Your files live on your handset.

That’s what most people don’t know about the Spotify iPhone app.  That if you pay the monthly fee, not only can you stream anything you want online on your desktop, there’s automatic synching of approximately 2,000 tracks to your handheld.  So, it’s just like owning them.  And, you can stream the rest of the catalog if you’re in cell range.

Rhapsody and MOG offer similar services.

But so far, no paid music subscription platform has gained significant traction.

This is a head-scratcher.  Apple’s not offering movies for free.  Why should music be free?

It shouldn’t be.

But it appears that the only company that’s going to be able to make headway in the music streaming/subscription sphere is Apple.  That’s right, great subscription streaming apps exist today, but almost no one wants them!

I keep getting e-mail from the Rdio PR person, do I want to talk to the CEO!  Do I want a comment!  No, Rdio is irrelevant.  Some hype upon release and temporary free use, then dead in the water.

But when Steve Jobs graces the stage in Silicon Valley and announces that he’s seen the future of music and it’s subscription streaming, which believe me, he’s gonna do, people are going to fall over themselves to sign up, it’ll be like the Who in Cincinnati.  But instead of people dying, thank god, you’ll get Net gridlock, you won’t be able to get through to sign up.  If the servers don’t crash outright, they’re going to run at a snail’s pace.

How did this happen?

You’ve got to go back ten years.  Actually, just a bit longer, to when Steve Jobs came back to Apple.  He’s been building customer trust as well as the content providers have been destroying it.  As powerful as any band, Steve’s now got a tribe of early adopters who will buy anything Apple offers, and will tell everybody who doesn’t have it how great it is.  Come on, if you haven’t been harangued by an Apple fan, you live in isolation in the Arctic.

But it gets better for Apple.  They’ve got a support network, not only online and on the telephone, but at the Genius Bar.  Yup, you can make an appointment to see an actual person, face to face!  And if you believe you’ve gotten ripped off, there’s a Fortune 500 company standing behind your product, not a one of a kind service that could go bankrupt at any minute, taking your money and music with it.

Furthermore, Apple’s got credit card information.  It’s just one click to buy the company’s latest offering.

The only way to compete with Apple is to start off free.

I’m not passing judgment, I’m just stating a fact.

Imagine if a social network far superior to Facebook launched today.  Only you had to pay ten bucks a month to use it.  It would be a nonstarter.

Look at Twitter, which is free.  For all the fanatical users, there are tons of naysayers, claiming the service is a wank, a complete waste of time. These same people forward any negative story about the microblogging service, they want to kill it.  Probably because they’re overwhelmed and they just don’t want to get up to speed, spend time on one more platform.  

Yes, people are overwhelmed, that’s why they stay with Apple.  Even if you’re better than Apple, you’re screwed.  Even if you’re cheaper than Apple you’re screwed.  Amazon can’t make a significant dent in Apple’s music retail market share.  Despite oftentimes blowing out product below cost.

Spotify has social networking features already.

But Ping gets all the attention.

So, we can wait for an indeterminate point in the future, when Apple offers a streaming subscription and the rights holders bitch that their hands are tied by Steve Jobs, or the rights holders can authorize free services to compete, to get a leg up on Steve and Apple.

That’s the only way Spotify can compete.  Spotify is superior in functionality to all its competitors, but the rights holders don’t want to make music free.  I can understand that.  But do they want to play into the hands of Steve Jobs?

And, rights holders can always experiment.  Offering a short license to see if Spotify can convert free customers to paying ones.  After all, the public has lived through the loss of Napster and KaZaA and AudioGalaxy and…

As for a Google music service?

Google doesn’t have the credit cards.  And the public doesn’t trust the company as much as it does Apple.  And the Nexus One debacle proves that without a customer service infrastructure, you’re screwed.

Then again, Spotify has no customer service infrastructure either, which is why a free launch is necessary, to build trust.

The only way you can compete with established Net players is by starting off free.

Theoretically, you can establish a whole new paradigm that charges.  Then again, the iTunes software was free, it was the Trojan Horse that allowed Apple to ultimately sell music.

So free is the best start.

If you want to start at all.

1

Rental.  Streaming.  Subscription.

Remember those three, they’re the key to the future.  Much more important than the Situation’s GTL.  (Gym, tan, laundry for the uninitiated.)

2

You can’t compete with Steve Jobs.  You can get on the Apple bandwagon, but if you’re tying in with a competitor, you’re just tarnishing your image.

Yes, if Apple comes calling, make that deal.  Look at what it’s done for Coldplay.  Chris Martin is wailing as I write this.  Very well.  Not competing with Mr. Jobs, but riding on his coattails.  In his very own vehicle behind the master.  Chris loses nothing in comparison.

