Get Busy Committee
My friend Ian Rogers, CEO of Topspin has started to co-manage the band “Get Busy Committee“. He has begun to blog about ALL the activities that an artist manager needs to drive their band to success. It is a fascinating read and a real world education on how to take a band to market in the new music business. This is going to be really fun to watch as Ian lays out step by step what he is doing to break this band and “get busy” in the marketplace.
To bring a band to market in today’s indie music market is a hell of a lot of work. You need to be an entrepreneur and you need to build a team of people to help you market, package, promote, distribute, brainstorm, license, and develop a successful artist. Ian is taking the indie artist management route described at Music Power Network.
Here are some excerpts from his blog. Required reading for the indie artist and manager today:
The first thing we did was define success: as I mentioned earlier, the goal is to get this music to as many people as possible, connect directly with the ones who like it, build products those people want to own, and turn a profit. Sure it would be great to make enough money that Get Busy Committee could be their primary income, but we definitely aren’t starting with the “if we don’t get a song on a radio this is a failure” mentality. We are starting at zero. The goal is to grow every single week and not lose money.
We started by putting together a release plan. I opened a Google Doc and started dropping ideas and info into it, and encouraged others to do the same. We needed a team, so we started assembling the roster of people, services, and tools which would help us get this record out the door:
Building a Team
Press Relations and Marketing
Creative Direction
Web site design and development
Digital distribution
Physical Distribution
Non-traditional physical manufacturing
Performing rights organizations
LegalWhile getting the album to iTunes is the main thrust for a lot of artists, it’s only part of the story (and a very small part so far) for us. We’ve been preparing for this release for months, started selling the album in six different package two weeks ago, are selling the album for $1 on MySpace all weekend, and much more.
Web Site
The object was to make the site:
Home base. The top SEO result for “Get Busy Committee” and anything else related to the band.
Vibrant. It should update with the latest information about Get Busy Committee with very little effort, from a variety of sources. Furthermore, we weren’t going to spend time or money building any of these tools from scratch. We integrated WordPress and Twitter to make sure it was easy to update with long or short-form updates (respectively) easily.
A fan acquisition tool. The site should be sticky like fly-paper. If you visit the site you should have an incentive to leave behind your email address, follow GBC on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook, a friend on MySpace, friend on Flickr, subscriber on YouTube, or subscribe via RSS. We may only get one chance to make a connection with you. We don’t want you to bounce in and bounce out without granting us permission to reach out to you later with an update.
A tool for fans to create other fans. Every page of the site is instrumented with simple ways to share on Facebook and Twitter, and feedback for having done so either in the form of a counter or free music for having done so. We want it to not only be easy to spread the word but for you to be recognized for having done so.
A place to convert at whatever level of fan you happen to be. Never heard of Get Busy Committee? No problem, you can stream the record or download a few songs for free. Super fan? How about the T-Shirt/USB Flash Drive combo for $55? Somewhere in between? No worries. We have something for you.
Useful. If you’re a college radio DJ who needs a clean version to play on your show or a beatmeister who wants an acapella to remix that should be easy to find. If you’re a blogger writing about the band there should be, even if it’s not linked from the front page. Anything you email to people regularly should be on the site and easily linked to.
Thanks Ian.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
From Future of Music. Artist Management – from the Top
Saturday, November 14, 2009
From BusinessWeek. Buddy, Can You E-Mail Me 100 Bucks?
Buddy, Can You E-Mail Me 100 Bucks?
The Next Big Thing in U.S. banking may be mobile person-to-person money transfers
By Amy Feldman
BW Magazine
Story Tools
What if you could send money to that friend who loaned you $20 last week by using your mobile phone rather than having to go through the trouble of trekking to the ATM or mailing a check? All you'd need would be your buddy's e-mail address or cell number—and presto.
