the dotmatrix project

(originally uploaded by maria flash)

Blogs will be Record Labels, and Bloggers will be the new Music Moguls - BlogJs anyone?

Within 2 years, the leading music blogs will become what used to be called ‘Record Labels’. The people running them will be those sharp, tuned-in, hyper-networked and resourceful BlogJs formerly known as bloggers. They will use their blogs as the primary attention channel (yes - attention really is the new distribution) and will dish up a complete, interactive and highly relevant multi-media experience that will include TV shows, chats, webcasts and games. Forget about ‘websites’ and browsers - the BlogJs will do it on all platforms and devices.

The future brings 1000s of micro-music-channels that will literally broadcast - or rather, ‘narrow-cast’ their longtailing creations — be it text, audio, images or videos — to their hungry subscribers using MediaRSS feeds and customized my-stuff-pages such as [fiction alert] imoogli, beatwibes amd muflakes that will ‘live’ on any connected device, e.g. your mobile, your TV, your computer, your interactive bathroom screen, your wrist watch, your wimax-ing car radio, or your new P2P global gaming network. Widgets will continue to become instant, ubiquitous mini-site modules that will allow anyone to re-distribute any kind of content, to any device and any platform, anywhere. Most marketing will be done through and with the users - and some of them will get paid for it, too.

[…]

n less than 2 years from now, ubiquitous and fully legal yet ‘feels like free’ music offerings will bring us music bloggers that will become bigger than the biggest radio DJs we’ve ever had. And just like a lot of successful radio personalities before them they will move on to become A&R people and label owners, too. The difference is, of course, that they will have powerful, direct, zero - friction distribution channels at their disposal, and a loyal global audience, built-in and ready to go. All they have to do is keep on earning and retaining the attention of their users.

[…]

It’s a bit choppy and reaching, but Gerd Leonhard’s full article is a must read.

Along the lines of the article, a major part of what I’m trying to do in this spot is build an attention economy around the dotmatrix project; not just to spread the word of what we’re doing, but to help evolve what we’re doing.

I’ve been jumping between pimping local music, exposing instances of music impacting culture and delving into thinking about the business of music — from where we were to how the industry is folding to where we might go. As guest bloggers begin to post here with similar but varied opinions, drivers, experiences, the dotmatrix project’s direction will undoubtedly be influenced.

[insight] The genesis of the dotmatrix brand name is this crazy idea that while we’re all individuals, when we come together over a similar interest and build community, a position becomes apparent. And with a position, comes opportunities to interact… to build… to exchange… to create. [/insight]

Another angle of our approach is participating in the live music scene with a recurring event in downtown Greensboro — we’re putting on our first show this Friday night at The Green Burro. Where that leads or how it folds into this site is still up in the air, which is exciting.

If anything, that notion is the future of music — having fun enjoying a personalized experience with artists that you directly support. From a “label” perspective, the money will come based on how open you are and how committed you are to the careers of artists you assist.

Or not. Fuck it. Either way, we revel in music.

(via KOAR)

(originally uploaded by Kaj Bjurman)

Scripps Shoots for “Total Category Dominance”

[…] Brown told me that what she’s really concentrating on over the next few months is an extensive rebuild of Scripps’ backend, particularly the CMS, to bring more Web 2.0 functionality to the networks’ numerous sites. “After eight years of the same CMS, it’s time for a change,” she said.

Users won’t see a difference, but will be able to use the sites differently and in deeper, more engaging ways. Methinks this is an issue many media companies are going to have to address — and invest in — to remain competitive, retain audience and attract advertisers.

Guess what dotmatrix has been busy working on since Spring 2007?

We’re knee deep in defining the information architecture and internal user experience for the aforementioned CMS, juggling the needs of more than 10 discrete design personae and numerous internal and external systems.

If you’re an interaction designer looking for a challenge, ping me.

Two years ago this month, I had the pleasure of catching the world premiere of The War Tapes at the Tribeca Film Festival as a guest of the director, Deborah Scranton.

If you’ve never seen TWT, the style and genre can only be described as Documentary 2.0 — soldiers on the front lines with cameras affixed to their shoulders, guns, the hoods of their vehicles, telling their stories while you watch what goes down, with Deborah IM’ing them each night from across the world to coordinate the progress of the film.

