Digital Audio Insider provides some context for Jill Sobule’s success in raising over $80K from 552 different fans.

Digital Media Wire announces Slicethepie.com taking in $2M in their third round of venture funding. Slicethepie is another site where fans prepay artists as a means to get closer to the person and/or creative process. Meanwhile, Mr. Van Buskirk looks at Slicethepie’s first album (The Alps’ Something I Might Regret) released under the new model.

Ms. Sobule didn’t sell shares in the record. She gave away premiums, pledge drive style. Slicethepie actually distributes ownership in the product.

Loosely edited notes from SanFran MusicTech Summit 2008.

Panelists are Sandy Pearlman, Marc Canter, Rob Kaye, Mike Godwin, and moderator Mike McGuire.

Mr. Pearlman believes the market should accept that we’re quickly approaching a time when personal storage devices enable anyone to possess a collection of all music and literature ever digitized. He’s making a political point against DRM, against the current copyright system, and perhaps can be interpreted in favor of net neutrality. He refers to anti-piracy efforts as “tracking” and “interdiction”; thinks they’ll be impossible.

Demonetized serial copying will be the norm with all intellectual property. Read the rest of this entry »

Loosely edited notes from SanFran MusicTech Summit 2008.

Kurt Hansen is the host. He publishes a daily newsletter called RAIN and is generally active in the streaming radio space. Panel includes founder of popular Bagel Radio, Ted Leibowitz. Also Tom Conrad from Pandora, and KFOG program director Dave Benson.

First, Mr. Hansen’s presentation. The overall decline of the radio industry has been misreported. Traditional home and work listener numbers have fallen in recent years but the trend is offset by increases in newer areas, notably satellite, and streaming. In-car listenership has been stable.

Mr. Hansen states that new distribution channels are successfully redefining markets. He compares them to Starbuck’s success in changing peoples’ taste in coffee. Radio programmers are succeeding by offering depth, niche marketing, and allowing listeners to tweak the program to suit their exact taste.

Plus, successful new radio businesses understand online branding (user interface especially) and have good design sense.

Read the rest of this entry »

Loosely edited notes from SanFran MusicTech Summit 2008.

Claudio Prado is an inspiring public figure. He represents Brazil’s Department of Digital Culture. A good starting point for learning about Mr. Prado’s work is in this video interview.

Mr. Prado’s presentation at the SanFran MusicTech Summit was generally an introduction to his work and an invitation to collaborate. The ideas that follow are his…

Advances in networked digital technology and communications can only be understood from a cultural perspective. These changes are redefining who we are and what we do.

He’s in favor of reinventing the rights of authors. Copyright is obsolete.

Read the rest of this entry »

Loosely edited notes from SanFran MusicTech Summit 2008.

Labels often seed P2P networks with “leaked” material because they view filesharers as potential promotional partners. Panelist Dave Kostiner says that he’s had first hand experience with this; as a member of Creeper Lagoon and as an attorney. He couldn’t measure if the tactic was a success or failure.

The current copyright system is a mess.

When does exposure hurt revenue? No one knows. It helps to a point and it’s an art to identify the signs of when overexposure becomes a negative factor. Streaming may hurt album sales - very much depends on context, where the artist is, what the artist is doing.

Ted Cohen says the $0.99 price barrier is a joke, not clear why he thinks so, maybe due to a perceived negative impact on “discovery”. Discovery isn’t coming from iTunes as much as from the music discovery engines: imeem, last.fm, pandora, rhapsody, and of course myspace.

Read the rest of this entry »

Last Monday I woke up to a large Philharmonic coffee and a high five sandwich from my man Joey at Philz. Took BART to 16th and caught the Fillmore MUNI north, sitting behind a morning girl who danced and sang quietly over the distant tinny sound of her headphones. She was the present. I was on my way to learn about the future… at the SanFran MusicTech Summit.

Made it to Hotel Kabuki and settled in for a day of panel discussions and crackberry thumb mashing. The mashing resulted in a body of notes, presented for your review, nothing fancy… sharing the caffeinated thoughts that arose while surrounded by a crowd of interesting, intelligent people talking about the music business.

Thanks to Brian Zisk and Shoshana Zisk and Cassie Phillipps for producing a great event.

