Music

Kutiman, Big Media, and the Future of Creative Entrepreneurship

Merlin — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:51:00 -0400

So amazing, so illegal. What are we going to do with you, future?

That’s my pal, Jonathan Coulton, remarking on the disruptively talented Kutiman, who has made an astounding series of YouTube video remixes that’s lighting up the web and (one imagines) generating a lot of wood amongst our nation’s libidinous entertainment litigators.

Here’s Kutiman’s “The Mother of All Funk Chords” (link includes credits for each video):

Unsolicited tip for media company c-levels: if your reaction to this crate of magic is “Hm. I wonder how we’d go about suing someone who ‘did this’ with our IP?” instead of, “Holy crap, clearly, this is the freaking future of entertainment,” it’s probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page.

Because, this is what your new Elvis looks like, gang. And, eventually somebody will ﬁgure out (and publicly admit) that Kutiman, and any number of his peers on the “To-Sue” list, should be passed from Legal down to A&R.

Everybody knows the business has moved from legal to binary ﬁles. The question now is how much more lead time old media companies and other IP-obsessives can afford to burn by pretending it’s otherwise.

In the mean time, though, you have to wonder how much artists like Kutiman (or, for that matter, Jonathan), really need the mixed basket of theoretical beneﬁts that big companies with big distribution can provide. For a long-lived career, does a boot-strapping indie artist with giant niche appeal gain enough from a big-company relationship to offset the loss in agility, equity, and ﬂexibility? I guess we’ll ﬁnd out soon enough.

Because, even in the face of bullying, obfuscating, and throat-clearing from corporations with a homemade timetable for evolution, more and more folks like Kutiman will just keep making and releasing stuff. Cool stuff, “illegal” stuff, niche stuff, and stuff that doesn’t require the benediction of a middle-aged executive in order to reach its precise audience with almost zero friction or overhead.

And, that prospect should buoy and energize anybody with a scintilla of artistic entrepreneurship or the drive to just try making and offering their own stuff in their own way.

Man. What an exciting time this is. Seriously. We may not each have Kutiman-level talent and vision, but there’s absolutely never been a better time to at least give it a throw.

Remember: the only person who can sit on your ass is you.

”Kutiman, Big Media, and the Future of Creative Entrepreneurship” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on March 11, 2009. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

TWiT 133 with Jonathan Coulton and "Rock Bad"

Merlin — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 10:04:43 -0500

TWiT 133: Jonathan Coulton - Functional And Elegant

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Jonathan Coulton, Merlin Mann, Veronica Belmont, Ryan Block, and Tom Merritt
Jonathan Coulton and niche broadcasting, HD DVD ﬁnally kaput, YouTube goes down, frozen RAM and more.

Here’s a free, direct MP3 download of TWiT 133.

Man, I really loved this episode. Jonathan Coulton’s music and performances are inspiring in themselves, but as a fellow (albeit, much more modestly successful) “microbrand,” I have huge respect for how he runs the business of his career. (more after the jump, including why we were all on this episode together in the ﬁrst place)

Jonathan engages his audience actively (on- and off- stage) and he’s crafted an approach to making a career out of entertainment that is nothing short of disruptive. As I said in this episode, it’s my belief that in about 5 years, Jonathan (along with folks like Jane Siberry/Issa) will be seen as Patient Zero in the unravelling of a 90-year-old, sheet music-based business model that’s based on false scarcity and lawsuits rather than engagement and service.

That said, Jonathan is also a terriﬁcally talented writer and performer who knows how to scratch his audience’s itch. I’ll admit that one of the entertainment highlights of my year-to-date involved joining a roomful of ecstatic zombie nerds on Friday night for the singalong of “All we want to do is eat your brains!”

Also, of passing note in this episode, at least to me: since our last visit, it appears JoCo is now not only a Mac nerd (12” PowerBook), but a sometime Inbox Zero practitioner, and a Kinkless fan. (gulp: we need to get him a license for OmniFocus). Welcome to the Mac family, Jonathan!

