Communities Dominate Brands

Mapping our digital universe

Its something that I have been thinking about quite a bit recently. What shape is our digital universe?

So here is John Naughton musing on that topic

But it isn't just the age dimension that marks out Facebook from MySpace. An intriguing contrast in strategic vision is also becoming apparent. Murdoch bought MySpace because it had become one of the most visited sites on the web. The challenge for the Murdoch team was how to 'monetise' those eyeballs. Their solution was a traditional combination of advertising and control. (It also helped that Google paid $900m for the privilege of providing search facilities on the site.) The advertising bit is self-explanatory; the control freakery is exemplified by the Murdoch philosophy of not allowing other people to make money on his platform. In that sense, MySpace is really Rupert's Space

So Rupert it seems has got the charts out, but it still looks like the world is flat. There is no Panama canel to fast riches as yet. Yet I thought the purchase of myspace was a real understanding about the digital holes in the digital cheese

Then we have magazines trying to chart the same universe. In the most recent Pirates of the Caribbean, navigation of the underworld forces Jack Sparrow to think laterally

You won't find an executive in British magazines who doesn't believe that in the near future 30% of publishing revenues will come from digital ventures. But neither will you find one prepared to tell you precisely how that 30% will be achieved or give you a definition of "near future".

So be prepared to think laterally. But its so hard to do.

The future lies in letting loose the very thing they have spent a large part of the past 20 years trying to suppress - the individual voices of their writers - and recognising that all that the web provides is a platform upon which to compete for the key commodities: attention and trust.

Argues David Hepworth

Then, Jeff Jarvis points to even a digital immigrant that should know better and are struggling with their own charts...

Yahoo! is the last old-media company, for, just like a publisher or broadcaster, it has relied on controlling content, marketing to attract eyeballs, then bombarding those eyeballs with ads, arbitraging our attention for as long as possible.

So how do we think differently. How do we work out that down is up and up is down?

In Terry Semel, Yahoo!'s just-bounced CEO, the company got the essential media man and model. The site, he said once, is "all about content" and distribution. But the internet isn't. The internet is about people, connections and networks. Google knows that; that's how it won. Google is a platform

Picture: Richard Ross

So – Plant your own forest

What should it do next? Yahoo! could sell out to another company that also watched Google whiz by: old-media conglomerates, for whom Yahoo! would seem like a younger second wife; Microsoft, always in search of a media strategy it doesn't need; cable companies, seeing their exclusive hold on content torn from them by the internet; AOL, because they can fade away together. Or it could split itself into three mediocre companies: content, services, ads.

The internet: the 6th Mass Media and mobile: the 7th Mass Media are not however good at forgiving second rate content or mediocrity. Why should they. We live a world of Plenty not a world of Scarcity. And lets be honest – interruptive ads that are irrelevant, non-contextual (therefore lack meaning) and boring will not succeed on the 6th and 7th Mass Media.

We have to live in a world of open platforms, engaged and targeted content, information and services. It doesn't matter, whether you are Yahoo, Emap, News International, or a retailer. The reality is the rules have changed as Jack Sparrow realised as he realised that the Black Pearl was the wrong way up.

what shape is our digital universe? well, we don't know, but what we do know its not the same as our analogue one.

Virtual goods worth 1.5 B dollars and climbing - Habbo, Cyworld, Flirtomatic, Second Life, World of Warcraft etc

Meanwhile, there is a world also beyond the iPhone hype. On a non-mobile topic, but very central to our blog and book themes, is virtual worlds. Anything from Avatars and private rooms in anything like Habbo Hotel or Second Life or Cyworld, to virtual races on Kart Rider to virtual battles in World of Warcraft etc. Its a whole chapter obviously in our book and we regularly report on these virtual matters.

There is a great article by Susan Wu on Tech Crunch on the sales of virtual goods. The dollar value of virtual properties sold worldwide is already worth 1.5 Billion dollars. Its a rapidly growing area. Almost any company or brand can offer "a virtual Coke" or sell a virtual pari of Levi's jeans etc in the right virtual environment and situation. In Cyworld already 30,000 separate corporate/business enterprises are offering fully branded content - and over half a million individual items of virtual goods are on sale in South Korea. Did anyone at your company suggest these things like Second Life won't take off? Yeah, right. Read Susan's article and then go smell the coffee ha-ha..

so now iPhone, then what? Your mobile media strategy

The iPhone launches tomorrow in America. Already several first reviews based on a couple of weeks of trial use, are published in periodcals from the Wall Street Journal to the International Herald Tribune. The hype is totally everywhere. Tomorrow the blogosphere in America will explode with iPhone reviews and ratings (and ravings) by those who get their hands on an early iPhone.

