Image credit: Getty Images, Michael Bodge/Flickr
Writing in the Guardian, journalist Simon Jenkins argues that publishers should learn from the lessons made by the music business rather than return to paywall media. He says that he viewed the evolution of the newspaper when he went to the Glastonbury music festival recently, and witnessed how people will still pay for the live experience:
The key must be to learn the lesson of the most tightly competitive medium of all: popular music. It has cast off its enslavement to recording studios and recast itself, almost in Victorian mode, as a mass movement for live [...]

‘Rockjazz’ pianist 36-year-old Eric Lewis a.k.a Elew played at TED Long Beach, California, in February this year to an audience that was impressed enough to give him a standing ovation. Elew’s style is difficult to describe. He studied piano as a child and later at the Manhattan School of Music. He then played for the Lincoln Center Jazz Troupe and toured with jazz greats Wynton Marsalis and Cassandra Wilson before breaking off to go it on his own. His individual style – he often stands when he plays, reaches into the piano to pull its strings and contorts his face [...]

As a follow-up to our post from yesterday discussing the gray areas surrounding the “fair use” of online material, we learned that the Guardian has settled any debate concerning their own publication in one bold move, almost. To that end, they have launched Open Platform a service that encourages readers to reuse Guardian content within the larger context of the internet, leveraging – according to the site – “our journalism, our brand, and the technologies that power guardian.co.uk.”
Despite the labels of “free” and “open” being tossed around to explain the Open Platform’s services, it might not be as magnanimous as it [...]

A job description for a sales associate at Guardian America reveals the motivation behind the British newspaper’s $30m purchase of Rafat Ali’s great PaidContent.org site last year. The job description suggests that while the publisher has made great in-roads with their online presence in the UK, they feel that the digital media news site will help them break America. The job ad reads:
Guardian America is an emerging online news provider in the US. Guardian America is the US outlet for Guardian News & Media, the UK’s leading liberal voice. Guardian News & Media owns The Guardian and The Observer, two [...]

There’s a very interesting interview with Dickie B over on the Guardian. Highlights include where the exploration of the creation and sales of the various units within the Virgin brand umbrella.