Posts from — January 2008

Earlier, I read Bruce Warila’s blog because he has the same interest that I have - getting content creators to come out of their shell. Their shell is actually there body of work. So often, it’s who they want to be to their audience - the same well rehearsed, articulate show every night. Musicians and authors, both.

Bruce is Rocky Road. I am on a diet. We have so many, many stylistic differences. I need a sedative or something before I venture to his blog. Even so, what he said:

50% of the online population is using RSS.
RSS is the best way to slowly introduce yourself to new fans that don’t have time to read your emails or continually visit your website.
For fans, RSS is so much less intrusive than email, and so much easier than visiting your website.
For everyone, RSS is the most efficient method to subscribe to updates from hundreds or thousands of information sources.
Having thousands of RSS subscribers is another reason why a label or an investor may invest in you.

Then comes the sex. Or something like that according to the story he puts through his RSS feed. Other than being about 3 feet and 2,000 words too long, and largely irrelevant, it was bad. There is nothing about bad or long that agrees with ‘episodic.’ I hope he hears my joking tone.

But otherwise, what he said. Consistently show something easy. The RSS feed is a medium that encourages passivity. In fact, RSS is the channel that readers hardly ever change.

I do have one significant point. If your blog posts are longer than 600 words and two pictures, you don’t understand this medium yet. That is not the way to tweak a passive audience. When someone subscribes to an RSS feed, they are giving you their permission to make light use of their attention. Three minutes max.

I start deleting RSS feeds that fail the 3 minute test. I believe most casual readers would especially after they are on RSS feed overload. An RSS feed is something you scan during a commercial break.

Also, you need to be really, really good with your title, your first paragraph and your picture. In that sense, it’s simple front-page journalism.

I re-read my post that started with a quote from John August. I stated that he had credibility. I wanted to state that his blog post eloquently stated a reasonable case for the primal fact that artists desire to get paid. This sentiment is the sentiment of my writing, too. It’s one of those statements that is so obvious, that I forgot to say it out loud. That, or I just hit the ‘Send to Weblog’ button too quickly.

The post: Sinisterly He Declared, “I Want To Get Paid”

I am proud of my “It’s Just A Wig” note.

Mathew Ingram consistently blogs in a matter-of-fact, sensible-is-as-sensible-does style. Today, he’s discussing musicians and business men in response to a poorly reasoned CNET post. To quote Mathew:

As for the line about only 5 per cent of EMI’s acts being profitable, that’s hardly surprising. For one thing, many of the label’s acts are unadulterated crap, which even millions spent on marketing and hype cannot spin into gold; and for another thing, the overhead of a traditional label like EMI is astronomical — for all the mid-level managers and their salaries and bonuses (never contingent on actual sales, of course). That’s presumably why the new owner is slashing and burning.

Some thoughts.

The record labels need only 5 percent of the artists to be profitable. There are two types of acts that interest record labels: 1) established, or 2) new. Bands that don’t transition from new to established in relatively quick order usually end up 3) dead, broke or both. Labels don’t want to financing struggling bands or pay them better. Labels want to go through many new bands in order to find the most established bands. Plenty of bands do manage the long road of touring and fan base building, but that’s a much different skill than either 1) creating music or 2) being a record label.

The $1 per CD problem. There would be fewer broke or dead bands if they were better paid by the labels. Since there are so many bands that are looking for the possibility of label-promoted success, the labels don’t need to negotiate much. They just talk to the next, newly-formed, newly-struggling act. Unestablished bands cannot wish away the other unestablished bands.

Record labels cannot tell a good band from bad band. That’s a good thing. They are well aware of this fact, too. The labels naturally focus on the quantity of unestablished $1/CD bands rather than the quality. They don’t know quality. The wasted expense of unsuccessful bands is a cost to all bands.

A band who’s primary approach to their potential audience is to get the record labels to give the a $1/CD record have to live with the fact that the odds are stacked against them. If you talk with business men who say, “the first thing we do, take 90% of the money,” why would you expect them to change?