Folks in Japan and Europe can already do that. Soon Americans will, too. Studies show that U.S. consumers, particularly the younger set, have embraced the convenience of online shopping and e-banking and are now ready to move to the next frontier: person-to-person mobile payments. A recent poll by Mercatus, a financial consulting firm, showed that the proportion of people ages 26 to 34 who had used a cell phone to buy goods or pay for a product or service had doubled, to 14%, in the past year. "We are at the tipping point," says Mercatus managing partner Robert Hedges.
That's why a host of banks and financial companies are gearing up to add person-to-person payments to their existing mobile and online banking platforms. PNC Financial Services (PNC), Bank of the West, and the Boeing Employees' Credit Union have teamed up with CashEdge, an outfit that already processes more than $50 billion a year in transactions among financial institutions, with plans to launch services in early 2010. Fiserv (FISV), a technology company that handles bill payments for 3,100 financial institutions, is marketing a similar service. MasterCard (MA) is working with Obopay, a mobile payment startup with funding from Nokia (NOK), while Visa (V) has been testing a service with U.S. Bancorp (USB). "Payment habits change pretty slowly, but Generation Y expects this," says Thomas S. Kunz, director of payments and e-business at PNC Financial.
While the banks are only now waking to the potential of person-to-person payments, PayPal (EBAY) has built its business on them. The company, acquired by eBay in 2002, boasts more than 78 million active account holders worldwide and introduced a service earlier this year that allows users to make transfers over a cell phone. Now it is teaming up with banks to offer the same service. FIS (FIS), a tech outfit that counts 14,000 financial institutions as clients, announced on Nov. 3 that it plans to integrate PayPal's technology into its online banking platform. "We found out that [banks] want to collaborate more than ever," says PayPal President Scott Thompson.
HACKER HEAVEN?
Here's how these digital cash transfers work. Sign up for a service through your bank or another provider. Enter an e-mail address or phone number to send money to anyone you know. Your bank's person-to-person payment system will be integrated with your regular online banking, and the funds will be debited from your account. At the other end, the recipient may get the cash deposited directly into an account or have it posted to an existing credit card or a prepaid card. Mostly likely, banks will make money by charging senders a nominal fee (25 cents, say, for a domestic transfer).
What about security, you ask? "Banking on the mobile phone is relatively safe," says Robert Vamosi, an analyst on security, risk, and fraud at Javelin Strategy & Research. In fact, says Vamosi, mobile banking is currently more secure than online banking because cellular networks are tough to hack into.
With many of these new offers set to launch next year, the big question is who will gain critical mass quickly. Says Jim Bruene, editor of trade publication Online Banking Report: "Whoever can make mobile payments as simple as sending a text message is going to win."
Feldman is an associate editor with BusinessWeek in New York.
Monday, November 09, 2009
Phys Ed: Why Doesn’t Exercise Lead to Weight Loss? Oh, OK. (I take solace in Garfield: "I'm not overweight...just undertall.")
Sven Hagolani/Getty Images
For some time, researchers have been finding that people who exercise don’t necessarily lose weight. A study published online in September in The British Journal of Sports Medicine was the latest to report apparently disappointing slimming results. In the study, 58 obese people completed 12 weeks of supervised aerobic training without changing their diets. The group lost an average of a little more than seven pounds, and many lost barely half that.
How can that be? Exercise, it seems, should make you thin. Activity burns calories. No one doubts that.
“Walking, even at a very easy pace, you’ll probably burn three or four calories a minute,” beyond what you would use quietly sitting in a chair, said Dan Carey, Ph.D., an assistant professor of exercise physiology at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, who studies exercise and metabolism.
But few people, an overwhelming body of research shows, achieve significant weight loss with exercise alone, not without changing their eating habits. A new study from scientists at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Denver offers some reasons why. For the study, the researchers recruited several groups of people. Some were lean endurance athletes; some sedentary and lean; some sedentary and obese. Each of the subjects agreed to spend, over the course of the experiment, several 24-hour periods in a special laboratory room (a walk-in calorimeter) that measures the number of calories a person burns. Using various calculations, the researchers could also tell whether the calories expended were in the form of fat or carbohydrates, the body’s two main fuel sources. Burning more fat than carbohydrates is obviously desirable for weight loss, since the fat being burned comes primarily from body fat stores, and we all, even the leanest among us, have plenty of those.
