February 2007

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John Vanderslice on The Merlin Show

February 28, 2007 in blogs/podcasts, music, music business by George | No comments

merlin mann john van[click to +/-]

Oft-mentioned productivity guru Merlin Mann of 43Folders has added a new feature to his blog called The Merlin Show.

Basically it’s a video blog (I have so much trouble calling them “vlogs”). It launched this week, and it looks great. So far he’s straddling a very compelling line of interviewing interesting people in the tech world and in the music world. There’s quite an overlap.

A recent guest on the show is John Vanderslice, who sort of epitomizes this music/tech nexus.

In the interview, Mr. Vanderslice speaks compellingly about the difficult (though inexorable) transition today’s artists make in adapting from the old/label paradigm, to the new/content-creator-direct-to-customer paradigm. Not surprisingly, Mr. Vanderslice bemoans the lack of advances in this system.

Cash flow/liquidity is definitely one of the short-term hurdles that artists today face. Here’s hoping that efficiencies obviate this, because I promise you those advances are the most expensive loans most artists will ever take.

Anyway, check out Merlin’s interview of Vanderslice here.

Quicksilver shortcuts

February 27, 2007 in GTD, tech by George | No comments

quicksilver logo

Readers of this blog know of my love for Quicsilver. To me it is the finest example of a productivity application, and I can’t begin to calculate the amount of time I save every day because of it. This is time that I am able to use for other things; such as, creative endeavors. I implore artists and musicians who spend any time at all on a Mac to learn how to use Quicksilver.

Piling efficiency atop efficiency, I found this list of keyword shortcuts for Quicksilver that are really helpful:

quicksilver shortcuts

These shortcuts, and more can be found using the very cool xCuts Widget.

[via Lifehacker]

OT: Wayne Coyne on Optimism

February 27, 2007 in music business, Off Topic by George | No comments

Wayne coyne

NPR has a brief, nicely-stated essay from Flaming Lips frontman, Wayne Coyne.

I really don’t want to pull it apart too much, because it doesn’t need it. But one paragraph struck me as interesting in a different way then perhaps Mr. Coyne intended.

He talks about how he worked at Long John Silver’s for 11 years. While he doesn’t say when those 11 years were, given the fact that Mr. Coyne’s not that old, and that the Lips have been around for some time, one has to assume that those 11 years at LJS overlapped with his playing in the Flaming Lips.

I think emergent artists often feel that their dead-end jobs are somehow keeping them from attaining success with their art. Mr. Coyne, however, notes that this particular dead-end job:

“…freed my mind. The job allowed me to dream about what my life could become.”

We’re all over-burdened with too many things that distract us from what we really want to be doing; things that can be viewed as obstacles to our creative output. (The point of this blog, is, in some respects, to help artists be more efficient with all aspects of their life, and therefore have more creative space and energy).

However, as Mr. Coyne so clearly reminds us, we find our moments of inspiration and creativity where we find them, and yes, that is Zen, but it’s also pragmatic.

If Mr. Coyne could find a way to free his mind, while working at Long John Silver’s, to such a degree that he was able to create works like Zaireeka, none of us really have any excuses.

Arcade Fire explained by the Life Cycle curve

February 26, 2007 in music business by George | 2 comments

Last night, I noted that something was going on, as a result of – among other things – Arcade Fire being on Saturday Night Live.

Attempting to explain what’s going on allows me the opportunity to bring into this blogular conversation a concept that (much to my student’s dismay) I’m obsessed with.

Basically, I believe that the life cycle of all products can be charted along a normal distribution curve. Perhaps you remember seeing one of these bell-shaped curves in your statistics classes.

I’m over-simplifying this, but I believe it can be constructive to break the product life-cycle down into the following user groups:

•Mavens
•Early Adopters
•Early Majority
•Majority
•Late Majority
•Late Adopters
•Death

Here’s how the categories align with the curve:

lifecycle curve 1 1

So, looking at the curve, and its respective categories, you can see not only the temporal progress (along the X axis) of the product’s life cycle, but also the related percentage of users for each category (along the Y axis). It works, in essence, like a histogram, where what I’m calling the mavens represent a very small percentage of the market, while the majority represents a vast percentage.

Viewed this way you could, for instance, chart the path of a band.

Consider Arcade Fire. They started with only mavens knowing about them (I’m using the term “Maven” as defined by Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point). This could be people in the band’s hometown who began building a buzz; through blogs, word of mouth, whatever.
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something’s going on

February 25, 2007 in music business by George | 1 comment

pensive m. ward

M. Ward’s music in a Cadillac commercial during the Oscars.

the the
A song from The The’s classic 1983 album Soul Mining being used to sell M&Ms…during the Oscars.

arcade fire
Arcade Fire tearing it up on Saturday Night Live (when was the last time you saw someone break a string on SNL…when was the last time you saw a hurdy gurdy on SNL!!).

Both Arcade Fire and M. Ward are on the great indie Merge.

All three of these artists are the real deal, and if you don’t know them, do check them out.

The times they are a changing.

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