08.29.06
Posted in Social Media at 9:40 pm by
There’s a recent Wired piece by Jeff Howe that’s all about Terry McBride, the Candian music mogul who’s shaking up the music industry. I breifly mentioned him this past January for criticizing the RIAA’s ’sue ‘em into submission’ tactics. He’s back and he’s all about building loyal fans – by letting the fans build with artist content:
“This one’s a real wingdinger,” he says, leaning into the speakerphone so New York, Denver, and Los Angeles won’t miss a word. “Let’s give away the ProTools files on MySpace. Vocals, guitars, drums, and bass. We’ll let the fans make their own mixes.” The room falls quiet. Musicians usually record their instruments and vocals on separate tracks; the producer and mixer combine those tracks into a finished product. McBride wants to make the individual files available so that amateur DJs can use them like Lego bricks to create something all their own. The record industry likes control. McBride is proposing unfettered chaos.
A voice from LA breaks the silence: “For the single, you mean, right?” McBride’s features screw up in concentration, then quickly expand into a grin. “What I’m proposing,” he says, “is that we make all 29 songs available as ProTools files. In two weeks.” The Internet marketers in Vancouver look worried. “But,” he adds, “we’ll get the files from the single up on MySpace by Monday.” Libby White, a member of the department, shoots McBride a skeptical look. Can they make it? McBride asks. White sighs. “We’ll make it,” she says.
Sure, this kind of fan affection has been employed to great effect by indies. Often they have no other choice to break the monopoly of major label radio airplay. But McBride isn’t an indie – he’s got acts like Avril Lavigne, Dido, Sarah McLachlan, BareNaked Ladies and the Stereophonics to his name.
That MySpace page for not only the music remixes but T-shirt creation contests and more can be found at: http://www.myspace.com/barenakedladies
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08.28.06
Posted in Social Media at 7:18 pm by
With 80 million members MySpace has proven itself incredibly popular; not just with teenagers but everything from bands, to movies to political canidates. Now Dirk Shaw argues that MySpace represents a possible petri dish for corporate R&D.
With over 80 million myspaces created it seems as if News corp has the ulimate platform innovating “micro hits”. Micro hits can be any form of creative expression (music, art, video, writing) that is palateable to a community or segment of the population who will consume it.
Another opportunity for news corp is to invite certain particpants into an extended virtual R&D team for companies who are looking to get closer to their customers.
To see how this might work lets look at one movie promotion: the profile page for ‘user’ Ricky Bobby (actually a clever tie in for Talladega Nights). While ones knee jerk reaction is that this is just another place to sell Will Farrell shlock take another moment. It allows the people behind the movie to directly interact with fans. This communication is a two way street – fans can then create social media back. People can leave what plot points worked for them, what was cool, and what could have been done better. It’s a wonderful feed back loop that the movie studio can do for free (barring the time to make MySpace look decent, that is).
Next up: looking at social media and the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon.
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08.26.06
Posted in Social Media at 4:58 pm by
Those crazy Germans – not content with world-renown beer, they are now pioneering a revolutionary way of funding artist development. The site SellABand allows fans to chip in $10 towards the production of a CD for an artist of their choice. The albums will be produced when when the band raises $50,000. Lost confidence in Hall ‘N Oats Jr.? No problem – the $10 can be taken back anytime before production begins.
Michael Arrington has a summary of the progress made thus far:
One week since signing on, most of the 130 bands on the site have raised between $200 and $500. One Goth band from the Netherlands has raised $4500. Sellaband says that the $50,000 goal is whatÂ’s needed to provide the kind of quality equipment and support that a major record label could provide. The company takes none of this money, only 30% of the siteÂ’s ad revenue. The company is made up of people who used to work at major labels and youÂ’ve got to admire what they are doing. YouÂ’ve probably also got to give them some credit when they say that they can produce a better album with $50,000 than you or I could, they may well be right.
I love this model. Unlike a software funding idea I recently pitched over at BloomBurst the only thing the artist need to pay back is a well produced album. It’s taking the otherwise daunting price tag and distributing it among fans – fans who are now much more inclined to buy the finished CD.
Combine the crowdsourcing idea with some kind of built in protection for the production of social media (fan remixes, maybe?) and this idea would be white hot.
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08.25.06
Posted in Social Media at 11:30 am by
If anyone is interested in watching a train wreck check out WeAreTheWeb.org. For the less adventurous, a synopsis: You will be greated by a large woman in a disturbing silver costume that proclaims herself ‘The Keeper of the Gems’. She’ll encourage you to check out the video. Upon doing so you see her in yet more outlandish costumes alongside Internet ’stars’ like that fat guy in the Tron suit, those weird Quizno’s singing hamster things, the dancing baby, etc.
