music

One of the coolest music related services I’ve found recently is thesixtyone.com.

The idea behind the site is to turn scouting for new independent music into a game. From their website:

thesixtyone makes music discovery a fun, adventurous experience with persistent reputation and rewards — it’s like a massively-multiplayer game for music junkies who are always on the prowl for new sounds…

Musicians upload their music for listening, but rather than allowing the Simon Cowells of the world decide which songs go on the homepage, the listeners do. If you like a song you’ve found on thesixtyone, just click the “bump” button to increase its bump count. Doing so will cost you points, but if songs you bump get bumped by others, you can earn more points! Collecting points increases your level and reflects your skill in picking top songs in your favorite genre!

By listening to songs through the lens of the collective community on thesixtyone, you’ll always find good new music. We’re committed to giving every bit of music on the web the opportunity to find its audience.

mebeli

It can be quite an addictive experience as one logs in regularly to be the first to bump (”firstbump”) a great new song or just to check your score against others in the community.

I’m sure that this model of new music discovery will eventually replace the traditional music industry “gate keepers” in their role of taste makers. Just listen to “front page” songs that have gotten significant bumpage and although you probably won’t recognize more than a couple mainstream acts, you’ll find that songs that get that kind of attention are without exception, Quality music. That’s the power of the collective. We can weed out our own trash, Mr. A&R man.

In honor of this exciting discovery I’m posting my first thesixtyone.com song as the trackoday:

Love During Wartime by The Main Drag (warning: myspace link) is a track that I think is tragically underbumped, so don’t be afraid to click on it and set up an account. It’s free and you can help this track gain some dearly deserved momentum. Oh, and if you do set up an account, don’t forget to list me (gumptionthomas) as a referrer.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/93-music-piracy/

Would you like me to provide you with a weekly mix of music rarities from my collection?

I’m almost speechless.

If it was any other artist, I might have looked the other way, but in Bob Dylan’s case this must mean something. For someone who’s built an entire career railing against greed, war, and other anti-social behaviors, I have to assume that this cross-promotional ad campaign between the Cadillac Escalade and XM Radio (on whose satellites Dylan hosts a show) means that after some soul-searching, Dylan has decided we’re all doomed and has given up on humanity. Sure, he’s done commercials in the past for Victoria’s Secret and the iPod, but it seems to me that the Cadillac/XM campaign is different. Either he’s got Alzheimer’s and is simply a shell of his former self being handled by his management company, or else he’s given up completely. Unfortunately for all of us, I see no indication of the former and have every reason to believe the latter.

Now, don’t read this as an anti-Dylan post. Far from it actually. Mr. Dylan and his music have greatly influenced my life and personal philosophies. In fact, I find it ironic that he’s chosen to roll this way just as I find myself facing a similar internal struggle. On the one hand, I feel like finally giving up on humanity and living the carefree lifestyle that is the right of a near-post-peak empire citizen (see the myth behind the Roman Vomitoriums for an idea of what that could be like). On the other hand, my default mode is usually to still give a damn and try to be a good earthly citizen in the hope that humanity will finally get it’s act together and, against all odds, solve the myriad of problems we’ve created for ourselves.

Let’s just say Dylan has put a tick in the Vomitorium column.

It’s been quite a week for those of us that have been waiting patiently for music artists, especially acts with an established following, to dump their record companies and begin to interact directly with their fans. Of course, some artists (Harvey Danger, for example) have done so long ago, but this week saw Radiohead capture the collective imagination of the media and receive nearly wall-to-wall coverage of the self-release of their new album. I never would have guessed back in 1993 when I bought my first Radiohead album that they would be the proverbial canary in the music industry coal mine. Once other artists saw the free media hype that the band was getting for their new album, suddenly it became a “me too” game as The Charlatans, Nine Inch Nails, and Jamiraquoi all announced that they had left their record companies behind and were going to start selling directly to their fans. I could have included Madonna in that list as well, except that she dumped her label only to sign a similar contract with a tour promotion company. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. But that’s fine, she’s never really been on the cutting edge of music industry trends.

