Beneath the Underground

Can music learn from the slow-food movement? - Salon.com

2012-01-29T14:44:00.000-08:00

Can music learn from the slow-food movement? - Salon.com:

“People said the idea of giving away software and selling services to new markets would never work,” Tiemann says. “That worked out fine and this can, too. What would it be worth to provide a path to sustainable success in the music industry? I think that’s worth a lot. Strip-mining the low end, selling less and less quality to more and more people — there are limits to that model, and the music industry has done about as much of that as can be done. It’s time to try something new.”

The "salon" model may indeed work for lots of musicians, but we're gonna need a LOT more salons. How many tech VP's are lining up to establish these places?

Exactly.

Point - Counterpoint: The $100k "Indie" Band

2012-01-29T05:20:00.000-08:00

Point: TIME Magazine: Want to be a Rock Star? You'll need $100k...

Counterpoint: Lefsetz (and readers): Bullshit.

One interesting comment via iblogwhatihear:

But I feel like the backlash has been equally awkward — it’s all self righteous band dudes talking about their DIY cred acting like they’re fucking Fugazi or something. I’M THE REAL FACE OF A STRUGGLING MUSICIAN, NO ONE HELPS ME OUT, I BOUGHT MY FIRST BASS WHEN I WAS NINE YEARS OLD BY DIGGING THROUGH THE DUMPSTER OUTSIDE MY ORPHANAGE AND HUSTLING SPARE METAL OFF THE TURNPIKE. I LEARNED TO SING FROM “BLIND” SPLINTER MCGEE IN AN ABANDONED SILO OUTSIDE OF BATON ROUGE. WHAT THE FUCK IS A “PARENT”?

Tom Silverman – Music Business Resurrection

2012-01-24T19:18:00.000-08:00

Tom Silverman – Music Business Resurrection:
Those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time may remember my 2010 interview with Tom Silverman that wound up being picked up by several larger periodicals. Tom is the founder of TommyBoy records and one of the principal executives at the New Music Seminar. He asked me to re-post one of his latest blog posts about where the music business is just over two years later. I personally feel it’s premature to call the upward swings in some areas of the business a “resurrection” but I have enormous respect for what Tom built at TommyBoy and the work he continues to do with the New Music Seminar. If nothing else, the statistics he presents below are very interesting. The article below is unedited and written and compiled by Tom himself.

THE MUSIC BUSINESS RESURRECTION

Tom Silverman

As I sat and planned the program for the June 2012 New Music Seminar, it occurred to me that we are approaching the first anniversary of the music business resurrection. After ten years of decline, the music business hit bottom in the second week of February 2010 and began to rise the week of February 14^th. There have been many reports of the music business comeback and many have tried to figure out what was responsible for this upturn. Some have credited Adele, others the shuttering of Limewire, still others the Walmart $5 dump bins.

Let’s look at the good news.

In 2003, there were virtually no single sales as the labels stopped manufacturing them to drive buyers to higher priced albums to get the song they wanted. In 2004, iTunes changed all that and for the first time music lovers could buy not only the radio single, but also every track on the album separately for only 99 cents. Digital singles exploded, soon surpassing total album sales, physical and digital combined.

In 2010, digital single sales increased only 1.1% leading people to believe that tracks had peaked and might begin to decline. 2011 proved them wrong as singles grew 8.5%. Although this seems like a small number, due to the huge denominator, this represents growth of over 100 million singles in 2011.

Most of the 1.27 billion tracks that sold in 2011 were at the higher $1.29 price point showing the inelasticity of demand for digital singles even in the face of free illegal downloads and a half a year of Spotify plus Rhapsody, Mog and Rdio offering streaming competition. It is important to note that this growth did not come from current hits like Adele, Katy Perry or LMFAO but across the board especially from catalog.

More good news came from digital album sales where the growth rate increased from 13.3% in 2010 to 19.5% in 2011.

In unit sales, digital albums took the biggest jump since 2007 and the second biggest jump ever.

16.8 million more digital albums sold in 2011 than in 2010. 2011 was the first year that the increase in digital album sales exceeded the fall in CD sales. This is a significant benchmark that few seem to have noticed.

Good old CDs had quite an amazing year. In the face of the Borders chain closing and many other stores folding and CD SKUs shrinking within existing stores, we saw the smallest percentage shrinkage in CD sales since 2001.

Physical CD sales on the internet were actually up 17.7% in 2011 indicating an increasing desire for CDs at least online. With CD sales still running almost 69% of all album sales seven years into the iTunes era, it is clear that people still want physical CDs. If it were easier for record buyers to find the CDs they want in stores, there is no doubt that CD sales would be selling in far greater quantity.

More good news in the 60 year old 33 rpm vinyl LP album format where we saw a huge 37% increase in vinyl sales last year. The total sales are still under 4 million units (compared to 1.27 billion singles).

After hearing stories of the death of music acquisition from the “cloud camp,” music buying seems alive and well in all its forms. Nielsen SoundScan counted 1.6 billion music transactions for the first time ever in 2011.

If the good news in music sales is not enough of an indication of the returning health of the music business, add to that the new revenue centers of music streaming. In digital broadcasting where SoundExchange collects and distributes to artists and labels statutory fees, the industry has seen an enormous growth in new revenues.

In 2011, $95 million more dollars were collected by SoundExchange than in 2010 and conservative projections for 2012 show growth into the mid $400 billion mark. In 2011, SoundExchange collected almost the same amount from digital broadcasters as the traditional performing rights societies collected from all of the AM and FM radio stations for the songwriters and music publishers.

Other licensed streaming services with subscription models like Spotify, Mog, Rhapsody, Rdio and other subscription services added even more new revenue to the music business.

Although this graph tracks worldwide subscriber growth, Spotify’s U.S. launch in July shows great promise for significant new music revenues from the “access” model that appears to enhance rather than cannibalize music acquisition based on early results. This is comforting to a music industry that is always worried about a new format cannibalizing an older one.

The music business has clearly hit bottom and the resurrection is here. After a decade of the “music web” expanding its reach, becoming easier, faster and more social, new music discovery channels are showing their impact in more music sales and more paid music access. To be fair, all the news was not positive in 2010. The continued shrinkage of CD shelf space, the decline in mobile phone ringtone/ringback revenues and the failure of Beyond Oblivion, a promising idea tying connected devices to “feels like free” music access, were lowlights in an otherwise stellar year for the business of music. The powerful launch of iHeartRadio, the long-awaited U.S.

launch and explosive growth of Spotify, the public offering of Pandora and their achievement of 120 million registered users, Sirius/XM reaching 21.9 million subscribers. Mog, Rhapsody, Rdio, Cricket/Muve all grew their music subscriber base, all not only driving more revenue to the business, but more engagement and discovery of music and spending especially in the over-30 demographic that had historically spends far less money on music than younger demographics.

YouTube and Vevo are beginning to generate significant revenues to the music business and also driving discovery and sales as well. Mac Miller and Tyler the Creator were just two of the breakthrough YouTube driven hits proving YouTube’s ability to drive exposure as well as sales.

Smartphones reached 50% of all mobile phones in the U.S. and the recent CES Convention showed hundreds of new connected devices, and the rollout of connected automobiles all of which will drive more music access.

The 50’s saw the transition from 78’s to 33 rpm albums and 45 rpm singles that fueled a 30-growth period for music. The cassette made music portable and stimulated additional growth. The CD increased the perceived value of an album by 80% and ignited the biggest growth era in the history of the music business. A decade of adjustment is over and it is now clear that we are on the brink of the next big growth era of the music business.

On June 17-19, the New Music Seminar will explore the exciting future of the music business with the SoundExchange Digital Broadcasting Summit and the BMI Creative Conclave. The creative community and their label partners will meet the digital broadcasters, music bloggers, music technologists and all of the new music exposure and monetization players. Clear Channel CEO, Bob Pittman and Sean Parker will share their vision for the future as keynotes, as every sector of the evolving new music business convenes to discuss their perspectives for the exciting new future for the music business.

For most of us in the music business, this is probably the first time in a decade where we are feeling a new sense of optimism. Although unauthorized on-line music usage and distribution has not gone away, it is now time that the music industry begins to focus on expansion and positivity rather than fear and protectionism. Welcome to the resurrection. Have a nice day.

David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur - Page 2 - New York Times

2012-01-13T14:04:00.000-08:00

Bowie in 2002. How did his predictions pan out?

David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur - Page 2 - New York Times:

''Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity,'' he added. ''So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left. It's terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn't matter if you think it's exciting or not; it's what's going to happen.''

Victory over Suffering

2012-01-09T04:32:00.000-08:00

Victory over Suffering:

Depression is a battle many musicians fight. The darkness itself can be an incredible muse if it’s not debilitating. Listen to the great words of Leonard Cohen and let yourself be happy enough to produce your art.

“Good work is produced in spite of suffering… as a victory over suffering.” – Leonard Cohen

For more info: leonardcohen.com

xkcd: Tradition

2011-12-30T07:46:00.000-08:00

xkcd: Tradition

Worth a look, IMHO.

Flavorwire � Awesome Infographic: The Geography of the Year in Music

2011-12-27T10:26:00.000-08:00

Flavorwire � Awesome Infographic: The Geography of the Year in Music:

What does it all mean? That even in this brave new age of internet self-distribution and SoundCloud and unlimited online streaming, you’re much more likely to get heard if a) you’re American and b) you suck it up and go to scrounge a living in the big city in order to get your music heard.

via Google Reader.

The scale of the pop universe

2011-12-26T03:00:00.000-08:00

The scale of the pop universe:
I’m always fascinated to see real concrete sales numbers attached to pop-culture artifacts that you actually pay for—books, movies, video games, music. So I thought the most interesting part of this NYT piece on Cee-Lo Green was this graf:

“Forget You,” released in August 2010, reached No. 2 and has sold 5.3 million downloads in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan, making it the 12th most downloaded track of all time. (By comparison, Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” the top song of 2011, has sold 5.7 million.)

If you had asked me to guess how many times the top-selling track of 2011 had been downloaded—bigger than any Lady Gaga song—I would have guessed at least 10 million, maybe 20. Really, 5.7 million downloads for the top song—a song supported by a basically unfathomable media monsoon, by omnipresent playback on the radio, on TV, in real places like coffee shops and car dealerships—that ain’t so many.

So on one hand, it just makes me realize how truly fragmented music is these days.

On the other hand, it makes me realize how many of a pop song’s plays aren’t paid for by listeners like us. Rather, the song gets licensed, soundtracked, muzacked, and just generally rolled out across the walls of the world. That all drives downloads, sure, but I’ll bet it also accounts for a huge fraction of the total lifetime listens. And it distorts our instincts—it makes pop songs seem bigger than they are.

And on the third mutant hand, it makes me hopeful that we might build that bridge between Kickstarter and Louis CK-level success after all. If the absolute top of the scale—the speed of light and commerce—is 5.7 million, then suddenly the number of purchases and plays you might get through a smash-hit Kickstarter campaign (50,000? 0.01 RITDs?) seem pretty meaningful.
(reposted via Snarkmarket.)

your percussion based worries are over

2011-12-24T11:32:00.000-08:00

your percussion based worries are over:

via Imminent Discursivity.

“Mahna Mahna”: How a ditty from a soft-core Italian movie became the Muppets’ catchiest tune. - Slate Magazine

2011-12-21T23:35:00.000-08:00

“Mahna Mahna”: How a ditty from a soft-core Italian movie became the Muppets’ catchiest tune. - Slate Magazine

Music history.

Free Ride: Digital Parasites and the Fight for the Business of Culture | Brain Pickings

2011-12-21T05:16:00.000-08:00

Free Ride: Digital Parasites and the Fight for the Business of Culture | Brain Pickings

Worth the time for creative to read, IMHO.

tumblr_lwhopg6deE1r66jcwo1_400.jpg (JPEG Image, 333x423 pixels)

2011-12-20T23:23:00.000-08:00

tumblr_lwhopg6deE1r66jcwo1_400.jpg (JPEG Image, 333x423 pixels)

Walmart, you're doing Christmas right.

2011-12-20T23:05:00.000-08:00

Walmart, you're doing Christmas right.: submitted by becuzimbrown to funny
[link] [86 comments]

Production Music Disasters #3: New Age Meat Processing

2011-12-20T17:38:00.000-08:00

How does this happen? Does the producer think "Hmm, how do I bring a sanguine equilibrium to industrial meat processing? Oh, synthy 'new age' music - that'll do the trick!"

With its triplet-swing quantize, not quite in-time hand drumming, and meandering melody, this music track seems to have been originally composed for another genre featuring shots of naked meat, but some of you aren't old enough to visit that website yet.....

Brain Eno - Composers as Gardeners

2011-12-01T01:08:00.000-08:00

Brain Eno - Composers as Gardeners: Brain Eno - Composers as Gardeners "My topic is the shift from 'architect' to 'gardener', where 'architect' stands for 'someone who carries a full picture of the work before it is made', to 'gardener' standing for 'someone who plants seeds and waits to see exactly what will come up'. I will argue that today's composer are more frequently 'gardeners' than 'architects' and, further, that the 'composer as architect' metaphor was a transitory historical blip."

Brian Eno quoted from Edge.org issue 11.10.11

Google is over.

2011-11-24T19:16:00.001-08:00

Google is over. I'm telling you now, but neither you or Google will be willing to deal with this for years.

I should be clear: by "over", I mean the Google that brought us a new internet - a Google that reinvented email, browsing, security, commerce.....

THAT Google is gone. Dead. Never to return.

In its place a pale imitation having taken the form of a marketing company.

Google will continue to make money for those who demand it, but as with all modern corporate parasites, it will be done via bookkeeping shenanigans and public lies. Google has stopped making things - in fact, they're killing things that don't make them enough money.

I still can't figure out why Google thinks there's so much money in Plus - did Facebook really eat their lunch?

Google and Facebook believe in "The Now." But they're going to be surprised at how quickly that evaporates. There's only so much novelty to go around.

The next couple of years are going to see an explosion of mobile apps who's purpose it is to motivate commerce. Google and Facebook want nothing more than to be on the back of every dollar that leaves your wallet. Buying a coffee? Googlebook wants to be there.

They want to tell Starbucks that you just bought a Peet's, and for a few extra bucks, Googlebook will let Starbucks market to you right on your phone. It's a wet dream for every half-capable sales-douche who continue to fail into higher paying jobs.

But its not long - I'm telling you. Used to be the tech companies led the world - that's inverting. The world is taking the reigns again - only the smartest are going to come out of this unscathed. And Google isn't one of the smart ones, anymore.

Sooner or later, the degree to which Google's technology is being used (and by whom) to shape our day-to-day reality will be revealed. It will make Wall St. fraud look like The Amateur Hour.

But it's still years away. Long enough to forget.

And you will forget. Googlebook will be damned if they'll let you remember. This blog post? Ironically, on a Google service, and there's no way in Hell Google wants you reading my blog. What does Google get from me sitting here typing words that will never be read? Just some geographic biometric data?

----to be continued----

Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » These Bands Have No Fans

2011-11-19T13:56:00.000-08:00

From Lefsetz a couple weeks ago. Worth a read.
Related: When bands fall of cliffs.

Lefsetz Letter » Blog Archive » These Bands Have No Fans:
If you want to last, head straight for the wilderness. Leave the big machine behind. Work neither radio nor television. Concoct a ten year plan instead of a ten minute plan. It’s probably gonna take you that long to get noticed and build. But once you’ve made it, you’ll have a fan base that supports you. You may starve until you’re thirty and not even be comfortable until you’re forty. And it’s not your fault, it’s hard to reach people and they’re conditioned to believe everything is evanescent and close to worthless, why should you be different?

The machine lauds new music and movies, which flow over the audience like a tsunami. You didn’t like last week’s flick? Don’t worry, we’ve got ten more for you this weekend! Many people tune out. They believe there’s nothing good out there. But you know this is not true. But it’s hard to convince those who believe otherwise. That’s your mission, convincing people who think everything’s crap you’re not.

And as soon as they see you dancing, in fashion shoots, hear your song on Top Forty radio, they put you in that category, of here today, gone tomorrow. We used to look up to those trumpeted in the media. Now they’re fodder for ridicule. That’s what TMZ and Radar are all about. Everyone knows your name, but they’re laughing at you.

-----

Stayin' Alive In The Wall (Pink Floyd vs Bee Gees Mashup) by Wax Audio

2011-11-19T13:42:00.000-08:00

Stayin' Alive In The Wall (Pink Floyd vs Bee Gees Mashup) by Wax Audio:

I liked a YouTube video: Stayin' Alive In The Wall (Pink Floyd vs Bee Gees Mashup) by Wax Audio
MP3 available at http://www.waxaudio.com.au

The Bee Gees: Stayin' Alive
Pink Floyd: Another Brick In The Wall Pt. II

Mashup & Video by Wax Audio 
http://www.waxaudio....

Farewell Google Reader – We’ll Miss You

2011-11-19T13:14:00.001-08:00

Farewell Google Reader – We’ll Miss You:

Image via CrunchBase

Word on the street is Google Reader’s social functions, its funky community of shares and comments, and the archives of these interactions, will all be flushed down the memory hole tomorrow.

I check my Reader every day and it’s always a minute or two before I realize that these people I’m following, these comment threads I’ve become accustomed to, these excellent finds – will all be gone.

In Iran this may have real repercussions. “Gooder” as the Iranians call it, has been an under-the-radar social networking tool for young Iranians and activists in that country, and soon it will no longer be available to them:

In a country which all social website like twitter, facebook, friendfeed, and video or image sharing websites like youtube, tumblr, flickr, picassa and many more are banned, Google reader acts like a social websites and in lack of any independent news website (it should be mentioned that all international news channels like BBC, CNN, VOA, and all other non-governmental news website are banned,) Google Reader acts like a news spreading website. Easy access to Google reader made it suitable for Iranian community and through all these years, specially after June 2009 election, developed an strong community for spreading the news.

So that’s a pretty big deal, if you ask me, and Google is scrapping it anyways.

Francis Cleary has one of the best rants out there posted, of all places, on Google Plus. The whole thing is worth a read because it illustrates, at least to me, how so many different people can use Reader and never interact with one another and still have the exact same feelings about its value and its demise.

“Google Reader is was the best asynchronous social network ever made,” writes Francis. “It’s the closest thing to a party that 25 people, all on totally different schedules, can swing.”

Even if every Reader feature made it to Plus — and shit no they haven’t, and it doesn’t look like they will — the entire concept, culture and process is completely different. You can’t remotely replicate the closed, tight, context- and content-first communities of Reader in Plus. You can’t efficiently or effectively share, excerpt, annotate or discuss a 3,500-word longform news article on Plus alone without opening at least two other tabs.

You can’t sit back with a drink and catch up on discussions that don’t have to be carried on right fucking now or they’re gone forever in Plus. […]

Somebody else can swing in here and grab this niche now that Google’s flushed it. Not rolled it into Plus, but flushed it gone.

