While 2011 was a big year for political unrest, another uprising was afoot in the world of content creators and artists. Everywhere you look, artists are taking more control over their own economic well being, in large part because the Internet has enabled them to do so. You see it in all forms of content, from books, to video to music.

A few examples from this year:

e-books: Probably the most active area in large part because there is huge shifts taking place in digital publishing. From former mid-list writers like Barry Eisler to superstars like JK Rowling, writers are increasingly making waves in digital publishing.

Video: The story of the year for artists-as-entrepreneur came at the tail-end, with Louis CK saying no thank you to corporate middlemen and putting his new concert video online for a pop.

Radio/Music: All sorts of independent entrepreneurs are putting audio entertainment online, from the rise of podcast kings like Leo Laporte to a huge number of independents like Adam Carolla and Marc Maron. Music artists are being given freedom too, through new platforms to create and share their music like Soundcloud.

So what is driving this movement towards the artist-entrepreneur that will give it huge momentum in 2012?  Here are a few underlying trends:

The distribution chain is collapsing across content verticals

The middleman is under attack on all fronts, whether its in video, music/audio and e-books. As devices like TVs become connected, as books become e-readers and tablets, and music is now digital, the storefront is fast-becoming the entire distribution chain.  With e-books it’s Amazon or Apple, with radio it’s iTunes, with video it’s Google/YouTube, Netflix and other upstarts who are investing in original content, or simply direct-to-consumer efforts using web-payment platforms like Paypal.

Louis CK, who created his own site, paid for bandwidth, and used Paypal for payment, captured how many artists are beginning to think when he said in an interview with Bill Simmons that he “didn’t want to cut out the middleman, I just didn’t need one. There wasn’t any reason to have someone there. I just thought make this thing and put it up.”

Content production, distribution and monetization tools are becoming democratized through the web

In e-books, distribution and storefronts have already collapsed into one, but managing distribution across multiple channels is difficult since storefronts are still siloed (Amazon is separate from Apple iBooks, which is walled off from Barnes&Noble, etc). However, companies like Smashwords enable creation and distribution across multiple storefronts, while Vook, post-pivot, is working on SaaS tools to create e-books and manage their distribution, complete with reporting and management dashboards.

In music, artists are starting to embrace sites like Soundcloud to create music and share it, while others direct-to-fan sites like Topspin Media are enabling artists to create commerce sites to sell music in turnkey fashion. And it’s not just music sales, but actual concert tickets. The Pixies used Topspin to sell tickets for a recent concert, utilizing email campaigns and to notify fans and processed the tickets using an iOS app at the door.

With video, big middlemen still dominate, but that is changing as video creation and distribution costs come down in a world of connected devices. As Ryan Lawler wrote in a piece for GigaOM Pro:

“independent content creators stand to gain the most through massive reductions in the cost of recording equipment and editing software, as well as the greater availability of streaming video service on connected devices. They gain new distribution opportunities for their content and greater possibility for monetization. Consider any of the top YouTube video channels, which probably wouldn’t be able to survive in the pay-TV universe but have created thriving businesses due to the cost structure online.”

Generational shifts towards technology savvy-artists

As Matt Mullenweg put in in his New Year’s resolution on GigaOM:

“For a year now, I’ve said scripting is the new literacy. That’s something I strongly believe. In Douglas Rushkoff’s latest book, he talks about “program or be programmed.” That is, if you’re not in control of your inputs, you’re not really in control of your outputs either. You’re just a reactionary force.”

Matt is right, in that scripting is the new literacy, and a growing form of artistic expression. Tech-savvy artists are creating apps and developing sites to put their art into the world. Whether its Matt Inmann creating his work and coding his site at The Oatmeal or young app developers like Robert Nay, artists are becoming coders and vice versa, since, as Mullenweg states, scripting is “new literacy”.

No doubt, the vast majority of economic wealth is still distributed through large corporate media, but as new technologies enable artists to reach consumers directly through push-button creation and distribution, there is a movement afoot. Expect this movement to expand in 2012 as more artists take control of their own economic destinies and become part of the artist-entrepreneur generation.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• When video gets democratized, who wins and who loses?
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The 2011 holiday season that was kicked off earlier today (Black Friday) is proving to be a big boost for m-commerce as shoppers are using their smartphones, mobile apps and other devices to go bargain hunting according to various sources. Call it the season on couch commerce.