So, was the hype for Radiohead’s new album worth it? The music, I mean. Did the content of this industry-breakthrough album live up to its historical importance? After nearly constant listening since Wednesday morning, my opinion is that it is a solid release that continues to unfold listen after listen, but it is far from Radiohead’s best work. That being said, there are a couple of fantastic tracks, one of which I’ve chosen for the trackoday:

Bodysnatchers by Radiohead from In Rainbows

Purchase In Rainbows Directly From Radiohead

Now for the funny bit. The album download came without album art of any kind. A bit of a bummer, but I understand that they intend to use cover art as an additional carrot to purchase the CD/LP combo box set for about $80. I don’t currently have that kind of disposable cash laying around since my dog, Babbage, has had more income than me since I quit my corporate job in March (“When starting a new venture, be prepared for a long period of putting in before you can begin taking anything out.”). Instead, I improvised and made my own cover art from a screen grab of the In Rainbows website. However, while reading Global Nerdy this morning, I saw much more inspired fan-art:

(via Global Nerdy)

I just got my e-mail from Radiohead with the magic link to download their new album, In Rainbows. I chose to pay £4.00 for the digital download. Of course, I could have paid less, or even nothing as the album has instantly appeared on all the popular P2P networks, but about $9 seemed like a bargain. And this is the important part, I felt good giving my money to the band. That good feeling was partially because I wanted to support this kind of business model, but mostly because I like the band and want to support them in making more music. I finally have a direct channel to the musicians and I can rest assured that my money is going directly to the band (minus the credit card fee, of course), rather than being used to subsidize lavish lifestyles for label bosses.

This development is very exciting to me personally. As many of you know, I’ve been working for the last few months on a project called djedna, which is a music distribution, e-commerce, and marketing engine/framework for independent artists and labels (as well as the home user who may want to access their personal music collection from any browser in the world). One of the payment options I had been planning on implementing was “donations,” where the artist could set a minimum price (usually, just enough to cover the credit card transaction fee) and allow the fan to decide how much to pay. Well, Radiohead has provided justification for that feature!

I will be releasing djedna as open-source (meaning anyone can download it and use it for free — thus the informal tag line of “Software For The Rock Star’s Geek Friend”) when it gets a little further along. Currently, the code base is a little messy and I’d be embarrassed to show it to the world, but it’s getting closer by the day. If you’d like to see my own installation (minus all of the cool features, like e-commerce, since it contains my own purchased CD collection rather than original music), check out DJ Edna @ Gumption. For those that are curious, I wrote it in Python using the un-freaking-believably-cool-and-fun web-framework, Django.

I’d like to determine if the same business model can work for open-source software. Yes, this model, known in the software biz as Shareware, has been around for a while now, with inconsistent results. But I figure if I’m “selling” this software to musicians and labels that are using this same business model, they may more inclined to pay something for it, even if they don’t have to.

I believe that the main reason this “pay what you feel it’s worth” model has been slow to take off is that historically (i.e. pre-internet) there have been very few (if any) products where the distribution costs approach zero, making this payment model possible without “giving away the farm.” We, as consumers, just aren’t that familiar with the option to pay. However, I also believe that we’re adaptable (especially the generations growing up with the internet) and before long we won’t associate “set your own price” with “free.” That is, we’ll all soon learn how to quickly judge what these products are worth to us, without the “one size fits all” price set by the producer. We’ll use all kinds of information to come up with the “value” (Robert Pirsig might call this the Quality with a capital Q) of a product, and most of that information will be the kind we rarely think about today when buying, say, a jar of peanut butter:

• “Do I want to support the people/company that is producing this product?”
• “Do I want to see more of this kind of product?”
• “How does the Quality of this product compare to the Quality and price of other similar products I’ve already purchased?”
• “How much can I afford for this product right now? If not very much, will I pay more in the future if I have more?”
• “Do I want to pay a little extra to make up for those that can’t pay very much?”

Once we start learning to judge the value of a product ourselves, rather than just relying on the price the producer has come up with based only on their own concerns, I believe that this “pay what you think it’s worth” model will become more successful and popular. After all, the Quality and value of a product depends not only on the producer’s opinion, but on each individual consumer’s opinion, which is conditional on their own personal circumstances. The digital revolution has finally made this previously “impossible to implement” business model feasible.

And just remember, it was a rock band from England that brought this consumerist realization to the masses. Rock and roll revolution indeed!