But can they? Can some bright young entrepreneur rush in to create a new Gooder for the Iranians? Can they draw us all back like moths to flame or will the Reader Diaspora simply melt into the great wide empty of the internet proper?

Somehow I don’t think so. This is the end, beautiful friend. Too bad Google couldn’t just ignore you forever. Your neglect, it turns out, was the very thing that preserved you.

Oh, and one more thing: I had never heard the term ‘sharebros’ until now. I assume that each various niche within the Reader community had its own self-identification. Hivemind or Horde or what-have-you.

Sign the petition to save Google Reader.

Follow me on Twitter or Facebook. Read my Forbes blog here.

Tutorial: How to make Hip Hop Hits

2011-11-19T13:14:00.000-08:00

Tutorial: How to make Hip Hop Hits:

I liked a YouTube video: http://twitter.com/DavePBrown
http://www.boyinaband.com/tutorials/tutorial-how-to-make-hip-hop-hits/ - head over to my website to see the lyrics... uh... I mean the text version of the tutorial, grab some samples and check out my other blogs and t...

Casting Call for 'Sound Vs. Sound' Reality TV Series

2011-11-15T20:44:00.000-08:00

Casting Call for 'Sound Vs. Sound' Reality TV Series: Sound Vs. Sound, a new reality competition TV series that follows musicians, composers, arrangers and producers as they face musical challenges across different genres, announces an electronic casting call for producer/musicians who would like to participate in the show as contestants. The Sound Vs. Sound series will be filmed on February 5-18, 2012, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Deadline for submissions is December 1, 2011.

Protesting Reality

2011-11-09T15:46:00.000-08:00

"Schwetz stood Thursday in front of the Federal Reserve building on San Francisco’s Market Street, holding a plain white piece of cardboard with a handwritten plea: ‘Return our homes.’ A few months after Schwetz purchased a home in Petaluma in 2004, his subprime mortgage payments doubled. For five years, he poured almost all of his earning as a FedEx driver into his house payments, until he couldn’t afford it any longer. He rented rooms to friends, but ‘it didn’t help much,’ he said.”

“Schwetz’s lender refused to renegotiate the borrowing terms. Two years ago, he sold his house, which had lost about half its original value of $400,000, for less than he owed on the mortgage - a practice known as a short sale. ‘I’m angry and I’m frustrated, and it’s really unfair what’s been done,’ said Schwetz,”"

Let's examine a few things - he took out a subprime loan to buy a $400k house, and a few *months* later, he's dedicating almost "all his earnings as a FedEx driver."
http://www.simplyhired.com/a/salary/search/q-fedex+driver

Assuming he's making $46k a year, and assuming a non-zombie underwriter informed him as a matter of practice no more than 1/3 of one's income should be dedicated to housing, he's deep on the wrong end of that ratio. So, either he lied on his loan apps (probable), or got suckered into a loan that he "qualified" for due to someone else massaging the numbers elsewhere in the process (highly probable.) So a guy with a $46k-ish income is servicing a mortgage payment up in the $30k/yr range ($3k/mo??) - so his principle is up around $500k??

*THIS* is a person who thinks The Fed is responsible for his financial problems??

$46k gross means he's taking home $38-ish, which means his monthly rent/mortgage is going to be in the $900-$1400 range, $1500 tops (per the rent calculator recommendations). There's a name for this in realtor parlance: renter.

I know he's eating it on the equity side - upside down on a liar-loan and no way out that doesn't involve a decade of damage. Welcome to the downside of gambling.

There's no doubt the system is rigged against him/us - it's like trying to negotiate with an avalanche. I understand the psychic pain created when the absurdity of one's expectations comes into sharp relief, and I especially empathize with the need to identify a source - a singularity - who's destruction needs to serve both a re-stabilized future and a sense of justice/vengeance.

This is something bigger than a colorful social anachronism and convenient news fodder. There are deeper assumptions being challenged by physical reality. At best, this is a lurch towards establishing a new language in which to discuss a transition to new expectations. And that's giving this OWS movement waaay more credit than I usually do.

On the death of Google Reader

2011-11-09T15:39:00.000-08:00

The joke was on me.

I made the upfront investment.... on faith alone... in countless hours scouring and curating the web. My last stats were something along the lines of reading 10k+ articles monthly, sharing almost 1k/week. How many people can keep up with that?

Before Google killed their Reader yesterday, I'd amassed a pile of curated and - most importantly - searchable links. The "Shared Items" search was massively utilitarian (in one instance, shaving thousands of dollars off an auto-repair bill due to my searching having eliminated a previous information-asymmetry between myself and a retailer), making it easy to search a body of stuff I'd already qualified. Spammers can't game that.

But more importantly, apparently Google can't monetize it. So it's history.

Familiar story - a few smart heads wrap around a problem, solve it, and change the world. Then "The Money" moves in.....

Right now, money rules. We're in a new gilded age - a resurgence of social bivalence: you're either in, or out. No more middle ground.

And "The Money" thinks the future is all about "right here, right now." Google grew up as a "search" company, but now, it's looking more like they're a biometric inventory company - vacuuming up enormous amounts of identifiable behavioral data and selling it.

The most valuable data is, of course, timely. "What can we sell you RIGHT NOW!?" is all Google wants to know anymore, because that's what "The Money" wants to know. That's why the new GUI looks the way it does - everything is coming back to WAVE, except with more ads, and more people employed in real-time to sell you stuff. Got a pretty face? You've got a future on Google +....

But Reader users don't want to buy anything - that's why we enable AdBlock. RSS (mostly) doesn't carry ads. Reader was the anti-web for the internet. Reader WAS the internet - just not the abstraction most people think of.

Most people visit "websites" - not Sharebr@s. We'd click through once in a while, but we wanted the content - and only the content.

It was the future of everything but that future couldn't be monetized: so it had to die.

Apple Grew On Me

2011-10-05T23:26:00.000-07:00

Christmas, 1984.

Rubber moon boots, Pee Chee folders, schoolbooks covered with repurposed grocery bags. Metal lunch pails adorned with The Hardy Boys and rock bands. That summer, the film "Beat Street" had introduced our small town to "parachute pants", popped collars, and breakdancing.

It was also the year the first Apple II's showed at my elementary school - weird beige boxes with brown keys that seemed completely foreign. They didn't have much software, and at first glance, a word processor looked like the computer had stopped working correctly. In 6th grade, I didn't have much to say yet, anyway.

A couple years later, the Apple IIc showed up in my 8th grade science class. This time it was bundled with some more software - Oregon Trail, some pinball game, a programming language called "LOGO", and Br0derbund's "Print Shop."

Talk about a disruptive technology....

Print Shop allowed us (students) to co-opt the forms of the common daily newspaper and press our own views. (The only person who ever really mentioned the idea of being truthful and checking facts was our science teacher.) We'd write hilarious (to us) accounts of the school's principle abusing students, blissfully unaware of the potency of both the claims and the form they took - before "The Onion", there was my 8th grade school newsletter.

Got distracted... back to Christmas 1984.

I come home to see some large boxes gift-wrapped on our table (yes, we had one.) We tear open the gift wrap to reveal an Apple IIe computer. Zero day.

The next year is a blur - I can't imagine how many hours I sat in front of that thing, transcribing BASIC code from issues of Family Computing Magazine to figure out how to make basic games and graphics. I remember one record-breaking 14 hours playing "Akalabeth", (the precursor game to "ULTIMA") because there was no way to save your game. And those damn gelatinous cubes....

Somewhere along the line, an IBM XT clone shows up in the house, running the GEM operating system. I use this ugly thing begrudgingly. I'm sent to computer camp to learn to do 'computer stuff.' I learn the basics of AutoCAD, Pascal, and DBase. I learn basic animation techniques on the Apple II's using Dazzle Draw, and get exposed to Mac's HyperCard.

Then one day a computer store needs help assembling computers. I went to 'computer camp.' My god, I'm practically OVER-qualified for this job, sing my parents. This is how I escape food-service, the go-to path for high-school students in my district. Then it's how I pay for my AA degree. Then...

To this day, I've never owned another Apple product. Not that I didn't want to; circumstance made other choices for me.

But those formative years when by some miracle those weird beige boxes with the brown keys found their way to my 6th grade classroom - and eventually to the spare desk in our kitchen - those years changed every probability in my life.

Thank you, Dad.

Godspeed, Steve.

A Silent Solidarity

2011-10-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

Fellow musicians, I have some bad news for you: We're complicit. We're on the wrong side right now.

I thought we were getting a free pass for a while because so much had changed in our world - our footing had been lost and everyone was trying to figure out how to sustain.

Sustainable -that's what everyone wants to know. "How long will this really last?"

Seen car sales lately? A few trucks, a few utility, and then an alluvial fan of 'smart' low-mileage compacts with excellent quality ratings. Don't believe me? Try and get a deal on a Honda right now. Dealers are holding out - they know they've got the best and they're demanding top dollar. And they're getting it.

We're all aware of the sit-in's near Wall St, and the smattering of supportive cities that are hosting their own #Occupy events. As this movement coheses into something more focused, artists are on the sidelines. We're not the main attraction right now - we're not changing the world.

Lefsetz thinks we should all pick up our instruments and rush to #OWS for all the "free ink." Wow, talk about missing the point entirely.

Want to show solidarity? Show up and STFU. Don't sing.

In fact, here's my challenge: put down our instruments. Stop playing and recording music until a load of banksters are frog-marched into a parade of paddywagons.

How many of us are using YouTube, Amazon, iTunes, etc to get our music out? We're part of the problem - these are the same major corporations that are in bed with the very banks robbing us blind, and we've been giving them our music for free.... in hopes that doing so would make us stars.

Who was smarter here?

If we musicians were remotely serious about showing solidarity with #OWS, then we should remove/disable all our material on YouTube, iTunes, Amazon, etc. Don't let these companies profit one more dime. Take ourselves out of the equation.

You want to be a star at #OWS? Then you have entirely missed what #OWS is about - it's about solidarity, not asserting yourself for promotion.

---------

Just a thought - what if the #OWS protestors did the same? Instead of chanting/screaming, etc, just dead quiet while they march? A Silent Solidarity?

The Great Winehouse in the Sky

2011-07-23T12:20:00.000-07:00

I never "got" Winehouse.

To me, her act seemed like a thin imitation of a 60's US festival soul act. While her voice was fantastic, her music sounded like a karaoke knockoff of "The Detroit Sound." It felt imitative rather than a tribute - like she saw herself as a reincarnated Aretha.

I wasn't a fan, but there were plenty of people who were, and that's all that matters, really.

Godspeed, Amy.

---------------

PS - The business doesn't have to be this hard on people. It really doesn't.

Predictions: The next WAVE's

2011-07-20T10:38:00.001-07:00

Google:
I "get" Google+ now. It took me a minute because I forgot how Google thinks - they're in this for the long haul now, and that requires longer horizons. That stream interface that looks kinda like Facebook? That's just the transition - something familiar to make you comfortable. Underneath, it's WAVE.

"Hangouts" are the future here - it's what WAVE was before everyone signed up. WAVE is silly and useless without *everybody* there at the same time. Google knew what we wanted before we knew we wanted it. We rejected WAVE for many reasons, and I blame Google for not managing that very well - it could have been much more successful, IMHO. But Hangouts are here now, and they'll only get bigger and more capable. uStream and its ilk had better see the writing on the wall.

Mobile & Apps:
The future of almost everything. ("Website designers" take note - your days are numbered. Start retraining *now*.) Facebook is eating the lunch of traditional .com sites, especially if you used to build brochure sites for small businesses. Those days are GONE, replaced by the now-ubiquitous Facebook pages. And even Facebook is morphing into an infrastructure and advertising/market research company - that's why they'll continue to build high-quality mobile apps.

We're in uncharted cultural territory here. Some of the biggest brands in traditional media have been reduced to tiny icons that we scroll past on our way to Angry Birds. Those icons are the same size as Facebook *and* Yelp and Realtor.com, etc... y'know, the things that help your life by saving TIME and giving you tons of good information. Or entertainment.

Musicians future is not on Bandcamp or Soundcloud or any of those 'free' music community clones - it's apps. The tools to build your own mobile app are mere months away. You won't need to be a programmer - but you will need some basic sense of flow, and having a competent graphics guru around will help immensely. You're a musician, you have a community of these people around you already, yes??

Subscriptions via those apps are your income future. $1/mo will be the magic price, although it will take months/years for everyone to figure it out. Can we find 100 people to pay us $1 month? A thousand people? Can we produce something worth that every month? I know *I'm* motivated to...

Film and "television"
Apps are their future, too. HBO has an app for subscribers that allows you to download content directly to your phone. My mobile happens to have an HDMI port, which means I can download my HBO shows and watch them on-demand. What's that - HBO basically gave me a DVR on my mobile that's connected to their (growing) library of amazing stuff?? Where do I sign up for this??

Oh, I have to buy a cable subscription? Fuck that - I want it ala carte. I just want to pay my $5 or $10/mo and be able to LEGALLY watch episodes of HBO shows. And I'm going to get it, too. Because that's the future, and whoever brings that to the table first WINS!

It won't be Netflix- their tombstone is already cast. They're just a licensing company now, anyway - one with a great DVD logistics system, but mailing shiny discs can't have that much longer of a life. And 'streaming?' The rights holders are going to want that money, and it won't cost them much to get their own subscriptions running. Sure, there's room for a couple clearinghouses - HULU and Netflix could fill that role as licensing intermediary, but that just makes them kind of a Harry Fox for moving picture.

HBO and Showtime had it right all along: get people on board to keep paying for excellent/astonishing work, and you can have longevity. Subscriptions were always their model, and now they're everyone's model.

Go find your flock.

Musicians: Apps are your future

2011-07-14T22:19:00.000-07:00

Google+ is rolling out a bazillion invites to people who want to be part of the next "thing." What made Google+ appealing in the first place? NOBODY WAS THERE!

But now EVERYBODY is on G+, and like me, a lot of "Huh?" going around. It's just like Facebook, but with circles! Great, one more thing I have to teach my parents to use...badly.

If Google, the biggest tech company on Earth, can't figure this out....

As a musician, Facebook's fan pages are a great service - providing your fans use Facebook regularly enough to see your updates/invites. And this is really the problem - managing subscriptions to people's lives. Some people are more important than others, and some status updates are more important than others. Facebook doesn't know which is which, so after you cross that 200+ friend threshold, it's unmanageable.

Politicians and idiots are all over Twitter. That thing is downright useless.

MySpace? Bandcamp? Soundcloud? iTunes? YouTube? Amazon? CD Baby? Where should you be? Where is your future??

Not anywhere near those services, I promise you. Apps are your future. Back in January, I wrote:

We used to call them "patrons." Now we call them "subscribers" or "users." Same concept. Someone likes your work, and wants to support it directly. But more importantly, a patron wants to connect with you.
...
Lucky for us, these days app developers are a bit like weed dealers: even if you think you don't know somebody directly, you've got a friend that "knows a guy!" Ask around - you'll be surprised.

Musicians: THIS IS YOUR FUTURE. Not Facebook, not your website, G+ or any of the other 'services' that make money by making YOU the product. You're ALREADY a product - your own.

What you need more than anything is steady income, and this is where subscriptions come in: you only need a few hundred people at $1/mo to get rolling. And that $1 (or whatever amount) needs to get them EVERYTHING. Don't scale your offerings - you're not that smart. One price gets everyone in the door. All the music, all the pictures, tour dates, and opportunities to meet you directly - these are the trappings of distinction. You'll need them.

And you'll be motivated to produce for those patrons, too. Because if you stop long enough to rest on any perceived laurels, your fans will move on. This is your new reality, musicians.

You need to find app devs and ingratiate yourself. They are the key to your next kingdom.

I write this because I've seen a platform in development specifically for musicians that can't write code. This service will allow you to create your own basic Android/iPhone app (and publish it!) that your fans can use to connect with you.

Android is the #1 selling mobile right now, and they're continuing to fly off shelves in record #'s (during an economic depression, too!) in addition to steady iPhone sales. People buy apps all the time for their phones, and the $1 price point is just right to get people on board with little risk. Mobile phone use is only going to grow, and with cloud services looking to be ubiquitous in a couple years, there's no need to maintain 'fat' computers (laptops, desktops, etc) and their attendant media libraries.

Besides, it's all about the live show anyway: recorded music is your bait.

Next year, there will be a mobile app for the music of Jeremiah Jacobs. Fans will get the app for free, and there is a $1/mo buy-in for the premium stuff, like pre-release demos, all songs for free, lyrics, artwork, chat, concert dates, freebies, etc. I'll be glad to pry myself from Facebook and it's time-sink nature. Ditto for Twitter. I'll have my own 'world' and I don't have to sell my fan's user data to get it.

The Thrill is Gone

2011-07-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

Google, while publicly traded, is a private company. They have no obligations to you or I as users - they only answer to shareholders. Google has no obligation to recognize the 1st Amendment, nor any obligation to allow you to engage in "free speech" on their products and networks. Google actually retains the legal authority to alter any data in their properties in addition to republishing it.

Google has become the perfect embodiment of America right now - a pretty, smiling, duplicitous witch who's shaking your one hand and stealing your lunch with the other. Remember, you're not a Google user - you're the product being sold.

And don't kid yourselves - Google is one of the US Intelligence Community's primary assets. The company regularly hands over data about anyone they're asked to. And the US pays for it, too, so even that activity has been monetized.

Google's ruthless when it comes to monetizing its apps. With the exception of products still under the "Labs" moniker, everything Google produces must make money from their search products. This is one of the reasons I fear Reader, IMHO their product with the best chance of affecting social change, will be retired soon. It can't be monetized.

I'll own up to my own mistakes here: i trusted Google for far too long. I opened a GMail account the week the beta went live (2004?), and continued to be amazed as they released incredibly functional apps. I've lazily depended on Reader as an extended memory, only to have Google carve out chunks that aren't profitable to maintain (like my pre-2008 links).

It bears repeating that ALL of Google's products are built on the back of your user data - what you searched for, what you clicked, what you eventually bought, and if Google can capture it, everything about your computer's browser, etc. Is there a behavior Google wants to analyze and market? They'll write an 'app' that gets it, and sell the data. Apps that don't/can't collect lots of sellable data won't stick around.

I used to be OK with this tradeoff, but now I don't feel it's fair anymore. Google says I can export all my data from their coffers, but I'm sure this is a soft-lie. They won't release but a fraction of what they 'know' about you - and even then, it's really not that data I care about - it's the implications of the larger personal profile. Do American citizens have the right to verify data about them? (Hint: No.)

I made a comment earlier about social change - this is critical to understand. Google is one of the biggest power players in the world right now. That's right - the scrappy NorCal startup is now firmly an establishment player. Look at the executive teams - all Ivy-League thieves. So do you think these people are going to give us tools that uproot their dominance? FUCK! NO!