Tomorrow evening, Deborah’s latest film, BAD VOODOO’S WAR, will be broadcast by FRONTLINE at 9 P.M. ET on PBS.

If you miss the broadcast tomorrow night, be sure to catch the film, streaming, on the Frontline website.

Congratulations, Deb!

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch breaks news of a $5 “tax” that Warner Music is cooking up to impose on ISP’s — per individual customer — to guarantee protection from future liability caused by their customers downloading music, regardless of the fact that only a minuscule fraction illegally download music, let alone download music through proper channels at all.

Admittedly, this degree of hubris reaches a new level for the Industry, but dying business models will be dying business models.

The important question to focus on is: What’s going to replace these dinosaurs?

Cause there’s no way this scheme will ever fly.

In the comment thread, Dennis Ramirez makes a few good points:

[…] no, a band does not need a manager nor a label to play a local coffeeshop nor VFW hall. sometimes, they may even be able to organize a small tour for themselves.

if they are content with that, fine. more power to them.

but the majority of artists themselves are not, and there are only 24 hours in a day, so it is much more efficient if a band can hire someone to route touring, get them P.R., reviews, solicit labels or investors, etc., so the band can find time to write songs and record them.

a couple can do it, like Ani DiFranco, but they are overwhelmingly teh excpetion, not the rule.

and the manager needs to be paid (i dont know where you get the 25 manager thing from, bands only have 1), as does the booking agent, the recording engineer, the producer, the artist who designed the cover artwork, the web designer, their rent, their bills, etc. etc.

and that’s if they distribute everything themselves.

a music label can help a great deal with that, just like a VC helps a great deal in getting a startup off the ground. it’s not hard to understand that.

Ramirez names at least eight disparate communities that must be involved in an artists world to assist them in their quest for exposure and compensation. Right now, that’s what the label offers. So what could take its place?

Sounds like the perfect storm necessary for creating an industry-specific social network.

Sketching…

 
Pipes Badges are damn cool mechanisms for presenting custom feeds of data on your blog, though I have to admit — even being a web guy myself — that the user input field nomenclature can be confusing as hell at times.

For example: In the video, the prompt field for the User input > textinput defaults with “textinput” so Paul changes it to read, “enter keyword:”

My question: Does that change actually affect the output results (read: does the user need to have implicit knowledge of commands) or is Paul simply providing a metadata wrapper for the saved Pipe in order to provide context for future usability?

When I used Pipes in the past it seemed like I ran into these types of usability questions pretty often, which probably means that more explicit nomenclature or structuring of the widgets would help. You know, like be super clear about what each field means or if, as in our example, a field is simply metadata, then shift the addition of metadata to the end of the workflow; make it a part of the save process itself.

I realize that developers use Pipes, but obviously content creators are target users as well.

Big props to my buddy Paul Donnelly at Yahoo! Pipes, who was a killer Front-End Engineer in my User Experience team at Ameritrade back in the day.

Rock star!

Free download and order options.

shot by _Kriebel_

As I popped around town yesterday, looking to knock a few errands off my seemingly never-ending list of shit to get done, I caught a NPR segment about a relatively new book publisher making waves in his industry.

The grand idea behind Jonathan Karp’s TWELVE is actually quite elegant:

TWELVE was established in August 2005 with the objective of publishing no more than one book per month. We strive to publish the singular book, by authors who have a unique perspective and compelling authority. Works that explain our culture; that illuminate, inspire, provoke, and entertain. We seek to establish communities of conversation surrounding our books. Talented authors deserve attention not only from publishers, but from readers as well. To sell the book is only the beginning of our mission. To build avid audiences of readers who are enriched by these works – that is our ultimate purpose.

Karp spent 16 years at Random House Publishing Group prior to founding TWELVE, beginning in 1989 as an editorial assistant, working his way up to Editor-in-Chief. I’m guessing that during his run, he probably noticed something peculiar about the structure of a major publishing firm that interfered with the creative process.

From a 2005 BusinessWeek interview, Cutting Through The Noise:

[…] I’m going to personally edit every book. I’ve learned that you have the most fun and you can have the most impact when you work directly with the authors. I think I’ll have better publishing ideas because I’m also editing the book. I’ll be close enough to the content and spirit of the book that I’ll be able to communicate what’s special about it to audiences […]

Sound familiar?

