Deep Jive Interests

With Jian Ghomeshi, Amber MacArthur, McLean Mashingaidze-Greaves, and Ethan Kaplan.

• JG: Sam the Record Man will close down, an icon for Torontonians. 20 years ago that was *the* place for music, making it there was a sign of legitimacy. 10 years ago, signing to a major label was a sign that you’d arrived. I aired a three part documentary last year, and in that last year, it seems like ancient history — YouTube had grown and was acquired, Pandora grew, Avril Lavigne sells more ringtones than cd’s and now its gone — that’s the subtext.
• “Last 12 months of entertainment — what does it mean?”
  • EK: There’s been a new focus and an admission that its not going back to how it was. There’s a renewed effort to create a new future for themselves with the technology that is available to many startups. The technology to connect with the fan isn’t rocket science, it isn’t expensive, while the desire for the brand is there. The desire to pay for things — in different areas — is still there.
  • AM: There’s credibility with new media technologies such as podcasting and blogging; people have more power to make a difference, and people believe that the Internet is here to stay, people are jumping ship, and there are more and more people are doing their own things — they’re “internet hippies”! :)
  • MM: Big changes with distribution, with regards to video conferencing, fatter pipes out west (32mb connections to your home), WiMax, and so on. They are quiet changes that don’t get a lot of press — but we’ll see changes with that in the next few months
• “I want to stick with Sam the Record Man … the relationship between the consumer and the producer; the audience isn’t passive — they want what they want when they want it … I want to test that: when I wanted to buy my favourite INXS record (chuckles), I’d have to physically get up onto the subway, and into the Sam the Record Man, and pay a fat price for a whole record, play one track at a time — it seems like I was invested in the record. That seems like a non-passive experience. Are people investing more in their entertainment or less?”
  • MM: I think they’re experiencing it more, because the selection is wider, deeper, and its easier to consumer and share more
  • AM: Attention spans have gotten smaller, and so we’re watching smaller tidbits. I question whether or not loyalty has become affected — does this have implications with social networks like Facebook? There is a difficulty in creating loyalty to certain things ,brands, applications and so on. The lifespan of entertainment may be less. I think they’re getting more content, but spending less time to that content. The relationship may be crumbling.
  • EK: Passive consumption was an illusion that was propagated by big media that exploded a few years ago. Companies are starting to come to grips with that; the active participation has always been there, such as the Punk movement, but what’s really happened is that content has become agnostic between different media and modality. Participatory experiences, auditory experiences — they have all crumbled. There is a movement towards a closer relationship between consumer and content producer … all it is is data through a pipe, and they don’t put value through data.
• “Is there something intrinsic in making something harder to get — does the ease of acquisition art, music, tv etc devalue it or make it more disposable?”
  • AM: Its a global audience, so get it out as fast as possible and think about how to make a buck later. You want to get as much content in front of as many people as possible, and that’s the new model for what success is going to be.
  • MM: With RapTV, there is a different way to build brand loyalty, with social networks supporting unknowns, and when it does succeed, you have that group identifying with that artist.
• “How do you get a kid, who has limitless choices, get hooked on to a given artist?”
  • EK: The notion of creating attachment is *fun*. We have to embrace the notion that the availability and duplicability of content means that we don’t have to strive for the original — but we should acknowledge that the originality is gone, but use what we have to create attachment.
• “Michael Bubble is an artist who is high on the charts — how have you marketed that album differently than 5 years ago?”
  • EK: You have to treat Bubble as a personality. We started 6-7 months ago as to how the album was going to go. Bubble has a core audience, and we wanted to build on that organically through social media, RSS feeds, cultivating fans and so on. In the past there was a process to create albums, but now we had to do things differently — we had to create a marketing plan in conjunction with the album being born … there is importance to the long release of the album and engaging the fans in the way they want to be engaged. Websites should be interactive and not brochures.
• “If you’re not an Avril or Michael Bubble, and with increased access, how does a smaller artist compete?”
  • MM: You take the tools that are out there and just work it — put it as many places as possible. Artists can build an audience feeds by going out an seeking an audience and using those tools. Some artists will rise to the top.
• “Have the responsibility of artists changed? ”
  • AM: Transparency is key, and its important for all artists to be as transparent and engaged with your audience — if they don’t like it, they’ll leave and go to the next big thing. Tom Green has his own blog, answering his own emails, doing a TV show out of his own living room — he said Iím going to take things in my own hands, and the audience is going to participate in that