The Reach - Podcasting and other Portable Media Strategies

I realize this post has nothing to do with podcasting or social media per se, but I cannot resist the opportunity.  Oprah is telling us that we should vote for Barak Obama.  Now, here is the woman who’s due diligence was SO lacking that she recommended that we should buy James Frey’s book “A Million Little Pieces” and then had to issue an embarassed apology to the world for not doing her homework.  I wonder if she’s upgraded her homework this time or do we have the same risk this time of following her emotions and not the truth?

I realize that this news (on both accounts) is not new, but the reality of the potential conflict hit me today as I read the above headline on CNN Online.

Leander Kahney, of Wired Magazine posts earlier this past week an article discussing Apple’s new agreement with Apple (Corps that is) saying that iPods could become the new physical media medium.  While that’s possible, why has no one else done it yet?

As you can see, the title of this post is somewhat sarcastic, as we do that for non-profit organizations all around the world - although not with music, but with a message that the non-profit “owns” and wants to get in the hands of others.

But, let’s explore the music side of this a bit.  Apple would have to be reasonably prescient to pick which artists and “records” to load in order to sell them profitably.  The beauty of today’s business model for Apple is that they don’t care what gets put on the iPods.  Selling a device with content on it raises the price somewhat and may take it over certain “psychological” pricing barriers.  Leander is careful to mention low-priced shuffles, etc, but in general, Apple is not in the low-price game.

Neat idea, but not sure it will happen.  In the mean time, we’ve been doing this almost a couple of years now and we’ll be just fine continuing regardless of Apple’s content distribution strategy.

Well, the ugly side of the Creative Commons License got exposed via the naivete of one brilliant marketer, Seth Godin.  The big oops is detailed here and Seth encourages us not to buy the book, because we can get it free (assuming we want to help HP out and buy a bunch of print cartridges if we want it in print form) off the internet.

Publishing is going through massive change (just ask the major record labels what Steve Jobs did to them this week) and I’m sure we’ll see more change - but lets not be “bleeding edge” and then get surprised when things work out slightly different than we expected.

Being agressive and trying new things will not only give us the possibility of breakthroughs, but also the possibilities of breakdowns.  Don’t sign up if a couple of bruises and scrapes will make you sit out for a while.