Tumble, coil & fumble

Let’s recap, a bit over 90% of mobile content purchases are coming from the iPhone platform right now. With the iPad coming to homes in late Q1 of 2010 we’ll see that number increase and reach intro the premium content sector as well.

The audience measurement and management companies, the Topspins, Nielsens and last.fm’s of the world will have to change at their core in order to stay/become relevant. Why? Their tracking tools are built on Adobe Flash technology. So by 2011 almost every member of the media consuming audience will not show up in their data.

Basing decisions on tracking data of only 5% - 8% of your audience will cause investors to reconsider their capital flow into start-ups. More importantly however if an artist provides statistics to a potential investor and they’ll see for example a Topspin logo on it, will they have any fait in the data?

The iPad creates a new type for media consumer. And possibly we can do away with the term ‘consumer’ there even. The large display allows us to create more involving applications and musical experiences than on the iPhone sized devices.

Premium content is something that will be expected from an artist to stay competitive. Experience driven apps are becoming equal to official web sites of artists. These apps are tailored specifically to a device and engage fans in ways that simply weren’t possible before.

With the smaller foot-print housing situation of metro areas the iPad or similar devices could even replace traditional TV sets.

People come home after a day at work and kick back with a “pint and a pad”.

Soon it’ll be perfectly normal to have your iPhone with you during the day, find out about a new artist and download their app over the air. When you get home you pick up your iPad and enjoy the full experience on a large screen.

And all of that music discovery takes place in complete absence of Flash. So how do we measure audiences now? Nielsen is likely to stick with their guess-work. Quantcast offers both JavaScript tracking and pixel tracking. Pixel tracking basically works everywhere for the rough data (who, where, when). JavaScript tells you the details. Google Analytics and Woopra are great contenders as well.

What will happen to Flash based audience measurement services? Darwin’s law.

So what do we need? Something that puts these numbers in graphs and age groups! Let me tell you a secret about the ‘online age’ vs the ‘passport age’… they don’t match. So you’re basically conjuring up a chart that’s 50% based on bullshit and 50% based on measured data. Nice.

How do we get it. Audience involvement. An audience that’s involved with an artist is more likely to be honest with their data. And why? Because they directly see the value they get from it in return.

Does that mean we don’t really need all these tools and services? Well I’ll let you do the math.

The best thing about the change in the music industry during the last years was that the status quo finally got obliterated. Innovation is not only allowed now, but necessary to survive.