I am thinking really hard about starting a geekmusic podcast.

In fact, I’m thinking so hard about it that I want to do a pilot episode. The idea would be for it to be released in early March, before Norwescon. I could bring in a few people who are going to be at nwcMUSIC, so it’d serve a dual role – pre-event publicity and pilot episode! – while having a bunch of different people on, to keep it interesting. Then, maybe monthly.

I’ve already made a bumper.

What sorts of things would make you, personally, interested in listening to a geekmusic podcast? Yes, I’m looking for content ideas here, because I’ve never done a podcast before, and while once upon a time I was in radio, I didn’t do that kind of programming – I was a DJ at one station, in sports at another, and sports director at my college station. But no interviews.

(Yes, me being sports director is in fact hilarious. But we had the best women’s basketball coverage in the city, so take that.)

Playing some music? DIY? Interviews? About what, particularly? Other musicians not on the show? Vicious backbiting? History of geekmusic?

What would make you interested in listening?

If you haven’t seen this, it’s video of Heather Dale of The Heather Dale Band, trying to get YouTube’s attention. They tried to sign up to get micropayments off of YouTube’s royalty micropayment system, but YouTube has decided that they don’t actually own and didn’t actually write their music.

Now, this is bullshit, of course, and Heather has provided (and can again provide) all the evidence of ownership needed. But she’s not merely been told she didn’t write her own material, she’s been told she and her band can’t even contest this ruling, or even further contact the programme. And all attempts to contact YouTube at any level have been rebuffed.

And this is, frankly, about par for the course for most of the “social media” environment. YouTube routinely makes bad decisions on ownership – not just bad, but laughably bad. I’ve had three of my own videos – solo live performances filmed myself or by fans – flagged as DMCA violations of other people’s work.

So far, I’ve been able contest successfully through their automated system, which has surprised me. But seeing Heather and Ben’s experiences, I’m becoming more convinced that this has a lot more to do with me not trying to monetise my YouTube channel than anything else. If YouTube doesn’t have to give me royalties, or even a meagre percentage of some royalty fractional micropayment, they don’t have much incentive to deny my counterclaims when someone or something – more likely some software – throws a bullshit DMCA takedown claim at me.

But if I am trying to get money, well, that’s an entirely different story, and I think that’s where Heather and Ben are running into trouble.

YouTube really doesn’t have incentive for this system to work at all. I rather suspect it exists as a guard against infringement lawsuits. “See? We pay out.” But if you don’t have the money to hire a big enough lawyer to go up against Google when YouTube’s lackadaisical system fails, well, screw you.

Because honestly, what’s their incentive for having a good process, much less making the right decision? They’re a large, public corporation; if there’s not a monetary incentive, there is no incentive, and there’s not a monetary incentive here.

Simply put, such incentive doesn’t exist.

So. It ends up being once again who you know. They’re looking for an actual person inside YouTube or Google who can override the autoresponders and let them get the royalties they’re due under this programme. Are you that person? If not, do you know that person? Heather and Ben are more sanguine about that person being out there than am I. Hopefully, they’re right. Go tell them.

My replacement iPad – a mini – is Somewhere. Nobody knows where. Somewhere. The Apple store got it Wednesday morning at 10:32 and sent it back. “I’d wait a few days and see what happens.” THANKS GUYES. Now I get to play phone warz with FedEx and the online Apple Store.

And I hate phones. I am so pissed off right now.

But! I, by contrast, have not lost the packages with CDs that people have ordered! I’ll be hand-delivering a few more this weekend, and that’s the last of what I have so far. If you’re thinking of elfmetal as stocking stuffers? ORDER SOON! For best shipping, anyway. Dick Tracy Must Die, Cracksman Betty, both on yummy holiday discount.

