Okay, so people who have been out of the loop, Livejournal has gone through another purchase/”merger.” I know, I know, “Livejournal? Really? That’s still alive?” And you have a very good point.

But honestly this new ownership is the most responsive I’ve seen since Brad sold the place. They’ve been asking users what they want, they’ve put back in subject lines in comments, they’ve made all sorts of changes that people actually seem to want made.

Including, in response specifically to me, long-overdue resumption of support for Bandcamp embeds. That used to work, and stopped working, about three years ago? Whenever Bandcamp went to iframes for their players. Previous ownership didn’t answer questions about it. Current support just said ‘Okay!’ and “bandcamp embedding should work now!”

O.o

Which is the entire point of this post. Let’s see if this works, shall we?

eta: oh my gods it works. This hasn’t worked in three years. SEE HOW WE STOMP FOR… Livejournal?

Facebook is now doing this to me pretty much every time I hit the site:

That’s not the first one, either. Seriously, it’s most of the times. That might be because I do not exactly stay on Facebook all day, but this is very much not encouraging me to change that behaviour.

It’s like they have some sort of bet going. “How unpleasant and annoying can we make this before people give it up?” I already mostly treat it as a bit of a write-only medium – I skim, but that’s it. And that’s with Social Fixer running, and ad block. The bait-and-switch approach to content – it’s all just kind of awful.

I mean, honestly. How many of these do they think I need to see?

I also want to mention their whole horrible human experimentation thing, but it kind of trivialises both to combine the two. (I mean, as someone who has done research, I want to know exactly who the hell was on their Human Studies Board, just for starters.)

It’s crazy to me, yet I’m still kinda-sorta hanging on, because of the near-necessity of maintaining at least a minimal presence there. I don’t want to; I feel like I’m compromising, at this point, in ways I really do not like.

And yet it’s all so many people will use. If you’re a serious Facebook user, I really have to know – why? Everything they do is horrible, yet so many people refuse to use anything else, no matter how terrible they get. Why?

eta: I see XKCD is in on this question today, too.

Marian Call got my attention yesterday with this tweet:

So I went looking around, and yep, it’s absolutely true. The Guardian also has commentary, as does ars technica, but the Bloomberg article is a bit more in depth.

YouTube wants to solve its “being a radio station” problem with a new streaming service, apparently, and if you as an artist don’t like it, they’re going to exile you. One imagines they won’t outright throw non-new-service-licensing videos offline (tho’ that might actually happen), but they can do a whole hell of a lot by whittling them out of search results. (And, apparently, getting all letter-of-the-law on accessibility.) Several smaller/indie labels in Europe are suing for regulatory intervention to prevent this; I’ve no idea how that will go.

It’s a huge loss, if it plays out as reported. Last I checked – a couple of years ago – YouTube amounted for nearly 70% of music plays on the Internet. Google are the new gatekeepers, and wow, does that suck, because “Don’t Be Evil, Inc.” has been busily showing what a lie that was this entire decade.

Now me, I don’t have a big YouTube presence; I’m barely there at all. Really, I’m only there so if someone actively looks for me, they find something. I’m not on even an “indie” label. I haven’t been asked boo about this initiative and I’m sure I won’t be – which means I sure as hell won’t be on their new service. I’ll be locked out.

On the other hand, I’m likewise sure they won’t be throwing off my tiny-viewership live videos. But damn, folks. A lot of people (Hi Molly!) have gained a lot of traction (Hi Doubleclicks!) on YouTube, and … will this hit them? I don’t know yet.

But it does almost certainly say that this particular onramp – a big onramp – is henceforth closed. Sure, you can still upload your videos. Shame if nobody was to find them.

And that’s certainly one problem. With this action, Google/YouTube have taken the gatekeeper position so many people (hi) have been worrying they’d take. Right now, it’s music. What next?

A further specific music problem gets discussed over here at the generically-named Music Industry Blog. Basically, Apple loss-leads content to sell hardware, with their music service, this claims. Amazon does the reverse – loss-leads hardware to sell music/content.

Google/YouTube’s plan is to loss-lead on both, in order to own you. Which is Google’s business model in general, of course. But the downside is that it means they’re placing no value on either music or music technologies – they’re both just lures. Which has the psychological effect of further devaluing the idea of music having value – bringing zero-value thinking to streaming services as well.

That’s possibly already a lost battle – see also how the music industry made “music ownership” have negative value – but if there’s more damage to do, I’m wondering if these clowns won’t find it. I’ve previously discussed how streaming/banking services keep alienating customers with constant appearance and disappearance of shows, due to licensing games. This takes “licensing game” up another whole new level.

In a real way, it’s another prevention-of-plenty action. Like the cable companies and the so-called “internet fast lane,” which means slow lane for you and me, Google is gaming the system to benefit themselves and the other large companies with which they are making these deals, at the expense of everyone else.

Let’s limit supply of music on YouTube to that from other large corporations. Let’s try to implement some artificial scarcity.

Is that the plan? Maybe. Where there’s a way, there’s a will, and this part of the supply-constraint game is the opposite of new.

But will it work? Good question. Looks like we’re about to find out.
 
 

This is Part Nine of Music in the Post-Scarcity Environment, a series of essays about, well, what it says on the tin. In the digital era, duplication is essentially free and there are no natural supply constraints which support scarcity, and therefore, prices. What the hell does a recording musician do then?

