Are you in the business of sugar rushes or goose bumps?

Does music have a monetary value and if so, what is it? People disagree wildly on the subject. That in itself is a sign that there is value in music I guess.

On the one hand you have the Freetards, spineless thieves who are on some kind of conspiratorial and neurotic mission to protect themselves from having to pay for their favourite consumer product besides beer and Red Bull.

On the other extreme side of things you will find a bunch of disconnected music industry execs some of whom do not read email, but have it printed out and delivered to them. These guys still think it is their god given right to extort musicians with contracts the artist has no chance of understanding and no choice but to sign.

Both sides are of course insanely far off the mark. Freetards are no better than the guys who come to a party and immediately start bumming beers and cigz off everyone and as for the old school record men, well If you haven’t read Frederic Dannen`s “Hit Men” yet, please do.

So what is the real value of music recorded or otherwise? The answer of course is that there is no single correct answer to that question. Some music can have the power to stop a person from killing himself, but may not be of any use to anyone else. Other music could sell millions of bottles of fancy water that is no better than what comes out of my tap at home, and yet another tune might be someone’s only memory of a summer or maybe just a single evening that made a huge impression lasting a lifetime.

The point is that the whole discussion of whether or not its fair to charge 0.99 cents for a song is ridiculous. Several bands I know charge over twice that and actually sell more doing it. It is not about the price, it is about the fan and what he/she feels when confronted with the artist and his/her music.

So if Britney gives people goose bumps for the right reasons she will sell a bunch of tickets music and merch. If she just makes everyone feel numb everyone who wants the sugar rush of one of her poptunes will just steal the damn thing listen, to it for a day or two and then dump it when the rush is gone.

In other words you do NOT want to be in the business of sugar rush music any more. Be in the goose bumps business. Large or small, if you can make an impression, create an emotional response, then you are creating something of value and the money will follow right behind it. Cos lets face it, most of us are still in it for the glory, and there is not much glory in being broke.
Until next time….

In ancient times (or actually until quite recently) musicians had only one option if they wanted to succeed. Success meant limos and private aeroplanes and all the glitz and fun of being famous. And everyone wants to be admired right?

Here is how that option worked

1. Get a record deal
2. Get a huge advance
3. Get a famous producer
4. Get your video on mtv and cough up payola to a bunch of gangsters to get it played on the radio
5. Get your record placed in the big and important record stores.
6. Almost never recoup the advance and wonder where it all went. http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html

Think about this for a second. How many of the steps are still important?

1. You might still get a record deal if you are incredibly lucky, BUT....
2. NOBODY and I do Mean NOBODY is getting advances any more
3. Since you will not be getting an advance you can’t afford a famous producer unless he is a personal friend in which case you don’t need the deal anyway.
4. Nobody pays any attention to MTV anymore, and radio is to full of crap commercials to mean anything to anyone.
5. There are no more big and important record stores anymore.

So what the “#$”#&$ am I expected to do ? you might wonder.

How will I make money and how many fans do I need to actually make my day job go away.
Treat your career with the respect it deserves and you will be fine.

I know musicians. I used to be one. We are all hung up on talking about our amps and gear and less hung up on the bigger picture. Yeah, yeah I know we got into this so we wouldn’t have to put up with some bullshit office manager and now here I am preaching business plans and all the stuff we really do not want to deal with. What the &%$/ is that all about?

Well its about control. Control over your life and art. Cos even though you saw your fave rock star prancing around with groupies and limos, you did not see him broke years later fighting for the rights to perform his own songs and for royalties owed.

So get on with the job at hand
Work hard, play hard, and stick it to the man
Cheers
David

Pirate Bay's neo-Nazi sugar daddy (Entire article from theregister.co.uk)

The trial of the Pirate Bay operators in Sweden has generated huge amounts of media coverage. But one of the most interesting things about Pirate Bay hasn't got a mention.