And since we’re going to be talking money, apparently…

If any of you are Leannan Sidhe fans – and I know a few of you are – let’s talk about them for a second. They’ve been recording here, and down in Oregon, for their next album. Mixing is already started, mostly down at Alec’s. They have all the money they need to get recording and mixing finished, but are tight on mastering funds, so’ve launched an indiegogo campaign going to make up the difference and raise replication money. Give it a look.

See, I’ve talked a lot about the business of indie music, particularly in the Post-Scarcity Model article series (The Problem with All of This, The Damage is Worse Than I Thought, Even Pressing Play Makes My Fingers Ache, Touring, Part I, Touring, Part II, The Long Tail of Zero is Still Zero, The Same Model as Music), and one of the things I talked about was up-front money through patronage. If people don’t buy music once it’s out there – and a lot of them pretty much just don’t – then getting dosh in advance to do new work becomes really critical. If people believe in you enough to back you up front (Part A), piracy becomes almost unimportant. Anything you sell after – Part B – is profit, ramp up for next go, souvenirs, and PR.

Leannan Sidhe need a little more money to do the new things. They need their Part A help right now.

Me, I need some of my minions to give my current CDs to other, potential minions. That’s the back side of any album project; I had money up front to record, now I try to bootstrap on post-creation sales. Part B.

And that’s how we hope it works. Cycles, where Part A leads to Part B leads back to Part A. I’m running a couple of them in parallel – I’ve already got the money for the soundtrack album, or most of it, via Anna’s book kickstarter. That’s another, separate, Part A.

With a little luck, and a little help, it can become a virtuous cycle, and everybody wins except the RIAA, who can go fuck themselves. But that only happens if the cycle builds. Otherwise, you’re back to the labels and the DRM and the lockdown model, and everything sucks. If you care about music as art, then when you’re thinking about your holiday spending – think about that.

Because Heather Dale recently linked to this article on the necessity of music. Music is entertainment – but it’s not just that. I like to say that music is the written language of emotion, and I mean that in a literal sense. It can be fiction, it can be nonfiction, we don’t have good language for this so I borrow words from literature which don’t quite work, but you get the idea.

Karl Paulnack goes further than I, in that aforementioned article, paraphrasing the ancient Greeks as saying it’s “…the opposite of entertainment… music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us.”

There’s a whole hell of a lot of entertainment out there, and I don’t mean to disparage it; entertainment is healthful. It’s important, too. It’s approachable. It’s fun. You can get tired of it, but having your fill every so often is good for you.

But those of us who are, in our vain little ways, insisting on trying to do something more like art, more like that moving of invisible pieces inside our hearts – we’re not as approachable. We don’t pattern-match as well. It might have a good beat, but it can be pretty damned hard to dance to.

Are songs like Hide from Me “entertainment” music? Fuck no. It’s brutal and hard and mean and that’s on purpose. It’s on the album as a statement. And the same people who call you “quite brilliant” for it turn you down for tours because you’re not labelly enough.

That’s why we really need people who believe in what we’re doing – the people who throw in the up-front money, the people who think that art matters – to fuel that virtuous cycle.

So go give that Leannan Sidhe funding gap project a look. Be their Part A. Think about Dick Tracy Must Die and Cracksman Betty as gifts; fuel our Part B.

And maybe we’ll manage to epoxy something together out of all this yet.

Productive we so far; we got the last of Leannan Sidhe’s major guitar recording down in the lair. Still a few drop-ins to do, and fixes, but the heavy lifting in guitar is over. Yay!

Today, I’m busy building out melody parts for the Free Court of Seattle soundtrack album. I made learning tracks for the traditional music a couple of weeks ago, for the other musicians appearing on the album, but the fight scene set is really difficult to understand, so…

…I might explain what a learning track is. And a set, for that matter.

