HTML Site::Resources:: The Future of Music

For over a decade the Internet has been establishing itself as an integral part of society. Those who can remember the dawn of TV, cassette tape or the ancient technology of the compact disc can also remember a time 'before the Net'. The thing that we often find it hard to remember is that for an entire generation of people, 'b.N.' is history. They assume that information will be at their fingertips 24/7, anywhere on the planet. They no longer need to worry about what they know, for they can learn as they need. The fiction of Matrix-style skill uploads is still a distance away, but instant access to facts and opinions is very much a reality.

Until a few years ago, the popular image of the 'Internet' was a personal computer and a Web browser. The pioneers of the Net knew it as much more than that - a concept of information exchange, unhindered by geography. The Web has come to dominate the Net due to the visual rendering, ease of use and vast amount of available data, but the immediate future is set to break the limitations of the browser and bring consumers somewhere close to the original dreams. Information-enabled devices are not just limited to the desktop, cellphones are evolving browsers, virtual reality in-car navigation is soon going to amaze and scare the world in equal measure. Your refrigerator knows what cheese you like. Your TV assumes you might want to watch the Superbowl. Things you plug in know about your life.

This is something marketing executives are scared of. Very scared. Imagine showing them an unlocked cage of angry dogs. Sure, it seems like it might be good for something, but it has the potential, somehow, in a way they can't quite put down on paper, to destroy everything.

Let's think about how you expect an artist to be promoted. Let's call her Gothpixie, as surely nobody would try and make it big with a name like that. Amy, Avril, Alysha maybe, but sheesh.. anyhow she's a green-eyed little gothic princess with a love of tractors and keyboards, and has those eyes firmly set on stardom. First there's the official website - we buy gothpixie.com and cover it with brand-enforcing artwork, teasers, snips of audio, a link to a small garage in Columbia that makes mugs. We insert it into Google and wait for the important work to start - selling the CD to kids. The website kinda sits there like a sleeping grandfather.. not much use but everyone's comforted that it's 'just there'. The kids, meanwhile, start to hear the new track on the radio. MTV TRL plays it. They head on down to the record store on their skateboards and buy a silver circle. Money moves, Gothpixie gets a few cents, everyone is happy.

It might sound a little silly, but that is what we all used to do.

Now over the last few years, things have changed. We'd be rude to suggest we promoted this change, but hey. We're rude. Now Gothpixie will be promoted months in advance of the first CD being pressed. Websites in every possible retail country will be bought and filled, each tailored to the society and dreams of the people in that country. Teams of kids fuelled on espresso spend days on every chatroom on the planet saying how excellent this strange unknown singer is. Google sees many anchors. A 'community' is built of fans who are drawn by a need to 'belong'. More is said about the artist as a person, to make her seem approachable. Some of it may be untrue, but the community is all-serving. Must create the community, as the community will go and buy the CD. Why does this matter? Because the community bleeds money like a road accident. Only those few cents matter. Sell the CD.

If you don't recognise this strategy in your favorite artists, you've been asleep. If you don't feel just a little cheated, you're still asleep.

OK, so relax a little while we take you into our world. The year is the future, the day is not as far away as you think.

12 months ago, Gothpixie was signed to a major label. She already had gothpixie.com which she bought herself, and her demo music and free CDs have given her a few thousand fans already, who have been trying to help by putting her music on every filesharing network and journal page they can find. She'd like to use her own name on a domain but a porn star got that first - her own fault for lacking syllables. If you want to phone her, you can - because the laws on domain registration meant her home address is on whois. The label plans a CD.It wants to make those precious cents. It makes the mistake of coming to us, and the first thing we do is laugh. Then we start buying domains. We talk to the fans, learn from them. We bring them into a genuine community where they know what we're doing and see how they're helping. Gothpixie still talks to them when she can, but they have the live feeds from the studio to prove she's not been turned into some plastic pop printout. Websites evolve, music is recorded. There is no CD.

It's Tuesday, and you're listening to your personal webradio feed on your wristwatch. While you're eating the last slice of zero-carb bread your refrigerator silently arranges your grocery list to be updated, and reminds your TV that it shouldn't edit out advertisements for the Atkins Diet. 20 minutes ago your radio feed was analysed and the results sold on the streaming market exchange. We detect that you should like Gothpixie, so we inject a free track. Luckily, you seem to like it and press the buy button. As the music is added to your feed library, the label gets a few cents, and your universal online ID is added to our lists.

Two days later you've played tracks from our CD at least 8 times. You've even sent one to a friend, with the bluetooth traffic dropping a note back to us and another few cents to the label. You probably should be working, but you click through to gothpixie.com, a link added to your desktop by your phone. It redirects to your national page and loads all the background information, music videos, merchandising catalogs and community discussion groups that you expect from every website. A few minutes of clicking about convinces you that this girl, at the very least, isn't another one of the artificial CGI artists those labels keep programming. Watching one of her online interviews you find you actually have a few opinions in common. You sign up, then go back to work.

That night, as you're sitting in the bar watching the ball game, your TV records a section of the entertainment news interviewing Gothpixie. It knows you're already watching the ball game. Your watch quietly pulses, mentioning that it received a bluetooth broadcast from the group of girls over by the door, and they're also on the signup list. At least it gives you an opening line! One of them was even on the original site before she got famous, and she transmits you one of the exclusive back- catalog tracks they can access. A few cents move, and in this world of working from home, email and videocon, you gain a few friends.

Three months later your Inbox wakes you with the news that Gothpixie is playing in your home town, and the serial from your streaming radio purchase has been drawn, winning you free tickets. By that afternoon the three girls you met at the bar all have icons on your contact list to confirm they're going too. You arrange a WiBro channel to meet up on when you arrive, and that evening you drop onto the website to watch the live feed from the show in Chicago, while the die-hard fans from the old days have fun with the motion-control backstage cameras, scaring the living hell out of roadies and the hulking mass that is Traila Trassh, the terrifyingly morose bass player.

When you set off to the concert, your car already knows the way. Your fridge told it.

This vision of reality is where we play. We understand that the online management of an artist or a movie is no longer about buying a domain and creating a chatroom. The real world is not being replaced by the Internet, it is being made possible by it. From finding fans and protecting artists from online harm, to promoting and nurturing a genuine sense of belonging, the future of Internet marketing is an adrenalin-filled journey into imagination. We aim to be there waiting.