So. If you haven’t yet had the “pleasure” of seeing why we all happened to be together on TWiT a couple days after it happened: here’s video of our group – which I’ve dubbed “Rock Bad” – failing at the soon-to-be-released Rock Band version of “Still Alive” (despite the yeoman’s work of Veronica Belmont):

Jonathan Coulton performs “Still Alive” in Rock Band from Joy Stiq on Vimeo.

But, you should hear me sing “Don’t Fear the Reaper” in Rock Band: I kill. Drums? Not so much.

Jonathan’s music can be purchased for digital download from a variety of sources including Amazon.com (in DRM-free MP3s) and iTunes (DRM’d AACs).

”TWiT 133 with Jonathan Coulton and "Rock Bad"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 25, 2008. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Jacob Marley vs. Bob Marley: Shutting Out the Ghost of Music Past

wood.tang — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 17:32:10 -0500

In the few weeks since I wrote my ﬁrst plea to trim the fat from your iTunes library, I’ve continued purging my own collection. On the ﬁrst pass, I simply deleted the clearly objectionable stuff, things that I couldn’t understand what made me want to keep them in the ﬁrst place. It was rather easy, and like I said, it slimmed my corpulent media collection by a third.

Now though, it’s getting down to brass tacks, and I’m making some hard decisions about what to keep. I don’t need to do this for disk space, mind you, but as I’ve been trying to do a better job of organizing all my music and video with smarter lists and ratings, I’ve come to a simple conclusion: even if I still think it’s good, I just have too much.

“A massive CD collection never felt like such a psychic burden as a massive iTunes library.”

Other than the cost of acquiring it and the physical space it consumed, a massive CD collection never felt like such a psychic burden as a massive iTunes library. Because what I listened to on CD was limited to what I consciously pulled off the shelf, years of questionable purchases and bands that didn’t age well never crashed my DJ party. They simply stayed on the shelf, collecting dust. But now that the booty bass novelty song that used to be so much fun back in college has just as good a chance of popping up on shufﬂe as “No Woman No Cry,” it comes back to haunt me like the Ghost of Music Past, with gold chains clanking around his neck instead of shackles.

I realize I can avoid this problem with more smart playlists and clever tagging (or simply hitting the skip button), but how many people have the time to give that kind of care and feeding to a 10,000-track library? I’m one of the most obsessive music collectors I know, and I don’t do it. The answer isn’t so much devising a better needle-retrieval system as it is creating a smaller haystack.

This whole purging process has made me realize how much my tastes have changed. My main test when deciding to keep a song/album/artist now is to ask: would I ever intentionally pick this out to play? If the answer is no, I dump it. It’s a much different answer than it was 10 years ago, and even if I used to blast the hell out of a certain song, if I can’t see myself reaching for it again, it’s time to move on.

This time around, I’m at least making a compromise by archiving the ﬁles instead of permanently deleting them (tip: tell iTunes to move them to the trash, then copy the ﬁles out of your trash bin before you empty it). It’s fun to reminisce sometimes, but it shouldn’t be that much work to sort out what your former self enjoyed from what you simply want to hear now.

”Jacob Marley vs. Bob Marley: Shutting Out the Ghost of Music Past” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 16, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Put Your iTunes Library on a Diet

wood.tang — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 22:24:42 -0400

My music buying habits have slowed considerably since my college days, when I’d rush down to the music store every Tuesday and spend every penny I hadn’t guzzled through a beer bong the previous weekend, but I still managed to amass a rather prodigious CD collection. When I got a Mac and an iPod, this turned into a rather prodigious iTunes library, and quickly became a major thorn in my side.

Having suffered through a couple hard drive crashes, upgrades, and subsequent backing and re-backing up lately, I’ve really been feeling the weight of that 100+ GB media millstone around my neck. I felt so great when I ripped that last CD and put all those unsightly jewel cases into storage, thinking it would simplify my life. Instead, it just created bigger headaches.

I know, I know, there are a bazillion ways I can slice and dice my iTunes library, storing it on different drives, shunting the videos off to a server, pimping out my machines with terabyte drives, etc, but it begs the question: do I really need all that crap in my life?