According to IBM’s Smarter Commerce division, the number of consumers using a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site is 17.37 percent with almost 9.73 percent of consumers using mobile device to make a purchase. IBM points out that iPhone leads all mobile device traffic – no surprise – at 6.77 percent, followed by Android phones at 5.37 percent and iPad at 4.67 percent.

Akamai’sdata traffic trends show that while traffic on mobile websites of retailers is up nearly four times compared to last year. The increases reported by IBM and Akamai are backed by a PayPal, which says that it saw a 538 percent increase in global payment volumes compared to Black Friday 2010. In addition, PayPal saw a year-over-year 350 percent increase in the number of customers shopping through PayPal mobile.

GSI Commerce, a division of eBay that hosts commerce-related websites for several large retailers says that it saw a 345 percent increase in US mobile sales compared to last year’s Black Friday. Channel Advisor which tracks the eCommerce related businesses found that:

 ”Through the year, we saw traffic from mobile devices in the 6-7% range and on Thanksgiving it spiked up to 10%.  What’s really interesting is that Tablets (mostly the iPad) were the majority of that at 7.8% (with Smartphones at 1.2%).  It will be interesting to see if that trend inverts on BlackFriday as shoppers move from ‘Tablet couch commerce’ to shopping with their phones while they are out fighting the crowds.”

All this should not come as a surprise to anyone. Even last year it was pretty obvious that mobile was going to have a major impact on how people shopped during the holiday. We have been talking about that for a while and agreed with Google’s predictions for the mobile commerce this holiday season.

Traffic to retail websites on November 25. Source: Akamai

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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Right after announcing VeriFone’s 2 million Monday purchase of Point, a European-based point-of-sale, gateway and payment services provider, VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron got calls of congratulation from PayPal President Scott Thompson and top Google Wallet  officials. These two companies have been feuding and there’s no love lost between them. But they found common ground in congratulating VeriFone, because the company’s evolution is very much tied to their efforts in disrupting the in-store payment experience.

As Google and Isis, the carrier-led joint venture, bring forward new NFC-based payment systems and PayPal builds its own in-store solution for payments that leans on other methods besides contactless, they’re increasingly looking to VeriFone to make sense of it all for merchants, which are confused about how to handle this transition to alternative payments. The thinking by VeriFone, Google, PayPal and others is that VeriFone can help lead merchants and retailers through this transition by becoming a managed services provider, not just a payment system seller, VeriFone CEO Doug Bergeron told me in an interview.

By helping integrate these new payments models into the existing systems of merchants, VeriFone can be an independent third party, a “Switzerland,” said Bergeron. He said VeriFone can make all the alternative payment systems and their new discounts and loyalty features work through point-of-sale hardware merchants are familiar with.

“We’re realizing our customers need more than just our products; payments is [sic] getting too complex for them and they need ongoing service. They need someone to manage not only credit card acceptance and security but all the new stuff that will co-exist like Google Wallet, Isis, and PayPal and Groupon. Retailers want the ability to keep current with all this stuff  but they can’t hire an IT team.”

VeriFone CEO Douglas Bergeron

That’s where the purchase of Point comes in. Point — which offers point-of-sale technology and support, payments gateway services, card encryption services, and multi-channel e-commerce processing – has the biggest footprint in Europe with 475,000 merchant contracts, which will no doubt extend VeriFone’s existing business. But really critical in the pick-up are Point’s services business and technology.

Point doesn’t just sell terminals; it provides merchants with ongoing security, compliance and technological capabilities, as well as other mission critical service. That fuels a recurring services model that will add about 0 million in sales over the next 12 months to VeriFone. VeriFone plans to use Point’s technology and business model in other markets where payment systems are mature to help retailers make the transition to alternative payments.

VeriFone said with the addition of Point, its services revenue will grow from 20 percent this year to 30 percent in fiscal year 2012 and will hit 50 percent of revenues by 2015. By that time, services will represent a .5 billion business, including rentals. If all goes according to plan, the company will become a services provider, delivering remote support and help in connecting these new payments solutions with a retail business’ system and ultimately with their banks.

