I’ll quote one section in particular, titled Directories:

Teenagers never use real directories (hard copy catalogues such as yellow pages). This is because real directories contain listings for builders and florists, which are services that teenagers do not require. They also do not use services such as 118 118 because it is quite expensive and they can get the information for free on the internet, simply by typing it into Google.

So, teenagers are exactly like every other person that has the barest ability to type Google.com, press enter and then tell the little box what it is you want to find.

So, what spurred this blog entry? This furor over something that should be patently obvious to anyone is really what did it. Like this article in the London Times Online. Here are a few choice quotes for you.

Today he is the talk of Tokyo, Wall Street and the City. Fund managers, CEOs and analysts are poring over his report, How Teenagers Consume Media, which he wrote last week while on work experience at Morgan Stanley.

[His supervisor] had given him a list of things to do and then gone on holiday. His report on how teenagers consume media was compiled in a day.

His supervisors thought the report “one of the clearest and most thought-provoking insights we have seen” and published it. The bank said that the response to his report had been enormous — generating six times the usual level of interest.

This is Morgan Stanley, folks. Morgan Stanley the INVESTMENT BANK. Yeah, and not only that, but this is the department in charge of researching the media and internet. Guys, there are about a thousand blogs or websites you could be reading to get actual information on media and the internet. Here’s a marketing blog that is talking about the fact that teens don’t like twitter… Dateline? Thursday, February 14th… Wait for it… 2008!

Yep, almost 18 months ago, we’ve got some anecdotal evidence from two teens (double the number in the Morgan Stanley article) stating that teens don’t love Twitter. Where was Morgan Stanley on that one?

I guess my frustration stems from the fact that these people are basically sleep walking through their jobs researching media and the internet, and then they publish this completely obvious report, and it’s celebrated by journalists, CEOs, analysts and even some marketers. Really? These CEOs are the same guys that probably ignore everything that their own marketing people are telling them, because if information is any good, it has to come from a bank, an analyst or a 15-year old boy. Certainly not the people that they hired to know what to do.

And the report pretends that this information is only about teenagers, wrongly. You want to know why? Because it was written by a teenager, and teenagers are among the most self-absorbed people on the planet. They think they are special and they think they are misunderstood and they think they are different from all the people that came before them and they are wrong. This report could have been written by a late 20s girl working at a law firm, with the possible exception that she would be more likely to use Twitter (though not substantially so).

I’m curious what the breakthrough ideas are in the report. People go to the movies less when they have less money? People download pirated movies instead of buying them? People stream music online? There are people that are in their 50s and 60s in my company that do this all the time. They probably listen to the radio more, only because most have a commute to work. Below I’m going to substitute the word “people” or “person” for “teenager” and see if there’s any jarring differences in the statements.

Every PERSON has some access to the internet, be it at school or home. Home use is mainly used for fun (such as social networking) whilst school (or library) use is for work.

No PERSON that I know of regularly reads a newspaper, as most do not have the time and cannot be bothered to read pages and pages of text while they could watch the news summarised on the internet or on TV.

PEOPLE listen to a lot of music, mostly whilst doing something else (like travelling or using a computer). This makes it hard to get an idea of the proportion of their time that is spent listening to music.

99% of PEOPLE have a mobile phone and most are quite capable phones.

Most PEOPLE enjoy and support viral marketing, as often it creates humorous and interesting content. PEOPLE see adverts on websites (pop ups, banner ads) as extremely annoying and pointless, as they have never paid any attention to them and they are portrayed in such a negative light that no one follows them.

Outdoor advertising usually does not trigger a reaction in PEOPLE, but sometimes they will oppose it (the Benetton baby adverts). Most PEOPLE ignore conventional outside advertising (billboards etc) because they have seen outside adverts since they first stepped outside and usually it is not targeted at them (unless it’s for a film).

See what I mean. These are what analysts are calling breakthroughs and mind-openers? How is this news?