Okay! So, the basic element of Irish music is the “tune.” It’s a melody, typically in repeating parts (A/B, often A/B/C, sometimes A/B/C/D or more) which may and may not have basic chord and/or drum accompaniment. The melody is the defining element of the tune; the rest is optional. Here’s an example tune:

A set is simply a collection of tunes arranged together into a longer piece. As in hiphop, flow is critical, tho’ instead of lyric flow it’s melodic flow. These were historically performed in participatory playing circles, at pubs, in sessions. Those tend to look a bit like this:

The learning tracks I’ve been working on are rough mockups of some of the sets which will be appearing on the Free Court of Seattle book series soundtrack. (The link is to Book 1 on Amazon; also in print, B&N/Nook, and Kobo). You build learning tracks by taking other peoples’ performances and editing them together into a single recording that can be studied and learned from.

Most of the sets for this album are traditional; that’s intentional, being the music that informs the early parts of the book series. But for one set – for a conflict scene involving kitsune, a dragon, Our Heroes, and so on – we’re bringing in some Japanese traditional music.

To make this melding work, I’ve written a variation on one of the Irish standards as a bridging piece, and am not so much building a set as arranging the elements like one would for an orchestral piece. It’s… complicated.

And since some of this has never been recorded by anyone – my March towards Lisdoonvarna, mostly – the current learning track is a hideous mashup of flute and taiko, bagpipes and accordion, and me whistling something nobody’s heard before into a microphone.

Worst. Learning track. Evar. It’s totally incoherent.

So I’m currently learning all of these parts the hard way, and playing them on bouzouki. Once it’s all on the same instrument, it makes a lot more sense. But I’m not traditionally a big melody player on strings, which means I’m learning! new! skills! and means it’s taking for-bloody-evar.

But it’ll be cool.

Finally, a reminder from the Guild: don’t let the supervillain get bored. All CDs are on sale, so give them to friends and rivals, frenemies and nemeses, and help spread the rage. Besides, we need the money to record our new music. We can steal everything but time, and it’s just plain faster sometimes to buy things, you know? I mean honestly, who wants to spend time planning the grand supertheft of a breakfast bagel? I have better things to do. Or worse. Muah ha ha.

In much of the world now, it’s gift-giving season! So I’m putting the CD copy of Dick Tracy Must Die on special sale at Bandcamp: it’s $9.99, the same as the digital download.

Also, I’ve added a physical CD of Cracksman Betty, for $4.99, also the same price as the digital download. It’s the version we sell at shows.

If you like our music – and if you’re reading this I imagine you do – help us find new listeners and fans! Give these discounted copies to people you think would like them. At $4.99 and $9.99, they’ll make really good stocking stuffers.

Besides, it helps pay for the new album we’re working on, which is no small thing. Din of Thieves is going to be pretty epic if I have anything to say about it – and my Rainmaker 68000 says I do – but even volcano-powered generators aren’t free, and the more time we have to spend stealing things, the less time we have to work on the album.

And we all want us working on the album, rather than working on taking over the west coast, don’t we?

I thought so.

So! Spread the love. Or the terror. Whatever. Buy copies to give to other people. Warn them we’re coming, muah ha ha. If you’re nervous about buying straight from the supervillain, Dick Tracy Must Die is also on CD Baby, and they’re… ugh… reputable and shit.

So go! Spread the holiday fear! And as always, minions, you have a special place in my heart, so – try not to die, okay? Thanks.

To my surprise, people responded to an earlier post about process asking to hear about the Big Board, which is the organisational system I use for album recordings. Well, then, okay! Welcome to the Big Board:

Not the Big Bird

(Many of the photos in this post can be clicked upon to enlarge them.)

The Big Board is based somewhat on kanban, an inventory control system based on moving cards around to trigger ordering supplies. In my case, I’m moving post-it tags around to trigger actions and show status. If you look at one implementation of kanban to management of processes, you’ll see something that looks similar – the heijunka box.

The colour codes indicate actions needed. Orange means recording. Yellow means verification and/or adjustment. Blue will mean we’re happy with that individual track. Nothing at all means nothing at all needed; we’re not planning on that instrument on that track.

