I am not a musician

I’m not a musician. But I come from a long line of musicians so maybe I have that gene. My dad founded the band that gave Quincy Jones his start, The Charlie Taylor Band (which later became the Bumps Blackwell Band), in the 40s. His parents were musicians too. My grandparents’ basement served as a bar and was the place to hang out for black musicians traveling through Seattle after their gigs: Lionel Hampton, Erskine Hopkins, Count Basie, Jimmie Lunceford and more.

My dad said in an interview once: “All the black kids I knew had a favorite instrument that they liked to listen to and could ‘pose’ to. I liked to pose to a tenor saxophone. So, when I got my instrument that’s what I got. I liked Lester Youngand Coleman Hawkins. So the first thing I did was pose…. I went from posing to playing, because we didn’t really know how to play. But we just kept on doing it.”

Bob Lefsetz has talked a lot lately about the 10,000 hours, Malcolm Gladwell’s theory of how people achieve great things. It’s not about being born with talent, it is about doing something so much that you become great. My dad had that kind of obsession. First as a musician. Then as a cultural anthropologist. Then as an explorer of inner domains, meditation and other other-worldly stuff.
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Posted at 07:38AM Jun 05, 2009 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[0]

12 steps for digital detox

Amy Winehouse and her creative cousins are not the only ones who need help getting clean. The entire digital industry is suffering from ailments that threaten its very hope of survival. Of course music and entertainment will never die, but the revenues associated with them are under threat as piracy only continues and initiatives to save them are thwarted by old school music and film moguls who dream of remedies that harken back to medicine of the dark ages.

If 95% of the music on iPods has been downloaded for free from P2P sites, then content creators are in denial if they think they are going to reverse this trend by suing users or charging ridiculous prices for music, video and experiences that can be transported over the internet for free. There will always be people who won’t pay, and there will be others who will pay if given additional experiences (discovery, filtering, etc). But new models are needed and the music, film and entertainment industry needs to use its creativity to work with those partners who are helping them to monetize their content rather than preventing them by charging advances and minimum guarantees that make entry into digital services impossible.[Read More]

Posted at 11:43AM Apr 14, 2009 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[2]

Setting sail ...

All dig down sets sail this week into a perfect storm, a little boat armed only with a compass and the wisdom of others who have navigated similar storms and survived. We’re not talking about a closed beta anymore, but we are opening the site to anyone – a vast open sea of users will be lapping against our hull.

In the wake of economic mayhem the closure of one of the most media-hyped “potential” competitors to the iTunes, Spiral Frog is likely to be overlooked but points to some of the obstacles that any upstart digital entertainment site will have to overcome. Spiral Frog forced users to listen to ads in order to download music for “free” in a format that was not iPod friendly. It tried to offer users “free” music and to give iTunes a bit of competition but was doomed to failure having agreed to pay monstrous advances to major record labels hoping to use venture funding given to wanna-be MySpaces like Spiral Frog (with flawed business models) to save them from themselves. Others like QTrax, iMeem and lala.com, may not dead yet but are surely drowning.[Read More]

Posted at 07:02AM Apr 03, 2009 by shelley in Social Networking  |  Comments[0]

Fool's Gold

Please help me do onto others as I would do onto myself: make money, share money, discover and listen to great music and dig into amazing entertainment, and have fun.

Sometimes I think that if we knew how hard it is to do the right thing we wouldn’t bother! Every day I talk to someone, an artist, a content producer, a content distributor, some intermediary or another. And what I have learned is that it absolutely doesn’t pay to be honest! What pays is to be a brigand, a pirate, a thief, a greedy bastard. But I grew up in the 60s and I just cannot accept that all of that effort and belief was for NOTHING!

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Posted at 02:48AM Oct 17, 2008 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[0]

736 fashion tips

Does anyone really care about the 736 fashion tips for spring--the tips you see shouting from the cover of fashion magazines in every newsdealer’s window? Who reads this stuff? Who lines up to find out exactly what they MUST have for the coming season? And who needs 736 of them?

