This in from the Guardian this morning:

When we talk about newspapers, we talk about them being critical for informing the public; we never say they’re critical for informing their customers. We assume that the value of the news ramifies outwards from the readership to society as a whole. OK, I buy that. But what Murdoch is signing up to do is to prevent that value from escaping. He wants to only inform his customers, he doesn’t want his stories to be shared and circulated widely. In fact, his ability to charge for the paywall is going to come down to his ability to lock the public out of the conversation convened by the Times.”

It’s the social ‘guru’ Mr Clay Shirky speaking about all things web and the latest Timely moves by Mr Murdoch. What’s really interesting re his observations about news ramifying out wider to society is that it’s similar to some difficult thoughts we’ve been having around the ‘value’ of music and it’s ability to sound track our cultural events.

Think back thru every major cultural event, either in the wider society or in our own ‘cultural’ lives - there’s always a soundtrack that helps anchor the event, adding the sensorial, emotional resonance to our memories of them. Music matters, and in profoundly important ways.

This leads to all kinds of esoteric chat about how those soundtracks ‘get’ created, chosen, selected and embedded in the DNA of these collective moments. More interesting, what would happen if we didn’t have them? Who would be the less for it - we the target audiences? Or would it be the industry who helped shape and create the music in the 1st place, and is now using our innovative smarts to help connect it with the right target audiences - would it be them who suffered?

If you think deeply around this - and we have and might now start speaking a bit more given our work with our Sony client has come to an end - there is a relationship between music producers and music audiences that goes unrecognised by both. We the punters want great music, we want to know when it’s out, who it’s by and how can we get it - and why we should! But we don’t want to pay over the odds for what we could get at any time, with a bit of effort - for free.

Yes the music industry will be watching closely to see how Mr Murdoch goes with his pay walls - but there’s a bigger conversation to be had between the Industry and it’s audiences about the value of music beyond the cover price.

After all, would all our great moments have been so great without the music? Or more worrying for those who argue for the demise of the Labels and the rise of the crowds,  imagine those moments with shite music!!!

More to come on this for sure..