I ﬁnally started doing something about it by ordering what I called D-Day II. My D-Day I happened in college when someone swiped a CD wallet full of about 50 discs, the ﬁrst major casualties to my music collection. The irony is that while my renter’s insurance paid me a pretty good settlement, I only repurchased about half of what I lost, and those were the supposed good albums that I was carrying around in my car all the time. It should have taught me the lesson back then that when it comes to buying music, we all suck.

So D-Day II involved combing through my iTunes library, deleting all the music I knew that not only would I never listen to again, but would probably embarrass me if it popped up in a party shufﬂe. Face it, as we get older, our tastes change. All those middling, B-list albums I bought based off recommendations from Yo! MTV Raps or three-star ratings in Rolling Stone? Gone. The 90% ﬁller tracks on albums I basically bought for one good song? Gone. It was surprising how much junk I was toting around; after one pass, without making any really tough calls, I slimmed my iTunes library by a third.

And don’t get me started with video. I haven’t even bought that many TV shows or movies from iTunes, but I can already see it’s going to cause problems. Once my son passes his Dora phase, it’ll be adios, Swiper, no swiping my hard drive space. And as much as I loved those seasons of Weeds, I can’t see myself ever watching them again, so if push comes to shove, Nancy and Conrad will have to go too.

I understand some of you may not have the guts to delete this stuff completely, but do yourself a favor and move the ﬁles to an external disk. Then put it away, mark down the date, and if a year later you haven’t touched it, delete that thing and use it for porn again like it was meant to be. If you’re having trouble getting started, Merlin posted some good tips about using smart playlists to identify the lame stuff.

Smart people like Peter Walsh are making a career out of helping us purge our physical junk, but we neglect our computer junk and end up with digital rec rooms stuffed full of bad 311 albums and box sets of Fastlane. What’s the worst that can happen anyway? You’ll have to buy a few albums again? Trust me, you won’t even miss them.

”Put Your iTunes Library on a Diet” was written by Matt Wood for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on October 15, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Amazon launches sale of DRM-free MP3s

Merlin — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 17:35:30 -0400

Daring Fireball: The Amazon MP3 Store and Amazon MP3 Downloader

Given the Amazon MP3 Store’s audio quality, prices, and user experience, I can’t see why anyone would buy DRM-restricted music from iTunes that’s available from Amazon. And given that Amazon is quite a bit cheaper than iTunes Plus, you might as well check Amazon ﬁrst. I plan to.

I’m with Gruber – this is a welcome and fan-friendly addition to the marketplace. And, frankly, I’m glad there’s ﬁnally somebody out there who can really give Apple some competition in this area.

One thing: I’m surprised that MP3 sales links aren’t yet mixed into regular CD sales pages. That must certainly be high on their TODO list. Because Amazon’s Google juice is strong as hell, and on the day they put “Buy This Track Now” onto a few dozen thousand PR5+ music pages? Well. That may be the day Apple gets to really see what competition in this space looks like.

”Amazon launches sale of DRM-free MP3s” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on September 25, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Piano prodigy on focus and flow

Merlin — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 05:45:49 -0400

TED | Talks | Jennifer Lin: Magical improv from 14-year-old pianist (video)

This video from the 2004 TED Conference is extraordinary for a few reasons. First, the prepared performances by then-14-year-old composer and pianist Jennifer Lin are lovely and technically very accomplished. And – wow – the improvisation she creates on the spot (16:45) is really something.

But, I also wanted to draw your attention to her thoughts on creativity and ﬂow – discussing how she tries to beat distraction and gain focus in both drawing and composition. Her discussion starts around 13:31, but do stick around after for her improv based upon randomly chosen notes.

