One of my all-time favorite bands, Counting Crows, have introduced a new way to experience their live performances. Beginning with their show on 7/28 in Charlotte, audio from every show will be available for download in both MP3 and Flac formats at Live Counting Crows.

This idea seems like a complete head-slapper, especially for a band like Counting Crows, who have long been known for their wide-ranging set lists and for multiple extended versions of some of their best known songs. At any given concert, you are likely to hear a version of Mr. Jones Rain King, or Round Here that includes snippets of Bruce Springsteen, U2, or other Counting Crows songs. Fans often debate online about which version of a live song is best. All of this means that no two shows are ever quite alike.

Till now, the only way to get live recordings of Counting Crows shows (other than their official realeases) was to download them from bootleg sites or to participate in trader’s networks, where fans who tape shows swap their recordings with those who have recorded concerts in other locations. Unlike these methods, which can be very hit-and-miss in terms of sound quality, each show at the Live Counting Crows site has been recorded directly form the band’s soundboard which results in a clean and crisp recording.

All this has me thinking about the future of how we may experience concert going. The by-product of companies who create good experiences for their customers are the memories of that experience. What better way to re-experience a great concert than by purchasing a recording that will allow the listener to re-live those memories any time they choose. Bands might further capitalize on this model by offering fans the ability to purchase recordings of that night’s show right at the venue, with customized CDs delivered to their homes within 2 or 3 days of the event.

280 Slides – …or maybe this is the future of web apps? As gorgeous as this interface is, what may be even more amazing is what you don’t see at 280 Slides. Behind the scenes, the folks at 280 North have completely re-created the Cocoa programming platform in JavaScript. The result? A very Mac-like presentation builder right in your browser. Completely awesome.

Windows UX Taskforce – Digg style voting site reporting and prioritizing experience issues in Windows

To illustrate concept of the experience economy in the real world, the authors discuss the progression of coffee through the economic ages. In an agrarian economy, coffee beans were harvested and traded or sold as market prices dictated. As the industrial age arrived, coffee beans were ground, packaged, inventoried and shipped to a wide variety of grocery stores and other locations. The manufacturers could charge more for the same amount of raw beans. The next economic age, the service economy, allowed yet a higher premium to be charged for the same raw materials as coffee beans were brewed, customized and served up on demand in a wide variety of locations including restaurants and vending machines. In the experience economy, companies such as Starbucks creating a culture of coffee. Run-of-the-mill coffee shops have been replaced by warm comfortable environments in which you choose from an insanely large variety of totally customized coffee-based beverages, hang out in living room type environments, and even discover new music. Customers are willing to pay a premium for this new coffee experience, and Starbucks (at least for the first few years) is uniquely differentiated from “competitors” who sell coffee.

Notice that in each of these four stages, commodities, goods, services, and experiences, the raw materials (coffee beans) do not change. However, at each of these stages customers value the offerings differently. By creating a distinctive coffee experience, Starbucks was able to increase the value and the price it charges for those same raw materials by at least two orders of magnitude over the market price of the commodity.

There is much written and discussed on the subject of creating good user experiences on the web. Researching, designing, and delivering good experiences online is the subject of my day job, which I absolutely love. Of course, good and bad experiences are making and breaking products and services in the offline world all the time too. I’m more convinced every day that the Experience Economy is still just getting started. I intend to write more on this site about the experiences (both good and bad) that are all around us every day and how the most successful and best loved companies are actively staging experiences to win loyalty and praise for their products and services.

If this is a subject of interest to you, please stop back here from time to time. Or better yet, leave a comment or drop me an email to share your own examples of defining experiences.

“Look for someone with girly smooth hands who gets to go to lunch whenever they want.”

– the always quotable Merlin Mann

Applying Divine Proportion to Your Web Designs – fantastic article on Smashing Magazine explaining how the use of the Divine Proportion and the Rule of Thirds can be used to create an effective, clean, and balanced design.

Fireworks CS4 Beta Announced – Adobe has announced the availability of the CS4 version of several of its tools, including Fireworks. With this release, Fireworks takes another major step forward toward becoming the must-have tool for interface prototyping and design.