If you're unaware of eBay's new policy coming into effect in September, here's the scoop: you have to offer 'free postage' on all CD sales now, in a similar with to how their DVD listings operate. I strongly disagree with their DVD policy anyway, but this takes the cake. So I've 'lodged a complaint'; however expect this to fall on deaf ears as the megalith that is eBay can happily ignore its customers and blaze on with their secretive back-office policy.
But here's what I wrote, and encourage you (if you're a user of eBay or not) to write in and complain, too - who knows, it could make a difference...
"I would like to formally register a complaint with new ‘free postage’ policy for CDs that eBay are initiating later this year.
By forcing sellers to offer free postage on CD items, you will be severely affecting a large portion of the independent music community as well as individual sellers. I have always disagreed with the forced free postage policy on DVD sales, but to now see it on CDs as well is the proverbial ‘last straw’.
There is no need to force sellers to offer "free postage" - items cost us money to post! In the same way, why does eBay not offer "free insertion" on all these items, then? Additionally, adding a minimal postage charge of around 90p into the item price means that eBay listing fees will increase as well, meaning more money for you and less for the seller, PLUS a less attractive ‘bargain’ available for the buyer – you are forcing sellers to disguise the actual cost of the item for both domestic AND overseas buyers.
Your poor excuses of 'sellers can offer other postage options or combined discounts' still does not change the requirement sellers will have to include postage charges in the listing price of the item. This confuses the browsing and purchasing process for both buyers AND sellers from all other ‘normal’ transactions on eBay, and is quite frankly ludicrous.
As an alternative, price capping the postage rates on these (CD and DVD) items would me a much more reasonable solution - however, in terms of specialist items (such as CDs in deluxe or special packaging, or boxed-set DVDs that have significant weight to them) this grey area would make that hard to implement, so ultimately impractical.
There is seemingly no reason to instate this policy other than to line your own pockets, and no viable defence of the reasoning to do so has been presented publicly. The adage “there’s no such thing as fee” is certainly true here, and eBay is using exactly the same distorted language (“inclusive postage” is an accurate and appropriate term, “free postage” is frankly a lie) that it is seemly trying to ‘prevent’ by showing buyers the full cost up-front – the facilities of which are already available to users through the eBay system, anyway!
In addition, the recording industry as a whole - especially entrepreneurial and independent labels and shops – often rely on eBay to help sell small volumes of specialist or otherwise difficult-to-find products. Your fees (after your additional PayPal commission, listing fees, and final value fees) are already beyond 'normal' online sales percentages available elsewhere, but the ease and familiarity of eBay and its strong reputation make this an ideal marketplace for this industry. However, this ridiculous policy will now jeopardise the livelihood of many aspects of the independent music sector.
So please register my complaint against your unreasonable forced requirements for 'free postage' on both CDs and DVDs, and expect to see none of these items listed through my account again unless this policy is changed. I will be posting this letter publicly and encouraging others who use eBay to register their complaints as well.
I would implore you to reverse this decision and allow your customers the freedom to be responsible people.
Signed,
Erik Nielsen"
Friday, 21 August 2009
Monday, 30 March 2009
Virtual Worlds and Wild Speculation
I've recently contributed some thoughts to an upcoming press piece to appear "at some point in the future". So until then, I thought I'd share those thoughts below....
Virtual Merchandise is an interesting prospect, and one I've only just touched on. My first-hand experience first came when Marillion's singer Steve Hogarth was playing a solo piano-and-voice show in Milan, and one of the fans organised a simulcast (complete with Steve's avatar and piano) via his custom-built venue in Second Life. While the intimate show itself had over 300 people present, the online 'virtual concert' only had about 100 attendees. There was no fee charged for virtual tickets, and many of the fans 'made' their own T-shirts in Second Life - the organised also provided a free virtual shirt for women based on the original tour shirts which weren't being sold as a physical product at the 'real' show.
Now, no money exchanged at this event, but there was no reason why it couldn't be monetised. In the same way, another Marillion fan had independently set up a Marillion art gallery displaying album covers. When we had a look the thought that crossed my mind was "Why not put in links from each album cover to a digital download of that album?" The transaction could take place 'on site' at the Second Life gallery/shop and turned into a potential sale for random users who may have stumbled upon the building and may not have been fans. We could have considered piping in music to the gallery, or offering virtual t-shirts for sale, too.
All of this has potential to work, but my concern is that it is simply TOO niche - especially for an artist like Marillion. Historically their fans like physical product, so I wouldn't see it really working for them. Capturing the casual fan or exploiting a more generic/'fashionable' clothing design perhaps, but I wouldn't think any type of marketing investment would work for them.