The Denver researchers were especially interested in how the athletes’ bodies would apportion and use calories. It has been well documented that regular endurance training increases the ability of the body to use fat as a fuel during exercise. They wondered, though, if the athletes — or any of the other subjects — would burn extra fat calories after exercising, a phenomenon that some exercisers (and even more diet and fitness books) call “afterburn.”
“Many people believe that you rev up” your metabolism after an exercise session “so that you burn additional body fat throughout the day,” said Edward Melanson, Ph.D., an associate professor in the division of endocrinology at the School of Medicine and the lead author of the study. If afterburn were found to exist, it would suggest that even if you replaced the calories you used during an exercise session, you should lose weight, without gaining weight — the proverbial free lunch.
Each of Melanson’s subjects spent 24 quiet hours in the calorimeter, followed later by another 24 hours that included an hourlong bout of stationary bicycling. The cycling was deliberately performed at a relatively easy intensity (about 55 percent of each person’s predetermined aerobic capacity). It is well known physiologically that, while high-intensity exercise demands mostly carbohydrate calories (since carbohydrates can quickly reach the bloodstream and, from there, laboring muscles), low-intensity exercise prompts the body to burn at least some stored fat. All of the subjects ate three meals a day.
To their surprise, the researchers found that none of the groups, including the athletes, experienced “afterburn.” They did not use additional body fat on the day when they exercised. In fact, most of the subjects burned slightly less fat over the 24-hour study period when they exercised than when they did not.
“The message of our work is really simple,” although not agreeable to hear, Melanson said. “It all comes down to energy balance,” or, as you might have guessed, calories in and calories out. People “are only burning 200 or 300 calories” in a typical 30-minute exercise session, Melanson points out. “You replace that with one bottle of Gatorade.”
This does not mean that exercise has no impact on body weight, or that you can’t calibrate your workouts to maximize the amount of body fat that you burn, if that’s your goal.
“If you work out at an easy intensity, you will burn a higher percentage of fat calories” than if you work out a higher intensity, Carey says, so you should draw down some of the padding you’ve accumulated on the hips or elsewhere — if you don’t replace all of the calories afterward. To help those hoping to reduce their body fat, he published formulas in The Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research last month that detailed the heart rates at which a person could maximize fat burning. “Heart rates of between 105 and 134” beats per minute, Carey said, represent the fat-burning zone. “It’s probably best to work out near the top of that zone,” he says, “so that you burn more calories over all” than at the extremely leisurely lower end.
Perhaps just as important, bear in mind that exercise has benefits beyond weight reduction. In the study of obese people who took up exercise, most became notably healthier, increasing their aerobic capacity, decreasing their blood pressure and resting heart rates, and, the authors write, achieving “an acute exercise-induced increase in positive mood,” leading the authors to conclude that, “significant and meaningful health benefits can be achieved even in the presence of lower than expected exercise-induced weight loss.”
Finally and thankfully, exercise seems to aid, physiologically, in the battle to keep off body fat once it has been, through resolute calorie reduction, chiseled away. In other work by Melanson’s group, published in September, laboratory rats that had been overfed and then slimmed through calorie reduction were able to “defend” their lower weight more effectively if they ran on a treadmill and ate at will than if they had no access to a treadmill. The exercise seemed to reset certain metabolic pathways within the rats, Melanson says, that blunted their body’s drive to replace the lost fat. Similar mechanisms, he adds, probably operate within the bodies of humans, providing scientific justification for signing up for that Thanksgiving Day 5K.
From Clickz. Study: Consumers Look to Social Media for Discounts. Isn't OOH Social Too?
