U2 Conference: Matt McGee

Matt McGee is the founder and editor of @U2 and author of U2 – A Diary. He presented at our morning session on Sunday morning.

A few thoughts from Mr. McGee:

Matt gave us a great history of fandom related to technology. He went through the early days of newsletters and Propaganda, and then the first access to internet with AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy and Wire. Next in the evolution was websites like @U2, U2 Wanderer, U2Log, with the current social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace.

U2 has not had as great of a presence on the internet as fans. They started with PopMart live studio webcams. There was a mini-site with the release the 1980-1990 collection. An interesting excursus from McGee: there was a game on this website. The objective of the game was to move mini-U2 characters through a course as they attempted to dodge their fans. Once the fans surrounded the band, the game was over. Imagine a little pixilated Bono trying to avoid fans. Not a great premise for a fan website! U2.com is the most recent attempt to keep U2 connected to their fans and started with All That You Can’t Leave Behind.

McGee then went on to discuss how fans are using the internet to get their news about U2. For those who are online, 98% get their information from the internet (as opposed to traditional print media, books, mailing lists, etc.). U2 fans are now the marketers, media and information disseminators. We are doing the work for them. We take pics, videos and recordings. We control their image and information flow.

A couple of unique problems in this age of new media are evident. There is a huge loss of control – they can no longer manage the flow of information, audio recordings and video recordings from live concerts. We can get any song from any concert on torrent and other websites. There is also a loss of surprise – every set list and concert is published so there are no surprises. Many fans complain about a concert that they went to because they can read reviews and set lists from other shows.

A huge question has emerged for U2, other musicians and artists in general: How do artists protect their intellectual property? Any author would be offended if his/her work was reproduced and spread across the internet. A related issue is entitlement – people are very individualistic and narcissistic wanting U2 info on their terms, they want the control. The question emerges: should I have access to live video/audio from U2 shows simply because I can? Is this ethical?

McGee ended his presentation on technology and media by simply asking: What will U2 do?

Comments

[Tim]

I too thought that this was less of a problem for U2 than other bands. It seems odd to me which things they choose to be controlling of and which things they tend to ignore.

Regarding U2.com and viewer created vids, I thought it was extremely strange that a female security guard yelled at my wife and then, later, me for taking video with our little digital cameras. She was irate and waaay over the top (none of the other security personell seemed to mind). There are definitely mixed message here. In the end, "it is what it is" and there won't be any stopping the technology. Rather than hold the surf back, U2 need to ride it and enjoy.

Matt's presentation was fantastic. I asked if he would release the data and he thought that would be possible.

[Beth]

I thought Matt was superb, both in his historical overview and in his gentle way of pointing out how many terrible mis-steps the band have made in their own use of the online medium.

I get the concept around intellectual property, but my question about the live streaming is... how does the fact that u2 historically has been a pro-bootleg band fit in? They have demonstrated the ability to get official material which they *don't* want on YouTube taken down within hours, yet all these bootleg videos are left up for years -- and in fact their own U2.com site directly encourages fans to post videos from the shows they attended. It seems to me that needs to be taken into account.