On first glance its just painful. On second thought it would seem that the site creators are trying extremely hard to make a viral bit of media; that is, they’ve tried to concoct something so bizarre that people will go running to tell their friends.
However, some of their ’stars’ are more than obscure web phenomenon. A vast majority of people won’t get the joke. Further, their big assertion seems to be that we need to protect net neutrality for the sake of completely inconsequential crap. There are some extremely important arguments for keeping the net neutral: allowing upstart businesses to compete on a level playing field, for preventing the bifurcation into a multi-class Internet system, etc.
Sure, there are some funny Net Neutrality videos out there… And they don’t make you feel dumber for having watched them.
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08.24.06
Posted in Social Media at 6:39 pm by
Michael Robertson, ever the serial entrepreneur of odd intent, today unveiled Oboe Lockers. It’s a service that allows people to store music online in what is dubbed a ‘music locker’. These digital files are then available anywhere an Internet connection is. For up to 1GB there is no charge.
Forget, for a moment, that this is the exact same service that led to the demise of MP3.com. It’s dumbfounding – even the term ‘music locker’ is the same. Perhaps Robertson believes that this time around there is better understanding of what digital files are and more legal outlets for obtaining them. Dunno…
However, lets think about this in the context of social media. What has been announced is 1GB of free storage for any and all forms of audio media. For a variety of content producers (those musicians, podcasters, lecturers, etc.) they now have a great way of getting their stuff out there. Emailing an audio track to someone else for collaboration is a frustrating process – inbox attachment limits differ, there may not be enough space, etc. In this case, throw some files into a locker and give the combination (most likely a username/password) to anyone interested. Working on a lecture with more than one person? Work on it in your convience and then toss it into the locker for your partner to finish.
Robertson is suspect – he loves creating businesses that generate conflict (and, more importantly, his name in the press). But Oboe seems like an idea that could be leaveraged for the social good.
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08.18.06
Posted in Social Media at 1:28 am by
Did that title make you cringe? Did you get to the word synergy and have a shudder in rememberance of some horrible, hair-brained scheme that someone in sales or marketing cooked up? Yeah, me too. Fred Wilson, on the VC blog, talks about an amazing trend he is seeing; that the geeks have completely cut out the ’synergy’ folks and getting a whole lot more synergy as a result.
* YouTube makes it flash video player available via embed code on MySpace and their traffic takes off.
* TripAdvisor search engine optimizes its service and becomes one of the most popular travel services.
* Technorati hits delicious’ api for its tags and builds the web’s most succesful tag search service.
* Indeed crawls the Internet for jobs and builds a popular job service overnight.
* Kayak crawls the Internet for flights, hotes, and cars, and builds a popular travel service overnight.
* Qoop takes Flickr’s API and builds a Flickr printing service without ever engaging with Flickr’s team.
* Netvibes takes a few RSS feeds and builds a start page that looks as complete as MyYahoo overnight.
Of course the synergy spouting folks haven’t left us. Again from Fred:
We have noticed another thing happening. When you do get a business development deal with a leading web service, the implementation is everything and it often sucks. Witness the job search space. Indeed has a deal with the NY Times. SimplyHired has a deal with MySpace. I’ve looked at the media metrix numbers and neither jobs service (NY Times and MySpace) is delivering any real usage (0.1% of myspace users visit careers.myspace.com which is SimplyHired’s myspace service). Think of the time and energy that went into these deals. And to get 0.1% of the users to take up a service is so deflating.
Amen. Technology enables us to cut the crap and get to the point – sharing info between services is a good thing. Each service can excel at what its good at while fullfilling parallel needs with what others are good at. They’ve been able to create more value by giving things away. The only people not benefitting are the ‘Synergy’ guys. Such a shame.
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Posted in Social Media at 12:58 am by
I recently had a press release for Social Media Club pass by the great roving eye. However, it seems like the ‘Club’ that they’re referring to is one of those private, member’s only ones:
SocialMediaClub.org (SMC) officially launched today for the purpose of elevating Social Media to a higher level of professionalism. The organization will bring together different groups of social media practitioners such as bloggers, podcasters, publishers, journalists, students, artists, developers, marketers, and PR professionals.