SanFran MusicTech Summit Session Notes:

* Artists, Copyrights, Technology

* Conversation with Claudio Prado

* Streaming: The Future of Radio

* The Paradise of Infinite Storage

* Promoting Music in the New Environment

[tags]sfmusictech[/tags]

In 1977, Amory Lovins published Soft Energy Paths, in which he wrote:

“Some analysts still predict economic calamity if the United States does not continue to consume twice the combined energy total for Africa, the rest of North and South America, and Asia except Japan. But what have more careful studies taught us about the scope for doing better with the energy we have? Since we can’t keep the bathtub filled because the hot water keeps running out, do we really (as Malcolm MacEwen asks) need a bigger water heater, or could we do better with a cheap, low technology plug?”

McKinsey Global Institute has released a study on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in which they pay particular attention to the concept of “energy productivity”. Richard Stuebi at Cleantech Blog has shared some thoughts on the issue.

It’s curious and a little obvious to see these ideas finally catching on. Lovins and many other policy experts at the time were at least 30 years ahead of the policy curve. It’s a clear illustration of how even in today’s world of technocratic experts, science and economics can take several decades (or more) to influence political will.

[tags]Amory Lovins, Soft Energy Paths, Energy Productivity, McKinsey Global Institute[/tags]

The consumers have new cause for concern; prospective tv outages on the horizon as broadcasters proceed with their campaign of planned obsolescence. Government coupons are coming, but critics complain those $40 coupons might be too little too late or too much too soon or just right but not right for quite long enough.

As Dibya Sarkar reports, if the consumers aren’t properly prepared, millions of them could find themselves dangerously fixated by commercial-and-content-free programming:

“If consumers don’t get a converter box when the country’s broadcasters complete the digital transition Feb. 18, 2009, they may wind up staring at a blank screen.”

I hate to sound cynical, but I can’t imagine how consumers will avoid this potential programming disaster without immediate and prolonged government intervention. Kidding.

One of the core principles in the Natural Capitalism approach to sustainable management is to identify opportunities where the economy can substitute services for products. Here’s a good example of that approach from the Ventura County Star:

“Baby Plays subscribers visit the company’s Web site to browse among nearly 200 toys for newborns through preschoolers. Customers build a wish list of toys they’d like to rent, and Pope’s staff ships them to their door.”

What’s great about the BabyPlays.com business model is that it reduces the total consumption of toys while providing a more valuable experience to customers. It’s pretty cool that kids will have access to more variety in toys. Parents aren’t left with closets full of outgrown objects of amusement. These are objects that eventually find their way into landfill.

The BabyPlays model has the potential to significantly increase the life cycle of each toy, thereby lowering the impact of the baby toy sector. That subsector of consumer goods isn’t a popular target for environmentalists nor should it be. What’s nice is that BabyPlays has found a profitable way to accomplish positive environmental benefits in a market space with lower-than-average external environmental pressures.

BabyPlays.com is an efficiency and value play not an environmental play. It’s good to see this type of model in the market and as resource and disposal costs rise, expect to see more of it.

Perhaps next BabyPlays will research other ways to reduce internal inefficiencies and improve service value. Again the County Star:

“The toys are sanitized with Clorox wipes and loaded with fresh batteries before being shrink wrapped and boxed for shipment.”

Bleach is not a healthy product and name brand wipes don’t seem like an efficient solution. Would parents appreciate a recyclable battery program as part of the main offer? Also is shrink wrapping necessary to make parents feel like they’re getting a newish product?

UPDATE: Brad Stone gives a good run down of other innovative rental services for household stuff (NY Times Bits Blog).

[tags]BabyPlays.com, Natural Capitalism, products as services[/tags]

This story is part 7542 in an ongoing series examining the evolution of bioengineered behavioral control…

Media ratings provider Nielsen has made what’s being described as a “strategic investment” in NeuroFocus. NeuroFocus is a Berkeley, California company that applies neuroscientific techniques to the study of effective messaging. It all makes perfect sense when you think about it.

As NeuroFocus says:

“The measurement method is established EEG technology, which is simple, non-invasive, non-influential, and comfortable to consumers.”

There’s never been a better time to be a consumer.