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Not quite the rotation you imagined, I’m sure, but we’re getting some rotating spotlight love over at Amie Street these days. Big ups to Julian over there for the sweet post and placement in their header.
And remember, you can join Amie Street here to get free music. (I recommend the DMP tracks… just in case you were wondering)
If anyone in Hip Hop deserves their own sneaker line, it’s ?uestlove from The Roots. Dude is a true innovator. I guess Nike agrees, as they just hooked him up:
I so would’ve rocked these red, green and gold leopard print kicks with my white boy jean jacket and Levi’s back in ‘86. That would be on Tuesdays and Thursdays, with my classic Vans and original Jordans filling out the rest of the week.
Release date: August 1, 2008.
UPDATE: ?uestlove describes the design process and why he’s a sneaker culture freak:
UPDATE II: And the day of the Philly release:
Paul Hunter’s video is beautiful. And Q could very well be dope… but I’ll never know.
Why?
So President Dupri (smacks forehead!) is going to give an unknown artist 10x the platform of a “regular artist,” instantly making them the voice of Procter & Gamble’s body spray everywhere.
Or more succinctly, we’re going to be mass exposed to artists. And not based on listeners pumping their credibility through a combination of music or ticket sales, 5 starred music videos, high numbers of track scrobbles on Last.fm or word of mouth (Jesus Christ, I can’t believe word of mouth was the last item in my list), but through commercials backed by the deep pockets of male perfume makers… after being hand picked by Jermaine Dupri.
It’s definitely a smart short-term bottom-line investment for TAG! — the unknown talent costs way less to represent and promote the brand than an established act, similar to reality TV, so Dupri can cycle through the “artists” who don’t pan out — but I’m already turning the channel.
I couldn’t possibly see a train wreck down the road. You?
I have an Ad Design degree from Syracuse University, admittedly much more so because I was convinced by my father that I needed a stable job coming out of college than out of any incessant love for crafting adverts. Illustration was my passion as an adolescent — political cartooning to be precise — but she wasn’t too stable of a pursuit, so I caved early on.
Even before I matriculated, I knew I was never going to use my degree in its proper setting. I had no desire to become a Jr. Art Director, slaving away on terribly boring, listless campaigns at a big agency named after a long dead, old, white male copy writer. But many of the skills that I developed in the VPA program — creative brainstorming, rolling with constructive criticism, putting my feet in the shoes of a person with need, etc. — I find myself using to this day on supply-side projects from time to time, though I do try to do so with positive intent and not simply add to the noise of the media ecosystem.
Doc Searls is a demand-side advocate, and I completely agree with his position on the false construct of our system that attempts to connect markets to product via the boisterous shouting of offers into the wind. Maybe his VRM work will begin to flip the script on that paradigm, maybe not.
In any case, Bill Hicks is genius.
Is this for real?
If it is, this completely redefines the concept of selling out. I know the music industry is in the shitter these days, and of course Kanye West isn’t Anton Newcombe, but still… this is pretty damn crazy.
(originally uploaded by factoryjoe)
Trent Reznor just posted the results of the internet-only release of Niggy Tardust:
[...] Saul’s previous record was released in 2004 and has sold 33,897 copies.
As of 1/2/08,
154,449 people chose to download Saul’s new record.
28,322 of those people chose to pay $5 for it, meaning:
18.3% chose to pay.Of those paying, 3220 chose 192kbps MP3
19,764 chose 320kbps MP3
5338 chose FLACKeep in mind not one cent was spent on marketing this record. The only marketing was Saul and myself talking as loudly as we could to anybody that would listen.
If 33,897 people went out and bought Saul’s last record 3 years ago (when more people bought CDs) and over 150K - five times as many - sought out this new record, that’s great - right?
I have to assume the people knowing about this project must either be primarily Saul or NIN fans, as there was very little media coverage outside our direct influence. If that assumption is correct - that most of the people that chose to download Saul’s record came from his or my own fan-base - is it good news that less than one in five feel it was worth $5? I’m not sure what I was expecting but that percentage - primarily from fans - seems disheartening.
Add to that: we spent too much (correction, I spent too much) making the record utilizing an A-list team and studio, Musicane fees, an old publishing deal, sample clearance fees, paying to give the record away (bandwidth costs), and nobody’s getting rich off this project.
But… Saul’s music is in more peoples’ iPods than ever before and people are interested in him. He’ll be touring throughout the year and we will continue to get the word out however we can.
So - if you’re an artist looking to utilize this method of distribution, make of these figures what you will and hopefully this info is enlightening.
So, in two short months, Saul Williams was able to sell 84% of the total number of albums he’s sold through traditional channels over 42 months or so?
I’d call that a success. Of course, it probably didn’t hurt to work with a talent like Reznor who has a huge, loyal fan base.
