Another study revealing the obvious: downloads are what TV is to DVD: a free teaser that actually increases sales in the long run. This one from the Canadian government:

• When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was “a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. […] The study estimates that 12 additional P2P downloads per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.
• When viewed in the aggreggate (ie. the entire Canadian population) […] we find no direct evidence to suggest that the net effect of P2P file sharing on CD purchasing is either positive or negative for Canada as a whole.”

Link

Why? Simple: people who download love music, and they will buy CDs for artists who make a real effort in making the object appealing (the only context in which it makes sense, because in an iPod world a CD is an obstacle to my wish to listen to my music), reward their favorite bands with “donations” (I bought CDs I had downloaded a large number of times) and gifts to others. A tune is a teaser, and a teaser is an occasion to get in touch. In our economy of attention this is all that matters. Music has a bright future. It simply needs to change.

Consumers are pushing the creative industries towards a free model, forcing a reinvention of monetization, a crucial element of the chain that “professional” artists obviously need. As more and more creators experiment free models, mixed reviews come in. This fascinating interview of Jean-Louis Murat, a French musician who is known for being very opinionated, gives a harsh perspective:

You have been one of the first French artists to open a web site in 1998 and to offer songs, exchanges, links, images on it. Is you current anti-internet stance in contradiction with that?

[…] At the beginning, I was putting an exclusive song on my site every week, downloadable for free. Then I stopped. These songs were downloaded without a “thank you”, without a “hello” , and eventually sold as paying compilations in conventions. I belonged to the idiots who believed in the mirages of the internet, and therefore to the inner goodness of people, to communautary exchanges.

Link (in french)

And now Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert:

I’ve been watching with great interest as the band “Radiohead” pursues its experiment with pay-what-you-want downloads on the Internet. In the near term, the goodwill has inspired lots of people to pay. But I suspect many of them are placing a bet that paying a few bucks now will inspire all of their favorite bands to offer similar deals. That’s when the market value of music will approach zero.

That’s my guess. Free is more complicated than you’d think.

Link

Free is not an option as it will be forced by consumers, so the question is not about wheter is can happen or not.The lesson here is that free is not something that can happen by simply taking money out of the equation. Both artists and listeners need to adapt and re-negotiate how they will interact. Artists having the longest way to go in their quest for new monetization channels, but consumers should also adapt their behaviors and change their outlook on artists who are more and more enhancing our lives and less and less pieces of a puzzle trying to screw us as much as possible.

When you want to know what the next five years will look like, it is usually a good idea to listen a Doc Searls speech.

Doc - who I still hope to be able to invite one day at LIFT (he said he would love to come in 08 but since got buried under an overload of emails) - talks about Vendor Relationship Management, or the final step in the power transfer from vendors to consumers, what Doc also refers to as the intention economy. From his speech at Leweb3.

We will be able to manage vendors at least as well as they manage us. We are calling this VRM, Vendor Relationship Management. The project is being launched within the Harvard’s Berkman Center. The core concept is that the individual should be able to manage their relationships with their vendors and suppliers, based on the idea that they actually know more about specific preferences, updated data, etc.
Link

Imagine VRM on a large scale. You would have something even more powerful than stock markets: real time consumer-driven indicators, forcing vendors into behaving better because of this freely available pulse. Consumer dictatorship. It will happen, and probably create a whole new set of issues (consumers not reading the manual and complaining about things they should have known, competitors sending in fake reviews, etc…).

Davos is really shaking it’s image of a closed and elitist conference. The latest move: youtube.com/davos, or your chance to jump in the debate right from your computer screen.

Congrats to Matthias Luefkens and the WEF teams for pushing the envelope like this. For more information head to GenevaLunch.

I’m finally giving Twitter a try out of curiosity. No guarantee I’ll be there for long but so far so good. It is strange to open an account on a system you know could ruin your privacy like that. It makes you look at the features with extra care.

One of the pleasures of running conferences is that you can invite people you were looking up to when you were younger. Bruno Bonnell, founder of Infogrames, is a legend of French entrepreneurship I was watching on TV when I was a teenager. I’m glad and proud he will give his first speech in years at LIFT. Thanks to him for coming and congrats to Nicolas Nova for this great addition to the impressive program.

Seen yesterday in Geneva.

Fascinating stuff as usual. Google Zeitgeist.

Being a conference organizer changes your whole attendee experience when you go to an event: you have a different look on things, especially on the tiny logistical details who are details to the public but crucial decisions to the organizer.

One of the areas where I still hadn’t made a decision for LIFT08 was badges. It might sound exaggerated but badges have a huge impact on attendees experience, because they are the main “navigation tool” and therefore impact the quality of networking.

As usual there are pluses and minuses:

At LIFT07 we had a logistical problem (actually the Swiss post did) and the badges arrived only on the second day. It took many attendees out of their comfort zone and triggered a few negative comments. On the plus side it created a nice ambiance where you had to rely on your usual judgment to network. This person looks nice and smiles at me, let’s meet (regardless of whether the person is a CEO or not). Less badges equaled more serendipitous encounters.

So I proposed to turn this accident into a feature, making NO badges on purpose. But the idea was not very well welcomed by the team who argued that badges are an indispensable part of networking at conference. We’ll see, and yes I’m speaking about that so you know that this blog’s readers opinion and experiences are more than welcome on the topic.

We saw more than 30 persons register for LIFT08 in the past 24 hours as the early bird price comes to an end on Friday at midnight. Get your ticket for 650CHF (390€, 570$, 280£) instead of 850CHF before it is too late.

Register now and join the 230+ persons who already registered.