Big Yellow Taxi (They Paved Paradise and Put Up a Parking Lot)

"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got till it's gone." Joni Mitchell © 1966-69 Siquomb Publishing Co. BMI.

I had lunch the other day with a friend of mine, blues legend Otis Taylor. Otis recently won the coveted Downbeat Critics Poll for best blues album of the year for his "Recapturing the Banjo" recording, a wildly innovative and entertaining education for those of us who grew up associating the banjo with Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs.

As he usually does, Otis had something interesting and challenging to say. We were talking about our kids - both his and mine are college-aged. And he suggested that they had best be sure that they're planning on doing something that the Chinese and other lower-paid laborers abroad can't do. His point: the Chinese engine of economic growth is moving at an enormous rate of speed. "Made in China" used to be stamped on all manner of relatively simple-to-manufacture consumer goods. But today, China has become identified with production that ranges from basic consumer goods to high-tech products of all kinds.

We have become accustomed to exporting American dollars and manufacturing jobs to China in exchange for consumer goods. But in recent years, with the rising cost of energy and the decline of the most prominent symbols of cheap energy, the automobile and the entire automotive industry, a new model has begun to take hold.

Some parts of the future that this new model suggests have been apparent for some time. Other elements are just beginning to become clear.

Tonight, after dinner and margaritas with a few of our kids (and a grandchild, Aiden), Nanette and I wandered up the street to the Boulder Bookstore. We do this almost every time we head down to Pearl Street for dinner. Boulder is beautiful on almost any summer evening. Full of scents and sounds and surprises, it has as much magic for me now as it did the first time I visited, back in 1985. And the Boulder Bookstore is an institution. It has the feel of a place that belongs in Boulder. Like a number of restaurants that bear an unmistakable "local" feel, including the Mountain Sun, Foolish Craig's, Jax, and the Mediterranean, among others, the Boulder Bookstore seems to belong here.

But tonight, as we headed in, I realized something had changed. Not with the store. With me. I was looking forward to walking through the front door as much as ever. I was eagerly anticipating my first view of the shelf that holds the books that are favorites with the locals. I knew where the Seattle chocolates would be. And I knew before we entered the door that I would head, before much time had passed, to the section of the store that displays the music-related magazines. But this time a thought crept into my head: I wonder whether I will see a book I like and decide not to buy it at the Boulder Bookstore because I can download it, instead, to my Kindle.

And that got me thinking. If you're the Boulder Bookstore, how do you fight that? I love Amazon. Love it. They grab more of my consumer dollars each year than I, or anyone, could have guessed had they looked at the marketplace back in 1998, just ten years ago. I buy from Amazon because it's fast, it's reasonably priced, the experience is uniformly good and I can find almost anything I want. Immediately.

But I love the Boulder Bookstore too. And it occurs to me that there may not be enough consumer spending to go around. Many of the books, including bestsellers, that would cost me $15-20 or more at the Boulder Bookstore will cost less than $10 via Amazon's Kindle download store. And finding and purchasing books using the Kindle is remarkably fast. Efficient. Inexpensive. When I download a book instead of purchasing it in hard copy, fewer trees have to be felled. And having a few hundred books on a device the size of a notepad is a lot more convenient than lugging them around. Trust me. I know. And anyone who knows me has seen me try to lug a dozen or so through one or another airport.

So, what happens next? While you're contemplating that, how about this: "China as the World Factory (Kindle Edition)." Where do you suppose the Kindle is manufactured?

And what about the Boulder Bookstore? Just like Joni Mitchell says, "They paved paradise . . . " Let's hope that doesn't ever happen. That would really suck.

Music, Business and Capital

Seth Godin has blogged his "the live music talk," and it's must read stuff for those who follow or have a particular interest in the continuing deterioration of the recorded music business. He talks about the music business as it used to be: radio promotion, limited competition, physical albums (vs. digital distribution), top 40 stardom and star power, magazines that were focused entirely on promoting new artists, songs, albums. And he talks about what has changed. Basically, everything.