So we'll get a free word processor, but some gov't plebe will be monitoring what you write with it. Ditto for spreadsheets, social networks, etc. All of these things will be used against us - no doubt in my mind, but none of them will be allowed to be used to instigate any real upset of the US social order.

And that's really the Grand Bargain that Google struck, isn't it? That they can wrestle whatever advantages from the system provided they leave the system perfectly intact?

I've relied on Google as an extended memory for too long. I'm paying the real price now.

Google Plus

2011-07-07T08:33:00.000-07:00

I got my invite the day they went live, but was too late in clicking it. So I got shuttered out for several days. Yesterday, my Plus went live, and I've had about 24 hours with it so far.

My initial impression is this is Google WAVE, simply renamed with a different GUI. WAVE was so far ahead of its time most people didn't understand what it was for, and they certainly didn't know how badly they wanted it. I'm pretty confident Plus will morph into the WAVE GUI (or at least provide it as an option.)

I'm also confused by it's layout and relationship to other Google stuff - do my Blogger posts automatically post in my stream? What about my Buzz? What's the difference? If someone comments on a post in the stream, does it show up in Buzz? What about all the smart, interesting random people I'm following on GReader? I don't really care about their personal lives - in fact, that gets in the way sometimes. I don't care about their photos, etc - I'm just interested in their GReader shares and comments.

Circles are confusing, too. Facebook does the same thing with lists, but the issue is the onus is on an individual user to maintain those circles. Are circles also opt in/out? Can I bridge circles on relevant topics, or do I have to xpost and then maintain multiple streams of comments, etc?

It's worth remembering that Plus, like a lot of Google products, is in beta, so it's probably a safe bet a lot of things will get worked out soon.

But I'm worried about Reader. Reader is, IMHO, the app with the most transformative potential. It has been my experience that Reader usage correlates (and may I say, predicts) with an overall ability to construct an lucid argument. Acquaintances that don't use or know of Reader are *weeks* behind news cycles, and consistently lack insight or the depth of available knowledge/opinion on most topics.

Which is precisely why it's not a very popular product. Eventually, another Reader user will creep into your shares and start schooling you. The majority of us do not react well to this, and even few actively seek out that kind of interaction. Additionally, RSS, the technology that Reader is dependent on, is facing its own hurdles as competing standards and frameworks emerge in the mobile world.

It seems Google is moving from being a knowledge-services (read: search) organization to an social/advertising org, and I hope I'm wrong about that. Google's brand was built on providing tools to make better assessments from even better data. Social networks don't do that - they're reinforcing by nature, so not very ideal for a rodeo of ideas.

The Final Cut

2011-06-28T16:45:00.000-07:00

Apple released the latest incarnation of their vaunted Final Cut Pro software. The professional community has been most vocal about the huge changes in the basic assumptions in the software. Gone are dozens of features common to video editors of days yore, and in their place, heavily streamlined (dare I say 'dumbed down?') interface and features more tuned to the modern 10th grader.

Video pro's don't like this: it's their domain, after all. What's this, a new set of tools that makes their existing skillset obsolete? Hello music business in 1993?? This is the video editing world's ADAT.

Apple has realized the future isn't with the professional class: it's with the amateurs right now. Here Comes Everybody, as Godin famously quipped. Attendance to movies continues to fall - people just don't have the time anymore, and don't care. So who needs a product to make movies? Very few, that's who.

FCPX is made for people that don't have backgrounds in editing, and don't care to, either, They just have something they need to show/say RIGHT NOW and getting it on YT/iCNN with all due haste is the primary objective.

I'd like to say I didn't see it coming, but I did. I've been saying for years the film business only started its technologically induced transformation - the distro and exhibition side got hit first, but the real revolution in production is just getting started.

If you cling to the old shit, you're going to be eclipsed by people more passionate than you.

Your Own Road

2011-05-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

This has been making the rounds. The YouTube comments alone tell the story - people really hate this 'tribute' by Miley Cyrus.

I remember the first time I heard Nirvana and "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Summer, 1991. A high-school friend had come home from his freshman year at WSU, and he'd brought a cassette - some compilation he'd made up north. We played it in my car on the way to his house one afternoon. I couldn't stand it. I preferred the 'cleaner' aesthetic of producers like David Foster and Walter Afanasieff - the cerebral instead of the bloody.

It wasn't until about 1994 - right about the time I started interning in recording studios, and coincidentally recording a lot of Nirvana-esque bands - that I began to change my relationship with that "Seattle Sound."

But none of that is of particular relevance - only that I remember the first time I heard Nirvana, and it made an lifelong impression on me. I can very much understand what it is to have an historic attachment to certain songs/artists. I can also understand why people feel offended, or violated, or simply outraged when someone else plays the song that maybe doesn't have the same relationship with it.

I feel the haters on this one.

But then I read a great comment on MeFi:

Here's the thing, though: she really thinks she's owning it. Look at her: totally confident that she is doing it justice, delivering a balls-out blistering slab of rock n' roll to her tweentastic fans. She believes.

That’s' what freaks me out. About her. About Nickelback, or Train, or I dunno, Michael Bolton. They honestly think they're up there kicking ass and taking names, just rocking out as only they can.

Here's the conundrum for artists: conviction is what makes you real, but if you've got it at the wrong time, you only look more foolish. It's a helluva balancing act.

Sometimes I think I write pretty good stuff. But then things like Miley Cyrus performing "Smells Like Teen Spirit" pop up in the back of my brain, a niggling nasty little worm of a thought that burrows down right in there.

And that thought says "hey, remember how Miley Cyrus just massacred that great song; turned an anthem of rebellion and undirected anger into simpering kidpop, and still thought she was delivering straight-to-the-vein hardcore awesomeness? Remember that?"

"Listen, champ: what if you're doing that right now?"

And then whatever I'm working on turns to shit right in front of me.

These words...they are SO true. That worm - burrowing in the rich loam of self-doubt, and incredibly necessary for true introspection and humility. Yet Miley.. does she have that yet? Does she have demons to wrestle with? This is a young woman born into a gilded life who has co-opted not just a song, but an anthem, and by performing it, perhaps made it cheaper.

But how do we know we're not doing the same thing? Our fans tell us.

So for me to keep working, and stay sane, sometimes I have to tell myself that these delusions are actually okay. If I believe in it, and I think it's good work, that has to on some level be good enough to keep me hammering away.

And if I'm allowed my delusion, how can I begrudge Miley hers?

So I'm left not knowing if I should be upset by this sort of thing -- the wanton violation of what was a great song -- or just let her rock out in her own way, hoping that people will be just as kind when I choose to rock out in mine.

The only people who's opinions Miley should care about are her fans, especially the ones that come to her shows and appearances. If her fans love her, then what does she care? Any artist that builds any following will attract haters - it's almost one of the most dependable signs you're doing something worthwhile, but a real artist won't care. Real fans will still come out.

You really can build your own road these days. If you love a song - if it makes you feel good to sing it, then DO THAT SONG. Don't worry about people like me who heard it when it first came out and think we get to 'own' it culturally. Sing it with all the delusional conviction you need to bridge the canyon between the real and ethereal, and not collapse into a quivering pile of terror and self-doubt.

"Here we are now, entertain us!"

The Time It Takes

2011-04-07T00:14:00.000-07:00

In this rather unassuming interview, Mad Men co-producer Maria Jacquemetton spills out the fact that it took seven years from the time Matthew Wiener had written the pilot as a SPEC until it was picked up and produced. Even after that, it took FOUR seasons for the show to gain its core fanbase, who in turn talked up the show to their friends on Facebook and Twitter, and now, we're all running to Goodwill stores searching out ironic 60's cabana shirts. (I picked up a NICE one!)

And then, at 5:02:

"..probably the most important thing i learned at film school was that the connections you make early on in your career are the ones that really can pay off later on in your career."

Somewhere early in her career she meets Matt W at a writer's group. He/they write a pilot on spec, and then its seven years before the thing gets picked up. First season is anyone's guess: "Will this thing even survive?"

Not knowing was their freedom.... to tell stories they wanted to tell. Stories drawn from sitting around a table and baring their souls to their associates.

Wow. No wonder it's a hit.

Let's ponder the implications of the timeframe and associated circumstances: seven years from concept to execution, and four more before it's a powerhouse...eleven years. If you've been in this business for 10-15 years, you already know the people who are going to be with you in the long run, because they're the only ones left. Remember, staying in the game IS the game! You've got to be in play long enough for you or someone you know to catch fire.

Then, you've got to be ready, too. What's the famous quip about luck: it's when opportunity AND preparedness meet? All those years you still need to be putting in the time so when the fire lights, so to speak, you're ready to deal with it.

Ok, maybe you need a clearer takeaway:

Post all your stuff online, in high quality, for free (or 'spec'). YouTube is currently the best platform. If you must sell shiny CD's or mp3's, YouTube *should* auto-link your iTunes or Amazon sales links. I wouldn't count on it for income right away, but your conversion rate will tell you a lot about how people perceive the value of your work.
Remember it can take years for something to catch on, so don't get discouraged if you've only got 200 views/plays in the first year. It will take years for you to get it right.
Don't get distracted by train wrecks. They're not for you. Study them to learn how to prevent them, and you'll be ten times more valuable.

And don't stop.

AdSense

2011-04-01T00:20:00.000-07:00

I'm trying out AdSense. You'll notice some text ads on the panel. If they're too intrusive, I'll take them down, but for now, I'm curious if I get anything out of it.

Share and Like

2011-03-31T11:54:00.000-07:00

Are the buttons not obvious enough? "Share" and "Like?" These two features are now *basic* staples of social media sites, from Facebook (who's gone so far as to allow web designers the option of "Like" buttons ANYWHERE on the web...) to YouTube.

So why don't people use them? Isn't a mouseclick the most effortless thing someone can do? I mean, if I can't get you to take five seconds to hover your mouse and clicky the little button, how am I going to get you to come out of your house on a Wednesday night to see my live show?

Part of me wants to draw a line: if you can't bring yourself to click the "Share" or "Like" button, you're not a fan. A lurker, maybe, a hanger-on, for sure. But not a fan.

For musicians (and almost nobody else), fans are the only (external) legitimacy we get. (No, this is not the same as personal validation, which is a different problem. I'm talking about market legitimacy, not one's personal view of oneself. Don't even try it.) The fans have to tell people about us, because we can't be trusted to get the story right on our own.

I know why people aren't clicking the "Like" buttons: Because the music's not good enough yet.

But don't think anybody's going to say that. What was .50 Cent's famous quip - people telling you something loud and clear, you're just not hearing it?

But what if you do have a genuine hit and don't know it? How would it break through, and how long should it take? It's so easy to confuse a hit with a train wreck - which is what most people are on YouTube for anyway; the quick fix. YouTube is all about "the moment"- here's the fall, the crash, the explosion, etc. YouTube is not for context or deeper meaning: the comments alone bear this out.

"Nothing had the chance to be good
Nothing ever could."
- Simply Red

It's so hard to disentagle ourselves from the old world. We've got so much invested in it. How many of us were driven by visions of 80's rock videos and 60-70's concert footage? Be honest... How many of us still judge our material by FM radio standards? Be honest... How many of us felt we deserved the attention granted to a 14 year-old Texan girl? Be honest...

I know artists that are still trying to get FM airplay. In 2011? Really?!? Do you think radio has the power to anoint hits and create stars? That's old-world thinking. American Idol tryouts? You'd have to be insane. Or mediocre and desperate.

It used to be a mediocrity could game the system with the right contacts. Public discourse was limited to the biggest players. Not anymore. Now everyone with a blog wants to tell everyone else. Artists need to decide which conversation that's going to be: the evangelizing of your music or the celebration of your unveiling and demise.

Right now, YouTube is our modern online equivalent of the Roman Coliseum. Thumbs up or thumbs down. Every viewer's a Caesar. People want a spectacle. To be astonished.

That doesn't have to mean we have to pander to the most vile and basic impulses. We may live in a post- "2 Girls, One Cup" (Google it on your own) ecosystem, but nobody's really clamoring to follow that act. Further, I believe we are culturally ripe for a Renaissance in music, if someone would just display the bravery to take us there.

Those who do will be rewarded.

And like all great movements, it begins with the true fans who "LIKE" and "SHARE".

Get clicking, people.

YouTube and iTunes: So Happy Together

2011-03-29T12:00:00.000-07:00

I was looking at it all wrong.

I thought it was YouTube vs. iTunes for music distribution. Wrong thinking.

Correct thinking: YouTube AND iTunes.

YouTube is your bait. You should be posting all your music there anyway. In high quality, for free. Add links to iTunes/Amazon for people that are converted. Don't rely on it. If you truly bat one out of the park, you'll be amply rewarded.

But don't get focused on stats. Focus on the art.

Yes, we still have to do some basic legwork, and we can't count on 'social media' to do it for us. It certainly helps maintain momentum, but it can't be the genesis of it. Unless you're in the train wreck business.

Stop releasing CD's and 'albums.'[1] It's indulgent, and nobody has time for filler anyway. Let the singles sink or swim on their own. When you've got ten great singles, THEN release an album.

Record a few covers. Licenses are cheap an it greatly increases your chances of new fans finding you.

In order to post your songs to YT, you'll need some basic video editing software that will create a title card for your tracks. Remember, this is the graphic displayed on one's phone while they're listening to your music.

But don't worry about your stats. Remember this: more people DON'T listen to music online than people who do. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is how many people come out to your show.

[1] The only album you should be producing is one that's financed directly by fans/yourself. Kickstarter.com is a great place to get funding for such things.

What The Future Holds

2011-03-28T02:24:00.000-07:00

I. Don't. Know.

Neither does anybody else.

Full. Stop.

Things happen so fast right now in the music world. It's the future of all arts. Even painters are getting in on the live act. Have you seen David Garibaldi paint his funky portraits live? Sure, he's using other people's music, but he's paying tribute with it, not exploiting. And it's really about the live act right now, anyway. Recorded music is fine - and necessary, too. It's also a bit like sewing - the only risk is error, which can be quickly corrected. Live shows, by contrast, are all about jumping off a cliff and seeing if you can fly.

Which one is more exhilarating? Sewing or cliff diving?

That's the question in my mind when I'm looking at all these live music apps on the iPad, and a few for Android. They're all geared for realtime interaction, but they've also been programmed to remove almost all the risk of sucking. How do you push boundaries that way? Where's the excitement there? Watching guys fiddle with knobs? Can you even create enduring music with these tools?

Well, I think somebody will. Will it stand the test of time like some of today's legacy catalog? Unknown.

It's such a free-for-all right now: so many listeners, so many creators. Why does anyone need to be "on top?" Can we calibrate our expectations in such a way that the simplest rewards are all the fullfillment we need?

I'll confess: I'm not immune to the onset of depression when confronted with one's YouTube play stats. I want to be noticed, too, just like every one of you. I think I deserve it, too. I work hard at my art. Almost everybody does.

The problem seems to originate in an conviction that the only measure of success is public accolades, a point driven home by decades of television programming. I fight with this, too.

We forget sometimes that public attention and opinion are a bit like the lottery. To "win", a high number of probabilities need to align in one's favor. Eighth-grader Rebecca Black took a spin earlier this year and came out a huge winner... in a way.

We Are All Rebecca Black

(Note: This is the last time I want to write about this.)

I don't know about the rest of you, but I had to take a step back and seriously examine some of my expectations. Yes, I got schooled by an eighth-grader. But I'm ok with that now.

I saw that smiling face and heard that horrible song, glanced at the YouTube play count, and went ballistic. Who was this person with the audacity to share my dreams of receiving effortless and unconditional public affinity? How dare she sit in on MY deservedly-earned place being interviewed by The TODAY Show?

Wait a minute...have the last 20 years of my life in this business been driven by an adolescent need to be loved unconditionally? What am I, a fucking puppy? Deep down, are my career's needs on par with a 13 year-old girl??

Truth is, no. My frustration is not rooted in adolescent emotional needs, even though it's an easy target. The truth is, I'm committed now - I'm all-in. That can be terrifying. Especially in a business where everyone's a player now... even eighth graders.

I don't think there's any real lesson for people in the pro music scene, other than realizing that today's youth are far more connected than we are, and because of this, their culture can seem as if its dominate. It's not. Connect your fans, do your thing, and don't worry about the train wrecks.

It All Went So Wrong

2011-03-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how to tell this story.

IMHO, the key to understanding a train wreck is to understand the power of *inertia*, and how, like an avalanche, once set in motion, there's nothing you can do but hold on for dear life.

"If somethin's gonna go wrong, it's gonna go wrong out there." - Captain Ron

I'm playing keyboards for an Artist (who Shall Not Be Mentioned) who's (ostensibly) got some touring experience and (allegedly) audience demand stateside on a very particular festival circuit. We have roughly 3-5 weeks of rehearsals prior to this particular show.

Let me momentarily digress to remind readers the Cardinal Rules of Festival Shows:
1 - To keep the show on -schedule, your first song *is* your soundcheck, and...
2 - they're *always* behind schedule.

There's an abundant 'green room' area behind the stage, but the trick is, performers only get access for the hour prior and following their set. The festival organizers have provided (nice) trailers for use as changing/rest areas, and a well-stocked food & beverage table (performers eat for free! nice, eh?). All in all, this is a well-run festival.

One last detail I think worthy of mention - the FOH mixer is someone who's name has recently appeared in MIX magazine because they'd recently been doing Sting's FOH on his Soul Cages tour. I'd met her prior to the show - great person.

So that's the general list of cars in this train: nice festival, good perks, top-notch tech crew, a bit of a crunch on the clock. Enter The Artist.

The Artist has decided that a mere hour to prepare for the set is not enough. Further, The Artist has deemed it unnecessary for The Band to have access to a changing trailer, too. For us, the public bathrooms in another zip code will suffice. Nor will the band require access to the food service area. Milling about in the early-summer sun (in full black attire, no less) is all the luxury we need.

We seek out The Manager who, upon hearing our dire pleas, retrieves passes for both the retreat area and food. And a changing trailer. The Band is happy. While we are eating, I notice The Artist approach the stage manager and audio engineer, then hand him what appears to be a multi-page list of demands.

The Train grinds to life.

What The Artist doesn't know is the audio guy and I are acquaintances. No sooner does The Artist turn away, the audio guy makes a beeline for me. "What is this??" he asks with a tone of disbelief. It's a prep list, all the way down to the number and placement of spare picks, water bottles, wet and dry towels, etc. The Artist appears to be preparing a base camp on stage. Brief discussion ensues. We only get three songs anyway. The food is good, temperature pleasant, the material within our grasp. The Band is happy.

We seek out The Artist to brief on the changes. The Artist, however, is preparing a SEVEN song set, complete with an ENCORE, and has been angered that we've had the audacity to tell The Artist how to perform said show. We are asked to leave The Artist until just prior to showtime.

The Train is gaining momentum.

Setup. We haul ourselves and instruments to the main stage. During this transition, it is important to note there is another group performing in front of the main stage, and they have audio coming out of the FOH. While they literally are not on stage, they certainly HAVE the stage.