ClickZ NewsStudy: Consumers Look to Social Media for Discounts
By Douglas Quenqua, ClickZ, Nov 9, 2009
Among those who have friended a brand on MySpace or Facebook, a third did it mainly to gain access to exclusive deals and discounts, according to a new report from Razorfish. The number was even higher -- 44 percent -- for people who follow a brand on Twitter.
While it may come as no surprise that consumers view brand interactions as a potential source of insider deals, the findings should supply a dose of reality to marketers getting caught up in the hype of conversational marketing, said Garrick Schmitt, group VP of experience planning at Razorfish and author of the agency's FEED report.
"There's all this talk about social media and conversation, but you forget that what's at the heart of it for most consumers is actual products and the act of buying products," he said. "I don't think that it takes away from the power of the medium, but I do think that you can't forget what's primary in the consumers' mind in terms of the conversation."
The study cited Dell, Amazon and Starbucks as brands that have won large followings online by using social media platforms to present regular deals and discount. Starbucks, for example, has amassed nearly 5 million fans on Facebook, in part by frequently posting alerts about free products and discounts.
The study also showed that consumers were happy to let brands be part of their social media experience, so opportunities for branding do exist.
Seventy six percent of respondents said they welcomed brand advertising on social networks, and most have sought to initiate interaction. Seventy percent said they had read a corporate blog, 67 percent said they'd sought out and watched a commercial on YouTube, and 65 percent said they had played at least one branded casual game online.
Forty percent of consumers have friended a brand on Facebook or MySpace, and 26 percent have followed a brand on Twitter, according to the study.
"Consumers who have brand experiences based on our findings are the ones who are becoming much more active, and that is changing and shifting their perceptions and their purchase patterns," said Schmitt.
The survey took place in August of 2009 among 1,000 American consumers. The respondents were evenly split between men and women and hailed from 10 different regions of the country.
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Saturday, November 07, 2009
Thursday, November 05, 2009
The WSJ Scores with it DOOH Strat. Content + 360 = Success?
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From BusinessWeek. Media Deals: Why They Fail
Media Deals: Why They Fail
Posted by: Tom Lowry on November 03
On Monday night, 150 or so of the media elite gathered at the Thomson Reuters headquarters in New York’s Times Square to listen to a panel discussion focused on one basic notion: how badly they’ve all screwed up.
The panel was assembled to help promote a new book, “The Curse Of The Mogul, What’s Wrong With the World’s Leading Media Companies,” in which the co-authors skewer media executives for their companies’ poor financial performance over the years and for propagating a “myth” about the necessity to do mergers. Needless to say, there was no shortage of opinion on Monday night.
Lead panelist and co-author of the book, investment banker Jonathan Knee, kicked it off by saying that media executives have essentially tried to merge their way to excellence by “convincing the world there is something special and magical about media.” To hear more from Knee, click here
Here are a few more highlights from the panel, moderated by New York Times media columnist David Carr, who described The Curse of the Mogul “an intellectually honest book” but then drew laughs when he said he worried that its title is “vaguely satanic.”
Former cable executive and now partner of investment firm InterMedia Partners, Leo Hindery Jr. slammed Barry Diller’s dealmaking record. “Do you think (Time Warner CEO) Jeff Bewkes and (News Corp. Chairman) Rupert (Murdoch) go to sleep at night worrying about what Barry did today? They could care less.”
Hindery said he admired Murdoch for his vision and said today’s media executives are “mushy” and have “no soul, no vision….Can anybody tell me what the vision at Viacom is today?”
Time Warner CFO John Martin, who spent a lot of night distancing himself from the disastrous AOL-Time Warner deal that happened when he wasn’t in his current job, said his company is now moving toward becoming a more focused company. He emphasized that it doesn’t need to do deals. “Abstinence is the best policy.”
When Carr asked what media company has done a good job, Susan Lyne, the former CEO of Martha Stewart Omnimedia and currently CEO of Gilt Groupe, cast her vote for ESPN, which she says has “stayed true to its mission.” But she did note that its one mistake was getting into restaurant business.
