It doesn’t seem that long ago since Radiohead did what was once unimaginable – release an album without being signed to a major record company. On the long march to digital ubiquity as the means of music delivery Radiohead avoided the tar pit that seems to be major label thinking and came out clear winners. Yes, they resorted later to releasing the album as a good old CD into regular retail distribution but they were pioneers and were soon followed with great success by Nine Inch Nails and to lesser success by many others. Both these bands had an understanding of what their fans wanted [price level choice, quality and special packaging] and both bands understood the power of the internet for marketing purposes and direct reach. [NB: Although I believe that the digital music file will rule the day, vinyl still has a role to play and I'll get to that later.]

The most interesting part of this experiment [which at the time, I would argue it was] was not only that it was wildly successful but it laid the groundwork for what I have coined the end of the organizing principle. In other words I suggest that we are now seeing the end of the album-length work as the permenant work, the everlasting body of work that represents the pinnacle of an artists’ creativity. I am fully expecting to hear the howls of derision over this but bear with me.

Radiohead

If you were honest how many albums do you own that demand to be listened to from beginning to end? AV Club recently came up with a list of 25, some of which I agree with and Rolling Stone, Spin and other mags regularly post their lists of the “all time greatest albums” whether its 100 or 50 or less. My band Gang Of Four’s album Entertainment! is often featured on these lists but take it from me it has its flaws. The problem with lists and suggestions is that they are all subjective. Being engaged by music requires too much of a personal commitment on an emotional level for anyone to be able to provide an ultimate list. [Imagine if an art critic attempted to make a top ten list of the world's greatest paintings. Why does popular music suffer from this conceit?]

We live in an era of MP3 players, streaming internet radio, web apps – not to mention the iTunes music application and its ability to shuffle your entire digital music collection – now the cloud and almost-mobile ubiquity, the list goes on; in what part of digital music culture does an album-length piece of work now reside?

I’ll answer that question – I believe it has no place in a digital future.

The original organizing principle of music was of course hand written, composed. It then moved along to sheet music and with that came revenue from sales to the musical public and by so doing helped to move revenue income beyond just ticket sales to the opera or orchestra performances. This wasn’t enough though. It was as if music was demanding to be organized and soon enough inventors jumped in to the fray and began organizing music recording and playback – at first on tin foil.
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Honda Insight – Let It Shine from Honda on Vimeo.

As Rodger Bridges said today ‘page takeover is the new microsite’ and at least this Honda ad doesn’t break the nav. Click here for the full effect.

The University of Oregon in Portland is showing a free screening of the documentary ‘Copyright Criminals’ and I have been invited to interview the director afterwards. The documentary takes a look at the many hurdles that hip hop artists, DJs and producers have to overcome to use samples of other peoples work in their ostensibly new or reworked versions of classic songs and beats. Those interviewed in the documentary include – Chuck D of Public Enemy, James Brown’s drummer Clyde Stubblefield and co-founder of the Creative Commons Larry Lessig. It also includes performances from Run DMC, The Beastie Boys, Grandmaster Flash and more….

Wednesday April 15 @ 6 PM No Charge and open to the public.
The University of Oregon in Portland
White Stag Block
70 NW Couch St, Portland Oregon

“an amazing documentary on the history of sampling…it kicks
you in the head with how radically the sampler redefined
music…” Blender Magazine

Co-sponsored by the UO Portland Library & Learning Commons and the Portland State University Sociology Club. Promotional considerations by KPSU.

Schooled in Social Networking

Beginning next year, Birmingham City University in the UK will begin offering a one-year course in social media with an emphasis on using social networking sites as communications and marketing tools. Costing over 6,000 U.S. dollars, the program will also teach students how to set up blogs and publish podcasts.

Though the school reports that there has already been significant interest in the course, a few initial thoughts come to mind. First off, many students are already very skilled in social media; is it necessary to dedicate an entire year to the subject when ample resources are available online for free? Secondly, social applications and technology are changing so rapidly that one has to wonder if, by the time the year-long course is up if much of the content will still be relevant…

Stars Love Twitter

Did you know (or care) that Martha Stewart is on Twitter? Currently, she has over 200,000 followers, including Jane Fonda and Michael Phelps. In return, she follows P. Diddy and Snoop Dogg (who refers to Twitter as “twizzle”).

Other famous tweeters include Trent Reznor, Courtney Love, Shaq, Ashton Kutcher, John Mayer, Yoko Ono, Al Gore and Demi Moore.

When celebrities join Twitter, it lends a sense of credibility and authenticity to their brand. And more importantly, they’re generating a constant stream of free publicity with the ability to set the record straight when something unflattering arises.

Fans love tuning in to hear random tidbits from idols’ their daily lives such as when Martha tweeted on March 4th that she had just dined out with Ludacris. According to her, “he loved lunch–esp. the choc cake.”

Of course, there is always a potential downside when a celebrity is allowed to run free with technology away from the watchful eyes of their publicists. Recently, Beyoncé’s little sis Solange Knowles sent out erratic messages to her thousands of followers, only to follow up with a tweet the next day, wondering how she had ended up in the hospital.

