Mashup! Mashup! Mashup!

If you have ever been to my place, you know I love to play music and especially mashups. Last spring break, my section from HBS went to Panama for spring break and we were at this resort , pretty much the most beautiful place i have ever been to my life (credit Sofia Berger for taking us there). While hanging out there, I put on a mashup from Girl Talk (Feed the Animals) and was surprised to see how many of my friends knew nothing about Mashups. We ended up playing the Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, Z-trip, Bootie and RJDJ albums for most of the trip. In 2005, my buddies Nick Soman and Noel Rosencranz first introduced me to the live Bootie mashups which happen every other Saturday in SF at DNA lounge and since I have been hooked. Check out this clip from Bootie SF Mashup Shows. If you are ever in SF, try to go. Also, a good explanation on what Mashups are:

I have experimented a bit with it but mine are terrible right now, so I will share if I ever get good. In the meantime, I thought I would share some of my favorites of all time. Click below to play and enjoy:

Party & Bullshit (In The USA) (Notorious B.I.G. vs. Miley Cyrus)

Work It Out (Beyonce vs. Dave Matthews vs. Jurassic 5 vs. Deee-Lite)

Dec. 4th, Oh What A Night (Jay-Z vs. Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons)

Z-Trip Mama Said Knock You Out

Q-Unit If I Can't Be A Champion

Q-Unit We Will Rock You In Da Club

Also, here are some links to where you can download some of these albums:

Best Of Bootie

Z-Trip

Girl Talk

Q-Unit Greatest Hits

Is Big Media Doomed?

The media industry as a whole is shrinking. Consumer spending in this market is inevitably going to decrease dramatically and not just in music, but also film, broadcast and cable. Everyone wonders, well wont advertising make up for it? Inevitably, the marketing budgets of corporations are not going to change and overall media ad spending will not increase because its tied to corporate budgets (the aggregate of online and offline wont change).

Google's recent announcement on ultrafast internet services is the scariest thing yet for the media industry. What has happened to music will also begin to happen to video and inevitably all large files (games, software, etc). This trend threatens the sustainability of any paid model. Media has been built through three monetization sources: advertising, subscription services (cable, print circulation, etc.) and individual purchases (download, physical, etc.). As broadband gets faster and more content becomes ad supported, consumers are going to spend less on both subscriptions and purchases, which had been the cash cows of the media industry. Fewer consumers will buy cable services, online debundling of channels will occur and fewer people will see movies as they can pirate them as quickly as they can a song today. Sure, all the media companies can provide free ad supported content, but there is only so much corporations can spend on ads and ad spending will never make up for the lost revenue because marketing budgets are not big enough.

So what is the solution? Freemium models and upselling the user experience. People will always pay for the best experience (bigger TVs, quicker access, improved features). Media companies need to make sure that consumers do not cut their budget for media spending. That spending will shift from buying and owning the content to experiencing the content.  Spotify has been very successful at this in Europe, providing a free ad supported service for music that does not include mobile adaption and has fewer features (no caching for example). They then hook the users on the experience and make them want and need the better product and pay a premium subscription fee to access the service with no ads and on their mobile devices. Once users like a service, they dont want to shift away if it gives them everything they want. Its time for media companies to innovate and focus on providing the best media experience and realize that content may not be king any more and something that broadband has commoditized. Marketing, delivery and user experience should now be the focus.

What Google Products are Successful: Google Buzz Out Today

Today Google launched Buzz to compete directly with Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, etc. It got me to thinking, how do people differentiate between services and what is the stickiness necessary for users to come back. Everyone assumes that no matter what Google does, it will always create a successful product and it is the ultimate threat to a start-up. “Oh-oh, Google entered your space, so you will inevitably be out of business in a few months.” Well this clearly is not true as we saw with Froogle, Dodgeball, Google Video, Google Answers, Google Video and Orkut (I know it has a huge following in Brazil, but it does not touch Facebook) and the jury is still out on Google Voice (I don’t particularly like it yet and the voicemail scribing is terrible). So how do we judge if Buzz will be successful (since Google will not release any negative user metrics)? 2 ways: 1) Does it differentiate itself from existing services 2) does it have the stickiness for people to come back.

1) Differentiation: How different is it to Facebook and Twitter? Will people stop using Facebook or Twitter because Google Buzz has come along? People did not stop using YouTube when Google Video was launched, and we know how that ended. Facebook and Twitter also have open platforms (allowing it to link to other services), so reach is not an issue, which Google utilizes to launch new services. Google is not fundamentally a social interface, but used as a utility to find and store information. Facebook and Twitter are social interfaces that have differentiated themselves from similar services (Facebook was better than Friendster because it was focused on affinity groups and Twitter was better than blogging because it was short and simple and allowed people to provide a proper stream of consciousness). I still can’t figure out what Google Buzz does to differentiate itself beyond being linked to the rest of your Google accounts. Historically that has not been enough as evidenced by Google’s failed products. When I first used Gmail, I immediately saw the functionality that made it so much better than other services. Buzz does not differentiate itself in the same way.

2) Stickiness: I think this relies on how easily people initially pick up functionality and whether it is compelling enough to come back. Second Life from Linden Lab (a company my old firm invested in) was initially successful because it was compelling enough to come back but growth stopped because it took too long to understand how to use it: on average, users picked up functionality in 45 minutes (way too long). The same thing has happened to Google Wave (I still can’t tell you what to use it for and from what I hear it is very innovative). I think the Google Buzz is very intuitive (a status update that ties to your Google profile and all your other Google aps including gtalk updates). I doubt it provides a product that is compelling enough to come back, partly because Google as a product is not used to broadcast what one is doing but rather a utility to find information. Google reader is a successful product but a very small percentage of people share information on there or even interact what others post. I also think that gchat will be a detriment to Buzz because it is a competing status update (and I know they will be integrated), but it will only contribute to confusing users who don’t know where to go to change their status (while in Google). Although simple to use, I ultimately don’t think Buzz has a compelling enough product for people to keep coming back.

I ultimately don’t think Buzz will be a success. This begs the question, if Sergei and Larry want to provide people status updates, why don’t they just go ahead and buy Twitter with their massive pile of cash they have on the balance sheet. It should only cost the $3-4B.