Free at all costs

I'm still in utter amazement how slow Time Out have been on this, to compound my disappointment they've brought onboard Smirnoff to brand the whole thing. This might make it free to the end user for the first 6 months and therefore help build up a loyal following who can activiely market the app to their friends but this does also erode what I think is one of the key strengths of the Time Out brand, it's impartiality.

Now I appreciate the commercial pressures of a traditional media company, relying on declining revenue from two key sources:

a) subscription and newstand readership of physical magazine

and

b) display advertising revenues (on and offline)

...but jumping into bed with a brand for a limited period in order to create a free app shows a little too much desperation in my view. Whilst 'free' does obviously play a part in creating a successfull app and take up in the short term, it is ultimately the utility that the app provides that will seal it's position in the app store chart in the long term. Don't get me wromg, I appreciate Chris Anderson's opnions on the subject but do we always need to strive towards free at all costs?





If we are to look at The Guardian's recent foray into the world of apps, we see a different approach. The Guardian are dogmatic about free online content but understand that there are environments where a consumer, who has a relationship with the brand, will be happy to part with their cash if they can see the brand is doing more than transferring content from the paper or website and creating something genuinely cool and useful for the out of home or on the underground context. Their range of iphone features seperate this digital offering from the site in a number of ways to offer a totally new experience for the Guardian reader - increasing the value and amount of interaction with the reader. It's still early days but I'm confident that the average Guardian reader will identify that the brand understands what the user does and doesn't want.



What I value both the Guardian and Time Out brands is that I ultimately trust what they say, if I'm looking for restaurant reviews or films to go and see I treat these sites as bastions of quality, intellingent comment. Suddenly teaming up with a drinks brand brings into question (for some) this impartiality and independence which most readers see as the core value of these two publishers.

Free is good, but should never be a sole aim, sweeping all else aside (core brand values included), can't Timeout see why they're the no 1 things to do site? it's because we trust them - this trust is the one thing that differenitates them from the competition, lose this and they're back on a level playing field with a number of inferior, younger competitors.

tiger vs jay-z

how will magazines adapt to life in a digital world?

Mag+ from Bonnier on Vimeo.

2000 - 2010: splintering scenes and technology

Panda Bear - Person Pitch, the surprise choice in Pitchforks top 10 albums of the decade

Just reading this Guardian piece debating whether Pitchforks 200 albums of the decade is a significant list that we should take note of. The answer for me from both a music fan and cultural observer angle is yes definitely. Those guys went beyond the guitar based music with the odd exception mindset that the NME and Q had to one where any album, whether it was from a Norwegian disco producer or Brooklyn 4 piece was listened to and assessed on a level playing field.

I've got to be thankful to them for some of my musical highlights: Clipse, Portishead, Grizzly Bear, Hercules and Love Affair, Mark Pritchards incredible 'feel the spirit' folk comp. Their level of music geekery is both completely impartial and unrivalled. They are the guys who spent sunday afternoon making mixtapes with the kind of attention to detail an ipod user wouldn't ever understand.

More intriguing than the who is in/out/massively overrated is the effect technology has had on what we've listened to. There seems to have been a splintering of tastes towards the second half of the decade as the information via digital platforms becase more accessible. This was the decade that the music industry changed from tour to promote cd to recorded music to promote tour and artist as a brand. As it became easier to find out about music beyond mainstream media channels (remember MTV anyone?) people went onto the web and explored - they came across sites like myspace and pitchfork and never looked back. The long tail theory for music at least has most certainly happened. This article in the Economist makes the point much better than I ever could, we've all seen the Kings of Leon reach world domination and know that bands no longer need a deal to get themselves out there, it's now the ones in the middle that face the biggest challenge in a splintering world.

This quote sums it up...

So what was so intriguingly odd about their top 10 albums of the noughties? I was immediately struck by the fact that seven of the albums were from 2000 and 2001, with one other record from 2002 and another from 2004. The only album from after the mid-decade point was Panda Bear's Person Pitch. Now what significance can be derived from this dense clustering (eight of the ten) of "greatest albums" in the first three years of the decade? You could interpret it two ways: firstly, music deteriorated as the noughties went on, or secondly, it grew harder and harder for people to reach consensus about which groups mattered, what records were important. The first scenario seems unlikely, so I'd have to go with the second. It resonates with how the decade actually felt: diasporic, scenes splintering into sub-scenes, taste bunkers forming, the question "Have you heard X?" increasingly likely to meet a shake of the head or a look of incomprehension


So there will always be the big hit making stadium touring mega stars. There is a human need to be part of something with other people and not all of us are prepared to spend hours geeking out online to find that swedish skiffle band to then go and check out in Mile End. We want human interaction, an excuse to be social and something that gives us an identity but there is a limit to the time and effort that we're prepared to put into it.

The big stars deserve every penny they get for holding onto their audience in a time when technology has created a profound change beyond 'the hit' - there is now a massive part of the market made up of splintering sub cultures, niches and groups all of whom can survive with very little corporate involvement of any kind.

Not a great time to be an A&R man, an incredible time to be someone with a good idea and a nack of communicating well with people.

Google Goggles

keep it simple

courtesy of raxraxrax

public spaces, interactivity and post digital ramblings

This use of redundant street space is great. Phone boxes are part of our heritage yet if you see someone in one now you're convinced they're either cheating on their wife, plotting a terrorist attack or looking for some shrapnel in the rejected coins hole. It's definitely time for brands / the powers that be to reclaim the street and show they understand how technology has changed the we way we use these public spaces.




So how can we bring these iconic structures back to life, create usefulness and genuine value? The opportunities seem endless given their ubiquity, cosyness and the public affection for them. The recent resurgence in pop up shops looks like one avenue that could be explored.



I think the lesson here is that interactivity isn't exclusively digital, it's potential lies everywhere. This is a medium that is at it's best when it's two way communication rather than dictatorial and one way. I guess the risk summed up in that question: what if no one interacts? the answer to this is simple. It's a field of communication where aside from thorough research and intuitive planning, it must be understood that putting an idea into the public sphere involves the 'r' word. A great example of a campaign that nailed it was CP&B's Shocking Barack.



Here was Alex Bogusky's take on why the idea flew:

That’s the thing about this that’s so fundamentally different than anything that has even a tiny media buy connected. With media you know you’ll get something but here, there is a very real chance that absolutely nothing happens. Yet we were also confident that what we were doing mattered and that, maybe when something matters, it has a chance to get noticed.

Mark Earls nails it when he talked about lighting fires, don't get obsessed with the one big sexy idea, try stuff out, see what resonates and what doesn't and learn from it. Following this appraoch allows for a greater understanding of people like about you and what they don't, more importantly, it frees you from the shackles of focus groups, one way mirrors and bad sandwiches.

charging up the digital world

If the world becomes increasingly reliant on digital and the number of devices in the house increase then we'd better find a way of understanding how we're going to power charge our lives.