Archive for the ‘Arts & Business’ Category
Back story of the “Bed Intruder”s song
Follow-up on a post from September 13, 2010 — It’s a new game — the music industry’s process of re-invention (part 1). The Gregory Brothers talking about their surprise hit and their Auto-Tune The News project. Fascinating with some great quotes: ”Joe Biden is the Beyonce of the Executive Branch“ and great clips of “Bed Intruder” covers (I love the N.Carolina A & T marching band and shamisen versions).
Reposted from Hypebot.com
Video: Gregory Brothers Share Business Back Story On The Bed Intruder Song
Southwest Virginia’s Gregory Brothers, better known as the “Auto-Tune The News” band, shared the story of how they created and monetized the “Bed Intruder” song at Google’s Zeitgeist conference this week. “Bed Intruder” was the first totally d.i.y. tune to break Billboard’s Hot 100 singles chart completely on the strength of YouTube play.
via MediaMemo
Reposted from Hypebot.com
Video: Gregory Brothers Share Business Back Story On The Bed Intruder Song
via MediaMemo
Related Articles
- The “Bed Intruder Song” From Auto-Tune The News Cracks Billboard’s Hot 100 (businessinsider.com)
- Top 10 ‘Bed Intruder Song’ Covers (socialtimes.com)
- “Bed Intruder” Gets Star-Studded Punk Rock Cover [VIDEO] (mashable.com)
It’s a new game — the music industry’s process of re-invention (part 1)
The changing face(s) of the music industry
The recording industry has always been dragged kicking and screaming to adopt new technologies and business models (see ). Often the big boys were educated to what was possible by the appearance of new competitors on the margins who responded to new opportunities provided by new technologies or new music markets the majors ignore (and sometimes both). Typically, the big boys eventually swallowed up their upstart competitors and the same thing may happen this time but it seems less likely. And some of the upstarts are convinced the solution must come from somewhere different this time. The memorable quote below comes from an August 22, 2010 edition of “Broken Record: Music in the Download Era”, the LA Times occasional column on the current state of the music industry.
“I don’t want to hear some guy chomping on a cigar in Beverly Hills telling me it’s all gone pear-shaped. The people who invented the paradigm and were trusted to run it let it run afoul. We have to fix it.”Jeff Castelaz, co-owner of LA’s Dangerbird Records quoted in L.A.’s string of indie labels succeeds with a jack-of-all-trades approach.
Castelaz’s Dangerbird Records is one of a new crop of independent record companies that have sprung up and are giving the majors (or what is left of them) a run for their money. And this time it is different — there are new big boys providing low-cost distribution: Amazon, I-Tune… — and new free or low-cost marketing outlets: Twitter, Facebook… It’s no longer simply the independents vs. the majors.
A little historical perspective from Mark Mothersbaugh (from Verbicide Magazine)
I’m in the music industry, so I’ve had to listen to people moaning, lazy record executives who are saying, “Oh no, people aren’t buying our records anymore.” And I want to say, you know what, that is not how people historically have disseminated and listened to music in the history of mankind. It has only been a really short window since Thomas Edison invented the wax disc and then the record companies could start selling platters and then tapes and then digital discs. It has only been a short time. Record companies could control the process of what kids could listen to, which influenced what artists were able or allowed to create. I think the internet… is the most amazing thing that has happened. As far as being an artist, I think now is the greatest time to be an artist… Now, kids can wake up in the morning and say I want to hear some “cowboy Chinese computer death-metal.” You put those four terms into a search engine,something is going to come up. Some band is playing that kind of music. That is so amazing to me. That is so exciting. It is so inclusive… And now kids who are 16 have cell phones that have more powerful recording systems inside their telephone than the Beatles had to do their first album. The technology is amazing. And who needs a record company? You start a website and people from every corner of the planet now have access to your music.
