Apple and Google Tech Titans Battle in Music Business
Trends Taking Shape In Music Will Yield Opportunities For Some And Threaten Others
It seems to me that there is a growing contention between Google and Apple. One can’t stay out of the other’s business more and more. Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO drops from the board of directors at Apple. Apple blocks Google’s Admob service from being the sole advertising system on their iPhones. Now Google moves into the digital marketplace for music. Have you thought about what this means for you?
Both firms have increased revenue phenomenally over the last few years. Apple passed Microsoft in market capitalization. They’ve expanded their core service offerings, added new products, created new marketplaces, and increasingly have been getting into each other’s clouds and smart phone customers. When Google recently revealed their online music marketplace, everyone roared about the storm clouds forming. No wonder, Apple with their iTunes store leads the way for all contenders, and vigorously defends iTunes. Those in the music industry widely recognize their capitulation when they let Apple launch the iTunes store.
|
When I heard recently that 40% of the music business is digital downloads, I was quite surprised because I thought a much higher percentage of the music business was digital downloads. Apparently, CD’s at 60% are still a major distribution medium for music in 2010. The tech titans are making an end run, based on a number of factors, but what’s interesting to me are couple key trends: cloud computing and smart mobile devices. |
|
There’s a feeding frenzy on music content and the trends affect all stakeholders in profound and mundane ways. If you’d like to read further trends and the impact on consumers, artists, music business wags, technologists, and advertisers, check out my survey on your music preferences.
Side Notes
I invite you to tell us about your stories of enjoyment using your music player device, whether you play an iPod, an mp3 device, or an ordinary CD player, a time where you set the tone at an event with music, or were the self appointed DJ, you were the Karaoke favorite, you had so much fun you drained the battery, or you inflamed your passion.
Please Tell People About Honest Intentions
If you like this article, please ReTweet it with the little green button above, or tell a friend through the Share and Enjoy buttons below. I have been introduced to these features to make it easier for you to email it to a friend or add it to your favorite social media website. I understand that if you Digg it or bookmark it on Delicious or Stumbleupon, that will get more readers here. Many of my thanks in advance for your help. I appreciate it.
Break Through From Cell Phone To Smart Phone
My brother proudly showed me his new Droid smart phone. I got weak in the knees. He’s never used a Smart Phone or computer before and out of the blue he asked me how he could improve his life using this new device and its capabilities. That was a really big question. He really meant, ‘what kind of entertainment features can I load to have fun?’
I hadn’t quite figured out what he was asking right away, but I was thinking he wanted the same things I want: productivity, and greater efficiency by connecting to his community of family, friends and customers. Clearly, he’s part of a growing consumer group, discontent with the sluggish support efforts from old-line cell phone operating systems, and he is surfing on the surge in demand for Smart Phones.
 |
I took a deep breath because I was thinking “Do either of us know what he wants? He thinks this droid thingy will change his life, and I’m thinking it would be a frozen place in hell if this device would work for him the way mine works for me.” |
As I showed him some of the things I do with mine, I could see him becoming frustrated. I noticed his attitude shifted to anger because he didn’t know what to ask, and how to implement things like setting up a password account, going to the app store, searching for apps, and installing them.
Adapting To New Technology
It was too much to absorb. The shrimp kabobs on the grill were getting done fast. The family was totally ready to have dinner. We were running out of time, and neither of us could figure out what would make our short conversation a win-win. We dropped our pursuit. Had we been grilling steaks, here’s three entertainment ideas that I would’ve set up for him.
I invite you to tell us about your stories of victory or trepidation about using your new smart phone, your successes and accomplishments of getting it done, a time where you had so much fun you drained the battery, you mastered a new application, you started a new process to be more productive, you found deeper meaning, you inflamed your passion, or the way you integrated the technology into your regular habits and routines.
Please Tell People About Honest Intentions
If you like this article, please ReTweet it with the little green button above, or tell a friend through the Share and Enjoy buttons below. I have been introduced to these tools to make it easier for you to email it to a friend or add it to your favorite social media website. I hear that if you Digg it or bookmark it on Delicious or Stumbleupon, that will get more readers here. Many of my thanks in advance for your help. I appreciate it.