While The Band has been able to setup in near silence, The Artist has deemed it neccessary to tune their guitar at TOP VOLUME while the group before us is finishing their own performance. The monitor engineer RUNS onstage to silence the offending amplifier, only to be met with The Artist's utter contempt and disregard.

The Train is nearing a bend...

The dance troupe in front of us has finished their show, and making their exit. The Artist has already stepped to the mic, and is repeating the opening line with all the volume The Artist can muster, but the FOH and monitor engineer have muted her completely. War has broken out among commonly peaceful tribes.

The mic comes to life mid-line, as does the guitar. The audience offers a response that could be kindly described as "tepid." The Band is prepared for the first song. The Artist turns to me, the "music director" and says: "Let's do a warm up jam.... in G." The Artist addresses The Band: "Warm up jam, in G! One, two......."

Bear in mind, up to this point, this band has never "jammed." We've rehearsed a specific set, at The Artist's insistence. But a sudden 'jam in G?' Not something we'd prepped for...but here goes...

So come ONE, I play a G chord. The Artist, having a slightly different relationship with music theory, plays a Gm7. So the very first sound that escapes the speakers is a piano playing a G MAJ and a guitar strumming a Gm7. Puke.

The Band ambles aimlessly for just over a minute. Sheer torture. Nothing sounds rehearsed because NOTHING WE'VE PLAYED YET WAS!

The audience sits through an unplanned ending. The Artist is making gesticulations and calling commands to the band we've not yet witnessed. We are as lost as lost gets. We launch into the 1st official song of the set. It comes across as not bad. During the next song, The Artist, now frustrated that The Band cannot decipher their new utterances, has cut off all contact with us onstage. With the sheer exception of a looping motion with one hand (telling us to keep something going), we get no direction. The second song, timed at 4-ish minutes during rehearsal, takes a full two minutes of repeating the intro before The Artist sings the opening lines. More looping in the 3rd verse. The Artist is buying time.

The song finishes. The Stage Manager gives us the universal "your set is over" sign. The Band begins to set down instruments. The Artist, defiantly oblivious, shouts into the microphone "Ready for some more [Artist name]??"

Audience is tepid.

Before we know it, The Artist turns to us, having started the next song solo, and via emphasized head-nodding, tells us we should start playing. I look at the Stage Manager (who's been very nice to The Band) and shrug my shoulders. There's nothing we can do. We play. Regretfully.

The song ends, but not really. The Artist, determined to get their allotted time in the sun, medleys into yet another song. The Stage Manager is making the cutoff gesture.

The Wheels Come off the Track

The stage audio dies while The Artist flails valiantly into the silence. Doesn't even get a final "thank you" on the mic. The host runs on stage, quickly ushering The Artist offstage. I am not so lucky.

The host is a regionally known celebrity drag queen. Before I can leave the stage, the host accosts me and says "Oh no, honey, you can't leave the stage just yet!" For the next two torturous minutes, I'm subjected to a comedic interview routine in which the host and audience agree the best part of the previous performance was watching me play.

The Artist hears all of this over the PA.

We've not spoken since.

TL;DR: Lots of prep work for a concert, the actual show is a disaster who's highlight is how well my shirt fit.

An Apology

2011-03-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

Ok, I fucked up.

And I am genuinely both ashamed and humbled.

I don't know why I got so angry.

Well, that's a lie, isn't it? We all know why...

I hate everything about this. I hate that it makes me GRRAAAAAGGEEE!! at the world.

But I don't hate Rebecca Black. I don't even know her. I was reacting to what I thought she was.

"The Jew Comment"

...doesn't bear repeating. I'd incorrectly believed she was the daughter of a Goldman-Sachs scion or something, and had made an *intentionally* offensive comment aimed at what I perceived to be an otherwise insulated population and I'm like Robin Hood and his Merry Band of Metaphors.

But it looks like she's just a regular middle-class 8th grader having a bit of fun. Well, shit, she's having a LOT of fun.

And isn't what this whole thing is supposed to be about, anyway? Just fun? What the hell else is an eighth grader going to sing about? And a lousy $2k for a single? Of *course* it sounds like that.

So to you, my remaining faithful readers, and especially to Ms. Black (who I hope never sees this blogpost), I humbly and genuinely apologize for my vitriol and general shittiness.

Mailbag: Rebecca Black

2011-03-23T11:03:00.000-07:00

"I didn't want to email you at first because I know how strong you are with your opinions, and I also don't like how you print peoples personal emails to u, but thats your choice. But if your going to print what i say, then print this in your blog:

Go. Fuck. Yourself. You. Bitter. Old. Asshole.

She's an EIGHTH grader for goddam sakes man! Not even in highs school yet, and you're writing about her like she's the worst thing in the world. Did you even think through the possibility she'll read your blog? Aren't 13 year old girls having enough problems in the world without adults THEY MIGHT VERY POSSIBLY BE LOOKING UP TO TELLING THEM THEY"RE BASICLLY PIECES OF SHIT?!?? Fuck dude.

Oh, adn what the fuck is it with the Jew comment? her parents are Veterinarians or something. Where do you get your information? Oh wait, I know...."

"J - I've only started following your blog in the last few months, but this like the 2nd or 3rd post from you that sounds a little more than angry, and honestly I makes me wonder about your credibility. I'm a musician myself (and a middle-aged one, to boot!) and I certainly felt that same sting for a moment when I read about how much attention this young girl is getting. Then I think about why she's getting the attention, and I realize none of its really good. And right now you're part of that ugly circus, in my opinion.

And what was the Jew thing about?"

"Back up, check your sources, work out a well-worded apology, switch to green tea, and remember how awful *your* songs were at 13.

I know you have strong opinions about things - it's one of the qualities that makes you good at what you do. But the jew comment was **way** out of line."

Rebecca Black

2011-03-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

The 13 year old 500lb elephant just shit on everything.

I couldn't think of a more appropriate "fuck you" to everything than Rebecca Black. Are you an actually talented musician investing your entire life into your craft? Well, fuck you.

I understand the appeal - there's absolutely no commitment with Black, and in that respect, she's got America perfectly figured out. I have no doubt Ms. Black will go on to attain many further public accolades as her parents continue to finance that charade. [--edit-- sentence removed that was both factually inaccurate and fucked up.]

And that's really what's pissing us off here, isn't it? That she is a clear and present indicator there are absolutely no rules here. That fame can absolutely be bought/sold. Talent's just another gimmick, and a talentless pie-faced hack can buy her way to more YouTube views in a week than you'll see in your lifetime.

Welcome to America. Where privilege rules. And Rebecca Black embodies that perfectly.

Make no mistake - this is the ruling class making fun of us. Reminding us they've got a lock on the system.

And we'll probably continue to defer to them. What was the famous quip - Even poor people think of themselves as millionaires just down on their luck?

The takeaway:

I know the music blogs are abuzz with this stinking excrement (even FuturehitDNA tries to make sense of it...fucking idiot), but they're almost all wrong. There's nothing to learn here. It's a cultural abscess; rich people fucking with us. In that way, Rebecca Black makes an astounding case for raising taxes on the nation's top 10% earners. But I digress.

I'm pissed, though.

EDIT #1: I want to roll out a prediction that in a few weeks we'll learn that Black's 'success' was due to her hiring a hacker's bot-army to game her YouTube stats....

Attention Deficit

2011-03-15T09:33:00.000-07:00

I'm supposed to be writing music right now, not my blog. Why are distractions so compellingly more interesting than the thing I'm ostensibly passionate about? Am I burning out from sheer anxiety?

No, probably not. Most probable reality: I hate sucking at something, so I avoid it until "inspiration" (which is usually code for "shedding of artistic inhibitions") strikes and I can once again feel supremely confident in my work.

Anyone else feel this psychotic?

I have something like nine songs in various states of undress, so to speak. And I keep starting new ones. I'm a great starter - terrible on the follow through. "I want my songs to be good!" I'll keep telling myself. "I want to astonish!"

Set the bar high enough, and it can be perpetually just out of reach. And I can blame someone/something else. "Sigh, I would have if only I'd had this one more thing...."

The truth might simply be I just haven't put in enough time. Not the right time, anyway. I thought if I could just ponder it enough, from just the right perspective, I could outsmart, short-circuit and capture The System, finally claiming what I knew all along to be rightfully mine: adoration.

Or something like that. Crippling insecurity gets the best of anyone in this business. We might be conduits to another world, but we're firmly rooted here.

Was this supposed to be easy?

Bill Murray on Howard Stern

2011-02-28T21:21:00.000-08:00

Howard Stern is one of the best interviewers in history. Only a few people know this. I barely remember him being popular on FM, and then he disappeared. Then "Private Parts" came out, and I kind of lost interest. It wasn't until I watched "Private Parts" a second time - after I'd had more experience walking my own road. Suddenly his story made sense.

I wasn't a fan, though. His fans never left him. They went with him to Sirius. I didn't care enough to get past the in-car receiver or subscription. Which is too bad - I'll never even know what I've missed.

The best stuff surfaces on YouTube, though. Why isn't Stern on YouTube already?? Why do I have to sort through gobs of pirated gunk with its questionable quality and insidious video comments?

His interview with Billy Joel is amazing. So is this one with Bill Murray. Listen while its still up.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Are electronic or digital musicians 'fake?'

2011-02-19T14:21:00.000-08:00

Just some random thoughts re: using digital tools as a performing musician.

DROID

2011-02-14T01:48:00.000-08:00

I had no idea.

What was Donald Rumsfeld's famous line - "unknown unknowns?"

I mean, I knew about smartphones, but I wasn't a true smartphone owner, having been suckered into two miserable years with the terrible LG EnV Touch. Which itself was an upgrade from the Motorola RAZR. Well, kind of..

The EnVTouch wasn't a smart phone. It took a few months of trying to get the thing to perform before realizing it was less frustrating to simply not use many of the features. The web browser was not really a web browser, but something that acted like it. Every feature on the EnV Touch had these same characteristics: the look and feel of a smartphone app, but really nothing like it.

Everything on the LG was closed in - everything was proprietary. No native access to Facebook or Twitter, because the phone couldn't. It was pretending.

But how could I know until I had the real deal?

Well now I know. Holy shit do I know.

In only a few hours, my world looks different. That realtime stream on Facebook and my Twitter feed are suddenly with me now. I'm holding that future in my hand..the one I kept wanting the LG to give me.

And now I understand why companies are so motivated to go after smartphone users - the world is more interesting with this thing! Why bother printing directions on your computer when you're going to change your mind five times anyway?

Something else that strikes me: this phone is the first technology I've integrated this thoroughly in my life without understanding almost any of its underlying components.

And to think, in many regards, we're years behind in the US with respect to mobile tech, especially the infrastructure.

Anyway...

...I had wanted the iPhone. The DROID X wasn't even on my radar. In retrospect, isn't that odd? I was so enamored with Apple's products I couldn't even consider an alternative.

Until price became the barrier. An iPhone upgrade was $200, plus god-only-knows what they'll talk you into at the Verizon store.

The DROID, by comparison, was at a tiny, nondescript booth nestled in Costco. No frills. Fifty bucks to upgrade. And 100 free photo prints at Costco. Sold!

And now I don't care about the iPhone. I mean, it would be nice to have iTunes on the Android, but its not a dealbreaker. Sure, tell me about resolution differences or camera ephemera. For everyday snaps, it's a huge step above the EnV Touch. I'll never go back.

Survival

2011-02-13T13:12:00.000-08:00

First rule of (corporate) survival: don't take risks.

Borders books is filing for bankruptcy protection. Like Powell's in Seattle, they can't figure out how to sell books.

To be fair, they can't figure out how to sell crap books. People would buy XKCD and Penny Arcade, but they don't have to at Borders. Borders probably doesn't even know of those strips. Borders has no A&R - no filters. Nobody at Borders (or B&N, for that matter) reads, so they don't tell anyone "no!"

Both stores have shelf space dedicated to the NY Times Bestsellers. Who cares? How many of the last singles you bought on iTunes are on the Billboard charts? (zero for me). Those bestseller lists are completely gamed - just like Google's search results. They don't reflect anything real - the legions of purchase-bots that buy the latest spew from their ideologues are motivated by fear, not affinity.

Booksellers don't know what's real.

Borders isn't completely down and out, that is if they feel like taking a risk. Current signs point to a company in survival/preservation mode, and that mentality won't let you take risks. So they're putting more cheap plastic on shelves instead of cheap books.

This is the wrong approach. I can buy cheap plastic crap anywhere.

But cool places to hang out (and hook up?) are always in high demand. Look at the goofy teens in B&N on Saturday night. Coffee and "study?" Mating rituals, folks.

Borders may not have any good filters right now, but they do have one thing: real estate. Square footage, and they don't know what to do with it.

But I do.

There is huge demand for (good) live music, and a large supply of artists that can bring in 50-100 people per show, but not 500-1000. And right now, the vast majority of venues that are open to this class of performer are bars/clubs.

And those places SUCK. Management turnover is 99%, you never know who's running sound, if they're even sober, if there's even sound at the venue, is it 18 and up? 21 only? Will they still be open in three months when your appearance is booked? Are they going to stiff you on the door? Is the facility even clean? Are you going to catch a disease from a doorknob?

But Borders doesn't have these problems. The facilities are clean and all-ages accessible. They're almost always an anchor store, so they're close to other services (like food, etc.) The absence of alcohol means parents can send their kids to a show at Borders and feel ok about it.

It also means Borders would have to reinvent itself, and I don't know if that's on the table. It means they'd have to start working with musicians, which brings its own set of logistics and problems, but they're not insurmountable. The new generation of performing musicians need a place to grow, and Borders needs feet in their stores.

It's there, but only if they're willing to risk it.

The Album is Dead - Here's Mine.

2011-02-13T12:04:00.000-08:00

Here's a collection of my released songs to date:

Rule The World
Not My Day
Cross My Heart
Mystery In My Mind
This Song is for You
My Heart Belongs To You
To Run Again

Thank you for listening.

Powell's Books

2011-02-08T21:52:00.000-08:00

The venerable brand Powell's books is laying off staff. 31 today. In the veiled business-speak of the published memo, more are coming.

A bookstore that can't figure out how to sell books.

Just like Borders.

You think the record labels are behind the times? Bookstores think it's the 1400's. And why not? What's changed in their model since the invention of the printing press? They ship UPS now instead of horse and carriage?

That's what I find so ironic about authors and booksellers - they were the first to embrace all kinds of tech - word processing, digital typsetting, blogs - but just couldn't make the connection that blogs were replacing publishers. And authors today still want old deals. They want bookstores to stock their product but don't want to do the work of face-to-face promoting. Sound familiar?

Today's successful writers are having conversations. They spend as much time composing comments as the posts themselves. The inherent quality of their person shines through, and we become fans. We trust Barry Ritholtz and Calculated Risk more than The Fed, JimTheRealtor more than NAR. Warren Ellis and Neil Gaiman produce tweets more interesting than most of the books in Powell's.

What do they need a middleman for?

Better question: What can bookstores do to bring nothing but the best?

In a world of rabid readers and an overwhelming volume of product... what a weird problem. Oversupply AND high demand?

But, its an oversupply of crap, and high demand for excellence. And few reliable filters.

Why aren't bookstores renting iPads for a few bucks an hour? I may not be able to afford an iPad, but an iTunes account is free and I can certainly afford a few bucks for Angry Birds and some eBooks. I'd hang out somewhere and buy overpriced coffee to play iPad games and read magazines....

Somebody's going to figure it out, matching outstanding writing with hungry readers.

Prince: Welcome to America!

2011-02-08T11:36:00.000-08:00

We've all heard about Christina Aguiluera at the Super Bowl. Everyone's got an opinion. I haven't even watched the whole clip - I can't.

Initially, I'd wanted to hate on Aguiluera. I wanted to hold her up as an example of everything that was wrong with major media (namely, my absence as it's lone dictator) and make comments about how it revealed she was really an undeserving talentless nobody.

But then I got high¹.

Lefsetz mentions something about Ms A looking at the Jumbotron screen and being momentarily distracted. I don't know. Things happen in live performances. Bruce Springsteen once forgot the words to "Born to Run." I feel bad for her that it was a Super Bowl, but I don't think her fans care at all.

If anyone at all should apologize publicly, it should be the audio crew that mixed The Black Eyed Peas performance. Fergie's mic was off intermittently and nothing sounded like part of the music.

I'm over it.

I want to talk about Prince. And Kim Kardashian.

Maybe it was scripted. Maybe not. Either way, his comment "Welcome to America" was spot-on.

You're at a Prince show and you don't want to dance? You got in the front row and didn't want him to pick you out? You get onstage with Prince and you're too good to dance with him?

Prince might be clueless when it comes to the internet, but he's a master of the live show.

What's Kardashian a master of? Why is Kim Kardashian famous?

...Kardashian’s patriarchal bargain. A patriarchal bargain is a decision to accept gender rules that disadvantage women in exchange for whatever power one can wrest from the system. It is an individual strategy designed to manipulate the system to one’s best advantage, but one that leaves the system itself intact.

Sound familiar?

Play by the rules and you'll be granted legitimacy. But only if you play completely by the rules. And leave the system untouched. That's America.

(And don't confuse rules and "laws." The law may say don't steal, but the rules say winner takes all. Look at our current robber-baron bankster class to see this primalism in action.)

It's our providence as artists to confront this system, demolish it if need be, and create something better in its place.

¹Not literally. Colloquialism for "I changed my mind."

Legitimacy

2011-01-23T10:04:00.001-08:00

I got called out.

It happened a few weeks ago via email (with no permission to quote/attribute), and it's really been bothering me.

A while back, I'd written a couple of posts about a performer (Greyson Chance) who I felt wasn't being responsibly managed; "..borders on child abuse..." is what I wrote. My blog, my opinion. Leave a comment if it really bugs you.

The callout:

"...and I'd take this chance to remind you how small and connected this business really is, especially as you get close to the top. Everybody knows everybody, and if you think you want a career working with any of these people, it would serve you well to keep that in mind."

...and...

"...you probably should do a reality check on yourself. You pass yourself off as someone who's been around and done all that, but why doesn't anybody hire you? Why don't we see your name in our BMI/ASCAP logs? Oh, that's right....."

...and...

"...maybe you're making tons of money up north and all that, but nobody who counts is going to want to work with you if you keep writing [blogposts] like that. I know for a fact you're on [name removed]'s shitlist."

These are threats.

To be clear, the person writing this is an acquaintance, and is doing this ostensibly to help me. Which is fine, but let's be honest about the subtext here: "If you don't say nice things about me, I'm not going to hire you."

To recap: I wrote a blogpost in which I expressed my opinion, which, apparently, was not the opinion someone wished I'd held. I didn't even know people read this thing, much less cared what I think about topic A or B. Next, it's asserted that because I'm a 'nobody', my opinions don't matter, unless I want to be Somebody, in which case, I'd best show my unrelenting deference to the power structure.

What's going on here?

