A Mixed Bag This Month . . . By Director Wayne Hall

October 30, 2007

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During the past year, the activities of the Music Industry Piracy Investigation team (MIPI) have noticeably increased, with a number of successful convictions carried out in partnership with other forces. This is great news for legitimate content suppliers and users, and MIPI are to be commended for their approach. MIPI are currently working on a Code of Conduct for the Juke Box industry which will provide them with more informed and logical ways of dealing with piracy. The code should also provide them with a working template for addressing other market segments as they turn their attention to them. Furthermore, it is very apparent (from personal experience) they now have the drive and commitment to follow up complaints. The only way to maintain the value of business music services is to ensure that all contributors to it -  the composer, performer, rights owner, programming & production house and operator – receive a return on their investment. If the total amount available to this pool of services falls (through piracy) then the capacity to maintain the level of service falls – and we all suffer. It is no coincidence that wherever you encounter illegitimate content, you encounter an inferior music service.

Our suggestion is that you become familiar with MIPI ie it’s charter, approach, and requirements for reporting piracy incidents, and support them where possible. In doing so,  you will be protecting your business, the business of others and the standard of music services.

Go to www.mipi.com.au for more information.

Last month we wrote about the importance of assessing the need for strategic partners. During the next month we will be launching a web page which lists the various strategic parties with which we have dealings – suppliers, clients, sales partners, associations – with links to their sites. We will also be distributing their stories through our contact network. This will be done topically and over time, starting with the juke box industry, then the DJ, Hospitality, Retail, Fast Food and services industries. If you feel your business would benefit from this exposure, please contact us here at SBA for more information.

Recently a number of media businesses ran a story on research findings about people’s mental state over a 24 hour cycle. The findings could generally be summarised as determining that people travel through the day largely influenced by their hormonal state. There a periods when we are “slow” and therefore best suited to simple tasks, periods when we feel energised mentally and/or physically, and periods when we feel downright “flat” (that 2pm coffee craving or chocolate pick-me-up is the real deal after all !). Everyone who runs a business, and in particular those that rely on creating a service experience, would do well to appreciate these “mental-state” periods, because the way our staff behave, and the expectations of the customer, are heavily influenced by them. In other words, the capacity to perform a task, the type of environment being presented  AND the value a customer places on the look and feel of a service environment can change depending on the time of day. Fortunately, and this is the good news, we all seem to be a fairly predictable lot, with little more then five states of mind occurring around the same time each and every day. The challenge for resource managers becomes one of setting an environment for staff and customers which complements (and perhaps even compensates) for these states. For instance, a business may wish to use techniques which “pick up” the mental state of it’s staff who are largely involved in cognitive thinking or physical work during “flat” times of the day, while a café may wish to complement the state of it’s customers (relax and drink more coffee…) during the early to mid-morning period. It is worth spending a little time identifying these periods and responding to them where possible, because productivity and revenue improvements are possible. It goes without saying that music (style, tempo, familiarity) has a role to play here.

Finally, I am continually amazed at the standard of some of the acoustic environments which are created by designers and signed off by their clients. Restaurants, retail stores and venue areas full of hard surfaces and meaningless voids which make it impossible to deliver any semblance of an acoustic solution – be it the capacity to hold a conversation or listen to music; style over substance.  Put simply, speaker placement and acoustics should be one of the first considerations of any environment where people gather. There is nothing as pleasant – exhilarating, even - as experiencing great sound, and we all need to educate everyone who will listen (designers in particular) about the long term benefits which accrue to businesses where the acoustics are done well.

People gravitate to environments which make them feel good.


Wayne Hall
Director

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