On the possibility of a merger between NBC Universal and Comcast, Hindery said “both guys really need it,” referring to (NBCU parent) General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt and Comcast CEO Brian Roberts. “Brian has the carryover (from the failed attempt to buy the Walt Disney Co.) and he can’t lose another one.” That said, Hindrey wouldn’t predict whether the deal would be a success.
In a closing shot, Hindery told Knee that after writing this book “you are never going to have another investment banking client again.”
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Forrester: Mobile Will Become The Hub Of Multichannel Consumer Relationships
Marketers seeking to sprint out of the recession need to become multichannel-friendly and completely consumer-focused, and get over themselves. The need to construct data-rich profiles of customers, personalize responses to their needs and smartly play in their social, mobile digital sandbox are themes that resonated in the opening-day keynote addresses and discussions at Forrester Research's annual Consumer Forum in Chicago Tuesday.
"Consumers are focused on their needs, not on your channels," Henry Harteveldt, Forrester vp and principal analyst, warned in the opening keynote.
Basic information, transactions (from signing up for email alerts to buying products), and providing assistance must be interactive and real-time across all possible devices -- from smartphones and other mobile data devices to PCs and televisions.
Sadly, too few companies are embracing multichannel strategies to improve their recession-strained consumer relations and sales, although many say that developing digital channels is a top 2010 investment priority. Less than one-third of companies recently surveyed by Forrester said they want or can provide a consistent cross-channel experience. The other two-thirds cite budget, staff and technology constraints as reasons why they cannot.
But even companies testing the waters are quickly falling behind the 80% of Americans online -- three-quarters of whom have broadband, because they have not added mobile or social network strategies to their marketing mix.
"Mobile will become the center of your digital channel relationships," Harteveldt said, pointing to 36% of smartphone users who access the Web daily from their devices. One in four use the device to research products they will buy either online or offline. The heavy lifting needed to become an effective multichannel marketer often involves eliminating silo operations; aggregating, analyzing and acting on consumer-profile data from across the company; and integrating online and offline consumer marketing, sales and service.
For some, that complete overhaul also means viewing everything about marketing and customer service through the eyes of consumers. Some 13% of consumers surveyed by Forrester say the ads they see are not relevant to their wants and needs.
Some companies have accepted the extensive transformation challenge that can take several years to execute but immediately yield cost savings and increased revenues.
Hewlett-Packard saved $1 billion as a result of a three-year process of aggregating 750 customer databases across all of its international operations. Employees now analyze, share and act on the massive data bank to customize service and products across 2 billion annual customer interactions in 117 countries.
Creating and leveraging functional customer intelligence is the difference between giving customers what you presume they want and what they actually need, explained Hewlett-Packard vp Prasanna Dhore. The company also has extended its "social media 101" efforts to ask consumers to design products.
"Once we know what they want, we can deal with it on their terms," Dhore said.
Bob Kraut, Pizza Hut vp of marketing communications, said the company has tapped the entrepreneurial spirit of its own in-house teams and its agency, imc2, to create progressive interactive mobile applications (such as placing customized pizza orders) and social network participation (with inexpensive professional and consumer-produced viral videos).
In a grab for young male consumers, Pizza Hut is using social media and mobile connected devices to partner with Electronic Arts Sports and other video game companies, fight night and films such as Terminator 4.
Kraut said the company's willingness to experiment has been driven by the fact that its key consumers socialize, play, buy and generally exist online.
Forrester reports that online captured 29% of consumers' reported general merchandise retail spending in the second quarter of 2009. Half of all online Americans participate in social networks, a number that has increased 46% in the past year.
Still missing from the transformation equation are the measurement systems and metrics needed to assess the effectiveness of multichannel approaches. There are no sure ROI formulas for interactive consumer relevance and engagement. Still, it is imperative to "measure customers' total value and profitability -- not just their individual action or transaction," Harteveldt said. "This is all about getting the customer to say yes."
