FRUKT Sessions 001: What did we learn about Generation Free?

Last week I attended the inaugural FRUKT Sessions. I promised to drop a few notes down so here goes.

Dan Southern: Xtreme Insight

Dan kicked off with some interesting vox pops showing that if you ask people what they get for free they can’t recall exactly. Of course we’re accessing a huge range of free services & content everyday (particularly on the internet) but this has become so normal, especially for the young folk, we’re seeing ’Generation Free’

Dominic Hodge: FRUKT

Dominic listed some of the trends which have been driving the culture of free in music:

1. Technology:fast internet speeds & storage ability. P2P networks the obvious example, I love the case study that even though Radiohead gave their album away for free 100s of people within minutes were putting it on P2P site; the behaviour on those communities is entrenched
2. Ethos of creative freedom: internet is disruptive at a philosophical level, some people feel content should be free and they should also be able to take, reuse, repurpose
3. Competition from other industries: Gaming industry, film industry much bigger media providers for consumer than in the past
4. Bad music industry PR: calling customers “thieves” made music companies unpopular and made people more reluctant to buy from them
5. More brands = more promotions

The session wrapped up with a panel featuring: Steve Purdham (We7), Geoff Morley (Blyk), Greg Miall (Sport) and moderated by Ruth Mortimer (Brand Strategy).

I normally gripe a bit about panels being dull but the guests were really well selected but I’m sorry to say I stopped taking notes at this point and just listened. I saw FRUKT taking video so I’m hoping they may put some highlights online. We’ll see.

I’d recommend getting in touch to see if you can get on the list for these events and you can also sign-up for their free fortnightly newsletter Brands, Bands and Fans (which I defy you to say 5 times in a row really fast).

On a final note, thanks to Dan for showing Chris Anderson’s 4 models of ‘free’. Really insightful and something I hadn’t seen before.