the dotmatrix project

[photograph by Michael Dunn]

Above is the working cover for the 14 track live album we recorded last month at The Green Burro for the Greensboro-based, Southern Rock, alt-Americana group, The Radials. Our featured act on opening night, Sorry About Dresden, will have their 10 track live album finished sometime this upcoming week.

Each band we put on receives a live album, professionally recorded, mixed and mastered in downtown Greensboro. We record live on 6 to 8 separate channels — depending on the amount of vocal mics and mic’d instruments needed — through our Mackie Onyx 1620 w/ a Firewire card straight to Pro Tools on our MacBook Pro. Dan “Mixmaster” Bayer, our resident sound engineer, has been mixing both live and in the studio for years with outstanding quality.

Once the album is complete, we license it with a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 license. It basically means that anyone can use the music, even remix or sample it, as long as they give proper attribution and don’t use it commercially. Of course individual cases of copyright permission can still be managed individually, so the artists have complete control of their product.

Our distribution plan is where we shift away from the traditional label route — not to say that we consider ourselves or strive towards being a “label” on any decipherable level. Each album will be uploaded to the Internet Archive, where fans can download the tracks for free. We’ll also work with artists to get their albums out to spots such as Last.fm, iLike and AmieStreet while schooling them on how their fans can help them in the internet age by doing simple, free things like scrobbling tracks to their Last.fm account when using iTunes or their iPod, tagging tracks, recommending tracks, etc.

We’ll provide a package of audio tracks to the musicians — along with cover art, a professionally mixed video and professionally shot pictures of the show — but it’ll be up to each band to get their music to online stores such as iTunes and CDBaby or physical retail spots. We’re not interested in managing the machinations of music sales. Our profit margin is much greater designing software.

Once the product has been delivered, we’ll provide a free download of each album, along with links off to corresponding media from the evening back here at HQ. All we ask in return from people downloading the tracks is their email address and an optional PayPal donation to help us recoup our initial costs.

All of this is a designed effort to build community around diverse local artists, with local music fans, while still providing access to people around the world with overlapping tastes of music.

Prego, baby. Prego.

The Radials Live at the dotmatrix project by the dotmatrix project is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Another John Ford special is hot off the presses and ready to be served. Yes, John Ford is a front-end engineer God. No, he does not pay me to say such things. He simply makes cool shit work on the intertubes, super fast and to spec.

I swear I could take on Silicon Valley if I only had 20 John Ford clones.

What we have to the right is a dotmatrix project event calendar. As new gigs are scheduled, we post the event to Upcoming.org, add them to the dotmatrix project group over there and this fansy, shmansy, customized badge dynamically displays updated show dates within our custom design. It’s not revolutionary or anything, but I dig it.

The super cool thing about this particular pimped badge is that now you can use it as a promotional widget on your own blog, Live Journal, web site, etc.

Yes, you — the person who says that he digs live music, but never seems to finds the time to hit a show. I know you — you tell your girlfriends that you’re going to check out this awesome underground band at this totally cool spot, and then you bail to watch a Sex in the City rerun.

Tell me I don’t know who you are.

So now that you blog and participate with every social network known to man, you can wash away your live music dissing sins by simply posting the following code into your sidebar:

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.dotmatrixproject.com/badge/"></script>

For those of you whose sidebar is a different size than the default 210 width here at HQ, simply use the following code and customize the width setting to your liking:

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.dotmatrixproject.com/badge/?width=210"></script>

Down the road we’re going to support various visual themes and potentially accept styles submitted by you, our loyal readers. We do things like this because we love you. And because without your uncontrolled fanatical support of this here project, it’s not going to go anywhere.

So if you love music and want a pain-free, cost-free, time-free, guilt-free way to support your neighbors trying to gain exposure in an industry that’s tougher than ever to catch a break within, well, you know what to do.

-Sean

(originally uploaded by Rikke Moltisanti)

If you think you can capture the essence of a live show like in the above picture, we need to talk. Same thing goes for filmmakers with the following video:

The Wigg Report: It Won’t Take Long from Sean Coon on Vimeo.

