The Next MySpace for Musicians

I’ve stopped logging on to MySpace. The only reason I’d continued to check it was to read bulletins posted by bands I enjoy.

But then the noise became deafening.

Too much effort for too little reward.

Processor-intensive Flash ads swarmed my homepage.

And instead of including bulletin pagination, to allow me to view 25 or 50 or 100 bulletins on a page, they kept with the original model of dividing bulletins into groups of 10. Each page yielded a new set of flashing ads. Awesome.

But that’s in the past. Bye, MySpace.

So if you’re a band I listen to or a band who thinks that I might like to listen to you, there’s a question you should be asking yourself. How are you going to connect with me, now?

How are you going to coerce me to join your tribe?

Or, more importantly: where is your tribe going to converge?

I don’t friend bands on Facebook, because Facebook is for human friendships.

I rarely visit band websites, as I’ve discussed.

If I don’t visit your Facebook profile or your website, it’s going to be tough to convince me to join your mailing list. And mailing lists aren’t the ideal method for artists to broadcast from, as it’s one-to-one. Not one-to-many like the sense of community you felt when browsing a band’s MySpace profile.

MySpace succeeded for several years because it provided the tools for musicians to share their craft and assemble a community in a central location.

But if the community is dispersing, where are they going to meet next?

Where is the next MySpace for musicians?

Finding a suitable answer for this question is as important for me, the music fan and critic, as it is for the artists who want me to hear their music.

I want a central hub to connect with hundreds of artists I admire and enjoy. I want to listen, to follow, to gain an insight into their recording process and international tours and personalities.

MySpace is no longer the answer. It’s old tech.

I don’t care about exclusive album streams. I don’t care about digital music store partnerships.

I just want to know when my favourite artists have recorded new music. When they’re touring. What other people think of their music.

Twitter is not the answer. Too shallow. When it comes to musicians, it’s a case of too little data spread too thin. I’ll happily read essays on subjects that I’m interested in.

If you’re a musician, I don’t particularly want to know what you’re doing all day, every day. Just the important stuff. Specific, anticipated, relevant. New music, tours, reviews, videos.

Again, these kinds of periodic updates could be delivered via mailing list. But I’m not going to go around visiting band websites and joining lists.

Like I said, this is as important a question for me, the music fan, as it is for the artists and labels.

Build something remarkable. Something worth sharing. Somewhere worth returning to. And I’ll be there.

Effective Tribe Management: 200 Nipples

200 Nipples is an online t-shirt store with a twist:

That’s how many nipples we assume will be covered by any single run of our high-quality shirts. (We’ll have the third-nippled buyer in there occasionally, but we didn’t want to count on it when naming the company; this is serious business, after all.) 

One hundred shirts per month, individually numbered. Shirt prices range from US$1 to US$100 inclusive. First in, best dressed.

I’ve had my eye on them for a few months, since they were mentioned on Seth‘s blog. Funnily enough, I can’t find the post where he initially linked to them.

I received notification this morning, Brisbane time, that a new shirt was due to go onsale later that afternoon. I set a reminder in my calendar and went about my business for the rest of the day.

At 4pm, I logged onto the site and found that their 100-item cart showed that no shirts had been bought. Weird. I proceeded to checkout and received order confirmation of my longsleeve shirt, which cost US$11 including postage. Sweet.

Except that their shopping cart and database broke, and 76 users thought they’d snapped up shirts for a dollar or two. Whoops.

This potentially painful ordeal was handled brilliantly by Wade, 200 Nipples’ founder. He replaced the storefront with a temporary ‘out of order’ page and kept hundreds of repeatedly-refreshing users in the loop by updating two blog posts.

A couple of dozen users chatted amongst ourselves in the comments sections until Wade initiated a ‘do over’at 4.30pm. Best of all, Wade defused the fiscal situation by creating and publishing a 33%-off coupon, which was valid for an hour. 

Shirts 1-30 were snapped up in minutes, but I snagged #11 for US$11.

This year, Seth’s all about tribes. He posits – bolding mine:

Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world.

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn’t an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.

At a guess, Wade’s tribe numbers in the low hundreds right now. His tribe was brought closer together today, by sharing a disruptive experience that was elegantly and openly managed. 

