Keep the Free State Social momentum going! Please join us for Mobile Monday on May 10th, 5:30pm at Harry’s Bar and Tables in Westport

Harry’s Bar and Tables
501 Westport Road
Kansas City, MO 64111-3011
(816) 561-3950‎

We’ll organize and discuss around the purpose of the group:

* Commit to Innovate.
* Bridge the gap between small and large companies, those in Kansas City and outside.
* Share knowledge with each other on the meaning and relevance of the mobile space in order to affect concerns.
* Coordinate, collaborate and cooperate with others to fulfill common and individual ambitions
* Educate the public about the importance and relevance of mobility.

Bring with you, your concerns, an open and collaborative mind, and good ideas.

We’ll see you on May 10th.

**Please join the Mobile Media Club Facebook group and RSVP there**

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Please join us on April 12th, 5:30pm at Harry’s Bar and Tables in Westport

Harry’s Bar and Tables
501 Westport Road
Kansas City, MO 64111-3011
(816) 561-3950‎

We’ll meet to begin to organize around the purpose of the group:

* Commit to Innovate.
* Bridge the gap between small and large companies, those in Kansas City and outside.
* Share knowledge with each other on the meaning and relevance of the mobile space in order to affect concerns.
* Coordinate, collaborate and cooperate with others to fulfill common and individual ambitions
* Educate the public about the importance and relevance of mobility.

Bring with you, your concerns, an open and collaborative mind, and good ideas.

We’ll see you on April 12th.

**Please join our Facebook group and RSVP there**

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As someone who, up to this point has declined to “wear the ribbon” of Saving Folgers in Kansas City, might make those who do scratch their head a bit and wonder why not? Doesn’t Vince care about jobs? Does he hate coffee? Families will suffer because of this, Vince, aren’t you aware?

Vince, wear the ribbon. If you don’t, you just don’t care.

If anyone is interested I will explain why, to this point, I have declined to wear the ribbon. I view it as an opportunity to talk philosophically about something I care about and also help my readers notice something that they might previously have not seen before.

A metaphor was used with regard to this situation. It has been said that this situation, while on a much smaller scale, is similar to the situation in Haiti. I’ll bite my tongue a bit but am happy to use a different metaphor in which we now have more information and see if its valid.

We live in a world in which forces act without concern for human beings. Weather is a perfect example. Case in point, in 2005 South Louisiana endured one of the deadliest hurricanes ever to reach American soil. 1800 people lost their lives, businesses were overrun and thousands were displaced and homeless. The suffering was highlighted and enhanced by the interpretation that the US, state and local government response was largely neglectful and incompetent.

People took to the blogosphere and traditional airwaves to denounce the government efforts. Petitions were drawn for the victims. Because of the widespread criticism, the numerous breakdowns experienced, and the lack of satisfaction produced by its citizenry, FEMA is challenged with, according to the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace within Stanford University, to:

transform itself from a civil defense agency into a natural disasters agency.

It may be a challenge but at least they have the power to take action because of the criticism.

For background’s sake, it is interesting and obvious to note that no one protested or aired any grievance at the hurricane itself that actually caused the destruction. Why? Because hurricanes don’t care what humans think. As humans, we know it does no good to scream at weather. That’s why we blame the weatherman.

In the movement to Save Folgers in Kansas City, there are also forces at work that we have no control of.

We live in a global marketplace. This marketplace has grown exponentially in the Internet age. Manufacturing, programming, call center and other jobs that can be shipped remotely, typically are. As such, salaries for these types of jobs have become priced by overseas talent. Companies, not just big companies, but EVERY company is looking to operate as efficiently as possible. The commoditization of labor is a real problem for laborers who seek to earn a living and live a good life.

Because the cost of labor is plummeting, it poses a different set of challenges for large companies. Small companies can now compete with large companies for profits that were once unheard of. Micro-breweries are competing with larger beer distributorships. Boutique businesses can impact the bottom lines of Enterprise-size companies. To further illustrate, 11.9M viewers saw the last episode of The Sopranos. To date, 55M viewers have seen David After Dentist. The Internet age is a threat large companies must deal with.

Large businesses for the first time, because of the Internet age, see smaller businesses as huge threat in their industry. Folgers might not admit it, but it is scared to death of companies like The Roasterie. Every one of them are eating at the profits companies like Folgers used to enjoy.

