I feel such urgency to get everything done at once! Obviously I can’t do that. I have been really productive, though, updating this website, upgrading another (Generate Kindness.org) and launched a third (The Missing Song), not to mention a fulltime job at CivicActions. And there’s still a ton to do! I’m focusing on completing the music bundle for The Missing Suite, which looks like is going to require more recording and production ahead. I also am going to spec out some phase II functionality and budget for empowering this project to the next order of magnitude.
Things have really picked up this month. I’ve taken a few steps back from mainstream media consumption, instead focusing my time and energy on creating and connecting bits. This month I’ve launched the Generate Kindness Blog, as well as re-enabling an online request form for free stickers, which right now sends me an email when anyone requests stickers (I’ve been having database problems, so I get an email instead of the intended storing in a db).
Anyway, about a hundred a day now. Woo!
I’ve set up digital distribution through e-junkie. It’s an online shopping cart and digital delivery management thing. I’ll be revamping my music store next.
The Missing Song project is rolling ahead. Expecting final, final mix in the mail from Will in LA. I’ve finalized the track listing for the bundle:
_ The Missing Suite _ I. The Missing Song II. The Ballad of Robert John III. Unexpected Turns (bonus preview track: “What Kind of Amazing Grace?” from upcoming July release.)
I’ve got a short list of big production tasks on each of these, and am shooting to have the Missing Suite bundle wrapped by March 4, my birthday. I’ll be in Boston for the Drupal Community Conference. I’m proposing a panel called “Using Drupal to Save the World,” featuring people in the Drupal community who are using the platform for sites like Amnesty International and The Witness Project and The Missing Song.
Business has picked up quite a bit. January was like this big gust of wind that picked up the kite and let it soar after a rather languid holiday season. It’s been lot of fun being a business guy again for a group I really believe in.
Lots of heavin’ up going on in the world. I’ve landed in a huge room in a new pad in San Francisco. Rumor has it the landlord’s getting ready to sell the building so I don’t think it’s a permanent place, but I hope it’ll at least last me 6 months, enough time to get my next two recording projects out.
Putting the finishing touches on the final mix of The Missing Song, which I recorded last weekend and had such a brilliant, incredible, awe-inducing and productive weekend recording and mixing it. I’m incredibly pleased with the result. I had no idea it would turn out like this, and I’m amazed, and moved to have the project start to gain some real momentum. I’ll share more about it later, and the song, too, when I get the final mix back from the Magic Gadget Studios (what a great name for a recording studio, huh?). In the meantime, I’ve gotten a commitment from CivicActions to build the technical infrastructure for this viral project designed to find missing children and adults around the world. Over 200,000 children and 80,000 adults are reported missing each year. Most of the time, they find granny wandering in the backyard or Saralyn asleep in a big linen drawer, but often times, the reasons a loved one goes missing is more tragic. More tragic still is the possibility that lost loved ones might be near you right now and you wouldn’t know it without happening to go to the post office or getting a half-gallon of milk.
Anyway, I’ve got to get back to making the final notes for the mix, and then work on the trailer for the project, a 1 minute video explanation of how it all works. I don’t know if this is realistic or not, but I’m going to release the project on Christmas Eve in some form or fashion.
I was at a friend’s house last night, hanging out with a bunch of people connected to the music industry and I heard this guy John, whose irish surname I don’t quite remember. He’s apparently a heavy ’cause he listed off some of his clients and they’re all top of the entertainment industry. Anyway, he said something that catalyzed something for me. He’s got a commitment to giving artists total freedom – as a producer, he knows that in that space, artists radiate. Anyway, what he said was that he’s about empowering the artist, and the words were exactly the phrase that’s been banging around in my head for the last several weeks. I’ve been composing a blog entry about empowering the artist, because I think that’s where the future of the music industry lies, not to mention a total transformation of the way music is created, shared and consumed. And that really turns ME on.
Artists have more access to audience than ever, and audiences have more choices for delightful sensory experiences than ever. The Music Industry Establishment (The Endustry) needs to control access to their content. But content is simply information, and as we well know Information wants to be free..
The winners of music 3.0 (which is about to emerge) are going to be the people who empower the artist. Intermediation is increasingly irrelevant – the network routes around inefficiencies and breakdowns. The internet is an inversive force – and by that I mean, it’s not just disruptive, but it completely alters the ratio of control from centralized, tightly controlled (and profit-driven) entities to the single thriving entity of the Network, the sum of all its parts, which now numbers in the billions. From content providers to content producers, which are anyone with a computer, camera and connection to the net.
