September 21, 2010 This post comes from Fred Wilson’s blog. The quick video below is worth watching. Not only is the content within the video interesting, the video itself is a great example of leveraging the creative use of video to promote something else (a book in this case).
I love the final quote in this video: “Chance favors the connected mind.”
Creativity, Ideas August 24, 2010 It’s been said that over a million songs a year are being uploaded to the Internet, and that number is growing. In addition, the number of new “artists” entering an already crowded marketplace is exploding. And as you all know, it’s not only hard to generate a return on investment when promoting artists and music, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to fight through the noise. The last thing music fans need right now is another PUMP; what fans do need and want…are FILTERS they can trust.
From this day forward, this label will cease to PUMP out anything and everything you create. Moreover this label will no longer support or promote artist websites and brands. This label is going to have one management team, one fundraising initiative, one website, one set of widgets, a unified scheduling page, one mobile app, one social stream, one streaming radio service and one voice.
August 12, 2010 There was a time when LSD could propel an artist to fame and fortune. Prior to today’s Internet culture which calls for everyone to share everything and anything, the only sights and sounds music fans ever experienced from the likes of Mick Jagger and Jim Morrison were LSD driven. I am talking about Lead Singer Disease (LSD) of course. LSD was the look, the sound, the swagger and the distinctive persona that each lead singer carved out and manicured, and due to the lack of today’s personal broadcast technology, it was the only personality that music fans ever experienced. Then came the Internet. The Internet cures LSD and that’s probably not a good thing.
Personally, I want my lead singers to be freaking super heroes. I have zero interest in knowing that you put blueberries in your Cheerios, or that you are flat out broke. I don’t even want to know that you are a regular human. Give me LSD over feel good videos, cameo shots, home interviews, cat holding, dog petting, bike riding, smiles, friends, family, or anything that makes you look close to normal. You drive a rocket ship, eat steel and shit nails, divine songs, date models, burn money, wear a cape, sleep naked, and when you blow your nose…a melody comes out. And, you are not an asshole.
July 20, 2010 When people search for information about investing in the music industry, about investing in artists, and when they are looking for information on 360 deals, my blog posts often appear within the search results. As a consequence, at least once a month, someone calls me about investing in the music industry or about investing in artists. Although this post speaks to artists, I plan to use this post and the accompanying comments as a tool to make my conversations on this topic more efficient.
One Billion True Fans - It Won’t Happen.
Even with overlap, at one thousand fans per artist, one million artists cannot acquire one billion true fans. All the music lovers in the world are never going to accept and process billions of artist-initiated emails, status updates and text messages. Pushy self-promotion doesn’t scale. If everyone is doing it, nobody is going to do it effectively; the same applies to fundraising; fans are going to tune these messages out. Collectively, artists and their managers are running the risk of appearing like financial planners at a cookout…occasionally invited, but often avoided. Moreover, the sum of all the effort and capital invested in music promotion generates such a negative return, that it makes investing heavily in time travel machines appear outright attractive. Perhaps it’s time to consider jumping off of, or avoiding altogether, the self-promotion bandwagon.
July 6, 2010 I will argue here (just to be controversial) that prior to becoming popular (as in financially viable), you could choose to have no website, no Facebook fan page, no widgets, no videos, no album, no twitter, no centralized location on the Internet, and never do much of anything on the Internet that could be called self-promotion, and that your fans can and could effortlessly do everything for you now; including the recording and the distribution of your music.
Moreover, I will also stipulate that all the stuff I just listed above is practically a waste of your time now, as it’s all being steamrolled anyways. See the list below:
Social Amplification. With the unprecedented, widespread use of social utilities like Facebook and Twitter, hundreds of millions humans now have super simple mechanisms that enable all of us to rapidly connect, communicate, and share thoughts and stuff between targeted and/or widespread groups of people. Collectively, people are currently doing this billions of times a day.
June 23, 2010 Every single day for more than two years, I have logged into Music Think Tank to either post articles or to manage the site. Today is my last day as the Community Manager of Music Think Tank.
Although I will still be writing articles, the job of managing and growing the community is being passed on to Bruce Houghton and his team from Hypebot.