Its much like we predicted, the hype is still growing louder. But clearly the hype around the iPhone has validated the concept, that a pocketable, converged device, a media player, internet device and phone - is totally viable. And with it, many of the IT side (PC makers, software companies, internet players) and the media side (from TV to movies to print to advertising etc). So already today, but even more tomorrow and next week into July, there are lots of CEOs of major IT, internet, media and advertising companies who suddenly demand a mobile strategy. What is your mobile media strategy?

As luck would have it, I met today with my good friend and fellow author, Dan Applequist, the Strategy Director at Vodafone here in the UK (for those of our readers who might not be very familiar with mobile/wireless - Vodafone is the world's largest mobile operator (carrier) group, they are a dominant operator in most major markets such as UK, Germany, Italy etc and have a significant ownership in Verizon in America, a smaller ownership in China Mobile the largest single mobile operator (carrier) in the world, and until recently owned an affiliate in Japan; clearly of the global players in the operator space, Vodafone is the biggest. So Dan's thoughts are definitely always very insightful and he's a really worthwhile speaker by the way, if you ever get a chance to see him.

But returning to our theme today, mobile content. Some of our discussions were also on the informal side - such as Dan's strong interest in helping the Mobile Monday concepts thrive - and I strongly support him on this - any "newcomer" to mobile, and mobile media and mobile internet very specifically - and all who admire the "new" opportunties from the iPhone - please note that Mobile Mondays are wonderful opportunities to meet and mingle with the real "doers" of the mobile space. There are very active MoMo chapters in many countries and they feature really top notch speakers and are a fantastic way to get familiar with what's happening in mobile and who are doing it in your neck of the woods, without paying the often excessively expensive conference fees or buying viciously expensive industry reports etc. And as a personal plug - I'm for example giving the keynote at the Mobile Monday event in San Francisco in October.

And then Dan observed something about the iPhone buzz and hype in America right now. The "conventional wisdom" of the IT and internet side, looking at the iPhone, and thinking "at last, what we didn't want was the lousy WAP experience or SMS on a cellphone, now with this iPhone we can have the real internet on our phone."

This is so wrong. Its the first reaction, and it has some merit. But it misses the whole big picture. Its like seeing an automobile, having worked in a coal mine, and thinking - I am sure I can make millions selling those cars to pull out coal rather than having people push coal carts. (The first trains were used in coal mines, long before they pulled humans as their cargo). The BIG picture. Don't focus on trying to squeeze the internet to the cellphone screen. Why bother. There is already an excellent metaphor for that - a PC.

What we need to do - and regular readers of our blog know this has been a long-term theme for Alan and me - is that for mobile we should not try to copy concepts from legacy media (and yes, today, even the internet is a legacy media, when mobile is the 7th Mass Media). What YOU should do - is build a strategy for mobile - what is the POWER of the phone. Don't see the limitations of a small(ish) screen or small keypad. Think of the POWER of the mobile. As a Mass Media, mobile has six unique benefits, that are not able to be copied anywhere else. 1 - Mobile is the first personal mass media (even the internet is only semi-personal). 2 - it is the first always carried media. 3 - It is the first always on mass media. 4 - Mobile is the first mass media with a built-in payment channel. 5 - It is the first media device available at the point of inspiration. And 6 - mobile is the first mass media with near-perfect audience information. Not perfect, but as AMF Ventures reported, on TV you capture 1% of the audience data. On the internet, you capture 10% of audience data. But on mobile you capture 90% of audience data !

This is the holy grail of media ! You get 90 times better info on your audience than on TV; and 9 times better info than on the web !  What are you WAITING FOR? The iPhone has validated the mobile media and internet as a concept. Now you need to get into it, before your competitors do. If you are a media company, and consider those 6 listed benefits in the above, you can see that you can improve ANY of your media offerings, in MULTIPLE ways, by incorporating only some of those elements.

It doesn't even touch upon the fact that ALL media can be replicated on mobile. Music, gaming, TV, movies, books even (80 million dollars annually on mobile books in Japan alone..). And the full internet can be replicated on mobile, including the interactivity and the social networking of the web, and including search.