Ok – so apparently social media – that is, media made by you, me, the sweater guy down the street, etc – is just too plain amateurish. Forgive me, but I thought the fact that anyone could make something to their own standards was the point; it’s about personal self-expression. As soon as the ‘professional’ label starts getting tossed around things begin to get subjective. And of course, there really is no need for the forced deliniation between groups. Just throw everything into a pot (ala YouTube) and people will find things they find valuable regardless of whether it’s ‘professional’ or not.
Serial entrepreneur Chris Heuer started Social Media Club. Again from the press release:
Heuer adds, “The path towards the transformation of Social Media Club from an idea and a blog into a real world community is paved with unconferences and blog posts tagged with socialmediaclub!”
Riiiiiiiight. Conform to the standards we lay out, build our brand in your work, and vie for the attention of our dedicated ‘experts’ and maybe, maybe we’ll let you into our community.
Sounds more like a clique to me.
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08.16.06
Posted in miscellaneous at 2:18 pm by
In recent discussions both here on the board and at some idea flinging fun fests I’ve been probing just what I need to do with mutednoise. My goal was to build a passionate community around the revolution in self-creation, remix culture, and/or social media (pick your buzz phrase of choice). I know there is a very vocal and bright audience around this stuff. However, I haven’t been able to bring them under the mutednoise roof.
Why should I be concerned with the audience size? For one, the more people we have discussing these issues the more informed and aware the community will be; everybody brings something to the table and the more bodies the more heaped on the table. Second, social media must be more than just one guy posting television observations or treadmill infomercials. Me on a soapbox is not being social; its a screed.
So here are the 3 things I need to do to reignite this cultural bomb:
1) Simplify the branding. The term ‘remix culture’ causes people to think this is a music blog. While self-produced music is an aspect of social media it is by far not the end of coverage. The ‘communities and collaborative works’ bit is also far too vague to have meaning. If we look at the Google Trend graph for all the many variations of remix culture social media far and away is what has mindshare. It’s only a language shift but one that would better allow the audience that’s out there to find us.
2) Find an alternative to PHPBB. PHPBB is a popular BB – and therefore unsavory types use the board as a target for spam. As a result forcing people to generate a user account, verify an email, and log is a necessity from the Cealis Crowd. However, in an age where everyone is used to posting immediately to a blog this seems archaic. It’s just not worth the effort. Dvorak recently had a forum discussion trying to identify just what works and what doesn’t in this space. There are some good ideas there but developing a new communications piece that minimizes spam and griefers while encouraging community development is a tall order. I’m of the opinion that either blogs or bb’s aren’t the solo answer – we need to consider a new breed of apps.
3) I need to be clearer with my calls to action. Many of my posts link to an article and end with ‘gee willikers, isn’t that neat’? With that kind of profound statement I wouldn’t be able to ignite a gas drenched newspaper, much less a flamewar. Some of this stuff is very controversial and confrentational – but it’s not coming across that way.
What else do you want to hear from mutednoise?
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08.15.06
Posted in Social Media at 4:25 pm by
Within the last year I think its safe to say that my oodles of optomism regarding the transformative power of technology has been tempered. Whether tech is enabling open source warfare or manipulation of public perception we are seeing that these incredibly powerful tools can also be misused.
Now there comes a very poignant article from GigOM about the how inappropriate some tech initiatives can be. From the piece:
The village doesn’t have a single Internet connection, though the article says one is “imminent.” It only has two computers, on one of which someone is learning to type. It has just two high schools, which, going by the pictures on the ‘uploaded’ village, look pretty woeful. Worse, it doesn’t have a medical clinic. (The village web site says there is one primary health center that is three kilometers outside the village.)
Yet the villagers have been given to think that having a web site will somehow revolutionize their lives. “Now we can put our problems on the Web site, and then the government can’t say ‘we didn’t know’,” one villager is quoted as saying. Hate to dash his hopes to the ground (or to upload them) but methinks the government already knows. Does it care? We don’t know.
It’s easy to get caught up assuming that everybody has the same issues as we do – adapting to living in a remix culture and all that. Periodically we need a refresher article like this one to keep things in perspective.
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Posted in Social Media at 4:13 pm by
After Shaarn brought it to our attention that the Pirate Party was seeking political offices in Europe after forming during the Pirate Bay raids comes more news: they have now released Relakks. The software app promises to further the Pirate Party’s aim of shared culture, free knowledge, and protected privacy. From the press release:
Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.
“There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,” says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. “If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check. The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to the democratic society. Without a safe and convenient way of accessing the Internet anonymously, this right is rendered null and void.”
Hmmm….
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