Google sees the immensity of the opportunity. the tendency of information is to be networked and “free” (or I should say, “accessible”). How do you find things in an infinite information universe? Google.
The industry is trying to figure out how to mold it’s model of limiting supply and increasing demand into a world of decreased (relatively) demand and infinite supply. By decreased relative demand, I mean, the demand for Industry product (CD’s from major label acts) has fallen, as record sales numbers show. But people are still listening to more music than ever. They’re just not paying for it, currently, and because they don’t really have to – it’s pervasively available. Wrong or right, it’s a fact that if you can hear it in real life, you can hear it on the net. So the Music Endustry is trying to figure out how to stop something that is inevitable and unstoppable. Kinda like the war on drugs, or the war on terror. Except that record companies don’t have the bank the US government has, so this one will be relatively short-lived.
The Music Industry Establishment, a Music 1.0 legacy operating system, is about to be made obsolete in a networked world.
The Industry is right to be in panic – it’s not that the money is going to go away – it’s just going to be dispersed. That principle of inversion. The music 1.0 nightsky had a few thousand stars. the music 3.0 nightsky will have millions, selling directly to their fans.
The economic question isn’t how to capture the revenue by exploiting intellectual property. I believe the economic question is how to empower the artist to more effectively reach their audience. And the companies that develop models that empower artists to deliver directly to their audiences could, I believe, usher in the era of music 3.0.
We used to say that the winners of the 90’s dot com phenomenon were the people selling picks and shovels to the Gold Rushers. The principle still applies – empower the artist, recoup a reasonable commission on each sale. What if a record company had a million street team members who were REALLY motivated to poster, flyer, promote their record? There are something like 1.8 million band pages on myspace and every one of those 1.8 million accounts are connected to hundreds of millions of people. Add facebook, band websites, and all the other things bands do to promote themselves, and a few million musicians have access to the discretionary income of a hundreds of millions of people. That’s the music 3.0 marketplace in a nutshell.
I can’t believe it’s been almost SIX MONTHS since I blogged. Well, fact is, I’m not a blogger. Maybe that’ll change in the new year. Big changes afoot. I quit one of my part-time jobs to make my other part-time job a full-time gig. I’m now a professional do-gooder. Woot.
Also, I’m moving. I’ve been in a sweet rental situation for the last couple of years which has been a nice dose of stability after a harrowing 2005. And it’s time to move on. I’d found a perfect place, and at the last minute, a friend called with an even perfecter place for half the cost. I’m moving this week.
The video project for “Missing” is picking up momentum and I couldn’t be happier and more excited. This project has been waiting to happen for a year now, and the pieces are finally coming together. I think it’s going to be huge.
I plan to take *this* blog private, keeping the details of my personal life to my friends and family and early-adopters. In addition, I plan to have a kind of “backstage” area that will have live video performances, demo Mp3’s, discounted recordings and such like that. For the time being, it’ll be free for the asking, but as I add content and value, I’ll be considering offering access via subscription. So let me know if you’re reading this and want to be “in” and not, y’know… out.
I uploaded my new tracks to snocap intending to offer them for sale. A few weeks ago, I got an email from cdbaby saying “One click adds your snocap store to myspace”. I clicked the link and presto – my cdbaby catalogue on myspace. Magic.
Except that the snocap account I had prior to the cdbaby email is/was different than the one they “magically” added to myspace. Worse, snocap is saying that cdbaby owns the rights to the music I put out for digital distribution through cdbaby and consequently I can’t sell it on my non-cdbaby snocap account. I’m in customer “service” email hell between snocap, cdbaby and myspace. Yeah…
So the demo’s almost done. pretty stoked, ’cause it’s been a longtime coming. Way more time and money consuming than I thought it would be. Actually, if you want to hire professional musicians and have a set of sharp, creative ears behind the board, y’know… artists deserve to get paid, if ya know what I’m sayin.
I think the plan’s gonna look like this: a) 3 song demo for booking b) 5 song EP for sales at shows and online
Then start working on a 7 song topical (peace, justice and the American Way?) disc I’d like to release by Nov 7 (Veteran’s Day), which is actually 107 days away. At first, i thought – man, there’s no way I’m gonna record, mix, master and press 7 songs and get them out to publications who need a 3 month lead time. I had a moment of being upset at myself for not thinking ahead further and taking more action sooner. If only I’d…
Then it kind of occurred to me, that is so not the way of the new world.