We ended up taking a $150+ hit on the coupon code, but that’s OK. Above all else, we always want to deliver a good experience to you, the users of the site. The overwhelming majority of our customers were very cool about it. Thanks so much for your understanding.

Perfect. This is the kind of experience that gives Wade’s tribe a story to tell and something to talk about. You can bet I’m going to tell this story to everyone who asks about my long-sleeved shirt.. which mightn’t be worn for months, since it’s almost summertime in Australia.

Tribes is a great concept and a book that I look forward to reading. 200 Nipples is an example of gathering a tribe around a niche concept – attractive, limited, (potentially) cheap shirts – and today, a great example of masterful tribe management.

Website review: Time Off Magazine

Imagine that you run a free weekly music publication. A pretty popular one named Time Off, that’s read widely across Brisbane, a city home to 1.8 million. You recently got bought out by – sorry, merged with - Street Press Australia, who own several similar publications across the country. You decide to upgrade the magazine’s website, which has become outdated.

You’ve got two options: fast, easy and crappy, or slow, meticulous and attractive.

Which option do you think Time Off chose?

Time Off Magazine website screenshot, 20 October 2008. Click for full size.

I think it’s pretty obvious. 

It’s an out-of-the-box, CMS-based site with minimal focus on design. Okay, fair enough; not every site needs to be eye-catching, so long as it gets the job done, right?

Unfortuntately, the redeveloped Time Off site fails to get the job done. Content is cumbersome and slapped onto the site directly from the latest printed issue with little rhyme or reason. 

Mysterious capital letters abound throughout the site’s content. Album reviews are awarded SEO-unfriendly URLs, and they’re grouped per-issue on the same page. Nice one.

Two live reviews from last week’s issue – #1395, 15 October 2008 – are attached to the same article named ‘Feedback’, which is the name of the live review section in the print magazine. The fact that they opted to devote that issue’s entire Feedback section to 2000 words about the Time Off-sponsored Sounds Of Spring festival is another discussion. What’s more, that review was part one; part two will be printed in #1396. Can’t wait.

Clicking the top-level Time Off item on the site’s menu results in the following page, cleverly named ‘Rock’:

Rock

Six Pack   ( 24 Articles ) Gig guide   ( 3 Articles ) Features   ( 53 Articles ) CD Reviews   ( 8 Articles ) Live Reviews   ( 20 Articles ) Short Fast Report   ( 4 Articles ) Breakdown   ( 4 Articles ) Rootsdown   ( 4 Articles ) The Racket   ( 4 Articles ) Behind The Lines   ( 3 Articles )

Wow, useful! When were these articles published? Let’s click one to find out. Gig guide, sure. Oh, another page, that lists those three associated articles. Two named ‘gig guide’ and one named ‘venue guide’, all authored by ‘Webmaster’. I’m really glad that it shows me how many ‘hits’ each article has! Unsurprisingly, the gig guides are pasted in a plaintext format that’s needlessly difficult to process.

Okay, so their content sucks, and it’s evident that no one within Time Off gives half a crap enough to check for consistency, or anything resembling quality control. That’s fine, I didn’t really want to use the website much anyway.

But after clicking around a bit, I uncovered some truly awful content that I must paste for posterity, as they’ll surely change it once someone decides to actually.. I don’t know.. look at their fucking website.

This is under the readership section. Subtitle: Who are our readers?

Time Off readers are divided equally between male and female.

Time Off readers are predominantly aged between 17– 30 but the nature of the industry and the refusal of bands such as Rose Tattoo to call it a day suggest readers will more often than not continue to pick up SPA publications well into their 40’s.

Time Off readers are avid consumers of music, entertainment and technological devices and products. They own iPods, Blackberrys, video game consoles, Macs, Laptops, Wiis, records, record players, Mobile Phones, DVDs and MP3s. Their need to have the latest model/product available coupled with the urge to spend rather than save sees readers replacing said items as frequently as once every 6 months.

Time Off readers have access to the internet both at work and at home, on which most time is spent accessing websites of bands and performers, shopping online, watching video clips on You Tube and blogging about how the band they saw play last night changed their life…. or destroyed it.

Time Off readers go to shows, get their hair cut, buy new jeans, are addicted to coffee, see films, occasionally turn up to Uni and party hard. And wherever they are doing these things, SPA publications are within reach.