So what we here at the Communities Dominate blogsite have been advocating for a long time - and ask for in our book Communities Dominate Brands - is to create the new for this new mass media, what is not possible before. Don't try to copy the "real internet" to mobile. Yes, it can be done - but you are abandoning your competitive advantage. Its like the transition from radio (4th mass media) to TV (5th mass media). On radio, in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, a very common form of content was the radio play. People would listen to actors speak out a play, with sound effects. The actors would all be in a studio, some actors would play several roles (with different voices of course) and some technicial would be providing the sound effects, rain falling, the shot of a gun, a door slamming, sound of running feet, a car pulling away, police sirens, etc)

Now, if you do the "real internet to mobile" thing, it would be like taking that radio play - with the actors in the studio, huddled around their microphones, and one technician with the sound effect recordings - and you point ONE camera at the studio. This is "picture radio" - but NOT television. If we take the same story, we apply what is possible on TV, we have the camera cut between the actors, showing their faces and expressions. We see the action of the person shooting, running out of the room, slamming the door, etc.

If you - with an existing media strategy, whether in print, cinema, recordings, radio, TV or internet - and you now are considering what to do about the iPhone - we urge you to think beyond the existing. Invent the new. Think of cinema for example. Today on TV we have all movies ever shown in the cinema - obviously old media can be repurposed for a smaller screen. But what are the killer apps on TV - reality TV like American Idol or Big Brother; talk shows from David Letterman and Jay Leno to Ophah and The View. Music videos, 3 minute ultra-short clips, in continuous rotation. These are all new content formats invented for TV, which would not be viable on cinema !

We want you to invent the new content and services for mobile as the 7th Mass Media. What is truly radical and new, so wonderful, people feel it is like magic.

Like magic? Yes, invent the magic. Let me give one example. Kamera Jiten from Japan. Imagine if I gave you a printed magazine in Japanese with your picture in it. And you'd ask, what is the text saying about you. But I don't speak Japanese, I can't help you. Now, get Kamera Jiten. You point your cameraphone at the magazine article (all Japanese and South Korean cellphone owners have cameraphones and they are internet enabled today). You take a picture of the page and Kamera Jiten thinks for a moment, then it displays the text of the same page for you - in English. Magic ! It is totally impossible in any other media or any other device. You can't do it on a laptop or iPod or digital camera, wave it over the magazine page and get it to show you a translated page in another language. But on mobile you can, Kamera Jiten launched already in Japan, where the first translation was from English to Japanese. These kinds of services are not only possible, they are economically viable - and will be the new killer apps which make much more money than re-purposing existing media formats, like TV short clips or legacy internet pages - onto mobile.

Take Flirtomatic, which has the gift element - you can give gifts to your dating partner, send a bucket of roses to her, or chocolates, or she can respond sending you the image of twirling the bra, suggesting you'll have a hot night. Now, obviously you could do that on a web based dating/fliting site - but then they would be free content (you can't charge 50 cents on your credit card every time you send a rose to your girl). But remember, the fourth of the 6 benefits of mobile is the built-in payment mechanism. Flirtomatic makes tons of money out of these kinds of gifts. And the recepient really does value them. Not as much as a real rose, of course, but a virtual rose - where the recepient of course knows that it cost the guy sending it real money - does have considerable romantic value. As the tens of thousands of Flirtomatic users who generate 100 million page impressions per month (Flirtomatic is already the 10th most popular independent mobile internet site in the UK)

Or take breaking news. Any news junkies out there feel compelled to turn on CNN on any hotel room, and whenever they get home from work etc. Need to know whats going on. The most urgent feed on CNN and all 24 hour news channels is the live news ticker on the bottom of the screen. Now do it on the only mass media which is with us 24 hours a day (60% of all humans sleep with the phone in bed with them; 72% use the phone as their alarm clock) - and recollecting that there are twice as many mobile phones as TV sets worldwide. What happens when breaking news migrates to mobile. The news ticker - but on your idle screen. Whenever you lay your phone on the table or desk or glance at it from your pocket, rather than display your screen saver, the iMedia service by NTT DoCoMo in Japan will give you customizable news feeds. Want sports news, or financial news, or world news, or gossip about celebrities and Paris Hilton, or pop music news, or whatever. Get it on your idle screen on your phone !  And better than the TV - if you want more info, all you do is click, and you are immediately connected to the related news page. If its really breaking news, only a short blurb WAP page, but as the news story is developed, you get pictures, video clips, sounds, etc. Better than the news ticker on CNN, because now the user gets to select which stories to get more info on.

