Why and again why? Why does the industry feel, in particular the mayors feel like we the public need this. Is this the next step? First the vinyl disc as an audio carrier then the Compact disc and now the ‘Slot’?I’m not really that sure,  in this millenium it’s not that relevant anymore. It’s about content not the carrier of the content, now is it?

I read the press release a couple of weeks ago. From the bat I thought; ‘Uhm … Why?!’  To me this feels like a ‘fiasco’ like eighttrack, or something that’s more in my recent history and something I actually witnessed as a lil’ kid .. the CD-i.  Things that seem like a bright idea when they started it, but not really thinking the whole thing through.

The company SanDisk is also releasing a special player where you can slip your Slot Music Cards in. That’s just more of the same e.g. the discman back in the nineties. Not going to work… but maybe I’m wrong.

After all it’s just lil ol me and my tiny opinion (which apparently I share with a lot of people, just type in slotmusic in any search engine)

Apparently some marketing gurus considered it extremely funny to cross another border while marketing their products. Sometimes these lines are crossed in a funny way. Or at least shocking with a grin. 2 examples to show where ‘my’ edge is.

A good example from Holland: all kids from Holland know the Clown Bassie, who could not be seperated from his brother and acrobatic partner Adriaan. My point being, the’ve had so many shows on TV everybody knows them.
Recently a newsitem popped up: Bassie (who’s reached the age of 73 already) was accused of getting a 32 year old woman pregnant (!). The following days all news sites and blogs were discussing it. Bassie was a phenomena, how could he do something like that?
Of course, it turned out to be a ‘joke’ from an insurance company trying to prove their point: ‘be careful, you never know what will happen next in live so you’d better be insured’. They did, in a funny way.

Now the following is far more tricky to mention and I am not sure whether I should – mainly because there are some doubts about the validity of the whole story.
2 nights ago a young man called up one of Holland’s major radio stations. The show is called 90’s request, where people can just call and request whatever song they appreciate from the 90’s. This young man said he had a special request. Because he had only 10 hours to live. Understandably, the DJ’s were a bit suspicious and making some jokes about it. Then they realised the young man (19 years old) had been fighting cancer for 4 years and was going to be most likely one of the youngest people in Holland ever to use euthanasia to end his fight with the horrible disease. So the DJs were shocked and of course willing to play the song he requested (which was not from the 90’s but ok…).

Rumours are rising that this was also a marketing ‘joke’. Apparently a movie about a young guy fighting cancer will be premièred soon. You guess how the story of that movie ends…

If this all is true, I sincerely feel sorry for the guy or girl making up this ‘marketing’ idea.
You are the one being sick here.

EDIT: Where I stated ‘premièred’ I should have added that it was the TV première.

EDIT 2: Apparently it was a joke. A very sick one. Food for marketing thoughts however.

I visited a live gig of a band I didn’t know recently. The flyer stated singer/songwriter. That, in my humble opinion, mainly means guitar songs with a main person and a live smooth music playing band.

What I got was something totally different. The fact it was different matters here.

Create expectancy is creating value. Don’t mess it up. If you want people to be pleasantly surprised, choose a slogan or a combination of words (can also be signs) on the flyer that create some kind of expectation (most likely to be positive). Fulfil that expectation and you have something to learn, overwhelm and you succeed. Don’t let them go home disappointed. Because you are on the stage to give them something.

Where is the added value in crossover?
It’s all about a recent post of Seth Godin that i read (How much extra for nice?). It speaks about how much am I willing to pay to get something nice with the product or service you offer me / what do I get when I visit you, how much does it cost me to make you be nice to me?

In the music business some ideas have been handling this idea unconsciously. They have added an extra feature to their product (for instance video images to a live gig of a band) that you truly appreciate. And most of these features didn’t cost a lot, but people were willing to pay a lot extra:
* acoustic gigs of bands that you only know as electric
* decorating a venue that you didn’t know it could look that way, but the band made it look awesome. You paid extra, believe me.

Many things have been called crossover in the music industry, because it combined genres or presentational forms. So here’s why crossover works – you are willing to pay extra!

D.

Hladno Pivo (literally ‘Cold Beer) is band based on fun but critical lyrics & punkrock music.
The band are celebrating their 20th birthday as we speak, 20 years from a small garage band to Croatia’s main act.

They (at least the three core persons of the 6 headed band) have build not only a band, but also a brand. And that in a country where most of the artists hitting a different note/approach to their music are silenced or killed by the media. The band moved from record label multiple times, but always remained a highly self-managed deal. Their association with beer brought an almost lasts-for-life endrosment by Croatia’s biggest beer brand Ozujsko.

