Teen Content Creators and Consumers (Pew Internet & American Life Project, November 2, 2005) One of the trends sure to shape the future of music and media is the behavior of the next generation of music audiences. Researchers at the Pew Internet and American Life Project completed a national survey of people 12 to 17 years old and looked at their use of media for accessing music. Among the findings: more than half of online teenagers create and post content on the Internet; over half of them use the Internet to download music; and they use paid services as much as they use free peer-to-peer services. [Download]

Tech Brief : A Survey of Recent Innovations in the Production and Distribution of Video (1.3 mb download) (Corporation for Public Broadcasting, August 2005) Sweeping changes in the technologies of creating, distributing, finding, organizing, and experiencing media will also shape the future. Yes, this well organized, easy to follow briefing is about what's happening in video, but every one of the themes laid out here has analogues in music or audio-based media; indeed, the video world looks at the music and audio world as being further into the digital revolution than video is. What are the examples of these same phenomena in the domain of audio/music programming? What else, if anything, would you add? (Note that the web links in this slide deck are all live if you view the presentation in the 'slide show' mode.)

Where Music Will Be Coming From, by Kevin Kelly (The New York Times Magazine, March 17, 2002) Kelly, a serial provocateur, has been writing about technology and society for 20 years. In this essay, written a year before iTunes was launched, he notes "Technology is changing music. But then again, it always has. The invention of the piano 300 years ago centered Western music on the keyboard. Electricity's arrival in the late 19th century enabled the duplication of performances and, later, the amplification of instruments. With digitization, the pace of upheaval has further accelerated. Digital file-sharing technologies -- Napster and its offspring -- are now undermining the established economics of music. And everything we know about digital technologies suggests that Napster is only the beginning." [Download]

The Hit Factory, by Jeff Howe (Wired Magazine, November 2005)A brief and breezy overview of MySpace, the social networking site that has become a newly powerful way that musicians and their music are connecting with audiences, and vice-versa. The article suggests that for the emerging generation of young pop musicians, "the mass market and the hit-making apparatus it supports are relics of a bygone age. The new reality is that their audience isn't listening to radio."  How might this apply to the next generation of jazz, classical, or alternative music audiences? [Download]

We Are the Web, by Kevin Kelly (Wired Magazine, August 2005) Kelly looks back 10 years to the Netscape IPO in 1995 as the beginning of an era that, he claims, we have mostly misunderstood. "As a result of ignoring what the web really is, we are likely to miss what it will grow into over the next 10 years," he insists, before setting out what he believes is the real story. Looking ahead 10 years, he argues that what is powerful about the web today, and even more so in the future, is that it is the basis for mass collaboration. Even if you only read the first half, you'll get the gist: "What we all failed to see," Kelly explains, "was how much of this new world would be manufactured by users..." [Download]

The Public Radio Format Study: Listening Patterns of Stations with Different Formats 1999-2004, by Thomas J. Thomas and Theresa R. Clifford (Station Resource Group, Revised Edition, December 2005). A recently released survey that does exactly what its title promises: analyzes the listening patterns over the last five years of public radio stations with different formats. As the authors explain, "we review patterns of listening to groups of stations categorized by the formats that they present. We find that stations that pursue different format strategies – news, classical, jazz, AAA, and the principal combinations of these – have experienced significantly different patterns of audience growth in recent years and important differences in key audience behaviors such as loyalty and time spent listening." [Download]


About the process used in the January '06 Forum

How to Build Scenarios, by Lawrence Wilkinson. Every plan is a bet on what the future might be like. Scenarios, a tool in use by companies, government agencies, and nonprofits for almost thirty years, help decision-makers investigate how the future might evolve in ways more challenging, or more surprisingly supportive, than we might otherwise imagine. It can be an enormously useful process before making a plan, because it allows for groups to consider a range of possibilities and see both common and surprising features they might otherwise miss. That's why we'll be using a version of scenario building to orient our thinking about the future for music and media. Originally from WIRED magazine's special issue on the future, this is a short, step-by-step introduction to the technique by one of GBN's co-founders.

What If? The Art of Scenario Thinking for Nonprofits (Chapter 1), by Diana Scearce and Katherine Fulton (GBN, July 2004). An overview of scenario thinking specifically written for use by nonprofits and noncommercial organizations. This elegant introduction to the underlying premises of scenario-based thinking and the uses to which it can be put complements the step-by-step instructions of "How to Build Scenarios" and addresses the question, "why would one build scenarios."the rest of the book is at www.gbn.com/whatif

WELL WORTH READING

THE FUTURE OF INDEPENDENT MEDIA – by Andrew Blau, Global Business Network (9/04) Speculations and findings about the new media landscape of bottom up content creation, the move to the Internet, niche marketing & more.
http://www.gbn.com/ArticleDisplayServlet.srv?aid=34045

ARTSJOURNAL.COM: Doug McLennan, editor. Daily online aggregator of arts and media news and blogs. www.artsjournal.com

RADIO & INTERNET NEWSLETTER (RAIN): Kurt Hanson, editor. Daily aggregator of new technology and Internet radio news. www.kurthanson.com

THE CLASSICAL MUSIC CONSUMER SEGMENTATION STUDY by Audience Insight, Inc. for the John L. and James S. Knight Foundation (10/02). The largest cultural audience research project ever conducted in the U.S. concluded that radio is the dominant avenue of public access to classical music in the U.S., far ahead of live performances and recordings. http://www.knightfdn.org/default.asp?story=research/cultural/consumersegmentation/index.html

CURRENT: “My Time!” by Dennis L. Haarsager (11/04). Get to know the media habits of an impatient, underserved audience. Reach listeners at their convenience, in non-real time. http://www.current.org/tech/tech0421mytime.shtml

American Public Media’s CLASSICAL MUSIC INITIATIVE, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. http://classicalmusicinitiative.publicradio.org/

CLASSICAL RADIO 101: A Primer for Performing Arts Partnerships (1/05): This working paper from APM’s Classical Music Initiative is a guide to today’s classical music radio universe and a primer on how radio is made. http://classicalmusicinitiative.publicradio.org/media/cmi_0622_brochure.pdf

Association of Arts Presenters White Paper from the Classical Music Think Tank held in San Francisco May, 2006 http://www.artspresenters.org/members/pdf/ClassicalMusicWhitePaper.pdf

WELL WORTH SURFING

CREATIVE COMMONS: a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works
http://creativecommons.org/

THE FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION: a not-for-profit collaboration between members of the music, technology, public policy and intellectual property law communities
http://www.futureofmusic.org/

INTERNET ONLINE DISTRIBUTION ALLIANCE (IODA): digital distribution company for the global independent music community
http://www.iodalliance.com/

MAGNATUNE: the open music record label
http://magnatune.com/