Is this a success? You bet. In 18 months NTT DoCoMo has 8 million or 16% of its customers subscribing to iMedia, paying 200 Yen per month (1.70 USD) - so just this ONE news service earns an annual income of 163 million dollars. That is massive revenue migration if you're a newspaper or other news media organization.

This is what we mean when talking about a strategy for the 7th Mass Media in a post-iPhone Era. Don't minimize your chances only copying what you are currently doing, squeezing it to mobile. Think big, invent the new, build services utilizing the unique benefits of mobile, make it magic. And yes, to help you, Alan's company, SMLXL has written a great White Paper, called - Mobile as the 7th Mass Media - and you can get it for free simply by e-mailing Alan at   Alan (at) smlxtralarge (dot) com

What do, Cyworld, the iPhone, blyk, Admob, MyNuMo, Artists first, Moblog UK have in common? They are all part of the 7th Mass Media: Mobile

90% of Korean teenagers belong to the virtual world of Cyworld, the iPhone cometh, whilst blyk creates enormous speculation, MyNuMo is redefining the rules of commerce on the mobile platform and Admob have sold over 3billion ads on the mobile platform in just under 14months. Cash generation is not the issue for Admob, the issue is what to do with the money. American teens who have used both, say Cyworld is MySpace two years into the future. Who owns Cyworld? SK Telecom. Whilst we have Vodafone Live. Hardly compares does it?

Interestingly enough, I think that what all these businesses represent is the grassroots of a new media ecology, one that is part of a revolution that is sweeping aside the blockbuster economics of the mass media, unplugging consumers from interruptive communications, and traditional notions of consumption. And where we all play a more intimate and meaningful role. Just think about it, three times as many mobile devices in the world vs TV sets - nearly. Hands up class, does that represent a new media platform? Does it represent a different media ecology where the rules are different? If that is indeed so, why on earth then do brands and even operators insist that they sell mobile like baked beans.

For those that wish for some focus and perhaps a little clarity - the mobile is the 7th Mass Media is as profound as Gutenberg inventing moveable type. As profound as the industrial revolution. And yet, and yet, I hear people say - Yeah but in the UK marketers are justing starting to understand the internet let alone the mobile. Well my answer to that is don't these people read? Are there not supposed to be heads of insight and stuff?

I remember suggesting to the CEO of the Johnston Press a couple of years ago that putting a digital and mobile strategy at the heart of his business might be a good idea. The man shook my hand and said goodbye, today the Johnston Press is struggling in our new digital universe, whilst Admob are frankly coining it in. Homer Simpson where are you? Dooohh. Mothercare? HMV? all the same.

Although to be honest I presented to a large fizzy drinks brand a while ago and I did a little test. I asked if they knew what blogs, RSS feeds, widgets, citizen journalism, wikipedia were. it was I think 1 out of 5. And I am being kind. Though they did snatch my presentation and ran out the room, and never answered my phonce calls after that. I guess I have been lucky in my collaboration with Tomi, my experience of working and living in Finland in the early 90's, the work I have done with Nokia, and my own personal thirst for knowledge has allowed me to take a view that mobile is the 7th Mass Media.

Up until very recently, mobile was seen, and in fact is very still seen as well just the mobile, divorced from, and, having no relation to the other very important mass media. But in fact mobile is part of an historical process that stretches back to the 1400's. However the mobile is a sister of the anarchic internet. Our famiiar mass media analogue world is pretty much gone. Gutenberg brought us the first mass media - Print, then we had Recordings, Cinema, Radio, Televsion, the Internet and now the 7th Mobile. And consider this there are 3 times as many mobile phones in the world as there are TV sets. Surely we have to accept TV is no longer the hostess with the mostess.

So don't ignore mobile, and don't do as too many other companies have done – ignore a technological revolution, they do have a nasty tendency to come and bite you where the sun don't shine as Forest Gump famously said. I suggest have a read and then make you own mind up.

