Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Chain CDs

Hey people, but especially Gary!

Look what I just stumbled across: What's a chainCD?
I think this is an interesting idea. It's not like the most outrageously original, new idea I've ever heard of in my life (because I know other people who have done similar things- Bryan Free, for instance), but I think it's a pretty concise description of a fun, different way of doing things (for CD distribution).

What do you think? Maybe you (people, but especially Gary!) could comment about this.

Friday, April 08, 2005

The Doc Searls Weblog : Friday, April 8, 2005

The Doc Searls Weblog : Friday, April 8, 2005: " I did get some drive time on side roads in the red rental Mustang, and here's my final take on the car..."

It's not as bad as it originally sounded.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Music: If they don't like your music, they wont buy it

Just had a little blip of a brainstorm.

If you give your music to somebody and they don't like it. They wouldn't have bought it in the first place. So, by giving your music away to that person, you haven't really lost a sale. It doesn't hurt my ability to earn money off my music if everybody who hates it has a copy.

Now you might lose out on the "I bought this CD cause I thought I would like it but I don't" type of purchases, but who really wants to earn a lot of money off their music that way.

What is much more likely is that the inverse will be true. I find I'm less likely to buy music these days because I don't know if I will like it. Add to that, the fact that it's very hard for me to find out if I will like a band. The best way to find out is to listen to some music. Some of the best music I've found is because a friend played it for me, or recommended it to me.

So how does this translate into a business plan? Good question. I'm not sure I have it all figured out yet, but there's gotta be something that can be built on top of this. My original idea was subscription based, but maybe it doesn't need to be.

We'll see how things go with the EP release. Maybe there is a model closer to that that might be easier to implement.

The fact that the music is released under creative commons means we get to play around with technology.

What if we could extend the creative commons searching functionality that Yahoo has. Add the recommendation and rating system, build in a good way for people to pay the musicians to make more music or because of the enjoyment we've gotten out of the previous work and kablamo.

I love how podcasting can influence this. Podcasting is basically nothing more than a content delivery mechanism. One that I think is well suited to pushing new music at people. There just has to be a good business model surrounding it or else artists wont be able to afford to make cool music.

Pegasus News: A different angle

Pegasus News: A different angle: "In parallel words, kill the presses and the paper, and make room for more journalists. And watch the profits roll in."

More fallout from Mark Cuban's article.

This is from an update to an interesting brainstorm on restructuring another type of information delivery mechanism. The newspaper.

Music: Congress: one media format to rule them all

Congress: one media format to rule them all: "Of course, this entire circus has a ringmaster that needs no introduction: the DMCA. If it weren't for the anti-circumvention clause of 17 U.S.C. § 1201 and following, none of this would even matter. If individuals could circumvent DRM for any otherwise legal purpose, and if companies could be free to develop circumvention tools for legal uses, then it wouldn't make any difference what format this stuff was sold in. It's the kind of Catch-22 that could only be borne of special interests and fear mongering, but did anyone mentioned this at today's hearing?"

hmmm, DRM, my favorite :rolleyes:

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

The Doc Searls Weblog : Monday, April 4, 2005

The Doc Searls Weblog : Monday, April 4, 2005: "The bummer at hand was none other than the new Ford Mustang, which Budget rented me because they were out of Ford Focuses, which are the onlly cars I like to rent."

This is depressing to read because I really want one of those Mustangs. Oh well, I wont be able to get one anyways, so I'll just continue to covet ignoring anything negative said about the car.

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Blogging the EP: Stats 'n Status

I don't know if I've talked much about what's actually going to be on the EP. So I'll give a quick run down.

It will be five songs, about 22 minutes in length. All the recording and programming done in Protools and Reason. The final mixing and mastering is being done at soul kitchen studios.

Release date should be sometime in mid April. Mark at soul kitchen is out of town this week and so we're taking a little break from mixing the CD until next week. But hopefully next monday I'll have a good feel for much is left to do.

The first CD run will be about 100 cds. We'll be using a CD duplicator that can print on the CDs and burn them. So we should be able to have color on the CD. We'll be using full jewel cases, and producing the inserts for them. Not sure what paper we'll use. All those materials will be factored into the Per CD cost. Once I know those numbers I'll feel pretty confident setting a price for the CD.

How much does a 5 track single usually go for these days anyway?

