Attention is the new currency

In my days at O2 content visionaries kept asking one question: how do you predict what Gen Y thinks is hot, so you can capitalise on it? It’s a good question, because Gen Y’s attention could be for one day, or one year.

The answer is: Don’t. When fads either die or become trends with lightning speed it’s pointless. Instead, create a system that alerts you to a blip and allows you to react quickly. Because what you want to capitalise on is attention.

Attention is the new currency. It comes from all directions.

Music polemicist Bob Lefsetz posted a LefsetzLetter to his list raving about Prince’s halftime Super Bowl concert while Prince was still playing. Meanwhile on MOG, a music social net, Crash Pryor posted his head-shaking disappointment, also while the purple one was playing. Within a few hours the show was on YouTube and you could make up you own mind.

MOG is a fascinating place to observe the currency of attention. When members recommend artists to each other they usually use YouTube videos as a tool. Even though they can upload mp3s they don’t – not because of copyright issues, but because it’s too much hassle. YouTube is a search and a click to imbed the link. Make referencing an mp3 as easy and you’d probably find as many audios. It’s not just about the latest indie bands either. Reporting a live Ennio Morricone concert at Radio City included both video clips of Morricone and classic scenes from Sergio Leone films, leading another member to youtube Yojimbo (the source of A Fistful of Dollars) and off they went into a discussion of Kurosawa.

(Will “to youtube” become a verb like “to google”?)

Within the current copyright framework almost everything mentioned above breaks the law. One way to bring it within the law is to shift copyright emphasis from ownership to distribution. Acting from ownership, to control when and where your content is permitted, is a lost cause – Nielsen estimates that 2/3 – 3/4 of Net traffic is made up of bit torrent files. But shifting emphasis to distribution creates a different environment. First of all, potential customers are already doing the distribution. Create buying opportunities at all the attention points along the chain, make it as simple as imbedding a YouTube video, and the potential market increases exponentially. If you also think of the actual distribution as the spreading of attention and then monetise that, it becomes in content owners’ interest for their material to be shared as much as possible.

How to charge? Advertising and licensing are the most attractive. When a person jumps from Morricone to Leone to Kurosawa, or Girls Aloud to Sugarbabes, Garbage, Eurythmics, Tori Amos and Bjork (as another MOG thread did), discrete charging is illogical. But if ISPs charged an extra dollar, euro or pound per month, if media giants fed YouTube, which prioritised a proper tracking and payment system (isn’t that really the crux of the Viacom-YT tiff?), if music files were open-source, how much extra money would be generated by people sharing, recommending, giving their attention? Distributing the money is one of the easier parts: payment distribution systems are largely in place through existing rights collecting societies (MCPS/PRS, BMI, Jasrac, etc.), who regularly track and make payments to thousands of people.

To a degree, social nets and cultural aggregators like YouTube are the systems that aggregate attention. What’s needed now is the layer that builds the revenue.

Top Hip-Hop Producer Timbaland Accused of Stealing Music

Music blogs and web sites are racing with the accusation that hip-hop producer Timbaland (aka Tim Mosley) has used verbatim a 16-bar sequence from a track by Finnish musician Janne Sunni for the Nelly Furtado hit “Do It”. Timbaland is one of the most successful producers of the last 10 years, instrumental in the careers of Missy Elliott and Justin Timberlake, and now Nelly Furtado. At a time when the music industry is desperately trying to stem the rise of free p2p music sharing and suing people for doing so, this is bad news.

The controversy centres around “Acid Jazzed Evening” by Tempest , a piece originally composed in 2000 on the Commodore 64 for the Old Skool Music Competition in Finland. The Commodore’s sound is distinctive and allegedly this particular sound, as well as the bass line, melody, and chord progression, is exactly the same on “Do It”. A video on You Tube graphically shows the similarities of the two tracks.



Compounding the outrage is the discovery that Timbaland also used the track (named “Block Party”) in 2005 as part of an exclusive promotion by ringtone provider Zingy with AOL. Again, the video is on You Tube.



According to hearsay, Sunni isn’t going to pursue it because he doesn't want to go through the "time-consuming and horrible" process of a legal suit.

Whether Timbaland knew of “Acid Jazzed Evening” is so far unknown. He could have bought it from a sample library or one of his assistants could have brought it to him. He may be innocent of knowing the sample’s history.

But the perception of theft is what’s important. The music industry has been calling p2p music sharers thieves and suing individuals in a high-profile manner. Universal CEO Doug Morris claims all iPod owners “are thieves”. Three days ago the RIAA arrested DJ Drama for creating mixtapes that used uncleared samples in mashups. When a music industry professional as big and important as Timbaland is perceived to be stealing, the cries of hypocrisy ring very loud.

Here’s a sample of comments from joystiq and Rolling Stone.com:

-- I'm disgusted by this whole thing. It would be one thing if they wrote Tempest a check for it and credited him on the album for the original composition, but it appears they didn't do anything of the sort.Pathetic. Down with Nelly Furtado. Down with Timbaland. Down with whatever their label is.

-- You know, record companies get to pull this kind of stuff all the time with zero remorse and punishment…Just remember this shit the next time you buy a CD and they have a pamphlet about piracy.

-- Stealing music to listen to for yourself cannot be compared with stealing music to publish as your own and make millions…One man has done the work while the other one receives the money. In combination of the “copy kills music” campaigns of the major labels on markets worldwide this sounds just wrong. Remember that the RIAA is sueing people for “sharing” music over p2p without having financial profits.

Either they sue people and credit original artists, or they let people “steal” their music and do the same with other people’s music. You cannot pick the best from both booths.

-- “So go sue him” I hear the defenders say. Tempest can’t. Why? Record labels like Geffen have teams of lawyers ready to chew up and spit out anyone who dares cross their path. It may be different in your part of the world, but in the American judicial system, he who has the most money is the winner. Tempest doesn’t have the money to fight this out because Geffen’s lawyers will delay every phase of the case in order to drive up Tempest’s legal fees. This is a VERY common tactic in the music industry when “nobodies” try to challenge those at the top.

Others see the situation as just one more reason why hip hop sucks; is artistically dead; is based on stealing so who cares?

Not pretty, is it? This is the music that, according to Def Jam creator Russell Simmons, drives 25% of all American music spending.

For years I’ve heard music industry people say ‘we need to teach people the value of music.’ Well here’s a perfect opportunity.

A smart label would move quickly and publicly to credit Sunni, but as publisher Chris Abbott says in a very knowledgeable review of the situation, “a knee-jerk reaction is what you'd expect from a company which finds its reputation and money under threat.” Abbott is well-placed to understand the nuances of the accusation and concludes that Timbaland knows what he did. It doesn’t help that a video interview with him shows an essential piece of equipment for sampling Commodore 64 tracks.

If the music industry wants the public to respect IP and copyrights, then they need to do the same. As the commenter said, you can’t have the best from both booths.