At first glance, it might look like Folgers is the big bad corporation hopping on board the bandwagon to screw the American worker. In truth, the American worker is screwed by the global marketplace. But even that’s not true.

The global marketplace doesn’t care about the American or the Kansas City worker. It is indifferent because both the American and Kansas City worker can’t provide any marginal utility over a worker in Mexico, Brazil or, in the case of Folgers, New Orleans. In many ways, Kansas Citians could think fondly that these jobs aren’t headed overseas. I speculate that they could very easily.

The global marketplace is why you can search on any topic in the world and come up with a result. It is why knowledge is at a premium and hard work is at its all time low. It is why profits from the Roasterie have grown every year since 1993.

The flaw in the Save Folgers KC movement? Delicious aromas will still exist, they are just moving to a different neighborhood. Folgers isn’t the first company to lay off an American or Kansas City worker and they won’t be the last. Folgers isn’t doing so because they have no heart. They simply decided to operate more efficiently as a response to their owners — the shareholders of Smuckers Inc. If you were CEO, you might choose a different plant to close but, no doubt, you’d have to choose one.

To protest the Folgers plant leaving Kansas City is like protesting against Hurricane Katrina. It provides no benefit. Forces, like the global marketplace, and other laws of physics, exist without concern for humanity.

I have no suggestions over what you should protest instead. Maybe you can go to one of our lovely coffee shops in Kansas City and think about it for awhile.

Or . . .

Maybe you would like to make the world a better place. If so, I have a cause that I would like to talk to you about.

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Secondly, Line2, an app you can download from iTunes, allows you to have a second line on your iPhone. It’s similar to Google Voice in that allows you to make calls over a wireless network instead of using AT&T. No more dropped calls?

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Part One:

Part II: Introduction courtesy of Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine. Interesting choice.

Link courtesy of Buck Sommercamp.

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Case in point, the music industry.

In 1999, the U.S. accounted for 14.9 Billion in record sales (CDs, albums, tapes, etc). Record sales (including digital downloads) fell to around 11 Billion in 2008. Forrester projects that number to be around 9 Billion by 2013. The music industry “hoped” that digital sales would increase their overall revenues earlier in the last decade. That is all but a pipe dream now. Unless a major innovation is announced soon, I speculate revenues will continue to decline.

Because the music industry can’t rely on record sales alone to create profits, bands must now tour and sell merchandise regularly to account for lack of revenue. Even the biggest (and some of the oldest) like Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel among others are touring the country providing the only marginal utility left for these musicians — opportunities to hear them play live. According to 70% of those who participated in a recent survey, ticket prices are too expensive. In spite of this sentiment, gross ticket sales are rising and so is attendance.

While record sales are a commodity, live music isn’t. Demand has, seemingly, never been greater.

With the recently approved merger between Ticketmaster and Live Nation (the biggest retailer and promoter now one and the same), I speculate musicians will choose promoters and agencies that will allow them to play in the best venues and have the most powerful reach to allow them to increase revenues. If the economy holds constant, I speculate revenues for the live music business to increase steadily.

The music business has a winner on its hands.

It’s also a good time for new original bands to make their mark. The reason music sales are so commoditized is because of outlets like Napster and YouTube which made listening and watching music to become almost free. On YouTube, consumers are watching musicians like Dave Carroll sing about how United Breaks Guitars or Jonathan Coulton wax musical about Code Monkeys. Bands playing original music, like the Elders, connect with fans by planning excursions or having drinks with fans before and after concerts. Also, bands are updating on Facebook and Twitter.

Its still an uphill battle for relatively unknown bands to make money playing music. One expense for bands: promotion. Bands pay promoters to get their show booked, advertised and sponsored. Another expense: ticket brokers. Brokers take a cut of every ticket sold. Ticketmaster is rumored to see around 40% of every ticket sold.

Live music is carrying the music industry. The demand for live music has never been greater. Conglomerates are consolidating and seeing record profits. And yet, why are so many (i.e. the fans) the ones paying the expensive ticket prices, so unhappy?

Because of the merger, Irving Azoff, the CEO of Ticketmaster, Michael Rupino, CEO of LiveNation and Barry Diller the Ticketmaster Chairman appeared before the Senate Judiciary committee last year to testify.

