Last week I blogged about how the digital age has ushered in a new era of music patronage, where fans finance a band’s album through a service like SellaBand. Bands also appeal directly to fans through their own web sites. This approach proved successful for Jill Sobule.
Slicethepie, another music patronage service, just announced the release of its first fan-funded album. An indie band called The Alps raised enough funds through Slicethepie to professionally record an album. Under this business model, bands retain 100 percent copyright (and publishing rights) of their work and keep all royalties. Bands are also free to sign with a record label at any time.
[Update: Hey, I'm a random blog! Don't The Alps know who I am?]
Somebody thinks Slicethepie’s idea is a good one. The service just received about $2 million in funding, which it will use to beef up current offerings and add more services.
Thinking out loud…
Do Christian music fans camp outside concert venues to get close to the stage and gather around tour buses after shows hoping to meet the band?
Do Christian bands have to deal with stalkers, “zealous” fans who follow the band on tour, and so-called Christian young women (and men) willing to drop their pants to gain access? (So to speak!) Christ followers, eh?
Now that would be an interesting series of articles. Who shall write it? Perhaps I shall.
Watch out for that thin line between zealous fan and groupie.
by La Shawn on March 11, 2008
in Comedy
…as the old folks used to say.
Or maybe Eliot Spitzer’s just brain dead.
Am I the only one who thinks this Spitzer prostitute scandal is hilarious? I mean, a governor, former attorney general, and prosecutor, for crying out loud. Did he expect to get away with it forever? What was he thinking? Ah, there’s the rub. His brains had shifted to his…
Yeah, Spitzer’s a fallible human being like the rest of us, but come on!
What a dope.
(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Some corners of the blogosphere are buzzing about a blog post written by Kevin Kelly, an editor at Wired magazine. The idea behind his post, “1,000 True Fans,” isn’t new, but it’s timely.
Background: The Long Tail
You’ve probably heard of the “long tail,” an idea popularized by Chris Anderson, Wired magazine’s editor-in-chief. Anderson argued in The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More that the era of the “hit” or “blockbuster” was driven by artificial scarcity. Because of limited physical shelf space, air time, etc., only those products that sold well were given precious space and air time. Owners could not afford to stock items that sold only a few units a year.
The Internet has eliminated this artificial scarcity by opening up a seemingly infinite supply of niche goods and services to consumers. Technology has made producing, storing, and distributing products cheaper. At the head of the demand curve are best-selling products, or hits. In the long tail of the curve are non-hits, products that sell in smaller quantities. Anderson argued that the future of business is in the long tail.
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by La Shawn on March 6, 2008
in Playlist
Update (3/10): Amy, honey, please get off the drugs and just sing. Listen to her rendition of The Shirelles’ “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” Pure gold:
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While I’ve been blogging about music and digital technology for the past couple of months, something interesting has been happening. More counties and states have been “cracking down” on illegal aliens and individuals and businesses that hire them.
The DC area has been flooded with illegal aliens, especially Northern Virginia. Prince William County has authorized its law enforcement agencies to check the immigration status of people stopped even for minor traffic violations. (Source) Only the federal government can enforce immigration law (and deport people), but local governments are well within their rights to ask about immigration status and to report those who can’t or won’t prove it.
Frankly, this stinks of “too little, too late.” About 20 years too late. Millions upon millions of people are in this country illegally. While local ordinances like Prince William County’s are a necessary step to at least making a dent in the problem, illegal aliens will just pick up and move to “friendlier” counties. (MoCo MD is about to get a lesson in reaping and sowing.) Unless the country has a whole commits itself to securing the borders, stopping illegal “immigration,” and deporting people who don’t belong here, things won’t change.
Why should we expect illegal aliens to respect our laws when legal citizens don’t? It’s very frustrating, which is why I don’t blog about it often anymore. I want to read and write about topics that fuel my emerging fascination with the cultural impact of digital technology.
Illegal “immigration” isn’t one of those topics. 
Everybody’s heard of outsourcing, the fine art of subcontracting jobs and services to third parties.
Computer manufacturers like Dell outsource support services to countries like India, for example, because it’s cheaper than hiring Americans in America to do the job, despite the fact that it frustrates American customers to speak to people with thick accents they can barely understand.
I guess it’s pretty clear how I feel about Dell’s outsourcing practices.
But I digress. “Crowdsourcing” is a newly created word that conveys a similar idea in the context of Web 2.0. Wikipedia is crowdsourcing in its purest form. Founder Jimmy Wales asked the crowd – you, me, and everybody else – to help create an online encyclopedia. Content providers aren’t paid to add or to edit entries (as far as I know). They do it for, well, I don’t exactly know why they do it. They just do.
Also see “A journalist’s guide to crowdsourcing.”
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By popular request: The music search engine I blogged about last month was Seeqpod, and the podcast was called The Chillcast.