The Old World was predicated on a business that had monopolized distribution of its product (there was no other way to maintain 'scarcity'), and had grown inordinately powerful as a trafficker of social ephemera. It had a power structure: names that meant something, all backed up by (fake) sales stats. Legitimacy conferred by random anointing and a herd mentality.

But no more. Fans don't care anymore how many sales you have -they care what their friends say about you. Unless they're personally invested in the success of Greyson Chance, they don't give a shit what I write about.

People in the old world, however, care very much because trafficking in legitimacy (and the perception thereof) is a powerful sport to those beholden to it. If, however, you can honestly live without needing that (and some artists can't - I'm not hatin'!), then they've got no leverage.

I don't need legitimacy conferred.
I don't need their fucking money.
I don't need their approval.
I don't need to work with anyone so desperately I can't maintain an air of honesty...what good would I be as a producer?

So here's where we end up, dear reader(s) - if, as an artist you feel you need these things -external validation, someone else's money, etc - then you're beholden to The System. Old, dying and decrepit, that's what you're aligning with. You're up against all its legacy and establishment. If you think you can get into that maelstrom and retain a foothold, by all means. Godspeed to you.

It's not for me, though. I have a different path. My future fundraising is with a large Mason jar and a Kickstarter account. My fans are my PR. The next five hundred shows I perform will be in the living rooms and art-house theaters within a hundred miles. That's who I am. That's the only legitimacy I care about.

I got off track here somewhere...

Not long ago, I cared very much to be seen as affiliated with "the music business" and its associated accoutrement, cared very much what awards or titles were bestowed upon whom, cared very much about various statistics. Most importantly, I cared very much to be recognized by that system because I felt I deserved it (for reasons I still cannot fathom).

Among the many reasons I cared were people I looked up to in the business cared, too. Or seemed to...

I realize now that was a naive perspective, and honestly, it's been quite freeing to be able to write honestly (and clumsily) without the fear of being alienated from that Old World. I sleep better. I love better. I write better.
----------------

Artists: If you feel you need to take on The Big Game, by all means, get into it and ingratiate yourself with the names you see on the music you listen to. Pay attention to who's doing what/where and do your best to work yourself into those situations. Be positive at all times and keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you. If you can do all that *and* write really good songs, then you can absolutely play in that pond. Go for it.

Everyone else, you've got my email address.

The Quiet Crier

2011-01-14T02:24:00.000-08:00

Shout! Shout!
Let it all out!
These are the things we can do without
Come on,
I'm talking to you.
-Tears for Fears

I released another single yesterday. Nobody cares.

This is the part of the business I least enjoy. Part of me believes there was a golden yesteryear when the listening public wanted to be engaged with musicians and may have actually cared to listen to what was being produced. But now there's just too much. Too much music, too many other details competing for attention.

In some ways, a hundred negative YouTube comments are almost preferable (almost - I still have a functioning cortex...) to the yawning silence.

A lot of my artistic friends are in a similar position - their talents seemingly unrecognized/unrewarded. When did artists clamoring for attention become the equivalent of email SPAM?

But here's the catch....

...if we're honest with ourselves, the feeling that we're being ignored/spammy is rooted in the perceived disparity between what we think we deserve and what we think we're actually getting.

We've got to keep our expectations in check. And that's inordinately tricky when we've got to believe - and I mean believe with conviction! - that our music/art is worthy of public consideration, and still balance the reality that right now, it's all about the users when we want it to be about us.

Releasing a single means more than just publishing it on YouTube. It also means letting go of unreasonable expectations, and relinquishing our solitary grip on our art. Let our fans evangelize if they feel compelled.

Put simply, let somebody else do the talking.

Single: Mystery In My Mind

2011-01-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

A new single, Mystery In My Mind.

Apple's Orchard

2011-01-11T10:19:00.000-08:00

This video may indeed have "AP" stamped on it, and these guys are officers of Verizon, but this is an Apple iPhone advertisement. Notice Verizon did not say "We welcome the iPhone into our line of products..." or mention any other brand retailed in their stores. Instead they pitch the iPhone as the flagship of the Verizon network.

You may not be able to afford an iPhone, but you sure know what it is, and chances are you want one. Same with the iPad - you may not be able to afford it, but you know what it is and you want one.

What is Apple doing different? I mean sure, their overall design is better, but it's a little more than that. Even though their app store is a 'walled garden', Apple's users are not clamoring for open alternatives. Relatively few people jailbreak their devices - that speaks volumes to the overall experience.

I think Apple's strength lies in its ability to be invisible. The most popular apps are built around communities, not Apple itself.

Maybe this is our new paradigm as musicians and performers - we're really creating tribes out here, and we'd do best to simply be a part of the experience versus demanding our community to worship us alone.

Shift

2011-01-06T11:07:00.000-08:00

Oh we're never gonna survive unless,
we are a little crazy.
-SEAL

Geologists call it 'plate tectonics.' Change that is invisible, yet alters destinies. One epoch your relatives are all in walking distance. The next, an ocean divides you.

The thing we forget about change in our modern day is that adoption is logarithmic. Put another way, the future comes slow, then faster, then....avalanche. And you can't negotiate with an avalanche.

Haven't you touched an iPad yet? That's why the Apple store is now the #1 draw in malls. Don't believe me? How long was the wait last time you wanted to play Angry Birds while the Cinnabon wears off? It's as if the Apple store is what the arcade used to be, except now you're not ashamed to be there with your parents. That's how cool Apple is right now.

And all indications are it will be that way for some time to come. Even the current crop of iPad wannabes yowling for attention at this year's CES show are forced to compare themselves to the iPad, if not overtly, then certainly by borrowing design cues (shiny bouncing icons!) For musicians, this means two things:

iPads and tablet computers are here to stay, will only get faster/cheaper/cooler.
the Apple model of 'apps' is firmly ingrained in our culture, so 'apps' are the future: Subscribers are our future.

We used to call them "patrons." Now we call them "subscribers" or "users." Same concept. Someone likes your work, and wants to support it directly. But more importantly, a patron wants to connect with you.

Yes, we'll still have obligatory websites, and some of us will still post content on YouTube, but the best of us will be working with geeks to develop mobile apps that engage our fans. Lucky for us, these days app developers are a bit like weed dealers: even if you think you don't know somebody directly, you've got a friend that "knows a guy!" Ask around - you'll be surprised.

What's an app going to look like and actually do, though? In it's simplest, it's just a content bundle. Maybe we've shot some footage in the studio and want to present it in a magazine style format. Or exclusive backstage footage. Or concert. Or our blog. Can we find a hundred people who'll pay $1 a month to get in our world? A thousand? Can we produce good work consistently, every month, like those winning kitchens on "Kitchen Nightmares?"

Are we willing to put in the time? The thousands of hours of sucking at something? The next thousand getting slightly better? And for what? A few hundred bucks a month?

But what happens if we create something as engaging as Angry Birds? What if we manage that terrific feat of being so compelling - so astonishing - that people can't wait to turn on their iPad/Android and join us while their Cinnabon wears off?

For now, I'm just excited this is even possible, much less that it seems our current destiny. But it means we need to change our ways. For instance:

The album is dead. It's indulgent. Nobody has time anyway⁺. People want ala carte singles. (there are exceptions, if you're doing New Age or some kind of ambient where an hour of time is reasonable to ask a listener.)
Music is free now, but concert tickets are not. Apps are a vehicle for getting asses in seats.
Mashups are sometimes more popular than the songs being repurposed. Participatory culture means our raw tracks are bundled in the app for remixers. This is antithetical to how many of us musicians were trained to relate to our work. It needs to change.

I'm off to play Angry Birds.

Mailbag: Context

2010-12-27T17:41:00.001-08:00

re: my post "Context"

Hi Jeremiah. I just read your latest post and something didn't sit well with me, and my wife says I shouldn't get too stressed about these things but I really had to say something. You said:

"Even more important, control your presentation. Buskers (street performers) are public music spam. No better than those teenagers paid to shove glossy 5x7 party fliers in your hands."

I'm sorry, but after 20 plus years of playing in public as a street performer, I don't like being called 'public music spam.' No doubt there are plenty of bad perfomers out there to that give us a bad rep, but they don't last long anyway. Give us old badgers a break. We have been in this longer than you've been alive.

--name withheld

#2:

Hey Jeramiah! Usually I don't take time to comment, but your post about musicians being public spam was not cool. Even those kids pushing flyers into your hands are signs of a vibrant population. They are part of the arts community just like the artists. What better patronage than your time? I like your blog, but your wrong about that.
--withheld (published without permission)

Context

2010-12-13T20:46:00.000-08:00

"But in the Metro, Bell is no one. The context of the Metro fails to authenticate Bell’s music. Everyone can listen, thus hearing offers no distinction at all. And almost no one cares."

I can't say this enough: YOU are your own credibility. If you're trying to book shows in "name" venues with the expectation that an audience comes built-in, get out of this business. Now.

Even more important, control your presentation. Buskers (street performers) are public music spam. No better than those teenagers paid to shove glossy 5x7 party fliers in your hands.

But distinction - that's the secret sauce. Sure, you've got to have songs and performing chops, but even if you've only got basics, you can still create an exclusive experience. And that's what people really want - to be around other people just like them (getting laid doesn't hurt, either.)

And who 'authenticates' you now? Your fans, and nobody else. Not the venue, not a critic, not a radio DJ, not a magazine, not an award, not a TV show. When you're good enough, they'll tell everyone about you.

IF YOU ARE STILL STRUGGLING TO GET NOTICED, YOU ARE NOT GOOD ENOUGH YET!

The Last Degree

2010-12-02T16:09:00.000-08:00

"Standing on the outside,
Lookin' in." -Cheryl Crow

Imagine standing at a golf tee. The green is not too far away - an "easy up" in golfing lingo. So you make your swing. You connect. The ball arcs gracefully toward the grass, plops just long of the cup, rolls down the green, and stops within inches of a hole-in-one.

What do you change??

NOTHING! The best you can do is make a perfect swing. After that, it's just probabilities: the density of air, humidity, wind. The inclination of the green and the tightness of the turf. One or two things against you, and you come within inches. And inches don't count

In my music life, one of my paralyzing fears is that I'll have done all this work - all the emotional and personal investment, etc - only to be confronted with the reality that I'm not quite good enough; close, but not enough. To use the golf metaphor again, it's (emotionally) easier to never get off the green in the first place.

And it's even harder in this business when you see peers in your 1st degree in The Game. Maybe they're on The Tonight Show, or being quoted in major music publications, or on a major tour.

But you're not. You're sitting at home writing about it. (who is this about again??!?)

Here's another way to look at it: you've been toiling along a trail for God knows how long, and upon finally reaching the castle at the top, the guards turn you away. And here you sit, incredulous as all heck, thinking "Are you kidding me? I walked this whole path, did everything it took just to get here, and now you're telling me I can't get in?"

And the guard just nods. It's not his problem - it's his job.

But here's the rub: if you walked that trail and climbed that mountain to the castle with the expectation you were going to be let in, YOU WERE WRONG! It's not about the castle, because that castle doesn't exist. It's like a mirage...something your brain creates out of the chaos so you don't feel lost.

It's about the PATH, you idiot! It's about the journey and those who make it with you. The castle? FUCK the castle. They're terrible homes, anyway.

If you find yourself relating to the Lone Monk On A Mission story, you've got this all wrong. That's the test.

Because the truth is: YOU DO NOT WALK THIS PATH ALONE. And if you forget/ignore those who walk with you, they'll abandon you, and THEN you'll know what loneliness is.

So here's today's big insight for you: take a moment to stop that narcissistic artistic nonsense and appreciate all those who are making the journey with you. They count more than any mythic castle dweller. They make the journey bearable and ultimately, worthwhile.

What I've been wrong about, Vol 2

2010-11-06T23:26:00.003-07:00

A few years ago, I wrote:

Seth Godin's awesome insights can be boiled down to this: musicians need to find new ways to make money, because Seth will be godamned if he's gonna pay a pretty penny more for his mp3's. As with all of these "outsider" perspective screeds about the collapse of the shiny-disc-distribution music business, not a single person volunteers to pay artists *more* for music. Instead, we're lectured about how the wonderful internet has made our "product" ubiquitous and......free.....for Seth.

I'm going to spare my readers and clients the verbal 100-yard hurdle that is Godin's article. Here are the realities facing "independent" (read: non-label affiliated) musicians:

Don't believe the hype: We're told over and over how "the internet changed everything" in the music business. This is a lie. The only thing that was undermined was the physics of distribution (and to a degree, promotion), and all the associated businesses and infrastructure along with it. Beyond that, the music business is essentially unchanged.

Except now, it's easier to sell cheap Chinese plastic crap and sweatshop garments at horrific markups to your fans. Of course, these are called "souvenirs" or "schwag", but it's the same shit we've been peddling since Elvis. Thanks, Col. Tom.

Fuck MySpace: MySpace makes more money in a week from your music than you'll ever make from MySpace. They don't even share ad revenue with their members. Record companies tried for decades to get these kinds of deals signed, didn't they George Michael? This goes the same for practically every other "social" site that allows bands to upload music. People will argue that MySpace's value is not as an economic platform, but as a promotional one, because, inherently, your music has no value.

This is, of course, a hollow argument. Billions of gigabytes of mp3's litter the hard drives of Earth's denizens precisely because music has value.

The larger question is: will musicians be able to make a musical living at all?

As I write this today, my prediction is: generally, no. While there will be a minority class of professional artist/performer/personalities (smaller than today's), the vast majority of musical creatives will straddle multiple career paths and lines of income.

But fans also must realize they cannot have it both ways: you do not get to complain about the vapidity of contemporary music and similarly argue it should be free to acquire and listen to. Fans have a choice: you can remain passive and invisible, or you can engage and participate. And by participate, I mean to become a patron.

And let me be clear about this: patronage is *not* the shallow act of commenting, ranking/voting, or posting trite animated gifs on a MySpace page, nor nauseating promotional gushing on one's own blog: it is direct - a motivation of affinity.

It's an unfinished (and unedited) response to an article by Seth Godin (ala 2007-8?) where he lays out his map of the music business. I cannot find the post I was replying to, but it's almost irrelevant: Seth was right.

You have to understand where my head was at the time. Starving (economically) and hurt. Couldn't see my way through, and didn't want to deal with the realities of how hard the work was going to be. I didn't want to pay those dues. I came of age when the business looked completely solid. So of course my expectations were miscalibrated - my inputs were all wrong.

I saw the future in some ways (broadband), but was dead wrong about how long it was going to take. I knew the day I signed up on MP3.com (1999???) it was the way of the future. I just didn't think it was going to take 11 years for the internet to scale to a point where it was both relevant and useable.

The only thing that was undermined was the physics of distribution (and to a degree, promotion), and all the associated businesses and infrastructure along with it. Beyond that, the music business is essentially unchanged.

Turns out, distribution *was* the business, and the tours were supplemental to supporting the distribution. Now, it's inverted. And yes, that means the music business is changed. Big time.

MySpace makes more money in a week from your music than you'll ever make from MySpace. They don't even share ad revenue with their members. ... People will argue that MySpace's value is not as an economic platform, but as a promotional one, because, inherently, your music has no value.

Turns out music has incredible value, if it's any good, and ONLY IF YOU CAN PERFORM, TOO! Sure, the social sites are collecting a few pennies, but who cares? That's peanuts compared to what an artist can take in ticket sales. And that's really where the action is: the live show.

But fans also must realize they cannot have it both ways: you do not get to complain about the vapidity of contemporary music and similarly argue it should be free to acquire and listen to. Fans have a choice: you can remain passive and invisible, or you can engage and participate. And by participate, I mean to become a patron.

And my God do they want to participate. They want to engage, evangelize, and patronize. Desperately. A few years ago, before Twitter and Foursquare made the world interesting again, it seriously looked like people just didn't give a shit. Again, my inputs were wrong.

Finding Bob Lefsetz

I had no clue about Lefsetz until this video was linked one day on Reddit:

I'm not comfortable assigning a term to Lefsetz - blogger, critic, etc. In my view, he's none of those things. He's just Bob. He writes passionately. He cares. His blog is addictive (to me.) Subscribers of my GReader feed know I share his posts with annoying frequency. He is, in my world, a star. I had a choice to spend a Friday night on the town with Gene Simmons or Bob Lefsetz, I'll go with Bob in an instant.

The Big Insight

You have to appreciate how significant that statement is, and how much has changed in the world that makes it real. Instead of hanging out with a bonafide Rock Star, I'd rather hang with someone I'm going to feel a connection with. I'd rather have a great conversation about gardening or oceanography or Byzantine architecture than spend an evening ingratiating myself to Gene Simmons.

It's a little deeper than that, because Bob has also been an unwitting mentor. He's kicked open doors to new realities for me. He's helped light a new path. And like a true fan, I'm evangelizing his gospel. Most beautifully, he's done this without asking anything from me other than consideration. He's not behind a paywall - he's just put it all out there. For free.

I hate to keep couching this in religious terms, but let's be honest: it IS religion. Lefsetz put his gospel out there - his truth - for all to see. Take it or leave it. I took it. It changed me. I've seen the light and I want you (artists) to see it, too; I want you to be saved.

I'm out of the darkness now. Not only do I see the path, I know it's navigable. It's almost too easy: play, get paid. And most importantly.... no seriously - most importantly, BE GENUINE.

And why not? Why try to follow Simmons' path - who could?? Sing YOUR songs the way YOU want. If you're trying to mold yourself for the old world, you're totally fucked. Just do what you LOVE TO DO, and like flies to food, they'll come to you. They'll tweet. They'll share photos they take with you on Facebook. They'll record and post your performances on YouTube. Remember all the overhead it used to entail to get that done? Now its fansourced and......

....look at me. I'm so excited I can barely form coherent paragraphs. I keep veering into tangents.

And I owe this not to academia, not to the school of Hard Knocks, nor some random weekend music business seminar or songwriters guild, but to a guy with a blog who wasn't afraid to lay it all out there.

Thank you, Bob.
----------------
Pop Quiz: Name two songs by the act Simmons is promoting in this video.

Greyson Chance

2010-10-26T06:41:00.000-07:00

We knew him a few months ago as "The Lady Gaga Kid." He popped up as if he were a viral hit, only to be revealed as yet another manufactured spectacle. And here he is again, completely manufactured, coached and oblivious:

I can't imagine this is really a future star here. His plucky demeanor and smile betray a kind of cluelessness - it's cute when you're ten, but he's worn out that welcome mat. Truth is, there's not a kernel of authenticity in him, but he's not mature enough to know that.

I don't know why we tolerate this - it borders on child abuse. We're being presented this individual as if somehow he's arrived - fully realized and ready to take on the world. He isn't. He couldn't be. Does he think he's going to have the respect of others in the music business? Even worse, do his handlers believe this? Sure, he's got some heavy hitters in his corner, but to what end? And who's his audience? Seriously, who's bought a Greyson Chance concert ticket?