We’re putting on a monthly show in the Back Bar of The Green Burro in downtown Greensboro. The bands are playing for free, a sound engineer is recording the live show for free, photographers are shooting for free and filmmakers are shooting/editing music videos for free.

Cost of admission: FREE

The idea is that if we all collaborate to create art and release it into the wild — online and off — we’ll be opening doors for each other that might never have been opened otherwise. And over time, if people dig the concept, maybe we can turn it into a sponsored event with a sustainable business model to support live, local music in downtown Greensboro.

Along these lines, we’re looking to build a community of photographers and filmmakers interested in participating at least one time. That means you’ll be joining up with a media team and collaborating with the bands before the show on shot ideas. If you want to do more than one show, we’ll do our best to schedule it. If you want to work with a specific filmmaker, photographer or band, we’ll do our best to accommodate that as well.

We’re good like that.

Photographers: We’re looking to meet photographers who have access to DSLR cameras and can really craft a shot. If you have a great eye, you’re in. There’s no pledging involved, no hazing, no sleeping with farm animals. And while that last sentence read like an extremely male perspective on stupid things adolescent men might have to do in order to join something potentially cool — though this ain’t a corny frat — we’d definitely like the talented ladies in our community to participate just as much, if not more. So I promise, no more horrible analogies, ladies.

So if you’re interested in participating, please follow these two steps:

• Join the dotmatrix project flickr group and then contact Mike Dunn or Stephen Charles to get assigned to a show
• Join our dotmatrix project Google Group to ask questions of or communicate with anyone on the project

Filmmakers: While we’d like to have professional filmmakers participate on the project, we’re very open to amateur filmmakers and videographers. All we ask is that you know how to use a modern digital video camera, have a good eye and have at least some experience editing on non-linear systems. dotmatrix HQ has a digital editing bay with Final Cut Pro, so you’ll be able to edit with your co-filmmaker on top notch equipment.

If you’d like to join up, please follow these two steps:

• Subscribe to the dotmatrix project Vimeo channel and contact either Jason Pierce or Andy Coon to get assigned to a show
• Join our dotmatrix project Google Group to ask questions of or communicate with anyone on the project

Cross-Promotions We’re currently working on finalizing deals with local establishments to cross-promote the material created from the show. I don’t want to jinx the potential deals in the works by naming names, but I will say that we’re close to finalizing we’ve finalized a deal where a major movie theater with Carousel Cinemas on Battleground in Greensboro to present still shots and music videos from our show prior to the trailers run before each film shown in the theater. We’re also working on establishing a quarterly photo exhibit in a well known downtown venue to present the best shots of the previous three shows.

Both of these cross-promotions are in the works to market the name and work of our participating media creators.

So are you down or what!?

A hundred years ago the Lower East Side was the first stop for waves of newcomers to America. Today this is the patch of town everyone is talking about. With streetscapes that are livable in scale and rich in history, there are scores of new restaurants, vintage and designer owned fashion and furniture stores & a diverse & vibrant night life.

The profile of the typical renter in the area is changing from the counter culture hipsters to the more mainstream hipster and young professional.

You are a downtown person and you want to live in the neighborhood you love.

The switch — boutique style quality and elegance. Five unique luxury 11 floor through homes located in New York’s Lower East Side.

Are you ready to make the switch?

A whole new view of the Lower East Side.

These two panels were stumbled upon by Molly while we waited outside to see a show at ABC No-Rio.

UPDATE: I found a clip of the documentary, 156 Rivington:

That’s Molly McGinn, with Chris Micca on guitar and Toaster manning the drums at last year’s 5th Annual St. Patrick’s Day Festival at M’Coul’s Public House in Greensboro, NC.

Tonight at 8:30pm, Molly will be introducing a new set of Buster Dilly players to the St. Patty’s Day crowd:

• Dave McCracken on keys
• Chris Lord on guitar
• Andrew Lazare on bass
• Jonathan McMillan on drums
• Bennett Sullivan on banjo
• Josh Lovings on trumpet
• Hank Widmer on trombone

I was behind the camera for that shot above, as I had just started working on a media promotion strategy with my latest client, Simonne McClinton, owner of M’Coul’s Public House and The Green Burro.

