Marketing Photos with Mary Virginia Swanson

November 2006 issue of Fast Company . Interesting cover story on Gordon Bell, a computer scientist at Microsoft who has for the past 7 years embarked on a project to save everything – every email, a digital and audio recording of every conversation, family histories, EVERYTHING – his goal is to never forget anything, and have it at his fingertips, searchable through his “MyLifeBits” software. He states: “We’ve come to a time when machine memory creates ideas we’ve never considered.” A daunting but awesome concept. Another story on viral market is also fascinating. Fact within: Total ad revenue, 2005: PRINT, $47.4 billion (+1.5 % since 2004), ONLINE, $2 billion (+31% since 2004). Also read a report on the annual conference POP!TECH which just wrapped it’s tenth annual event with an enviable roster of presenters from artists to entrepreneurs to self-described “brainiacs.” Lastly, the article laying out the mechanics of Rumblefish, a portal for licensing independent music, makes me think it is very, very similar to the model that the image licensing industry has been utilizing for decades now, except that in the music licensing model, the creator has a 50%/50% split with the agent. Those were the days, eh? That pay structure is now, sadly, ancient history for image licensing fees as market pressure has forced agencies to seek (or require) multiple distributors, each getting a slice of the pie . Here’s hoping the musicians can keep their 50%, as the market for music as an essential element within multimedia programming grows.