SMLXL has produced a whitepaper on Mobile as the 7th of the Mass Media. If you would like a free copy please leave a comment here or email me alanm (AT) smlxtralarge (DOT) com

Crunching numbers for iPhone: benchmarks, regional and quarterly, to reach 10 Million

The hype around the iPhone is enormous. Its on CNN and CNBC every day, and happily for Apple's PR department, the news broadcasts keep playing clips of iPhone's new flashy ads meaning Apple gets plenty of free publicity for its pending launch. Its pretty much what we expected knowing Apple's flair for showmanship.

But the hype has also brought about an enormous amount of miscellaneous pundits, mostly without much mobile telecoms knowhow or background, who make wildly varying predictions.

We are not an Apple blog. We are not a mobile telecoms blog. We are an engagement marketing blog around our book Communities Dominate Brands. But one recurring theme in our book and the blog is digital convergence, and the iPhone certainly embodies convergence - of media, internet and telephony - in that one device. Not the first phone to do that by any means, but yes, its a converged device. And another recurring theme at our blog and book is the inevitable direction of where social networking and digital communities are headed (as is the IT industry, internet, and media) and that is mobile, as the mobile becomes 7th of the mass media. So yes, as the iPhone is a step by a former computer company now entering mobile, this is a trend we track at this site, like other major players moving to mobile whether they be Google or Microsoft or Yahoo or Dell etc.

The iPhone is seen by many industry experts within the mobile telecoms industry as being a landmark moment (we called it the two Eras of Bi and Ai time, Before iPhone and After iPhone).

We cannot compare the iPhone against its current rivals as the phone is not out yet. And that is certainly the job of those blogsites and websites which dedicate themselves for honest handset evaluation and comparison. It would be foolish for us to even try to do that properly.

But in my current job I advise global mobile operators, the biggest handset manufacturers, the largest mobile telecoms infrastructure providers and various middlemen in the mobile industry, on their strategy. My previous job was heading Nokia's 3G Business Consultancy, and mobile telecoms business modelling is a core competence of mine. My first three books were all bestsellers specifically in the next generation mobile strategy, business, marketing and services areas. I lecture at several of Oxford University's courses about next generation mobile. And ever since the iPhone was announced, I've taken at least one question on the relevance of the iPhone at every one of my public and private sessions.

So I want to put the iPhone matter "to rest" for us at this blog, for now.

So I planned a longer, "definitive" mobile telecoms industry "insider" view of what are the opportunities and threats, for Apple and the various industry players, and what to look for as metrics from Apple, when estimating whether the iPhone will deliver on its promise to reach 10 million iPhones shipped by end of year 2008. It is written a week prior to the iPhone launch, to try to inject some reality to the wild predictions galore.

I will go through with you, the three major markets (North America, Europe, Asia); talk about iPhone sale volumes and targets and triggers; talk about mobile operators (carriers) and the rival handset makers; talk about handset subsidies; contracts; SIM cards; handset replacement cycles; return rates etc. What factors will directly impact the iPhone's success. Along the way I will also digress with a couple of myths etc, but will do my utmost to keep this long posting on topic. But yes, it will be long. The mobile telecoms network is the world's largest interconnected system; it is built to the most demanding tolerances of any industry, far exceeding those of automobiles, airplanes, computers or even the proverbial rocket science; and a smarphone is the most complex piece of electronics on sale today. There are some very serious issues to cover, if you want to do a fair job of evaluating this market opportunity.

So get a cup of coffee, sit back, relax. This is a longer piece even by my verbose standards.

Hyper-individualism, Consumerism & Resentment. A dangerous cocktail

The recent spate of knife and gun killings, argued Tony Blair recently, cannot be solely attributed to the effects of poverty but to a dysfunctional gang culture among young black people. This provoked a predictable outcry from black community leaders, but Blair was at least half right that the violence has roots in youth culture - though half wrong in confining it to black youth. The problem is not that young people are, in Blair's words, being brought up with "no rules, no discipline, no proper framework around them", but rather that the framework of rules they live within diverges sharply from that of mainstream civil society.

I wonder if there is a crisis of identity going on but its not just disinfranchised youth that causes concern. Crisis of identity

Law and order is but the bottom rung of this debate.

the way young people wield Cool as protection against the depression that failure in a highly competitive and celebrity-obsessed culture may induce. If you can't win, then refuse to play the game by dissing it as uncool. What we could not have predicted was to what terrible lengths this mechanism might be stretched. Merely refusing to play a particular game - such as succeeding at school, or joining some desirable social set - is no longer sufficient. Now you need to stop others playing too, perhaps by knifing them in a street fight, or by taking a 9mm Glock automatic on to the university campus.

