I have been thinking quiet a bit about my last post – titled The Death on an Industry. I have been thinking of doing a new one and have hit many brick walls – usually when that happens it means i am meant to write something else (writers block means find another way).

I was going to write about changing the guard, researching ways to reinvigorate an industry as the last lines said:

“I’m going to do some research into the music industry to find interesting places to go, or avoid.”

Sounds rather big of me to change an entire industry from my blog. I was going to spend time looking into CD Packaging and how it grew. Looking into CDs as a dying media format – that would be a big call from anyone on this internet thing. But overall I was going to look at how we can use the internet as a better marketing tool.

I think what I am talking about is not a little change, it is not as I put it a ‘Death of an Industry’ – more as a reformation. The dictionary defines reformation as ‘the act of reforming’ and reforming as ‘To improve by alteration, correction of error, or removal of defects; put into a better form or condition.’

Now there is something I can talk about. I have many theories on how to reform media industries a lot of which have come up in my huge number of years spent on the internet. There has been some successes who have attempted releases on the internet, see In Rainbows by Radiohead or many of the latest Nine Inch Nails albums.

The time is right for change. The time is right to experiment with something new. The time is even right for me to stop talking in small riddles, and incomplete thoughts. So on with the show.

The Realisation of Reformation

Stagnant media stinks. The world is changing so rapidly online, we never seem to spend too long in an era of the internet before someone goes and changes things. Lots of little changes add up to big ones. And staying on the bleeding-edge of the technology is choosing to be in a constant learning curve.

This is not a bad thing, because Era’s of the internet are a long time coming, mostly because it takes the general public to be involved in them before the era changes. It was sites like MySpace, Facebook or Flickr that heralded the Era of Web 2.0. It would have eventually got there for us geeks, but the more usership on a site leads to more bugs fixed and a more solid website.

I am happy for you to comment on this thought. But I think Web 3.0 will be upon us in full force when the general public starts getting the hang of the new semantic features. In other words when the websites that boast what we would call Web 3.0 start being used frequently and passionaly by the public. Maybe the best way is to say, when Web 3.0 is not idiological but invisible…

While this is happening with the internet, we now see a huge shift where the internet is incorporated into ‘real-life’. Like bands plastering their myspace address everywhere. People sharing blogs enticing people to read what they write. Twitter, taking it further than online diaries, and more into minute by minute updates. Trends decided by analytics. The internet is becoming more real world, a little more tangable day by day with the advent of things like google docs, bringing products that we used to purchase to our desktops (with google gears).

And so more real-life internet means that is become a place to exist and sell items. But in this new era how do we bring the older media types, that have existed for years as tangible items, into this web-driven world?

A Question with Answers Already…

Hey I know that this is the question posed by thousands of people already. I also know that it is basically stating what I wrote in the previous article. Just excuse me for a little while, I am still trying to collate my thoughts on how to handle this.

The future is open. There is no set goals, but I think there is a dash to the line in achieving media distribution in a way that benefits the creators and the consumers. There is no perfect solution right now.

But is there?

Is there a way to bring the created item to the consumer in a way – I think this is where my previous article left off – where the middle men, the guys who used to hand out and take money, are left out of the creation of the media?

On a side note: I am currently working with a few chaps on a project that takes the advertising out of the mix when searching for a product. Say a camera, or phone, or beer. The MyPerfect choice engine selects a product based on its features and not on the advertising dollars spent.

What will it take to have the passion put into a song, or a tv show, or a movie without other hands grabbing it to make it easier to sell? In the past, for example with bands, it has been to find a record label that won’t control the sounds you make. But even those labels get bought out by bigger labels when they start making money.

Catch us next week when this article continues. Maybe I’ll even get some questions answered – I think they are in my mind, somewhere… Wish me luck!!