I’ll guarantee you that Williams made considerably more per album this time around than he did with his last release through a label. Based on David Byrne’s Wired interview with Thom Yorke after the release of In Rainbows, I’d bet that it’s a pretty decent haul in comparison:
[...] Byrne: Are you making money on the download of In Rainbows?
Yorke: In terms of digital income, we’ve made more money out of this record than out of all the other Radiohead albums put together, forever — in terms of anything on the Net. And that’s nuts. It’s partly due to the fact that EMI wasn’t giving us any money for digital sales. All the contracts signed in a certain era have none of that stuff. [...]
Reznor’s rich enough to not care about personal profit or loss, so that probably affects this as an experiment for other acts to leverage. But regarding Saul Williams’ success, Reznor hit it on the head; more people are now walking around with Saul Williams blasting out of their iPod earbuds than ever before. All things being equal, that should equate with both increased ticket and merchandise sales.
I still can’t help but to wonder where the tipping point lies for this model to become successful for indie artists.
Don’t get that pondering twisted, though. I advise Molly to give away her album at most shows and certain places online in order to get the same result of more people listening to her music.
It’s the most successful form of marketing for a musician — aside from touching someone’s soul during a live show, of course — and all synthetic marketing has a cost. In our case, it’s the straight cost of producing mass quantities of CDs.
But the question remains: Can a free/donate internet download model ever provide a decent amount of a cold hard cash return for an up and coming act? Or is this world just too big and decentralized for small acts to be able to cash in without traditional channels?
I’d rather pull out my eardrums with tweezers that listen to most 50 Cent tracks, but you gotta give him credit for staring technology in the face and not blinking. I guess he has an advantage over Doug Morris and the rest of his ilk in that he’s previously dealt with raining bullets.
Dodging the damage of MP3 downloads must be cake by comparison.
Check out this exchange from an interview by Pål Nordseth at a club in Oslo, Norway:
[...] “How are G-Unit Records doing in these times of file-sharing?
“Not so good.” he responded. “The advances in technology impacts everyone, and we all must adapt. Most of all hip-hop, a style of music dependent upon a youthful audience. This market consists of individuals embracing innovations faster than the fans of classical and jazz music.”
“What is important for the music industry to understand is that this really doesn’t hurt the artists.”
Thats quite a statement. Organizations like the RIAA are always talking about how the artists get hurt by file-sharing but 50 Cent clearly doesn’t agree. In fact, he appears to appreciate the value of a good fan, whether he buys or file-shares his music, as he explains:
“A young fan may be just as devout and dedicated no matter if he bought it or stole it.”
Indeed. It’s been said time and time again - get the music out there by any which way, fill the gigs and capitalize on the merchandising and ends will meet. 50 Cent agrees:
“The concerts are crowded and the industry must understand that they have to manage all the 360 degrees around an artist. They, (the industry), have to maximize their income from concerts and merchandise. It is the only way they can get their marketing money back.”
He finishes up: “The main problem is that the artists are not getting as much help developing as before file-sharing. They are now learning to peddle ringtones, not records” he said.
“They don’t understand the value of a perfect piece of art.” [...]
50 Cent is using marketing terminology like “360 degrees” to describe the value proposition surrounding an artist and the major labels can’t come up with anything better than suing their customers and boycotting iTunes.
Amazing.
UPDATE: Cayocosta, over at RecProAudio, has a different take on 50’s revelation:
Apparently not realizing that piracy-catalyzed 360 deals are actually recouped directly out of the artist’s pocket, he went on to offer the following when addressing the issue of lost recorded-music sales revenue, “The concerts are crowded and the industry must understand that they have to manage all the 360 degrees around an artist. They, (the industry), have to maximize their income from concerts and merchandise. It is the only way they can get their marketing money back.”
Further expounding on the negative effects of piracy, he offered, “The main problem is that the artists are not getting as much help developing as before file-sharing. They are now learning to peddle ringtones, not records. They don’t understand the value of a perfect piece of art.”
I could be off here, but 50 Cent’s perspective sounds steeped in the shoes of an artist / label executive, not in naivety.
With most major deals, all money put up by the label must be recouped prior to an artist getting a dime of profit from any revenue stream managed by the label. With fans that download music for free, it seems to me that 50 Cent is looking at the silver lining of the situation and chalking it up to a marketing expenditure — similar to producing music videos in the golden age of MTV.
Maybe instead of suing people for spreading the goodness of an act, labels should focus on the remaining opportunities to maximize their profits and stop trying to force their will on both a market and open technology? 360 deals don’t represent an ultimate answer, but neither does suing their fan base.
(originally uploaded by Living Juicy)
The DNA of our internet is fascinating — specified as a flat, open and relational network, so that only the limits of our imagination could obstruct its evolution (except for the omnipresent power brokers of industry who try to control anything disruptive, I suppose).
