Music: Money

So yeah. I'm sitting here in the living room listening to snowdrift after Team November's set and thinking about music. (blogging from shows seems to be a good way to go for me).

I think demonstrating to artist that we're committed to getting them money will help get people signed up. I'm almost thinking that would be a good place to spent startup money. Basically approach a number of groups and give them a guarantee on revenue. Sort of a profit sharing plus guarantee package. This would be targeted at the early adopters... kind of a bonus for signing up early. And we would only approach bands we thought had a chance of becoming popular and raising the esteem of the system.

Maybe carrying it beyond the early adopters is a good plan as well, as an incentive to sign up bigger acts into the system.

Come to my show tonight! or "how not to be a loser on a friday night"

So, I bought this key-tar, right? And it's this Roland AX-7, right? And it's like the coolest thing ever and I'm gonna play it at my show tonight, right?

Team November (my band)
@ living:room (4301 Fremont Ave. N, Seattle, WA)
8pm
$3, all-ages, beer/wine for 21+
also on the bill: Snowdrift

Check it out if you get a chance! Gary will be there, so it's bound to be cool.

Love and gumdrops,
Gwen

Back from San Diego

Gwen and I got back from our trip to San Diego yesterday. It was a fun trip down to the emergent convention, which is a convention for those interested in emerging churches.

I don't go back to work until monday, so I've got a little time to ease back into things. I haven't thought of anything interesting over the last week. Which has been kind of nice.

Music: Recommendations

So here's an idea.... If an artist uploads their music into the system and they have recommendations, their songs should get into the list of "pushed" songs of others that like the same kind of music.... that's a way to get songs that haven't been listened too, connected to people that might like them.

The logic being... if you as an artist, like certain bands... then your music might appeal to others that listen to those bands...

Music: Where to start reading

If you're new... here are a few links to read on my blog to get started on what this whole music system is.

Music = Loud
Music = The Internet
Artist compensation
User Experience
Podcasting

Those are some of the highlights....

More Bryan Free

So yeah, Gwen took me over and introduced me to Bryan (my brother's name is spelled Brian so it's really hard for me to remember to spell his name with a Y). We only talked for a minute and now he's up on stage. He sounded interested and I'm looking forward to talking more with him.

Most of these ideas seem good to me, but I don't earn my living off music, so my perspective isn't the best. I need feedback from people that would place their livelihood in the hands of a label. Established record labels have the benefit of history. All I have are some crazy half baked ideas that might or might not work out. :-)

Well, but that's the point of this blog... to separate out the ideas that can't work from the ones that can.

Bryan Free

Gwen and I and a bunch of folks from COTA are about to hear Bryan Free play.

Gwen likes his music, and I think his ideas about honest in music are interesting.... I wonder if I"ll have a chance to talk to him about them.

Music: Recording

Maybe I should spend some time talking with local artists about doing recording for the system. I have a protools digi 002, and could probably produce some pretty reasonable quality recordings....

Recent Slow Down

I haven't slowed down too much I guess, but it sure feels like it. Work has been really busy these last few weeks.

I'm going on vacation next tuesday though, so hopefully I'll have some more time to get my head around this stuff then.

SmartShuffle: Refreshing Your Music Without Wires

IOD: SmartShuffle: Refreshing Your Music Without Wires: "Each day my phone would call up my home computer on its own and replace the 5-10 oldest songs on my phone with 5-10 new 'recommendations'."

Sounds like Josh would be interested in something like "the system".

Reactions to the Pew Study on Search Engine Users (by Jeremy Zawodny)

Reactions to the Pew Study on Search Engine Users (by Jeremy Zawodny): "If you find what you're looking for, does it really matter if it's a sponsored result or not?"

The only reason I think it would matter is that without indicating they are sponsored links, you would lead your users to believe that their ranking was as a result of your searching algorithm, instead of their rank because a result of their money.

If the links are relevent like Jeremy indicates, then I don't think I need to care as much where they come from. But when money gets involved, things get sticky.

Why we need an iPod competitor | Doc Searls' IT Garage

Why we need an iPod competitor | Doc Searls' IT Garage: "It's a closed system."