Yesterday I tossed out a tweet in Twitterland to ask whether the major record labels had become their own worst enemies. Actually, I don't think there's any doubt about it. Steve Jobs is their nemesis. Or so they suppose. But their problems are not nearly so simple as that.

When the engine of growth for your industry, the enthusiasm of the 13-24 year-olds for the latest music, no longer contributes to your bottom line, you have a serious problem. It's even worse for those in the 18-24 year-old age group. I spoke on Saturday to the owner of an independent record store in Boulder, Colorado. He has operated that store for many, many years. When I suggested that 18-24 year-olds aren't paying for recorded music any more, I expected at least a little push back. Instead, he vigorously affirmed my suggestion. "Tom," he said, "we saw signs of trouble years ago, but it became absolutely obvious that over the past two years what you say is true. Eighteen to twenty four year-olds aren't buying recorded music."

So here are my questions:

(1) does that matter?
(2) if it does matter, can anything be done about it?
(3) and if something can be done, can it be done in time to make any real difference?

My answers to these questions will be developed in subsequent posts to this blog.

Meanwhile, Trent Reznor of NIN fame has taken his cue from Radiohead and raised the bar a bit. In addition to offering some of the latest mp3 content for free, he has assembled multiple packages at various price points - offering content at $5, $10 and even $300. How is it going?



Trent seems pretty pleased so far!

Music, Business and Capital

Stardoll

My friend, Daniel Ek, the CEO of Spotfy, is also the co-founder and CTO of Stardoll. The New York Times Magazine has a good piece today, "Dress-Up for Dollars," by Rob Walker (who does the Consumed column) about Stardoll and the remarkable drivers that brands have become among teens, in this case teen girls.

What I'm really looking forward to is the New York Times' coverage of Spotify (based in Europe and currently in closed beta).

Can't Buy Me Love?

All this time, I thought Seeqpod was just about searching for mp3s. Turns out the company has several initiatives underway that combine it's search capabilities with particular areas of focus, including finance, video, shopping, etc.


I thought I'd give the buyable search and discovery a try. They recommended I search the Beatles, but, nah! I thought I'd search for the one thing the Beatles told us that money can't buy. That's right. I searched for "love."


Some of you are going to think I'm searching for love in all the wrong places. But, as it turns out, my search did manage to turn up a whole lotta love. (I know. Terrible. Absolutely terrible.)

But I have to say, the results are not too shabby.

Andreesen's on a Roll

I don't know if you've been reading Marc Andreesen's blog.

If you haven't, you should. There are a handful of folks who write things that just nail what's going on in the world at a particular point in time. Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine does that. My friend Brad Feld does it from time-to-time and so does Fred Wilson. But Marc Andreesen is taking things to another level entirely. Check it out.

Chris Anderson - "Free" Not Equal to "No Value"

When I saw Deborah Solomon's New York Times interview of Sheryl Crow, I had the same reaction as Chris Anderson's referenced below.

Whether it's pop stars or Wall Street analysts, the biggest misconception of free is that no cost = no value.

For instance, this today from Silicon Alley Insider:

Whether it's software, patents, movies, or music, as a planet, we have decided that things that exist only in the form of atoms, or are not offered as a service, have no value.

Or this, from Sheryl Crow in last weekend's New York Times magazine (from which this photo was taken):

I’m sad that people feel like music should be free, that the work that we do is not valued.

Don’t you feel valued enough? It’s more about consciousness. When music comes free by way of friends burning CDs, there’s not that understanding of the work that goes into the making of an album.

Spot the error? It's that the only way to measure value is with money. Of course the Web is built mostly on two nonmonetary economies, attention (traffic) and reputation (links), both of which benefit hugely from free content and services. And it's a pretty simple matter to convert from either of those two currencies into cash, as a glance at Google balance sheet makes clear.

In a recent post, we listed dozens of business model built on free. All of them are based on the notion that free stuff does have value and the way we measure that is in the time people spend with them. Do I actually need to remind Wall Street analysts that time is money?

[The Long Tail]

Forwarded or Posted by Tom Higley