Terry McBride's Blog

YYoga + Nettwerk = Nutone

So what is YYoga and where did it come from?

YYoga was born from an in depth conversation with a dear friend and Yogi, Lara Kozan, over 20 months ago. We discussed our different but entwined visions of what an amazing yoga studio should look and feel like. The name YYoga its self is a question (why) Yoga? The name came to me while I was winding through the streets of London in a taxi. The answer "pure freedom" came almost a year later after having conversations with many passionate Yogis who all believed that the linage they practiced was the correct one. From all their perspectives, they where right. So why not embrace them all into one and in doing so realize a sense of freedom?

YYoga was imagined as a social center where all are welcome and inspired to practice yoga, engage in wellness and be encouraged to interact with one another to build relationships and community. Essential to this creative purpose is the ability to be receptive to the thought that the community is the heart of our studios. YYoga studios are accessible, healthy, innovative and playful but authentic to embracing Yoga's lineage. The studios are intuitively designed to respect our environment by being ecologically and spiritually balanced. The larger studios will be know as wellness centers and will encompass many elements from yoga including meditation, massage, acupuncture, spa, retail, social spaces and food and beverage.

Music can be a big part of a yoga practice; I first heard Nettwerk artist Wade Morissette while practicing yoga. His music allowed my practice to take on certain ease and in time I found myself humming his songs. Many spiritual singers play at yoga studios with the more popular ones in theatres. I recently saw Krishna Das pack 1400 people into a church for a sold out "kirtan" (a singing chant fest). As such Nettwerk is bringing the "Nutone" record label back to life and signing some powerful artists to the roster. The initial roster will feature Krishna Das (http://www.krishnadas.com/), Wah (http://www.wahmusic.com/), David Newman (http://www.davidnewmanmusic.com/), Bhagavan Das (http://www.bhagavandas.com/), and Reema Datta. Each of these artists tour and have successful live careers. With their music gaining exposure online and in Yoga studios, their popularity continues to grow.

Nutone will be hiring a "Cultural Creative Product Manager" to lead this new initiative. As the roster develops, we will create a very unique team to market the abundance of this music. I am very excited to see this happen, as I know it will grow into something magical and help spread an abundance of beautiful, positive music to the mainstream, much like the vision that created Nettwerk 24 years ago.

Warm regards

t

I always seem to write these blogs when I am on a plane, which means I should be writing them more often!! These past few weeks have been a lot of fun. Time with the kids, fishing with my good friends Ric, Mark and Shaw& I continue doing lots of Yoga and its cool to really see some progress; a headstand is now a distinct possibility!!! This past week I also had some long nights as Brent Muhle and I wrapped up a 30+ page paper for MusicTank, which is a business and development network owned and operated by University of Westminster in the UK. This paper lays out a lot of our current vision of the music space and where we see a lot of opportunities. We wrote it from a perspective of creating a roadmap for the future growth of the music and other media centric paradigms. The report should be released in late May and I sincerely hope that it can assist those that it resonates with.

The Junos were fun, congrats to Feist. Its nice to see good artistry get recognized by the mainstream; it builds a much stronger future for our business. Calgary is a great city, the more time I spend there the more I appreciate it. Im looking forward to the Junos coming back to Vancouver next year; it will be a great opportunity for Yyoga to host a great (detox) class for all the partiers!

So there seems to be a welcome shift within the music business towards a DSP subscription based platform for a small monthly fee. This has been discussed for years now, but finally the major music labels are seeing the common sense approach to it. As I have said over and over, it's my belief that you cannot legislate or litigate social behavior. The only place for legal and legislative pressure is within a business-to-business paradigm. I do believe that the cable and Internet providers should pay a fee for the content that flows through their pipes. After all, no content, no need to charge those high speed costs. I do not believe that kids should be kicked off their Internet accounts, nor should they be sued for sharing their passions, but I do believe that they should pay for consuming the content of others. I have read a few interesting views that are opposed to this major label shift of perspective, but their reasons have to do with distrust of the system and a fear that the price will gradually get pushed upwards. I understand their concerns and based on past behavior, they are valid, but then again is this not the same fear that has been used to thwart other new ideas? I for one delete such fears and instead see great opportunity in this model. For one, all creators will now have an economic ability to monetize content. The user generated content, mash-ups and so on will now have a larger reach. We will also see social filtering really come to the mainstream, which will have an interesting effect on what is deemed mainstream. As per the price going up, well there are many DSP providers to pick from so there is real competition. This competition will increase as things move more and more wireless. Look at all the different mobile phone packages on the market. There is also the ability to create levels of price, not necessarily based on content (as I believe one needs access to it all for it to work on a mass level), but based on speed of delivery. A speed based price paradigm would allow a level of choice for both ease and also quality, after all there is a huge difference between mp3 and acc music files. Mp3 is the de facto choice, but that was greatly influenced by the size of file versus speed of delivery metric&. Yet another tipping point to be explored!!! LOL

Cheers