Since they’re paper tabs, they can carry notes. For example, an orange tag which is scheduled will have the date and artist’s name written on it. An orange or yellow tag in an “other” column could list the relevant instrument(s).

The album side in a little more detail shows ALBUM (in all caps), underneath which are tracks. The next columns are all instrumental parts expected for each track.

Also not the Snuffleupagus

To the right of the album section is the artist section. This is a list of artists, a column showing very general availability, and then their next scheduled date in studio:

And not the Big Band

There is also a corresponding Big Book. The Big Book has pages for each track and each artist. The pages are plastic protector sleeves, into which colour sheets are inserted. The colour sheets for each song page correspond to the tab state of the songs on the Big Board; notes are made either by putting them into the sleeve in front of the colour sheet, or just taping them onto the plastic cover.

Orange means the files are set up, but all recording is needed. Note the album and song title in upper right:

Orange you glad I didn’t make another muppet reference?

Predictably, an orange page has no notes on it. Yellow means, “we have some recording but need more work.” Here’s a yellow page, with a couple of notes attached:

Tweety is a right bastard, he is. Just sayin’.

Blue means “we’re basically done with this.” There will still be mixing changes and tweaks, but the heavy lifting – and all recording – is over. I have no blue pages yet. ^_^

The backs of all the song pages are blue, because I pre-stock all the plastic sleeves with all colours, in order; then it’s just a matter of removing a top layer – first orange, then yellow – as the work progresses. Since they aren’t written upon, they can and should be reused.

Artist pages are green, and each artist on the Big Board has an artist page. This is also for notes. On Ellen’s page, I have a post-it showing mic choices, locations, and distances for her hammer dulcimer. I also took photos, for backup, but I hope not to need them.

Notes about Kermit’s banjo can go on ANY page

I’ve used systems like this before, when I was a small-press publisher. I didn’t have the book part, back then; it wasn’t necessary because there just weren’t as many notes. But that version of the Big Board was huge.^*

I tried to do a smaller version of the board with Dick Tracy Must Die, just on paper in a binder. When that didn’t work, I tried again in spreadsheet software. That was a total disaster, combining too little space in front of me with too little need and too much trouble, since I was doing all the performing and could just, you know, remember. Plus, I hate spreadsheet software. Worst of all worlds, ahoy!

So now we have my new Revision 3. I’m really liking it so far. It’s uncomplicated, but flexible enough to let me add anything to the notes file without having to retype it or scan it or make it fit into a spreadsheet cell or link a document or write any code, while nonetheless being physically small despite still having a big board that I can check at a glance. I’m pretty fond of this revision.

But we’ll see how it goes in practice as more people get involved. I really do need something, with all the different work going on at the same time, and being second-studio in collaboration with Fae Hollow/SeaFire down in Oregon. It’ll be more than worthwhile if it just helps us keep everything in sync.

So, that’s how it works. Any questions? Fire away!
 

PS: The Big Book also has my cable inventory chart. I don’t need one for mics yet, but will if I keep buyin’ the damn things:

Some of these are VERY custom

*: No, I mean seriously, huge. I’d take it down and put it up because it was too big to leave out. Imagine a physical implementation of page preview for an entire magazine. Yes, actual full-size page drafts in an 8×7 grid. With notes. It needed an entire wall (or more often, floor) and was kind of nuts, but it worked.

The Motley Fool has discovered 3D printing. Hat tip for the pointer to L. S. McGill at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, who has already been talking about this, and has important extension commentary.

You can actually read L. S. McGill’s article and get the idea about Motley Fool’s commentary, tho’ I’d recommend listening to the analysis – at least, the first chunk, before you get into the extended David Gardener sales pitch. You’ll know when you get there.

One point the Motley Fool analysis makes is that the future of manufacturing is the same model as music and film. He calls it the destruction of the economies of scale, ending the advantages of factories, and moving manufacturing per se to the end user. He even talks about Star Trek‘s replicators.

