Yesterday Radiohead released their new album “In Rainbows”.  To stir the pot, the band are no long with a record label so released it independently through their website.  The beauty of it, you can pay whatever you like for the album download - yes - that includes $0. I paid  £ 4.45 (about $10) because to me, that is what it is worth.  I won’t lie, I felt a really odd sense of satisfaction pulling out my credit card.  It was like simultaneously donating to a worthy cause and getting a real bargain to be proud of.  I felt like I was doing them a personal favour by paying, because I knew I didn’t have to.  I admit that if the album came out and was £ 4.45 to buy from their site, I would have hesitated.  But because it was a buyers market, I was keen to participate.

Now for the juicy bit.  What edge does the direct download pay-what-you-want business model have over traditional music distribution channels?  Forgetting the obvious difference in production costs, there is another key component: every person who downloads the album from the Radiohead site provides detailed metrics about who they are, where they live, how old they are and your email address.  You don’t get that when a listener buys it from a store, you get the metric that someone in that area bought an album (after you’ve just paid for it to be cut, printed and shipped from who knows where).  It is a lot more powerful to have a completely up to date database of listeners that you can easily contact.  It would make tour destination planning very easy as well.

Obviously there are few factors at play here before we get all excited and think that record labels are doomed forever: 

1. Radiohead are insanely popular.
2. They already have money.
3. They have nothing to lose.

However it might only take a few big profile artists to create some momentum behind this donationware music business model.  The concept needs a few cases to study before the idea is truly validated.  For the moment I suspect a lot of people like me are participating on a rationale that is dictated partially by the disruptive nature of the idea itself.  I sure hope they release some metrics, would be fascinating to know the downloads and average “price”. 

Oh, and for the record (pun intended), the album is great - why not download it?  

Barely 24 hours after Nokia announced the acquisition of Navteq, Tele Atlas shares have jumped.  Good news for them, not so good for TomTom who will have to lift their $2.5 billion bid they made in July to obtain the mapping company.  Tele Atlas is another Google Maps data provider along with Navteq so it will interesting to see if they start reaching for their chequebook too.

Nokia announced today that they are acquiring mapping company Navteq for $8.1 billion, here is the 2-minute deal run down:

About Navteq

• Founded 1985, has extensive digital map content and an associated data platform
• $582 million in revenue 2006
• Provides for car navigation, mobile navigation and internet based mapping
• Provides significant data to Google (the other major vendor is Tele Atlas)
• More info

The deal

• $8.1 billion ($78 cash per share)
• Price represents 34% premium on NAVTEQ stock a month ago
• Navteq will continue existing services
• It has pushed Garmin shares down 12% today

The play

• Nokia want to expand their location based services
• Acquiring Navteq will accelerate their time to market for mapping products
• It may be a play to try nudge Google away (although it would be interesting to know what portion of Navteq’s revenue comes from Google)
• This isn’t the first mapping company Nokia has snapped up. Last year they also acquired gate5
• Could be part of a more serious play to enter mainstream GPS market competing head to head with Garmin, TomTom, Navman

It seems an interesting acquisition. Ultimately, viewed as a content play, there are two obvious ways to monetize that:

1. Make your customers pay a premium for the service / product generated from the content
2. Establish an advertising network but provide content for free

There are of course, obvious problems with both of these two options being Nokia. With the first, you have to convince consumers that Google Maps (free) isn’t as good despite having partially the same data. With the second, you have to build an advertising network that essentially competes with Google.

Last time I checked, Google were still doing pretty well with the whole advertising thing.

Either way you cut it, Google is going to keep overshadowing Nokia without a shake up somewhere. Even if Nokia develop straight consumer GPS units (emphasizing product rather than content) they obviously cannot ignore their core mobile devices business.

It was inevitable.  It has taken a few months but serious anti-iPhone campaigns are starting to appear, this weekend Nokia has revealed theirs taking the form of billboards in New York and a website, with much more sure to follow.  I wouldn’t say it is a particularly aggressive campaign, appearing to be almost a bolt-on to their existing marketing guff.  The billboard really sums up three things about Nokia:

• They can’t attract their N series market without directly comparing themselves to the iPhone
• The N series features aren’t amazing enough to afford frontline marketing
• They are not innovative enough to develop a revolutionary product

Of course it is only responsible business for them to be so defensive, but how about something offensive?  How about making a product that gets the Apple marketing team going? 