These are serious questions. I am the material girl, after all, a Taurus who lives to own and cultivate and touch and feel. I’m the sort who has matched my scooter and scooter helmet to my 27-speed road bike--a bike purchased especially for the hills of Palo Alto (the center of Silicon Valley, for those not in the know), a bike that I didn’t ride much in the South of France where I was exiled for 5 years recently, hoping in vain to escape the excess (even for me) of 6 Hummers in every 6 square blocks during the startup follies. I am serious...

Anyway (bref, we say in French), this is all leading to something quite serious. I haven’t written a blog for a very long time and I am somewhat embarrassed to admit to the challenges I am trying to overcome for fear of being laughed at (that is part of my superficial nature speaking, the side of the brain that I would like to erase but that is stronger than me and not curable by any self help program). My serious side wants to dig all the way down, to understand everything and to be understood. The other side just wants to be pretty and appreciated. Back to the blog. [Read More]

Posted at 08:06AM Jan 02, 2008 by admin in Music  | 

Hold my tongue?

I wish I could. In school I was a good student but I always got bad marks for talking too much in class. It must be genetic. I see the same things on my mom’s yellowed report cards.  And I unintentionally passed the gene to my son, who transformed curiosity and love of conversation into an even higher art form: class clown. Fortunately, he has put this gene to good use in his chosen career as actor/writer. And I often take advantage of this gene for mouthing off. Ranting is the perfect outlet for me! But sometimes I regret it. I hope this time I won’t.

What is wrong with the entire music industry? Are they all suffering from collective insanity? My office was abuzz last week with the news of the RIAA “victory” against a file sharer, a 30 year old woman who was fined $220,000 for sharing 1700 music files. How completely ridiculous! Where is the RIAA case against Newscorp, the publicly traded company that has been endorsing and profiting from illegal filesharing for two years?

I want to hold my tongue. I should hold my tongue. I’m working with major and independent record labels, doing my bit to resuscitate an ailing music industry, standing up proudly for copyright protection and against piracy, yet here I am about to tell them in black and white that they are all stupid! I must be the stupid one! [Read More]

Posted at 07:03AM Oct 09, 2007 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[8]

Riffs…

I love that word! Riff, “a short rhythmic phrase, especially one that is repeated in improvisation.” Improvising. Another great word. Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to since my last blog post: improvising around a theme.

If you have read any of my infrequent (and often long) posts, then you’ve probably noticed that I am very passionate about a few things and don’t hesitate to rant about them. I missed a few opportunities to rant over the last few weeks… like the site lala, lala land, who opened and closed a certain “too-good-to-be-true feature” of letting users stream their favorite songs to their computers for free--in less than one month! I wanted to slag off this silly venture that launched without any clear revenue model and dubious user benefits, but I was distracted by my own work. And then I thought that maybe I should be a little more circumspect. I’m about to launch a site with amazing user features, what we hope is a strong revenue model, and I remembered that old adage: “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” Or the other one, “Actions speak louder than words.” Or, “Put your money where your mouth is.” One of those, you know the ones. So back to the riff, so to speak.

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Posted at 01:40PM Aug 17, 2007 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[2]

Rips, ripoffs, and rip tides

… for Rip van Winkle

You gotta wonder. YouTube was the startup that entrepreneurs dream of, or maybe don’t dare dream of because it seems just too good to be true. Seems? Well, most things that seem that way… often are… too good to be true. I don’t know if it’s true, but this is what I heard on the grapevine…

Three adorable, young, brilliant entrepreneurs, all ex-PayPal employees, founded YouTube 2005, and then sold it for $1.65 billion in Google stock in 2006. At best they can be accused of having accidentally created an adolescent shell game; they were brilliant and naïve. But at the scary worst, they can be seen as playing the greatest confidence game ever played on Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists. In addition to the fact that one those adorable founders has a dad-in-law who is a Silicon Valley legend, I heard from a fly on the wall that the eventual purchase of YouTube was planned in advance and orchestrated by some very sophisticated investment mavens.

