The “New” Music Industry

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Before he signs a new band to his independent music label, Franz Schuller usually gives aspiring musicians bad news: They’re probably not going to be famous. This bitter pill is briskly followed by another: “Whatever they think they knew about the music industry from what they’ve heard, or read, or seen on television, that really doesn’t exist any more,” says Mr. Schuller. “It’s really, really hard for artists out there now. It’s an insanely huge challenge to actually make a decent living playing music these days. That’s the reality.”

Ok, I do not know much about the music industry but right away this statement by a music industry insider put me off. If this is true then all the musicians are doomed and it’s the end of the indie music industry and we will all be listening to manufactured pop from the major labels from now.

But wait. Is that what’s really happening? No. We consumers of indie music are not being forced to listen to manufactured music at all. There are tonnes and tonnes of choices of indie musicians who are  creating superb music. I am a child of the 90s but I can say without any doubt in my mind that the indie music scene at the moment has been the best EVER.

Schuller thinks that bands will never make it in the real world.

“For all the massive opportunity that the Internet and mobile phones and devices give us by reaching millions and millions of people, there’s also a gazillion bands. It’s really hard to get noticed or to get anyone’s attention,” says Mr. Schuller. “It’s allowed people with absolutely no business competing in the same space to complicate the careers of people who do have a lot of talent. There’s way, way too much stuff out there.”

So, the reason you are not making money because untalented people are taking up your space??? What the fuck? That is one of the crappiest statements I have ever heard. You will get noticed if you are good and if you think you are destined to be famous then tap on the shoulder of your management not the technology. No one is asking you to be a technology genius. Just be smart about how to connect to people. If you can’t do it, ask your friends, family, your fans or just google it. I cannot believe that the reason why you are not successful is because you think someone else it taking up your space. What nonsense.

And then there is this :

This rings true for Tim Baker, lead singer of the burgeoning Newfoundland-based band Hey Rosetta!, which made the shortlist for this year’s Polaris Prize. As social networking technologies grow more popular, bands are put under pressure to communicate with their fans in a way that didn’t exist a decade ago.

“I just want to create a clone who actually enjoys being online,” he says with a laugh. “What a band is historically supposed to do is tour, and write music and put on shows. When you get home, your time off is actually way more work than being on the road.”

Again. What nonsense. If you do not like to spend time on line – Don’t. Please. Spare us.

Just make sure your music is easily accessible (iTunes, emusic, amazon) and put up shows in different parts of the country to stay in touch with your fans. Stay away from Twitter and facebook if it bugs you so much. I want to hear your music and I will pay for it and your shows/t-shirts. I do not want to hear about your life. I have no interest in it.

I think that’s what bugs some of the musicians these days. Gone are the days where a musician could define a fan, now it’s the fan who defines a musician.The fan decides what he/she wants to hear, what he/she wants to share and what he/she wants to spend money on. The musician should focus on what they do best, play music and leave the business of making money to the quality of their music.

Watch this video to learn the business model of the new music industry.

Why Twitter Rocks

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Twitter, with its 140 character per message limitation, is no match for the capacity to put a lifetime online the way a member of Facebook can or the ability to watch the Michael Jackson funeral online the way viewers of CNN.com can.

It would probably be hard to get the average user of Twitter to say much about what he or she would lose if the service disappeared. Obviously, research shows that many of these people are Twitter members in name only. Many others seem to use the service infrequently. That leaves some number of “hardcore” people who spend a substantial part of their time sending each other Tweets for the better part of some or, in unfortunate cases, most days. Twitter is for them, a cell phone without a voice. Based on that analogy most of the time spent on Twitter has no redeeming social or economic value, unless it connects the agoraphobic or the desperately lonely.

It may be old fashioned to look at the value of a business based on whether it provides any real service to the people who are its “customers.”  The best way to evaluate that may simply be to ask what would happen if Twitter suddenly went away. In the case of McDonald’s (MCD), Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), or Wal-Mart (WMT) a sudden disappearance would be a really big problem for its customers.