Time Off readers are a product of a consumer driven age where brand awareness has taken place of literacy and social etiquette. They were born in the ‘80s when greed was good and they know what they want and when they want it, which is sooner rather than later. This puts them and their peers ahead of their game.

Time Off readers have one best friend that never lies – the mirror. They preen, puff, spray, squeeze, flash and luck all in the name of fashion. They buy what they don’t need and are willing to try anything once if it’s considered hip, regardless of cost.

Time Off readers are educated and informed. They value substance over transparency and integrity over wit. The wool is not often pulled over their eyes.

Nevermind that it’s the most awkwardly-worded piece of copy you’ve read this month, possibly this year. Nevermind that nobody at Time Off cared enough to edit out all the instances of ‘SPA publications‘.

No – most of all, I’m genuinely disgusted that Time Off, or moveover, Street Press Australia felt it necessary to attempt to classify their readership using some broad, sweeping statements that are neither funny nor accurate. I’m not sure which outcome is more disturbing – the fact that someone was commissioned to do a half-arsed hack-and-paste job to create content just for the sake of it, or that the above paragraphs made their way onto the site apparently without quality control.

What a fucking shambles.

Hey, Time Off. This is 2008. People use the internet all the time; they check your website, and if it sucks, you’re going to get called out about it. Invest the time and money into planning a genuine strategy for the website to complement the printed magazine, or don’t do it at all.

The old site sucked too, but at least it didn’t describe me as someone who “preens, puffs, sprays, squeezes, flashes and lucks”. 

The bullshit readership copy quoted above was at least partially correct, though: I’m educated and informed. I value substance over transparency and integrity over wit. The wool is not often pulled over my eyes.

So who the fuck are you trying to kid, Time Off?

Disclosure: I write for fellow Brisbane street press Rave Magazine – who have a functional, attractive and well-utilised website – and I work for a Brisbane-based web development company. The sentiments expressed above are my own, and should not be attributed to any entity other than myself.

Celebrity Photographs: I don’t get it

Why do publications still pay ridiculous amounts for “exclusive” photos of celebrity babies?

We all know that as soon as these photos are published, they’re scanned, uploaded and disseminated across the web.

Exclusive pictures of [celebrity name] newborn twins fetched $14 million, a person involved in the negotiations told The Associated Press. The celebrity weekly scored the photos in a joint deal with [magazine name], and the two will split the bill. Particulars of the division were not disclosed.

Bragging rights?

“We’re thrilled to be able to feature these pictures in [magazine name],” managing editor Larry Hackett said in a statement. [magazine name] plans to unveil the first photo on its Web site on Sunday evening.

The photographs aren’t even going to appear in the magazine first.

How can a collection of pixels be worth US$14 million? And what kind of fucked-up, media-driven society thinks this is normal? Acceptable?

It’s cool that they’re donating it all to their charity. Really cool. But can you imagine the boardroom conversations before this deal was sealed?

“We’ve got to secure the rights to these pictures! It is imperative that people of the world associate the images of these celebrity children with our brand name! Our magazine!”

Doesn’t this all seem ridiculous? Excessive? Moronic?

Always-On

Seth describes a world whose eyes and ears are synchronised via technology:

So, very soon, you will own a cell phone that has a very good camera and knows where you are within ten or fifteen feet. And the web will know who you are and who your friends are…. This is going to happen. The only question is whether you are one of the people who will make it happen. I guess there’s an even bigger question: will we do it right?

Complete connectivity is difficult to imagine. I understand the principles of the notion, but my thoughts remain firmly grounded by its logistics.

Speaking locally, the biggest barrier to overcome when discussing an always-on world is the price of data transmission.

I can’t see this barrier being lowered in the near future. It’s unfortunate. Australia has always been behind in terms of broadband cost and speed. ISP policy has traditionally placed harsh restrictions on bandwidth, too.

The effect that these data limitations have had on Australia’s web economy are obvious. It’s frustrating to read about US-based technological advancements while using an internet infrastructure that’s at least five years behind.

Phone-streaming services like Qik are financially unfeasible in the current data climate. My recent research into internet plans for a phone upgrade confirms this. Until the price of data transmission lowers, there’s little point in such an investment. The always-on notion is admirable, but out of Australian grasp for the foreseeable future.

