simon elliott - media architect

Do you remember what was fun about buying a record?
It was listening to a song late at night on the radio, then writing the artists name down and getting down to the record store and buying it on the week end.

But what made it cool was talking about it with your fiends, dancing to it in the club and wearing the outfit.

This does not fit into the modern world, any chump can download whatever they want whenever they want, they can checkout the web sites telling you what to listen to and make sure that they have all the right music on their ipod. The fact that its not cool is killing the music industry, not the free downloads.

The listener wants to be a member of an exclusive club. They have to work hard to become a member of this club, i.e. you cant just pay for it.

Today's idea is for the music companies, it is "Limited availability".

In the past mass media age the exclusivity and segmentation of the audience was caused by delivery methods for the media, the awkwardness of buying (finding the shop, knowing the guy and ofcouse going to the gig) the right record accidentally created these micro clubs.

In the modern individual media age, the record company must use methods to digitally emulate this exclusivity. Sophisticated DRM solutions could allow record companies to only allow "cool" people to listen to the music. Teasers and advertising can be used to promote over traditional mass media channels, but to get the great tracks you must be a member of the club. This can only be done by creating hundreds of marginal record labels, Warner will never be cool.