4 big opportunities for radical innovation in media

Umair Haque has a talk that finally brings everything together to help us understand the new economics of music (and media). Go and listen to it. It will help you better understand where are the value drivers and how radical innovation will happen.

The sound in the video is a bit soft and most people might not have the time to sit through. Here, I have summarised the 4 big opportunities below. If you are a startup in media, these are the value proposition that you should think about:

Information about preferences (or demand)
The simple thing about demand is this: know what your customers want. Yet, many of the media companies simply don't have a clue. Micro communities are gathering across the Web around music, animation, films etc they love. How do we aggregate and surface these demand in the most easy to understand manner? Bandmetrics is an early example.

Information about supplyThe same information asymmetry applies to the creatives as well. Unknown talent have very little information about them, although that is changing with the explosion of services like RCDLBL. Going forward, I see this model extending to the physical world.

Mechanisms to connect demand and supply
Contextual pricing is the primary mechanism whereby demand and supply can be coordinated. Amie Street is one example of how this can be done. Radiohead is of course another (see more examples here).

Building better relationships between creatives and their fansWhen we have a better marketplace for music, the eventual step is to build a better kind of relationships. The NIN iPhone application is a good example. It focuses purely on fan engagement and viral distribution. There is room here for someone to make this available to all musicians (hat tip to Ethan Bauley).

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Posted in: startup business ideas