable environment in which to ponder what recorded entertainment would be like. May not be the “right” answer, but it shows signs of thinking. How would YOU sell music to the offworld on Mars and the asteroids?
Sometimes Andrew, you’re guilty of what you complain about in others.
Then I haven’t made myself clear. I advocate understanding the environment as it stands now and innovating based on that understanding. Simple as that really.
Thought experiments based on fantasy scenarios are interesting but less helpful, in my opinion.
My bigger issue is with people who talk about the present as if they’re predicting the future or just making stuff up and saying ‘one day, we will all…’ – but asking what music businesses would do if they were cartoons, underwater or run by dinosaurs is little more than an entertaining rhetorical device.
Great read. Good laughs.
Interesting times.
Thanks for making this clear Andrew.
Your philosophy can be applied to other aspects of life.
Unpredicable but yet changing…
While I’d concur that one can never know the future with absolute certainty, one’s ability to predict future trends and technologies is possible to a variable degree, correlating directly with said prognosticator’s level of influence within the field.