You need to have a better alternative. That requires a different type of creativity. Complaining isn’t creative.

Cory Doctorow posted on fair use at Boing Boing. I enjoyed the article, and want to quote a small piece:

Tim busts out a great working definition for fair use that simple enough to understand that it can be reliably followed by casual remixers and users of content, but not so simple as to be idiotic: if it adds new value, it’s fair use; if it substitutes for the original, it’s infringing.

It’s going to take me a while to get my head around the implications of this — questions like how complex it will be to adjudicate “substitution” are thorny indeed (”I have a store where I sell licenses to move your DVDs to your iPod; your DVD-ripper substitutes for my product.”).

My silence on this quote is my way of adding value.

John August’s blog is on my daily read list. He’s a screen writer on the picket line. He also wrote, directed, and financed an awesome movie, The Nin9s. He wrote Corpse Bride and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

He could say anything with credibility. Anyone could accuse him of being part of an industry that is struggling because of it’s unwillingness to adopt a more permissive version of copyright. In his reasoned commentary on Torrents and Nin9s, he says:

The pro-torrent argument, particularly for indie films which get limited distribution (like The Nines), is that a torrent allows a lot of people to see the movie who otherwise couldn’t. And yes, a filmmaker wants his work seen.

But he also wants to be paid for his efforts. No matter where you work — an office, a factory, a retail store — you do your job with the expectation of getting paid. If your employer decided he didn’t want to pay you, you’d be upset. If the employer said, “Well, the customers decided to take the products without paying for them,” you’d rightly tell him to get off his fat ass and hire a security guard.

The internet is a powerful distribution model. Both for bits via Torrents and for product via sites such as Amazon and iTunes.

The Torrents model lacks a payment model. Sellers of content, both resellers and the creators themselves, passionately declare that it’s illegal, it’s piracy, it’s theft. And it is. They then argue: buy it from places like Amazon and iTunes. The resellers by definition are payment models.

The consumers of content could argue, it’s unavailable, it costs too much, I want to try before I buy. Torrents solve all of these potential problems.

The concert model for bands works this way: the better you think the band is the more you are willing to pay for a ticket. Of course, there is scarcity involve too. But the concern model satisfies the ‘try before you buy’ desire of the typical consumer (a point I stretch perhaps).

Who wouldn’t want to go to a movie and pay on the way out based on how much you liked the film? That’s the micro payment model. Most content creators abdicate any responsibility for developing this alternative payment model, and only to their cost. Found money is found money, after all.

The Wired Magazine article on watermarking is scary. There are certain days that I wished I wore tinfoil hats because I’d get paranoid an all. I could roll my eyes like Mel Gibson. I would feel alive. The recent discussion of watermarking would have been one of those days.

Mathew Ingram also had a comment, What if everything was watermarked? A quote:

I’m trying to imagine a world in which every piece of content was watermarked in some way. What would happen to mashups? How would it affect the principle of fair use? Would Internet service providers start to block specific activity on the Web based on whether a watermark was detected? And would the DMCA-driven “take it down first and ask questions later” policy extend to virtually every kind of content?

And then he mentioned the “Amen break.” That is brilliant.

The linked YouTube video if great. The juxtaposition that Mathew Ingram created is worthy of the Tin Foil Hat Award. If one exists. Which it doesn’t. I’m just staying… Or not.
.

Sometimes Booms are good. Sometimes Booms are bad. Why do I think of Nuke LaLoosh as I write that?

The Economist, in the article, From major to minor, details three ‘vicious circles’ that are tearing apart sale of music:

First, because sales of CDs are tumbling, big retailers such as Wal-Mart are cutting the amount of shelf-space they give to music, which in turn accelerates the decline.

Second, because the majors are cutting costs severely, particularly at EMI and Warner Music, artists are receiving far less marketing and promotional support than before, which could prompt them to seek alternatives.

Third, record companies face such hostile conditions that their backers, whether private equity or corporations, are loth to spend the sums required to move into the bits of the music industry that are thriving, such as touring and merchandising.