Man, what a difference a year makes.

dotmatrix, llc is now headquartered down the hall from Simonne’s office, a window spot overlooking The Green Bean. 12 months later, I now consider Simonne, Matt, Mikey and the rest of the crew as extended family. Hamburger Square is no longer an obscure reference to a time long ago; it’s the foundational core of my understanding of community here in Greensboro.

Two other good friends of mine have picked up where I left off last year and are documenting this year’s event in ways I could never do myself. Michael Dunn and Stephen Charles, photographers extraordinaire, will hang their shots on the walls of M’Coul’s and post the digital files across the web for people to enjoy and begin anticipating next year’s event.

And oh yes… a few months after that spellbinding performance last year, I tripped and landed in a bushel of Shamrocks where Molly was playing about, busy introducing tunes and words in dance, drinking Ginger Ale, making faces, centering herself and very quickly becoming the most important person in my life.

I love you, milady. Kick some ass tonight.

It’s a damn good thing to be Irish.

UPDATE: I swiped the set list.

Traditional Tune
Blue-Eyed Boston Boy
Preachers and Thieves
Pall Bearers Handle
Kill Devil Hills
Satirical Cynical Man
Wild Rover

Transition to the full show

Stonecutter’s Lament
Damn Strange Thing
Walking Cane
Tennessee Waltz
Secret Heart
Beautiful Ugly Man
Sunday, Bloody, Sunday
Whiskey in the Jar-O

Horns

Sideshow Harley
Butterflies or Whiskey
Into the Mystic
Deep Ellum Blues

After a bunch of cat wrangling through acres of honey-drenched fields, I’m happy to announce that the kick-off dotmatrix project gig has finally been booked.

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UPDATE: David Bartel had to cancel his trip, but The Radials have stepped up to open for SAD. It’s going to be a great show.

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David Bartel and I go waaay back, all the way to the days of CD-Rom game development — yes, there was life before the internets took over. We teamed up as sound producer (David) and animator/illustrator (me) deep in the belly of Soho’s edutainment production row. When we weren’t twisting pixel’s arms to make them dance to our whim, we’d catch the Thursday night Mingus Big Band show at the Fez like clockwork — it’s where I learned to love jazz. Those were the proverbial days.

Soon thereafter, David dropped a tune on Abstraktions, Volume 1 and then started Deep Sound Channel, on which he dropped his second collaborative album, 01. If you dig avant-garde, ambient & abstract music, you’ll enjoy David’s set. I’m psyched and honored for him to make the journey down from Philly just to play this gig.

Our featured act, Sorry About Dresden, blew me away last year at a Local 506 show in Chapel Hill. I originally made the trip to powder blue country to meet my buddy, Nate Aune, who was in town for a conference. Due to SAD’s killer performance, I ended up focused in on the show like nothing else existed. Sorry Nate.

Aside from their distinct indie rock sound, SAD represents exactly the type of band that we’re looking to promote — a local/regional act, playing to succeed, either unsigned or on an indie label. A big shout of thanks to James and the fellas for agreeing to kick-off our event.

So get your cameras recharged, your recording devices fine-tuned and we’ll see you at the show!

Awesomeness.

If I wasn’t planning on attending the Original Music Showcase in Raleigh this Sunday, there’s no doubt I’d be shopping for free at The Hive.

You gotta love the anarchists.

The deeper I get into Greensboro’s music scene, the more I hear musicians complaining about the propensity of support for cover bands over original acts. And while it’s true that some local bands enjoy a steady following — The Mantras, Old Stone Revue, The Urban Sophisticates, to name a few — it’s a fact that most venues can’t consistently draw a crowd to check out (read: pay a cover) original bands, unless they’re retreads from the eighties like Pat Benetar or Van Halen.

And at that point, that’s kinda like listening to a cover band, you know?

There’s no silver bullet out there that will radically increase Greensboro’s patronage of original music to reflect, say, a Chapel Hill or Asheville, but I do believe in the power of cross-promoting community — from artists collaborating on projects to jamming together at shows to showing up as a band to listen to and support other acts, bringing new fans with them.

More can be done; I’m sure of it.

Before I get into this post, let me put out there that I’m not that big a fan of advertising anything through traditional channels.