Giving him the benefit of the doubt on “23rd century”: I presume food replicators

He further gets that there’ll be “legitimate” download sites for designs, ala iTunes, and alternate sites, such as Pirate Bay.

It kind of astounds me that the same analyst who can get that right, and make that parallel, is not actually able to take a look at what’s actually happening in those comparison businesses.

In particular, how we’re all scrambling to find viable business models that have nothing to do with recordings, and how to build a new recording model that actually pays something to artists, because there’s an entire generation that sees no value in paying for music. (To wit, parts one, two, three, four, five, and six. Parts one and two both talk about the disregard for purchasing music, the rest start to talk about new approaches.)

Regardless, though, it’s about trying to find a way to make a post-scarcity model work. But that seems invisible to this guy. Don’t get me wrong: I’m for this future. A post-scarcity model in manufacturing? Sign me the fuck up. But there are huge ramifications, and this guy doesn’t understand – or at least doesn’t talk about – the fallout.

It won’t be going for coffee.

The good news for us in creative industries is that music, art, maybe movies, certainly performance – all these have alternate paths, many of which we’ve talked about in parts three through six. Bryan Kim at Hipset also recently posted an article on crowd patronage, expanding on one particular method I discussed in part three.

But I think manufacturing will have an even harder time with this than musicians and artists. Product designers may not, but that’s going to be a much smaller chunk of economic input and activity, compared to the mass-manufacturing stage; we’ve seen that in the rust belt. Replication of physical product was never the high cost point of music – but he doesn’t seem to understand how problematic that makes his comparison.

What happens to all those people when factory jobs are mostly just gone? What happens with all the money they don’t make anymore?

The post-scarcity environment won’t look anything like our current economy. Just ask some of those musicians you’re referencing – and that’s the upside, for producers. Ask the American “rust belt” for the down.

Maybe it really will look like Star Trek, eventually. I sure hope so. I even kinda think so – or, at least, that it could – and that’ll be awesome. But you’ll see your financial world torn apart, on the way there. Be ready for that – or, at least, as ready as you can be. It’s a great destination, but one hell of a bumpy road.
 

This is Part Seven of Music in the Post-Scarcity Environment, a series of articles about, well, what it says on the tin. There are no barriers to availability now, and copying is free. What’s a musician to do now?

I want to talk a little bit about Facebook. Facebook, the all-encompassing. Facebook, the omnipotent, the omnipresent, the ever-more-integrated. Facebook, the would-be identity validator for the Internet.

Facebook, the Destroyer of Worlds.

I have problems with Facebook. Not just its censorious ways (which aren’t new), tho’ I’m obviously more than unfond. What I have issues with is how it more and more completely replicates the old Real World from which the net used to be an escape.

No, I don’t mean seeing all those lame old “office humour” graphics start to float down my news stream, tho’ gods know that by itself is enough to burn down the server farm and start over.

I’ll be right back! With a rifle!

I also don’t mean the echo chamber aspects, or the preference for soundbite and short form over longer posts, and I don’t even mean the way that they seem to want to replicate CompuServe of the early 1980s – a closed box that you never leave but that you visit first.¹

No. I mean the way Facebook strives diligently to replicate the old corporate-dominant communications structure.

Think about it a bit. Whether you think of it this way or not, Facebook is a fakenet. It claims to be about people being able to communicate with other people in ways they never could before. That’s even in its letter to investors and prospectus; they don’t care about the business model, they claim, they care about the technology and the project.

And yet, it has invented nothing in this regard.

No; that’s unfair. They have. There’s something about it that older, pre-net people understand. They can and do use it, when Livejournal and Tumblr and even Twitter are beyond them. I don’t know how or why, but this is an achievement.

