I finally started using Klout and it's kind of a fun game. Did so just in time to get included in Michael Brandvold's Most Influential Music Marketing Experts list on Klout.
I guess that means I need to step up my game and do something worthy of inclusion. Or more of you could just start following me on Twitter and save me extra work in my climb to the top!
Hitler gets invited to South By Southwest
If you have yet to be introduced to the phenomenon of YouTube rewirings of the above scene from Downfall, here's one excellent example.
I had been planning a piece for Hypebot on Unofficial Marketing at SXSW and was reminded it was about time to do so by the above video created by comedian Duncan Trussell in response to being asked to perform for free and pay his own travel expenses.
Though SXSW has its pluses, it's not what it used to be for indie artists trying to get some attention. Each artist has to decide for him or herself what actions are worthwhile but, if I was on the move as a musician, I'd be going unofficially and taking the guerrilla route to fame.
Though I don't state this in the post, I think of SXSW Unofficial as the name for an alternative festival taking place within and beyond the confines of SXSW.
Hypebot: Unofficial Music Marketing at SXSW
I recently relaunched a project from back in my ProHipHop days called Music Biz Blogs.
It features a selection of mixed RSS/Atom feeds from 50+ music industry blogs plus a search engine to search those blogs.
It also has a sidebar featuring tweets from my Music Biz Linkmasters list plus a Flickr strip that displays the most recent Flickr pics tagged either musicindustry or musicbusiness. I switch between the two searches when one gets slow.
You can subscribe to the Music Business Blogstream via an RSS feed or by daily email. I tried to set up a Twitter account as well but it's just not working due to issues with the feeds.
When I created it a number of years ago, many of these tools were new and I was experimenting with lightweight information sites for the web. Most of them never really took off beyond a certain core audience but now that I'm writing for Hypebot, I thought it would be worth reviving.
All this talk of shopping that comes with the holiday season reminds me that I shop when I want, where I want for reasons of my own.
But I did try to participate in a positive way to Record Store Day one time and it was a first and last for me for both Record Store Day and for writing for Yahoo's Associated Content:
In late 2004, I founded the first hip hop business blog called ProHipHop. I eventually sold it in and fully exited by late 2010. I originally wrote the following hip hop business essays for ProHipHop and have since archived them at Hip Hop Logic where I still, on rare occasions, blog about hip hop.
At ProHipHop I planned a regular series of business interviews to be called Talking Hip Hop Business but only completed one, an interview with Tahir titled:
The Revolutionary Heart of the Dirty South: Tahir on Hood Economics
I also wrote a handful of hip hop business essays for a Canadian publication, Pound Magazine, in a series called All In The Game, that were intended to address misconceptions about hip hop and business:
How Much Longer Can Hip Hop Claim Outsider Status?
Shifts in Music Business Models & Related Stats
This is a fun little video created by Simply Zesty. Don't know where they got the stats from and I haven't been gathering that sort of thing but there are some interesting points to consider.
Via Mashable.
Michael Masnick: Trent Reznor Case Study at MidemNet 2009
In the above presentation at MidemNet 2009, Michael Masnick discusses Trent Reznor's creative approach to music industry business models over a series of album releases. These releases were marked by free as a pricing option with a variety of deluxe packages that sold quite well. Fans were involved with the introduction of gamelike elements and the release of free content intended for remixing.
Masnick calls this the Connecting With Fans and giving them a Reason To Buy business model or CwF + RtB.
Though I would hesitate to call that a business model per se it's certainly a powerful perspective that any business should employ.
I take Trent Reznor's activities as a form of Revenue Innovation that combines Pricing and Package Innovation via experiments in price points and content bundling.
To some extend you could call this the Topspin approach to Package Innovation since they power many such experiments, introducing a digitally savvy approach to direct-to-fan relationships.
Ian Rogers discusses such business models on This Week in Venture Capital.
Related Flux Research Coverage:
Business Model: A Definition from Saul J. Berman
The Future of Music Coalition is conducting a research project, Artist Revenue Streams, and they have a survey going live September 6 through October 28. They seek professional musicians to share information on the revenue streams from which they make money in order to better understand the business of musicians.
Prior to developing this survey, they identified 29 Music Revenue Streams divided into 7 categories included below:
A. Composer or songwriter - revenue streams from musical compositions.
B. Performer - revenue from sound recordings
C. Revenue from licensing your musical composition or your sound recording.
D. Performer - revenue from live performances.
E. Revenue from a performer’s brand.
F. Revenue from an artist’s knowledge of the craft.
G. Funding through grants.
Check the site for numerous examples in each category.
Power of Six Booktrack Demo
As a hardcore fan of the traditional book format, Booktrack strikes me as disturbing and ludicrous. Soundtracks for books? Get out of here!
But if we consider the growing ranks of people who use multiple media at once, those who don't find reading alone to provide enough entertainment and those in commuter settings that might want audio with their reading, perhaps there is a market for this strange new beast, perhaps even a new market that hasn't been attracted to reading prior to sound effects!
If such offerings are a success, we can look forward to Booktrack becoming a new platform for music licensing as well.
Update: Paul Carr eviscerates the whole concept and I can relate to that. On the other hand, it's striking me that this is potentially a great business idea for children's books though I can think of some problems with that as well.
This Week in Venture Capital: Ian Rogers, Founder of TopSpin Media
I haven't gotten the chance to watch this whole interview with Ian Rogers but, based on the outline of topics on the post, I intend to go back and find out more. Honestly, I prefer transcripts though the fact that it now has Timecodes for the topics makes it easier. I used up my time listening mostly to the background stuff I already knew.
That said, Ian Rogers is always worth checking out for his views on music industry business models and, even if you're not involved with music, you can learn a lot about web business models from his perspective. He has a very clear take on what's happening with disruptive innovation and the music industry that is relevant to anyone considering legacy business models and their difficulties adapting to to a constantly shifting digital landscape.
Rogers has his own This Week In show titled This Week In Music, where he interviews various music industry figures and draws on his own considerable industry insights.
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