NeilCocker.com

Chris Anderson‘s 2006 Long Tail theory states that because the web provides unlimited availability of vast amounts of niche and specialist music/films/books/whatever that there will be perpetual sales for the relevant artists, authors and creators of this content. But in an update to their recent findings, the PRS-MCPS Alliance (the UK’s music royalty collection organisation) has announced that only 173,000 of the 1.23 million albums available online actually made a single sale last year. In other words 85 percent didn’t sell even one copy. This is in addition to their recent announcement that 10 million of the 13 million individual tracks available online didn’t find a single buyer. Anderson is stoutly defending his economic model of the new web-based landscape, but who knows what further data is out there to strengthen or weaken is argument?

Is the Long Tail a dead theory already? Is one year’s data in just one sector enough to kill it off? Or should we see the theory as along term economic model that will take time to develop? Or do we just accept that the web makes those producing niche content a little easier to find – a slightly healthier short tail…?

pic credit: novelr.com

Chris Anderson‘s 2006 Long Tail theory states that because the web provides unlimited availability of vast amounts of niche and specialist music/films/books/whatever that there will be perpetual sales for the relevant artists, authors and creators of this content. But in an update to their recent findings, the PRS-MCPS Alliance (the UK’s music royalty collection organisation) has announced that only 173,000 of the 1.23 million albums available online actually made a single sale last year. In other words 85 percent didn’t sell even one copy. This is in addition to their recent announcement that 10 million of the 13 million individual tracks available online didn’t find a single buyer. Anderson is stoutly defending his economic model of the new web-based landscape, but who knows what further data is out there to strengthen or weaken is argument?

Is the Long Tail a dead theory already? Is one year’s data in just one sector enough to kill it off? Or should we see the theory as along term economic model that will take time to develop? Or do we just accept that the web makes those producing niche content a little easier to find – a slightly healthier short tail…?

pic credit: novelr.com

I was doing some research yesterday with the website Alexa.com. It generates usage stats for the most used websites. Very useful if you need to know that kind of thing. For example, did you know that Myspace has 0.1 percent more of its users in Germany than in the UK? And that after the US (31 percent), the UK has the most users (9 percent) of the world’s fifth most popular website, Facebook?

Anyway, does this graph tell us anything about the future of various social networks?

And I find it interesting that Bebo.com (yes, that pale line across the very bottom of the graph) has experienced absolutely zero growth in users since its $850m sale to AOL earlier this year. What do they plan to do with it?

I was doing some research yesterday with the website Alexa.com. It generates usage stats for the most used websites. Very useful if you need to know that kind of thing. For example, did you know that Myspace has 0.1 percent more of its users in Germany than in the UK? And that after the US (31 percent), the UK has the most users (9 percent) of the world’s fifth most popular website, Facebook?

Anyway, does this graph tell us anything about the future of various social networks?

And I find it interesting that Bebo.com (yes, that pale line across the very bottom of the graph) has experienced absolutely zero growth in users since its $850m sale to AOL earlier this year. What do they plan to do with it?

I’ve been incredibly busy and stressed of late. I tend to deal with it pretty well as a rule, but the lack of sleep, added to the travel and poor diet, has resulted in me being pretty wiped at all times for the last week or so.

So at the beginning of this week I committed to being in bed by 10pm for three consecutive nights, gorged on vegetables, and went out for a couple of long runs. Result? Bags of energy and feeling like a new man.

It’s so important when you’re working on several projects to manage your time effectively, but most of us (me included) never seem to schedule in time for “self-maintenance”. Schedule an hour of your day to looking after yourself (swimming, running, tai-chi, meditation, press-ups or all of the above) and your productivity and energy levels will sky-rocket.

News in brief –

- I wrote and produced a documentary about Prince, a childhood hero of mine, a few weeks ago for an ace internet radio station. You can download it here. Nudge me if the link has expired and I’ll upload it again.

- I’ve been working with Milen from MTR Design and Marc from The Undercard to get a new Pollen website up and running. It’ll be going live within about 24 hours, I hope. So keep checking back to www.pollenhq.com to see the utterly brilliant site they’ve put together. It’s been a genuine pleasure working with both of them and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

- I’ve decided to make my blog a bit more attractive by using some of my photos in it. They won’t necessarily relate to the blog (this week features a shot I took in Lyon when I was there doing a gig a few years ago), but they should make it a bit more colourful around here….

I’ve been incredibly busy and stressed of late. I tend to deal with it pretty well as a rule, but the lack of sleep, added to the travel and poor diet, has resulted in me being pretty wiped at all times for the last week or so.

So at the beginning of this week I committed to being in bed by 10pm for three consecutive nights, gorged on vegetables, and went out for a couple of long runs. Result? Bags of energy and feeling like a new man.

It’s so important when you’re working on several projects to manage your time effectively, but most of us (me included) never seem to schedule in time for “self-maintenance”. Schedule an hour of your day to looking after yourself (swimming, running, tai-chi, meditation, press-ups or all of the above) and your productivity and energy levels will sky-rocket.

News in brief –

- I wrote and produced a documentary about Prince, a childhood hero of mine, a few weeks ago for an ace internet radio station. You can download it here. Nudge me if the link has expired and I’ll upload it again.