Rupino remarked:

“I would also like to get on the record that when people hear what Ticketmaster’s service charge is, Ticketmaster was set up as a system where they took the heat for everybody. Ticketmaster gets a minority percentage of that service charge. In that service charge are the credit-card fees, the rebates to the buildings, rebates sometimes to artists, sometimes rebates to promoters.”

Essentially, bands, venues and promoters are paying Ticketmaster to be the fall guy for the Music Industry’s woes. According to the testimony, the breakdowns experienced by fans are not due to the fault of just Ticketmaster and the promoters. The breakdowns are caused by the entire industry itself.

Keep in mind, because of the very nature of live music and the scarcity of the musician(s) performing, artists are able to set their own prices in the marketplace. If fans wish to see their favorite artists play live, fans will have to pay.

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The world is a better place because of the legacy of openness, generosity, and love left by Bob Wormington.

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I can confirm what the Los Angeles Times reported 7 days ago that the Tablet will actually be called the “Canvas.” It will roughly be an eight to ten inch screen. It will run on the iPhone OS (Not the Mac). Bloomberg has speculated that Jobs will also announce that the iPhone and the Canvas will be released to all the other carriers. As I wrote late last year, this will mitigate many of the problems iPhone users face today with bandwidth usage and dropped calls. I can tell you that the iPhone will NOT be released to all carriers. It may be opened to another besides AT&T but don’t expect to be able to go to any store in the big 4(TMobile, Sprint, Verizon, and AT&T) and order up an iPhone to go.

What more have you heard?

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Since April, Web requests coming from an Android phone have increased almost six fold. 20% of all smartphone traffic comes from an Android device. 2 Android phones, the G1 and the HTC dream, are in the top 10 of devices purchased.

This is a boon for Android and if trends continue, Android will be the dominant player in the market for mobile devices.

Apple is not without options. Soon it can open up the monopoly AT&T has enjoyed and distribute its handset across multiple carriers. The iPhone, historically, has held the mindshare of the market.

Keep in mind too that Apple is more than just an iPhone company. With its rumored, “iPad,” coming next year, Apple will add yet another item to its stack of products . . . all designed to work together. And what ties them all together . . . iTunes.

iTunes is, historically, the most successful distribution model for downloading music. Consumers learned to use the “App Store,” by being conditioned to use iTunes for the iPod. As such, every mobile device is also judged by the power of its app store. In 2010, Apple is estimated have more than 300,000 “apps” available for download compared to around 100,000 available to Android. And every app is also another capability available for that platform.

And Apple has another product using the App Store than just the iPhone. According to Flurry’s Industry pulse, “it’s important to remember that the iPhone’s flank is protected by an often overlooked, powerful fighting brand: iPod Touch.” According to the study “24 million” of the 58 million Apple devices sold are the iPod Touch.

iTunes is a mammoth differentiator for Apple. It allows for the users to sync their devices and share information in a single household that includes music, photos, videos and data. And it is the single best reason why, if Apple can open up the device to more than one carrier, it will continue down its dominant path.

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In 2008, Google announced they were building a mobile operating system, Android. With Android, a user can enjoy many of the same features that exist on the iPhone. It is backed by the Open Handset Alliance, a consortium of over 50 companies focusing on open standards in the Mobile space. With October marking the one year anniversary of the Android G1, there has been a steady increase in handset deployment and Android usage.

According to the latest AdMob reports:

Since April, Web requests coming from an Android phone have increased almost six fold. 20% of all smartphone traffic comes from an Android device. 2 Android phones, the G1 and the HTC dream, are in the top 10 of devices purchased.

These numbers are about to increase.

Most recently, the Motorola Droid, another Android phone launched and after only two weeks, it comprised 24% of all Android requests.
According to the New York Times, we should see even more phones launched with Android technology before 2010 becomes a reality.

As the dysfunctional marriage between Apple and AT&T twists and tweaks many of its users into a frustrated frenzy, Google and its Open Handset Alliance, if left unchecked, will soon become the dominant player in the Industry. It’s distributed manufacturer strategy automatically creates a distributed network strategy. The capabilities appear similar to many casual users. And the price of an Android phone, aka Google Phone, is less expensive by comparison.

What can Apple do? You’ll have my recommendations next week.

**Update: Chris Brogan’s lastest post is a real world example of my claim that AT&T’s failings become a boon for Android.

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