 From The Economist print edition |
| Jan 10th 2008 The music industry, from major to minor |
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| Last year was terrible for the recorded-music majors. The next few years are likely to be even worse |
| IN 2006 EMI, the world's fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. "That was the moment we realised the game was completely up," says a person who was there. In public, of course, music executives continued to talk a good game: recovery was just around the corner, they argued, and digital downloads would rescue the music business. But the results from 2007 confirm what EMI's focus group showed: that the record industry's main product, the CD, which in 2006 accounted for over 80% of total global sales, is rapidly fading away. In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected. For the first half of 2007, sales of music on CD and other physical formats fell by 6% in Britain, by 9% in Japan, France and Spain, by 12% in Italy, 14% in Australia and 21% in Canada. (Sales were flat in Germany.) Paid digital downloads grew rapidly, but did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs. More worryingly for the industry, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing. "In 2007 it became clear that the recorded-music industry is contracting and that it will be a very different beast from what it was in the 20th century," says Mark Mulligan, an analyst at JupiterResearch. Last year several big-name artists bypassed the record labels altogether. Madonna left Warner Music to strike a deal with Live Nation, a concert promoter, and the Eagles distributed a bestselling album in America without any help from a record label. Radiohead, a British band, deserted EMI to release an album over the internet. These were isolated, unusual deals, by artists whose careers had already brought years of profits to the big music companies. But they made the labels look irrelevant and will no doubt prompt other artists to think about leaving them too. The smallest major labels, EMI and Warner Music, are struggling most visibly. Warner Music's share price has fallen to $4.75, 72% lower than its IPO price in 2005, and it is weighed down by debt. EMI's new private-equity owner, Terra Firma, paid a high price for the business in August 2007. Now, having got rid of most of EMI's senior managers and revealed embarrassing details of their spending habits (£200,000 a year went on sundries euphemistically referred to in the music business as "fruit and flowers"), Terra Firma is due to produce a new strategy later this month. But many observers reckon the private-equity men are out of their depth. The two biggest majors—Universal, which is owned by Vivendi, a French conglomerate, and Sony BMG, a joint venture between Sony and Bertelsmann, a German media firm—derive some protection from their parent companies. Universal is the strongest and is gaining market share. But people speculate that Bertelsmann may want to sell out to Sony next year. Three vicious circles have now set in for the recorded-music firms. First, because sales of CDs are tumbling, big retailers such as Wal-Mart are cutting the amount of shelf-space they give to music, which in turn accelerates the decline. Richard Greenfield of Pali Research, an independent research firm, reckons that retail floor-space devoted to CDs in America will be cut by 30% or more in 2008. The pattern is likely to repeat itself elsewhere as sales fall. Circular arguments Second, because the majors are cutting costs severely, particularly at EMI and Warner Music, artists are receiving far less marketing and promotional support than before, which could prompt them to seek alternatives. "They've cut out the guts of middle managers and there are fewer people on the ground to promote records," says Peter Mensch, manager of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Shania Twain. Third, record companies face such hostile conditions that their backers, whether private equity or corporations, are loth to spend the sums required to move into the bits of the music industry that are thriving, such as touring and merchandising. The majors are trying to strike "360-degree" deals with artists that grant them a share of these earnings. But even if artists agree to such deals, they will not hand over new rights unless they get better terms on recorded music, so the majors may not see much benefit overall. Tim Renner, a former boss of Universal Music in Germany, says the majors should have acted years ago. "Then they had the money and could have built the competence by buying concert agencies and merchandise companies," he says. Now it may be too late. By mid-2007, when the majors realised that digital downloads were not growing as quickly as they had hoped, they landed on a more adventurous digital strategy. They now want to move beyond Apple's iTunes and its paid-for downloads. The direction of most of their recent digital deals, such as with Imeem, a social network that offers advertising-supported streamed music, is to offer music free at the point of delivery to consumers. Perhaps the most important experiment of all is a deal Universal struck in December with Nokia, the biggest mobile-phone maker, to supply its music for new handsets that will go on sale later this year. These "Comes With Music" phones will allow customers to download all the music they want to their phones and PCs and keep it—even if they change handsets when their year's subscription ends. Instead of charging consumers directly, Universal will take a cut of the price of each phone. The other majors are expected to strike similar deals. "'Comes with Music' is a recognition that music has to be given away for free, or close to free, on the internet," says Mr Mulligan. Paid-for download services will continue and ad-supported music will become more widespread, but subsidised services where people do not pay directly for music will become by far the most popular, he says. For the recorded-music industry this is a leap into the unknown. Universal and its fellow majors may never earn anything like as much from partnership with device-makers as they did from physical formats. Some among their number, indeed, may not survive. |
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 Copyright © The Economist Newspaper Limited 2008. All rights reserved. |
viernes, enero 11, 2008
La industria de la música, de mayor a menor.
