Back in 1993, when I was still a practicing lawyer, I went to lunch with a good friend of mine. He was the head of the Cable Television company, and my law firm represented his company. At the time everyone seemed to be preoccupied with the notion of 500 channels of TV, and he was troubled by this. During our lunch, he turned to me and said,

Now remember, this was before YouTube. It was before social networks. It was even before email and the web were in common use. Nobody was talking much about user generated content in those days. But the truth is, the elements were already there, the groundwork already in place, to precipitate a revolution.

When Tim Berners Lee invented the world wide web and Marc Andreesen and his buddies at NCSA created Mozilla, the first really important graphical web browser, they laid the groundwork for an explosion, a big bang in the universe that is “content.” And ironically, from the moment that happened, content has ceased to be “king.” You remember the expression, of course. But “content is king” only when content is scarce, controlled and meted out. Today content is cheaper to create, cheaper to store, and cheaper to distribute than ever before. And there are many many more “producers” of content than there were in 1993. The world will never be the same.

All of this has an enormous impact on music and on the music business. There is more recorded music available today than ever before. Orders of magnitude more music. People listen to more music today than ever before in the history of the world. And increasingly, they’re distributing that music (sharing) and even creating it themselves.

Every copy of Apple’s OSX comes with a copy of Garage Band. Programs like Garage Band, Logic, Ableton Live, Cubase, Pro Tools, Reason, Sonar and others have made it possible for nearly anyone to record or compile “music” that may be completely original (and fall anywhere on the scale from sublime to unbearable) or utterly derivative. Artists have long been treating this vast collection of content as source material for the inspiration and support of their further creative efforts, including Grandmaster Flash, Dr. Dre, The Bastie Boys, Eminem, Moby, and a legion of artists with names that begin with “DJ” and end with pretty much any other word or expression you can imagine.

And the thing that amazes me most about all of this? That the transition from mere spectator to full participant hasn’t been more widely understood, embraced and appreciated. I’d like to introduce you to someone who does get it: Suzanne Lainson. Suzanne writes the blog “brands + music (bpm),” has some interesting things to say about this in the context of music. A week ago, some people from the music, tech and marketing/advertising space got together as part of the Jim Lewi inspired “First Thursday,” here in Boulder. Suzanne was among them, and during the course of our discussions, it became apparent that (a) she’s tired of hearing so many people in the industry say the same things over and over again, and (b) she has a different point of view about what needs to happen – a perspective I happen to share.  Rather than steal her thunder, I invite you to read her most recent post, “Involving Music Fans at Many Levels” for yourself.

One of the things I particularly appreciate about Suzanne’s post: she wants to know what you think, and she asks you to respond. Instead of simply speaking her mind and leaving things at that, she has invited you to join in a conversation – precisely the thing she things needs to be happening in the music industry. And I can’t wait to read what you have to say.

iggli is happy to be working closely with Global Digital Syndication to provide invite services for tonight’s Jowell y Randy concert. Global Digital Syndication is working with uVu Mobile(TM), a mobility solutions and software provider to promote the first streaming concert event through ClickConcert.

Jowell y Randy

Use iggli to connect to Jowell y Randy

During the coming weeks, I’m planning to do something a little different with the iggli blog. We’ve managed to get to know quite a few people in the sports and entertainment, technology and ticketing industries. Some of them are very well known, others maybe not so much. But they all have a unique voice and a particularly valuable point of view. These folks will be “guest” bloggers from time-to-time, offering their own perspectives on everything from social media and marketing, the music industry’s challenges, new developments in sports marketing, friend-to-friend communication, ticketing (including primary and secondary market ticketing, paperless tickets, dynamic pricing) and more. We’ll see where it all goes, but wherever they take us, I know it will be interesting, educational and entertaining. In the meantime, go listen to some music or watch a game!

Facebook has provided a new attention-getting tool that you’ll want to know about if you are an artist, promoter, or venue responsible for promoting events, You already know that you can use iggli’s invitation services to leverage the power of email. Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. Now Facebook lets you use the @ symbol to get the attention of a particular person. You can read more about the service in the September 15, 2009 edition of Inside Facebook.

Here’s how the new feature works. Suppose you’re posting an update to a band’s status and you want me to know. For example, Crosby, Stills and Nash are playing the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on September 23rd. You go to the status box and type: Hey @ . . . and you’ll be given the option to add the name of any of your Facebook friends. So, you type, Hey @ Tom Higley let’s go see Crosby, Stills and Nash at the Greek! Presto, I get a message saying I’ve been tagged by you in a status update. Give it a try!

A note about CS&N. Their 1969 release was one of the first two albums I ever bought. I was probably 13 or 14 years old. While Young wasn’t yet a member of the group or featured on this recording, he made his appearance on DéjåVu and who could forget Ohio in 1970? Released when I was still a junior in high school, it had a pretty powerful impact on me and on everyone I knew.

It’s nice when your company generates a little attention in the press. It’s nicer still when so much of what is written is on the money. Yesterday the Boulder Daily Camera covered iggli’s invitation service – invite – and left readers with the impression that we’d like to see our button used on every online listing of ticketed events. That’s accurate. They also accurately captured a couple other key notions:

• that events are social
• that the friends who are going to a particular event are often as important (or more important) than the event itself
• that most people pay more attention to information or invitations from friends

And the part they really got right, the part I particularly liked, was the notion that “one click of the widget” helps folks get through a process that would otherwise be tedious, time consuming and filled with frustration. You’ll know this is true if you’ve ever tried to invite more than two people to a concert or a playoff game. The process is ridiculous.

• Which event?
• Which friends should I invite?
• Do I talk to them by phone to see if their interested? Text? Email? Facebook? Twitter?
• How do I deal with the fact that some of my friends use Facebook (and won’t read email) and some use email exclusively (and won’t touch Facebook)?
• How do I keep track of those who respond?
• How many tickets do we need?
• Who is going to buy them?
• How are we going to handle reimbursement?
• Will we all get to sit together?
• How do we get the best seats?
• What if someone can’t make it at the last minute?
• What’s the best way to communicate with the whole group about our plans on the day of the show or game?

There’s more. But you get the idea. The process can be . . .  problematic.

iggli’s invite service has been designed as a way to deal with these issues. It’s not perfect. We have a long way to go to make the service as easy to use, useful, and fun as we think it should / could be. So feedback is welcome and appreciated! One of the biggest shortcomings of the service is the relatively few places you can find it or use it.  If you’re a fan who wants to take a group to see a Lakers game, a show at Red Rocks, the Michael Jackson memorial concert at Staples Center or anyone of a thousand different events around the country, you’re going to be out of luck for at least another few weeks. Because right now, you can only use the service if our invite widget appears on an event page.

We’ve already made substantial progress in this department. Today iggli’s services have been embraced by Nederlander Concerts, The Greek Theatre, The Grove Theater, Bill Silva Entertainment and Management, Jason Mraz and StubHub. And we have some big deals to talk about in the not-too-distant future. But things will really get interesting when you can use iggli’s service with just about any event you can find. And that capability is right around the corner. So please, stay tuned!