“When artists stop waiting to be chosen, whole new economies open up. The most compelling models today come from artists who said: “I’ll start it myself.”
Category: ART
ENJOY THE BARRYVILLE CAMEL
Noah Kalina investigated the Barryville Camel for Radio Catskill.
“The current Congress just slashed $170K from (the Radio Catskill) budget, so your support will help fill in the gap. These small-town stations are vital to the local community and culture.”
Read so much more (and watch Noah’s excellent video) here.
STOP PRAYING TO ALGORITHMS
I see this so much on Substack Notes: “I wish the algorithm…”
STOP! Stop wishing a computer in the cloud is going to deliver your new favorite band, some cool new writer – the algorithim can only process 1s and 0s, and by doing so turns all “content” into 1s and 0s, so just stop with this belief that if only the algorithm were better you’d be able to know about better stuff.
It’s all bullshit. Don’t rely on computers to discern editorial quality, or help you discover.
Don’t let AI take these jobs of editors, curators, DJs, writers, and various other conveyors of taste and fine art.
Via Stephen Moore’s Trend Mill:
“A lot of people seem to actually enjoy AI-generated content, and are ready to eat up more. We should have seen that coming. There’s a simple explanation — too many people have become so lost in platforms, so dictated to by algorithms, ‘for you’ feeds and suggested content, that we’re collectively losing our taste.”
Everything has been reduced to bits. Cleaned up, covered with a vanilla scent, and optimized to keep you tied into whatever platform you think is somehow “good.”
Friends are filters. People are guides. Pick up something in print that still requires some editorial discernment, or find your local college radio station. Email the writers of the newsletters you like. Go find some blogs again.
Moore is right, we’re collectively losing our taste, and we’re become helpless babies being spoon fed whatever media someone else wants us to consume.
FAT WRECK CHORDS SELLS CATALOG, WIPE OUT BAND DEBT
I’m not much of a punk rock guy, but I know this is pretty cool.
As part of the sale, all bands on Fat that are “in debt” to the label, will have their debt wiped out. That is, if a band had an advance that was not yet recouped, that balanced owed is zeroed, so that if the band sells a single royalty at Hopeless, they will begin earning royalties immediately. (Often when a band signs with an independent label, the expense of record production is granted as an “advance.” When the band’s music earns money, the money earned is first counted against the advance. So, a band usually does not earn any money until the advance is paid back through royalties earned on record sales).
Even more interesting is that Erin and Mike essentially paid off the debts themselves. That is, say the cost of Hopeless buying Fat was valued at $100. In this sale, Hopeless only paid $80 to Erin and Mike, due to the fact that Erin and Mike required that band debt be wiped out upon the sale. As far as record label sales, this is a rather monumental and magnanimous move on the part of Erin and Mike. In fact, the debt forgiveness cost Erin and Mike about $3.5 million.
via Punk News
MAKE THE HEART MOVE
“What does it mean to have a positive impact on a life? How intimate does that connection need to be? Understanding your scale — the scale that moves you — is critical to understanding with whom and how you should work, how you should live.”
Earlier in this piece, Craig Mod talks about working at Flipboard and hitting a million users, saying, “I didn’t feel my heart move.”
So then searching for the things that make your heart move, whether it’s one person a day or a 100 or a 1000. Helping add light to the world, add joy to the darkness, somehow, someway.
DOWN BY THE RIVER (NOTHING HAPPENS)
My HUNTERTHEN track ‘More Immersive’ used in one of Noah Kalina’s new ambient videos. Here the full album below. Enjoy.
MONEY AS A BYPRODUCT
From keningzhu’s new course Sharing Space Camp:
sharing your work is the bridge between “ideas in your head” — and money.
and by money, what I really mean is: the byproduct that comes when you make your creative energy a shared resource that others can access.
I WRITE TO REMEMBER
From my People & Blogs interview with Manuel Moreale:
Given your experience, if you were to start a blog today, would you do anything differently?
Honestly, no. WordPress and the hosting and such works fine for me. I don’t care much about the name, or the theme, or whatever. The blog is 100% for me.
“I write to remember,” as the lyrics go in ‘One Armed Scissor’ by At the Drive In.
Read the rest here.
SURFACE AREA
There’s the saying to increase the surface area for luck, but I’m telling you… meeting new folks increases the surface area for COOL STUFF.
I just got off a Zoom call with some great folks and met Andrew White and I want him to take photos of me running up the hills I try to run up (just kidding, I’d look awful), and also discovered Andrew(?) Byrd who is running an analog recording competition – making and recording music with no computers!
I know, I know… the surface area thing… for networking, for finding jobs, yes, sure. Of course. But wow, there are just so many amazing people out there doing great work.
MAGIC AND MACHINERY
You can have the magic, but you need a little machinery to make it go. It’s still magic, and it’s a gift to the world.
But you can have all the machinery in the world, but without any magic, well… what good is any of it?
Strategy and tactics… you can learn those.
That’s what I always tell my super talented clients. The ones who’ve been making magic for decades. Pro mountain bikers. Musicians. Painters.
The hard work is already done! Try being magical at any of those with one course, or email drip sequence, right? You can’t.
But add a little bit of machinery to the mix. A well thought out email sign up page (one that doesn’t just say “sign up for updates”).
A plan for sending out a newsletter, and not just “whenever.”
An idea how to frame the magic around the business side of things, without just posting images of products with BUY NOW buttons.
Magic and machinery… good to have both, but if I had to pick just one I’d take the magic.