sábado, diciembre 22, 2007
Tendencias en Management para el 2008
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sábado, diciembre 15, 2007
Internet y las PYME´s en mercados hispanos.2006
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| Noviembre 25 de 2006 Internet y las PYMEs Por: Bernardo Hernández "The main stream media are in a good position to get things wrong." Dr. Weinberger La radiografía de las PYMEs e Internet es la siguiente: | |||||||
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| Del 21,2% que dice estar online, menos del 10% reconoce hacer actividades de ecommerce según la AECE. Sin duda un número muy pequeño. ¿Cómo poden hacer las PYMEs para vender por Internet? ¿Qué es lo que les limita? La PYME no lo tiene fácil a la hora de vender por Internet. El proceso no es sencillo. A mi juicio estos los pasos que tiene que dar para llegar a vender por Internet: | |||||||
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Hacer que las PYMEs vendan por Internet no es nada fácil. Cada uno de estos 4 pasos no es sencillo y necesita de la inversión, muchas veces a ciegas, de los pequeños empresarios, sin que sepan muy bien qué hacer después de gastarse el dinero. Creo que hay una oportunidad muy importante para Cámaras de Comercio y asesores de ser los evangelizadores de este proceso que ayuden a las PYMEs de nuestro país, que suponen nada menos que el 97.9% de la empresas de España, a poder vender por Internet y así entrar en el mundo de Internet.
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makka dijo...
miércoles, diciembre 12, 2007
El potencial empresarial de Facebook está en evolución.
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| CIO News: Headlines COLUMN: By Kate Evans-Correia 11.01.2007 | SearchCIO.com |
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| "facebookies" |
I have 52 new friends. And I have no idea what I'm going to do with them all. It's been nearly three weeks since I challenged CIOs and IT managers to sign up for Facebook in the hope that the uninitiated would come to understand the potential business value of social networking sites. And, yeah, I wanted some friends. As I confirm invites like a mad woman, respond to questions, join groups and, yes, make real friends, I'm not sure if I'm having a blast or driving myself to the social networking nut house. This is what I can tell you about the folks who took my challenge: Of the 52 people who "friended" me, about half were already using Facebook.
Of all the comments I've heard in recent weeks about Facebook, it's the social vs. professional debate that comes up time and time again. One of my friends, Eric Hanson, asks on his profile page: "Is Facebook a social or business resource to you?" His experience thus far is heavily weighted to social networking sites rather than the more professional LinkedIn or Plaxo. My answer was there absolutely is room for professional networking on Facebook, but I think it depends on whom you friend. From what I can gather, with whom you chose to network determines what kind of networking you do. After all, how can you keep a professional front if you've got a friend who keeps asking you to play Movie Trivia? But it's also about how you build out your page. What kind of applications are you using? Plus, results are not immediate. Like real friendships or professional networks, solid relationships don't happen overnight. There are a handful of people who "friended" me in the past few weeks who use Facebook as a professional network, but most are using it for social purposes. Perhaps the reason is cultural or that users haven't yet mastered the inner workings of Facebook to exploit its potential. More likely, it's this: Facebook was built as a social utility, and applications and activities are built around that concept. Applications like "Vampires" are just too hard to resist and, really, who wants to "bite" their boss? There may be little incentive, at this point, to use it to advance our careers. Still, Stamford, Conn.-based IT consultancy Gartner Inc. says in a new report that it's only a matter of time before social networking platforms (such as Facebook) cross the boundry from social networking to what has now been dubbed enterprise social computing. Although a Facebook that targets and supports enterprise business process requirements doesn't exist, Gartner predicts that given the interest of companies such as Microsoft, IBM and Oracle Corp., it's only a matter of time before a platform is developed where social and professional networking coexist. There is definitely a movement under way. I have seen a shift in the level of interest among IT professionals. Last week, I attended a session on wikis, blogs and social networking at the Interop conference in New York. The room was packed with IT professionals eager to learn how they could incorporate new media into their workplace. The speakers ran out of time. I thought it was promising. Still, if you want to use Facebook professionally, do it, but be patient and choose your friends wisely. Add business applications (there are 311, and new ones are added every day). There are apps that allow you to post your résumé, or introduce you to people in similar jobs; an event planner; and an application that lets you view and share your LinkedIn contacts. For fun, you can add the "Business Word