So I’ve decided I’m gonna just go for it. Have the record pressed and ready for online release (meaning physical discs in hand ready to ship) by Veteran’s Day blog/vlog and post all along the way. Learn some more stuff. I’ve already learned a TON from producing these 3 songs. Seeing the process through once from start to finish sure makes it a lot easier to do it again more efficiently. I started the sessions for this demo on March 22, I think? So it’s been 2 months for 3 songs. Hm. 3 months for 8 songs?
I do have a few aces up my sleeve… a new recording strategy (which I’ll talk about later). I also just bought a copy of the music creation software that gets used where I’ve been recording, so now I can do a lot of the time-consuming work myself. No more driving to Santa Cruz to do what I could be doing at home. I also have a bit of a headstart recording,
I definitely like releasing the record on Veteran’s Day. I’ve been working on a version of the National Anthem, too, which I’ll be posting as soon as I get around to recording it. I got some really great feedback at the Montgomery, Alabama vigil. I’ll tell ya! So much music to make!
The album won’t be ALL anti-war, but that sure is what is up for me right now. ‘Nother 120 billion dollars and more human life thrown into that gaping hole. When will it end? I’ll post a tentative track listing and some lyrics later on.
Well, it’s been a long time smooshing around in the chrysalis. I’ve been churning and recording and writing and stewing and planning and getting excited and feeling frustrated and working my ass off and I think I have a plan. First of all, this is going to become a private blog, available by invitation only. I should say, this is eventually going to become a private blog! Fact is, the point of doing that would mean having a private area on ianrhett.com, which I plan on having for the i-Team and friends and family. I’ve been sharing a lot of private stuff in a rather public forum, and I’ve learned already how easy it is to misunderstand/misinterpret things, and I think I’d prefer to know who was getting to see an inside glimpse into my life. I’ve always been attracted to living a life online – but in point of fact, i’ve learned that I actually DO value my privacy.
The second reason for doing this is to provide some focus to the blogging. I’m really interested in taking people along for the journey of becoming an artist, a writer and a performer. So the blog’s going to focused more on the process of planning, writing, recording, performing, inspirations and pointers to my latest work.
One of the things that’s really been hammered home for me is “get it out there”. I’m often reminded, sometimes painfully, that it’s not about me (Ian Rhett), either. I keep wanting to be impressive with my voice (’cause I’m excited about being able to actually sing, I’m eager to keep pushing the limits of my range and control) – I have this aspiration that I want to be a soul singer. But really, what’s underneath all of it is the desire to plant a seed in the new terrain that is this connected consciousness – to get a message out, to promote positive change, to do everything I can do to make a difference in the world. ‘Cause my point of view suggests that things aren’t as rosy as they seem to be on TV.
So the new blog is going to have new, rough hewn music, which I’ll be releasing with increasing frequency this year. I’ll be honest, I’m really reluctant to put out work that isn’t 100% finished and perfect. I want my art to be exemplary and perfected. I want to master the process of writing and producing music. And… I have a LONG way to go. I keep forgetting that I just started. (Actually, I’m reminded every time I listen to a recording of my voice)
But I’m also interested in trying something different. The web has become our marketplace – our commons. And the old rules of commerce, especially with respect to music are in flux, to put it lightly.
On the one hand, I don’t have a choice. I’m clear this is my path and an inalienable part of my being. I will be writing music until I can’t breathe anymore. So in that sense, the “economics’ of all this don’t really matter. I have a deal with the Deity that I’ll just concentrate on doing my job, and let the rest happen as it is meant to. I’ve never starved or found myself on the streets yet, so I’m just gonna keep on truckin, so to speak.
On the other, I want to do this (make music) all the time. I just can’t afford to, yet. I think the new market for music is going to continue to have its megastars and its smash hits – any company (like Viacom, Fox, etc) that has reach across television, film, radio, print, outdoor, etc… will be manufacturing stars like Brittney Spears and N’Sync forever.
But I also believe that there is a whole new music reality emerging online. More people are connected, able to share their discoveries with social networks, direct distribution to fans gives any artist an unprecedented opportunity to make a living making music. Or so I believe.
This might be like a speech before one of those old-time movies of people strapping on their flying contraptions and plummeting into obscurity. And, maybe it’s the start of something big. Time will tell.
I started writing a blogpost about my crazy weeks and how frustrated I am with the slogged pace of production on my record, and feeling like I’m so far from where I want to be in so many ways. Feeling resentment for paying my taxes (a duty I dread performing). Then I had this moment where i started thinking (again) about the shootings in Virginia and I instantly felt both a heavy sadness and a stinging shame for feeling so much about something so relatively insignificant. And, y’know? I’m upset and scared. And I’m intermittently hopeful and frequently inspired by what others are doing in the world. And then again the cycle repeats.