But most so-called artists today do.  They’re so busy selling out, they lose touch with what it is they’re truly selling, which is music, which is art. They say that the public is inured to commercialism, that endorsements are a way of life, that you can’t do it without corporate money.  But that’s short term thinking by businessmen looking to line their wallets, not caring a whit whether the performers they’re shoveling down our throats sustain.  Yes, once music is just another product, it loses its specialness.

In other words, if you’re an artist, RUN from commercialism.  It’s your only hope.  Because you pale in comparison to Steve Jobs.  You can’t do his job better than he can.  But Steve Jobs can’t play music.  Can’t write, can’t perform.  He’s put his 10,000 hours in developing technology.  Your only hope is to practice really hard and sell your essence…music.

Despite Chris Martin’s cheeky performance, Apple is no longer a music company.  It’s like thinking Sony is a music company.  Rights holders can bitch that Apple has hijacked their business, and now with Ping, that might be more true than ever, but the future is not Apple.  The future is not Live Nation.  Certainly not Universal.  The future is music.

And it hasn’t been about music for far too long.  It’s been about fame.  But no musician is as famous as Steve Jobs.  Think about that.  And think small.  Intimate.  Don’t start trying to reach everybody, start trying to touch just a few.  Think of it like love, not commercialism.

3

How impressive is Apple?

It’s got stores cooler than Tower Records ever was.  In a digital world, it’s triumphing in the analog sphere.  Think about that.

Yes, Steve trumpeted Apple’s retail success.  Take a peek at the Shanghai Apple Store, makes you want to go.

And every iPod is improved.  Then again, did you notice the absence of a new Classic?  That illustrates how Apple’s no longer about music.  The true fan, who needs to schlep his entire collection on vacation, he’s been abandoned, in favor of casual gamers.

Yes, multiplayer games, that’s where the excitement is.

Apple’s got demons and swordsmen on hand-held devices, and the music industry still thinks people are going to play plastic guitars in front of TVs.  Shows you who understands the future.

4

Music was the pretense, but this presentation was truly about television, the Apple TV.  Which, priced at $99, will blow out this holiday season. That’s truly a staggering price.  Apple fanboys can buy one as a souvenir, like merch at a concert, to show their friends more than use.

But in introducing the new Apple TV, Steve Jobs revealed the future of music.

Steve said people don’t want to store their movies.  They don’t want to manage them.  They want them instantly, on the TV.

And casual viewers might think he’s building a business renting TVs and movies, but those thinkers would believe Apple cares about selling music.  No, music was a platform for selling iPods, and eventually iPhones and iPads.  And the iTunes movie and TV rentals are just a demonstration, a minor business.  The real key is streaming Netflix.

Have you been following this story?  While Blockbuster languishes, dying a slow death like brick and mortar music retail, Netflix has gone into the streaming business.  The future.  They’re locking in deals.

You could stream via certain TVs.  A PS3.  Other set-top boxes. But now it’s even easier to get in on the action via Apple TV.  You pay a small amount per month, and you can stream a ton of product.  Just keep paying.

Rental.  Streaming.  Subscription.

You rent these Netflix movies.  They stream to your TV.  And you pay every month for the privilege.

This was the essence of today’s Apple presentation.  This is the future of music.  Don’t say people won’t rent, Netflix is gigantic, incredibly fantastic and successful.  Reed Hastings will tell you the future is streaming.  And you’ve got to subscribe to participate.  Oh, you can rent individual shows on iTunes, but that’s like being pecked to death by ducks.  Sure, you can buy music on iTunes, but don’t you want to be able to play whatever you want, wherever you want, for a small sum of money per month?

It’s just a matter of when we get there.  When the rights holders realize that they’ve just got to follow Steve Jobs’ model.  He’s given them the blueprint.  He’s done the research.  License others before he ends up dominating the music market too.

The biggest problem facing Arcade Fire is not enough people have heard their music.

Old time players and music business insiders constantly ask the question "How do I get paid?"  That’s important, but secondary to "How do I get heard?"

At dinner the other night, I asked how many people had heard Katy Perry’s "California Gurls".  You might be stunned, but most people had not.  Because they just didn’t have to.  The days of AM radio, when Beatles fans knew Louis Armstrong and Frank Sinatra hits because they couldn’t switch to another station and avoid them, are done.  We can avoid anything these days.  Hell, there’s so much information that we can’t even find what we want.  How do you get people to take notice?

It’s very hard if you’ve got no traction at all, if no one knows you.  Then, more than ever before, it’s about the quality of your product.  With so much music and information out there, your only hope for a toehold is quality.  But once you’ve achieved this, once you’ve got a fan base, how do you grow, how do you get people to listen?

I never listen to FM radio.  Never ever.