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I’m having one of those “wish I’d expressed the idea first” moments.
I listen to a podcast called “Music Career Juice,” by Peter Spellman, owner of Music Business Solutions. In one episode, he talked about the return of music patronage, but with a modern twist.
Centuries ago, artists and musicians depended on churches, royal courts, or wealthy individuals to support their work. Over time, this elitist system waned, giving way to public concert halls where everybody else could pay to attend performances. Recorded music eventually lured people out of concert halls. It was no longer necessary to attend a live performance to hear music.
The digital age has created a new style of patronage system, says Spellman. Instead of receiving support from one exclusive patron, musicians can seek support from thousands of patron-fans. A company called SellaBand allows fans to be modern-day patrons.
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by La Shawn on March 4, 2008
in Lunacy
Last week, I read a New York Times review of a memoir titled, Love and Consequences: A Memoir of Hope and Survival, the story of how a “part white, part Native American girl” survived as a foster child in a black home in gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles.
According to the review, Margaret B. Jones told “in colorful, streetwise argot” of how she got a gun for her 13th birthday, learned how to cook crack, and saw friends killed and sent to prison. Jones made it out of the ‘hood, attending the University of Oregon on a scholarship.
I smelled a rat.
I’m generally suspicious of memoirs anyway (thanks, James Frey), but this one was stretching it. Now, I don’t know much about “gang culture,” but the story just didn’t ring true. Based on the book review, Jones’s tale seemed like warmed-over TV drama. It sounded to me like Jones was a white girl just pretending, living out some weird fantasy and using the “right” gang slang. (Homies? Do people still use that word?)
It turns out my suspicions were warranted. Today it was revealed that Margaret B. Jones, also known as Margaret Seltzer, made up the whole thing. She’s a white woman who grew up in Sherman Oaks with her biological family and graduated from a private Episcopal day school. Seltzer’s sister saw a New York Times story about baby sis and told the publisher she was a liar. From TimesOnline:
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Channeling Margaret Sanger!
Child killing isn’t funny, but I laughed while listening to this audio clip of a telephone conversation (posted on YouTube) between a Planned Parenthood employee who accepted a donation from a man who requested that his money be used to help black women have their babies slaughtered in the womb, because “the less black kids out there the better.” (Pet peeve pause: the proper word in this context is fewer, not less.)
The man was a plant, part of a strategy to expose Planned Parenthood for the death-focused organization that it is. Autumn Kersey, vice president of development (no pun intended!) and marketing for Planned Parenthood of Idaho, fell right into the trap. I’m sure that happens a lot when you’re dealing with murder. (Read the text of the conversation.)
An abortion mill worker got caught in a similar web last year. She told an 18-year-old posing as a 15-year-old girl carrying a 23-year-old man’s baby to lie about her age to circumvent the statutory rape law. And then the death factory threatened to sue the poser for recording the exchange. Hey, what can you do? Child killing is legal in all states; recording people without their consent isn’t. Twisted, isn’t it?
Big tip of the beret to blogger Dawn Eden, one of my favorite people. Dawn, author of the highly-recommended The Thrill of the Chaste: Finding Fulfillment While Keeping Your Clothes On, is hot on the church and college lecture circuit, speaking to young people about chastity. Read the book review.
By the way, Dawn will appear on the “Today” show (NBC) on Monday at 10 a.m. ET. Congratulations, Dawn! Set your DVRs, everybody.
Update (3/3): Actor Martin Sheen is pro-life? Apparently, he is. Why do so-called pro-life people support politicians who believe women have a right to kill their babies? I don’t get it.
One of many things I’ve learned in this life journey is never say never. Ever. That’s why I’ve never said I’ll never return to political blogging. I may one day, but for now, it’s in a corner collecting dust.
Christian writers and bloggers have to contend with many things. One of the most irritating is hearing from people who tell you what you ought to be writing about (wishing I’d write about certain things is OK), whether it’s a blog post, article, or book. (The same applies to non-Christian writers and bloggers, of course.)
That’s why I empathize with novelist Anne Rice, authoress of such vampire novels as the well-known Interview with the Vampire, which was made into a movie starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.
A few years ago, Rice returned to the Catholic faith after years of atheism, and vowed never to write another vampire novel. She said she’d only write for the Lord. See “Interview with a Penitent.”
Let’s lay it out. Vampires are associated with evil. I mean, they’re bloodsuckers. According to vampire mythology, which has evolved over the centuries, a mortal human, once bitten or infected by a vampire, dies from blood loss or becomes a vampire. These soulless creatures are damned to exist for an eternity in non-aging, “undead” bodies, feeding on the lifeblood of mortals. In other words, they must murder (or at the very least, violate) in order to survive.