Well, it’s official: my music has enough fans to be worth pirating. Yay?

They’re both in Russia and they’re probably going to be 128kbps preview-grade streams (or worse – one’s lifted from YouTube), so yeah, have fun with that. I’m kind of flattered. I mean, to keep copyright I’m kind of required to protest (hence this), but lol yeah like that works. XD

But still, if you like my work, throw me some coin, eh? Stuff costs money. 😀

Any of you hit any weird milestones like this? What’s the weirdest milestone you’ve ever hit?

I have seen a fair number of Kickstarter burnouts and explosions, but I have never seen one like this.

A few years ago, there was a truly great and hilarious webcomic called Sad Pictures for Children. I always thought – despite reading it during almost all of its run – that it was called Pictures for Sad Children, and I still think that’s a better title, but that’s not important right now.

It gained a following, and, as such things do, eventually wrapped up and the writer/artist launched a Kickstarter project to fund a collected book edition. It kept ramping up, and went way, and I do mean way, over the creator’s head – particularly as stretch goals started piling up, and super-arty features got added, like … okay, the last comic in the book included a joke about a dead wasp. Of course, it was only a drawing…

…originally.

As it snowballed, and costs exploded, and we find out that really, the creator didn’t include any budget for his time and labour in the project, things started to get goofier and goofier.

This is the final update, which just went out.

Yep. That’s a video of him burning a bunch of his own books. And, posted along with the video, you’ll find many pages of anti-materialist philosophy and anger, interspersed with bold text inserts like this:

I called this post “never ever do this,” but not because of the business aspect of this implosion, and not even because of the spectacle of the whole thing. All that’s obvious. I could talk about successful Kickstarters I’ve run, and why things like this shouldn’t put you off the ones I’ve been promoting this week.

I call it that because…

This shit ain’t healthy. I mean, seriously, not. And that’s obvious, isn’t it? But it’s like the (apocryphal) boiling frog, I think.

There’s an old Dilbert cartoon from the 90s, called “When is it time to quit your job?” and, of course, you get a whole series of panels that end up with Wally or Dilbert or one of them hanging themselves and thinking, “Yep… this is better than work,” and everybody laughs.

This artist didn’t get to the last panel, but… yeah.

So. Don’t let anything get there. Don’t let anything here, for that matter. It’s not worth it for anybody. Including you.

ps: I got my book, 18 months or so ago. Just had it down last night. It’s genius.

The Emerald Forest Filk Society has been on the same web and mail platform for a long time, and the administrator really wants to shut down that machine, so Anna and I have agreed to take on hosting. This URL will always work, if badly, despite being non-canonical. There’s also a Twitter feed and a Facebook account, because I am dragging this into five years ago, no matter what! XD

Anna found this WordPress plug-in called Social that I’m trying out with this post. The best thing about Social is that it transfers comments back and forth too, so, say, if you comment on a replication of an EFFS post on Facebook, the comment also goes back to the home website, and that is epic.

So this is mostly an excuse to see if it works. But also I’m publicising the EFFS’s new homes. LINK ALL THE THINGS! XD

I meant to turn off free/pay-what-you-like Bandcamp downloads last week, but I didn’t warn people. Accordingly:

Today is the last day you can pull my Bandcamp albums down for free/pay-what-you-like. So grab while the grabbing’s good; I’m putting minimums back on tomorrow.

A couple of singles – Kaiju Meat and The S-100 Bus being notable examples – will stay free/pay-what-you-like permanently, but the rest? Not so much.

Okay, so I mentioned the big project? Well, a bunch of bands, including us, SJ Tucker, Heather Dale, and lots more, got together for a truly massive free mega-music ‪download package. Seriously, there are like 39 artists in this thing:

If the download link there doesn’t work for you for some reason – it’s been a bit swamped! – here’s a direct link to the .zip file with all songs:

In addition to the previous, there’s Betsy Tinney, Talis Kimberly, Pandora Celtica, Julia Ecklar, Ginger Doss, Whisky Bards, Tom Smith, us – so many different bands.

GO GET IT. And if you like what you hear, a lot of us are doing specials right now on our own download pages, like us, where everything of ours on Bandcamp is currently pay-what-you-like. That won’t last forever, so GO. NOW.

Click for full-size

And a happy new year to everyone!

eta: Okay, maybe having everybody involved tell all their people at the same time wasn’t the best idea. XD If you’re seeing an XML error, it’s a result of server overload; try again in 15 minutes to an hour. But my Bandcamp downloads are working fine – Bandcamp is more robust. 😀

Through the holidays, all my Bandcamp downloads are free/pay-what-you-like. That’s not a permanent condition, so grab while the grabbing is good! And if you feel like hitting the tip jar on the way out: awesome, but optional.

CDs are also still discounted, for any last-second physical gift-giving, but you can buy for other people through Bandcamp, too.

Y’know what? All my Bandcamp downloads are now set to pay what you like, including zero. Also including one MILLION dollars, but I suspect most people are more interested in the zero part.

Physical CDs are discounted, too.

I did this for the Scalzi crowd a few days ago; some of them have been taking advantage of it, and you should get a turn. G’wan, download, hit the tip jar if you want, and if you don’t – I’m a supervillain. Who’m I to judge? XD