I’m a big fan of satellite radio, but most people have no access to it.

And I hate Pandora.

I like Slacker.

In other words, by time you deal with everybody’s predilections, you discover you go down a lot of blind alleys if you’re trying to promote something, it just doesn’t reach the target audience.  But if you’ve already got traction, a fan base to spread the word, and you create something incredibly cool using new technology, the word can spread, like wildfire, almost instantly.

Who even knows if the "Wilderness Downtown" story will make the mainstream press.  But even if it does, it’ll be at least a day behind in the newspaper and a week or a month later in a magazine, whereas this is exploding online right now!
Yes, go to:

The Wilderness Downtown

Oh, I forgot to tell you, you need to download Google’s Chrome browser first.  Mashable says the video will murder Safari, I tried in the Apple browser, but I felt I was missing something, so I finally downloaded Chrome.  This is how you tie in with a corporation, one that has a need, that most people see as benign (then again, after the Google/Verizon net neutrality announcement, Google’s cred is teetering).

Then enter your home address.  If it’s not in the Google system, if you get the error message stating that "Your address doesn’t contain enough Street-View and/or Google Maps data to 100% enjoy this experience.", put in another address you’re familiar with.

Then watch.  To the end.

I don’t think the video is as cool as billed, but when you get to the writing a postcard to your little self at home, be sure to do it, it’s amazing!

Bottom line, my inbox is filling up with this story.  I’ve seen it on Twitter.  To the point where I checked the clip out.  And I’m now telling you.

So millions of people will hear Arcade Fire’s new single, "We Used To Wait".  Some will already know it and will kvell at the breakthrough of their favorite artists.  Others will forward the link even if they don’t like the song, their friends may end up watching the clip and loving the music.

This is how you do publicity today.

And know that the shelf-life online is very brief.  

The key is to burnish Arcade Fire’s image and build awareness of the act and ultimately its fan base.

As for monetization, that’s further down the road.  But it can only come if people know who you are and hear your music.

Badges.

Dedicated readers will remember my meeting with Shawn Fanning at Quincy Jones’s house, wherein he spoke about making music a game, enabling fans to unlock status achievements like in video games and use their acquisition to become members of the club, to brag to fans.

What kind of crazy fucked up world do we live in where a resort company utilizes this concept before a music company?

I’ll make this simple.  Live Nation should have an app.  AEG too.  The big indie concert promoters, JAM and IMP, also.

You download it and you find out which of your friends are going to the gig.  And once you get to the gig, it shows you which friends are there, and where they’re located in the venue.

It gets even better.  Your app is your ticket.  Yes, you use your smartphone to get in.  And if you want to resell that ticket, you do it through the promoter’s Website, like they do in sports.

And when you go to the show, when you earn your achievement, you unlock your badge and it’s instantly pushed to Facebook so all your friends can see.  And a status update is pushed to Twitter.  Sure, you can turn these features off, but who’d want to?

Go to five concerts and you unlock a special ConcertGoer badge.  Go to five concerts of the same act and you unlock a SuperFan button.  Hell, there can be competition online as to who is the biggest fan of GaGa, Phish, DMB, EVERYBODY!  Who’s gone to the most shows!

And each band can have its own badge.  Possibly created by Shepard Fairey or another hip designer.  So you can accumulate a plethora of them to display on your Facebook page.  But the only way you can unlock the badge is by buying something.  Oh, you don’t have to buy anything, but you want to, to celebrate and demonstrate your fandom!

This technology is not futuristic.  This technology is here today.  But only innovative companies are using it.  Used to be the music industry was the most innovative on the planet, cutting edge, where all the breakthroughs took place.  Now it’s a greedy enterprise trying to lock people into consuming the way they always did, ensuring big dollars to the usual suspects.  But the public hates the usual suspects.

And many people want to hate Vail Resorts.

But how can you hate them when they come up with EpicMix?  Making your skiing experience even richer at no additional cost! Yes, it costs nothing to get a Peaks card and play.

Watch this video, think of the possibilities.

And know that Vail Resorts has refocused its marketing efforts online.  That’s where the action is today.  Following Rob Katz, the company’s CEO, on Twitter, I knew they were up to something, he said today was launch day.  But I didn’t expect his product to be this good!

And I’m disappointed there’s no BlackBerry app.  Yes, it’s so hard to write software for the BlackBerry that most companies don’t. And without software, your platform dies.  It’s like having a venue with no shows.  He who has traction wins, and so far it’s only iPhone and Android.  Then again, the app is not required, you can surf to the site via your browser.  Thank god Verizon provides 3G speed completely over Vail Mountain!

Really, watch this video from beginning to end, even if you think skiing sucks and you hate me, this is the future:

EpicMix