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It is with great pleasure and anticipation that I will travel back in Stockholm between the 14th and 17th December for my Diplomutdelning - graduation from KTH: joyful and undoubtedly glistering moments ahead at Stadshuset, even though it still remains to be seen how penguin-like I do look in the mandatory tails coat!
Anyone på stan at that time feeling to catch up? Drop me a line!
Since a couple of hours ago today, Last.fm, everybody's favorite music-based social filtering and recommendation web service, has reopened along with a much needed and waited-for facelift. For those joining the bandwagon right now, Last.fm could be described as a mix between a personalized radio stream and a social networking service (with musical-taste proximity being the "distance" between users).
Besides the now much cleaner and simplified "less-is-more" design, I see that Last.fm has integrated the concept of tags, that is already widespread in the live-content sphere, such as with Technorati's for blogs or Flickr's for photos. Here music tracks can be tagged to reflect the artist / genre or pretty much anything, the service then aggregating the tags altogether. And just like in Flickr where a picture stream representing picture bearing a specific tag can be displayed, here a musical collection of tracks with a specific tag can be streamed to registered users. Seems like an interesting method of expanding one's musical tastes (besides the personalized radio streams), and also a new way of looking at music charts from a more consumer-centric perspective.
Is it the first step towards seeing in the mass media a "Last.fm top 50" alongside the traditional top 50/100 album sales and top digital downloads?
I first heard about i-mode sometimes around in February 2000, a since-then forgotten time when we Europeans were struggling with more-or-less crappy and unreliable mobile data access with the then glorified WAP service. Back then, the very ability of downloading-as-you-go and running fully-featured games and and having access to diversified content and information source from a click on your clamshell phone was at the very least extremely intringuing. And seeing over 5 million users in Japan at that time (growing to 42 million in Q1/2005 according to NTT DoCoMo) made it obvious that the Far East knew something in how to make mobile services technically viable and economically profitable. All of that starting with a startlingly simple yet profoundly new thinking from the mobile network operator: "to become profitable ourselves, we have to motivate and enrich the content providers", as explained by Takeshi Natsuno, the chief designer of the i-mode service at NTT DoCoMo.
Fast-forward to 2004, after having experienced i-mode myself in Japan (and in France, through Bouygue Telecom's licensing of the technology) and while studying about wireless and mobile network architectures in Sweden, I wrote a synthesis report on the technological and business characteristics of the i-mode ecosystem, which I'm happy to make available under a Creative Commons license.
If you are interested on the subject, I recommend that you read by NTT DoCoMo's own view of the service. Written by Natsuno san, The i-mode Wireless Ecosystem and i-mode Strategy are two excellent sources of information on how this radically new approach to mobile services emerged and managed to cross the chasm, both in Japan and now on a global level. And for a constantly updated insight on current developments, have a close look at the i-mode Business Strategy blog, a very informative source to track the evolution of i-mode on an international level.
The OECD (Organisation for Econocomic Co-operation and Development) publicly published a few days ago its Report on Digital Music. A very insightful read, it exposes key insights on how the music industry is shifting from a physical media business down to a broadband content business. It also debunks some of the most extreme (and caricatural) depictions of the Internet music industry as being the sole haven of piracy by showing how the value chain is currently reshaping itself and creating new models to better understand both the "Consumers as users of music content" and its dual perspective, the "New content created by network users". In short, from broadcast to broadcatch.
While this rethinking in terms of technology (how to find a proper DRM compromise? How to ensure inter-operability?), legislation (what is the new meaning of fair use? How can Intellectual Property rights evolve?) and business (what is the proper mix of content and network? Which payment models are adapted) is still under way, legal online music stores have already gained a solid foothold against free file-sharing network: as noted in this Reuters article, "around 35% of music consumers now download tracks legally via the Internet and the percentage will soon pass the 40% who have pirated music". Interesting times for new media in general, and "music 2.0" in particular!
Just back from Stockholm. Thanks everyone for the nice time there back again. As talked about in the previous post, here is my Master of Science Thesis report on Strategic Outlooks for European High Definition and IP TV. Enjoy!
I know you may have been wondering where I was hiding or what was behind the (very unstringent) lack of update on this blog in those last few weeks. Well, I was quite a bit busy finishing up my Master's thesis I began back in January when starting my end-of-study internship at Sony in Paris.
After those six wonderful months of discovering, investigating, getting in touch with and living (breathing?) in the European media sector, I 'm delighted to travel up to Stockholm to present and defend my work next week, on Monday June 13th at 13:00 in Kista (have a look at the official announcement posted at KTH).
What will be the topic-of-the-day, might you ask? Quite simply, I have been looking at the structural trends and disruptive innovations that are today appearing in the TV world in Europe - mainly High Definition TV (HD TV) and Internet-based TV (IP TV). What are they influence in the European "big picture" digital TV ecosystem? Can evolution patterns and emerging business models be sketched out of the profound and quicker-than-expected digital switchover we are experiencing today in Europe?
The event is public, so you are more than welcome to attend if you happen to be around (maybe lingering a couple more days in Scandinavia after the Reboot7 conference?). Oh, and expect the report and the presentation slides sometimes soon on this blog. Stay tuned!
After this week's article in Wired about the strength and dynamism of the blogosphere in France, a new and even bolder indication of the massive adoption of the new media in the country is finally coming tomorrow, with the Les Blogs conference in the Sénat. As participant n°76, I'm looking forward to stimulating and enlightening speeches and discussions, catching up with familiar faces, meeting new ones, all while thinking outside-the box on tomorrow's Internet and looking beyond at the crossroads of technology, people and communities.
See you in a couple of hours!
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