Fans prefer the real thing, even when it’s a train wreck in progress. One of Courtney Love’s recent tweets was as dramatic as ever; “THIS MOVE HAS BEEN A TRAGEDY. THIS HOUSE IS CHAOS BEYOND WHAT I COULD HAVE IMAGINED, SOMEONE THREW OUT A HUGELY EXPENSIVE PIECE OF ART!”

While most celebrities compose their own tweets, there’s a handful that hand off the task to their staff, including 50 Cent. His 230,000 followers weren’t impressed when they learned that he has his “web guy” write and post for him. Though, there’s no need to get angry since “the energy of it is all him.” On the temptation of hiring someone else to tweet for him, Shaquille O’Neal nailed the general consensus by saying that “It’s 140 characters. It’s so few characters. If you need a ghostwriter for that, I feel sorry for you.”

If you really can’t get enough of celebrities on Twitter, Celebrity Tweet (complete with the too-obvious tagline “Stalk Celebrities on Twitter!”) provides a real-time feed of their tweets.

Not surprisingly, Twitter really has become a self-induced stalker’s paradise.

[*NB: The idea of the collapse of newspapers is moving at the speed of light across the 'net. In the hour since I posted this opinion I came across multiple arguments, all very succinct. Here's one from David Eaves - Newspapers' Decline is a Sign of Democracy's Health not a Symptom of its Death. I will attempt to keep this piece updated as the conversation rolls out.]

Jay Rosen on the Huffington Post Investigative fund.

[Latest edit March 29th 12:17PM PST]

Having spent the last decade [at least] discussing the major label recording industry’s supreme mishandling of how its customers embraced the digital music file and how they quickly became savvy internet users sharing those files with millions of other users – basically penalizing the industry for scrapping the single and charging too much for an inferior product, the CD – my interest now turns to the fate of the newspaper industry.

There are some parallels across each of these industry’s woes but it is worth pointing out that the newspaper industry is not being penalized by its customers [readers] for doing anything wrong ala the music industry [weak overpriced product, suing its customers,] rather newspapers are victims of circumstance; technology, shifting reader habits and ubiquitous access in an increasingly mobile world. Unlike the music industry they were not late to the online game even though their initial foot-dragging suggested that like the music industry they would much rather wish the internet would go away.

I must give credit to the labels as I sense that they are beginning to find new routes to profits from music sales. At a recent music industry conference in Nashville I listened to Rio Caraeff, EVP eLabs at Universal Music Group, give the keynote speech. He lamented the loss of the experiential, tactile nature of recorded music when it came in its vinyl form [his father was a famous album sleeve director.] The digital file, he argued, had stripped the experience from the music – listening to music was now a flat and unemotional activity compared with holding a well-designed sleeve filled with images, lyrics and artwork. Because of this flat experience he predicted that there was no future for selling recorded music directly to music fans.

He mentioned one area of success for Universal; the advent of the video game. An all-encompassing experiential medium that included more than just the games – the games came with a community of like-minded people and music. They also generate millions of dollars especially through the subscription fees that are required for online gaming activity.

He also said “the browser is the new iPod.”

So, how does the newspaper industry embrace the browser, what does its “video game” look like?

Umair Haque

The first thing that they must do is abandon the old business models as an idea. Those models can not be re-created for the web. As Umair Haque writes on the Harvard Business blog – “companies and investors focused on business models are simply applying yesterday’s obsolete logic to today’s novel problems.” He goes on to point out that nowadays it is about “making something valuable” – “When we can make valuable stuff, there are a plethora of business models to choose from, some old, some new, some untested, some tried and true. When we can’t, no amount of business model innovation can save us from implosion.”

Referring to Caraeff’s contention that the experience around music is what we relate to the most, why is it that newspapers, that are experiential and tactile, are struggling to maintain readership offline while attracting millions of readers online? Maybe it is just that news is not sexy. Or as Haque points out do they need to just keep providing “valuable stuff” and scrap old business models?

Here’s the quandary – newspapers have to shoulder the enormous burden of overhead required to run a newsroom that collects the news in the first place. What is clear is that the online advertising dollars for newspapers are not filling the gap in the loss of revenue that occurred in print editions – just as digital music sales are not replacing the sales of CDs. So should newspapers start to charge for access to their websites?

Clay Shirky

I have been following the thought leader and writer Clay Shirky via his web site and Jay Rosen, who teaches journalism at NYU, via Twitter. Both of these men have strong opinions about the future of news media, note news media not necessarily newspapers. At the recent SXSW Interactive conference that I attended, Shirky showed the audience a slide that read – the internet is the largest group of people who care about reading and writing ever assembled in history…. A simple and very accurate statement. We have ubiquitous and easy access to more text now than ever; it just needs to be filtered. Which is what newspapers always did for us – as the New York Times masthead proclaims still ‘All the news that’s fit to print.’

Should newspapers be allowed to die? What would replace them?
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