I mean, the cost of both print and television advertising (production and placement) in relation to the ability to gage actual ROI makes for a ridiculously obscene (read: poor) investment. Companies — or more specifically, executives — have money allocated to marketing budgets that need to be spent, but imagine if a percentage of marketing budgets were to be reallocated to actual product development instead.

You know, adding improved talent or more resources to the mix to give products or entertainers a chance to actually sell themselves based on their merit?

Dream on, right?

Enter Facebook

I’ve been playing around with Facebook as a platform for the past few months, deep diving into its advertising functionality to get a sense of its potential value for independent musicians trying to raise local awareness.

I can’t tell you if Facebook is worth its $15 billion valuation, but man, to an indie artist this platform is gold.

The above is a snapshot I took of a campaign that I created to pimp Molly’s recurring Tuesday night show at M’Coul’s Pub in downtown Greensboro, NC. Through 5 some odd days, we’ve served just over 7,000 impressions with 7 click-throughs, which in traditional advertising terms is a wasted campaign. But there’s nothing traditional about our internet, so even a walled garden like Facebook can flip the script on another angle of meat space industry.

For Team Molly, that .10% click-through rate represents a huge win. Let me explain.

Less Is More… Seriously

Facebook users tend to fill out a good percentage of their profile information, so advertisers attempting to target any number of niche markets have a wealth of structured, personal meta-data options to leverage. Take the above campaign as an example.

Molly plays a weekly 2 hour show — a mix of jazz, blues, alt-country and funk — in downtown Greensboro at a 21 and over pub venue. Our primary goal at this early phase of her solo career is to raise awareness of her musical style, specifically with locals who dig the style she plays.

Alright, so here’s where our ROI kicks in:

• Greensboro is a city about 230,000 strong and 79,360 of them are Facebook users (34.5%)
• Out of that crew, 4,320 people have explicitly told Facebook that they like Jazz, Blues or Country music (5.4% of Facebook users in Greensboro)
• Narrowing that set down to a 21 to 50 year-old range — our guess at who Tuesday night bar goers might be — 2,460 people remain (3.1%)
• I created an ad to speak to those 2,460 people, choosing to go the CPC route, bidding a top bid of $.75 (the range was $.53 to $.75) for every click-through to Molly’s Facebook musician page. If we had chosen to place the ad in the News feed — going the CPM route — the cost would’ve jumped to ~$10 per every 1,000 impressions.
• I then set the daily budget to $5.00, knowing upfront that we’ll never get more than 7 or 8 click-throughs per day, which is fine because we’re promoting a weekly event

So yeah, we’re only getting a .10% click-through rate, with an average impression day of ~1,200… but Molly’s Tuesday night show isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. For less than $7.00 per week, we’re serving twice as many impressions than the total number of neighbors who probably most appreciate Molly’s talents.

Over time, that equals awareness.

This week, 3 of the click-throughs have “fanned” her page, which in Facebook lingo is synonymous with making a commitment to be kept up to date with her happenings around town. It’s too early to bank on those numbers staying consistent, but for the sake of argument, let’s assume they keep steady. Extrapolated over the next 52 weeks:

• One years worth of fans: ~156 people (6.3% of our targeted market)
• Cost to reach them: ~$338
• M’Coul’s upstairs capacity = ~40 people

That’s four times the capacity of Molly’s weekly show, located smack dab in the middle of our hometown. These people have visible names and actual faces attached to them and they can be contacted either individually or as a group — Facebook’s notification system delivers iCast updates of what Molly’s doing and auto-updates fans when new gigs are scheduled.

Compare those costs and the qualified ROI of the campaign with a Rhino Times (a local, free weekly) full-page ad that runs for ~$1,200.

That .10% click-through rate is looking pretty sweet now, isn’t it?

We’re now building our local strategy around the contextual, hyper-local, interconnectivity that Facebook’s platform provides for free. The platform is working for us 24/7 — the exposure of friend’s actions consistently drives fan adds — and now we have a low-cost mechanism for simultaneously overlapping multiple niche campaigns to a local crowd.

Fuck making it big time; we want to make it locally.

You can become a “fan” of Molly here. Just know upfront that if you click that magic link, it’s a two-way sentiment coming right back ‘atcha.