Here’s A Quick Way To Curb A Panic Before You Lose Your Phone
| Habits and Our Smart Phones
A crisis event will happen to you or someone you know when the smart phone gets lost. Before it happens, that is an opportunity to raise your awareness and start something new. You want to enjoy the benefits of having a cell phone, but it carries some responsibility that most people don’t want to accept. Yesterday, I was reminded of these little short-cut habits when my brother asked me to help him get acquainted with his new smart phone. |
 Goin' Mobile |
Time Travel and Your Cell
Most of us consider having our phone vital to our livelihood, because it extends our ability to live our purpose. We’ve all been cut off from using our mobile phone. Note the feelings you have when that idea takes root. That’s a fertile subject for some people, addressed in an article by Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. You don’t need to dump your phone to go into the present, but it allows you to traverse the past and the future to be better in the present.
3 Solutions
The anxious feelings you have when your gadget gets lost is the perfect signal that you need to take precautionary steps in case it happens in the future. You wouldn’t leave your home or office without charging it first, right? Oh, are you one of the few of us who forgets to charge it sometimes? Let’s save that topic for another post. Most of us charge it before going mobile. Now, it’s time for us to extend that action step further with some protection recommendations to use.
- Password to log into the device
- Mobile security software to protect your data
- Lost and found item recovery service to return your device
So, you’re a bit anxious about a lost cell phone or smart phone? Take some of the stress out, and enjoy your mobile device. Be sure to take these three steps, today. And please, feel free to share a personal mobile phone crisis.
More about Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.
Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D. authored Neuro Web Design, which you can buy on Amazon.
Thanks for Reading
Please add your comments below and remember to get updates by email now or get the RSS Feed, if you haven’t already, so you don’t miss out. As always, good luck with goin’ mobile securely.
Please Tell People About Honest Intentions
If you like this article, please ReTweet it with the little green button, or tell a friend. My blog group has introduced a little tool called Share and Enjoy to make it easier for you to email it to a friend or add it to your favorite social media website. I hear that if you Digg it or bookmark it on Delicious or Stumbleupon, that will get more readers here. Many of my thanks in advance for your help. I appreciate it.
Be the Best in the World
| If you knew you would be the best in the world in your field by making a commitment to a certain level of effort or number of working hours, how much more confident, persistent, and passionate would you be towards your dreams and goals? |
 |
|
Outliers
Malcolm Gladwell answers the question of being the best in Outliers in an insightful, seductive, and entertaining way. During the first part of the book, you’re wondering what is the point of him talking about a great percentage of professional Canadian hockey players with birthdays in January or February.
Hockey Players and the Wealthy
By the end, you have a keen sense of a unique theory that unifies the fact that most hockey player birthdays are clustered in the calendar with the same fundamental basis for the great wealth of John D. Rockefeller, and Bill Gates, or the long tail influence of Amadeus Mozart, and Joe Flom of legendary law firm Skadden Arps; or the fame of the Beatles? And, by the way, what does this have to do with honesty?
Belief in Yourself
Gladwell’s Outliers book illustrates how these seemingly overnight successes became the best in the world. For me, reading it unveiled one less mystery, one more reason to be encouraged to achieve my ambitions. The theory he poses that I found fascinating is that being the best comes from a confluence of ideal external circumstances, plus internal factors like talent and ambition.
10,000 Hours
In several cases, Gladwell points to a common thread where each subject took advantage of opportunities, spent 10,000 hours with their craft before they reached world’s best recognition. Gladwell’s findings highlight a major divergence common with society; and that is, most people don’t reach their potential destiny because as George Leonard says in his book Mastery; they either dabble, obsess, or hack in their journey. It is compounded by an American War against Mastery, reflected by a consumerism society, a quick fix mentality, and a never ending quest for climax after climax. “There’s no Plateau.”
Preparing for a Big Decision?
If you feel like you’re facing a fork in the road, Gladwell’s book may not offer you the advice you need. I invite those of you who are asking “Should I quit, or should I stick?” to check out another book, which may be perfect for you. It is The Dip by Seth Godin.
Your Success Outlook
In Gladwell’s conclusion, he brings it home by applying his observations of history and coincidences of his mother Joyce, and grandmother Daisy, lifting themselves in Jamaican society. The book offers the reader a fresh perspective on what it takes to reach a stage of mastery in one’s life or profession. I was greatly encouraged by its message. If you’ve been doing what it is you do for less than 10,000 hours, then keep going if you haven’t reached it yet.
