On January 17th, 2009, the heroic Mike Masnick (of Techdirt fame) descended into a lion’s den wielding a sword of flame to guide a lost people to salvation. Ok, well, it didn’t happen quite like that, but it was pretty close. Just think music business conference instead of lion’s den, 280 Powerpoint slides instead of a flaming sword, financial success instead of salvation and the record industry instead of… no, I guess that part is accurate. Masnick gave a presentation on Trent Reznor and the Formula for Future Music Business Models at MidemNet in Cannes, Frances and, at only 15 minutes long, it’s definitely a must watch for anyone remotely interested in a future in the music business.
It’s a case study on Reznor, whose provided countless examples of these business models in practice, but Mike abstracts the common pattern in them all:
Connection with Fans (CwF) + Reason to Buy (RtB) = The Business Model $$$
(And no, it’s not about royalties, micropayments or forcing people to buy stuff!)
My sister was kind enough to film my set at January’s Kelly’s Korner, a monthly open mic. at St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto. I played two covers. The first is a song written by a friend and inspiration of mine, Robyn Dell’Unto (a local singer/songwriter I usually accompany on violin). She didn’t know I was covering the song, but another friend texted her during the performance, so my secret didn’t last too long. I played her the video last Thursday and she didn’t hate it! The next video is the third acoustic Tool cover I’ve done, but the first to be recorded/filmed. There are a few rough spots as this was the debut of the cover, but it turned out fairly well.
In March 2006, the Hart House Chamber Strings had their first pops concert (photos). I play bass with the chamber strings, and I’ve since taken over as administrator for the pops concert, but that first concert really left an impression on me.
Especially Kevin Fox.
He closed the night and played a song called “Phone Booth” off his upcoming album, Songs for Cello & Voice. Unreal.
I’ve since run across Kevin many times. He worked as musical director with Shaye for a while, and I met Damhnait Doyle through the Humber Summer Songwriting Workshop, so I saw him perform with them. I swear I saw him in a Jann Arden music video, and I saw him play with Andy Kim at Hugh’s Room. He also played cello on some of Robyn Dell’Unto’s recordings.
As a songwriter and cellist, he’s doing exactly what I’m trying to do with songwriting and violin. Kevin Fox is my hero.
I’ve had Phone Booth stuck in my head for years, and yesterday I finally got to hear it again. After finding his Facebook Musician Page, I came across this YouTube video and found more tracks from his upcoming album on his website.
Michael Wesch has an amazing video called An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube. Though it’s well worth watching the full hour, I wanted to highlight a particular moment which really stood out for me. The overlay of the video, Us (which is already a remix of Regina Spektor and popular films), with Wesch’s commentary and part of a speech by Lawrence Lessig raises the hair on my free culture arms.
Mike Ho from Techdirt provides his take on the “glorious future” of video players, sentiments with which I can strongly empathize:
With each new offering, it seems like viewers need a separate and proprietary piece of video playing software which is obviously aimed at enhancing the viewing experience for the audience. The DRM and the crazy number of different time limitations for how long you can watch you downloaded shows are really just bonus features. Imagine the glorious future of watching a la carte videos where every distribution channel has its own player and set of rules for how you can consume the content. Future DVRs will incorporate access control systems that would rival the most complex enterprise content management systems of today. I can’t wait to click through dozens of end-user agreements just to watch my favorite time-shifted shows! Progress is great.
I recently helped a family friend install a Rogers HD PVR at their home. It was an educational experience. They had several devices that needed to be hooked into the TV, but once everything was plugged in I thought it would be ready to go. Not so with Rogers… turning the HD PVR on for the first time displayed only a screen saying: “Your settop box has not yet be authorized. Please call <phone number/>”
I will never purchase a device that needs to phone home in order to turn on and work for me.
Rogers has a right to control the use of their network, sure, but to control your own device in your own house? The most obvious problem that comes to mind would be if you ever cancelled your Rogers cable account (say, to switch to another provider). Sure, the box may not work with another provider, that’s expected, but you wouldn’t even be able to turn it on to watch TV shows you’ve already recorded! Never mind trying to get this device to play nice with other devices you own…
Until a commercial company starts offering something that isn’t defective by design, I’m sticking to MythTV.
I recently had a friend record a video clip of a performance and send it to me. The video turned out great, but it was a whopping 240 MB for 2 minutes and 15 seconds. Not only is that a bit of a nuisance, but it’s also beyond the upload limits of video hosting sites like YouTube.
I had a lot of difficulty trying to figure out how to use either ffmpeg or mencoder to do the conversion, but ultimately this command worked:
I was able to modify someone else’s command (found here) to do the trick for me. I think something is still off though… as the mpeg thinks it’ll only 41 seconds long.. I’m guessing the perfect solution lies in some different bitrate/sampling settings… *shrugs*
But hey, it works! And the resulting video is only 14.5 MB (not to mention awesome)!
The NY Times website used to be the perfect example of what not to do with a newspaper website – put up a pay-wall to keep most users out. It’s hard to think of something more annoying than that. It goes against the basic nature of the Internet and the basic expectations of most users. Also, their website was just an electronic version of the print newspaper, so it didn’t even offer anything particularly compelling in order to get people to pay.
But they’ve changed. NY Times’ web developers attended OSCON this year. They’ve opened up the website and put their focus on making their website a destination, on attracting users by making the website useful rather than forcing users to pay for content that they can get elsewhere for free. They’ve launched blogs and podcasts and RSS feeds and all those other useful sorts of things.
I came across the Republic YouTube Debate on their website (via Greg Wilson) which was a great sign of that. Why wouldn’t somebody just watch this on YouTube? Well, the NY Times website offers a transcript of the video that scrolls along beside it and they offer bookmarks so that you can jump to a specific section of the 111 minute-long debate. Also, there’s a transcript analyzer which allows you to view who spoke when and for how long. These are the types of things that attract visitors to your website.
(When I mentioned this to my dad, he directed my attention toward the University of Toronto’s ePresence project – an open source webcasting project that allows you to do more with video, something along these lines.)