What’s becoming obvious is that as more domains decide to make their APIs available in the public arena — to both independent developers and to the very same domains they compete with — our internet rapidly progresses from a linearly connective space to a multi-layered, inter-connected environment — more akin to a network — ripe with exposed hooks to latch onto and build upon.
The most powerful part of this equation? How about the fact that a great number of internet services — across numerous industries — have evolved to a point where Joe Layman can now leverage our internet’s many to many power of connectivity and discovery, yet never have to bust out one line of code in the process of doing so.
Consider Me Joe Layman
I’ve a few close friends who are talented musicians; all of whom are trying to catch their big break during the off hours of their daily grind. Being the curious guy that I am, I told both Universal Mathematics and Molly McGinn that I’d dive into the online music and event promotion space to see if I could craft an approach for promoting their gigs and sound.
I figured that with all of the free services online — from social networks to event services to video communities — I’d be able to figure out an optimized approach to:
After about a month of reviewing practically every service under the sun (feel free to suggest ones I’ve missed in the comments), I’ve come up with a particular approach for:
Like I said, it’s only one approach of what I’m sure could be many. That being said, let’s break down the thinking behind it.
If You Don’t Promote The Event, Who Will?
If an act has a gig, but doesn’t promote the event online, will the audience make a sound?
Of course they will.
We’ve not quite evolved as a species to all internet beings (well, those of us outside of Silicon Valley at least), but to disregard the power of the internet in building community and enhancing reputation is a mistake, as the only cost to harnessing the web is time.
The key to this approach is recognizing that it needs to augment an off-line promotion plan. Without fliers, listings in weeklies, real world word of mouth, real friends and family support, etc., the online plan can’t guarantee results.
So, understanding that time is money and precious — particularly for independent musicians — I came up with a simple plan for online event promotion, utilizing four web services to get the word out: Eventful, Last.fm, Facebook and MySpace.
Most indie artists already maintain a Facebook and MySpace profile, which in turn has prepped musicians to become accustom to interacting with their communities on a somewhat daily basis; adding a couple additional event spots to their periphery shouldn’t be too much for them to manage.
The benefits of these two particular spots?
All of this is free.
What I’ve stressed to my artist buds is that as soon as they book a gig, they need to update these four services with richly crafted and tagged event submissions. Once they do so, their Facebook friends will automatically catch the new event in their stream of friend updates. With MySpace, artists can send out a single bulletin to their people and make them aware of the gig. And while Last.fm and Eventful have their own degree of community built-in, the purpose of including them in this approach is to work the information retrieval mechanisms of the web itself, not to add layers of complexity and management for the artists.
Curate your communities and provide findable metadata for the rest of the world to discover you.
Not too crazy of a concept, eh?
All Recording Devices Are Welcome At Our Gigs!
Jerry Garcia was quite possibly the most brilliant marketer the music industry has ever known.
Way before the internet came into play, Garcia was giving his fans the pass to record and distribute his music between themselves, which obviously spilled out to potential fans at parties, cookouts, late night bake sessions, etc. While the RIAA would argue today that such an approach would be taking money out of the artist’s pocket, go ahead name me one artist who wouldn’t kill for the degree of popularity and recognition such a decision helped foster.
Of course, in order to have Universal “Heads” or Molly “Heads” as a fanatical, viral, media creation fan base, the artist has to bring it to each performance, just like Jerry and the boys did. But it’s not like that has to be explained to an artist; that motivation to excel live is already built into the deal.
So with an open media policy — actually promoting the concept of audiences recording live performances, whether it be photography, video or audio — an artist can tap into the myriad of free media communities and services found online and stack the deck for discovery and the potential for viral exposure.
In my above approach, I outlined the services that an artist could leverage with a mixture of planned performance coverage and audience participation. Again, any number of services could be used, but I wanted to keep the list somewhat manageable. Here’s my rationale for including the diagramed services:
As long as media is uploaded with a rich description and tagged well enough (names, places, genre, etc.), it really doesn’t matter if it comes from a representative of the band or an enthusiastic fan — in either case, search engines will index the additions and place the media within search results.
The benefit of artist’s hiring a media generator is that they have the extra incentive to spend the time and effort in cross-posting within each community. For example, a concert photo uploaded to flickr with a decent description and tag set is valuable, but one assigned to eight related groups as well will greatly increase the chance of community interaction.
The more that people talk about a great shot of a band or a great video clip, the greater the chance that the band name sticks in their head.
Well, at least that’s the idea.
Sell, Sell, Sell! And Give Away!
The last part of the online equation is music distribution, where most businesses ratchet down their open policies a notch or two, falling in lock step behind the traditional distribution behavior of the music industry.
It’s a lot harder to get a spot on Amazon or iTunes for an independent artist than it is for a label-backed act. That being the case, I decided to focus on two music communities with rather liberal policies for uploading original music: Last.fm and AmieStreet.
I’m going to save the insight I’ve gained from using those services for my next post, but I’ll leave you with a hint of what I’ve discovered…