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Wednesday, October 28, 2009
GSMA Mobile Asia Awards 2009 - Nominees
The nominees for the Asia Mobile Awards 2009
1a - Best Mobile Game
- Bharti Airtel Limited, INDIA for 'Airtel GamesClub'
- Electronic Arts, PEOPLES REP OF CHINA, for 'The SIMS 3'
- Gameloft, TAIWAN, R.O.C. for 'Hero of Sparta'
- Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S., TURKEY 'Mobiwar'
1b - Best Mobile Music Service
- Aircel Limited, INDIA for 'Aircel Dialer Tunes Eat-All-You-Can service'
- Bharti Airtel Limited, INDIA for 'Gaana Bolo Hello Tunes Pao'
- China Mobile, PEOPLES REP OF CHINA, for 'New Albums Digital Release'
- Green Tomato Limited and CSL Limited, HONG KONG for 'Musicholic'
- Singapore Telecom Mobile Pte Ltd, SINGAPORE for 'SingTel AMPed'
1c - Best Mobile TV or Video Service
- Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT) Limited, HONG KONG for 'The Strongest PCCW Mobile Infotainment Platform on uprising Android Platform'
- Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., INDIA for 'Tata Sky Active Mall'
- Mobixell Networks, ISRAEL for 'Mobixell Videon and InfoGin IMP'
- Motorola Inc, HONG KONG for 'Motorola TuVista'
- Telegent Systems, SINGAPORE for 'Telegent Free-to-Air Mobile TV – TLG1120 Mobile TV Receiver'
1d - Best Mobile Advertising or Marketing
Bharti Airtel Limited, INDIA and Onmobile Global Limited for 'Gaana Bolo Hello Tunes Pao'
- InMobi, INDIA for 'Reebok Indian Premier League Campaign'
- Madhouse Inc, PEOPLES REP OF CHINA, for 'HP'
Smart Communications Inc, PHILIPPINES and Unilever - AXE for 'AXE ON PHONE'
Zad Mobile, UNITED STATES and Indosat for 'SC i-klan'
2a - Best Mobile Enterprise Application Product or Service
Aircel Cellular Ltd., UNITED STATES and uReach Technologies, Inc. for 'Aircel mConference Plus'
Aircel Cellular Ltd., UNITED STATES and uReach Technologies, Inc. for 'Aircel mReceptionist'
- Cylande, PEOPLES REP OF CHINA and Terranova for 'Cylande’s StoreAssistant Corner Manager'
- Orascom Telecom Bangladesh Limited, BANGLADESH for 'banglalink jigyasha'
- tenCube Pte Ltd, SINGAPORE and SingTel for 'PHONESafe'
2b - Best Mobile Internet Service
- Aircel Limited INDIA 'Aircel’s Pocket Internet'
- Eterno Infotech Pvt. Ltd, INDIA for 'NewsHunt'
- Geodesic, UNITED STATES for 'Mundu IM'
GyPSii, NETHERLANDS and China Unicom for 'UniSpace'
- KT Corporation, REPUBLIC OF KOREA, for 'SHOW HYUNDAI/ KIA-MOTOR mobile service, SHOW is brandname of KT’s WCDMA service'
2c - Best Mobile Money Service
- Bharti Airtel Limited, INDIA for 'Airtel m-Commerce Service mChek on Airtel on Voice (IVR)'
- Globe Telecom, PHILIPPINES for 'GCASH CLICK'
- SK Telecom, HONG KONG for 'T Cash'
- Smart Communications Inc, PHILIPPINES for 'Smart Money’s expanded mobile-based securityfeature for online purchases'
- Sybase 365, SINGAPORE and Celcom for 'Celcom AirCash'
2d - Mobile Money for the Unbanked Award
Bharti Airtel Limited, INDIA and EKO for 'EKO'
- MPAY SOLUTIONS LIMITED, PHILIPPINES for 'm-bux'
- Smart Communications Inc, PHILIPPINES for 'Smart Islands Activation Program (IAP)'
- WING Cambodia Limited, CAMBODIA, for 'WING'
4 - The Green Mobile Award
Grameenphone Ltd, BANGLADESH and Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd for 'Building a Greener Mobile Network'
- Nokia, INDIA for 'Take-back & Recycling of unwanted devices and accessories in Asian Markets'
- Smart Communications Inc, PHILIPPINES for 'SMART Post-Marketing Waste Management initiative (tarpauliN recycling)'
- StarHub Mobile Pte Ltd, SINGAPORE for 'Green Network- Singapore's first Solar-Powered Mobile Base Station'
- ZTE Corporation, PEOPLES REP OF CHINA, for 'ZTE’s GSM ZXG10 uBSS system'
Best Mobile Broadband Handset/ Device - Judging of the Best Mobile broadband Handset/Device’ category will take place in November, nominees will be announced soon.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
I know times are tough for the music biz, but this is too much...Apology for singing shop worker
Sandra Burt was told she needed a licence to sing in the store
A shop assistant who was told she could not sing while she stacked shelves without a performance licence has been given an apology.
