Posted July 19th, 2009, in: Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Marketing/Advertising In The Cloud| Music Industry| New Media| Reviews & Thoughts About Products| SEO, SEM, SMO Etc| Technology| The War on Free Culture| Viral Marketing| Web 2.0
OK so I have to admit that I’ve overestimated the popularity of Last.FM. At least, I am realizing how different LastFM is for a user like me that mostly has mp3s on my hard drive, and users who stream music from lastfm.
PowerPlay isn’t going to do a lot of good for me very quickly since I’ve chosen to buy impressions on radio streams for artists that are pretty obscure. I did this because conversion rates (see web marketing 101) are higher in a narrower target, so if I try to compete for impressions/plays on Bjork’s radio stream, the chances that the users will actually like my music are considerably smaller than if I target people who like more obscure music like the constellation acts or something. Going for Bjork is more like going for Britney Spears in that there’s a fairly diverse audience and the users are more likely to be fairly mainstream (Bjork being one of the strangest things they like). Going after a band like Excepter or HRSTA is a better bet for me because these are people looking for fairly unconventional soundtrack-y experimental music.
In ten hours since I launched my first $20 Powerplay campaign (100 plays on radio streams of ten artists I chose), I’ve gotten ZERO plays.
On the upside, twenty bucks is going to provide my with at least 3 months of entertainment since I’ll have one more site to check in with a few times a day when I’m being neurotic.
The music industry is a mess. The best discovery tools suck because the content owners are afraid of change, while the best music delivery systems are either incomplete (legal or illegal but private) or unreliable (illegal but public).
And legal or not, there’s no real integration between the streaming services and the OS environment.
Maybe the Chrome OS or the Smartphone market will change that. I’m sick of storing tons of MP3s.
OH! If these other music acts are so obscure, maybe I should buy their Keywords from Google. Hmmm…
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Posted November 9th, 2008, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Intellectual Property| New Media| The War on Free Culture
I left a comment for the Obama Administration via their new online “suggestion box“at change.gov. I sent in a suggestion hoping that the Obama Administration look at Lawrence Lessig as someone who could help out in some way. I didn’t say “Attorney General” but maybe I should have. Here’s what I did say:
Lawrence Lessig should be looked at by the new administration for positions like ‘Technology Czar,’ ‘Federal CTO,’ ‘Chairman/Commissioner of the FCC,’ or any other position in which Ethics and the Public Interest in matters of Technology and/or Communications are concerned.
Professor Lessig has already proven himself as an advocate for the people as an Educator, an Attorney, an Author and an Activist.
I’m sure there are many, many others like me who believe that the Obama administration, and more importantly, the American People would benefit from having Lawrence Lessig’s sound judgement and clear voice involved in the Federal decision-making processes.
He’s one of my personal heroes, and he cares about America, its consumer’s, their rights, the possibilities of modern technology, and the importance of our culture as it evolves and we grow with it.
Thanks for having this open suggestion box.
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Posted August 4th, 2008, in: Computer Problems and Fixes| Music Industry| New Media| Technology| The War on Free Culture
I’m not going to try to be an expert on comparing trackers and/or sites, especially when the folks at File Share Freak already compiled a pretty awesome list of Music Trackers.
Oh damn, it hurts! I’m still mourning the death of Oink! Please, please, please, if you’re reading this and you can hook me up with the latest thing… [waffles?] …I’m dying over here!
Anyhow, back to the blogging.
I usually start off with a ScrapeTorrent search. It’s a meta-search that searches several of the top trackers like The Pirate Bay etc… There’s also YouTorrent.com, which is also a meta-search, but I have found that ScrapeTorrent.com has the better results… At least that’s how it seems to me.
Oink, I loved you!
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Posted July 31st, 2008, in: Cultural Acceleration| Data Portability (DataPortability)| Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Intellectual Property| Marketing/Advertising In The Cloud| New Media| Semantic Web| Social Software and The Social Graph| Technology| The Semantic Web (Giant Global Graph)| The War on Free Culture| Videos| Web 2.0
Kevin Kelly gave this talk at TED in 2007. It’s worth watching.
He touches on a number of things ranging from history of the Internet and Moore’s Law to the future ubiquity of Cloud Computing and Kurzweil’s “Sigularity.“
He covers concepts like the Semantic Web, and the give-and-take between privacy and participation with relatively light language that any lay person should be able to understand. This is an interesting and entertaining little presentation. Thought I’d share.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDYCf4ONh5M]
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Posted May 13th, 2008, in: Humanity, Culture, Philosophy, Politics, Ethics Etc| Ideas, Observations, Opinions, Rants Etc| Intellectual Property| Music Industry| Technology| The War on Free Culture
“Just as citizens of a nation must be educated about their rights to ensure that they are protected and upheld, so too must those who compose words and music know the rights that support their own acts of creation. Without these rights, which directly emanate from the U.S. Constitution, many who dream of focusing their talents and energies on music creation would be economically unable to do so – an outcome that would diminish artistic expression today and for future generations.At this time, when so many forces are seeking to diminish copyright protections and devalue artistic expression, this Bill of Rights for Songwriters and Composers looks to clarify the entitlements that every music creator enjoys.
- We have the right to be compensated for the use of our creative works, and share in the revenues that they generate.
- We have the right to license our works and control the ways in which they are used.
- We have the right to withhold permission for uses of our works on artistic, economic or philosophical grounds.
- We have the right to protect our creative works to the fullest extent of the law from all forms of piracy, theft and unauthorized use, which deprive us of our right to earn a living based on our creativity.
- We have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free.
- We have the right to develop, document and distribute our works through new media channels – while retaining the right to a share in all associated profits.
- We have the right to choose the organizations we want to represent us and to join our voices together to protect our rights and negotiate for the value of our music.
- We have the right to earn compensation from all types of “performances,” including direct, live renditions as well as indirect recordings, broadcasts, digital streams and more.
- We have the right to decline participation in business models that require us to relinquish all or part of our creative rights – or which do not respect our right to be compensated for our work.
- We have the right to advocate for strong laws protecting our creative works, and demand that our government vigorously uphold and protect our rights.”
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