Convergence Conversation

The music industry  - under enormous external pressures -  is undergoing huge structural change at the moment. Two articles in the press today capture the shift in shape and size of the industry. Firstly a pithy little graph from The Economist, adorned with a spotty youth listening to his (illegally) downloaded content on a handheld device. The analysis has a one ray of good news flashing through a generally gloomy grey sky for the record companies. Whilst sales of digital music are steadily growing (in 2007 digital downloads accounted for 15% of global music sales compared with almost nothing in 2003) the outlook for the music industry as a whole is worrying. More...

Another new initative from our dear old capital yesterday when it became the first British city to provide the public with access to data on local crime, in an initiative launched by Boris Johnson, the mayor, and police chiefs.

The US-influenced crime-mapping website provides a set of interactive coloured maps, showing numbers and rates of certain categories of crime - burglary, robbery, and vehicle offences - from borough to sub-ward level. Here's the map, http://maps.met.police.uk .If you live in London just enter your postcode to find out what nefarious activities are going on in the streets around you. More...

Just a couple of articles that have caught my eye in the last few days. Firstly a nub from The Economist detailing how China has overtaken the US in having the greatest number of people online in the world: 253 million according to Neilsen research, standing imperiously above the US's 223 million people. The growth in China's internet users has been rapid—91m people have come online in the past year alone. And with a population of some 1.3 billion, there will be plenty more to come. Here's the graph from the paper.:

And from The Guardian comes this 'Google has launched a music service in China offering users free track downloads, funded by advertising to be split between the music industry and downloading site Top100.cn, Google said: More...

 

Last night saw the the first convergence conversation event to be hosted in BT's iconic tower building. 65 people congregated to discuss the problematic issue of the future of broadcasting around the rather provocative title 'Is broadcasting dead or merely taking a break?'. For the big commercial broadcasters the landscape does indeed look bleak: share prices are falling rapidly under pressure from audience fragmentation and the migration of advertising spend  to different platforms. What can be done to reverse these trends, who will pay for the production of the content and how will future generations want to interact with? The disruptive influence of the internet was identified as a game changer in audience behaviour and  it was felt that at this stage nobody had the solutions to the problems.&nbs More...

A helicopter view of the communication markets from Ofcom's CEO Ed Richards at Intellect's own Consumer Electronics conference. My colleague Colin Batten blogs below on the five top line messages from Mr Richards' speech which are based around securing a regulatory regime that encourages competition, investment and innovation.

So far so good.  Within the broad brush of the speech that sweeps from telecomms market to broadcasters, mobile players to CE manufacturers, a strong line on super fast broadband was made. Mr Richards wants to allow a fair return to be made to stimulate efficient and timely investment. He actually went further on this saying return should be 'commensurate to the risk taken' and made 'over a reasonable time horizon.'

We're into the thorny issue of risk premium here, recently discussed by EC Commissioner Reading who suggested&nbs More...

More evidence of the enormous power of the BBC and its ability to shape future communication markets comes out today in the shape of announcement by corporation DG Mark Thompson that the beeb is working with other PSBs to agree a standard technology that would make internet TV available on traditional TV sets. This comes on the back of recent BBC innovations that have had already had significant impact on ISPs and satelitte operators business models including the launch of the iPlayer and Freesat.

Thompson said  "IPTV could play an important part in delivering the ultimate goal of universal broadband access, with all of the wider consumer and citizen benefits that would bring. More...

Lots of good stuff around the re-release of the iphone this week which will now come with 3G wireless connectivity to ramp up the speed and, crucially, the reliability of its connectivity. It appears well on track to hit its target of 10m sales by the end of 2008. Plaudits came from amongst others The Economist which says Apple has managed to 'double the speed, halve the price and add a host of essential features. In this Apple's clever mobile phone will appeal not only to the 6m fashionistas and faithful, but also to the 60m mere mortals who want a mobile communication and computing device they can take anywhere and use for practically anything.' 

Competition abounds in this market in the shape of the big beasts Nokia and Blackberry manufacturer RIM, who are jealously preserving their own market share whilst nibbling at the advancements Apple have already made (RIM is going after the business w More...

A mass of stats to pick through from PricewaterhouseCoopers' comprehensive 'Global Entertainment and Media Outlook' review published today, some of them to be expected, some of them more counter-intuitive. 

Highlights include news that the UK is the largest media and entertainment market in Europe, The Middle East and Africa and will continue to grow from $115bn this year to $152bn in 2012. Over a similar timetable, and in a matter dear to all our hearts, the number of UK households with broadband is expected to rise from 56.4% to 84.9%. More...

I blogged this week on the Broadband Stakeholder Group's conference where a new report entitled 'A Framework for Evaluating the Value of Next Generation Broadband' was launched. It's a weighty tome full of careful and thorough research and I commend it to you. Here's a link to the conference presentations and the reports. See you Monday!

The music industry has taken a severe kicking recently, its problems and mistakes have been well picked over by analysts, pundits and musicians and rarely does a report or article into its prospects for revival pass off without reference to its beleaguered status. The story here is a good one and remains the pre-eminent exemplar of the disruptive effect the internet can have on accepted and well established business models: along it came and suddenly consumers (legally and illegally) began accessing their music digitally at a fraction of the cost of ‘real’ music. CD sales plummeted and continue to do so, digital downloads leapt and keep leaping. More...