You might as well be Honest-Abe with yourself, then you have the strongest foundation. I welcome your comments here on how Gladwell has shaped your success outlook. 9PPEPWBZBSFH
Here Is A Look Behind The Scenes Into A Super Star Sales Professional
This is the third post in a series of six articles
 |
Why you will be the next person your customer seeks to solve their problem |
You may think that making more sales in your business is too challenging, but if you try, actually your prospective customers will thank you for offering the solution they’ve been seeking. And if you just introduce yourself with their needs in mind, then you’re well on your way and you’ll get better sales results.
Find Things in Common
First, you find something in common, making sure that you’ve made a connection. Often I hear people use closed ended questions in the beginning of the conversation. You know, the yes-no type. This is a generally big mistake. Remember the poem from Rudyard Kipling? I KEEP six honest serving men who to taught me all I knew. Their names are What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who. Then you begin to discover your customer’s situation, with some context to build from. Save the yes-no questions for decision time, a very short interval at the end of your conversation.
Have You Tried Paraphrasing?
I’ve used paraphrasing in conversations, where I listen intently to the customer, re-phrase what they are saying with words that will reveal buried meanings and feelings submerged under their statement. This approach works great, and should be studied carefully. These concealed meanings and feelings need to be clear.
Here’s an example . . . when I’m discussing the ImHonest.com product that helps people recover lost valuable gadgets, I sometimes hear a prospective customer say that they never lose anything. Many times I can spur the conversation along a direction pleasing to my goal, by first, acknowledging what I just heard. Yes its admirable that you are careful with your belongings. Can I ask you this, “How do you manage to not lose valuable items.” “I tell you, it’s a habit that I learned from my mother. I just wish that my teenage kids would be better at keeping track of their iPods and cell phones. They rely on me too much.” Here’s the paraphrase that the superstar sales person might use: “It seems to me that if you could help them to recover their lost items, that it would relieve you of a certain burden of replacing it. Am I right?” You’re seeking a deeper level of understanding. The person I credit with learning this approach is Lee Boyan, writer of Successful Cold Call Selling. With their answer of Yes, now I have it going a way that helps both of us. This is just one example of the kind of seeds you want to plant that take root in the form of impressions and memories of events or attachments. Commit to learning it and give it a try.
Get Agreement on the Minor Things, then the Major Things Take Care of Themselves
Make sure you have agreement, and that you’ve empathized properly with their situation. The conversation is lively at this point, because you’re talking about what’s important to them. Next, summarize the benefits and ask more confirmation questions. Here’s a way I do this with the customer, “Yeah, so you’ve told me that it’d be a lot easier to receive a notice later in the same day from ImHonest that someone found your son’s missing iPod and it’ll be shipped to your home via UPS in three days.” These are mini yeses, which seek agreement. It’s kind of like testing the temperature of the water in the hot tub with your foot before sinking your whole body. If you have a complex product or service, it’s a good idea to seek several confirmations on different aspects of your solution. You know, follow up appointment, payment method, delivery date, implementation plan. When you take the time to learn this approach and execute it, you’ll notice that reaching the final agreement, when they say YES to your offer, will be a natural and pleasant conversation rather than a contrived, ill timed, awkward presentation.
It’s time to take off the chill and embrace the thrill of selling. Let me know how you find this working for you.
What Everyone Ought To Know About A Killer Sales Strategy
This is the second post in a series of six articles
 |
You Want to Float Above the Clouds |
First, Be Friends
The customer is looking for you, the consultant or salesperson, to be friends first. People like to buy from their friends. How would they describe the relationship? Would words like sincere, trustworthy, responsive, considerate, knowledgeable, trusted advisor be characterized? What approach you use will determine how prospects and customers, even colleagues and other business acquaintances view you.
Many Sales Pros Don’t Have a Clue
I do business with many types of people. Sometimes they are customers or clients, partners, affiliates, sponsors, employees, contractors, referrers, suppliers, and vendors. I am amazed that when I ask sales professionals what is your value proposition, they don’t have a clue. In situations where there is a partner and a customer, one needs two different value propositions, expressing different perspectives. How are yours?
Ask your Customer
What I suggest you do in the beginning, when creating a Value Proposition is ask your customer what are the benefits to them of using your product or service. You listen carefully to what is said and work that into your pitch. You do the same thing for other roles, like partners, anticipating the benefits as a different facet of the problem you’ve solved for them. Be sure your value proposition addresses questions like what are the results of the solutions and indicate some sort of economic payback for an investment of time or money.