& New routes to success
Inspiration (local TV news) to Pop Song (“Bed Intruder Song”) to Viral Video (YouTube) to Internet Sales (I-Tunes) to Hot Single (Billboard Top 100)
More to follow — the game ain’t over yet
“William Gibson On the Future of Publishing: Made to Order Books” (@ Speakeasy)
Interesting interview with innovative author William Gibson (think cyberpunk) in the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog. Thanks to Julie Norvaisis of All This Chittah Chatter for turning me on to it.
An excerpt from the interview by the Wall Street Journal’s Steven Kurutz:
Will you mourn the loss of the physical book if eBooks become the dominant format?
It doesn’t fill me with quite the degree of horror and sorrow that it seems to fill many of my friends. For one thing, I don’t think that physical books will cease to be produced. But the ecological impact of book manufacture and traditional book marketing –- I think that should really be considered. We have this industry in which we cut down trees to make the paper that we then use enormous amounts of electricity to turn into books that weigh a great deal and are then shipped enormous distances to point-of-sale retail. Often times they are remained or returned, using double the carbon footprint. And more electricity is used to pulp them and turn them into more books. If you look at it from a purely ecological point of view, it’s crazy.
How would you do things differently?
My dream scenario would be that you could go into a bookshop, examine copies of every book in print that they’re able to offer, then for a fee have them produce in a minute or two a beautiful finished copy in a dust jacket that you would pay for and take home. Book making machines exist and they’re remarkably sophisticated. You’d eliminate the waste and you’d get your book -– and it would be a real book. You might even have the option of buying a deluxe edition. You could have it printed with an extra nice binding, low acid paper.
The struggle against innovation: the recording industry’s “appetite for self-destruction”
Examples of industries that fight innovation are not hard to find but it is hard to match the history of Luddism of the recording industry. Kyle Bylin of Hypebot.com summarizes that history well:
In a desperate attempt to preserve existing cultural and social norms or potential damage to the current social institution, the traditional record industry has gone to war with everything from the phonograph to player pianos to home-taping, claiming that these new technologies would effectively kill of music.
All of these innovations, only re-engendered enthusiasm for music.
That quote is from an excellent interview with Steve Knopper of Rolling Stone, author of Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age. Knopper and Bylin discuss the often bewildering responses of the recording industry to innovations that they could have seen as opportunities. Well worth checking out.
Thinking about Research — Short Takes (2)
The paradoxes of choice overload — another installment of Kyle Bylin’s series on the paradoxes of choice overload of cultural products (on Music Think Tank). The article uses the I-Pod as an example and applies choice theory to the analysis and how the I-Pod can make “maximizers” miserable and turn “optimicizers” into maximizers. [A short excerpt below]
Savor Your Music: The Effect of Abundance in Culture
III. Overloaded With Choice
As you might guess, fans who exhibit the tendency to maximize their music experiences are also those who are the most susceptible to the paradoxes of choice overload. When a fan is overwhelmed by the number of songs on their iPod; it will be easier for them to regret a choice if the alternatives are plentiful than if they were scarce, especially if the alternatives are so plentiful that not all of them could be investigated. This makes it easy for them to imagine that they could’ve made a different choice that would’ve been better. All the imagined alternatives then, induce the fan to regret the decision they made, and this regret subtracts from the satisfaction they get out of the decision they made, even if it was agood song. It is, however, not the best song. To consider the attractiveness of the alternative songs that they rejected causes them to become less satisfied with the one they’ve chosen, leading them to keep scrolling through their iPod. The more songs they consider, these missed opportunities add up, and collectively diminish the amount of satisfaction they get out of the chosen alternative.
Social Media & Social Capital (an applied approach)
As an ethnomusicologist applying my training as a researcher and scholar to work outside of academia, I am looking for ideas of how others are approaching putting humanities and social science research and analysis to work in cultural projects (commercial or non-profit or public). Although, undoubtedly shaped by a different cultural and political setting, the efforts of the InteractiveCultures group of the Birmingham School of Media recently caught my attention. The description of their work presents an engaging model for the much-needed creation of effective interfaces between arts & culture research and arts & culture practice and policy:
Our work is part of a wider strategy by the Birmingham School of Media to make arts and humanities research useful in commercial and cultural projects, and to ensure academics engage with commerce and culture. Our partners have improved their business models, developed new insights, or instigated new cultural strategies as a result of their work with us…. We provide a consultancy service for partners from businesses and organisations in the cultural sector, developing new modes of working and informing public policy. We demonstrate creative online techniques, assist our partners in developing new strategies, and work on online prototypes.