YouTube was groomed for the perfect marriage like a first daughter. Google was the ideal candidate; deep pockets and blinded by love. Just in time. Just when hosting costs ($1 million a month) had eaten up the latest round of funding and just before lawsuits for copyright infringement began, and certainly way before there were any signs of serious revenue. If the good news bears ever do materialize, if advertisers ever do decide that it is good business to put ads on the back of the truck being used to sell stolen goods, and if someone convinces content creators that there is no value in copyrights and that they should just produce their music and film for free, then maybe Google got a good deal.[Read More]

Posted at 01:56AM May 30, 2007 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[0]

D is for Disaster

Everyone is talking about the demise of the music business, but it’s really just the demise of big business in music. We’ve all read about the disastrous results in physical sales of CDs. And digital has not, and will not, become the cure for what ails us. Some are resigned to the situation. The recent and short history of these megomaniacal and monolithic majors was profitable to some but ultimately concentrated power in the hands of very few (the labels and mega star artists). But there are too many layers of management between the artist and the consumer. Not enough sustainable value is being created by their involvement. In the past labels discovered artists and acts; without their efforts many of us would never have experienced the wonderful cross-genre love affairs (the emergence of country rock, for example, that Bob L talked about this week). But Wall Street has been controlling the mega majors in the music industry for maybe 20 years. And with the exception of a few, mega stardom and royal riches were not part of the entitlement plan for musicians. [Read More]

Posted at 06:01AM Apr 25, 2007 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[4]

Smoke and Mirrors

Hats off to William Dyson for his recent post in "The Emperor has no clothes"! He asks us to question the real value of all the many recent Snocap announcements. So far, Snocap is a superstar at PR but to date has had very little success in building out its store inventory. There may be a few reasons for this. I've asked several independent artists and labels about their MySpace/Snocap experience and they have unanimously said it has been painful, mostly because of such a poor user experience and lack of clear instructions as to how to get the store working on the MySpace page. Further, the inventory is exclusively independent -- and music lovers, even those who go to MySpace, want choice. This means they also want major label content. The Snocap store, as far as I can tell, has not done any "deals" with major labels to sell their content in the MySpace store (albeit DRM protected). Is all of this anti-major label, or anti-mainstream artist, or anti-establishment, perhaps just anti-consumer? [Read More]

Posted at 10:28AM Mar 18, 2007 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[3]

Last Rites, Last Supper and Last.fm

It’s all about death and dying this week. I read today that several social networks are on a killing spree: “MySpace’s YouTube Killer – Killing Will Begin Shortly,” by Pete Cashmore.  And then the day before, “Virb.com, Possible MySpace Killer, Goes Live” And there were more, many more just like this in the social network arena. Gladiators face off. One giant reality TV show. I’m not sure who is killing who (or is it whom?) but it seems there is plenty more room for death, since users are still not getting the best experience.

Digital music is also in imminent danger of death. Who will pronounce the Last Rites. Or shall I say, Last Rights? This week’s decision by US Copyright Royalty Board to set new royalty rates for the internet may very well mark the beginning of the end for rights owners. This very near-sighted decision means that internet radio and all other relatively new business models (the only hope of this flailing industry) have been put at even greater risk. It’s not enough that labels and publishers haven’t figured out that when compared to free, 99 cent (or 79 pence) tracks are not going to appeal to 40 times as many people who download from P2P sites unless there are tons of other services and other benefits bundled into the mix. This new decision will affect Internet radio and subscription streaming services, or music on demand. Radio is the way people have always discovered music, this encourages listeners to go out and buy! And the new music subscription model is the greatest thing since sliced bread, another fabulous discovery mechanism that can bring revenue to the industry. But both discovery mechanisms have been sentenced to, yes, Death! [Read More]

Posted at 09:59AM Mar 08, 2007 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[2]