Chance was vaulted into the YouTube consciousness on the back of a *very* selectively edited video of what appeared to be a coordinated concert effort (not the "hey some kid plays piano at his school" it was pushed as). It got some attention, including the (desperate herself) Ellen Degeneres, and allegedly, Lady Gaga's management team.

I want Greyson Chance to succeed, I really do, because it would mean the system can indeed be short circuited for the right amount of talent. And that's a lie we all need to believe.

Return of Albini

2010-10-08T00:55:00.000-07:00

Steve Albini has a new interview in GQ Magazine. Worth a read. Salient excerpts:

"Everyone said that radio would kill live music and kill the existing music industry because people wouldn't leave their houses because radio would bring the ballroom to them. It had exactly the opposite effect—it made people much more interested in music. The same thing happened with the Internet—people said access to music on the Internet was going to kill the music industry. What it killed was the record industry. The music industry—bands, concerts, things like that are doing great. The live concert experience is a valuable thing now."

"This is a terrific time to be in a band. Every band has access to the entire world by default.
...
An awful lot of bands that had no audience in their first incarnation were able to revive their careers and have a second lap. It's so exceedingly rare that somebody gets more than one bite at an apple like that. I think it's fantastic."

"There's a perversion of normal ethical standards, indulged and encouraged by a music industry that feels more important the more it is removed from regular life. For those of us in Shellac and the other bands we admire, being in a band is just part of normal, regular life. You don't act like an asshole when you go to the barber. So why act like an asshole when you're in a band?"

I succumb to the occasional "I'm an artist therefore I get to behave differently." Happens to the best of us.

All very salient observations.

Charlie Hopper on songwriting in Nashville

2010-10-05T13:50:00.000-07:00

"After class I would drive to the Bluebird, a little bar in Nashville where songwriting successes perform—midway into one of their verses you can usually feel the whole audience sort of slip into realizing they know this song from the radio, sort of like when your car shifts from first to second gear: if you're paying attention, you can feel it.
Especially when you're sitting there alone.
Nobody to talk to.
Many miles from the person you should be there with.
Who would enjoy the show, too." (#3)

and...

"You can always hear what's wrong with other people's songs, even as you're blind to your own song's shortcomings." (#8)

and...

"This particular Roundtable was a lovely affair with a catered dinner and free drinks, hosted by a well-regarded demo service. We gathered in the actual studio, where musicians perform. One by one Hopefuls arrived and mingled awkwardly—none of us had ever met. We were thrown together and had to muster our people skills.
Not all songwriters have people skills.
Still, networking is key to Nashville success. And this was prime networking. Future co-writers might be here tonight. We all made quick, biased, hunch-based, unfair judgments of each other, trying to answer the question, "Whom will I wish I'd buddied up with?" The classic Mingler's Challenge." (#9)

and...

"I have a mental malfunction in which the main way I approach enjoyment of any performance is through the fantasizing eyes of an introverted extrovert, as if I were the one up there performing, or the author of the piece being performed. Why, I could write a musical; I could write a play—I could write a book and read from it!
"Tonight when we get home I'll get started," I secretly plan to myself as I offer my applause."

....

"As I played these, or the songs I'd make up, I'd imagine a vast, appreciative crowd out to my right, just beyond the edge of the conjured stage the dining room had become.
Basically I am a pathological dreamer, with a vaguely pathetic desire to perform. Or have my stuff performed."

....

"[my wife] pales at the notion of having someone hand you a guitar with the expectation that you'll sing a song you wrote. "Is everybody paying attention to me? I'm going to sing to you! Something I wrote one day! I'm certain that it's good and you'll enjoy the experience of looking at me while I perform!" The idea makes her a little queasy.
But I was ready." (#10 is a gangbuster.)

I'll leave to you read the entire series. These are just a couple gems - there are many more. Absolutely fantastic series. Inspiring.

Production Music Disasters #2: The Deboner

2010-09-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

Serene, meditative piano accompanies industrial chicken de-boning. Commercial food production has never been more calming.

WARNING: Do not watch past 1:00 mark if even remotely squeamish about where chicken "products" like patties, nuggets, etc, come from.

Bob Dylan

2010-09-28T21:25:00.000-07:00

"And I thought: That's how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don't want him to be all cheesin' and grinnin' with you. You want him to be a little skeptical about the whole enterprise."

President Obama in Rolling Stone.

Worth a read.

U2: Stages of Grief

2010-09-20T16:24:00.000-07:00

Reading today's (ironic) LAT piece about U2's manager bemoaning reality, I'm reminded of the Kübler-Ross model of the stages of grieving:

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

They don't always go in this order - #'s 2,3, &4 will interchange. Paul McGuinness is bargaining. He wants to go back to 1997-8, right before Napster. He wants a do-over. "If I give you what you wanted twelve years late, will you even care?"

He's got some anger for ISP's, seeing them as beneficiaries of endless TOS violations, and there might be a case to be made. But he won't get them to pay up. Where would that party end? Everybody who was convinced they'd lost money because of "the internet" would want to eat from that trough. And how would it work? A blanket tax? If ISP's are going to start shelling out fees to PRO's or something, they're going to want to enable blanket access for their users. Which is, of course, antithetical to the media companies (they want ala-carte billing, or the ability to ding you for every possible use of their 'property'.)

“Artists cannot get record deals. Revenues are plummeting. Efforts to provide legal and viable ways of making money from muse are being stymied by piracy."

Go and read my post "Panic." Then come back.

The people who continue to produce quality product (music, shows, etc) are just fine. It's everyone else who's in a panic. Maybe McGuinness sees U2 as losing cultural relevance or something. Look how everyone got upstaged by Gaga last week as she activated an army of people in support of the DADT repeal. Talk about the ultimate sleeper cell.

I don't know what acceptance is going to look like. Maybe U2 puts out a few singles complete with individual tracks for the multitudes of remixers out there. Maybe they get behind a good cause and tie up some traffic intersections with impromptu concerts.

U2's paydays of yore are not on the table for future artists. It just isn't in the cards - not as a hierarchy, anyway. There will still be stars, but like an ever expanding universe, they'll be farther and farther apart, gravity be damned.

Worship

2010-09-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

There's a revival goin' on.

It's kind of a religious thing, in the sense that so many people are seeking transcendence right now.

And why wouldn't they? Read the news lately? A lot is coming unwound right now. If you're under 30, the next few years look like a long swim in Shit River. If you watch FOX News you feel constantly threatened and under assault. If you're even remotely connected to reality, there's a lot to be depressed about in the world.

But people still need to get up every day. They need reasons. They need friends. They need release.

They need to feel connected.

A reasonably good musician can do just that: connect. One hand on the ethereal pulse of the universe, and the other holding the audience. It's a dicey dance, and it takes years of terrifying practice to get it right, but when you do....

...they'll tell everyone about you. They'll evangelize. You'll get a flock. Your songs become your gospel.

But don't forget your place. You're a conduit, not a god.

Into The Valley

2010-09-17T09:06:00.000-07:00

We're over the top now, on the way down the slope to the new valley. Forces are beginning to converge. Fog is starting to clear. A new day is dawning in the music business.

I'm not alone in this feeling. There's a new static charge in the air. Things feel possible again. Not because any specific element is in play - it feels more like a case of "Well, why the hell not??"

Oh, there are still people lost in the old world - they've yet to make the journey over the mountain, if they make it at all. You have to see the mountain before you can climb it.

Some nearby acquaintances are still trying to outsmart the old formula. They're trying to goad their fans to call radio stations (do any of their fans listen to radio?) or ballot-stuff web-polls and surveys. What was the last CD you bought because you saw an ad on some website saying it was a #1? Anything long lasting is going to be via word of mouth.

The future is personal evangelists and the Gospel of You.

Evangelists. Gospel. It's really about religion in a way, isn't it? And isn't the time about ripe for a nice revival?

We can't look to the recent past on this one, however. That was an anomaly that isn't going to be repeated. We have to look further back. Remember, Jesus walked with his disciples, not in the VIP section. Bands and artists would do well to remember this.

The future is hyperlocal and personal (a band can play in front of 25k people, stop at a Whole Foods 10 miles away and nobody knows who you are. True story.). I know the usual signals are telling you different: the insipid "Idol" shows still shoveling hopeful after ever hopeful schmucks on stage, modeling the same tricks and moves they've been watching on MTV, and being handed tours and awards, etc.

I can tell you confidently it's all bullshit. It's the system feeding back on itself. The audiences are carefully groomed and prodded. The awards bestowed randomly and are meaningless anyway. Those shows exist solely to "deliver" a targeted demographic to advertisers and marketers, and for the few who are profiting, they are profiting handsomely. So of course they want to keep that feeding frenzy going. Why would an artist get anywhere near something that toxic?

But you've got to get outside that box to see what's really going on - what that system isn't telling you. It's not telling you that people spend more time on Facebook and YouTube than watching television, or listening to terrestrial radio (do cell phones have FM receivers?). If you live in the US, the system hasn't told you about Spotify. It's not telling you there are more consumers of music than ever before, and more genres than ever before, more places to play than ever before.

And musicians should be playing. Every day. There's a place for practically every kind of music now - no excuses.

Hired Gun

2010-09-15T21:24:00.000-07:00

Band vs. Promoter

2010-09-11T01:27:00.000-07:00

"How much will we be paid?"
" Nothing."

Epic.

How The Dave Matthews Band Made It

2010-09-04T13:03:00.000-07:00

Summary: They let fans trade their music FOR FREE via cassettes and concert recordings for YEARS before they cut a studio situation.

And they took *every* gig, because they wanted fans. Great story.

Single: Rule The World

2010-09-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

Watch the HD version on YouTube if you can - the difference in audio quality is striking.

Top 5: Older Artists and Social Networking

2010-08-31T08:33:00.000-07:00

Social networking is something a lot of older (35+) artists are doing poorly. Most of the mistakes are grounded in a fundamental misunderstanding(s) of the technologies at work, and how they're being used by various groups of people. I empathize, though: many people over 35 simply got left behind and are back to trying to figure it out. After a bit of thinking, I'm going to try and distill 5 major points that older artists are missing and what can be done to turn that around. Comments and feedback are greatly appreciated on this.

5. Overposting / spamming = disrespect for fans' time.

Ask yourself: "Why do I log on to Facebook/Twitter?" If you answer has something to do with finding out what your friends are up to or seeking a connection, then you're on the right track. If your answer has something to do with *telling* people something, you might be coming at this from the wrong perspective.

And that's really the difference between a spammer and a sharer, isn't it? The sharer has the best interests of his/her network in mind, while the spammer is busy monitoring clickthroughs and amassing friends'n'followers. It's all about where your head is. If you already think you deserve traffic, you'll be obsessed with those stats, judging the effectiveness of your campaign instead of your art.

Related to this is the tendency to post the same message across multiple platforms (Twitter, LinkedIn, etc), an activity enabled by apps ala Hootsuite. I understand the economics of this, but you need to be incredibly judicious. How many times do I see a Twitter crosspost on Facebook complete with useless hash-tags?

And speaking of Twitter, this is one particular service that the 35's and up simply do not understand. Part of this has to do with the cultural distribution of cellular devices - the most capable ones are in the hands of the young, while the old still struggle with the concepts of an address book and text messaging. So of course Twitter looks like just another billboard with your name on it.

This is wrong, of course. Twitter says so themselves: it's a service for communicating timely and concise information. "Timely" is another way of saying "immediately relevant," whereas most of the 35's think it means "whatever I type right now." Geographic location, new/exclusive product availability, emergency information...these are all great for Twitter. Desperate pleas for attention (i.e., "twittername is feeling meh right now.") are the quickest way to tell your audience you've got little to say of relevance.

4. Inconsistency (voice/purpose/frequency)

Basically, if you're a musician, stick with music and career related postings. There can be exceptions to this, too, but what I want to emphasize is consistency. If you're going to be a hub for all kinds of interesting arts/cultural ephemera, that's OK, too, but pay attention to being consistent about what you post.

Re: politics. I do not advocate musical artists wearing their politics on their sleeves, unless you're specifically doing politically themed work. I am not suggesting civic disengagment, but I think it's important to consider your place in the lives of your fans. This is something each artist will have to balance for themselves. All I can ask is you THINK FIRST.

3. Managing collapsing social networks & differentiating between friends & fans

This one's a real challenge for older generations who have a deep investment in firewalling their social networks. Facebook is changing that, much to our discomfort. But there's one wall that can and should be maintained - friends vs fans. A friend is someone loves you in spite of your music. A fan loves your music in spite of who you are.

In some ways, you have to treat your fans with more respect and delicacy than friends. Fans can be more fickle, and ultimately, they're the ones paying your way. These lessons are tough to learn, and difficult to adapt to. My heart goes out to you, fellow artists.

2. Resistance to new technology / adoption barriers

#3 is excacerbated by #2. I know that iPhones are expensive, and beyond the reach of many musicians, but used models are avail on eBay for a much lower cost. It gets you in the basic game, though. Older people have a mechanistic view of the world, so dealing with complex abstractions like cell networks, etc, is difficult. Most of the things the modern world lives on seem akin to magic to most people (just ask them to describe how a credit card works...).

But I'm not talking about just iPhones, but just about every tech that's coming down the stream, from web browser addons to cloud music services, etc. 35+'s barely have an appropriate conceptual framework for these things much less the understanding on how to leverage them to any advantage.

1. Passive-Aggressive Panhandling

The worst offense.

I get it: we're out here, shouting into the darkness, watching young kids who've paid absolutely no dues being crowned "Idols" and handed nationwide tours. We feel underpaid and overlooked. We don't understand why nobody is listening to us when we feel we've got so much to say (finally). We feel alienated.

So we lash out. We start spamming our Twitter feeds with incessant pleas to retweet our music. We waste so much time trying to craft a clever pickup line or gimmick ("retweet this and get a free thingyblah!") This is the internet equivalent of begging for spare change. Nobody wants to get behind that person. Sure, beggars get pity money, but nobody gives them any real investment.

Our job as artists is to astonish. To create a gravity so undeniable it attracts everything around it. THIS IS NOT EASY, and the pressure and circumstances sometimes involved have destroyed otherwise wholesome people.

Unhappiness is often rooted in a perceived disparity between where one is and where one wishes to be. Recalibrating your wishes and expectations is the easiest way to be happy, and ultimately, that's what attracts people to you.

The alternative is not the easiest way.

Job Titles vs Credits

2010-08-25T12:40:00.000-07:00

What's the difference between being a producer and being credited as a producer? Is a recording artist any more or less legitimate than a performing artist? Why the delineations? Can you just be a writer anymore? Is a title assumed or bestowed?

Legitimacy. That's the single ingredient - the secret spice, if you will - that changes the destiny of so many things. That's what all the niche noisemakers, publicists and other assorted toxins are trafficking. At least, that's what they'd have us believe.

It's all artists seem to want to talk about right now. They don't say it directly, but it's the prime topic driving so many conversations. Just look at the average Twitter feed of the current crop of 35+ DIY reborns. How many of them are following and retweeting establishment artists, sending ever-hopeful "@" messages hoping for a gilded tweet that anoints them worthy, setting in motion the wheels of great fortune? I lose count.

The youngest (and by proxy, technologically adept) artists have a massive advantage right now (welcome to the cruel downslope of evolution). They're coming of age with an internet that's scaled to relevance and a peer-group/fanbase that's not only deeply connected socially but motivated to gather (unlike their parents, who prefer to lock down in suburban homes.) A moderately talented artist can conjure a respectable following in weeks, now, where older artists are still struggling to get their fans connected, much less literate.

So we can try to perform for younger audiences, but that is especially risky because....well, here we are again.... the young are particularly finicky about legitimacy, because picking the wrong team to support has social consequences that reverberate further than before.

And who knows for sure if you're really an artist anyway? Sure, this is still the creative free-for-all its always been. You're still free to assert the title artist, or producer, or whatever, and just *be* that. Sooner or later someone will believe you. There's something inherently freeing about that chaos, yet at the same time it seems so formidable.

I'm not sure what to make of all this. On one hand, it seems a renaissance is upon us, but that can also mean a lot of uncertainty. I don't think anybody really knows.

And here's today's takeaway: Genuineness starts inside and shines out. If you're a person who honestly needs external validation, you're going to be very unhappy in this business. But if you can find that spot in yourself where you feel comfortably legitimate in your own eyes, that quality will begin to emerge in your work and performance.

The album is dead. Long live the album!

2010-08-25T10:51:00.000-07:00

The album is dead.

It's official - no more "albums." I'm not going to release one, nor will I participate in their production going forward. It's serial-singles from now on.

I feel alone on this - every single one of my peers is diligently working on finishing an album of their own. None of them can write ten hit songs (sorry guys'n'gals), much less two or three. Still, they persist....

I don't know why that model has such a firm grasp on the imaginations of young (and old) musicians. Maybe it's because the album is our only point of reference for identifying (and by proxy, legitimizing) a musical artist. You're not "real" until there are thousands of shiny discs with your name on them. It really is an indulgent exercise, isn't it?

I conducted an informal poll several months ago asking whether or not shiny CD's mattered to people who might be buying mine. At the time, almost everyone over 35 said they wanted a shiny CD. I've recently polled a few of these folks again, and across the board, not a single one of them has bought a CD (of any artist). But every one of them has purchased a single via iTunes.

So here we are, musicians - people telling us one thing and doing another. "I want to buy the CD" they say. But then they buy a single on iTunes. "I want the art and liner notes..." they'll say. But when they can't remember a detail or want to show someone the art, they'll look it up online.

Used to be the single sold the album. Fans tolerated this because there just wasn't any other way to get the songs 'ala carte.' We bought albums knowing it would have songs we didn't like/understand. We even had a common colloquialism for songs that weren't very strong: "B-sides."

Can you imagine putting a product into the market knowing full well it wasn't of the highest quality? Can you imagine that being built-in to your existence as an artist?

Not in 2010. We don't have time for that anymore. We only have time for the best. The term "B-side" now refers to a kind of obscurity or stamp of artistic merit (that something was developed outside the old system.)

Which is why artist development is in the tank. Nobody wants to risk the cost of development except the artist. So we're in a situation where only the artists (and their families) are all-in...who else? How many friends do I have who's CD's are lingering in their garages, ever hopeful for the DIY-heroin hit that is the CDBaby re-stock email? They'll never get that investment back. Why repeat that model? Why is it so prevalent?

I think its because the only history we have is the album history. Every artist that's come before has done an album, for better or worse. It's the first step in establishing credibility and legitimacy, at least for now. But credibility and legitimacy with who?? Are your fans demanding it from you? Are they helping you fund it?

And that's the only album you or I should be concerned about anymore: The one that's demanded and financed directly by the fans.

Long live the album!

Mandatory FM

2010-08-18T10:13:00.000-07:00

A story burning up the indignant media/tech blogs is an astroturf proposal to mandate (zomg evul gubmints!) FM receivers in many digital devices, including phones. Among the more common refrains are the ad-hominem (RIAA is evil so I am against anything they support) to the TeaBagger (the government shouldn't be issuing tech mandates (ummm, yes it should.))