In his daily dispatches for WiReD, court correspondent Oscar Schwartz swoons over the boyish charm of "likeable" and "winning" Pirate Bay PR guy Peter Sunde. But there seems to be something about Pirate Bay that no one wants you to read: its debt to one of the most notorious fascists in Europe.

Reg readers will already know a little about Carl Lundström's background. But as Andrew Brown, author of the autobiographical Fishing in Utopia, points out, no English language coverage of the trial has mentioned this. Thanks to Brown's blog, we know a little more about Lundström.

For example, Lundström was linked to a gang of skinheads that attacked Latin American tourists in Stockholm in the mid-1980s. [Expo.se report (Swe) - 2005]. Over the years, Lundström has switched his support from Keep Sweden Swedish to the far-right headbangers party New Democracy - but was thrown out for being too right wing. He's currently bankrolling 100 candidates for the Swedish equivalent of the BNP.
Pirate Bay cartoon T-shirt

The Pirate Bay's T-shirt design omits Lundstrom

Lundström is alleged to own 40 per cent of The Pirate Bay - the largest share - and gave it servers and bandwidth to get going. As one of the four defendants, been a regular attendee in court. But the presence of this significant national political player hasn't been worthy of a WiReD mention since the trial kicked off. Or a mention anywhere else. Why would that be?
Shhh, don't mention the neo-Nazi...

For me, there are two interesting aspects to this peculiar, and very selective silence.

One is that anti-copyright activists like to think of themselves as thoroughly decent, forward-thinking progressive people - because the internet is a new democracy, they're reflecting a fairer world. They like to contrast the hygenic efficiency of the technology with the old (and implicitly corrupt) copyright businesses. It's almost a badge of moral superiority.

But like the Futurists a hundred years ago - the original Freetards - they don't mind jumping into bed with neo-Nazis when it suits them. In this case, that's so long as the free music and movies keep flowing.

The second is WiReD's choice of Oscar Schwartz to file courtroom dispatches from the Pirate Bay trial. He's the only English language courtroom reporter, and bloggers and professional publications take their cue from his reports.

But Schwartz describes himself as "a leading critic of intellectual property" and an activist. His reports duly fulfil the caricature of plucky freedom fighters and bungling prosecutors that fellow activists (and some journalists) want to read.

"The fact it is represented by four young, rebellious and innovative guys all adds to the image of the rock'n'rollers facing up to the The Man," drooled Guardian blogger Jemima Kiss, who omits to mention the Fourth Man isn't particularly young - or looks great in jackboots. "Whatever happens at the end of this case, Pirate Bay wins."

When you invite activists to do your reporting for you, you can be sure that if a fact has an unpleasant odour, it won't be reported - no matter how important it may be. ®

Fab Portugese designer Marcelo created this skin for Enslaved

Dumb-captcha

Yesterday my esteemed colleague Mr Kilevold emailed me a link to an Internet debate about a music subscription service.
The debate was interesting to us from a professional point of view, but after having read the first few lines we both quickly concluded that this was not for us. This was not a polite exchange of views among civilized human beings. Instead it was a barrage of appalling language, despicable spelling, hatred and completely unfounded accusations both against other contributors to the debate, the music service in question and the world in general.

What is the point of creating these virtual barroom brawls? How depressing is it not that this amazing opportunity for intellectual exchange is so often lynched by people who are barely capable of spelling their own names, let alone completing a sentence in their native language?

Now thebizmo is hardly the kind of company that would attract the abovementioned dimwits and blunt knifes in our various forums. Therefore it was just as an exercise in product development that we pondered the problem of the un-moderated forum over coffee. Not only does intellectual pollution destroy the forums usefulness, it also keeps the very people who one might actually want to hear from, away. Who in their right mind would enter a bar populated by foul-mouthed retards with a propensity towards threats and insults? The answer is of course, only other similarly primitive individuals. Mr. K pointed out that he would certainly never enter an actual RL room where he knew that kind of discourse was going on or bother to take part in a discussion of that nature online.

By the end of our excellent French coffee Lars had the answer. As is customary for his product ideas, it used simple and existing technology, and once spoken was blindingly obvious. I am guessing that the first company to do this will get a mention in Wired magazine.