The Curse of Categories

Like many bloggers here, I have disparate musical tastes.  What could be better than screaming down the highway to Led Zeppelin's 'Rock and Roll'  and then later that evening chilling out to the dulcet tones of Nina Simone?  What about getting ready for work in the morning listening to Kasabian,  and then singing away to the guilty pleasure (although one may not want to admit) of Ronan Keating's latest hit?  And of course, we must not forget the classical choices.  What about driving down the highway at top (legal) speed to Wagner's 'Ride of the Valkyries'? Or getting ready in the morning to Mozart's Piano Concerto  No. 23?  Or chill before bed to Rachmaninov's Vespers?  All the choices.  All of the categories into which our musical choices are divided.
 
Who decided it would assist our search if we divided music into categories anyway?  Does it help us find Rachmaninov or Razorlight any easier?  The bigger question is, who invents categories into which music is placed?  Is there any subjective tool is used to define the category?  Marketing research?  Charts and sales?  Public opinion?  The guy behind the desk? [Read More]

Posted at 05:17AM Feb 19, 2007 by tristen in Music  |  Comments[1]

It's About Time

...it’s about space, it’s about the prehistoric race…

FADE IN:
INT. DRM FREE REALM – DAWN
WOMAN with dark hair sits reading something on her computer screen. She strums her fingers on the dining room table. She grabs her coffee cup, takes a quick swallow and begins typing…

Lost. Lost in Space. Steve Jobs is lost. He may give the impression that he found the plot yesterday when he wrote “Thoughts on Music”, but I would suggest he has lost his edge. He is playing a game of catch up, suddenly jumping on the DRM free bandwagon, making it his cause. This is really a game of dis-information, one that would be the envy of benevolent dictators world over (if they could but follow his devious plot). Steve is so tricky that even one of his critics, Fred Wilson, wrote in his blogpost this morning that he may have been wrong about Steve’s intentions: “I thought Jobs was using DRM to build a monopoly on digital music. Either I was wrong or Jobs has changed his mind. Doesn't matter.” Slippery, our friend Steve. [Read More]

Posted at 08:20AM Feb 07, 2007 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[1]

Much ado about Nothing (at MIDEM)

Nothing much to report, except that as always, randomness ran riot. I loved stumbling onto people accidentally, those I really wanted to meet, or needed to meet and didn’t even know it. But the digital entertainment industry is very, very ill. Don’t know what it will take to revive it.

The much touted Spiral Frog is already dead (but the emergency rescue team is still trying to revive it). Last week we read about how the entire management team was sacked. Guess who showed up as the replacement speaker on the panel at MidemNet? Their lawyer. The entire panel was to be dedicated to the great white hope, this very Spiral Frog! The title of the panel was “Sounds Like Free --Ad Supported Music.” Those of you who know me know that I thought their business model was terribly flawed from the moment I heard about it. For those of you who don’t know what it was, here is a brief recap:

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Posted at 08:08AM Jan 30, 2007 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[3]

Show Me The Money!

If you want to make money in the music business as an artist, then you must treat it like a business. Or else consider living in a Socialist country (or perhaps in France), where some people still get paid for doing nothing. There is no divine right to earn money on creative content. Content may be king, but only the truly creative rules. Those with the right to wear the Golden Crown create what people want to consume, especially on the Internet, where virtually anything can be found for free. So how can artists make money? In addition to their art, where else should they apply their creativity?

There are actually many ways for artists to make money: live performances, selling albums, selling merchandise, selling synch rights, etc. And then there is digital distribution, although selling downloads is a bit iffy. We all know that Apple makes most of its money selling its iPods--not selling tracks on iTunes. The percentage of tracks sold on download stores relative to those pirated from p2p sites (or even sold in the brick & mortar world), is small. It may not even be possible for most artists to make money through digital distribution. [Read More]

Posted at 10:55AM Jan 18, 2007 by shelley in Music  |  Comments[5]