[via Metaﬁlter]

”Piano prodigy on focus and flow” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on July 30, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

NYT Magazine on Coulton, Hold Steady, and "Artist 2.0"

Merlin — Sun, 13 May 2007 10:22:43 -0400

Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog

Jonathan Coulton
on The Merlin Show

Fun story by Clive Thompson in today’s New York Times Magazine about what some people are coming to call “Artist 2.0” (or “Music 2.0”) – the post-plastic-disc world of musicians like Jonathan Coulton and The Hold Steady, who are actively engaging with their fans and not relying on the old school “spray and pray” approach to music marketing that’s still in practice by the majors and their foundering artistic properties.

Selected quotes from Clive’s article (plus clickable video of my interviews with Jonathan Coulton):

More than 3,000 people, on average, were visiting his site every day, and his most popular songs were being downloaded as many as 500,000 times; he was making what he described as “a reasonable middle-class living” — between $3,000 and $5,000 a month — by selling CDs and digital downloads of his work on iTunes and on his own site…

Coulton realized he could simply poll his existing online audience members, ﬁnd out where they lived and stage a tactical strike on any town with more than 100 fans, the point at which he’d be likely to make $1,000 for a concert. It is a ﬂash-mob approach to touring: he parachutes into out-of-the-way towns like Ardmore, Pa., where he recently played to a sold-out club of 140….

In total, 41 percent of Coulton’s income is from digital-music sales, three-quarters of which are sold directly off his own Web site. Another 29 percent of his income is from CD sales; 18 percent is from ticket sales for his live shows. The ﬁnal 11 percent comes from T-shirts, often bought online…

I also like how Clive highlighted the challenges of maintaining a virtual relationship with hundreds or thousands of people. And, I’ll bet a lot of bands would love to get their hands on the “software robot” that helps The Hold Steady speed up the tedious process of adding new “friends” to their MySpace.

Really good article. Nice work, as always, Clive.

In our recent interviews (part 1 and part 2) for The Merlin Show, Jonathan Coulton addressed some of these issues as well as discussing many of the other challenges and joys of working on your own and outside the system. Very inspiring fellow.

The Merlin Show 002: Interview: Jonathan Coulton, Part 1

Click To Play

Part 1 Show Notes »

The Merlin Show 007: Interview: Jonathan Coulton, Part 2

Click To Play

Part 2 Show Notes »

”NYT Magazine on Coulton, Hold Steady, and "Artist 2.0"” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on May 13, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

MacBreak Weekly Special: the iTunes & EMI deal

Merlin — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 12:22:08 -0400

MacBreak Weekly Special Edition: Fixing A Hole

Hosts: Leo Laporte, Merlin Mann, Alex Lindsay, and John Gruber

A special edition discussing the Apple EMI announcement. Look for our regular weekly MBW on Tuesday as usual.

Direct Download MP3 ﬁle

Here’s a few links related to this very cool story:

Apple Unveils Higher Quality DRM-Free Music on the iTunes Store - “DRM-free tracks from EMI will be offered at higher quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording, for just $1.29 per song.”
EMI Music launches DRM-free superior sound quality downloads across its entire digital repertoire - “EMI Music will continue to employ DRM as appropriate to enable innovative digital models such as subscription services”
2 April press conference - Downloadable audio of the press conference.
Daring Fireball: EMI to Offer DRM-Free Online Music - “So much for accusations that Jobs was full of shit with his ‘Thoughts on Music’ essay”
EMI, Apple partner on DRM-free premium music | CNET News.com - “When a reporter asked Jobs whether a Beatles deal with EMI was upcoming, Jobs replied, ‘I want to know that, too.’ Nicoli stressed that ‘we’re working on it.’”
World music market - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia on Flickr - Photo Sharing! - My take on one angle of this: “Combined, independent labels have twice EMI’s US market share…My suspicion is that indie sales spikes on iTunes may be what convinces the other majors to get into the game.”

”MacBreak Weekly Special: the iTunes & EMI deal” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on April 02, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

The Merlin Show: Two JVs and more

Merlin — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 08:19:00 -0500

& a Nick" align="right" width="150" height="*" class="photoframe" />

No, I haven’t yet interviewed Nick Mirov, but The Merlin Show’s launch week juggernaut rolls on with interviews featuring two “JV”s: Google’s Jeffrey Veen and San Francisco indie rock institution John Vanderslice (the latter of whom also has a show tonight at The Independent at which you should say hi if you see me). Clickable versions of both episodes provided after the jump.