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My interest was especially captured by a recent blog post on InteractiveCultures by Jon Hickman (Social Capital & Social Media) that resonated with my prior work on the social capital created by a nightclub district in North Richmond, California and research on online musical communities. Hickman expands upon an earlier conference paper to make a simple, yet important, point: a community created by social media is not simply a network but a culture dependent on the availability of social capital to its members. The social capital created by social media is not equivalent to that described by Robert Putman in his landmark Bowling Alone (which built on the work of earlier sociologists, such as M.S. Granovelter’s “The Strength of Weak Ties”) but firmly in line with the earlaier use of the term by Pierre Bourdieu as:
…aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to the possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition (Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. 1986, p.248)
Eschewing the theoretical frameworks and formulas placed on the analysis of social capital by Putnam (and others that came before and after him), this approach simply acknowledges “that social capability can confer power upon individuals and groups.” As Hickman states, “… that is the key issue at the basis of much that is interesting about social media.” Further, this approach opens up many interesting questions. The one Hickman addresses is how social media communities use social capital to work together for a particular benefit to the community. Community members utilize the potential social capital “resource” that existed and “was activated by a set of social media practices, delivering benefit to its collective owners. Without the social capital, the clever social media tools would be useless.” The last sentence is crucial to remember when examining social media practices — it’s not the technology but the members that have agency.
Music Industry Reading List from Dave Haynes of SoundCloud
An installment of the series of summer music industry readings lists being published by Hypebot (for me essential music biz reading). This list if from Dave Haynes of SoundCloud.
Dave Haynes’s Summer Reading List (for the entire text). Below is an abbreviated version with my added keywords before each one:
(1) virtual reality, creativity, web 2.0
You Are Not a Gadget by Jaron Lanier – … best known as a pioneer of virtual reality, (Lanier) argues against many of the web 2.0 theories and … makes the case that these trends could stifle creativity, individualism and expression in the human race.
(2) art, creativity, self-expression, success
Linchpin by Seth Godin – Linchpin… argues that we must become indispensable, setting about our ‘true art’ rather than being content with being just another cog in the wheel. And that in today’s environment that’s not just desirable but actually vital, if we’re to succeed.
(3) web 2.0, technology, gin, sit-coms, creativity, media, social network
Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky – argues that the critical technology that got everyone through the early phase of the Industrial Revolution was actually gin! People had to drink themselves into a stupor just to get through it. In the Post-Industrial Age the gin-equivalent has been the sitcom. The compelling argument here is that times are now changing. We’re no longer happy to sit back and simply consume. A new generation has started to watch less and less TV and use this spare time, this cognitive surplus, to participate and create. Whether it’s posting to Wikipedia, leaving comments on blogs, uploading videos to Youtube or creating lolcats, the fact is that things are getting more participatory and it’s easy to create and publish. Media is no longer a one-way street.
(4) inspiration
What Matters Now by Seth Godin – Godin… has compiled a really inspiring e-book with wise words from all manner of different people on ‘What Matters Now’. Contributions come from the likes of Fred Wilson, Joi Ito, Kevin Kelly, Hugh MacLeod, Chris Anderson, Tim O’Reilly, Gary Vaynercuk, Jason Fried etc. It’s a very simple idea, get a bunch of smart people, ask them to write one short page on what they thing matters now, compile it into an e-book, then ask people to go and share it for free.
(5) fiction, music industry
Kill Your Friends: A Novel by John Niven – an extremely dark tale set in the late 90′s, at the height of Britpop, about an A&R guy working at a major label. It’s loosely based on the author’s own experience of working in the music biz and a murderous plotline is wrapped around tales of ridiculous A&R meetings, demands from artists and trips to music conferences such as SXSW and Midem.
Deciphering Culture