of the Day." Note that not all applications on Facebook (there are nearly 7,000) are worthy -- some don't even seem all that reputable, so chose carefully. The same goes for joining groups. I just joined "Social Networking in the Enterprise" -- a discussion group revolving around social networking tools and processes. On Wednesday, I did a quick search on information technology and found 202 related groups. Two that popped up on the first page: "American Society for Information Science & Technology" and "CISA Certified Information System Auditors." Facebook is a new media phenomenon and no one can say with any certainty how it will evolve. In the meantime, embrace it. At this point, why not? As a side note, just as I was putting the finishing touches on this column, I had a vendor briefing with MyLifeBrand.com, a social networking platform that provides a single Web site destination for multiple social networks and user communities. Part of its appeal, I think (I haven't actually used it), is its ability to let users easily determine who gets to see what -- which means you could, in theory, have one profile but two personas -- a social one and a professional one. I'm not sure how dissimilar it is from Facebook's privacy settings, but I'll check it -- and other, similar sites -- out over the next few weeks. If you have any comment about how these sites work, let me know. Kate Evans-Correia is senior director, news, for SearchCIO.com and SearchSMB.com. Let us know what you think about the column; email: Kate Evans-Correia |
| COPYRIGHT © 2007 Searchsmb.com Reproduction in whole or in part, or translation without written permission is prohibited. All rights reserved. |
sábado, diciembre 08, 2007
Innovación transformativa y sistemas dinámicos de precios
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| Publicado el Diciembre 3, 2007 Archivado bajo Innovación Innovación transformativa y sistemas dinámicos de precios Por Luis Fernando Solórzano En un artículo de Phil McKinney sobre innovación transformativa se plantea una definición de distintos tipos de negocios: |
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Hasta hace unos años, las operadoras de telecomunicaciones eran negocios que ofrecían servicios de red cobrando por establecer un canal de comunicación (ya sea una llamada telefónica o una conexión de datos) a través de sus redes de telecomunicaciones. Pero la liberalización del mercado ha fomentado la aparición de nuevos competidores y el transporte (red) se ha convertido prácticamente en una commodity. Por eso, aquellas operadoras que no quieran entrar en una guerra de precios tienen que necesariamente pasar al siguiente nivel. De hecho, el mensaje que hoy en día emiten las principales operadoras incumbentes (algunos entrantes "prefieren" ser los más baratos) está más cercano al concepto de negocio basado en la experiencia de usuario, en el que se cobra por el tiempo que se utilizan los servicios basados en la conectividad que proporcionan las redes. No es tanto una tarifa por la utilización de una red de comunicaciones durante un tiempo sino más bien un pago por disfrutar de un servicio (pago por uso). Según Phil McKinney, el siguiente paso está en la innovación transformativa, ser capaz de crear nuevos modelos de negocio en los que se cobre en función del beneficio que los clientes obtienen por la utilización de los servicios. Podríamos decir que es un modelo parecido a lo que las compañías aéreas vienen haciendo desde hace mucho tiempo. Las tarifas aplicadas en los billetes de avión son muy dinámicas, en función de distintos factores como el momento de la compra, la flexibilidad de cambios, la ocupación del avión, etc. Uno puede viajar en el mismo vuelo, sentado en una butaca justo al lado de otro pasajero que ha pagado un precio totalmente distinto (mayor o menor) pero los dos recibimos el mismo servicio. Algo así ocurre igualmente en eBay, ya que al tratarse de una subasta el precio que uno acaba pagando por un artículo depende del interés que otros pujadores hayan mostrado en el mismo artículo. En el caso de las telecomunicaciones no es fácil implantar ahora mismo este tipo de sistemas dinámicos de precios, por los problemas de regulación y por las reacciones que ha despertado el debate sobre la Network Neutrality. Y es que la filosofía de Internet parece ser que todos deben tener los mismos derechos (servicios). No obstante, desde un punto de vista de negocio, está claro que a una operadora le interesaría poder cobrarle más a quien más necesita o se beneficia del servicio y además puede permitirse pagar por ello. Las tarifas con tramos horarios o con límites de tráfico, que se vienen aplicando desde hace tiempo en móviles y ADSL, son un tímido intento de fijar precios personalizados. Llegar más lejos, supondría poder conocer el beneficio que obtienen los usuarios para cobrarles en función de ello. Aunque existen tecnologías para analizar el tráfico de red (DPI - Deep Packet Inspection), se aplican principalmente para funciones de gestión de tráfico y seguridad. Pero si las redes fueran capaces de discernir el valor que para los usuarios tiene el uso de un servicio, podría entonces aplicarse un sistema más dinámico de precios. Ya lo dijo hace tiempo el poeta Antonio Machado: "Solo el necio confunde valor y precio". |
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