Hey, guys, guess what!? Most teenagers use email instead of writing letters and using the post office. Most teenagers wish they had a sports cars. Most teenage boys really like teenage girls, and vis a versa.

What do you think? Am I wrong here, are these statements really all they are being cracked up to be? My theory: the kid looks like Harry Potter and people just can’t get enough of that kid.

Long story (and longer comment section) short, eMusic signs a deal with Sony to offer some 2+ year old music to their customers and in return they cut the number of downloads their users have in half.  Now, if you aren’t familiar with eMusic, then you need to understand that the people that are members of this subscription service are looking for hard to find music that isn’t offered at your more well known outlets like iTunes or Amazon.  Now, apparently, you know more than eMusic did when they made this decision.

The real kicker is that they announced it in a blog post titled “More of the Good Stuff”.  Really? More of the good stuff?

It’s so surprising to me when I see a company that is having a great deal of success, has a strong following, and seems to have a good connection with their customers (they have an active blog and message board), and then they just totally blow it.  Now, eMusic probably has tens of thousands of users, maybe many times that, but is now the right time to risk losing thousands of those customers?  There are over 650 comments on the announcement post, the vast, vast majority of which are negative.   Many state that this move assures that they are going to cancel their account.

It doesn’t take a lot to come up with some alternatives for how this could have been handled.  I’ll go over a couple below, but these are the types of decisions that make me wonder how the company became successful in the first plae.

Add Content Now, Delay Price Increases for Grandfathered Users

Really, how hard is it to figure this one out?  Add the Sony content on schedule, but announce that the price will increase at the end of the year (or some other arbitrary date).  It doesn’t have to be a long, long time, but the month notice that eMusic offered is without question too little time.  eMusic claims that they were already losing money on every download from the larger subscribers that had been around for a while and had been grandfathered, which could easily be true.  Would it be worth it to continue to lose money on those folks for another months before increasing the price, giving them the opportunity to get used to the new service, see if there is some value added to their experience, and when the price increase comes, they will have had time to get used to the idea.  Yes, the price still increases, but the customer doesn’t feel ambushed.

Add an Additional Membership Level / Package

This idea also makes a great deal of sense.  Give those users that want access to the new Sony songs (or even just a “premium” tier of labels) the option to get those songs, but at an additional charge.  WordPress.com does this very thing with the (in)ability to edit CSS, integrating sales widgets, and other similar features.  There are a couple of reasons that they wouldn’t go with this solution.  They could have decided it was too difficult to implement, but I have to believe that if you’ve already done all they’ve done to facilitate the downloading of music, adding an additional membership level couldn’t be that hard.  It’s a flag in the user database.

I think the  real reason is that eMusic had a real fear that the interest in Sony’s music wouldn’t generate nearly enough intereset in their existing user base, there wouldn’t be enough subscribers to Sony’s music which would be embarassing for both eMusic and Sony, and wouldn’t provide the revenue that either needed to make the deal work.

That’s why they went with the plan to convert all people to have access to the Sony music and increased the price of each download (in some cases from $0.18 to $0.42 each).  By ensuring that everyone has access, they almost guarantee that even those that aren’t that interested in the vast majority of the Sony offerings will at least give a few of them a try.

Is this good for eMusic, Sony or the customer?  I’d say “no” to all three.  eMusic is going to lose customers because there are literally hundreds (maybe thousands) of users that don’t want the Sony offerings and certainly don’t want to pay for the addition of something they don’t want.  Sony will lose out because there just isn’t going to be substantial demand on eMusic, they won’t be making as much per track, and I don’t think they are going to see the volume they will need.  It may be that they don’t really care what they make per track, since this is basically all marginal profit seeing as how these are out-dated tracks and they aren’t seeing any new revenue from them anyway, but they are still getting a black eye by being the instigator in the meltdown of this community.  And the customers lose out because they are paying the same or more for half the tracks.

Lose, lose, lose. It’s a sad day for everyone involved.