Tennis can damage your hearing

As Wimbledon calls ‘Play’ this year, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) is considering whether to make “noise hindrance” part of its code of conduct.

The issue of noise in tennis matches has been championed by Martina Navratilova who says: "Grunting, screeching, shrieking - I call it cheating and it’s got to stop. I started having issues with it when I was playing Monica Seles back in the early 1990s. She was one of the first, and I didn’t like it one bit. It affected my game because to me it is important to hear the ball hit the racquet. Rules must be changed: players must be warned. If they don’t stop, they must have points deducted”.

Maria Sharapova has thus far held the crown as the loudest player in the post-Seles era. However there is a new kid on the block who seems to have (literally) taken the practice to a whole new level. In the recent French Open, Aravane Rezai complained to the umpire about the shrieks coming from 16-year-old player Michelle Larcher de Brito, who has now been given a wildcard into Wimbledon, much to the joy of the British media. It's not just the level of her cries, it’s also the length of them that is causing concern. Tennis officials are now considering a proposal to make noise hindrance part of the International Tennis Federation’s code of conduct, which could mean noisy players being muted permanently.

The response from the playing community has been that it is always been part of their game and that there should not be any restrictions on the release of energy. Larcher de Brito for example says "If they made a rule that you're not allowed to shriek or scream or grunt, it wouldn't be fair because it's part of the game. I'm 16, I'm still learning. Maybe I can eventually put it under control. I hope not because it comes from Monica Seles, it comes from Sharapova, it comes from really great players." Others, such as Nick Bollettieri who has produced Seles among others maintain that it is within the rules and nobody can say that loud players have cheated.

So here is the countdown of the five loudest players in modern tennis  and their noise output (bear in mind that past 85 decibels is the point where your hearing can be damaged by continuous exposure and earplugs are recommended):

5. Venus Williams 85 decibels Equivalent to: A food blender, city traffic (from inside a car). 
4. Serena Williams 88.9 decibels Equivalent to: A truck passing by at 10m or a farm tractor.
3. Monica Seles 93.2 decibels The inspiration for the famous Centre Court ‘gruntometer’. Equivalent to: an electric drill, a motorcycle at 25 ft, or a power mower.
2. Maria Sharipova 101 decibels Equvalent to: A jet flying over at 1000 ft, a typical house stereo at maximum volume, a table saw. A walkman at maximum level.
1. Michelle Larcher De Brito 109 decibels (apparently) Equivalent to: A night club on the dance floor, front row at a rock concert, a jet taking off, a car horn.

Surely this presents a great merchandising opportunity for this year’s Wimbledon along with the usual strawberries and cream – purple and green earplugs for those in the front rows.

The future of music

I recently tweeted about a new book called Against Intellectual Monopoly by Professors Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine, who argue that the current laws on intellectual property rights, especially copyright and patent laws, are killing creativity and innovation. Using examples such as Napster, Disney and the pharmaceutical industry, Boldrin and Levine argue that there are other and better ways to reward people for their ideas or creations.

As a perfect case study we have the news that Google is switching off access to commercial music videos for UK users from March 16th because negotiations with the Performing Right Society (PRS) have broken down. PRS, which represents the record labels and some artists and negotiates prices for public performance of recorded music in the UK, wants Google to pay more because user numbers have grown; Google says PRS is overpricing. Without a PRS license, it's illegal for Google to share this content in the UK. The result is that the public loses access to the music - which means that everyone loses.

Then there's the launch of Spotify. Legal for private use, Spotify streams music at reasonable quality, completely free of charge and with no buffering. It contains hundreds of thousands of tracks from almost all the major labels, and is a joy to use. It's currently accessible only in Europe, and UK users are among the first to be able to sign up without being invited first. Spotify will never replace my own music because I prefer listening at full bandwidth: I use Apple Lossless codec (see my earlier post about compression). But a recent survey by Jonathan Berger, professor of music at Stanford, has shown that young people actually prefer the sharp, tinny sound of compressed MP3 to the richer sound of full quality audio. If this is true, Spotify and free streaming services like it are the future of music.

The challenge to the music industry is this: if all we need is one copy of a work on a server, streaming to millions of people simultaneously, where does the revenue come from?

So far the industry has attempted to transfer its product-based business model from selling physical units to selling digital units, in other words charging for downloads. The Battle of Napster and this latest PRS/Google conflict are encounters resulting from this effort. Whether you believe the industry is cleverly getting the last few pints from the cash cow before it finally dies, or you see the industry as King Canute refusing to acknowledge very wet feet, there is no doubt that this model is doomed. Digital recorded music will soon be consumed without being owned or paid for.

Value is based on scarcity, which is why the most enduring revenue stream for musicians is live performance. But there are limits to how many gigs an artist can play each year, to audience sizes, and to ticket prices. This revenue stream is simply not scaleable enough to replace product sales.