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I don’t know about you, but I’m so tired of reading stories of college students complaining about “racist” professors. It was refreshing to read one with a different spin, although a sad one.
Earlier this month, University of North Carolina biology professor Albert Harris said unborn babies with Down syndrome should be aborted. Thank goodness someone in the class complained. Unfortunately, she didn’t complain in class and to his face, which is what I’d have done if I’d been pro-life in college. Sadly, I wasn’t. An excerpt from the News & Observer (emphases added):
“In my opinion,” Harris wrote in his lecture notes, “the moral thing for older mothers to do is to have amniocentesis, as soon during pregnancy as is safe for the fetus, test whether placental cells have a third chromosome #21, and abort the fetus if it does. The brain is the last organ to become functional.”
Harris, who made the comments on Monday, said he has said the same thing many times before. But Lara Frame, a senior in Harris’ Biology 441, said the biology classroom is no place for opinion.
“Biology is not an opinion subject,” said Frame, an anthropology and Spanish major from Charlotte. “It’s a facts-based subject. And though abortion is legal, it’s not a fact that you should abort every baby with Down syndrome.
“If this had been a philosophy class, I wouldn’t have said anything.”
Frame’s brother, John, 18, has Down syndrome, and Frame said she became “physically ill” at Harris’ remarks. She didn’t say anything during Monday’s class. She was too angry, she said.
Don’t get it twisted. The “moral thing” Harris refers to isn’t having amniocentesis; it’s killing an unborn baby with Down syndrome.
In what universe is it a “moral thing for older mothers” to kill their unborn babies with Down syndrome? A moral thing. Moral? Killing an unborn baby with chromosome abnormalities, a human being who can survive and flourish outside the womb if allowed to develop inside it, is the right thing? Slaughtering a child who’ll be less than perfect or who may not live up to his parents’ expectations is moral?
I’m not surprised Harris said what he said. I’m fairly certain many college professors feel the same way. What surprises me is that a student made some noise about it. 
To “encourage” professors to keep these sort of irrelevant opinions to themselves and just teach the darn class (free speech, my eye), we’ll need bold students, not just students with strong opinions, to speak up and often.
Update: Blogger Julie let me know about a petition “urging doctors to give more factual and accurate (and POSITIVE) information to mothers who have been told their child might have Down syndrome.” For more information, see Mommy Life.
Related posts:
Country music singer Rissi Palmer will play a free show this Thursday night in Columbia, S.C., at the Wild Wings Harbison at 8 p.m., sponsored by NEW 92 FM. I wish I were visiting home this week. Oh, well. Hey, if you go see Rissi on Thursday, let me know.
I’m not what you’d call a big country music fan, but I’m fond of Rissi Palmer’s self-titled debut album. Read the review. I’d be remiss if I didn’t promote Miss Rissi after doing the same for these guys and this guy. (Girl power!)
For the record, I don’t promote books and music for money from authors and artists. It’s all for love…and maybe a backstage pass.
What’s that old saying? Each generation will become weaker and wiser. Who said it?
The high-tech age has encouraged a sedentary lifestyle, which renders us physically weaker than generations before us. We’re weaker morally, I think, because we’ve mainstreamed permissiveness, sexual and otherwise.
Are we wiser? Under the definition “having knowledge or information as to facts, circumstances,” perhaps. Thanks to the microchip, we know (or can know) a little about everything. If we’re using the definition “having the power of discerning and judging properly as to what is true or right,” then a resounding no.
What’s sad is that America as a whole is losing touch with the meaning of biblical references (the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon, the return of the Prodigal Son, Judas’ kiss, doubting Thomas, etc.). On a related note, we’ve heard and read about how poorly young people do on historical literacy tests. A new study from the American Enterprise Institute reports more of the same.
Half the nation’s 17-year-olds can’t identify history references, such as pinpointing the decade in which the Civil War was fought, knowing the main theme of 1984 or what Senator Joseph McCarthy had been trying to do. (But, if they’re taught, they will learn. What do government schools teach these days? I don’t know.) From USA Today:
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I was once a great lover of libraries. I haven’t set foot in one in at least two years.
Part of the reason is that the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, D.C.’s main branch, is a dilapidated, stinky building with falling ceilings and an overall dingy atmosphere. It made me dread visiting the library for the first time in my life. (I didn’t bother much with the other branches, either.)
I can’t remember why I decided to surf to the library system’s web site last year, but what I found there turned me into a library lover again, albeit the digital version.
I’m a little slow, so don’t laugh at this question: Did you that you could download audiobooks (videos and classical music, too) on public library web sites? All you need is a library card (which I’m almost certain you have to apply for in person). I did not know this. (I never could deal with PDF ebooks. I mean, reading a book on a computer? Get real.) Before the discovery, I considered joining subscription audiobook clubs and even buying digital audiobooks (the horror!). Not anymore.
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