Music, Technology, Art, Economy

Pink Floyd, Queen May Ditch EMI as Buyout ‘Implodes’ (Update2) ...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:41:06 -0800

Pink Floyd, Queen May Ditch EMI as Buyout ‘Implodes’ (Update2) - Bloomberg.com

File under: meeting expectations

"But in the announcement about the HTC lawsuit, he has a different perspective: “competitors..."

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:31:06 -0800

“

But in the announcement about the HTC lawsuit, he has a different perspective: “competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Strong words coming from the guy who admits he blatantly copied the graphical user interface he saw at Xerox PARC many years ago.

”

- Would 2010 Steve Jobs Sue 1996 (Or 1984) Steve Jobs Over Patents? | Techdirt

Nuff said on that. See Fred Wilson/USV posts on software patents and startup litigation for the rest of the story.

Op-Ed Contributor - Free viral videos - NYTimes.com

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 11:08:43 -0800

Op-Ed Contributor - Free viral videos - NYTimes.com:

Here’s the most lucid piece on the music industry I’ve read in a few years. Not surprisingly, from an a) actual musician with b) experience in the trenches, not making it who c) eventually got signed to a label and d) experienced some success due to a social media/”viral” marketing wave.

This is the profile of someone who should be listened to. Great stuff!

Music Review - Kneebody - Crossover Jazz, With a Little Ives,...

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:39:05 -0800

Music Review - Kneebody - Crossover Jazz, With a Little Ives, a Little Urban Edge - NYTimes.com

I’m still not tired of telling you people to go see this band…

Here’s a little flavor from work…Prith Banerjee of...

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:57:06 -0800

Here’s a little flavor from work…Prith Banerjee of HP Labs talks to McKinsey…

The News From Grammytown

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 20:48:37 -0800

The News From Grammytown

This is so hilarious. I had a chance to see Aziz a few times at...

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 18:06:53 -0800

This is so hilarious. I had a chance to see Aziz a few times at Largo but I blew it, one of my [few] LA regrets…

The Scale Every Business Needs Now

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:14:21 -0800

The Scale Every Business Needs Now

I link therefore I am - and other myths of the Link Economy

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:00:51 -0800

I link therefore I am - and other myths of the Link Economy

No one makes money off of creating private communities in an era of "free".

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:00:51 -0800

No one makes money off of creating private communities in an era of "free".

The Real Criticisms of Social Media

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 11:50:17 -0800

The Real Criticisms of Social Media

"Everybody views it as a terminal career decision if you get it wrong,” said Frank Biondi, who has..."

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 08:09:06 -0800

““Everybody views it as a terminal career decision if you get it wrong,” said Frank Biondi, who has led Universal Studios, Time Warner Inc.’s HBO cable network and Viacom Inc., owner of Paramount Pictures.”

- Netflix Envoy Pitches Online Films to Wary Studios (Update1) - Bloomberg.com

Great article…it’s tough to make changes when you’ve had it sooooo good.

For a truly incredible look at the history of the film business and its various revenue models, I recommend The Big Picture by Edward Jay Epstein. A fun read and extremely astute. Looks like it’s avail on Kindle FYI

"The point is simple: assuming only x% of people will become active prosumers blinds us to a stark..."

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:38:11 -0800

“

The point is simple: assuming only x% of people will become active prosumers blinds us to a stark reality.

That reality is this:

almost everyone is a prosumer of something.

Everyone has just a handful of things they really love. In the very near future, everyone will prosume the things they love.

In this world, worrying about 1% or 10% audience/prosumer ratio is to utterly miss the deeper strategic lesson.

That lesson is to build a deep enough, powerful enough, durable enough connection - an economic relationship driven by emotion, and nurtured by trust - to ignite the latent spark of prosumption, that as recent evidence tells us, lives within every consumer - whether they’re a CEO or a C-grade Myspace chav.

”

- Umair Haque / Bubblegeneration

Bubblegen posts are like fine wine

The contradiction inherent in the (Social Mediation) system

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:30:12 -0800

The contradiction inherent in the (Social Mediation) system:

This is, like, the central thing going on in social media. Must read post.

Bruce Sterling on Vimeo (via Vimeo) Always worth watching

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:40:28 -0800

Bruce Sterling on Vimeo (via Vimeo)

Always worth watching

Backstory on the Umair Haque hang, plus: why social media is underhyped

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 09:00:00 -0800

I had the distinct pleasure of spending a few hours with Umair Haque last week while he was in town for the Supernova conference. This was pretty exciting for me as he has been a core inspiration for my intellectual and professional pursuits of the last 3+ years.

