Power Pal

Read an interesting blog post titled " The Future of Music Business Models (and Those Who Are Already There) " by Mike Masnick. I don't know much about the music industry, so thought it was interesting. The main take-away of the new way to approach music business models is: Connect with Fans (CwF) + Reason to Buy (RtB) = The Business Model The business models he used as examples ranged from giving away music for free online (but charging for "packages"), to getting your fan-base to fund your next record, to Here were the examples: Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails - They give away their music for free online, but ask that you sign-up for their email list. You then get emails about their upcoming tour dates, can find ways to connect with other fans (like forums, mobile apps, and user submitted videos), to purchasing higher-end packages. He's made a lot of money this way ... despite giving the music away for free. Drummer Josh Freese - He priced his album s...

I've been trying to get up-to-speed on the mobile industry these days and had a thought on search and implications for marketers. All this may be obvious, but I figure I'd jot it down while I'm thinking about it. I was looking into all the new location based gaming companies starting up these days. In looking over what companies like Foursquare , Gowalla , and Booyah are doing, it seems like it introduces new opportunities for how search and targeted advertising will work. Each of these games is producing a rich amount of content regarding where, when, and how consumers behave in the real world. This is incredibly valuable if you're a retailer or service provider. Apply some analytics to this data set and you could form completely new segmentation strategies based on behaviors rather than demographics. For example, make offers to those people that may actually respond to them based on their previous behaviors (e.g. they don't always frequent the same locat...