Currently super popular pop duo The Ting Tings played in Helsinki a couple of days ago. I’m not a fan of pop, but it was nevertheless interesting to see a relatively freshly baked band live on stage.

They definitely put together a very energetic stage act. I mean, even their roadie probably had to go through an audition. He was constantly burning rubber as he erratically darted around the Tings untangling cables and setting the mic stands with great haste. He had put together a mini show of his own. It seemed they were all on speed or something. Impressive, man.

All that was just fine, but boy do I hate it when bands run out of tracks and then start repeating what they had already played that very same night. The last time that happened was some 15 years ago when for reasons unknown to me I ended up on the Spin Doctors concert (must have been paid to see it or something). Same here, The Ting Tings miss even shrugged her shoulders as she admitted they had run out of tracks after only 35 minutes and had to replay a number.

But check out their support act, the retro-electro nerd Moby Dictator. Seriously, when was the last time you’ve seen an electro artist perform on stage without a laptop, or two?

Mladen

Kaizers Orchestra played in Tavastia in Helsinki last night. Their first show in Finland was outright brilliant. Not only because they took questions from the audience during the gig and were selling their own merchandise after the show, but also because they brought Geoff Berner along. Although Berner performed only a handful of songs, his sharp satiric wit delivered the punch line of the night. Geoff Berner is the Woody Allen of music, period.

And just in case if you know Smashing Pumpkins personally, please tell them to go see Kaizers Orchestra. Pumpkins could definitely take a lesson or two from the Kaizers about performing live (the picture above from the last night’s gig might already give a hint or two).

Mladen

Remember Guns’n'Roses? I’m not surprised. They were in and screamed out within a few brief years. Only if you were a rebellious teenager during those fleeting moments and thought it was cool to dig hard rock and grow long hair, you’re probably humming one of their tunes right now. Even though it might be embarrassing to admit, I was one of those teenagers. But as soon as Spaghetti incident came out I considered the band forgotten. However, I have wondered from time to time what everyone besides Slash is doing. Boy was I surprised when I found out that Mr. Rose runs an established food business these days. It tastes better than it sounded.

Mladen

Not long ago opera house in Gothenburg begun a marketing campaign that seems to be the right kind of approach to selling an opera. The posters scattered around the city of Gothenburg invite people to dial an advertised phone number and listen in on opera’s current and upcoming program. Enticing.

Naturally, if you want to attract people to whatever you want to sell, you should let them get a taste of it, or in this case, let them hear what it sounds like.  I just wonder why opera houses don’t realize and accept this fact more often, or ever at all.

To get a glimpse of Göteborgs Operan program the old fashioned way dial 031 10 81 00 (or +46 31 10 81 00 if you’re calling from outside of Sweden), or visit the campaign Web page where you can sample different operas by picking up different telephones.

Even though the new generation of consumers will be content by hearing just these samples, I find it to be unfortunate that they don’t play the whole deal.

Mladen

Selling things is nothing short of a science. It’s not only being at the right place at the right time with the right thing priced just right. It’s also how many of right things you have on offer and how well you find your way around all that inventory of yours. That’s where algorithms, Web and throng of people step in. And the result is? Well, Chris Anderson calls it the long tail.

Wired’s editor-in-chief Chris Anderson first published an article back in October 2004 where he writes about practically infinite niche markets that drive a very big chunk of today’s on-line retail business. Then last year after gathering a long tail of comments and contributors from all winds on his Web site, Anderson published a book with an expanded title: The Long Tail: How Endless Choice Is Creating Unlimited Demand.

I picked up Anderson’s book a few weeks ago. The verdict? Read at least something about this phenomenon as it will help you understand what you might have not known even existed. If you have a reason for being too busy to read the book, then read the article. But if you’re getting into on-line business, then you should devour the Web site.

Here’s a few tidbits from the book.

Did you know that entertainment industry blatantly and unashamedly uses information about the content exchanged on peer-to-peer networks to develop marketing and release strategies for their products? Yes, those very same companies that sue their customers, at the same time benefit and even profit from the actions they sue those very same customers for. Strange, but not too surprising.

The name of the game is BigChampagne, a company that for monetary exchange tracks and analyzes information about media consumption of all kinds, with emphasis on following what’s hot and what’s not on P2P. The content producers thus know what people want and how bad they want it.

Did you know that you might order a book (book as in book the object) from Amazon that will materialize only after you have placed your order? Amazon doesn’t store just eBooks in digital form, but also many other titles that they plan to sell as atoms.

Their print-on-demand industrial printer machinery was first placed into their warehouses to top off small print runs inventory. In 2005 Amazon went a step further and acquired a leading print-on-demand company BookSurge to make their inventory more efficient and flexible. Although I’m still waiting for the day when I can get any book I have ever wanted, on eInk, instantly. Print-on-demand is cool, but dead trees and waiting for postman are so late-19th century.

Try to wrap your mind around this one:

TV produces more content than any other media and entertainment industry. There are an estimated 31 million hours of original television content produced each year. … In addition, 115 million digital videotapes are sold each year for personal camcorders.

31 million hours! That’s more than three and a half millennia, in a single year. Most of it is garbage, but it’s still 3.500 years. What about 115 million tapes (each probably an hour long on average) that amounts to more than 13.000 years? Who wants to watch all those home videos? Someone better discover how to consume video in a compressed format.

And if you think you or your obscure interests are unique, think again. The existance of parallel mass cultures might surprise you, but you and your freakiness are no longer alone:

The same Long Tail forces and technologies that are leading to an explosion of variety and abundant choice in the content we consume are also tending to lead us into tribal eddies. When mass culture breaks apart, it doesn’t re-form into a different mass. Instead, it turns into millions of microcultures, which coexist and interact in a baffling array of ways.

Or, as sociologist Raymond Williams wrote in Culture and Society: “There are in fact no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses.” And he said decades ago.

Mladen