Come on Nokia, aren’t you open to anything?  

When was the last time you used your DVD player, mobile phone, MP3 player, and wondered why that button was there, or why they seem to design purely to compete without any original innovation and creativity? That could all change with the TechCrunch40 finalist CrowdSpirit from France.

We’ve seen how Ponoko can use crowdsourcing to shake up the supply chain for furniture, jewelery and general industrial design. CrowdSpirit aims at the consumer electronics industry by creating a community where users can interact in the production process from concept to completion. Their website describes the process:

1. Submit an idea for a new innovative electronic product
2. Vote, define specification, or even invest money on products
3. Once finalized, test & recommend products to retailers
4. Based on your contribution, earn a share of the product revenue

Their business model is somewhat of a paradox, being both elegantly simple and devastatingly complex at the same time. The management overhead could be enormous depending on just how much responsibility they are willing to give to their community members. Consumer electronics, being inherently physical, are always going to be a lot more difficult to apply a crowdsourcing business model to than say, a crowdsourced novel.

Nevertheless, it is liberating for product designers, small investors, retailers and even end consumers that they can contribute a lot or a little to the design, development and distribution of a tangible thing. The market may be a little green for such disruption, but you have to admire the pioneers.

I was somewhat surprised to open my letterbox and see a bigger-than-a-letter sized package from Just Car Insurance.  I was more surprised to open it and find a pair of bright blue underpants with a note that said I “might need a spare pair” if I win a holiday they are offering.  This is very good marketing, but what really made me laugh was the note that apologised for sending them because they had a database administration error and weren’t sure whether I was happy for “marketing” material to be sent to me or not.   

I can just see their marketing manager with 50,000 pairs of underwear and a broken spreadsheet saying “you know what, get the courier, we’ll risk it!”.

1. You don’t have to upgrade.  So don’t.  Apple don’t have a gun to your head, just don’t click the update button. 
2. Apple knows that people with unlocked iPhones are customers too.  They probably just like their mobile carrier or are not in the United States (like myself).  Of course they have to look proactive against unlocking and it is reasonable to void the warranty, but they are hardly going to invest solid time and money to essentially block a decent chunk of people buying their product.
3. The new features aren’t that amazing anyway. Okay, the iTunes wifi store is cool, but not really cool enough to warrant stressing to update your new toy.  The TV out is cool.  The other minor features are good too, but nothing sensational or even expected (MMS, anyone?).  
4. The iPhone community will come to the rescue.  Rest assured given time the impressive and dedicated iPhone software community will allow unlocked sims on the new 1.1.1 firmware.

Comment below with your thoughts.

Do you think 50,000 people from all over the world who have never met each other could make a feature film? A Swarm of Angels is a web 2.0 community aiming to create exactly that, with a budget of £1m by gathering 50,000 people willing to contribute £25 each. The film gets released under creative commons and any profit gets put into the next project. The project was launched early this year, so it now time to check in.

There are 5 phases to their funding, the first two have been achieved presumably taking them to the first £125,000 of seed money. Interestingly enough, they freeze membership between phases which seems irrational, after all if I’m interested enough now to take out my wallet then why stop me? Obviously this is a long way from the 50,000 target, but the web has always proved that the first stage of an idea is the hardest, and it would be safe to say A Swarm of Angels has ticked that box. What provides some confidence to the concept is their strong sense of process, threaded through their website and identity:

FUND / FILM / FLOW

Fund the project. Call for collaborators. Publicize and create marketing materials. Gather the first 1000 members through targeting niche online communities and parts of the blogosphere. Develop the project and infrastructure. Start script development. Open the project up to more members.

Film. Collaborate. Develop scripts using a Wiki. Crew through The Swarm. Funding drive for pre-production/production/post-production. Create marketing and final materials.

Flow. Master materials. Create spin-off materials. Publicize. Burn. Upload. Seed. Download. View. Remix. Share.

What I would like to see is a broader execution of the open source film concept. A Swarm of Angels has a reasonable amount of predefined concepts that are then steered by the community. It would be great to see a community / web app that is built to nurture the entire process for independent film groups, from funding, resources, distribution etc. This could have real commercial value and guide the complicated path of independent film production with the obvious benefits of crowdsourcing.