Well, it sounds familiar to me.

Over the last few years — after making a huge life change leaving NYC to setup camp in Greensboro — I’ve slowly altered the definition of dotmatrix from strictly being an online design and strategy consultancy to include what I now like to refer to as a “next-gen music label.” Forget the consultancy aspect of the equation for this particular conversation (to my current and potential clients: I’m still in the game); I’ve been stressing about what I should call my work with promoting shows, local musicians and, in particular, Molly’s career.

And the term label just doesn’t sit right with me.

Why?

My mental model of what a “label” represents has been corrupted over the years to be squarely centered around the business of making money, much more so than the business of enabling the growth of musicians. That said, I’m not about trying to create some kind of old school, micro-managed, opaque, middle-management, tired ass A&R tiered nightmare organization to pull down a buck while skimming over artist development and promotion. Hell, I don’t want to “sign” artists to anything even closely resembling the notion of a contract; I want to empower them to make it happen for themselves.

Bob Lefsetz weighs in on the future of the label:

Will there be labels in the future? Sure. But they won’t look like and won’t have the same names as the big four companies today. Because the new labels will be about building acts and maximizing revenue in all areas of exploitation. They’ll be about transparency. They’ll be run by geeks as opposed to mini-mafiosi. There will be a level of trust between performer and businessman. All things today’s majors abhor, which will contribute to their marginalization.

Lefsetz is on the right path here — transparency, non-mafioso business types, trust — but there’s still a degree of traditional thought buried in his perceptive noggin’; the percept that an artist needs a businessman to make shit come together.

See, I’m thinking that what replaces the traditional label will most likely be more of a service — something that brings together and overlaps all communities of the current industry in a way that enables artists, producers, engineers, venues, merchandisers, lawyers and fans to self-connect, collaborate and/or support one another — rather than a business model where non-musicians represent the artist simply to play matchmaker, get muddled up in the creative process or push avenues of exposure on artists that might be more about their own agenda.

Jonathan Karp experienced the craziness within his industry and created TWELVE as an answer for dealing with the insanity. As a relative outsider to the “music industry,” I don’t have the muscle memory of 15 years within the business, but my goal isn’t to replicate this diseased model locally or to arrogantly focus on a new angle based purely on assumptions derived from creating information architectures for the live web over the past 10 years.

Over the next year I’ll be digging in locally to promote shows, expose artists, book acts, learn how to both mix sound for a show and a live recording, read up on copyright & revenue sharing and push the edge as far as possible in freeing up music and media in order to build community.

In other words, I’ll be asking questions, listening, supporting, learning, getting my hands dirty, modeling, designing… then building.

Nic Askew interviews Seth Godin (via Bob Lefsetz)

What the hell was Steve Jobs smoking when he decided to produce a laptop with no CD/DVD Drive, no Ethernet or Firewire connection and a non-removable battery?

Here are the assumptions at play in designing this beautiful POS for someone like me:

• He’ll always have access to a WiFi network
• He’ll never need to install a DVD based application… or play a game… or burn a media file… or…
• He’ll never take a flight that lasts longer than the life of the battery (like California, or anything international)
• He’ll never want to link up an external drive.

I love Apple, but this has to be the most uppity, niche product ever designed. I’ll check back when carrying my laptop in a manila folder pays my mortgage.

UPDATE: I want to pseudo-clarify my guess as to the business strategy behind producing this thing.

There are a bunch of people that live in highly dense, WiFi enabled communities — places like Manhattan, San Francisco, Austin, etc. A good percentage of tech-forward people in those communities are also probably making pretty solid coin, so either they can afford a “writing” computer as a secondary laptop or… they don’t need to travel because they’re in-house executives making just enough to invest in one laptop.

Now, such stay-at-home, trying-to-be rich geeks are probably afraid to rip their own CD’s or are too fancy shmansy to install software from a disc (so passe), so who needs an optical drive when they have a subscription to Rhapsody, play Spades at Yahoo! Games, download movies from Amazon and use Google Docs, exclusively.

And then… there are the fanboys.