To be clear, there are plenty of reasons to hate on RIAA (and the Fed Gov't for that matter), but those are so well-tread they don't bear repeating here.

I think this is a wonderful idea for a couple reasons:

Generally speaking, devices that span networks are more useful,
Scaled out, it would give FM a reason to compete with personal playlists. In turn...
...a revolution in FM broadcasting as a medium. DJ's can become very, very relevant again.
...which is great for listeners (and music fans) as they can build trust relationships (again) with filters

In its favor:

FM already has a MASSIVE installation base and infrastructure. The network is in-place - enabling a bazillion more devices to access this network is a no-brainer.
pressure to evolve the medium is a great thing for developing artists
great opportunity for local development of talent

Obstacles to overcome:

Legacy thinking about advertising, marketing, tracking, etc. The invasive ad-model will change (it will have to to compete with playlists), and something more passive will emerge (think BMW sponsoring a break-new-music show...)
It's current sponsors represent a de-facto Den of Thieves¹ in the creative arts. They think they're in this for their own interests, but they're so obviously clueless from the onset chances are good this accelerates their demise².

Summary: FM receivers embedded in media devices (phones) is really a smart, inexpensive, and potentially disruptive (in the good way) to the corporate stranglehold on FM. More listeners means more opportunity for niche talent and programming to develop, leading to (hopefully) the establishment of long-term acts and talent that provide economic longevity to their lives.

Footnotes:
¹ - I'm speaking to a popular conception as such, not making any direct accusation.
²- The rights-mgmt companies behind this obviously want to beef up royalty returns by getting some percentage of the bazillion media devices out there back into the FM listening situation. Station owners think they'll sell more ads. They're both wrong.

Note: re: AM vs FM. For those wondering why AM is not included, it has to do with the type of metal and shape required to receive AM broadcasts. Short story - that stuff is not compatible with modern equipment because it generates a field just to receive AM. FM antenna design, however, is easily integrated into just about every mobile design.

Followup: Great discussion over at Metafilter.

The First Five Thousand

2010-08-05T22:50:00.000-07:00

Ten thousand hours.

That's how long it takes just to get good enough to keep doing it. The first five thousand pass quickly, but you know when you've reached the midway point. When you put forth your best effort - a result of the First Five Thousand - and it falls flat. When you wonder "Why on Earth am I doing this?" When you start doing the mental economic calculus of investment vs. long-term payoff, and its associated probabilities.

And herein lies one of the cruelties of the arts: the closer you get to your ten thousand mark, the more appealing the choice to abandon it altogether will appear. It gets easier to quit. To throw it all away. All obstacles become barriers.

"I need a studio to work in" becomes "I can't work without a studio."
"I need a budget" becomes "I'm so broke I just can't do anything."

The psychological fortitude and vigilance required to keep these Demons of Doubt at bay is one of the skills developed in the First Five Thousand. It's the same tenacity that allows you to migrate from the soft cocoon of your approving friends and family and into the 'real world' where people who don't know you are asking why they should care about what you do.

I wish I could tell you I had answers or knew the secrets. I can only tell you I know there are no secrets, and probably no real answers either. At best, only better questions.

In my heart, I want every artist to find their way - to connect not only with themselves, but the Universe, and by proxy, people around them. But not everyone can, or will, be able to do this. There are too many variables. A successful career in the arts requires a million things to go right - a tilting of odds and probabilities in your favor that's only accomplished by dedicating so much time - tens of thousands of hours - to your craft that you lost sight of all else but your Art.

Divergence.

I want to talk about ploughs, because I think it makes a good metaphor. A plough is built of the hardiest steel, and whether pushed or pulled, will fracture apart whatever is in front of it. While it may be of the toughest alloy in the front, it also takes care to arrange what it leaves behind in the most fertile arrangement possible. By design.

And this is your big insight today: the best thing you can do is keep doing! And no matter how desperate or angry or alienated you feel in that latter five thousand hours, you still need to cultivate everything you pass with the same care and enthusiasm as the First Five Thousand. Learn to reconcile the idea that you can feel like death on the inside and still smile with your fans like you just shit a million dollars.

It will not be easy, and often the decision to persevere will border on insanity. Such is our clarion call.

PHOTO BY Flickr's eflon.

What are we doing here?

2010-07-19T22:07:00.000-07:00

What the hell is going on out there? Everything seems on its head. None of the usual inputs are making any sense. They're calling Justin Bieber a prodigy. A prodigy! What can that word even mean anymore? People tell us they want artists they care about, but they don't care about artists at all. People don't want to take the risk of getting attached to artists anymore - just like sports teams. Pick a loser that season and your friends will never let you hear the end of it.

So everybody is playing it safe. No risk taking. Not for patrons and investors, and certainly not for artists. We're all out here trying to outsmart the legacy catalog - "If I craft the song just right...." as we pore over the 2nd verse for the hundredth time.

Audiences have changed. What it means to "attend" an event has changed. Gone are the days of passive, receptive audiences. "Participation" is the new mantra, even though that usually translates to "something to post on my YouTube channel". We're in the new world, where the right cell phone video clip of your show can make as much money as your show!

Maybe this is why massive dance parties are, well...massive. There are no "artists", so to speak. (yes, yes, DJ'ing is artistry, unquestionably, but the DJ is not *the* artist in the same sense as the people's music he's spinning/mixing.) Just a person or two and a few laptops and electro-gizmos. The music is stupifyingly simple in concept, but deeply complex and eloquent in expression. It doesn't demand you to deal with all the things a pop song does (interpreting a narrative theme, style, etc)...it just creates a space for you.

And maybe that's what the most successful artists will do - create a space for their fans to congregate, rest of the world be damned.

Music Theory: One and Four

2010-06-30T23:26:00.000-07:00

The I-IV progression is one of the most powerful in music. How many ways can it be done? Here are just a few. Great lesson.

via IsraelsPrince's YouTube.

Concert Tickets as Commodity

2010-06-21T20:00:00.000-07:00

"I don’t line up in advance to buy paper clips. Not milk either. These are commodities, readily available at a cheap price.
That seems to be what concert tickets have become."

My concerts are all $10 or less. Never changes. My concerts run just about an hour. Anything longer, people start thinking about other things they need to be doing. Any shorter, they'll feel ripped off. Artists, like restaurants, should turn a room every 50-70 minutes.

And Lefsetz is right: Tickets are a commodity because time is a commodity.

Music Business: What do I do now?

2010-06-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

"These times are so uncertain
There's a yearning undefined
and people filled with rage."
-Don Henley

It's been a tough few years for (some) folks in the music business. As it becomes increasingly clear the paydays of yesteryear were unrelated to reality in any clear way, (what did we expect from an industry predicated on predatory bookkeeping?) a lot of us are having to rescale our expectations, albeit some more dramatic than others.

There's a lot going on out there. The world has serious problems to address (I know, when *hasn't* this been the case!?), and it's more challenging than ever to get someone's attention, much less make them care. There's so much apathy right now - a kind of generalized fatigue - the result of too many bait'n'switch scams that are now the established bedrock of American life, from elections and public services to housing and retail (that thing you just paid a buck for at Dollar Tree? It cost them $0.10 ). It feels like everyone's trying to get one over on us, and unfortunately, there's ample evidence to suggest this actually the case.

So many institutions in which we'd invested so much faith have failed us in dramatic ways. The Catholic Church, once perhaps the world's most present and active faiths, is now synonymous with sexual abuse. The great barge of capital and it's associated trades (banking, home ownership, business investment, insurance, etc) seems to have stalled in the mud of corruption and general untrustworthiness. Our political system seems to be populated with the same incoherent simian swindlers that have plagued its history for as long as we care to remember, and the slow realization that our mythic Three Branches of government have morphed into one massive political protozoan Hell-bent on self preservation have us, to say the least, stressed the fuck out.

And to jokingly attempt to cap this all off, a new reminder in the form of a giant gusher of toxic ooze in the Gulf of Mexico has us confronting daily questions as to what's really important right now, and what's going to be important in the future.

This all boils down to a crisis of faith. Without faith, you can't believe in an artist because you can't inherently trust they're A) genuine, and B) won't short change you down the line. This is what we're up against.

Young artists, in some ways, probably have the best shot at longevity, providing they can earn the faithful. They're coming into the business with their goals and expectations calibrated to current realities, and I think overall, they're less anxious. Middle aged and older artists, however, have really been given the shaft. This is really unfortunate, because I believe these artists have a *lot* to contribute culturally, but couldn't find a way to make it work.

There's another irony, too: the internet empowered younger generations in a way that early-adopters missed out on: scale.

For middle-aged musicians (raises hand) who may have been early adopters of the internet (raises hand), a good portion of our peers are not. People over 40 still use email(!!!) as their primary means of communication, will listen to entire songs, still prefer shiny plastic discs over digital downloads (but most shiny discs are ones their kids burn for them), and will more often than not prefer to leave a show early "to beat the traffic."

The kids, however, do none of these things. They'll stay for the whole show, don't care for CD's, have email accounts for the sole purpose of signing up with social networks and other communication platforms, listen to the best 2 minutes of a song before switching to the next. This is why so many young people listen to repetitive background music like house or ambient: it doesn't demand your engagement the way a vocalist does. Vocals are for the live show, silly rabbit.

These behaviors reflect this crisis of faith. Why should anyone get invested in what you and I are doing? Why should anyone care?

I don't know that I have the answers. I'm not even sure I'm asking the right questions, yet. I write pretty good songs. But if you're someone who's mind is occupied with the status of your mortgage, the food in your pantry, you're not going to care whether or not I wrote a pretty good song this month. You're going to need something more.

You're going to need friends. Family. Associates. A village. A community.

And that's really the trick, isn't it? Building a community of faithful that will flock together in support of each other? Artists make the mistake of thinking that community is about *them*. It's not: it's about the people who need each other. They just happen to be gathering at your show.

These are just some of the realities musicians face right now. But the question stands: What do I do now?

My best answer today: Get out there. No, I don't mean MySpace or Facebook or those toxic time sinks. Get in people's faces. Write music that heals souls, that you care enough about to ask other people to care about, too. Hand out free CD's at a coffee shop. Get OUT THERE. Play at a friend's backyard BBQ. Get OUT THERE! Enter a songwriting competition. GET OUT THERE!

Warcraft: Where's the Bard?

2010-06-11T14:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, I play World of Warcraft. This may account for the delinquency in my releasing of singles lately. Maybe.

As all WoW'rs are aware, Blizzard is releasing a new chapter in the saga of Azeroth, titled "Cataclysm." As a multi-year player of the game, I have a couple of ideas for the proverbial Blizzard Idea Box.

Non-Combat Class Characters: Almost everyone who plays the game seriously uses a "mule" or "banker toon." These are often low level toons (5 and under) who function solely as a go-between for the auction house, bank, and other combat toons. It would be neat to have an actual Banker class, featuring class-specific clothing items and mounts. (re: mounts - one idea would be a Livery that's actually a horse-drawn carriage. The player mounts, and then selects a destination within the city and is auto-course (similar to Gryphons) routed to the destination.) Would top-hats be too much awesome? I think not....

One additional benefit might be to allow Banker toons to act as intermediaries between combat toons and questgivers. As an example, if you've completed a Hunter quest in Dustwallow Marsh, but your turn-in is Stormwind, you could mail the quest items to your Banker (bound in this case, to Stormwind¹), who could then turn in the quest, and send XP back to the combat toon.

Bring on The Bard: A Pet Class addition

I think it would be neat to include a pet for one of the combat classes called The Bard, who could act as a serious party buff. As an example, perhaps Holy Priests could summon Choir Of Angels ( I just made that up) , which could be a +100 buff to all party member's stats for 60 seconds - that would be awesome in 25-man raids.

Notes:
¹ - It seems obvious that Banker class toons would be bound to major cities and not allowed outside to the combat areas.

Recap: Maker Faire 2010

2010-05-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

Bottom Line: 60% Awesome.

As usual, the place is chock-full of interesting, terrifying, thoughtful, creative.... things. One standout this year seemed to be a larger corporate presence, and with that, a new degree of proprietary information that seems to be the antithesis of the Maker culture. Chevy and Ford had large advertising exhibitions that were actively collecting marketing data, as well as the next generation of flavored tapwater marketed to youth by major corporations.

Prices on everything were higher this year, but without any commensurate increase in quality or experience. The Saturday morning parking situation was uncontrolled chaos. One of Saturday's major attractions (Adam Savage of Mythbusters) spent the early portion (up until I left) of his presentation with his back to most of the audience and a malfunctioning(?) sound system.

So that's my complaining. Now for the cool stuff:

I met one of my longtime Flickr contacts, Lane Hartwell. She's very pleasant in person, although probably had no idea what to make of me. I've followed her stream for years, so there's this odd familiarity I have, but she's got NO idea who I am. Welcome to stardom, Lane.

I got to see the famed WETA Legs in action. Definitely a top notch invention. You know who'll make good use of these? Farm laborers that harvest or maintain orchards.

I met David, the artist behind the Wondermark comics. I'm desperately trying to figure out how to get someone like him to do graphic design work for my upcoming CD.

The donuts! Oh god, the donuts! Harvey's gourmet donuts! I'm telling you right now, I'm working every angle I can think of to get this guy at my September concert, because those fresh donuts will SEAL YOUR MEMORY of my show like nothing else. Why? Because Harvey friggin GETS IT: His donuts are delicious - the highest standard is his baseline. He watches his cooker like a hawk. The product is CONSISTENTLY GOOD and he never changes the terms on you. And because of that experience, I will seek out Harvey and his delicious donuts. Note to event producers: This guy has a built-in audience.

The donuts. They call to me.

The Bay Area Horseless Carriage Club had an exhibit of restored antique automobiles, all of which (I believe) were more or less functional. (I even got to honk the horn on the Model T). The engine work was really something, especially the copper plated cylinders and leather fanbelt. Yes, leather.

These are interior (or maybe even stage) lamps by Jason Dietz. He calls them "UFO Kinetic Sculptures." They are very nicely done. You've probably seen a hundred variations on this kind of lighting (ala Spencer's Gifts) but his are set apart by the UFO's on the top. His materials are maybe obvious in one sense, but his unique assemblage is a step above. They're gorgeous.

A group called Stay Visible had a kit that allows bicyclists to display readable messages on their spinning wheels with coordinated LED's. Great idea for general visibility, if you ask me....

One last notable highlight was the MAKE marketplace (the bazaar bizarre). Here one could find basic home fuel cell kits (experimental/teaching, not functional), hundreds of components from motors to capacitors, all kinds of hands-on experimental things, arcane game programming kits, etc. (Why does all the cool stuff come from Japan?)

I think it's still on the to-do list for next year, but I'd like to see more Makers sharing and fewer major corps promoting their own wares.

Panic

2010-05-20T02:34:00.000-07:00

"What's happening is the people that don't have quality product aren't selling it," Blake says. "So they're the ones that are creating this panic. So it really comes back down to that, just like in every other [...] industry. When you get too many [musicians] and too many [labels] out there, then only the good ones make it."

Ok, so the quote is actually related to a crash in the price of marijuana in California, but it's dead-on about the panic: the people who don't have quality products are creating the panic.

I panicked for a long time. I still panic. That's because my music's not good enough yet. But I know the difference now.

There are too many musicians. Too much music to listen to that's already amazing. I know this. My fans know this. One of my best songs sounds suspiciously close to somebody else's song. It doesn't matter. People will tell their friends about a great plate of spaghetti.

Which brings me to Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares. You only need to watch one or two episodes to get the gist (the formula doesn't change on the show.) A restaurateur is in deep trouble. Chef Ramsey swoops in. It always comes back to the kitchen. It always comes back to FRESH ingredients, SIMPLE recipes, OUTSTANDING results, and CONSISTENCY.

Restaurants, like musicians, are based on the same basic ingredients. In the way that every restaurant basically mixes vegetables, fruits, meats, grains and spices, every musician uses the same basic 12 notes, the same I-IV-V...it comes down to HOW you use it. If you can take the simplest things and consistently make something delicious, satisfying, and memorable, people will flock to you. They will evangelize you.

But don't EVER short change them. Don't ever substitute frozen for fresh, microwaved for pan-seared. If you do, they will leave you, and the only way to get them back is hope for a major star to swoop in and give you a second chance.

I'd like to tell you that just opening the restaurant, or just completing a CD, was enough. That booking a few shows or selling a few plates was the only requirement, and that you're not in denial. You've got to do it every night for a thousand nights. The highest standard has to become the baseline.

Otherwise, you won't have a quality product, you won't sell, and you'll be in a panic.

Where your money goes

2010-05-17T13:03:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post has a nice graphic today breaking out ticket fees and where that money goes.

Required reading. From the article:

"I think the fans feel used and abused," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor in chief of Pollstar, a trade publication for the concert industry. "As an industry, it's extremely disingenuous to do what we do. These fees may exist for reasons that business people understand, but when a fan tries to buy a ticket for $60, and they pull out their wallet and it ends up being 80-something? Just tell them it's an $85 ticket, so they don't feel scammed in the process."

This is why I will never buy a ticket from Ticketmaster, nor will I *ever* ask my fans to, either.

I print my own, anyway.

The New Google Interface: I hate it

2010-05-10T14:49:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: A friend sent me this link. Apparently bookmark this to use the "classic" Google. I'll keep an eye out for Firefox updates to the search engine field. Thank you Nate!

There are people who use Google, and there are people who type things into the search engine (like URL's) and think they're "using" it, too.

If you're someone that likes the new Google interface, I know instantly you don't know how to use search in the first place, and that's why you don't understand how bad this new design is.

The old layout provided all the search results aligned to the far left of the page. For native English readers, this is the *most* efficient layout because it allows users to quick-scan the results for relevant returns. Adding this left column, however, makes it difficult to do the same quick-scan because A) there's literally MORE shit on the screen to look at, and B) the new crap is shiny, colorful, etc. It's distracting. (Thankfully, Google Scholar's results are still spartan from a "oooh shiny!" standpoint, but who knows? Maybe they'll skin those results for toddlers, too!)

And there are TOO MANY CHOICES! Remember, every choice presented to a user/consumer represents a NET TIMESINK - the fewer front-end choices, the more economic the overall process will be. (my own pet peeve: "Credit or debit?" This is an *enormous* economic time sink, when scaled over our entire economy. Don't get me started....) Another way to think about this is transactional overhead.

The new layout takes far too long to scan for relevant results. I'd rather have alternate search phrases or Boolean refinements suggested, rather than repeating the same search in alternating catalogs of content.

I completely understand the need for multiple interfaces: power searchers vs. market researchers vs. casual browsers....knowledge vs. thrillseeking.

I don't know if Google is willing to provide that interface, but I'm sure the demand is enough that somebody will quickly figure out how.

Moneymaker

2010-05-06T11:45:00.000-07:00

Do you know what being a (reasonably good) musician means in 2010? It means you've got a license to print money.

