HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE

They say, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is one of the first self-help books ever published. It is written by Dale Carnegie and was first published in 1936 so that can be correct. Since then it has sold over 30 million copies world-wide and have won numerous awards. I had the pleasure to read a couple of months ago and it was well worth my time.

This book gives simple instructions in bringing people to your way of thinking, leadership and navigating people in general. Dale uses psychology to present different human relations and problems we all face once in a while and how to overcome the obstacles; It is very effective, even for someone with no psychology studies in their backpack. This is a great book and you'll learn a lot just by reading the fist few pages.

Podcast: American film politics

Before leaving for Los Angeles for the millionth time last year. I was invited to talk about American film and the politics around the industry in Hollywood. Jakob Stenberg and Henrik Nygren runs the podcast, Kongressen in Stockholm. Two very professional guys with tough questions, great knowledge and ideas.

Listen to the podcast or download it here. We discuss American politics, how it was yesterday and how it might be tomorrow. It is especially interesting now with the election coming up.

Jakob Stenberg och Henrik Nygren
Podcast Kongressen with Daniel Bramme

Podcast Kongressen with Daniel Bramme

The podcast is in Swedish...

THE MAGIC OF THINKING BIG - David J. Schwartz

The Magic of Thinking Big
By David J. Schwartz

The book, "The Magic of Thinking Big" was first published in 1959 and written by David J. Schwartz. Since then, the book has sold over 4 million copies and is a step by step guide to reach goals by thinking differently, changing perspectives and habits.

David says that the thing holding people back is the relative smallness of their thoughts and explains the importance of thinking positively. According to the book, you don't have to be smarter, more educated or better connected than your opposition. You just have to expect more and see what can be, not how the world presents itself.

This book has three goal and that is for the reader to make better decisions, avoid negative thoughts and stop procrastinating.

THE TIPPING POINT - Malcolm Gladwell

The name says it all really, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference". This book is Malcolm Gladwell's debut, first published by Little Brown in 2000. With the idea that messages, as well as products and behaviors spread like viruses do. Malcolm seeks to explain how everyday life changes depending on who you talk to, who you are and how we can use this theory to our advantage.

Through explaining different rules and personal traits, Malcolm invites the reader to learn about his theory. Even if I don't agree on everything in this book, it is still worth your time. The thing with Malcolm Gladwell and his colleague's books are that they always approach ideas in a whole other way that in the end, most of the time, makes a lot of sense.

Netflix, Hulu, Redbox and the others

As the film industry is changing, so are the production and distribution companies, the emerging markets will force companies and laws to follow the path the consumer set today. Many are trying to keep up and change their way of distributing their content some are talking about producing their own content. Unfortunately for some, it is too late or they don't have the resources necessary for such a change. This will be a costly change and since the streaming services are still a fairly new service, there will be a battle of who can accumulate most customers in shortest time.

Film stream

The demands from the customer is already pressing the market to come up with new ideas and new content. Instant gratification and easy accessible products, together with "having all in place" will be expensive for many subscription based services. While some will aim at covering all types of content (for example Netflix and Hulu) others will aim towards their respective "originals" from their own company. A good example in this case is HBO. This will in turn put heavy pressure on high quality content and might be a dangerous game when competing for users, producing Film, Games and other types of entertainment is extremely expensive and will need a steady cash flow or investors willing to go all the way.

 
variety logo
 

Kevin Noonan wrote about this in Variety - Hulu, Fullscreen, Maker Studios Execs Talk Subscription Streaming Challenges.

As usual, Kevin writes interesting pieces and it is nice to see someone talking objectively about the new market that is steadily growing. Look at the music industry where Spotify is clearly making it's users happy but also how much effort and investments are needed in order to get something like this of the ground.

 
“I don’t think the demand has quite caught up to the supply yet,” Strompolos said. - Variety

The interesting part about subscription based services is that you, as a consumer, don't own the product, but merely the right to watch, listen och play the content. This is also the reality for the companies today and that is a though nut to crack.

For example, I use Spotify for the simple reason that they where first and with that, have the means to keep it's content (today). The worst thing that could happen, is for a consumer (me) to discover that their favorite song or movie is not in their library or lists. Netflix is close to work this out but it is far from good. Today I´m worried my that my lists and libraries wont stay intact and that is a deal breaker for me as a consumer.

For an update on this subject, please take a look at the streaming industry in 2017.