MySpace is about to make your life easier?

If there's one thing that I've found most frustrating about having an online presence as an artist, it's the sheer chaos surrounding the environment of social networking, band profile sites, blogs, facebook, myspace, imeem bebo, garageband, ilike and the list goes on and on...

Yesterday, Digital Music News reported that MySpace is going to make "profiles" portable. What this means to the artist is that instead of having to update your photos, blog, bio, and video across 15 websites or more, you can do it once and it will show up on whatever social networking sites you might choose to put them on.

This is pretty profound and what I think will be the way to go in the future.
At the SF Music Tech conference yesterday, I heard Tim Westergren, the head of Pandora
online radio suggest that bands should actually add an extra band member whose sole job is to manage and handle your web presence. Theoretically this sort of job falls into what a label or manager would traditionally do. But we don't live in traditional times anymore...

And the web presence is hugely important. Perhaps music managers will start adding these types of team members to their teams, if they haven't already. And if you're looking to get a start in the music business as a young internet-savvy person, then that's certainly an opening you could position yourself with.

But I give props to myspace for getting the jump on this "profile portability." Anything that makes life easier on artists in this crazy new music business is a good thing.

How to properly announce a tour

Tom Waits Press Conference

You can't get enough of this amazing video!

You Love this video

YouTube - Super Adventure Club - Mexican Gun Fight

Super Adventure Club comes to Cafe Du Nord on April 27

Cafe Du Nord - April 27 with Roy 2000, Radioactive and the Genie (of Spearhead) |

The end of the lowest common denominator? (or at least an alternative)

Barack Obama's recent speech about race and the media in the US

My favorite quote about Barack Obama's recent speech came from Jon Stewart who said "He spoke to Americans as if they were adults"

Given how large an audience the broadcasters are aiming at, they have to aim for the lowest common denominator to maintain that audience (and sell ads, most importantly). As a result, the TV news has to keep the news easily comprehensible for its entire audience. The level of rational thought required for any discussion or debate needs to be pretty low. Essentially, it must be comprehensible to 12 year olds and high drop outs. (Not that these are the only people who watch the news, but they represent the lowest common denominator)

Obama's speech was a complex and very thoughtful argument but it doesn't lend itself to soundbites very well. If you didn't hear or read the whole speech, then you miss the point of much of it. And the message I got from it, more than anything, is that our media culture is distorting and dividing our nation. But that argument is something that your average 12 year old high school drop out is probably not going to have much interest in understanding. I am hopeful that much of the voting public does have an interest in understanding that and doing something to change it.

Luckily, we live in an age where it's possible to hear Obama's entire speech without relying on media soundbites. The good part about the internet is that the lowest common denominator doesn't have to apply to how you get the news, art, music, film, humor, or anything else, if you don't want it to. Hopefully, the leaders of our democracy will realize that and start using their brains a bit more. Obama's off to a good start.

Ad supported music sites

There has been a lot of talk around the music industry about the idea of ad-supported music sites. It seems that many in the business (particularly the technology folks... go figure) believe that music is no longer something people want to spend money on and therefore we should turn music into the same form of media as television or radio by using ad-supported sites.

The most recent site I discovered "ad-supported-music.blogspot.com" goes by the motto "Don't Sell the Music - Sell the Time Spent Listening to the Music"

Something about this strikes me funny.

I think that a lot of people have a very important and personal relationship with the music they listen to. When you connect with a song, an album or an artist, it feels like a part of your identity. And the idea of putting a piece of advertising between the listener and the music feels like a violation of some sort of trust between the listener and the artist of the music.

This is the main reason why I feel that music will not become exclusively advertising supported. It may work for certain types of artists who are much more commercially driven (Hannah Montana, Britney, Madonna, flavor of the month celebrity / singer) but I don't think it will work terribly well for independent music artists who are artists first and business people second. (or third or twelfth or whatever...).

However, I do think advertising supported music sites are a good idea. I think they will be a great outlet for getting new music into the attention of new listeners. Most people don't want to spend money on music they've never heard before. If advertisers are willing to spend money that way, then I think it's great. But I don't think that most people really want advertisements on their iPods.

Like many other music professionals, I have involved myself in about 20 different roles over my 18+ years in the music business. Mostly I call myself a music producer, because it seems to be the most broadly undefined category available. I'm also a writer, a musician, a performer, a band leader and occasional theorist on the music business.

After reading the last two posts on Andrew Dubber's excellent New Music Strategies blog, I have spent the last few days writing down and categorizing all the things that I do. It has opened up a lot of insight into how I spend my time, and I am finding as much clutter in my activities as I find in the junk drawer at my studio. (Perhaps those two are related)

I first categorized my list into Learning, Writing, Performing, Collaborating and Relaxing (with lots and lots of subcategories). I then realized that most of these categories fell into the broader concepts of Creating, Selling and Maintaining.

What I am finding difficult is bridging the gap between creating (songs, writing, performances, recordings, etc) and selling (earning money from these creations). Both creating and selling seem to involve a lot of overwhelming maintenance for each. And I think I am someone who defines himself as a creator first, a maintainer 2nd, and a seller as a distant 3rd. But my goal for the year is to bring these elements together a bit more, or better still, delegate the selling and maintaining to others.

It seems that the more I collaborate with other people, the easier it is to do all three though. So a large part of the effort this year will be focused on projects that I can work on with others. A new band and possibly starting a new label for some of the artists I work with (if I can find someone to launch it with who wants to do the selling part...)