I just printed 40 tickets for a show. At $10/ea, I just printed $400 worth of paper and ink. People are actually trading these for cash. Sure, I've still got to affect the trade, but I'm having an easier time than I thought. I only need to sell one today to pay for my lunch.

The software I used was Sun Micro's OpenOffice. The font (ReservoirGrunge) was free, too. The card stock cost me $13.25 and I can print a thousand tickets. My ink refills are $7 at Costco. A couple other little things and some elbow grease, and I can walk around trading these things for money.

All you have to do is book a venue. Some can be rented for as little as a $100. Print tickets. Trade for money. Play your ass off.

It's....ALIIIIVEE!

2010-05-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

Who: Jeremiah Jacobs and pianist Bill Walker
What: LIVE music show
Where: Geery Theater, 2130 "L" St, Sacramento, CA.
When: Sept 11, 2010, 6:00 PM *SHARP*

Tix are $10. Seating is limited. No VIP comps are avail for this show (sorry).

If you want to attend, please contact myself or Bill directly.

Music Placement: HootSuite

2010-05-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

HootSuite, an application for heavy Twitter users, chose my composition "The Nostalgic Buffoon" for their most recent promotional.

It appears I've found at least one evangelist. ;) Hat tip, Dave-O!

Lefsetz on Artist Development

2010-05-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

Bob Lefsetz pisses me off more often than not, but that's because he's been telling me things I don't want to hear. I'll get over myself.

But as I've been reading him over the last year or so, it seems we're saying the same thing: it's finally coming back to the music.

Lefsetz writes:

It’s back. And its return has nothing to do with a change in record company strategy, no big time thinking on the part of managers or acts, but a change in the marketplace.

It’s just about impossible to be ubiquitous. And the cost of mainstream acceptance is prohibitive, not only in dollars, but career. If you push an act down people’s throats, some might buy it once, but most will walk away, doing their best to get out of the shitstorm.

You can go read the rest (and if you're in this business, you should have his blog in your RSS reader.)

I've spoken about a plethora of evangelists seeking new music to tell people about. This is the change in the market - this is what we never had before. Now we do, and we can finally break free from all the anxiety surrounding self-promotion and just create amazing music. Nothing else matters.

The Best News Yet

2010-04-30T08:13:00.000-07:00

My previous post seems to have come across as negative and a bit angry - it's not. At least, it wasn't intended to be. I just wanted to put some thoughts out in the most succinct way I could. As an antidote, I'll focus on a number of positive trends.

Freedom - For the first time in probably 15 years, artists are finally free to just create. After nearly ten years of trying to figure out the internet, it's finally scaled to a degree of relevance and general stasis that we can start making serious use of it. When music services and musician sites were just coming online, it seemed like we'd need to adapt a whole new set of skills just to subsist in the business: graphic design, HTML, marketing and PR, promotion, back office, etc.

Over the last decade or so, a number of services have sprung up to handle a lot of these tasks, and I think we're back to a place where artists really have all the tools they need to create/promote/release work into the public sphere.

But this is where a conundrum springs up: with more people than ever producing music, how do we get heard? How do we vault above the noise?

The answer is this: STOP FUCKING WORRYING ABOUT IT AND WRITE GOOD SONGS!

Seriously, the internet is chock full of evangelists seeking a Gospel. Give them Truth and they will tell EVERYBODY for you. The WANT to do this. They NEED to do this as much as you need to create your music.

Conversely, if they're NOT spreading your music, they're telling you something loud and clear: you're just not hearing it. If it's good, and especially if it's REALLY good, you'll have no shortage of help promoting yourself.

And this is why artists are free: you don't have to worry about anything but your music. Make it the best it can be. Make it amazing. A million people are waiting for a good reason to help you. Give 'em one.

The Essentials Don't Matter

2010-04-24T20:04:00.000-07:00

Photo by Juliana Coutinho.

You need everything, but none of it matters.

On Twitter? You should be. Nobody gives a shit, but that doesn't matter. Just the number of followers.

Got a Facebook fan page? You should. Nobody gives a shit, of course, but that's not the point. Just get as many people to join as possible.

Got a blog? Get one. Nobody will read it. That doesn't matter. It just matters there's something there when the great wandering eye of public spectacle happens to track across you.

Got an CD? You should. Doesn't matter if the music or production quality is good. Nobody cares. The best stuff is free anyway. They just want to remember. We'll smile for any photo. We'll buy any CD.

How about schwag? Do you have T-shirts and mugs and keychains and all that crap? You should. Nobody cares. But they won't believe you without it.

How hot is your website? It doesn't matter - the hottest website is only hot for 2 weeks. Nobody will visit anyway. But you need a top-shelf site otherwise you're a nobody. You're already a nobody.

Do you have any talent? It doesn't matter. Talent's just one more gimmick. As far as modern entertainment goes, the talentless get the same consideration. The stakes are different now. You're up against legacy on a scale nobody had to deal with before. You're competing with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and Elton John before and after meteoric success. The current crop of most-knowns are just clones stuck in a time loop.

Can you write a hit song? Who cares? Twenty million iPods out there are stuffed to the gills with everything BUT the Billboard Top100. The Long Tail of music creators is dominated by DIY troubadours and their relentless promotion.

How about management? It doesn't matter. They don't have a fucking clue right now. Try anything. Try everything. Play in coffee shops. Don't play in coffee shops. Give away your CD's. Sell. Sell. Sell. Play anywhere. Pay to play. Play for free. Play for tips. Don't play at all. Do interviews. Eschew public contact. Beg Apple to feature you on iTunes. Beg someone to put your song in their go-nowhere film. Crash other people's parties and hope that somebody just likes you enough to put your music on their TV show.

Got a record deal? You just signed a mortgage where the bank keeps the house at the end of the loan. It doesn't matter. They're fucked. They're looking for a reason to drop you the day after they sign you. Maybe you got a chance to cash out. Take it. Nothing's for certain.

Maybe Jim Kunstler and John Robb are right: the future is hyperlocal. Start with a ten mile radius. Work for ten thousand hours to make it 100 miles and you might be able to squeak out a living.

But only if you've got the essentials.

And they don't matter.

How It's Done: Bambino

2010-04-11T00:25:00.000-07:00

I love so much about this video. Raw joy of the audience. The closeness of the performer and the listeners at one point. Really good performance.

The artist is Nigerian guitarist Bambino.

The Big Stuff: Reconciling Artistic Irrationality

2010-04-09T15:27:00.001-07:00

I'm going to try and tie together a few "big ideas" for your consideration. This exercise unfortunately requires about 40 minutes of your time, but I think I can guarantee you'll come away with your brain on fire, creatively speaking.

Let's start with Merlin Mann's talk about The Fear of Sucking.
The Sound of Young America

(forward to 4 minutes or so to hear it begin) Merlin mentions an inner voice that is this kind of fatalistic limiter. It tells you, among other things, that whatever you're doing has to be EPIC from the get go, and if you feel that you're sucking at it (inevitable), you have to get used to the idea that you're going to suck at something for a very long time before you're genuinely good at it.

Maybe a really long time...like ten thousand hours (hat tip: Malcolm Gladwell).

Now that we've considered both an irrational fear of sucking or being outed as a fake (internalized doubt/anger) AND the idea that it takes thousands and thousands of hours of work to actually begin to NOT suck at something, let us now consider an alternative viewpoint:

That's Elizabeth Gilbert discussing creativity at TED. There is a moment (around 10:00) when she specifically refers to a poet's relationship with her muse, discussed in some kind of metaphysical language. The concept that an *idea* is a physical force that is seeking a fertile territory is an interesting one, if we now take into consideration this next presentation by Susan Blackmore, who discusses memes from the perspective of biological evolution:

And now, The Big Idea:

Creativity is really a form of reception, and everyone is quite capable. It's the continuing practice, the religion if you will, of connecting and expressing that begins to separate the common and the extraordinary. As creatives, there's little we can do immediately to deal with the cultural frameworks that imbue us with full responsibility for what random inspirations we pull from the universe, but the very act of considering this possibility is a first step at changing it.

If this idea is any good, it will catch like the flu.

I was on teevee!

2010-04-09T15:25:00.000-07:00

My first television appearance...well, ever.

New songs. New album.

Finally.

Health Care and Social Tipping Points

2010-03-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

This post is a little off-topic from my normal music-related blogging.

The United States woke up today with an arguably better health care system than the one we went to bed with. While MSM publications are trumpeting this as a "historic" event, I believe they do so for the wrong reasons.

From my perspective, the dimension here that's historic is not the success of the Obama Administration, but the failure of the opposition network (K Street) that had been fully captured by corporate interests.

With the most notable exception of the universal/'single payer' provisions that were removed from earlier drafts, practically everything else in the bill survived despite the lobbying activities on behalf of corporate interests. The single most profitable portion of the insurance business (the expulsion of unprofitable members from the system) is one of the first things the HCR bill sought to remedy. There are a dozen other bullet points, and almost every one of them was on the K-street hit list.

To me, this demonstrates a significant shift in the proverbial winds of political influence, but I'm not sure if this is for better or worse. If the K-street network failed to deliver on its promises to its (corporate) constituents, those interests are going to look to other networks to deliver their goods. This means a new marketplace of influence peddling will open up to fill that need. Will it be better or worse for us than the system that's currently crumbling? I don't know.

But I can tell you it represents a tipping point. Follow me....

The HCR is not just about hospitals, doctors, lawyers or insurers - in fact, those are almost minor players in the larger scheme. From my perspective, the HCR is more like a snowball tossed from the top of a mountain: it's the initial inertia, so to speak. What follows will be fundamental (hopefully) realigning of some national policies, i.e., the Farm Bill. HCR is also connected to the nation's food supply (Farm Bill, FDA), our civic infrastructure (roads & highways & motor vehicles vs. walkable communities), our environmental policies (EPA vs. industry), etc. In short, *everything's* gonna change.

My prediction: the "end game" is not domination of "the conversation" or even policy points: it's going to be about taking credit for the avalanche already in motion.

I know this is a loose conglomeration of thoughts and ideas, probably not the most responsibly presented. Thoughts and reactions welcome in the comments.

Neat Craigslist trick

2010-03-05T10:15:00.000-08:00

⎝

I've seen this symbol appearing in some Craiglist posts, and wondered what was going on. It's actually quite a simple hack. The title area in CL posts is defined with the (H2) markup. Calling the character # 9117 at the beginning of the title creates this huge symbol that immediately draws the eye. Clever and neat, but probably short lived.

Press and Burn: Do shiny CD's matter?

2010-02-19T10:49:00.000-08:00

Do CD's matter?

I've been asking this question of both professionals and fans, and as of right now, it's pretty evenly split.

Just about anyone under 30 seems to prefer digital versions of content, whereas people over 40 seem to exclusively prefer CD's.

From a monetary perspective, most CD's are a net-loss for producers: they're most commonly used as "hooks" to get people to purchase higher-margin schwag. Some artists I'm acquainted with have moved to a pay-what-you-want model for their CD's, a move that recognizes the inherent decline in perceived value on the part of fans.

But here's where it gets interesting and a bit non-intuitive: when asked to name their own price, most fans opt to OVER-pay: they'll sooner volunteer a higher price when given the option. Why?

I think it has to do with the psychology of what marketers call a "value proposition." When we as consumers are confronted with an item and its associated price, our natural instinct is to evaluate the value proposition: is this price too high for what I think I'm getting? Can I obtain it at a better price? Is this price even fair from a market perspective (information asymmetry)? There are probably hundreds more questions that consumers deal with before committing to a purchase.

But a PWYW model obliterates this psychological obstacle. When asked to pay what you want, your value methodology inverts: instead of deciding whether or not a predetermined price is too high/low, a potential customer is faced with a different set of motivators: social pressure to support an artist by paying *something*, a desire to retain the affections of the performer (closer bond between artist & fans), and above all, a sense of having *contributed* to the net worth of the artist, versus feeling exploited by them.

So if you're an artist who's fanbase is in their late thirties onward, chances are you're going to want plenty of shiny discs for that demographic. And with those discs come a new opportunity to create viable income.

Genres of music that appeal to younger fans, however, may find it difficult at first to monetize that fanbase. Downloads as promotional giveaways are one model, provided you've got something else to get fans interested, but I wouldn't look to the download model for reliable income. There are huge psychological factors at play when it comes to product tangibility.

This post opened with the question "Do CD's matter?" For some artists, the answer is a clear "yes." For others, however, CD's may not play a central role in the establishment of an artist's presence.

Addendum: While writing this post, I witnessed a couple at a nearby table downloading something onto a mobile phone (non-iPhone). The frustration level was evident. I'm willing to bet this person would have just sooner plopped down $5 for a CD copy of whatever they were trying to obtain. Again, the value proposition is: the CD is *far* less frustrating than non-intuitive download services with spotty success.

Why do social networking sites hide the logout button?

2010-02-10T08:02:00.001-08:00

Facebook (and some other sites I use) recently "updated" its user interface. One of the changes was to "hide" the "Logout" button under a new dropdown menu. (A couple other sites have either done the same or relegated the logout button to another page entirely.) This decision is deliberate. Facebook wants as much of your online behavioral data as they can get. And governments want that data, too.

By hiding the logout feature, you're more apt to simply close the browser or tab, but effectively remaining logged into a service. This allows Facebook to openly track your online whereabouts via advertising partnerships that all report back to Facebook (a couple years ago, they called this "BEACON.")

A potential solution is Ipredator, an encrypted proxy from The Pirate Bay. I'm not sure how long this service will remain viable (the U.S. could simply shut off access at whimsy), but for the short term, it's an easy way to remove yourself from the trackable net. This is probably a good thing.

I was wrong about....

2009-11-28T13:26:00.000-08:00

I keep a running list of things I've been wrong about in the hopes of learning from it. These have been foaming about in my head for a while; let's see if I can give them some shape here. In no particular order:

I was wrong about how the internet would "empower" artists and connect them with fans.
Part of this was due to my luck in being an early-adopter of broadband internet, and believing it would have the same dramatic impact on everyone else's life as it had on mine. I'd had some strong first experiences (winning the 100,000th artist slot at mp3.com, for instance) that seemed to indicate bright futures for musicians on the web. And for some musicians, that certainly was the case.

But scale changes everything, and that's one area I was completely wrong about: scale. I'd initially figured that "real" musicians would find an easier time connecting with purchasers because I'd (naively) thought A) the bulk of the music production community would embrace the technologies (didn't happen), and B) the bulk of producers would actually be professional musicians.

These two assumptions turned out to be horribly false. The bulk of the professional music community balked at first because they didn't see it as a way to actively pay their bills, and they were right about that. My second assumption was turned upside down - "Here comes everybody" - when the numbers of amateur and entry producers dwarfed the professional by scales of magnitude.

With these new scales came bigger versions of the same persistent problems (vaulting work into the public consciousness) invariably attracting the same niche noisemakers and creating only the slightest variation of previous hierarchies. The creative arts tend to drive tight communities. Birds of a feather...

The biggest lesson for me, however, was how it would change the value of live performance. For the longest time, I've (unfairly) judged live performance by my own production standards - a bit like comparing cropdusters to 747's - so I'd naturally underestimated its appeal to audiences. Turns out most people don't care if the music is built on simple, well-tread ideas: they just like how it sounds.

And from now on, that's good enough for me, too.

Photos by Flickr's jancin and gorski.

Why I want Google to be my record company (and you do, too)

2009-11-20T13:23:00.000-08:00

The music business as we formerly knew it was predicated on two basic legs: monopolizing the physical distribution structure (and by proxy, maintaining content exclusivity), and an information asymmetry between the record companies and the artists.

This asymmetry took its most insidious form in the famous "double books" that film and music companies used to keep (before corporatisation and Sarbanes-Oxley), allowing companies to misrepresent sales and distribution statistics, thus denying musicians a lot of their due income.

A decade ago, Michael Robertson's MP3.com tried to level this playing field by providing a means of distribution (mp3's) in addition to hyperaccurate sales and play statistics. This gave artists their first real glimpse at the relationships between listeners/buyers and artists' personal income.

Most record labels today simply do not exist: they are "paper" companies that are nothing more than a legal entity created for the purpose of easing the burdens of transferring ownership of musical works.

From an artist/producer perspective, the ideal record company will offer the following:

Access to global markets
Seamless integration of multiple platforms (mobile, web browsers, ???)
Detailed tracking, reporting and statistical analysis (Analytics for your songs)
Tracking of public opinion (Google Alerts)
Turnkey retail (Google Checkout)
Personal/professional network management (LinkedIn)
Facilitate collaboration (Google Wave)
Targeted marketing (AdSense/AdWords)

Apple has done quite well positioning itself in this space, especially given they've also put a hardware platform into the market, too. Although I personally see the iPhone as a transient platform, it has certainly demonstrated the power of "flat" distribution *and* an ability to open markets for music producers.

But the iPhone (and its near-term competitors) are "now" technologies. The future, in my current view, is hardware independent, and its in our interests as creatives to align ourselves with open frameworks that share this philosophy.

The current major media companies, however, demand exclusivity, which in turn forms the basis for our current conundrum: balancing exclusivity with the need to participate in open systems. It will be up to individual producers to choose how they want to interact with these new markets and technologies, and oodles of good datasets will make it easier to make the right choice.

I want Google to be my record company for these reasons:

Google (theoretically) isn't motivated to lie to me about traffic stats,
Google has no interest in *not* paying me,
Google's interest is in facilitating the highest volume of transactions possible (good for me),
Thus, Google's interested in matching my offerings to consumers at the highest possible granularity (good for me)
Google's platform independence means I can seamlessly offer digital files across hardware, anywhere on the globe, via any channel.

You want Google to be my record company for these reasons:

Ease of legitimate purchase. One-click purchase from web-search results means listeners don't have to set up profiles on multiple services (eMusic, iTunes, Amazon, etc).
No DRM.
All offerings as single selections - no requirement to purchase an entire album.

Photos by Alek Buznik and quack1701.

Pink Floyd: Great Gig...if you can get it

2009-11-18T08:14:00.000-08:00

Singer Clare Torry talks about the "happy accident" that resulted in one of the greatest vocal solos in pop music.

Worth it for her last few sentences. The takeaway for producers is this: it can really pay to hire professionals.

Beneath the Underground

Can music learn from the slow-food movement? - Salon.com

Point - Counterpoint: The $100k "Indie" Band

Tom Silverman – Music Business Resurrection

David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur - Page 2 - New York Times

Victory over Suffering

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A Silent Solidarity

The Great Winehouse in the Sky

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Your Own Road

The Time It Takes

AdSense

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An Apology

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Bill Murray on Howard Stern

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Prince: Welcome to America!

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The Quiet Crier

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Context

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What I've been wrong about, Vol 2

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Return of Albini

Charlie Hopper on songwriting in Nashville

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The First Five Thousand

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Music Theory: One and Four

Concert Tickets as Commodity