Something isn't right

Last week the musician Prince announced that his latest album would be given away free in conjunction with a UK newspaper. You can read an update here on the story.

Now I posted a couples times on the state of play of the music industry ( you can read my early post here and here). I resisted posting about the Prince story because I wanted to see how the side of the record labels would respond. I am dishearten to see that the same defensive posture of the wanning medium of the album still holds.

Why after a decade of decreasing sales have record labels not developed new avenues to generate income. We have music downloads widely available now but record labels didn't invent that as much as try to jump on the band wagon.

When will see the next era of engaging record music ushered in? It looks like the way of the record store is over. I would definitely be trying to get out of the selling businesses and move towards creating value around music inline with a new generation of music lovers who don't even have the context of only having music available through physical objects like CDs.

Not easy at all, but it has to happen and better to be one of the first right

The best movie marketing ever?

I believe this to be the most intriguing movie promotion to date: 1-18-08

The trailer for this movie was shot as if on a handycam, very amateur and very real, and was shown before Transformers (which I immensely enjoyed by the way).

Its basically a mystery as to what this film is about, and man has it got peoples' attention. The movie is produce by the same dude who brought us the brilliant TV show Lost.

Definitely worth tracking this to see how this evolves. I will be.

Excuse me, there is a white elephant in my way

I just watchws the Pursuit of Happiness with Will Smith. There is a scene where Will Smith's character, Chris, has an interview for an internship with a brokerage firm. As if it wasn't bad enough that Chris was going into this situation grossly under qualified, but that very night before his interview, he was arrested for not paying parking tickets in the middle of painting his apartment.

After spending a night in jail Chris goes straight into the interview , disheveled, shirtless and covered in paint.

How would you go about addressing this?

Well, Chris reacts by getting straight to it and naming the white elephant.

Sometimes acknowledging the white elephant by coming straight out with the obvious is the only way to make progress. Leaving it as the "the thing we can all clearly see but shall not speak of" is the route to disaster as it will remain the preoccupation usurping other more important things.

Naming the white elephant takes boldness. But it also results in greater trust and honestly once addressed.