Also, I’ve posted my ﬁrst in a series of credit highlights, beginning with John Roderick, the man behind the wonderful music you hear over our credits (it’s called “Blue Diamonds” and you can download it here).

Finally, if you haven’t yet subscribed for free, it’s a great time to hop in. Also, kindly note that, if you subscribe via iTunes, you can help me potentially overtake several popular public radio shows. Which would be really cool.

Jeffrey Veen

Click To Play

John Vanderslice

Warning: contains PG-13 language and at least one f-bomb.

Click To Play

Easy Subscription

http://feeds.themerlinshow.com/TheMerlinShow

”The Merlin Show: Two JVs and more” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on February 28, 2007. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"

Revenge of the Smart Playlist: 5 tricks for packrats & power users

Merlin — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 10:56:21 -0500

The success of yesterday’s post on the basics of Smart Playlists makes me think you might enjoy seeing a few more. So, today I want to show you how to get control of a very large iTunes library – to save space by getting rid of stuff you’re not enjoying or listening to, as well as bubble up stuff you may not even realize you like.

If you are an iTunes packrat but feel overwhelmed by your collection (or are simply running out of drive space), try these recipes for Smart Playlists to help you get it together.

Step 0: Backup

Before doing anything too fancy with your iTunes (or with anything else for that matter), always do a backup.

This could be as simple as dragging your library to an external drive, although personally I’d recommend a smarter tool – I recommend rsync for geeks, and ChronoSync for civilians.

In any case, don’t yell at me if you get confused and permanently delete your heirloom recordings. ‘Nuff said.

Big and Useless

This is the dullest instrument in our drawer, but if you’re on deadline for a video editing project and suddenly realize you have 200mb of disk space left – well, you need to delete some shit fast.

This Smart Playlist, as you can see, looks for the biggest bang for the buck in terms of deletion. It’s the fastest way to ﬁnd very large ﬁles that you aren’t listening to much. You could also use something like What Size for this, but, you know, that would be cheating.

Basic Culling

This one’s not much more sophisticated, but, if you’re doing regular backups, it’s my favorite way to quickly and responsibly reduce the disk space used by your library. As with many of these lists, you’ll start to see the value of rating your music; in addition to improving the quality of your lists and listening experience, it eventually becomes a quick way to determine which music you can afford to dump in a pinch.

Old Podcasts

Man, if you aren’t careful, podcasts will eat your lunch. Although iTunes provides useful tools for managing the number of eps you keep, per podcast series, you’ll be amazed how quickly old episodes will ﬁll up your drive.

This little fella does something insanely simple but critical; it pulls up any podcasts that you’ve already listened to, making it easy to select them all and delete quickly (without lots of COMMAND- clicking in the “Podcasts” window)

Sure you really like that?

This simple auditor calls you on your ratings. It looks at your higher-rated songs and sees if you’re skipping them often – a good sign you don’t like them as much as you claim. Very helpful way to refactor if you realize you’ve gotten too enthusiastic with the 5-star ratings.

Rate these

This does something like the opposite of the previous list – it pulls up songs that you’ve listened to a lot but have never rated. Again, if you’re going to get the most out of your Smart Playlists, it pays to rate stuff you have a strong opinion about. This is one of the fastest ways to do that.

You get the basic idea at this point. By tagging the crap out of your songs, adding correct genres, and rating rating rating, you can produce a library that is both more enjoyable and way more manageable. Even if you save every track you’ve ever added, you can always beneﬁt from the history of your behavior that iTunes has collected and exposed.

”Revenge of the Smart Playlist: 5 tricks for packrats & power users” was written by Merlin Mann for 43Folders.com and was originally posted on November 10, 2006. Except as noted, it's ©2009 Merlin Mann and licensed for reuse under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0. "Why a footer?"