Okay, that part’s pretty cool. HI MOM!²

That’s been a big deal for Facebook, because it lets them reach that older, pre-net market that has a pretty good amount of dosh³. And, more importantly, that pre-net market which is still invested in the old, pre-net world.

And most importantly of all, it brings in those who respond when Facebook actively suppresses content users want in favour of paid content from corporate/moneyed backers.

Why does Facebook have pages? So you can subscribe to them and see what their owners post? No. So you can subscribe to them, they can know what you like for better advertising, and so they can force page owners to pay up in order to let more than 30% or so of those subscribers actually see those page posts.

If you have the dosh, you can do that – and also place ads. Lots of companies do, after all. If you don’t? If you’re small, if you’re indie, if you’re new? Well, screw you, moocher.

Also your eyes

It’s the same old corporatist communications paradigm, now brought online more successfully than anywhere else on the net. Moneyed speech counts more than any other speech, even if you look for one and not the other.

The indie, the new, the not-moneyed, that’s what you want to see? Well, we’ll let you see about 30% of it. That’s the loss-leader. The rest, we’ll substitute in what we want you to see – which is to say, what we’re paid to make sure you see.

Facebook favours the established over the new, the large over the small, the moneyed over the startup, through suppression and replacement. It is, in short, the direct opposite of the free-and-open peer-to-peer ethos of the Internet. It is everything wrong with the old world, wodged into your web browser. It is the old paradigm, reborn.

And the importance of being able to sell you with confidence? Well, that’s why they’re starting to do things like this:

Don’t suspect your neighbour; report them!

So, yeah. Facebook. I have issues with it. Go fig.

1: I know, I know, not all of you do that. But I have stats. A good post will draw 450ish readers. If even one of those reads comes in from Facebook, it’ll be unusual. My blog post read rate is literally <0.1% from there.

2: Actual mom not included.

3: By which I of course mean, sigh, Baby Boomers. And also the lagging edge of Generation X, or some of it.

Over these six articles, we have started to scrape the surface of new music business models in the post-scarcity era. And while we’ve covered quite a bit of ground, don’t expect that this is even the complete first word on the subect, much less the last!

The common themes here have been reinvention and DIY; they’re the hallmarks everyone must show in a period of critical flux. Musicians and artists have long had to reinvent themselves throughout their careers; we’re just in a particularly acute period for it.

This installment is a bit of potpourri; several topics, all of them are important, but none quite substantial enough to merit individual posts.

First, the long-tail theory.

yeah, like that

The long-tail theory of making money, which emphasis the value of holding your own recordings and rights, isn’t nearly as important as when proposed back in 2004. It is still a valueable insight, and you still see people talking about it, and the value of residuals over long periods of time. But, well…

If people don’t buy recorded music, the long tail value of zero is still zero.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t care about holding your own rights, doing your own recording, and so on. Where it does have value is in liscensing for other commercial works in new productions, such as soundtracks. A song I recorded on Dick Tracy Must Die is going on the Bone Walker soundtrack, in new form; that’s actual value.

There’s also potential value in having more than one thing to sell – and getting a higher percentage of those profits – to new fans. Keep your old stock around. But the primary late-discovery late-sales argument you see bantered around strikes me as already out of date.

The thousand fan theory, the second item I want to hit today, holds up great in this new environment. To elucidate, this theory postulates that if you can build a thousand dedicated fans who are vested in, who buy everything, you’re set.

A smaller number of REALLY big fans might also work

Don’t aim for a mass market that’s coming apart; aim for the sliver most relevant to you. If you can get a thousand people to buy in, well, you have to work to keep them happy, and making new things they want, but that’s a career.

Just remember you always have people falling off the end of that – it’s completely natural – so you can’t just get there and relax.

Finally, I have very little idea what to do about eBooks. eBooks, god. eBooks don’t have shows, eBook writers don’t have tours (and readings don’t count), but on the other hand, they’re often naturals at blogging! And that helps build community. But it’ll still be all about preloading payment if the book publishing industry is dumb enough to follow the RIAA lead.

