What is VRM?

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There’s a conversation getting started about Vendor Relationship Management, or VRM. It’s brand new; the Wikipedia article is six days old and nearly empty.

Doc Searls fleshes out the concept on his blog, here and here.

The idea goes like this: CRM or customer relationship management has become a huge industry, and is arguably not about real relationship at all. Searls outlines the CRM industry’s emphasis on automation and analytics, treating customers as database entries rather than human beings. VRM is about people taking control on the demand-side of their relationship with the supply-side, vendors, and in later conversations, with creators, and building authentic and rewarding relationships. This is especially relevant as we move towards an open-source economy and enjoy the breakdown of traditional distribution networks for artists.

(To get some background on the changing marketplace, (re)read the cluetrain manifesto, which Searls co-authored).

“Markets are conversations”

I don’t ever want to pay for music again. The concept is ridiculous and anachronistic, and, obviously, isn’t working anymore. I do want to reward artists, one, to demonstrate my appreciation, and two, to allow them to continue to create music.

Searls writes,

Let’s ignore the record companies for a minute. Instead, lets look behind them, back up the supply chain, to the first sources of music: the artists. Part of the system we need is already built for these sources, through Creative Commons. By this system, creative sources can choose licenses that specify the freedoms carried by their work, and also specify what can and cannot be done with that work. These licenses are readable by machines as well as by lawyers. That’s a great start on the supply side.

Now let’s look at the same work from the demand side. What can we do — as music lovers, or as customers — to find, use, and even pay for, licensed work? Some mechanisms are there, but nothing yet that is entirely in our control — that reciprocates and engages on the demand side what Creative Commons provides on the supply side.

Yes, we can go to websites, subscribe to music services, use iTunes or other supply-controlled intermediating systems and deal with artists inside those systems. But there still isn’t anything that allows us to deal directly, on our own terms, with artists and their intermediaries. Put another way, we don’t yet have the personal means for establishing relationships with artists.

The VRM project is something that is needed for the new marketplace. I look forward to watching the development of VRM and creator relationship management and, hopefully, finding a way to contribute to the system myself. Expect more commentary in this very space.

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Filed under collaboration, community, culture, marketplace, music, the information movement, the long tail, vrm