We’ve had a rough couple months. Forever (I think literally), I’d wake up and the paper would be at the breakfast table. Finally, we decided the content of the paper (The Star Tribune) wasn’t worth the experience of reading it at the table.

This decision was not taken lightly. Our kids had already begun the tradition. Our oldest checked the comics and weather every morning. Currently, the paper is an amalgamation of other organizations work. As the staff continued to get trimmed at the Strib, it started feeling more like a Google homepage rather than a hometown source. So, after much discussion (no debate really), we canceled the paper.

This morning, as I sit here reading my MacBook, I found this article from the Rake (which went online only this week). You can read about the Rake ceasing its print operation in an article from The Star Tribune. The irony.

Long story short, the Rake article gives a nice picture of what they call “the online news scrum” in the Twin Cities.

We have this inside joke about our lawyer (who, it turns out, reads this blog). He’s famous for saying, “Well, I’m no <fill in the blank>, but I think, yada, yada, yada.” The blank is often filled in with words like “accountant”, “marketing expert”, and “large animal veterinarian”.

In any event, I’ll take a page from his book and say I’m no lawyer, but with Sony’s recent announcement that they’re joining the other big three labels in selling DRM-free content on Amazon’s nifty MP3 store, and in the face of Universal Music’s chief Doug Morris’ public assertion of his intent to create an alternative to Apple’s iTunes by allow others, but not Apple, sell DRM-free content, and with nobody but industry-leader EMI currently allowing Apple to remove the DRM, it all sounds an awful lot like collusion. Unfair business practices, at least.

If I was Steve Jobs, I’d sic my pack of legal Dobermans on the lot of them. Of course, if I was Steve Jobs, I’d spend most of my time flying around in my private jet playing Xbox and wouldn’t have time to bother with any of this crap.

Pardon this latest “if you’re a man of a certain age” moment, but Speed Racer looks like it’s going to rock.

From the Washington Post:

Doris Lessing pulled up in a black cab where a media horde was waiting Thursday in front of her leafy north London home. Reporters opened the door and told her she had won the Nobel Prize for literature, to which she responded: “Oh Christ! … I couldn’t care less.”

She continues:

“I can’t say I’m overwhelmed with surprise,” Lessing said. “I’m 88 years old and they can’t give the Nobel to someone who’s dead, so I think they were probably thinking they’d probably better give it to me now before I’ve popped off.”

Well-known Smart Guy™ and head of Universal Music Doug Morris is apparently marshaling the troops (aka, other music labels) to defeat the evil iTunes. Is he advocating an expansion of the consumer-friendly trend towards DRM-free music? Nope. He’s trying to put together a new music store that offers subscription-based access to music that will not play on iPods.

This will fail for the following reasons:

1. It’s subscription based.
2. It won’t work with iPods.

No subscription model has worked yet in the music space (see Sony, Napster, and Microsoft’s attempts) and the iPod has a 70%+ share of the MP3 player market. So, failed business model plus incompatibility with everyone’s player equals…success? I guess it does to Doug Morris.

In the article I linked to above, Doug is quoted as saying (in reference to his original deal with Apple to place Universal’s content on the iTMS), “We got rolled like a bunch of puppies.” His definition of “rolled” is that he only gets 70% of the revenue each song generates, even though Universal has zero distribution costs. Personally, if getting 70% of anything involving the sale of over 3 billion things makes me a puppy, I’d be happy to chew a few slippers and get my tummy scratched.

More examples of the point made in the preceding post:

• Oasis and Jamiroquai will both follow Radiohead’s example and sell direct digital downloads at whatever price listeners are willing to pay.
• Madonna is apparently ditching Warner Bros. and moving into a ten year deal with a concert promoter to distribute her music and market her brand – a concert promoter with no vested interest in preserving the status quo. (BTW, Madonna will be in her 60s when this deal expires.)

Basically, the acts at the top and bottom of the music pyramid are moving in directions where traditional record labels (and traditional distribution models and media formats) have no role. Ten years ago – before the web permeated our lives, before the iPod, and before near-ubiquitous access to broadband – this would have been inconceivable.

Today, Radiohead released their much-anticipated seventh album, In Rainbows. As has been reported everywhere, they are selling it directly to listeners via web download and you, the purchaser, get to choose how much you pay for it (even if you want to pay nothing – I paid £5). What music label would allow such a thing? None. Radiohead doesn’t have a label. Prince, who’s also had his issues with record labels, took a similarly revolutionary path recently when he gave away for free millions of his latest CD in the UK and then proceeded to sell out 21 dates in London. Trent Reznor announced two days ago that Nine Inch Nails is free from a record label obligation and is looking for a “direct relationship with the audience as I see fit and appropriate”.

Apple and Amazon selling DRM-free music while huge acts like Radiohead, Prince, and Nine Inch Nails sell unencumbered tracks directly to the public? The Media Sphincter (that clenching muscle of media companies who continue to restrict media from being freely created and sold to audiences who crave more and more of it, even in the face of epic changes that will eventually remake their business model whether they like it or not) is beginning to fail. Watch out below.

Fire Marshalls may be on hand to contain the crowds expected for the MIMA 07 Annual Summit. As a Gold Sponsor, we see this event as one of key venues to bring in thought leaders from all over the country. If you are attending, stop by and check us out during Happy Hour as we are strategically placed next to the bar and DJ. If you didn’t get a swanky swag bag, stop by to say hello and pick up a 45 (yes, they actually have songs on them) and get a chance to win iTunes by playing our SMS contest. We teamed up with our fantastic partner, OnCall Solutions, to bring this interactive strategy to life.

Today, the New York Times got smaller. Like, a lot smaller. It’s only an inch and a half, but as you can see above, when compared to the previous size, it’s quite noticeable. They say it will save them $10 million dollars a year and conforms to the way other papers are made. They didn’t change the layout; it’s still six columns, but they’re narrower by a quarter inch each. The masthead is smaller, as are the story headlines, but the typeface for the text appears to be the same size as before. Personally, I hate it. From a design perspective, I think the type is too big for the narrower columns and the big beautiful masthead seems just a bit too small. All in all, it’s a more awkward experience.

The bigger problem, though, if from a branding perspective. See, the Times is the greatest paper in the world. As the paper of record, it’s our first draft of history. It holds that position above all other American papers, and it’s well deserved. The fact that the paper was physically bigger than most other broadsheets helped reinforce it’s position at the top of the journalistic food chain, even if it was subtle. “We’re bigger because we’re more important. Deal with it.” Honestly, in some way, it helped justify its higher cost to readers like me. Now, with its diminution, it feels and looks like just another paper. In fact, they used that standardization argument in their justification of the move.

I know some will say that in this era of the embattled newspaper, this was bound to happen, even to the Times. They’ll say it makes good business sense. Ten million dollars is a lot to save. Sure, but what will it cost to save that money? The Times, like any other company marketing a product, needs to remember that a lot of consumers don’t base all their purchase decisions on the quality of the product inside the packaging alone. Premium brands differentiate themselves through experience. My experience enjoying the Times just decreased. It feels cheaper. It feels smaller. It feels standardized.

Honestly, I’d have paid a little more to keep the bigger sheets.

Has to, has to, has to be a joke.

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