I haven't decided yet if we're going to put the CD up on the website before we have CDs ready, but probably not. Haven't decided how to handle online ordering yet. Maybe I need to get setup with paypal so I can take orders that way. Karen used that to setup the online order system for the COTA CD so I can ask her how well that has worked out.

Oh yeah, the website. I gotta at least get some static content up there.

Oh yeah, the name.

We are Let's Go and the EP will be titled on with life. (We reserve the right to change the title)

Music: The countdown for the extinction of CDs is about to begin - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _

The countdown for the extinction of CDs is about to begin - Blog Maverick - www.blogmaverick.com _: "If Im an indie record store, Im making sure that all music from the labels you support is available for direct to player. Im offering every song as Ipod or MP3 player ready to anyone who walks in the door with their Ipod and wants to leave listening to the music."

Mark Cuban has his plan to save the music industry. Slightly different, yet I think complimentary to what I've been talking about here.

Music: SimpleBits | The Cheapening of Music

SimpleBits | The Cheapening of Music: "One of my favorite rituals has always been going to the record store and buying a CD or two. The physical act of purchasing something, taking it home, opening it up, lookng at the artwork, reading the lyrics, etc. Will that become something of the past?"

This author raises some good questions about music. I think in the future "the system" should be an avenue for artists to get their music out into peoples hands. Including producing and distributing physical media. It's more expensive to do, and might take a more critical mass of artists to get it done, but with connections to local music stores I bet we could do some very cool stuff.

I think the stores could like it because they'll get music that is already "proven" in that it already has a following online. It would also allow the artists on "the system" to brand out to the less tech saavy.

There's something to be said for "owning" a piece of music. But do you really "own" that piece of music today? Isn't there a big corporation telling you what you can and can't do with the music? I'm ok with that in principal actually. I think the copyright holder should have the right to do what they want with their music. Unfortunately for most of the CDs out there, the artist doesn't hold the copyright anymore, the music label does. That's why they're so interested in increasing the copyright holders rights. Not because they want artists to get their fair shake, but because they've gotten the artists to sign over their rights...

I think I may have gotten off topic here.

Blogging the EP: Creative Commons

So I think the music will be available on our website under this license.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License

Originally I was going to use Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License but if others are willing to share their remixes then I think I'm cool with it. Plus if somebody actually wants to remix our music that's neat.

Music: Non-profit

Had an idea the other day. What if the music distribution system was setup as a non-profit. Seems like that might change things a fair bit huh?

I think I like this idea because it puts the focus of the system back onto the artists. The goal isn't to become fabulously wealthy off of this "brilliant" business strategy (I suppose the brilliance is open to debate ;-) ), but to facilitate creative musical expression, something I think is cool and important.

I would get a kick out of making the system go, and by making it a non-profit, artists wont have to worry that someday the system will be sold to Microsoft of Sony or some other organization that doesn't have their best interests in mind.

So, who's interested in donating to the non-profit? :)

Paul Allen loves music doesn't he? Maybe he'd like to see a system put together that encourages creativity and independence in music. ;-)

Music: I gotta get a prototype together

Yeah, maybe when the EP is out I'll have some time to focus on slapping together a little prototype of the system. How about this for core functionality?

- A database of songs
- Artist Bios
- The ability to rate songs
- An RSS feed that pushes new unrated songs down to you

The second phase would probably

- Make the RSS feed smart enough to push songs you might like based on other people's ratings as well.

For the first couple phases I'll probably have to update the database, but that's ok cause there wont be much music up there yet. ;-)

Blogging the EP: Website

So I've registered http://www.studiogomusic.com. I don't have any content up there yet. I messed around with the demo of Radio, thinking that maybe I could just make that work, but so far I'm not happy with that.

I'm also checking out Geeklog to see if that might be a contender, but I'm not sure about it yet.

Monday, April 04, 2005

Music: ongoing · LimeWire & Chansonniers Perdus

ongoing · LimeWire & Chansonniers Perdus: "The conclusion is that the Record Companies’ business model, like General Franco, is still dead. If I were a teenager I’d be all over LimeWire and I’d be too stupid/oblivious to worry about the knock on my parents’ door, and there are just too many oblivious teenagers for the RIAA to sue out of existence. So I was right, the battle’s over; only I was wrong about who won."

Tim Bray coming to the same conclusion that I have.