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The Beatles are one of the strongest and most enduring brands in the world. Without having the benefit of new material, the only way of staying relevant is to support each shift in technology. From remastered CDs through to staged performance of their songs with Cirque Du Soleil, The Beatles have manged to stay connected to the times.

The Beatles on Rockband is one of the most anticipated software releases of the year and will doubltless be a huge global hit for the 09 holidays.

Here's the E3 trailer
 


Posted by Ed Cotton Rockband and Guitar Hero have changed the face of video games. Now we have some stats from the folks at Guitar Hero that show the impact of the new title- Guitar Hero 3.

- $1billion in sales in a 26 month period- the first video game to reach $1 billion in sales

- 25,000 songs created and posted in the first 10 days

- 141,000 songs posted to date

- 600,000 community members

- 15-843% growth in the music sales for artists featured in the game

For years, no one could make a good music game and the whole genre was in disarray. However, fast forward to today with the impact of great user interfaces and co-operation from the music industry and you have a whole new world.


Posted by Ed Cotton MTV or Music Television built its brand celebrating the new art form of the early 80s, the music video. It gave the music industry just what it needed, the eyeballs of a young generation to promote its product which it made a buck a disc for.

Fast forward several decades to the emergence of MySpace as THE music brand and you see a radically different notion of the role of music. Music is given away and streamed, the value of this is to provide exposure and shared advertising revenue for bands and record companies. The money is not made in the music, but in the merchandise and concert ticket revenue.

As Techcrunch told us in October.

"But today the labels have all but given up on DRM, and users can now play virtually any song ever recorded on demand for free. MySpace has created the first ecosystem that has a shot of producing sustainable revenue streams for artists based on advertising, merchandise and concert sales.

If it works, the next step is the fall of per-stream fees and download fees. Instead labels will see music consumption for what it really is - free marketing. Labels will compete to encourage song downloads and streams to move those songs up the charts, attracting premium advertisers, merchandise sales and sold out concerts."

What's interesting to see here is the role music has played as a glue to generate revenue for media companies, but the context of that revenue generation has changed over time.

It seems that MTV has lost its way as a brand with television no longer being the dominant media of the youth generation, music video dying as a form and the network shifting focus away from music to regular television shows.

Apple became the next brand to exploit and dominate the music channel with iTunes and the iPod, but the software was always just there to sell the high margin hardware. iTunes has now being panned by the critics for not keeping up with the times and Apple has a few other heavyweight players including Nokia trying to take a big share of the hardware business.

Another player is MySpace, who came out of the gate in October with a relaunched music service that achieved incredible traction. Just a few DAYS after launch, the brand streamed one billion songs.

At the recent Web 2.0 conference there was all kinds of speculation about the potential for an MP3 player to be launched by MySpace.

However, this isn't really the game anymore.MySpace's core competence is all about community and from day one its community has been focused on music. This is something that can't easily be copied and Apple, Nokia and Sony will struggle to make this happen. The story here is not about an iPod rival from MySpace, but instead the arrival of MySpace as a formidable media player in the new world of music.

Posted by Ed Cotton DJ Frank is a New York-based DJ and like any good DJ, he is on a constant quest to discover new sounds.

The difference is that he's not content with digging in old record stores and flea markets in the US, instead he travels to West Africa to find records, before they get destroyed.

This new documentary chronicles his journey.



Posted by Ed Cotton More here..

Posted by Ed Cotton Researchers at UCLA appear to have come up with an interesting cure to the problem iPod created by turning everyone a DJ.

It’s a become a common issue at parties, the musical taste of the host is not shared by the party goers, this leads to angst and ends up with guests connecting their own iPods to try and take musical control, chaos ensues and the party rapidly turns into a disaster.

UCLA’s Smart Party uses Wi-Fi to poll the tastes of the people attending the party and creates a play list based on those tastes.



It’s an example of a solution to the emerging challenge to encourage and facilitate crowd collaboration in appropriate situations.

The party example is good because there is no often no talent gap between the host and party attendees concerning music. The iPod hasn’t put expert DJs out of business, but in situations where they aren’t around, it has made everyone believe they are one.

Smart Party facilitates democracy, it allows everyone’s tastes to be considered, but it doesn’t take it to the next level and make the experience exponentially better by for example using algorithms to recreate a brilliant DJ set out of the music that comes from the crowd.

What if the system allowed you to select a “virtual” version of your favorite DJ to play the crowd’s music in his or her style?

Could this be how Zune beats iPod?

Companies are already tapping into the wisdom of their crowds of employees and consumers hoping for gems that challenge the experts.

However, it’s one thing to facilitate and collect all the input and its quite another to make that input great.

Collection alone is not enough, there needs to be another level added to the process.

This could happen if small teams cross-collaborate to make the initial ideas better, or if real experts are brought in and thrown into the crowd to extract and facilitate.

This challenge is the same for ad agencies, as they demand creative thinking from every employee, rather than just those with the word creative in their job title.

The old-fashioned brainstorming session might not be long for this world, real collaboration requires new processes, new skills and new tools and technology.



Posted by Ed Cotton