So what is the solution to the Internet hooligan? Well, its simple. Create a barrier to entry that hooligans cannot pass because of their defect internal wiring.
Lets say that your forum allows everyone to take part, but instead of the character recognition system it employs an IQ recognition system.
Like this
1. Audio clip requesting the user to spell …. eeeeh intelligence ?
2. Write the name of the man who first theorized that humanity evolved from apes (with certain exceptions)?

And so on and so forth., you get the drift. Make it fun for the nice people. Not that these questions actually test anyone’s intelligence, but they would set a certain standard.

This kind of brain trap would surely anger the zombies that could not pass through and they would go somewhere else to hiss, spit and boo with other angry people. But that would be the desired result. Keep the monkeys in the zoo, and let the rest of us talk in peace.

One could then add an extra layer for the demons that slip through the barrier. Just word-strip bad language and rate the participants by a combination of words stripped out and spelling mistakes made. This way if a Neanderthal got through the net, one could spot him by his low rating.

This idea is simple as pie to execute, and I absolutely guarantee you a place in the hearts of all good and reasonable people if you put this kind of dumb-captcha as a gatekeeper for your forum.
Let us know if it works. We think it will.
Later
David G

MIDEM. Crisis, what crisis ?

Imagine a really cool semitropical French city. Now imagine it full of all the best and brightest in the music business. Brings to mind Ray Bans and limos doesn't it ? Thats MIDEM. The music biz annual get up in the south of France.

Well lets change the image slightly.
Turn off the heat so its cold and windy. Now remove all the rock and pop royalty. Not so cool anymore eeeh? Then get rid of all the label babes and fun people who used to populate the record business. Not much left anymore.

Well its a good and a bad thing. The good part is that you do not have to live in a roach infested dive because there are actually rooms vacant. Also, you can talk to the people you need to meet because no one there is kidding themselves that they don't need the next deal any more. Everyone is in dire straights. That is everyone apart from Sonicbids, thebizmo and all the companies rising to meet the fact that only a very limited amount of musicians will be flying in their own Lear jets in the future and your trusty band van will be more familiar to you than the inside of a limo.
The old business is dead. Face it. The sooner the better. The age of the mass of niches has arrived. Now all we need is for the artists in question to get their acts together, stop clicking around for more myspace friends and actually pick up the ball where they hoped some label would do it. Sure there are a bunch of hard working indies out there, but if you had real Learjet ambition you always dreamed of Universal music right?

Well stop it, wake up. there is nobody home there any more. The streets are cold and empty like the streets of Cannes.
But being inside a happening club, or behind your fave earphones is still the warmest and coolest place to be.
Remember it was always about the music. Make a living, have fun, get the girls (or guys) play loud and forget about the free ride .
It was never really free anyway
David

The DLD a whole bunch of new users and a really bad back

I have just sat through an incredible interesting three day conference in Munich called DLD or digital life design. It featured over 800 really smart guys and gals from art to tech discussing various aspects of the internet. Chad Hurley from Youtube, Marissa Mayer from google, Mark Zuckerberg from the dreaded facebook, and a German neuro scientist all taking very direct questions from this amazingly intelligent crowd.

One of the things discussed about at some length was how people behave badly and write appalling things under the cover of anonymity and how that demeans the strength and power that the net potentially has to change things. Do all debates on the internet have to collapse into personal insults and foul language? When does a moderator have to get into the conversation and edit it without limiting peoples freedom to express themselves. how can we deal with information overload and jurisdictional issues surrounding cloud computing.

While all this was going on my lower back decided to behave badly so I had a hard time concentrating on a few of the talks. On top of that my company thebizmo was just releasing its first ever promotional push and getting new users like crazy. our new users where emailing me with their various questions, and I am answering them as fast as humanly possible.
My wonderful and thoughtful German investors are looking for a chiropractor as I write this, so one more session, this time on the internet and financial turmoil and I will be off to the docs office to push me back into shape hopefully.