- I’ve been working with Milen from MTR Design and Marc from The Undercard to get a new Pollen website up and running. It’ll be going live within about 24 hours, I hope. So keep checking back to www.pollenhq.com to see the utterly brilliant site they’ve put together. It’s been a genuine pleasure working with both of them and I can’t recommend them highly enough.

- I’ve decided to make my blog a bit more attractive by using some of my photos in it. They won’t necessarily relate to the blog (this week features a shot I took in Lyon when I was there doing a gig a few years ago), but they should make it a bit more colourful around here….

For those of you that have not heard about it, it’s a program that sits on your laptop/PC/phone/whatever and automatically syncs your files and folders across all those devices. Or, to quote the Wikipedia page on the subject: “Live Mesh is a data synchronization system from Microsoft that allows files and folders to be shared and synchronized across multiple devices. Live Mesh consists of a software component that allows synchronization relationships to be created among different devices. Once a folder is set for synchronization, it will be available in all devices, and any changes made to the content of the folder will be reflected across all devices.”

So, this morning I was working in my office. I made some changes to a document in Open Office (not Word, sorry Microsoft!) and when I saved them Live Mesh sent the changes over the internet to my account in the “cloud”, which were then very quickly downloaded (in the background) when I logged on via my laptop in my local cafe. Meaning I didn’t have to do any file transferring before I went out to work remotely. It was done quietly, quickly and silently in the background.

A few important things to note about Live Mesh*:

- All the files are stored locally, on the machine you’re working on, as well as online so you only ever download any updates to files. The files open instantly and normally. You don’t have to wait for them to download.

- This is basically like having a local network where you can access a folder from any computer on that network. But it’s done over the internet.

- You can invite other people with Live Mesh to have access to particular folders. So collaborative, remote working is a breeze.

- It’s done really, really well. Once I’d uploaded all the files I needed to be available from anywhere (and then downloaded them to the other machines too), I was pretty much ready to go. It’s been a dream for me because I work from a couple of different machines and often find myself in a cafe, realising that the document I need is sat on my machine at home.

Many thanks to Microsoft’s Steve Clayton for highlighting it. For more info on Live Mesh you should check out all his posts on it. There’s loads of writing and videos about it on there. And it’s a cracking blog, full-stop. Ideal for people like me who like to think they’re techie, but they’re not really! Sign up at the Mesh homepage for a chance to preview it. Or nudge me for an invite. I haven’t found them yet, but apparently I have them…

*It needs to be noted that I’m making assumptions about much of this stuff. I really have no idea how it works technically!

For those of you that have not heard about it, it’s a program that sits on your laptop/PC/phone/whatever and automatically syncs your files and folders across all those devices. Or, to quote the Wikipedia page on the subject: “Live Mesh is a data synchronization system from Microsoft that allows files and folders to be shared and synchronized across multiple devices. Live Mesh consists of a software component that allows synchronization relationships to be created among different devices. Once a folder is set for synchronization, it will be available in all devices, and any changes made to the content of the folder will be reflected across all devices.”

So, this morning I was working in my office. I made some changes to a document in Open Office (not Word, sorry Microsoft!) and when I saved them Live Mesh sent the changes over the internet to my account in the “cloud”, which were then very quickly downloaded (in the background) when I logged on via my laptop in my local cafe. Meaning I didn’t have to do any file transferring before I went out to work remotely. It was done quietly, quickly and silently in the background.

A few important things to note about Live Mesh*:

- All the files are stored locally, on the machine you’re working on, as well as online so you only ever download any updates to files. The files open instantly and normally. You don’t have to wait for them to download.

- This is basically like having a local network where you can access a folder from any computer on that network. But it’s done over the internet.

- You can invite other people with Live Mesh to have access to particular folders. So collaborative, remote working is a breeze.

- It’s done really, really well. Once I’d uploaded all the files I needed to be available from anywhere (and then downloaded them to the other machines too), I was pretty much ready to go. It’s been a dream for me because I work from a couple of different machines and often find myself in a cafe, realising that the document I need is sat on my machine at home.

Many thanks to Microsoft’s Steve Clayton for highlighting it. For more info on Live Mesh you should check out all his posts on it. There’s loads of writing and videos about it on there. And it’s a cracking blog, full-stop. Ideal for people like me who like to think they’re techie, but they’re not really! Sign up at the Mesh homepage for a chance to preview it. Or nudge me for an invite. I haven’t found them yet, but apparently I have them…

*It needs to be noted that I’m making assumptions about much of this stuff. I really have no idea how it works technically!

So much to write about – so little time!

A couple of cracking articles from the BBC about the future of the web: One points to the second web boom (as I highlighted with examples in a post about the huge amounts of money being spent on new companies). And the other asks lots of top thinkers and innovators what they think will happen to the web in the coming years.

And speaking of innovation, I went to a great talk last night by Charles Leadbeater, a world authority on innovation and creativity. His talk was mainly about how immigration is a positive thing for innovation in this country (did you know that Triumph cars, Moss Bros, ICI and ice cream trucks were all founded in the UK by immigrants?). His argument is that complex problems are better solved by a diverse group, and immigrants into a society provide massive diversity. Catering for the differences inevitably comes with higher costs, but the lesson for entrepreneurs and businesses is clear – don’t just surround yourself with people exactly like yourself.

Thanks to Richie Turner at NESTA for hosting it and providing the nice veggie canapes!

p.s. If you consider yourself an entrepreneur in the web or technology fields then you should probably read this….