What a Value Proposition Looks Like
Here’s an example of a value proposition, using the ImHonest solution: When someone loses a smart phone, laptop, or any valuable item, they think about the time and money it’ll take, and the pain to restore the new unit to the same condition as the old one–Applications, configurations, settings, data stores. Yuck. As a result of using ImHonest identification labels on valuables before they get lost, an owner can rest assured there is a good chance they will recover their lost items, through honesty. Our customers will be able to accept the convenient return of their lost valuables, resulting in less downtime, more productivity, and better peace of mind. For $14.95, they can manage six items for a year. The economic payback will be achieved within three days of recovering a lost item, and the whole process is administered through our online web registration site, 24/7 call center, and partnership with over 4,300 UPS Stores.
What are some outstanding value propositions you’ve used in your business?
Little Known Ways to Dump Poor Sales Results, Once and For All
| This is the first post in a series of six articles | |
 |
It’s Time to Chatter About Sales Strategies |
How many times have you had a conversation with a salesperson that didn’t work? You may have grown tired, bored, distressed, bothered, or annoyed. You’re thinking “Why doesn’t he now ask me what’s important to me?” Or, you were the salesperson, and you recognized later that you missed the mark. Ouch!
Your career, your company’s reputation, perhaps even our economy’s future depends on you getting better in this area. As a sales person looking to influence others or sell something, your success depends on making friends, having the knowledge, the skill, the expertise, motivation, belief; not to mention the ability to communicate, use empathy, and more.
In my upcoming series of six posts, I will put a spotlight on several aspects of building sales and forging stronger connections with your prospective customers, clients, partners, associates, and the public.
A Look at the Sales Strategies Series
The second post addresses the requirement that you create and communicate a compelling and enduring value proposition. The third piece covers why you’re the next person they’re going to seek to solve their problem. Following that, the fourth entry focuses on secrets of how to attract and grow more revenues from new and existing customers. The fifth notice will show how to forge credibility and trustworthiness. I’ll outline resources to get help in the sixth installment, and I most likely will continue to periodically address additional characteristics of the impact of a great sales strategy.
Android Apps I Like
The International CES show this week in Las Vegas will attract over a hundred thousand people and the 3000 or so exhibitors will launch countless new products for their customers.
One product that many ImHonest.com customers will be affixing their identification labels to is the Android. For me, along with millions of others, the Android is the ultimate handheld device. There are other models like Eris, Hero, Nexus One, Cosmos, and Devour, but the one I’m referring to is the Motorola A855 unit with a giant touch screen, keyboard and Google Operating System, currently available on the Verizon Wireless network.
After several years, I retired my Windows Mobile device. For some time, I’ve been jealous of iPhone customers, mainly because of the software from the app store. However, the Droid has extinguished my iPhone envy, for many reasons. The device and OS have many salient features which you can learn about elsewhere. Here, I’ll touch on a few applications available to Droid customers.
 |
 |
 |
You increase the functionality of your device by adding applications from the Droid Market, which is similar to Apple’s app store. You’ll find almost every conceivable application you might need. Here are my current top ten quality of life improvement apps that I’ve been using since I acquired my Droid a week or so ago. This info will probably change by the time you read it. I recommend Android road warriors check these out, and I invite you to leave a comment here and share the golden nugget applications that bring you joy.
| Application | What it does | Type | Cost | |
| 1. | Twidroid | Twitter platform | Productivity | Free |
| 2. | CompanionLink | Synchronizes calendar, tasks and contacts with many other PC platforms, like Outlook; can be done with or without loading all your personal data into Cloud or Google. | Productivity | $39.95 |
| 3. | Mobile reader, editor functions. Comes with unit. | Social, Productivity | Free | |
| 4. | Foursquare | Connect with your friends. Transmit your location in real time or historically, discover new places, share yelp like comments about places you’ve been or want to go. | Social | Free |
| 5. | Pandora | Programmable music, as simple to use as radio, but you chose the artists. | Entertainment | Free |
| 6. | PdaNet | Makes your Droid into a data transport modem for cutting hotel bills and enables your laptop to be on the web anywhere, free from congestion or fickle links of a shared Wi-Fi segment. | Productivity | $29.00 |
| 7. | PhoneMyPC | Gives you remote access to operate your desktop PC from Droid. | Productivity | Limited Beta Program $5 or $10 |
| 8. | Qik | Publish videos and receive real time feedback while filming and file sharing in the cloud. | Social | Free |
| 9. | WaveSecure | In case its lost, gives you locking, tracking SIM, location, wipeout, restore backup for SMS, contacts, call logs. Works in background automatically. | Productivity | Free |
| 10. | Trapster | Lets you identify police speed traps, red light cameras, speed cameras, and other roadway wallet hazards. | Social | Free |
Where Honesty Comes to Grow
As the New Year draws close, we have the opportunity to clarify our vision for success and outline our strategies and tactics. I’m talking about you being honest with yourself.
