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News from Europe of Spotify's approved iPhone application suggests that subscription services might be making a comeback.



Interestingly, Spotify's app is not available yet in the United States.

Could Apple's iTunes be planning to launch a subscription service to rival Spotify?



Posted by Ed Cotton The merging of social and old media is going to be happening more and more.

Instead of trying to imagine what the future might be like, take a look at the BBC's online coverage of the US Open.

You will see a blend of Tweets, text messages and reporting to provide the reader with a textured overview of the day's play.

It's the mixing of different sources that creates an interesting feel and one that's better than reading any one of the single sources alone.


Posted by Ed Cotton Perhaps the marketing experts have been wrong for years when they have told brand owners to be very careful with every element of communication and to handle every little PR challenge with added smarts.

Could it be that brands are becoming just like Bill Clinton or even "The Terminator" in that they are impossible to destroy or they are covered in a thin coating of Teflon?

Take this story from Game Informer. (According to a reader survey)

- X-Box consoles have a failure rate of 54%

- Only 3.8% of X-Box owners would not buy another X-Box because of this

Note- This is not your typical shoddy low sample magazine research- the base is 5,000 responses.

It's amazing that people can put up with over half of these consoles failing and still love the brand enough to keep buying it.

What's so special about this brand?


Posted by Ed Cotton The battle for attention and issues is all about getting the story right and creating a compelling piece of media to transmit that story. This year food and animal rights have loomed from and center in three important films; Food Inc, The Cove and End of the Line.

Food Inc explores the impact of the industrialization of the US food system on people and animals, End of the Line covers the plight of fish in the world's oceans and The Cove focuses on the dolphin slaughter in small town in Japan.

I got the chance to see The Cove last night and it's a great film centered on the creator of Flipper and explains how a change of heart led him on a mission to release dolphins from captivity. This mission takes him to a small town in Japan where dolphins are acquired for aquariums and the ones that remain are slaughtered.



The problem with many documentaries is that fail to get their point across in a compelling way and end up preaching to the converted, The genius of The Cove and Food Inc is that appreciate and understand the need to expand the audience for the issue beyond the small band of activists. They do this by making the issues very clear and compelling and in the case of The Cove, adding a huge element of drama.

While these films will never capture the box office of Up, they are still must see movies that cleverly use social media as a tool for promotion and a springboard to activism.

The success of these films is proof that there's no substitute for good storytelling as a way to breakthrough in the attention war. Seeing a film about dolphin slaughter is not most people's idea of an entertaining Friday evening, but The Cove got me to pay attention, listen and to take action, which is no mean feat.






Posted by Ed Cotton While the jury is out on whether or not the crowd can create, there seems to be a splinter of evidence to suggest they can. The new short film from Mass Animation looks almost Pixar-like in its quality. The project used Facebook to recruit and reach out to animators around the world, who contributed individual frames. The film has 50k fans and over 17k people downloaded the software to participate.

While the crowd did contribute on mass, the editing process and quality control must have been rigorous, because the final list of animators, who's frames were used, is fairly short.

Mass Animation must have done something right in its promotion, marketing and outreach to ensure that quality animators participated in the project. Obviously, the incentive of credits in a high profile short film is not bad.

Here's the trailer.




Posted by Ed Cotton Interesting to see The Atlantic write such a flattering article about The Economist and the current state of the newsweekly business. The discussion revolves around the recent changes and re-designs at Time and Newsweek, who are both hoping to drag their publications to new found success in an otherwise dying print market.
The Economist is the one shining ray of light that everyone now wants to emulate, but The Atlantic does not believe this is possible because The Economist possess one thing these other titles lack.

"The secret to The Economist’s success is not its brilliance, or its hauteur, or its typeface. The writing in Time and Newsweek may be every bit as smart, as assured, as the writing in The Economist. But neither one feels like the only magazine you need to read. You may like the new Time and Newsweek. But you must—or at least, brilliant marketing has convinced you that you must—subscribe to The Economist. "

In the end, it's all about the brand.


Posted by Ed Cotton