I’d intended to write about this last week, but all the G20 stuff got in the way.
Continue reading “A Week in Academia pt 1 – Wealth Of Networks II”
They (Should) Work For You – Record Labels as though Music Mattered.
Ever since the advent of rock and roll and the vinyl record explosion in the 50s, record companies – whose business is making money – have been using music in order to meet that aim.
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“Art First” – Why the ‘Present of Music’ is the Best it’s Ever Been for Musicians
From Thursday to Saturday last week I was following Andrew Dubber’s tweets from a music industry conference in Finland called Is This It?
The premise of the conference is that it’s a ‘music seminar about music‘, though there was a baffling and conspicuous absence of actual musicians speaking at it. The overall tone, it seemed – as drawn from the various tweeted quotes – was that it was a bunch of music industry people desperately trying to come up with a way to continue ‘business as usual’ – marketing strategies, ways to feed more data to collection agencies to get paid, and the usual crop of should’ve-been-left-in-the-70s ideas involving scantily clad women as a marketing draw. So far, so heinous.
Continue reading ““Art First” – Why the ‘Present of Music’ is the Best it’s Ever Been for Musicians”
Youtube Vs. The PRS: A very 2.0 Solution
One of the biggest “music on the web” stories in recent months has been the breakdown in relationship between the UK Performing Right Society (PRS) and Youtube (owned by Google). It’s over the share of Google’s ad revenue that should go to the writers of the songs in ‘premium content’ videos on Youtube. (for some background, here’s An article from The Guardian, and the PRS’s latest statement).
So, who’s in the wrong? Not surprisingly, both are, at least partly.
Continue reading “Youtube Vs. The PRS: A very 2.0 Solution”
In Defense Of Twitter… The video!
Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I found out at about 12 o’clock today that Andrew Dubber, author of New Music Strategies, was in London for a conference. Andrew and I met at BrumTwestival, a Twitter-organised charity event, got on great, and so I tweeted him to see what he was up to. 30 mins later, we were having lunch together at the British Library. Such is the immediacy and flexibility of the twittering life 🙂
Continue reading “In Defense Of Twitter… The video!”
House Concert Hosting: a Beginner’s Guide.
I’ve blogged a lot of late about the whole house concert phenomenon, and Lo and I seem to have inspired a few people with our house concert tour to get out and do it themselves. On Sunday afternoon, Neil Alexander and his amazing jazz/prog/fusion/rock trio Nail played a web-cast house concert from upstate New York, watched by about 15-20 in the room, and across the course of the gig, over 100 online.
Continue reading “House Concert Hosting: a Beginner’s Guide.”
Rejoining Emusic's subscription download service.
I just started my subscription to Emusic again. Emusic is one of the biggest site for indie music download sales, and works on a subscription model, so you pay for a certain number of tracks a month. I get 50 tracks for £11.99, I think.
Continue reading “Rejoining Emusic's subscription download service.”
Celebrity 2.0 – Fame in a Conversation-economy.
This blog post was triggered by a twitter conversation with two lovely women that Lo and I finally met in person on our US jaunt, Annie Boccio and Tracy Apps – Annie and Tracy are both people we’ve been chatting to online, in both text and video formats, for months. We know loads about them, and have watched both their day to day normal stuff, and the special events, like their visits to podcamps/expos/etc.
Continue reading “Celebrity 2.0 – Fame in a Conversation-economy.”
"The Ilicco Effect" – A case study in online music discovery.
Following on from what I was saying in the Tour round-up about playing to people who don’t get into solo bass, I thought I’d write up the story of a friend of mine who listens to a heck of a lot of me…
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House Concerts – what to do when you're not acoustic.
One of the main responses I’ve been getting to our tale of house concert touring success is ‘that’s great, but my band is too loud/too big/too jazz/too dancey/etc… to work in that setting. What do you suggest?”
The implication there is that there’s only one way for a band to perform. So, let’s consider house concerts as the modern equivalent of doing an in-the-studio radio performance.
Continue reading “House Concerts – what to do when you're not acoustic.”