Growing Revenues in the Music Industry

This article from eMarketer shows that artists’ revenues from recording performance rights (i.e. payments by radio and TV stations) as well as synchronization licensing (i.e. the licensing of music for commercials, television shows, films and videogames) are growing fast. Together they totaled nearly $4 billion in 2006.

So while the recording industry, i.e. the people who sell CDs, is in trouble, the people who actually create music have many potential sources of revenue even if the end user isn’t paying for CDs.

Couldn’t say it better myself…

Richard Dawkins on The O’Reilly Factor

I just watched this video of Richard Dawkins’ interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly (pointed out by Garr Reynolds on Presentation Zen).

The amazing thing for me was how O’Reilly didn’t give Dawkins a chance to speak. As Reynolds says, it was all about O’Reilly speaking. It strikes me that O’Reilly is doing a disservice to his own cause. Unless you’re an extremely religious person, who’s only interested in having your own view of the world reaffirmed and enjoy bashing atheists, you just might watch this interview and say to yourself: “I wonder why he won’t let this intelligent looking, soft spoken fellow string two sentences together? Looks like he might have something to say after all, but O’Reilly just won’t let him…” And the next step would be to look for some more information - you just might read his book, and you just might be persuaded.

In other words, if you suspect that your audience may be intelligent (and I wonder whether O’Reilly does) it may be a good idea to let the other guy speak and then base your attack on what he said, rather than talk about “me, me, me” in such an obvious way.