New Media Economist

Here in Hollywood, you can’t walk to any of the major shopping or entertainment areas without being bombarded by a handful of musicians attempting to sell you their burned CD’s. It has been this way for a while, but in this day and age, I have to wonder why they still exist… and why they haven’t figured out that spending an hour putting their stuff on the internet will reap more rewards than standing out on the street corner for a solid month.

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For a long time, advertising on television was a no-brainer. It was as if the technology was invented solely to plug the full, rich tobacco flavor of Winston cigarettes. Entire game shows were branded by coffeemakers. The good lord Kraft smiled and all was well.

I still think it’s a viable resource for advertisers, but some of them are starting to sweat the advent of DVR culture. To them, that’s thousands of potential consumers, breezing past entire pods, catching only a glimpse of the last spot before Heroes resumes. As usual, sea change in response to new tech is just not an option. Small, petulant resistances are the order of the day.

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As most of you may know, the long-awaited iPhone 3G was released today, with much fanfare, long lines, and a painful activation process. Once mine was fully operational, I headed straight for the App Store, which is where iPhone owners can [finally!] download and install programs, both free and commercial. The thing that surprised me the most when looking at the list of available applications was the amount of new media integration — and the amount of large companies that are finally getting aboard the new media train.

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Today, while at Hollywood & Highland, I stopped into the Green Earth Cafe to get a Caesar salad and noticed the plasma television mounted behind the counter. Powered by a company and service called Danoo, the television was performing a task that I’ve often predicted would be on the rise — showing activities and events within close proximity to the cafe, and outputting highly targeted advertising.

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I apologize for the lack of updates. Plenty of new stuff will be coming this week, I promise! In addition, I am bringing in a few other people to write guest posts when time permits. If you are interested in being one of them, just send an email stating this to nme [at] sent [dot] com.

A few days ago, it was announced that the Orange County Register will be outsourcing some of their editing to India. This, of course, is one of the dumbest things a newspaper has done in a while. (Outsource editing of the English language to a non-English speaking mass of people?) But beyond that, it is an example of how truly the newspaper industry just doesn’t understand new media. The Orange County Register, of all papers, should be best poised to make good in this new economy, but as we can see, this is not what is happening.

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If you haven’t checked out Redbox, I recommend you do so. The idea is pretty simple — they have a kiosk, usually inside of a grocery store, that stocks some of the more recent DVD release films. You stick your credit card in, movie automatically comes out. The real kicker is the price — you get to keep the movie until 9pm the next day for only one dollar.

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Everyone loves to talk about the death and the demise of record companies, as if they’re all going to curl up and die today, returning the power back to the artist. Personally, I think this is a load of crap. While certainly the record industry is in decline and huge changes to be made, none of those changes will involve the death of all the major record labels. There are, however, some interesting possibilities for the future of the industry, and I will present one of my theories for you now.

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In a totally predictable but vague article, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. says that the music video is dead, and that while he is not entirely certain what the future of music marketing is, he’s putting a lot of stock into the internet. This is hardly a surprise, given that Ethan (who is very close with the band) and the gang over at WBR have been working very hard over the past few years to increasingly market their artists on the internet, with R.E.M. often being the first out of the gate. But are music videos really dead?

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Despite my relatively positive opinion on eMusic, I have cancelled my membership. It’s not that the service wasn’t good, but rather, it is unnecessary. The biggest problem is that it is not a strong enough store on its own to replace iTunes or Amazon, and at the same time, it does not really complement either of them very well, either.

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