YARRRRRRRticles!

Right now, publishers still have a nice amount of goodwill, and readers are often more atuned to the idea of supporting their writers, so those are both big advantages. But if the industry doesn’t ditch DRM and device-dependency right now, they’re going to burn all that away.

One potential solution is going back to Dickens’s pay-per-installment model, publishing in chapters. Lawrence Watt-Evans is one midlist F&SF writer doing this already; it seems to be working for him. I’m also pretty sure the thousand-fan theory applies well here. But the hindrance is that most people read most books that they do read exactly once, so you have your one shot, unlike music, where they’ll replay it later and maybe decide to like you enough to pay you then.

If you have any ideas, let me know, because eBook people may need them even more than musicians do!

So that’s it for this week. Next week I’ll wrap this up, and start a new series – you guys interested in the studio buildout series or How Facebook Destroys Everything? I’m thinking studio buildout, some nice DIY to leven all the business noise.

AND! TORONTO! I AM IN YOU! And I have a show tomorrow night, 7pm, house concert north of the Beaches. Email for details or check the show page!
 

This is Part Six of Music in the Post-Scarcity Environment, a series of articles about, well, what it says on the tin. There are no barriers to availability now, and copying is free. What’s a musician to do now?

I’m not sure what to say when a series intended to be two parts runs over five long and some of those parts have two parts on their own. Probably, it means I must learn to write shorter posts.

To recap: the old touring model became a problem, particularly for bands, which are are expensive. We talked about the instaband/hive band model in response; go here to refresh your memory.

Of course, all that said, you still shouldn’t turn down paying old-school gigs when they pencil out. Take those! Money matters!

I’m rich! I’m wealthy! I’m comfortably well-off!

But building a career that way is much more difficult than it used to be. Concert culture is really kind of at a nadir right now. It’s not that there aren’t standalone concerts in traditional venues – of course there are! I go to some! But it’s not a thing, like it once was, and more importantly, it’s not a way to build fans like it once was.

I don’t know what killed that culture – the reputation for expense, the hassle venues and labels put you through in the 80s and 90s to prevent bootlegging¹, cowardice over “terrorism” and crime – despite crime declining steadily for three decades people talk about “how bad it is” out there – or maybe it’s all this woman:

Or maybe it’s the industry again, with their crackdowns on unlicensed venues, and the cost involved in being one. I know venues around here who were shut down over licensing issues.

It could be any or all of the above, or something I haven’t even listed. Regardless, the culture is not what it used to be. I know too many musicians who have seen their incomes drop 50-70%, and too many who have just dropped out entirely, to think otherwise.

So what to do now? Where do you get started?

The first thing to talk about the house concert. These aren’t new; folk musicians have done these for a long time. But in other genres, these used to be mostly college neighbourhood excuses for drinking and party riots – if you haven’t seen the Runaways biopic, you might, there’s a good example of what they used to be in that film. Spoiler: they sucked.

Not just Kentucky

Over time, however, they’ve become civilised. There are house concert circuits, there are house concert providers who host and take care of you, and do this on a regular basis. Terms are all over the place, of course. Most don’t charge, some want a percentage of the suggested donation, but even that’s generally just to cover expenses.

So what do the hosts get out of it? They get an event, and social credit – a key currency in any post-scarcity environment. They get to be part of it; people who do this like music and care about it, and want to be a part. This is one way.

Meanwhile, you’re offering an experience they aren’t going to get in any other venue. You’re offering something that’s close and personal and right there. And at the same time, you are getting a venue and a chance to make fans.

Seriously, a crowd of 6-12 people in a living room gives you your best shot of doing the most important thing you can do starting your career: making that personal connection, becoming meaningful to somebody, and through that, re-establishing the value of purchase that we talked about way back in Part Two of this series.