Openness

While writing about the new architecture of news, I came across Upendra Shardanand’s blog.

I found his writing on the subject enlightening and enjoyable. I went to subscribe, but there was no subscribe link.

I went to email him about this omission, but there was no content in his about section.

His blog linked to his Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, though. The latter reveals that he’s worked for AOL Time Warner and Microsoft. He’s the founder and CEO of Daylife.

My initial goal was to subscribe to his blog. Though he didn’t assist with this process, my goal was easily achieved through manual entry into my reader. That’s not my point.

If you’ve got a captive and willing audience, why make them jump through a bunch of hoops to achieve their desired outcome?

Conversation and interaction are achieved through making these two outcomes easily achievable by your audience. I desire both, which is why my contact details and subscription link are immediately visible to visitors.

Of course, Upendra might have chosen to omit these outcomes. If that’s the case, I’d like to know why he’s opposed to openness.

The New Architecture Of News

Jeff Jarvis writes about the idea of link layers within news stories, based upon blog etiquette:

…a new Golden Rule of Links in journalism — link unto others’ good stuff as you would have them link unto your good stuff.

I check ABC News often, wherever I am online. I consider their reporting the most credible and objective of the mainstream Australian news media. They tend to cut the bullshit and get to the heart of the matter succinctly. Few words are wasted.

It’s foolish to imagine that all of their reporters investigate and write original copy, though.

The only barriers between the present situation and superior navigation to news are habit and an unwillingness to adapt.

I’d happily embrace in-text linking to external sources. If news companies think that this would look tacky, they’re wrong. A link would save me the inevitable ctrl+T; ctrl+E; enter query. Furthermore, it’d show respect for their news-consuming audience.

To pretend that your news organisation is the sole carrier of a story is more than deceptive – it’s disrespectful to the intelligence of web users. The goal of web-based news services isn’t – well, shouldn’t be – to keep the user on their site. Initial content should provide a brief overview of the news story. Links should propel the user further down the rabbit hole of knowledge, if they so desire.

In an attention economy, taking my attention is stealing my money. That message, taken from a Bubblegeneration comment, is worth remembering.

When discussing online news, Jarvis is authoritative:

Cover what you do best. Link to the rest.

What don’t you know?

While chatting with a friend using MSN Messenger, I found myself about to ask a simple, specific question about an upcoming event. I stopped myself, because I realised that the answer was almost right in front of me.

All that I had to do was alt-tab; ctrl+E; enter query.

I’m embarrassed that I only just noticed this tendency of denying myself instant knowledge. Of relying on others to supply information that’s easily within my grasp. While I regularly use Google to define unfamiliar terms when reading, I’ve never consciously acknowledged this selfish habit when interacting with others.

This is less about creating an all-knowing facade than it is about about a desire to save time. By taking the initiative and informing myself of an unfamiliar term, I’m saving my friend the time it’d take them to explain. It’s futile to wish for this desire to be mutual: I’ve already realised that you should never hold others to your own standards.

This discussion presents an interesting dichotomy: increasingly, the question is changing from “what do you know?“, to “what don’t you know?”.

In an economy where information is free and search engine algorithms are constantly being refined, knowledge barriers are almost non-existent. This means that age is no longer an issue. It’s entirely possible that a dedicated 15 year-old – hell, a 12 year-old – could become one of the most knowledgeable individuals in the world in a particular topic; though, this notion has limitations in fields that require practical experience.

It’s heartening to see that some are realising the value of encouraging students to engage with social media. True world-changers are already engaging.

The Cost of Interaction

I haven’t experienced a more concrete example of the low cost of interaction on the web than two responses I received from people that I recently wrote about. Ryan Holiday and Gary Vaynerchuk both replied soon after I published my posts. I shouldn’t be amazed by this, but I am.

An orthodox branding approach, when considering your name as a brand, is to create a blog and only interact with those who visit. This is the blogging equivalent of spawn camping. This is also a poor marketing tactic if your goal is to create and interact with a readership.

Unorthodox branding is to monitor mentions of your name across the web. It’s to pursue and engage those who have taken the time to share their thoughts about you. It’s recognising that this is word-of-mouth marketing in action.

