Paul McGuinness during Midem

A couple weeks after Midem and after the speech of Paul McGuinness and reading several items on this speech, I think that many people don't take the effort to listen to what is actually being said. Part of listening to some body is understanding/knowing who that person is and what makes up this person's world. If you ask Peter Kolmisoppi to talk about the internet and media you will get a different story when asking Paul McGuinnes. Asking the guy who knows the future of music will give you another view on everything related to the internet etc. Listening to Paul and thinking about what he is saying a lot of things actually make a lot of sense. Not all, but this is primarily because he is not a real tech head and of course defending his position to the point where it becomes unrealistic. But the essence of what he is saying is quite true and understandable. I sometimes joke that in the land of the blind, one eye is the king (Dutch say, don't know if it translates to English ;-) Today it seems the moment you talk about the internet there are no rules, no laws and no mechanisms to stop things that hurt all or some users. We have a war on drugs and 80% of the planet likes to be stoned at given times, we search and destroy child pornography networks, we throw bombs on people that don't support our western values and may have access to WOMD, but we do not act on people and companies breaking copy right laws etc. Why? Maybe this is a less important subject in local and global politics and business and 80% of the people that enjoy music like to be stoned, so maybe if we kill the music business we kill two birds with one stone? Back to Paul and his ideas. It's hard to hold ISP's and mobile network operators responsible for everything that goes on inside their networks without supporting them and create a partnership where all take the burdern. It's true that the recorded music industry never made a serious attempt to create partnerships with technology providers, willing to pioneer together and together take the risk. Yes Paul might have a great relationship with UMG, but isn't UMG and it's Chief giving Steve Jobs a hard time to make iTunes less dominant? It's all to fucking complicated and to F*&^% political to get a prosperous  future for the music business. Everybody involved  is defensive and politics don't care because they live on votes, free music  earns you more votes than a music tax or utility bill for music. So how to proceed? The idea of a global hub for music isn't a bad idea IMHO. Easy access to music by Digital Service Providers and easy access to data about usage and money generated with that by owners. To make this happen we need all music companies to join this initiative, politics and lawmakers to allow this way of collaborating and technology providers to create and support this hub. Nothing is impossible, but to get this done on a global scale we need a Nelson Mandela for the music business. Maybe it's a good idea to lock up Doug Morris for the fact he runs a music business and release him 15 years later, tortured and motivated to the bone to change, but I don't think Doug likes the idea. So what to do? I have some ideas on this and even technology that could make this happen, but the hard thing is to get every body to agree that this is the way frwd. Back to Paul. Yes it's crazy that the internet gives everybody a card blanch to steal and it's crazy that everybody thinks you're crazy when speaking out loud about this. But it's also crazy that record companies take a decade to understand the world around us is changing and the game needs different rules. It's also crazy we still measure all of this misery against laws created before the mobilization. So I think too we should aim for a better collaboration between content and technology people/companies, dare to share! Create a new experience that goes beyond the expectations of the people out there enjoying music. I believe people don't mind to pay, but it should be simple and fair priced. Just make the effort and go on the street and try and buy a CD. I bet that with every store you try you get exactely what you want. Now try and do the same on the internet ;-) I do this several times per year and to be honest Steve and iTunes is the only place where I get what I want. I don't want advertising, I don't want complex stuff and subscriptions I just want to listen to music I love and want to buy. I will have an issue when changing my iPod for another device. I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. I also don't want companies/governments to track me, my music and my behaviour, I just want to pay and get what I paid for. This is me being a consumer. In the B2B it's a different ball game. There you want to understand what happened with your assets and how much you made on it. But it all starts with giving people that buy music to enjoy it what they want and even more!