The goal of Music Think Tank has always been to create the tallest “stump” that site contributors can stand upon to broadcast a message. To this end, merging Music Think Tank with Hypebot will ultimately enable the height of the stump to grow to a size that is equal to, or greater than, any media outlet that targets this audience.
Over the last two years, MTT has grown to welcome over 30,000 unique visitors a month; we have over 5,000 regular subscribers (RSS and Email combined); over 1,000 of you have registered to contribute to the site; and over 5,000 comments have been posted to date. And, this was all achieved under circumstances where not a single site contributor had to invest much more than a few hours of time! It has been the network effect of all of us combined that has grown this site.
May 10, 2010 Since the year 2000, the WORLD has gained almost a billion people, 100 million blogs and websites, 100 million films and short videos, millions of hours of television programming, millions of square feet of public performance space, hundreds of thousands of artists, millions of songs - and it all comes on top of what already existed. Expansion is cumulative.
May 7, 2010 Since I am pressed for time these days, here’s a financial incentive to do my work for me: The first person to definitively prove, with a verifiable fact, the statement I make in the next paragraph, I will PayPal you $100. This offer will never expire.
Globally, over the last 365 days, for all genres combined, for all artists that started performing live in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90, and 00s, cumulatively, there is more revenue being generated from live performances, combined with selling stuff (merch, music, apps, advertising slots, streams, licensing, publishing, etc.), than any other year in the history of the world. Moreover the graph of this number is sloping up and not down.
May 6, 2010 This is a post I wrote for a non-music related site. Since so many people are contributing value to artists these days, I thought I would post it here. Additional suggestions are welcome.
Unless your PR / marketing person thoroughly (underlined ten times) understands your products and customers, don’t turn over the task of delivering remarkable value to him or her.
To inexpensively win the search engine game (to rank near the top on the left side of Google), you have to be capable of creating something that is uncommon, remarkable and extraordinary. You have to try to create something that the community wants to share and promote for you…
A gentle warning: If you expend too much energy promoting your company and brand, your effort to deliver remarkable value will come across as a disguised advertisement. Be subtle when promoting your brand, services and products.
May 4, 2010 Why is it that sites like underjams.com, mudcat.org, museum.tv, and twenty thousand other sites are more popular than the websites run by U2, DMB or Coldplay?
It certainly has very little to do with momentary entertainment value of the content. You would be hard pressed to find someone that would not enjoy U2’s or Coldplay’s content over the content presented by most of the top 20,000 sites on the Quantcast list.
May 3, 2010 I finally got around to reading John Mellencamp’s post of the same title (above) on The Huffington Post. After 618 comments, John’s post was closed to further comments, so I am leaving my comments below.
When well-known artists (or their managers) pen something, I usually find a bit of a rant, some tired history, minimal solutions, a big audience, lots of fan comments, and very little substance. This post did not surprise me. However, there are a couple of things I want to selectively respond to:
April 28, 2010 I thought I would follow up Jed’s post titled The Four Reasons Fans Buy Your Products with this quick post on ten reasons why they don’t (assuming your live show is dialed in):
10. You never create anything different. It’s the same merch you were pushing two years ago, but you tried to change 2008 to 2010 with a Sharpie.
09. Your merch looks like your little sister drew it…using crayons.
April 14, 2010 Recently, a blog that I subscribe to (and respect) called Information Is Beautiful published a post titled How Much Do Music Artists Earn Online.
The title of post and the data within the accompanying chart is accurate enough to be interesting. However I vehemently disagree with the premise, which seems to (unintentionally?) imply that somehow streaming, Last.FM or Spotify spins (or any new music technology) equate to something negative. Bullshit.
April 1, 2010 Thanks to my first true friend Grasmaand, for the last twenty years; as I have moved from industry to industry, I have carried the image of a Tibetan windhorse with me from one venture to another.
Hard work, relationships and creative output have never gotten me where I wanted to go; it’s always been a windhorse that carried me someplace else.
Strangely enough, the destination was never a place where I intended a go; it’s just a place I ended up.