I mentioned these aren’t new, right?

Start by getting people who’ve heard you on the internet to host. If you’re lucky you can get fans to do it (hi guys! ^_^ ). Even if the turnouts are tiny, you’ll need the experience and the references. Once you’ve done some of those, you might be able to get the attention of people who throw these regularly. And from there, maybe you can get onto the circuits, if that’s where you want to go.

But don’t do them if you hate them. Don’t force yourself. People will know.

Event shows are another break-in point. Anything where there’s already an event that you can join is an opportunity. You gain cred by showing that other people are interested in your art. You get a crowd already there for something; you don’t have to overcome the stay-at-home inertia.

For example, I’m a musician, but I’m also a venue – I run nwcMUSIC, a mini-music-festival under the auspices of the Norwescon science fiction convention. I don’t have a budget; I don’t pay; but like a good house concert venue, we take good care of you. You get to play in a good environment to a lot of people who are already out at an event and therefore a lot more likely to check you out, stay and talk with you later. You end up with four days of meet-and-greet. You get to do panels; hopefully, you impress people.

The Doubleclicks at nwcMUSIC 2012/Norwescon 35

See also: Sakuracon, PAX, any kind of multi-modal event that’ll draw people in on several fronts and also let you get personal with potential fans. Hell, Clallam Bay Comicon, where I was last weekend? Exactly the same thing.

Because that’s what you have to do: build that connection, and through that, re-establish the idea of value in purchase. Maybe it’ll be merch. Maybe it’ll be CDs. No matter how you count it, it’s about getting people invested in you, and therefore caring about what you do.

To do this, you have to be there, not just show up and take off. You have to be on the whole time, not just on stage. You have to be part of the event, because you’re selling not just your music, but an experience, and a bit of glamour.

If you’re doing a convention or a show and only doing the concert? You’re missing opportunities. Get onto some panels. Be lively and entertaining and prepared. No panels you care about? Propose some. Make a god damned impression.

People also like event souvenirs. CDs can be souvenirs. Even download codes can be merch can be souvenirs – this is why my download code slips are shiny gold tickets, and not just pieces of printer paper. People react to that. Yes, I know, you first and foremost want people to care about your music! I’m in this because I want people to hear my stuff, not because I thought, “I know! I’ll GET RICH by MAKING MUSIC!”

Because that trick always works.

But if they don’t get your CD, or your download code, they can’t listen to your downloads or CD. So stop worrying about why they bought it and just hope they do. If they like you, if they liked the experience, they’ll want the token of being there, and once they have the CD or the download code, you’ve improved your odds.

Similarly, doing a house party on a house party, or house concert tour? Don’t just play and leave; go to the party. Then build in some time between house shows where you can hang out after the party with your hosts in a relaxed and fun manner.

preferably sedated

It’s work, being “on” for hours at a time like that. It’s new and unfamiliar to many, including me. But people are doing music this way, and some are building careers, in this post-scarcity environment. It requires a gregariousness that you or someone in your band have to have, or be able to cultivate.

But it can be done. It’s one way forward from where we are now. Not the only way; but one way.

This time next week I’ll be in Toronto! I’ll be practicing some of what I’m preaching here. There will also be a Part Six of this supposedly-two-part series, which I’ll do my best to post from the road. I do want feedback and suggestions; we’re all making this up as we go along, and there is no well-trod path here. If you spot a landmark, give us a yell! Otherwise, I’ll see you on the road.

1: Which is to say, the kind of youtube video you see from phones at shows now? They used to clamp down on that so hard. Even still photos were often prohibited, and gods help you if you had a cassette recorder or microphone. People used to make special concert-taping equipment, like glasses with hidden microphones and wires that ran down your back. So crazy.
 

This is Part Five of Music in the Post-Scarcity Environment, a series of articles about, well, what it says on the tin. There are no barriers to availability now, and copying is free. What’s a musician to do now?