These points are all true. The labels failed to adapt. They are getting rapidly disintermediated. I like that term. It sounds so clinical. Of course, it’s so easy to blame the labels.

Artists have to accept some responsibility, too. Very few bands, writers or other artists have adopted effective web-based strategies. Instead, they simple replicate the merchandizing strategies of live performances on the web. Buy our CDs. Buy our T-shirts. Do writers even offer t-shirts?

Web strategies require consistent use of fresh content. Interestingly, most bands only provide fresh content with they release new albums. Most writers, when the publish a new book. Most won’t commit to something like a blog.

I have a theory that e-mail did this. After getting swamped by e-mail and hiding from that sense of obligation, what artist would want to try to build connections? They assume that it takes so much time and yet provides so little benefit. That is the truth of e-mail. More declaratory formats of communication, such as blogs, are much different. They take less time, and can be much more beneficial.

Mathew Ingram has a wonderful blog. He linked to this article. He provide frequent comments that would interest any artist trying to understand the web as a business tool.

Bands play music, and compose songs. Writers, well, they write. Forms of communication, of course. Places to hide? Absolutely.

To use J.J. Abrams’ term, the artist is a mystery box. A successful artist communicates in a way that is exceptionally evocative. Such connection builds a desire in the audience to know the mystery man. For the audience, the artist is the Mystery Box.

Listen to J.J. Abrams’ TED video. He essentially says that his art is a mystery box which gives way to another box and then another and so on. Artists who have a static web presence and make no effort to communicate with their audience devolve to one unchanged mystery box. They become boring.

People Magazine, and that ilk (that ick?), elaborate on the mysterious qualities of a mystery box. When the life of an artist is in flux, they detail the drama, and narrate change to the mystery box. That change is essential to engaging and building audience. Most artists would rather hide than voluntarily detail the mysteries of their life in the mystery box.

So a couple of points. Don’t hide. Have and active web presence. A piece of great advice from Maki at Dosh Dosh:

The most important thing to do is to blog as if no one else was reading you. Know that the most crucial thing you need to protect is your authenticity. Know that your voice will change as you accumulate more unnecessary knowledge. As you realize that people have expectations. As your blog becomes a profitable asset.

None of the existing meta-blogging guidelines are necessary. I say this from the perspective of someone who has imbibed marketing and PR principles for years. Advertisers, peers, industry customs and societal obligations will affect the way you write. It will tame your voice and narrow your perspective.

Art is contrived. Authentic contrasts with the controlled, planned nature of most artistic expression. Authentic is spontaneous, captures a certain wildness, and chaos. That contrast, and the different quality of bonds evoked by authentic expression, help artists significantly improve the quality of their relationship with the audience, and in fact the size of the audience.

Justin Boland, of AudibleHype, posted an entertaining rant - Music Business 2.0 Without the Bullshit. I wish he would use stronger language for his points. To quote:

1. Nobody knows shit right now.
2. Nobody owns anything right now.
3. I have no reason to negotiate.
4. These dinosaurs are too fat to survive.
5. Everyone is lying to you (except me).

What he does is was artists should do. He communicates. He tells people something interesting fairly regularly. Bands lead interesting lives. Writers lead interesting lives. Say so.

I would point out that before you ‘Say so’, it helps to know the answer to ’say what?’ That question is a very essential one. Artists struggle to brand themselves especially when communicating in rather personal forums such a blogs.

If I had to write a brand statement for AudibleHype, it would be:

AudibleHype is the shit you need to know, to be in charge, to write or play your way to your own destiny.

It’s hack. In there are several branding attributes. The trick as always is to make such simple sounding sentiments live somewhere. That’s what great songs and stories do. Artists also hide behind their work. There is the problem, I think.

I have posted three TED Videos on pwnership.com.

Mystery Box, A TED Video, today’s post on the Mystery Box, and the opportunity to just create.

Prohibit: Against The Law, a presentation by Larry Lessig on copyright and the internet.

The Secret To Happiness Is A Bad 1st Marriage, a presentation by Barry Schwartz on the cost of choice.