This strategy isn’t without risks. Standard & Poor’s lowered its outlook on VeriFone Tuesday based on the debt it was taking on for the Point deal and the integration risks. And it’s unclear if VeriFone is being too optimistic in its belief that merchants will turn to it for managed services. But this is where VeriFone is ultimately going as it tries to become a full-blown resource for merchants and retailers. That’s the motivation that went into its recent purchase of Global Bay, which helps retail employees connect with consumers on the sales floor through mobile devices and provides software that ties into inventory systems and online commerce sites. Bergeron said merchants are increasingly going multi-channel, blending online and offline commerce, and they need more help in doing that.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that VeriFone is poised to capitalize on payments. It has been around for years and has a huge footprint in the U.S. with its point-of-sale terminals. But it’s making some bold decisions to grow beyond the point of sale, getting on to the sales floor with mobile devices like its PAYware card swipe tool and with Global Bay’s software and creating a services business that can provide a lot more recurring revenue. It’s hard to say which digital wallet and alternative payment system will win out. And VeriFone doesn’t connect to other mobile-based solutions like rival Square. But with its latest moves, it seems VeriFone will do quite well as the payment landscape goes through a lot of upheaval in the coming years.

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When PayPal went public in 2002, then executive vice president Reid Hoffman, spent some of his winnings on investing in an early round of Silicon Valley’s first solar thin film startup Nanosolar, according to an article in the New York Times. Hoffman, of course, later on founded LinkedIn, which went public in May of his year, but Hoffman hasn’t seemed to continue that sort of interest in funding early stage clean power and cleantech companies.

Those early shares of Nanosolar that Hoffman bought are likely worth a decent amount at this point. Other seed investors at the time included Spring Ventures investor Sunil Paul, Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and Benchmark Capital.

Nanosolar was reportedly worth billion at one point in 2008 when it last raised money, but I’m not sure how the company is valued now. As the demand for solar panels, particularly one’s not made of silicon, has dropped dramatically this year, and thin film solar companies have struggled, I wouldn’t be surprised if that valuation has dropped, too.

Back when Hoffman made that investment in Nanosolar, then colleague at PayPal Peter Thiel bought a Ferrari with his earnings, says the New York Times. Thiel has gotten a lot of attention recently for calling cleantech investing “a disaster.” 

So who was right back then: Thiel or Hoffman? Will Nanosolar struggle like its peer Solyndra has, going bankrupt partly due to cheap Chinese solar panels, and making Hoffman’s seed investment worthless? (And idealistic compared to Thiel’s sports car splurge). Or will the company be one of the solar leaders and add more cash to Reid’s coffers if it gets bought for a high amount of goes public?

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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GigaOM

If record labels were the canaries in the coal mine for digital entertainment, newspapers are bearing the brunt of digital disruption in news and information. With print circulation declining and ad rates collapsing, when and how will those proverbial “digital dimes” become dollars?

There have been spots of success in getting customers to pay for content online, including gaming and some segments of music and video. And newspapers and other information organizations are scrambling to roll out paywalls, usually supporting subscriptions and cross-platform access. Different models for content packaging and pricing are emerging gradually. Understanding consumer types and preferences through survey analysis is critical for building successful paid content strategies.

Join GigaOM Pro and our sponsor PayPal for “Building a better paywall: monetizing digital content,” a free analyst roundtable webinar on Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 10 a.m. PDT. As a thank you for attending this analyst roundtable, all attendees will receive a complimentary copy of our recent report, Building a better paywall: strategies for monetizing news content.

Our panel of experts includes:

• David Card, Research Director, GigaOM Pro
• Paul Sweeting, GigaOM Pro Analyst and Principal, Concurrent Media Strategies
• Carey Kolaja, Senior Director, Emerging Opportunities, PayPal

Some of the topics we will discuss include:

• Paid content lessons from online gaming, music and video
• Strategies for customer identification and segmentation
• How consumers prefer to buy digital content
• What kind of paid content packages show the most promise
• Other revenue stream opportunities

This free analyst roundtable webinar, hosted by GigaOM Pro and our sponsor PayPal, will take place on Wednesday, Sept. 14, at 10 a.m. PDT. Register today to claim your spot.

Photo courtesy Flickr user opensourceway

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It turns out there’s a method behind the FBI’s raids of suspected Anonymous members around the country. The bureau is working from list, provided by PayPal, of the 1,000 internet IP addresses responsible for the most protest traffic during Anonymous’ DDoS attacks against PayPal last December.

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