Sandra Burt, 56, who works at A&T Food store in Clackmannanshire, was warned she could be fined for her singing by the Performing Right Society (PRS).
However the organisation that collects royalties on behalf of the music industry has now reversed its stance.
They have sent Mrs Burt a bouquet of flowers and letter of apology.
Mrs Burt, who describes herself as a Rolling Stones fan, said that despite the initial warning from the PRS, she had been unable to stop herself singing at work.
They would need to put a plaster over my mouth to get me to stop, I can't help it
Sandra Burt
Singing shop workerThe village store where Mrs Burt works was contacted by the PRS earlier this year to warn them that a licence was needed to play a radio within earshot of customers.
When the shop owner decided to get rid of the radio as a result, Mrs Burt said she began singing as she worked.
She told the BBC news website: "I would start to sing to myself when I was stacking the shelves just to keep me happy because it was very quiet without the radio.
"When I heard that the PRS said I would be prosecuted for not having a performance licence, I thought it was a joke and started laughing.
"I was then told I could be fined thousands of pounds. But I couldn't stop myself singing.
"They would need to put a plaster over my mouth to get me to stop, I can't help it."
In response to the furore created by their initial hardline, the PRS contacted Mrs Burt to apologise.
In a note attached to a large bouquet of flowers they said: "We're very sorry we made a big mistake.
"We hear you have a lovely singing voice and we wish you good luck."
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Good news for mistake-prone me. Getting it Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn
For years, many educators have championed “errorless learning," advising teachers (and students) to create study conditions that do not permit errors. For example, a classroom teacher might drill students repeatedly on the same multiplication problem, with very little delay between the first and second presentations of the problem, ensuring that the student gets the answer correct each time.
The idea embedded in this approach is that if students make errors, they will learn the errors and be prevented (or slowed) in learning the correct information. But research by Nate Kornell, Matthew Hays and Robert Bjork at UCLA that recently appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition reveals that this worry is misplaced. In fact, they found, learning becomes better if conditions are arranged so that students make errors.
People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning. It’s an idea that has obvious applications for education, but could be useful for anyone who is trying to learn new material of any kind.
In one of their experiments, students were required to learn pairs of “weak associates,” words that are loosely related such as star-night or factory-plant. (If students are given the first word and asked to generate an associate, the probability of generating the target word is only 2 or 3 percent.) In the pretest condition, students were given the first word of the pair (star- ???) and told to try to generate the second member that they would have to later remember. They had 8 seconds to do so. Of course, almost by definition, they nearly always failed to generate the correct answer. They might generate bright in the case of star-???. At that point they were given the target pair (star–night) for 5 seconds. In the control condition, students were given the pair to study for 13 seconds, so in both conditions there were a total of 13 seconds of study time for the pair.
