I Want To Break Free: what B2B business can learn from the music industry

Taken from here under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

If somebody steals what is rightfully yours, what should you do? Sue them? Chase them and get it back? Phone the police? Hunt them down?

There is a growing school of thought to say you should be thanking them…

Having worked with some of the largest entertainment names in the world (including Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo) and flirted with the music industry, I’ve seen how companies protect their intellectual property with all their might.

It’s understandable to see why. IP = identity. It’s the DNA of any organisation, and to steal it would be detrimental, right? Perhaps not!

Like anything in life, in order to evolve, businesses need to adapt to their changing environment. It’s a common argument that businesses are not progressing with their audience quickly enough. Just look at the mass influx of businesses now getting onboard the Social Media wagon to keep with the times, but yet they don’t know how to use it. As people, we have taken social media into our lives naturally, so why do many businesses struggle?

The problem could well lie with businesses’ reluctance to release all their information into the wild, for the public domain to use and re-use as they please. If someone tags a photo of us, we let it happen (usually with some secret vanity). If someone did the same with a company logo, the Brand Police will want blood.

This goes against the very nature of social media. But how can a business protect its IP if it’s not within their jurisdiction? It’s a classic case of the teenager vs. the over-protective parent. The teen wants to go out and mingle, while the parent is scared their baby will be influenced negatively by the Big, Bad World. Yet, it’s an important part of any childhood to learn some important lessons in life and make some mistakes along the way. Your IP is the teenager and you are the parent. Don’t worry. It’s natural.

We could all learn a lesson here from the music industry. In the 90s, CD sales were higher than ever and the industry was printing money. That was, until Napster came along and enabled users to download music for free. Fast forward to 2011 and CDs are gasping their last breath; record stores are closing around the country - and yet, bands and artists are cutting out the middle man, allowing anyone in the world to hear them. Spotify offers free content to end users in exchange for advertising revenue. Artists are finally beginning to enjoy a digital renaissance period, whilst record companies are bitterly grumbling to themselves because they lost their share.

How did this happen? It was because the labels tried to protect their IP. When Apple launched the iTunes store as a legal alternative to file sharing, they were forced by labels to include Digital Rights Management (DRM) that prevented consumers from distributing the music they paid for (and limiting the media it could be played on). Why should a consumer pay if they can enjoy the same content without restrictions for free? Paying for music just became less appealing and so, piracy continued. If the industry were able to see the bigger picture in retrospect, they might have avoided this.

The moral of the story is, “If you can’t beat them, join them… But be clever while you’re at it”. The important thing to remember is that if you don’t release your content, someone else will. Just ask Julian Assange. But there’s no reason to be scared. That’s just the evolution of technology, and technology is your friend if you work with it and not against it.

Recently, I was discussing open source web technology with a colleague. He made the argument, “doesn’t that make it too easy for people to steal?” and I argued that if they steal it, it’s a good thing because people love what you do and they’ll not only talk about it, they will come back to you when they want more. It’s free marketing. Wikipedia is a great example of what happens when you hand the power of information to the people: for many of us, it’s our primary - free - source of information.

Never has there been a better time to open your content while keeping your IP, brand identity and credibility intact. All you need to do is follow these steps:

1. Stop thinking your content is yours.

As soon as you get out of this mindset, the sooner you will be ready to take on new ideas. The best ideas are usually shared or stolen (interesting article on How to Steal Like An Artist ), but they subsequently evolve. If you keep your content to yourself, your ideas will never grow. Beat thieves to it and it’s likely it will be re-distributed untainted and will have your name all over it. Everyone will know it was you who came up with the idea, and you become the primary source. People like to buy from a business they’ve heard of, that’s what brand identity is all about.

2. Share the recipe for the cake; keep the ingredients for yourself.

Now you’re in the right mindset, let your competitors see it and let them develop on it. But keep the ingredients yourself - Creative Commons copyright. The Creative Commons offers a legally-recognised alternative to standard copyright (which doesn’t always work with the nature of the internet). So while you may not control the content once it’s distributed, you can still protect your IP if anyone else claims the content as their own. It’s healthy, honest competition.

3. Don’t just give content away. Increase your presence while you’re at it.

One of my favourite books on digital marketing was obtained for free. You should download it for free, too. It’s called ‘Oh My God What Happened’ (www.ohmygodwhathappened.com) and you pay with a tweet. One of the very important marketing strategies it discusses is that by paying with a tweet (for example), your work is automatically promoted on Twitter in exchange for the eBook. How does it make revenue? It doesn’t. But it sure increases brand awareness (I discovered this book on Twitter, after all). You probably already give away content for data-capture, and that’s great, but what if you could market it at the same time for some new signees? There is always an opportunity to expand your audience when you dare to think beyond…

4. Treat your audience with respect and trust.

They will, in turn, respect and trust you. Don’t make them feel like you’re doing them a favour. Make them feel like this is all part and parcel of your company’s mindset.

We’re not talking “freemium” here. We’re talking free… And it scares businesses, because it’s thinking out of the box. So much so that it’s surprising how many businesses decide they like the box after all. It’s familiar, safe territory. This is probably why Mark Zuckerberg became a billionaire. He focused on great - free - content before money while the rest of us were thinking the other way around.

You should only be scared if you devalue your work, so look at the bigger picture. If you give away a great idea with confidence, you will have a “so-crazy-it-might-just-work” marketing strategy, an increased trend-setting presence, give reasons for businesses to follow you on Twitter and Facebook and, most importantly, you will earn the respect of your audience.

Just remember: if you don’t, someone else will.