Another obvious revenue source is opening the band-brand conversation and securing sponsorship deals. This is growing fast and has some way to run. But again there are limits: many artists will have ethical issues about which brands they promote, and consumers will lose interest in artists who dissipate their own brands by selling out too obviously.

The third revenue stream is public performance of recorded work, where royalties apply - Internet broadcast, background music in public spaces like shops, sync rights for TV, film and advertising, and commercial radio plays. I have posted before about my belief that music is not the most appropriate sound for every public space, but I expect this revenue stream to continue - as long as the industry agents like PRS can get their act together and create a sensible and consistent pricing model. However in a world of free personal music, public performance royalties will become increasingly anachronistic, and in any case they will never amount to more than a tiny fraction of the money lost with the demise of product sales.

Fourth there is patronage, or commissioned work. The great musicians and artists of previous centuries has no copyright protection and no recordings or duplicates to sell. They were paid by patrons, and produced much of their work to commission. Expect to see a renaissance of the patronage model as copy sales dry up.

But it seems to me that the future business model for all artists must be driven by a revenue stream that has only just started to trickle so far: the monetisation of the relationship between the artist and the fan. In this model the record companies have little or no role to play at all. Artists have their own teams handling a database of fans, who all choose where they want to be on a relationship continuum that stretches all the way from a single free download to personal meetings with the artist.

As the fan chooses to move up the scale, buying an album, signing up for a newsletter, joining a tiered loyalty programme, getting exclusive merchandise, buying tickets for fanclub-only gigs, getting signed merchandise, being in direct communication with the artrist, and attending small-group private audiences or gigs, the annual subscription goes up accordingly. And the music, most of the time, is free.

This model applies some of the best lessons from business and marketing - relationship marketing, database marketing, disintermediation, customer-centric business, virtual business, atomic business, web 2.0 - and applies them to an industry which is all about relationship. The fans crave relationship with the artists. So far, record companies have simply been in the way of that. Radiohead and others have started to explore this new direct model; the new wave of artists who don't need expensive recording studios, large advances or teams of suits to manage their entourages will leapfrog these efforts in the coming months and years. Using social networking, and new musician-specific tools that are already becoming available (see Gen-Y Rock Stars for some of these resources), artists will create their own communities, and connect directly and openly with them.

Within a decade I believe the music will be free - and the money will be in carefully managed direct relationships. Relationship is where the value lies - and it can never be pirated.

Why did Muzak go bust?

Some lessons about piped music - and a cautionary tale for the retail TV industry.

Muzak's filing for bankruptcy yesterday is no surprise. I flagged its mountain of imminently due loans several weeks ago on Twitter and socialmedian, and in the current financial meltdown it was going to be a miracle if an entertainment-based business found someone willing and able to refinance over $400m of debt. It's very sad for those who will lose their jobs, but it's also very interesting to look at the underlying reasons for the failure, especially in the light of the similar demise of DMX in 2005.

What's not working for these music pipers? Is it the nature of the service they offer, the malaise affecting the whole commercial music business, or the business model these companies have been operating? And are there any lessons to learn?

First, the nature of the service. I do have great reservations about mindless music as a global veneer. There is little independent research on whether people like it or not, so most of the numbers one sees are produced by interested parties: either Muzak and its competitors, or the music industry and its ambassadors such as the licensing agencies - in the UK that's PRS, PPL and MCPS. Those numbers are universally positive, giving the impression that music is great to have in the background everywhere, all the time. You and I both know that's not true.

There is one independent survey I know: it was carried out in the UK in 1998 by NOP for the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, and it was setting out to find out how piped music affects the deaf and hard of hearing, of whom there are 9 million in the UK - that's around one sixth of the population. The survey also interviewed the general public by way of comparison; a total of 1,002 people were interviewed, and interestingly the level of engagement and passion for the subject of the interviewees was judged to be exceptionally high. This is a hot topic with the public, and the results should make salutory reading for retailers. Let's start here:

• 34% of the general public finding piped music annoying
• 36% of the general public never notice piped music

This top line finding is fascinating. Assuming that the remaining 30% actively like piped music, what this says is that retailers are buying approval from 3 in 10 people at the expense of irritating over one third of their potential customers. I know of one retailer-specific study that found that four out of five people were turning around on the doorstep and not even entering the store because of the its music. Most retailers are entirely unaware of the sales they are losing because of this deflection effect, or because of severely reduced dwell time for people who dislike the music. Very few people complain about irritating music: they just vote with their feet and leave.