For a more established or global act, though, the potential is much greater. Because a global band is a more recognised 'brand' it can be marketed much more effectively. But the question then becomes - where do you place your efforts? Just like the social networking book, there are hundreds if not thousands of virtual worlds out there. Second Life is a clear leader, but even interactive MMORPG worlds such as World Of Warcraft, EVE, or the more child- and teen-friendly worlds such as Habbo, Club Penguin, and Animal Crossing have massive marketing potential in them if you could find a way to integrate music or branding into them (the former being the more likely). I will quite clearly profess absolutely no knowlede of user data and statistics for any of these, nor a detailed knowledge of any of them apart from the general look and functionality, so couldn't speak to 'market share'... but even when you choose one world, where do you start?
Driving existing fans to a virtual world from an existing website doesn't seem to me to be the way forward. Rather, look at the virtual world for what it is - a separate parallel existence. Although you have to start from scratch, there is a pre-existing social structure and knowledge of "RL" inherent in the users. SO setting up shop in a busy virtual high-street or using virtual advertising in other popular outlets announcing the arrival of a new clothing shop, music store, concert hall, or other available accessories or locations would be the best attack. But rather than just selling virtual product and translating physical product into a virtual one (which I expect would appeal to existing fans who would already own the music), I would want to use is specifically the opposite direction - to convert virtual awareness or sales into a more profitable real product by up-selling a bundle product: "Buy a virtual t-shirt, get 10% off a real one" etc. Perhaps pre-tour, an artist could host a week-long series of exclusive archive concerts in their virtual venue promoting the upcoming tour and offering discount, pre-sale, or the increasingly popular 'golden ticket' concept (which includes special access, autographs, meet-and-greets, etc.)
This is all wildly speculative, but there is no reason it shouldn't work IN THEORY - it is certainly something I feel strongly should be experimented with and look forward to getting stuck into provided both the artist and fans have a strong online relationship and community. With children increasingly engaging in computer game-based virtual worlds, and a shifting attitude towards the value of music it has the potential to become the next big market - but only for a few killer apps. Picking the right one will be crucial, especially when mobile handsets start gobbling up more bandwidth and users start to carry their preferred universe around with them in their pockets!
You ask "What's in the way?" and specifically point towards bloggers running into trouble for putting tracks up for other users/readers to hear the bands. This, for me, is a whole different issue. For virtual marketing/merchandise I would certainly see it being driven BY the artist, but in both instances you run into copyright issues. I could rant on for days about the problems with copyright, collection societies, bad licensing deals, rights ownership... it's something that very much bothers me as a whole. The problem is that the whole copyright issue as relates to revenue protection is so massive and complex there's no easy way to discuss it.
For me, though, I personally have no problem with bloggers using music or images to promote an artist that I represent. For me, that's free marketing, and the artist should have the right to allow people to have their music. It gets complicated if the artist doesn't actually own their art - but I'm a strong advocate of licensing and not assigning rights anyway - but, again, that's a more complex discussion. It gets even MORE muddied, though, when advertising comes into play. If a blogger is monetising his or her blog by accepting advertising revenue by posting up tracks that an artist has allowed them to use for the sake of review, does the artist deserve to get paid as well? There are many loopholes when it comes to purposes of 'review'. It's a tough one with no clear, easy, or seemingly fair answer for anyone.
A toaster isn't meant to wash clothes, so don’t expect it to work like a washing machine. The entertainment industry and copyright legislation at its inception never saw broadband, digital media, and user-generated-content coming, so it doesn't work with any of them. But everyone is still currently scrambling to try and turn it into a washing machine when that's not really what's needed. Problem is, I can't be sure myself "what is needed" - apart from massive change.
Virtual Merchandise is an interesting prospect, and one I've only just touched on. My first-hand experience first came when Marillion's singer Steve Hogarth was playing a solo piano-and-voice show in Milan, and one of the fans organised a simulcast (complete with Steve's avatar and piano) via his custom-built venue in Second Life. While the intimate show itself had over 300 people present, the online 'virtual concert' only had about 100 attendees. There was no fee charged for virtual tickets, and many of the fans 'made' their own T-shirts in Second Life - the organised also provided a free virtual shirt for women based on the original tour shirts which weren't being sold as a physical product at the 'real' show.
Now, no money exchanged at this event, but there was no reason why it couldn't be monetised. In the same way, another Marillion fan had independently set up a Marillion art gallery displaying album covers. When we had a look the thought that crossed my mind was "Why not put in links from each album cover to a digital download of that album?" The transaction could take place 'on site' at the Second Life gallery/shop and turned into a potential sale for random users who may have stumbled upon the building and may not have been fans. We could have considered piping in music to the gallery, or offering virtual t-shirts for sale, too.
