by Jimmy Guterman, Editorial Director, O'Reilly Radar
The instant-analysis business is a tricky one. None of us have working crystal balls; any attempt to predict the future, even the five-minutes-from-now future, is risky. For example, on Jan. 31, mere hours before Microsoft made its unsolicited $44 billion-plus offer for Yahoo, Forrester Research, my alma matter, posted a research note with the following headline and deck: Microsoft Will Make Small Acquisitions Its Size, Visibility To Antitrust Bodies And Strategy Rule Out Big Deals
by Jimmy Guterman, Editorial Director, O'Reilly Radar
Last Sunday’s Grammy Awards ceremonies were even less relevant than usual, no small achievement. The TV broadcast began with a “performance” by that cutting-edge new artist Frank Sinatra and fell down from there. The only real emotional charge of an evening celebrating the most emotional of media came when we viewers were confronted with the disparity between the preternatural confidence of Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” and the shaky, shell-shocked manner in which Winehouse accepted her award for it. Alpha geeks had a moment to celebrate, too, when one of the winners behind Historical Album of the Year (Woody Guthrie’s “Live Wire”) turned out to be a mathematician. But, those and few other brief moments notwithstanding, the action in the music industry is elsewhere.
by Jimmy Guterman, Editorial Director, O'Reilly Radar
The Industry Standard ably chronicled–and, eventually, mirrored–the Internet boom that began a decade ago and died a few years later. (Disclosure: Despite its occasional excesses, I am honored to have been associated with the magazine.) After years of noticing that thestandard.com was still receiving ample traffic and–with one brief exception a few years back–not doing much about it, IDG, which was the Standard’s lead investor and picked up the carcass in bankruptcy court, has relaunched the site this week.
by Jimmy Guterman, Editorial Director, O'Reilly Radar
The Qtrax debacle is getting most of the attention this week, with Warner Music’s ridiculous CEO compensation close behind, but there is promising news in the music industry worth noting. Late last year, there was much fuss around Radiohead’s decision to eschew usual distribution schemes and release “In Rainbows” in a variety of formats, among them free downloads. It was no surprise that the marketing plan worked well and, more recently, helped the on-CD version of the new album top many sales charts. Radiohead is an extremely popular band; of course its experiment did well. But if there’s going to be a music industry anymore, it’s going to be because nonplatinum performers can make a living as musicians.
The way people are dismissing the One Laptop Per Child project this week reminds me of how people were treating Hillary Clinton during the five days between her Iowa defeat and her New Hampshire comeback. To many observers, the inevitable has become the disaster in record time.
by Jimmy Guterman, Editorial Director, O'Reilly Radar
Recently I produced a CD. It was independently recorded and distributed–and it was available for free on every peer-to-peer service on the planet weeks before it was officially released, so it was only a modest commercial success.
Don’t feel bad. It was entirely expected. Even if there was such a thing as a record industry anymore, [...]
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