Yup. I would love to see a really strong ipod competitor as well. Especially since I'm still brainstorming ways to integrate the system with players.

Music: BBC NEWS | Technology | Napster offers rented music to go

BBC NEWS | Technology | Napster offers rented music to go: "'Music fans are moving away from buying the traditional bundled package of a dozen or more songs that we used to call an album to newer ways that fit their lifestyle; either single tracks or subscriptions services,' said Paul Myers, chief executive of Wippit, a UK-based music download service."

Interesting no? I think there are 2 things that will set the system apart.

1) Licensing
2) Implementation

I think the licensing will help make the implementation easier. Hopefully the licensing and the implementation will attract the critical component.

Artists

Music: Gizmodo : Gates Interview Part Four: Communists and DRM

Gizmodo : Gates Interview Part Four: Communists and DRM

There are some very good quotes to look at from this interview. I think those most interesting to look at right now is.

And in the case that the authors decided it's rights managed, you can decide to stay away from it or to use it. That, again, is your choice.

We're still at a point where digital rights management can't really work. Every DRM system to date has been compromised by determined hackers. Soon though, the hardware and the software will start to come together, and things will start to get rough. I think that's when people will start to wake up and realize that DRM does not help them (the consumers) at all.

Take a song you bought off iTunes Music Store and put it on a linux machine. You bought the music right, you should be able to listen to it on another computer right? Well you can't, not without breaking the DRM.

That's part of the goal of the system. To provide an alternative to DRM. An alternative that artists will need to evaluate when looking at ways to distribute their music in the internet age.

Music: Creative Commons

What do y'all think of this creative commons license

Music in the system will need to be licensed in such a way that people can legally download and share it. I like the terms of this license, except that I'm concerned about the non-commercial part. It will probably be beneficial for users of the system to be able to download the music for use in DJing or radio play.

Perhaps that could be a different kind of subscription to the service...

FeedBurner's XSLT and CSS Feed Views (by Jeremy Zawodny)

FeedBurner's XSLT and CSS Feed Views (by Jeremy Zawodny): "Related to Dan's complaint, I see the FeedBurner, like a few other services, does a good job of using XSLT and CSS to render human readable views of RSS feeds."


Like I mentioned before, blogger does a pretty good job of providing human readable atom feeds. So readable that I didn't think they were XML at first.

my atom feed

Music: Wired 13.01: The Zen of Jeff Bezos

Wired 13.01: The Zen of Jeff Bezos: "Well, it's difficult to see how physical stores participate in the digital distribution of music. Today most music is sold by multi-category retailers who are cutting back on the square footage they deploy to music."

A couple of interesting tidbits from this article. The most interesting I think is this quote.

WIRED: Does Amazon actually create demand for hard-to-find products?
BEZOS: Absolutely. We not only help readers find books, we also help books find readers, with personalized recommendations based on the patterns we see.

This is part of what I see the system doing. Since I perceive that in the future, the challenge of music isn't going to be media distribution or product, but marketing. Connecting musicians and fans.

iTunes restrictions

Miguel de Icaza: "Today a friend of mine asked me if I bought music from the Apple iTunes Store and whether she should. I explained to her that the music she purchases will be locked into the iPod and iTunes and she wont be able to play it on other MP3 players unless she hacks her music."

It's unfortunate that apple appears to be one of the most open of the online music distributors.

DRM Troubleshooting Info in Windows XP (WMP, MCE, Etc)

DRM Troubleshooting Info in Windows XP (WMP, MCE, Etc)

The fact that somebody needed to produce a FAQ like this is ridiculous.

Music: DJs and Playlists

So I'm listening to this Japanese Peercast right... and I have no idea if a person is behind it or not. And do I really care?

If the music selection is "good"...

I should be careful with this... my wife was a college radio DJ, and she reads the blog. :-)

Maybe the system can be your own personal DJ through the recommendation system.

I remember Brian Mansell (he used to livejournal, but I've lost track of him, does he have another blog up?) working on creating a system that would allow people to post requests to an automated playlist system. I bet he would have some interesting ideas about this.