And these are just the conscious reactions to sound. The picture gets worse when you factor in the unconscious effects of music, which are the most important part. Sound's impact is like an iceberg: most of it happens at unconscious level, below the waterline. We have become so used to suppressing noise that we are unaware of the vast majority of the sound around us - but it still affects us all the time. In shops, even for people who say they like the music, the standard fare of upbeat pop music acts as a stimulant, speeding shoppers up and causing them to leave the store faster than they otherwise would. This is losing further sales because, as every retailer knows, the longer we are in a store, the more we spend.

So most piped music is reducing sales, both by upsetting and deflecting a third (or more) of customers, and by shifting the rest out of the store too quickly.

The demographics make this even more painful for any retailer aiming at the top of the market:

• 45% of 45-54 year olds find piped music annoying
• 21% of 15-24 year olds find piped music annoying
• 51% of people in social group AB find piped music annoying
• 26% of people in social group DE find piped music annoying
• 86% of hard of hearing people find piped music annoying

For shops targeting youth or social groups D and E, music may be a great choice. But the vast majority of the wealth is in the hands of the people who most hate piped music. For upmarket shops targeting the affluent, music upsets around half of their customers! For the deaf and hard of hearing, the disapproval is unsurprisingly almost universal: piped music makes it harder for them to communicate in an already noisy world. (It's also worth reminding ourselves that Western populations are ageing, and the incidence of hearing loss is growing fast too, largely as a result of headphone abuse by younger people - so these 10-year-old numbers probably already understate the problem.)

At least most of us can leave the store. Staff have to put up with the music all day, and unsurprisingly, according to a survey in 2007 by the UK Noise Association, 40% of them dislike piped music and only 7% like it.

And yet most shops play music these days. Why?

There are three reasons. First, the desperate need for the music industry to create new revenue streams has led to strong sales pressure from Muzak and its competitors, backed by hyperbolic claims in one-eyed research about the effects of music on customer satsifaction. Second, the billion flies argument: everyone else is doing it, so it must be a good idea and shoppers must like it. And third, it can work. If carefully chosen by someone who really understands the function of a space, the people in it, the environmental factors (noise, quality of sound system etc) and the brand or values behind the space, music can create a delightful, appropriate and effective experience. Sadly, this is rare and most piped music is bland, mindless and ineffective - which, in my opinion is why it is so offensive to many people. We all understand music very well (though nobody knows quite how), so we find inappropriate music upsetting: somewhere deep down we know it's wrong.

Tha's why the issue raises such strong feelings. There are even organised anti-piped-music communities such as PipeDown and Mu-sick, to name but two of several. Many people, me included, mourn the devaluation of music that results from its use as a universal veneer. Society's relationship with music has been radically changed as a result of its omnipresence in public places: it used to be something we had an active, intense relationship with, but now most of the time it's the soundtrack to some other activity.

But all of this is isn't why Muzak has just gone bust. The company had tens of thousands of sites, and hundreds of major retailers as its customers. None of these retailers, as far as I know, had rumbled the fact that their music wasn't working, so the big game of the emperor's new clothes was still being played. There is no shortage of piped music in the world, most of it from Muzak, so what went wrong?

And so to possible reason number two: is this a symptom of the bigger disaster that is the commercial music industry today? Album sales are nose-diving, digital rights management (DRM) is becoming indefensible, and young people believe that music is a right, not a commodity (or product, as the old record companies used to describe it). Has Muzak gone belly-up because people won't pay for their music any more?

It's an attractive premise but it falls down because we are unaware of the cost of the music we are subjected to in shops. It is, of course, far from free, and we certainly do pay for it in higher prices. The music industry, through its licensed agents, is rabid about collecting fees for all public performance of music, despite the regular bad PR arising from its pursuit of corner shops or local garages with radios on for their staff. The legal landscape is complicated in established markets: in the UK, the Performing Right Society and Mechanical Copyright Protection Society (now combined as PRS for Music), and Phonographic Performance Limited, collect for different rights in any one piece of music. For big retailers the fees are huge, running into millions a year, and our experience at The Sound Agency is that the methods of calcuation are arcane, often incomprehensible and inconsistent. In less developed markets, it's like the Wild West: you can obtain cheap bootleg MP3 music from many Russian and other Eastern European websites, and there is little policing of public peformance, so vast amounts of music are bought and played illegally.

But even with effective policing, however large the fees are, and however difficult the system is to understand, the shopper is oblivious to this or to the extra cost of the musical wallpaper they suffer in stores. There is no equivalent of an organic section - a quiet room where you can buy goods without listening to or paying for the music. (Come to think of it, that's a great idea!) So this can't be the reason for Muzak's downfall either.

Which brings us to the third possibility - business model. All the piped music companies have been operating the same business model: an up-front fee (typically leased) for purchase of their players, plus monthly fees for each site served.