We all have the opportunity to appear benevolent, and invested in the success of our personal branding. It’s acknowledging that you’re being spoken about online, and maintaining a dialogue with these people. It doesn’t matter whether they’re speaking positively or negatively about you. That you’re willing to take the time to engage, to create a dialogue, signals your investment in personal impression management. Few achieve notoriety for being an asshole – and even he’s embracing openness now.

I experienced some negative personal feedback earlier in the month. I wrote a review about an Alchemist show that I attended. Within a few days, it was picked up by the local metal community. The discussion made a few small waves before I became aware of it. You can read about it here. My response was concise, accurate and timely.

You could argue that it’s only a bunch of metalheads – who cares? That response momentarily crossed my mind as I read through the initial discussion. However – I care. It’s my name. It’s my brand, far beyond my responsibilities as a music critic. I will outgrow that role: my name will endure.

Nobody is more invested in the creation and maintenance of your brand than you are. If you’re not going to market yourself, it’s rare that others will do it for you. You’re your best marketer.

Content Analysis: Winelibrary TV

I was linked to WinelibraryTV through Jeff Jarvis’ blog. He wrote a short article on The Guardian‘s site describing the site and its owner, Gary Vaynerchuk. A few words from Jarvis:

Before you read this, do me a favour and go to WinelibraryTV.com. Be prepared for a jet engine in your face. That blast of personality is Gary Vaynerchuk, a 32-year-old merchant who has made more than 450 daily wine-tasting shows online – just him, his glass and a spit bucket.

The show, with its audience of 80,000 a day, has transformed Vaynerchuk into a cultural phenomenon. He has appeared on two of the biggest TV talk shows in the US and in the Wall Street Journal and Time. His book, Gary Vaynerchuk’s 101 Wines, comes out next week and the day he announced this on his internet show, his fans immediately pushed it to No 36 on Amazon’s bestseller list. He has a Hollywood agent. He makes motivational speeches. And he has only just begun. Gary Vaynerchuk is on his way to becoming the online Oprah.

After reading this intriguing introduction, I immediately load the site. The episode at the top of the page is #467 – Some Wines At The Blue Ribbon. Not exactly the most descriptive of titles. I click play on the FlashBlock logo, and find that the video’s running length is sixteen minutes. This is an immediate turn-off, as I tend to avoid watching any streaming video longer than two minutes unless it’s attached to a convincing recommendation. I sure hope Gary thanked Jeff for his effective word-of-mouth marketing.

Jarvis wasn’t kidding about the jet-engine personality: Vaynerchuk is entertaining from the first second. His enthusiasm and sense of humour is immediately apparent. I’m surprised and impressed that his energy and charisma hasn’t dulled after 467 episodes. I watch with a smile on my face as Vaynerchuk talks rings around himself, but constantly returns to several central themes within the episode. It’s almost as if the actual wine-tasting process is secondary to the cult of personality that surrounds the site’s subject; intentional or not, this is the impression that I get.

Vaynerchuk’s concluding question of the day asks his viewers to respond with their favourite wine bar in the US. He specifically addresses casual viewers who are happy to watch without interacting:

Lurkers! Please answer! You’ve been watching my show and you haven’t left a comment! Can you do that? It’s free! Give it to me! Please! Because you, with a little bit of me, we’re changing the wine world. Whether they like it – or not.

A cute conclusion, and one that’s produced a reasonable return: at the time of writing, the video had 18,000 views and 250 text comments. Further exploration of the site reveals a spreadsheet maintained by a Vayniac that contains exhaustive data summaries on every wine Vaynerchuk has sampled – though it only contained the highest rating wine for this episode, wherein he tasted three.

Vaynerchuk’s impact on my life was non-existent until I decided on a whim to give him a chance after an impersonal recommendation from a person I respect. I’ve now become a casual devotee of the man. His blog contains short videos that discuss business development, marketing, and personal ethics. What’s remarkable about the site’s content is that I only have a passing interest in wine, yet I’m now compelled to watch and interact with Vaynerchuk.

This dude is the personification of the “good, open, free” edgeconomy model. His enthusiasm and winning attitude is contagious. I have a feeling that I’ll be following him for a long time.