The band tried this to higher the expectations. First they took few K capacity sportscentre to fill up, and they did. Which made them move forward, heading for the first time open air 20k crowd concert. And as we speak, they are doing it. A country which so great cognitive interest in music, however so little financial appreciation for intellectual property has moved itself, on the hand of Hladno Pivo, in a new daylight.

Of course they are not the first one to get 20.000 people to one place. It is however the first time open air, in Zagreb and not a popband/cultural herosinger. Plus, the show will be covered on national television, on this very saturday night, LIVE all 38 songs.

This is Hladno Pivo, perhaps opening doors for more international focused bands to be appreciated by their home crowd and abroad. Because here, in W-Europe we do fill 20k for bands that we like.

Hladno Pivo’s website + myspace

The reason I got into studying Music Business/Management is that I love music, I love the industry, and I am not talented enough to master an instrument of any kind (Unlike Daan who kills on the bass guitar) to make a living by making music. The second best way of getting in to the game is by making sure that the talented ones get a chance to make a living, by helping them out on the business side of things. To sooth my inner I-wish-I-was-in-a-band person, I play Singstar, Guitar Hero and Rock band with friends and rock out!

Today I found out I can rock out without having that expensive game console near me and buy those games, plastic guitar and extra mics. Nope, all I need is my trusty MacBook but any other laptop or computer will do as well, now that Jam Legend is around. Jam Legend has a bit more extras than say Guitar Hero, you can play against or with people all over the world. The nicest feature yet is that you as an artist can submit your own songs to be played on Jam Legend, and in time you can play every guitar song on Jam Legend. So this is a great way as an upcoming band to get your song heard. Since I’ve been playing I’m humming the tune to “Stand Tall’ by the Dirty Heads

JamLegend Trailer from JamLegend on Vimeo.

Right now you need an invite to get some action. Either you have a friend on there that can hook you up, you get an invite from Jam Legend … or you just click here the first 500 gets a free invite. Start Jamming I’m Kimster_P challenge me, btw I suck so winning will be easy.

Mininova is offering free p2p content distribution for music and filmmakers. This gives the authors access to 35 million users, zero bandwidth costs and statistics on downloads.

One of the first to use this are Dutch Indierockers Silence is Sexy.They will be releasing their sophomore album ‘This Ain’t Hollywood’ as free torrent on Dutch uberportal Mininova. You can also buy the physical CD later this month with free downloadable content (yay!).With this ‘torrent release’ the band wants to make a statement towards the music industry.

Pim van de Werken one of the bandmembers says that ‘the muisc industry should come up with decent alternatives beore they try to fight filesharing’. And frankly, well I agree, time and time again the music industry has been fighting evolution through out the ages. It’s time they step up, dust the dust off their shoulders, and for once walk ahead of the game instead of 3 laps behind.

That said, Silence is Sexy is not the first band that released their album on a p2p network (legally that is). British Marillion distributed their 2nd album via p2p last week, but it wasn’t really free. You had to give up your e-mail address and you had to watch this 11 minute *yawn* video.

So I think we can state that ‘This Ain’t Hollywood’ by Silence is Sexy is one of the first real free legal album?

The Myspace music service is in the news a lot. Again a very detailed post from the Wired Listening Post with a lot of details about the service.

A few remarks that came up reading the article (based on Myspace is not doing something new):
* As nicely stated in the Wired post, it’s more or less a mixture of existing (and highly hated by Majors) music services
* Obvious thing: why aren’t the Indies featured? Oh wait, it’s a ‘Major’ thing. Grab what  you can guys, before you really destroy the business!
* With so many users, with such a brand – why not doing something really new? I suggest supplying music related to the persons INTERESTS, that’s after all what Myspace is about right? Interests can be related to musical taste, trust me. If you pay me I’ll show you.

But that is just me.

D.

Everybody read the news that Myspace will start streaming tons of music for free – including whole catalogues of major artists.

Well here is a newsflash. All on the internet that is streamable is downloadable. And what is downloadable is shareable. Myspace cracked it! The holy grail!

How to download streams from Myspace?
There is, for instance, an add-on on FireFox called DownloadHelper. Once installed a 3ball icon will appear in your toolbar. Stream something (video, music), click the magic button and download it! at incredible speed, because once streamed its downloaded in matter of clicks…
And let’s just say this is not the only way.

Good bye majors, it was nice you thought this was ‘fraud free’!

D!

Looks like Gerd Leonhard got inspired when he saw that we refreshed and created a new blog, hehehe
He just totally renewed the look of his website mediafuturist.com. And I’m so happy that he did! Even though he is a great futurist for the music and media in general, his website looked like crap. So the content is stil the same, it just looks better.

K.