All of this has potential to work, but my concern is that it is simply TOO niche - especially for an artist like Marillion. Historically their fans like physical product, so I wouldn't see it really working for them. Capturing the casual fan or exploiting a more generic/'fashionable' clothing design perhaps, but I wouldn't think any type of marketing investment would work for them.
For a more established or global act, though, the potential is much greater. Because a global band is a more recognised 'brand' it can be marketed much more effectively. But the question then becomes - where do you place your efforts? Just like the social networking book, there are hundreds if not thousands of virtual worlds out there. Second Life is a clear leader, but even interactive MMORPG worlds such as World Of Warcraft, EVE, or the more child- and teen-friendly worlds such as Habbo, Club Penguin, and Animal Crossing have massive marketing potential in them if you could find a way to integrate music or branding into them (the former being the more likely). I will quite clearly profess absolutely no knowlede of user data and statistics for any of these, nor a detailed knowledge of any of them apart from the general look and functionality, so couldn't speak to 'market share'... but even when you choose one world, where do you start?
Driving existing fans to a virtual world from an existing website doesn't seem to me to be the way forward. Rather, look at the virtual world for what it is - a separate parallel existence. Although you have to start from scratch, there is a pre-existing social structure and knowledge of "RL" inherent in the users. SO setting up shop in a busy virtual high-street or using virtual advertising in other popular outlets announcing the arrival of a new clothing shop, music store, concert hall, or other available accessories or locations would be the best attack. But rather than just selling virtual product and translating physical product into a virtual one (which I expect would appeal to existing fans who would already own the music), I would want to use is specifically the opposite direction - to convert virtual awareness or sales into a more profitable real product by up-selling a bundle product: "Buy a virtual t-shirt, get 10% off a real one" etc. Perhaps pre-tour, an artist could host a week-long series of exclusive archive concerts in their virtual venue promoting the upcoming tour and offering discount, pre-sale, or the increasingly popular 'golden ticket' concept (which includes special access, autographs, meet-and-greets, etc.)
This is all wildly speculative, but there is no reason it shouldn't work IN THEORY - it is certainly something I feel strongly should be experimented with and look forward to getting stuck into provided both the artist and fans have a strong online relationship and community. With children increasingly engaging in computer game-based virtual worlds, and a shifting attitude towards the value of music it has the potential to become the next big market - but only for a few killer apps. Picking the right one will be crucial, especially when mobile handsets start gobbling up more bandwidth and users start to carry their preferred universe around with them in their pockets!
You ask "What's in the way?" and specifically point towards bloggers running into trouble for putting tracks up for other users/readers to hear the bands. This, for me, is a whole different issue. For virtual marketing/merchandise I would certainly see it being driven BY the artist, but in both instances you run into copyright issues. I could rant on for days about the problems with copyright, collection societies, bad licensing deals, rights ownership... it's something that very much bothers me as a whole. The problem is that the whole copyright issue as relates to revenue protection is so massive and complex there's no easy way to discuss it.
For me, though, I personally have no problem with bloggers using music or images to promote an artist that I represent. For me, that's free marketing, and the artist should have the right to allow people to have their music. It gets complicated if the artist doesn't actually own their art - but I'm a strong advocate of licensing and not assigning rights anyway - but, again, that's a more complex discussion. It gets even MORE muddied, though, when advertising comes into play. If a blogger is monetising his or her blog by accepting advertising revenue by posting up tracks that an artist has allowed them to use for the sake of review, does the artist deserve to get paid as well? There are many loopholes when it comes to purposes of 'review'. It's a tough one with no clear, easy, or seemingly fair answer for anyone.
A toaster isn't meant to wash clothes, so don’t expect it to work like a washing machine. The entertainment industry and copyright legislation at its inception never saw broadband, digital media, and user-generated-content coming, so it doesn't work with any of them. But everyone is still currently scrambling to try and turn it into a washing machine when that's not really what's needed. Problem is, I can't be sure myself "what is needed" - apart from massive change.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
Too Much Information
I'm here clearing out old posts to make sure the NEW posts are on their own, but with Twitter taking over, and everyone moving away from MySpace to Facebook and a thousand new feed burning apps, Open ID, why doesn't Google just come up with 'Omnipresent' - the implant that allows people to listen to your thoughts.
Ray Kurzweil was right - we'll all be a single shared machine before too long. Until then I highly recommend going to the pub and interacting with real people.
Buy the music you like, kids. Or at least go to a show. More later.
Ray Kurzweil was right - we'll all be a single shared machine before too long. Until then I highly recommend going to the pub and interacting with real people.
Buy the music you like, kids. Or at least go to a show. More later.
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