The team found that students remembered the pairs much better when they first tried to retrieve the answer before it was shown to them. In a way this pretesting effect is counterintuitive: Studying a pair for 13 seconds produces worse recall than studying the pair for 5 seconds, if students in the latter condition spent the previous 8 seconds trying to retrieve or guess the answer. But the effect averaged about 10 percent better recall, and occurred both immediately after study and after a delay averaging 38 hours.
Some readers may look askance at the use of word pairs, even though it is a favorite tactic of psychologists. In another article, in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Lindsey Richland, Nate Kornell and Liche Kao asked the same question, but they used more educationally relevant text material (an essay on vision). Students were asked to read the essay and prepare for a test on it. However, in the pretest condition they were asked questions about the passage before reading it such as “What is total color blindness caused by brain damage called?” Asking these kinds of question before reading the passage obviously focuses students’ attention on the critical concepts. To control this “direction of attention” issue, in the control condition students were either given additional time to study, or the researchers focused their attention on the critical passages in one of several ways: by italicizing the critical section, by bolding the key term that would be tested, or by a combination of strategies. However, in all the experiments they found an advantage in having students first guess the answers. The effect was about the same magnitude, around 10 percent, as in the previous set of experiments.
This work has implications beyond the classroom. By challenging ourselves to retrieve or generate answers we can improve our recall. Keep that in mind next time you turn to Google for an answer, and give yourself a little more time to come up with the answer on your own.
Students might consider taking the questions in the back of the textbook chapter and try to answer them before reading the chapter. (If there are no questions, convert the section headings to questions. If the heading is Pavlovian Conditioning, ask yourself What is Pavlovian conditioning?). Then read the chapter and answer the questions while reading it. When the chapter is finished, go back to the questions and try answering them again. For any you miss, restudy that section of the chapter. Then wait a few days and try to answer the questions again (restudying when you need to). Keep this practice up on all the chapters you read before the exam and you will be have learned the material in a durable manner and be able to retrieve it long after you have left the course.
Of course, these are general-purpose strategies and work for any type of material, not just textbooks. And remember, even if you get the questions wrong as you self-test yourself during study the process is still useful, indeed much more useful than just studying. Getting the answer wrong is a great way to learn.
Are you a scientist? Have you recently read a peer-reviewed paper that you want to write about? Then contact Mind Matters co-editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist at the Boston Globe, where he edits the Sunday Ideas section.
Heard it before, but we ought to hear it again: Creative ad agencies must adapt or die in digital age
Creative advertising agencies are failing to adapt to the new digital landscape and are losing out to media buying agencies in a "Darwinian" ad world, according to a senior agency executive.
The advertising industry is facing a Darwinian era of adapt-or-die, said Damian Blackden, president of Omnicom Media Group, speaking at the MediaGuardian Changing Advertising Summit today.
Blackden added that the fundamental structural shift in consumers, and advertising, to online – exacerbated by the recession – has left many traditional agencies caught out using out-of-date business models.
"We are not going to replace creative agencies," he said, referring to agencies that have traditionally specialised in making TV, press and radio campaigns. "However, many have missed an opportunity by not investing in data capabilities like many media agencies."
Blackden argued that in many cases it has been media buying agencies that have stolen a march by investing in resources to better measure users' habits online and how to target them.
"Those [agencies] who have an advantage now are unlikely to be caught up any time soon," he said. "No one has got it right yet, developed a perfect agency model. The Darwinian conditions are pretty painful for the industry but I am optimistic."
In the same Changing Advertising session Samir Arora, the chief executive of online network Glam Media, highlighted some key differences between how the digital world works and consumer behaviour in the "traditional" world.
Arora said the top 100 websites globally, including Facebook, account for less than 20% of consumers' time spent web surfing.
"That is unbelieveable – this un-monetised web where we spend all this time is nothing like other media," he added, giving another example of how the internet has changed the power of communication. "500 small, tiny Anna Wintours [online] have more power than Anna Wintour will ever have."
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