If Twitter closes, or ceases to operate because its service is constantly interrupted, no one would be really affected.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Douglas’s article, What If Twitter Folds, is just awful. He basically compares twitter to cellphones and then goes on to explain how twitter is useless except for “the agoraphobic or the desperately lonely”. (I find it fascinating how morons who do not comprehend a technology immediately assume it’s for the losers of the society).

A brief rant about twitter.

The first thing you have to understand is that twitter is not new. It’s been around in the form of IRC (Internet Relay Channels) for quite a while now. Ask enterprising journalists how they got their news during the parliament troubles in USSR in 1991.

I agree that most of what’s on twitter is mindless chatter. But once you see signs of mindless chatter, it is your fault if you encourage it or participate in it. You can easily ignore the mindless chatter and if you do not do so, please don’t complain about being told what your friend had for breakfast. Mindless tweets are something that journalists love to brandish about again and again and I swear, it’s these journalists who encourage idiots to continue broadcasting their life.

What I find fascinating about twitter is the ability to streamline the tweets as per your requirement. I want to hear from some news organisations, from the popular bloggers, from close friends, from people who share my passion for running, passion for tennis, passion for formula 1 racing etc.

The company I work for is following the trends on twitter closely and wants to integrate it within the company platform. How that will work? No clue but the point is that companies are paying attention to this technology and just because 40.5% of tweets are about what one did a few minutes ago, does not mean that MSM dismiss the rest of the tweets which continue to inspire and entertain.

So, to go back to the question, what would happen if twitter folds? I can only answer that question with another question : Dougie boy, did you ask the Iranians that question, Douglas?

……..the State Department asked Twitter not to go down at its original time last night in order to allow Iranians to tweet out what’s happening in their cities. It also seems that U.S. officials are watching the chatter on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and elsewhere to keep up-to-speed with the situation on the ground.

UPDATE : I just noticed the header on the article bashing twitter. FAIL……Hilarious!!!

Net Neutrality Finally Arrives In Canada

I have been waiting for sometime for this bill to appear here in Canada.

Net neutrality issue has now been tabled to House of Commons and the games will now begin in earnest. I am glad it was the NDP that tabled the bill. NDP is famous for “championing the cause of the under-represented” so I guess the lobbying of Bell and Rogers did not really have much impact on the decision by NDP to put in clear wording in the bill.

Network management practices

36.1 (1) Network operators shall not engage in network management practices that favour, degrade or prioritize any content, application or service transmitted over a broadband network based on its source, ownership or destination.

Although I am not sure what this means?

Exceptions		(2) Nothing in subsection (1) shall be construed as limiting or restricting the right of a network operator to
		(a) manage the flow of network traffic in a reasonable manner in order to relieve congestion;

I hope this exception will not be construed as a loophole to “manage” congestion caused by brats playing video games or BitTorrent and other downloads. Either way, it will be interesting to see how this plays in House Of Commons. I am going to write to my MP, better contact your MP soon.

Oh This Is Absolutely Sh*t

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Rogers Communications Inc. is gearing up to make Internet use more expensive for consumers who have a penchant for chewing up bandwidth by downloading movies or playing video games online.

Bandwidth hogs who exceed their allotted limits on Rogers’s networks will face service-fee penalties of up to $5 a gigabyte, to a maximum of $25 a month.

I download movies and music heavily so I am definitely going to be affected. I don’t like the idea of paying more money than the $50 a month that I am charged by Roger’s but if that’s the price that the Internet monopolies of Canada have decided then so be it. But what really bugs the doodie out of me is this

On Tuesday, it was revealed that Bell Canada is rolling out a new strategy that restricts certain types of online traffic on its own networks and those it provides to third-party ISP wholesalers.

Both Rogers and Bell employ “shaping” techniques that slow down some kinds of Internet activity – mostly peer-to-peer and torrent file-sharing traffic transmissions of large files such as videos – and give priority to other data.

What the f*ucking hell!!?! That means that not only do I have to pay top dollars for their ‘un-limited” bandwidth, I also have to be subjected to data filtering? This is absolute crap. So muc for net neutrality in Canada.

Does anyone know of any other company providing Internet connections beside Bell and Roger’s in Toronto?