22:
The current commercial model of “CD stores” are in my opinion dinosaurs yet to realise the meteor has landed.
I was reading the other day about “Sounds” closing after its parent company collapsed. “Sounds” was the biggest national chain of music stores in New Zealand. In the article on Stuff.co.nz the company blamed a weak retail market and illegal downloading of music on the internet.
“Auckland-based Real Groovy music store manager Chris Hart said competition from The Warehouse was “huge”, the discount chain selling CDs for about $22 when the full markup price for a music store was about $35”.
Looking at the Real Groovy website you’ll find prices up there on average between $27.95 – $34.95.
Stores like the online Apple itunes store allow you to buy albums digitally and download them onto your computer through itunes. Digital hard-drives are becoming the main transportation and storage device internationally and will continue to be so. Music CDs are now mere transport devices until the user uploads it onto their computer or digital mp3 player.
With the release of the “iPod touch” and the “iPhone” buying has now become mobilised with music available for purchase from the “iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store”. Not that I’m condoning the coffee, but even at selected Starbucks stores if you like the song playing at the time you can purchase it instantly (can’t wait till Peoples Coffee and Mojo get this service ha! ). It is services like this which are showing the direction needed.
I feel the current packaging model is making it even more attractive to buy or “acquire” music online. If you are committed to persuading people to buy a “hard-copy” a far better “packaged experience” could be provided. Something unique, with time and passion invested is necessary. Rather than the cheap “cd booklet” with little quality material, a more thorough and informative book combined with the cd would provide both the digital music and the physical experience.
A local company which has been exploring this “packaging” technique is LOOP Recordings. They have released many multimedia boxed sets containing a CD, DVD and a book. One of the latest examples is “LOOP Select 008: RARE VISION”. It is a “A multimedia firecracker [box set] CD/DVD/Book” containing:
-13 tunes from Recloose, Adi Dick, The Black Seeds, P-Bass Expressway, Kraak & Smaak, Nickodemus etc.
-2 hrs of short films, documentaries, music videos & motion graphics
-20+ artist work showcased.
Check out the online booklet for a taste of this stunning package.
It retails at $44.95, just ten dollars more than the “standard” $34.95 for a regular CD. Currently on the smokecds site they have it at $32.95, a bargain for the content provided.
This is another great example of the possibilities available for music companies who open there eyes, evolve and embrace the exciting possibilities of the mobilised and musical web.
12:
I just finished watching the Bill Buxton presentation from the global Expression around the Clock seminars. It is part of the webcasts from the Microsoft launch of its Expression suite.
If you are going to watch any I would recommend this and also the one by August de los Reyes, as I touched on in an earlier post. It will be interesting to see how these talented individuals impact on future user experience led Microsoft products.
The title is “Design for the Wild: Sketching experiences”. Bill Buxton is a senior researcher in Microsoft Research. Here’s an article talking about his job further.
It’s well worth the watch as he delves into his experiences into the growing importance of Human-centric design over a flawed Techno-centric methodology. He discusses that whilst technically communication and learning tools have changed dramatically since the slate and blackboard, the core social and human interactive aspects have fundamentally stayed the same.
Looking into modern communication techniques and tools he explains how recent products have started to re-engage familiar habits people use to interact, and how technology is becoming more and more invisible.
Bill goes onto provide some recommended reading:
“Sketchpad: A man-machine graphical communications system” by Ivan Sutherland
“Pygmalion: a creative programming environment” by David Confield Smith
“Designing for people” & “The measure of man” both by Henry Dreyfuss
He also has in own book available called “Sketching User Experiences“. Which even has a quote on the front-cover by Bill Gates for what it’s worth (which must be even harder “than getting Arrington to link your site” ha!)
11:
The BeST Design Awards 2007 were several weeks ago but with the quality on show that night I’d be rude not to mention it. I was fortunate to be attending it so was able to see a wide range of nz design really at an international standard!
Of the Interactive Media and Website Design awards Fracture (Auckland based) and Resn (Wellington based) both received Gold.
Fracture was awarded for its website for Obo, a hockey protection/ safety equipment company which specialises in goalie gear.
Resn was awarded for its website for Synapse Learning’s educational software “The Bridge“. The starting point for The Bridge is a story, which is read by both the teacher and the pupils. It is a story of a family journey and the unexpected events that happen along the way.
The rest of the nominees were also of an impressive quality with a wide range of design companies being awarded, check out the winners on the BeST Awards site.
Of particular note Resn impressed me by also managing to have two of it’s other client projects awarded Bronze too. Firstly was The Black Seeds site and last but not least the Minuit site.
The Minuit site in particular grabbed my attention, starting with an avatar character you navigate the site by walking around the inside of a giant circle (kind of like a giant mouse wheel). It still allows you to easily jump around the different sections but the joy really comes from wandering around the “mini minuit world” and discovering the different landscape additions and features in each section. Certainly refreshing to see a unique approach to simple navigation.
All in all it had been a heavily design enriching weekend in Auckland which I loved but Wellington certainly showed you don’t need a million plus and traffic nightmares to do innovative and quality design!
*On a personal note and shameless shout-out my final year Major project from Massey University was awarded silver in the Student Interactive Media and Website Design section so that was pretty sweet too!
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