I’ve been thinking a lot about the price of my Music in the Digital Age book this evening. I listened to the Lean Blog podcast in which Mark Graban talked to Leanpub founders Peter Armstrong and Scott Patten, who talked about their philosophy for the business, and it started me thinking about the trajectory and [...]
Category Archives: Business
An economist weighs in 0
I ended up having a lot of really interesting conversations about the ‘pay whatever you want (including free)’ pricing model for digital goods (usually abbreviated to PWYW) over the past 24 hours as a response to my blog post about why I had selected to make my book Music in the Digital Age available with [...]
Categories: Business
Planzai knowledge sprint 0
I’ve been in Belfast for the past weekend, doing what we came to describe as a ‘knowledge sprint‘. My friend Rich Dale (pictured above, uploading his brain to the internet) is co-founder of a startup called Planzai. I’m on their board of advisors.* Planzai is a web application that helps people do things, with easy-to-follow [...]
10 reasons PR should stay the hell away from Twitter 1
Photo by DoktorSpinn I saw an article being linked to from Twitter this morning. It was entitled 10 Reasons PR Should Embrace Twitter. I thought I should go check it out, partly because I regularly guest lecture about the internet on a PR module at Birmingham City University, and partly because I had a feeling [...]
Categories: Business,culture,Technology
30 days of ideas – 21: Nationalise EMI 16
Photo by Dunechaser The record industry is in turmoil. We’ve known that for a long time. But today, the news comes that Guy Hands is desperately trying to stave off a firesale by doing some sort of deal with the other major record labels to manage its catalogue. I’ve been reading a book recently (actually, [...]
Categories: 30 Days,Business,culture,Idea
Tagged: culture, EMI, Recordings
30 days of ideas – 08: Smart Business Cards 7
My card Today’s idea is a fairly simple one: a business card that remains relevant and current no matter whether you change your job, your address, your phone number or your email address. People you give your card to simply open up a generic reader application on their computer, hold the card up to their [...]
Categories: 30 Days,Business,Idea
Tagged: Business Card
Bill Nighy helps explain the Robin Hood Tax 0
You should go here and sign up to give your support to the idea. And here’s a Facebook link for good measure.
Categories: Business
2009 in review 0
Photo by Infodad So, that’s it then. The end of 2009. Looking back over the notes, this was a pretty good year, and since I’ve blogged a fair bit of it (though with some significant gaps – must watch that in 2010), I thought I’d do a quick wrap-up of some of the highlights. But [...]
Categories: Birmingham,Business,Family,New Zealand,Technology,Travel,Whisky
My own record shop 0
I’ve always wanted to have a record shop. I don’t want to sell the music, necessarily – I just like the idea of being surrounded by all those records, talking to the people who come in about albums I like, listening to music, reading books during the quiet times – and maybe having bands do [...]
Categories: Business,Music,New Zealand
Tagged: Business, Music, New Zealand
Unpopular in Helsinki 6
River of ice outside the hotel I’ve spent the last few days in Helsinki at a music industry conference called Is This It. Since I’m not that great at mingling (or at least, slow to start), I brought my laptop down to the first networking breakfast session on Friday. Coffee and email, while people settled [...]