Why do you do it?
If you’ve experienced pain recently, then it’s time to look at your situation differently and change the way you do things. If everything for you is hunky dory, then you don’t need to read the rest of this post; but you’re welcome to share with me your secrets of success.
The Interesting Part
Most people find growing pains too uncomfortable, and they avoid it. I view it as a learning experience. Even if I don’t have a complete understanding of how or why it happened to me, I answer it with a philosophical response. “I know there’s a reason this is going on, and I’ll figure it out.” It’s nature talking to me. I get inspiration from nature every day in some way. I know others do, and that gives me more enthusiasm for my own vision and goals. I’ll give you an example. At the San Francisco Academy of Sciences yesterday, I viewed the architecture of the building and how nature has been integrated with engineering. The building has a roof of plant life. It’s like a living roof. I thought it was interesting that they are recruiting volunteers to help pick weeds.
How do you get started?
Your go dos:
- Sketch out these items on a piece of paper, a napkin, or a digital file.
- Make a schedule in your weekly calendar for completing more details, amending and revising a little bit at a time.
- Use some kind of system that you consistently implement. I use a system which goes like this: day in, day out; week in, week out; month in, month out.
- I take a little time at the end of each period to reflect on my status and progress. Do you?
- Recharge, revise, and re-engage.
Let me know if you’d like further details about how this looks for me, and I’ll send you a draft.
Tiger not out of the Woods for lack of Honesty
Tiger shanked one into the woods the other day when he rammed his Cadillac into a tree. He has more repair work than his SUV. His health is OK. That’s good. It’s no big deal, right? Wrong. The speculation about conditions preceding the event has been a firestorm in public conversations. Some rumors I’ve heard are his wife chasing him with a nine iron, breaking glass in his escape vehicle, him driving barefoot, and the extramarital affairs with other women, Rachel Uchitel and Jamiee Grubbs. The interesting part for me is it comes down to character and how he responds to the present situation. Is he being honest?
This crash was a very minor mistake, considering his injuries weren’t severe. The Florida Highway Patrol gave him a careless driving charge, a $164 fine, and four points on his driving record. He’ll pay for a broken fire hydrant too. That penalty causes Tiger less damage than a bogey on a hole in one of his golf tournaments.
If this event happened to an ordinary citizen, small harm, no foul. But this didn’t happen to an ordinary citizen. It happened to Tiger Woods. The same guy that agreed to “I am Tiger” commercials on television, portraying him as a saint, and letting him collect millions upon millions of consumer dollars in endorsements from firms like Accenture, AT&T, EA Sports, Gatorade, Gillette, Nike, TAG Heuer, Dubailand, TLC Laser Eye Centers, Upper Deck, and the PGA Tour. EA Sports already said they’d stand by Tiger. Will someone stand up for disclosure and honesty?
Remember what McDonalds did when all-time Olympic gold medal winner, Michael Phelps was pictured in a compromising position? He owned his actions and we were part of it. Phelps’ mistake was in the kiddy pool, whereas Tiger’s is in the deep end. These companies would do well to make announcements on their position with their Tiger Woods sponsor agreements.
In Tiger’s case, Honesty will get him out of this mess. I believe the media is justified in asking “what happened?” In response, Tiger chooses to stonewall everybody. If he just answered the question to his fans, then it would have a chance to pass and we could get on with building for the future. Remember what David Letterman did shortly following his recent expose. Tiger should look to Mr. Letterman for clues on how to handle it.
In my conversations with family members this week, we discussed different aspects of Tiger Woods’ recent calamity. For me the issue is Honesty. I said that Tiger owes his public fan base an explanation. One of my sons agrees with me, the other said that Tiger’s family business is private if he wants it to be. Why am I making it an issue of Tiger being honest with his public fan base? He’s earned his sports hero status, but his fame and wealth came from us. This event doesn’t change his sports legend, but it does call into question for his sponsors and all of us, why do we hold him up as a model to aspire when the honesty is gone?