The players are usually adapted PCs, sold in large volumes by the pipers to leasing companies which then charge the retailer a monthly price for the staged purchase over three years. The music piper makes a 10-25% margin on the initial sale. The retailer doesn't have to find a big pile of cash for the boxes. The leasing company does what it knows best. Everyone is happy at that point.

Over the next three years (the typical life of one of these deals) the pipers charge a monthly fee per shop. This has to cover the rights to the music - typically that can amount to £20 or more a month - plus the service contract for the kit. It should also include a service fee for the piper to cover music updates, account management, administrative costs and R&D.

This is where it all goes wrong. The pipers have become so competitive in pitching against each other that they have driven the monthly fee down to the bone. It barely covers the rights and service fee - indeed in some cases it doesn't even do that. There is no margin for the piper, so all their profit is in the initial sale. They become like sharks, having to move forward with new sales all the time or die. The problem is that what was once a vast virgin market is now highly competitive and mainly sold-up and under contract.

There is a great analogy here with the mobile phone companies. Ten years ago they made all their money from selling handsets, and they could hardly make enough to satisfy the demand. Now everyone has a handset and the market is so competitive that we expect not to pay for replacements in most cases. Seeing this coming, companies like Nokia and Vodafone have successfully transitioned from a volume product sales model to a rich service model: their profit stream is shifting from handset sales to a lifelong relationship based on offering great services like navigation, music (of course!) and personal organisation.

The pipers just didn't see the wall approaching. Muzak took on massive debt to expand, but it failed to grow in the right direction - towards added value services and a profitable ongoing relationship with its clients, and away from being a box seller.

In Europe, Mood Media has taken a slightly different tack, expanding into the fast-growing digital out of home market - retail TV to you and me. This will give the company several years of rapid growth, but eventually, when every shop has screens all over the place and we are all complaining about being bombarded with video messaging at every turn, the same wall will be standing in the way.

In sum, businesses based on capability ("We're doing this because we can") have limited life-spans. Businesses based on need, value and service ("We're doing this because people want it") have long-term sustainability, as long as they listen to the market. Piped music in its current guise and with its current business model is a busted flush because it's based on technical ability and an assumption about customer need that is not grounded in reality. The DOOH market should pay attention right now: this could be you in five years.

My hope is that retailers will start to use the new tools that are available, especially in the new field of neuromarketing, to create an integrated approach to retail environments, designing them in all five senses. As far as sound is concerned, I believe that carefully crafted generative, ambient soundscapes will replace music in most retail and other public spaces, doing the same job as a good piece of design with lighting and colour - creating a space that's interesting, branded, appropriate, comfortable, functional, and pleasant to be in.

Shut that door!

It's time for retailers to close their front doors. Not only do open doors admit traffic noise and fumes; they also let out vast amounts of wasted energy. A new UK pressure group called Close The Door estimates the cost at hundreds of millions of pounds a year, and is gathering excellent media coverage and growing political support: there's a private member's bill due in Parliament at the end of this year.

In the US, the Long Island Power Authority estimated that retailers waste 20 to 25 percent of the energy they consume by allowing air-conditioned cool air to waft out onto the sidewalk - and in some areas the proportion of shops with their doors open as a matter of policy was a high as 65 percent. According to LIPA Chairman Richard M Kessel:

“Customers should ask the stores to close their doors. What good does it do to worry about such issues as air quality, global warming and high energy prices when one is scooting in an out of stores that waste 20 to 25 percent of the electricity they use? The message from customers should be: Be Cool – Keep it Closed.”

Now New York's Mayor Bloomberg has passed legislation banning shops from leaving their doors open while running their AC. But in the UK the practice remains common in summer and winter alike. A stroll down London's Oxford Street reveals that the vast majority of store doors are wide open, leaking energy and admitting noise and fumes. In my book I wrote this about the aural consequences:

I have stood in booth-like cell-phone outlets on Oxford Street wondering aghast how the people who work in there survive without therapy, and how any sensible business conversations take place at all. To add insult to injury, some of them are playing semi-audible music, presumably in the hope that this will make everything fine. It doesn’t.

I speculated that the noisy and smelly front few metres of many stores is effectively dead space, with much lower takings per metre than the more comfortable back part of the store, negating any benefits retailers claim from their open doors letting more people in; also, closed doors stop people from leaving just as much as they stop them from entering.

I would love to see a return to the old-fashioned system of revolving doors, which keep the noise out, the energy in and require no power to operate at all. An extra aural (and also environmental) benefit would be getting rid of those noisy and wasteful hot air blowers that many stores use instead of air curtains.

Shops with closed doors would be quieter, calmer and much more pleasant places to be, and I believe sales would increase - as long as the retailers also control their habit of playing mindless music, which surveys have shown upsets at least a third of their customers.

I welcome the new campaign and look forward to some sensible legislation on this in the UK very soon.

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