What a sad indictment

Via Immoral support

And the book Cool Rules

So you wonder why young lives cast aside in country life which has no forseeable purpose, or, urban life that sucks you in, are lost to those parents that love and want to nuture them.

YouTube the folk culture of the 21st Century - On steroids. Coming to a mobile near you

When Tomi and I co-wrote Communities Dominate Brands we spent many days discussing mobile, its impact, economics, its future. Perhaps the most contentious part of our book.

Way back when, we were still getting our heads around blogs and the social ramifications of the internet let alone mobile, in its full shiny glory.

So it raises an eyebrow, when one reads that YouTube are going to target every mobile on the planet.

Well, in fact thats bollocks as there are many of the nearly 3bn phones out there that cannot support video, but nonethless its still interesting, that YouTube see mobile as the next step. Co-founder Steve Chen says,

Our goal is to put YouTube on every screen, we want to create the same amazing experience on mobile devices - and definitely want to be the first video service in whatever video features are enabled on mobile.

And indeed why not.

Let me see... 217m broadband users vs. lets say 1.5bn 3G phone users.

So the internet will co-evolve to mobile.

More on YouTube

Rethinking the cultural institution @ The Speed Museum of Contemporary Art

We have thought and written about many aspects of what exactly engagement marketing means.

Its ramifications, and, what other parts of society engagement ultimately affects.

There is no doubt in my mind that one of the areas that needs examination is the relationship of the cultural institution to its wider audience, community. In many ways cultural institutions suffer as much from being in broadcast mode as TV does.

If we think about it – the Victorians were the inventors of the mass cultural institution. Museums, are the aggregators of knowledge, which are specific in their interest. Military history, local history, Anthropology, Science, Fashion, Design etc.

However in the time of engagement, how do and why should cultural institutions engage with their wider community?

So, The Speed Museum which is part of the University of Kentucky are exploring this issue.

Flavia da Rin will be commissioned to create ten images, which will be displayed as billboards around the city of Kentucky during the months of January and February 2008. The sites will be dependent upon availability but each will be a 48ft x 14ft. billboard.

In addition to the billboard sites the project will have a web element. First access to this web element will be keyed by a text or web address that will be part of the billboard design. This key will lead the public to a blog or web site where the following elements will be set up.

And there is a whole lot more...

They have put together a very interesting project around the artist Flavia da Rin

The programme is in its development stage, and the curator of the Speed Museum of Contemporary Art is looking for a small team that can practically realise that goal.

So in true open source fashion, I am asking if there are web developers, mobile entreprenuers, or anyone else who gets excited by such a project, who, would be willing to explore and realise a project that investigates engagement within the context of cultural institutions in the early 21st Century.

Please leave a comment and your contact details and I can hook you up.

My belief is that Engagement will transcend marketing to: politics, education, organisations, & cultural institutions over the next 5 to 10 years.

So why not be a part of making history

I want my MTV or I want my Second Life? Why not both

I really like MTV in the digital media space. We mention several MTV initiatives in the book and of course here at the blog. Now we have their latest move. MTV is launching VMTV - Virtual MTV. Its their virtual world (similar to Second Life). Lets see how this world develops. Oh, and the service was designed by a specialist company M80 for MTV. Find VMTV at  vmtv.com of course.

Rich music futures

I very good friend of mine Clive Rich, a veteran of the music industry, but also I believe a visionary has set up his own company calld Rich Futures. Which I thought was on a par with SMLXL's name :-)

Anyway, Clive's vision is

to partly service and connect third parties needing to use music and other entertainment content to create points of differentiation and new revenue streams in a highly converging world. Clive sees such an approach to be of value to Music companies, Digital Service providers, Network operators, hardware manufacturers, TV companies, big Brands etc.

And Clive is already busy.

However, Rich Futures is also there to do something else, which is more entrepreneurial. Looking at music platforms and music ventures that look to the future not the past. Clive with his extraordinary contact list could help many fledging companies make the right contacts with private equity or VC's and advise on the right strategy for growth.

In a connected world personal advocacy counts. So I am saying to anyone out there that has an interest in music as a business, I suggest that you first port of call is Clive Rich at Rich Futures.

Drop me a line alanm (AT) smlxtralarge (DOT) com if you want to get in touch