I was first turned on to Umair’s work via Fred Wilson. Once I read a few of Umair’s pieces on Bubblegeneration, I was immediately blown away by his combination of writing skill, extreme econogeekery, and keen insight into pop culture and the human condition. He presented a really compelling framework for how to make sense out of the media and technology environments I had been working in (and continue to), so it struck a chord, to say the least.

A good bit of what he was writing about (network economics, game theory, social capital, etc) was just over my head enough to get me obsessed with understanding it. Over the course of a several months, I went through and read every single thing he had ever posted to Bubblegeneration, along the way buying and reading books about the above-mentioned subjects, reading everything he linked to, and scouring Wikipedia for definitions of things I wasn’t familiar with.

I sometimes refer to this as my self-directed MBA. It was the perfect way and perfect timing for me to study some forward-looking business economics after finishing my MFA, which was extremely self-directed as well. I had learned how to apply and discipline my curiosity at CalArts, so my broadband connection + these influences = a total field day for many months.

Around the same time, another major intellectual/professional influence in my life had turned me on to Yochai Benkler’s work and also Bruce Sterling. So this was a period of really intense learning as you can imagine.

Fast forwarding to this week, the actual hang (also featuring Chris Golda, Jonathan Strauss, and Jonathan’s friend Loren) met my [wild] expectations: some drinks, some analysis of various agreed-upon douchebags, some discussion of solutions to some problems, and plenty of jokes. Everyone involved was super hilarious (Umair included) so that was key to the fun.

I’ll get into some more details later, but of the things that I was reminded of was, ironically, tied to the ever-present “social media” phenomenon. Typically I try to stay away from talking about social media in the abstract as those conversations (occurring online especially) in the aggregate have not changed at all in years.

The thing that I was reminded of is that there are many things that these new media technologies can do to make people better off, but they require specific application to specific problems…not just the meta-problem of media itself. That’s why I think social media is “under hyped”, because few have really executed strategies that take advantage of the broader implications and opportunities of hyperconnectivity (also note The Shift Index).

What I mean by that is: things like StockTwits and Hello Health and Lend4Health and eduFire and awe.sm and Topspin are about 80 billion times more valuable and interesting than, say, AdMob (here’s a nice post from Umair explaining why).

A lot of people are spending their time figuring out how new ways to connect buyers and vendors so they can engage in the same old transaction. But what we really need are new kinds of transactions and new roles for economic actors (check out Doc Searls VRM project for an example and Eric von Hippel generally).

Social media tools are just that: tools. Here’s hoping more people start using them to build a better plane/train/couch/IRA/classroom, instead of wringing their hands over advertising*.

(**note that social media conversations are a substitute for advertising. But you knew that, because read this incredibly on-point paper by Umair, right? ;-)

The New York Times is at least 4 different papers combined

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:46:27 -0800

cdixon:

- commodity AP style news

- bad summary reports on tech, finance, other topics by people who don’t seem to understand what they are talking about.

- hit (krugman) or miss (dowd) Op-Ed

- incredible actual reporting, like today’s article on how obama decided on his plan in afganistan

+ 1,000,000 points!!!!

fascinated: A common problem. (peekasso via Zoya) LULz Nota...

Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:45:18 -0800

fascinated:

A common problem. (peekasso via Zoya)

LULz

Nota bene: you can bring art into everything you do

Worried About the Googlenet

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:50:44 -0800

continuations:

Yesterday, I tweeted “welcome to the googlenet” and was asked to explain what I meant by that. My tweet was about the announcement of Google DNS. With Google DNS, you can now run pretty much entirely on a Google stack. You fire up Chrome OS (or maybe just the Chrome browser), point DNS to Google, get your content from Google (e.g., music integrated into search results or driving directions), work with Google apps and other applications run of Google servers via Google AppEngine, and so forth. Potentially, even doing so with new Google developed protocols. This is a totally vertically integrated single source solution to the Internet.

Now in theory, at no point are you actually boxed in and everything is supposed to be open and standards compliant. But the temptation to cross the line and give Google owned properties an unfair leg up and start pushing aside rivals and startups is huge. It will take so little to go from “creating the best possible Internet experience” to “creating the best possible Google experience.” The company itself is publicly traded and a lot of employees wealth correlates directly to the price of Google stock. On the margin, I believe that drives behavior more than any corporate commitment to not be evil.

Just to be clear, I am not suggesting that anyone at Google is actively setting out to take over and control the web. I am, however, worried that the cumulative effect of all the initiatives, combined with economic incentives for decision makers, amounts to an important threat to the open Web.

"There’s a big question in the industry about what will be the dominant way people will obtain music,..."

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:12:06 -0800

““There’s a big question in the industry about what will be the dominant way people will obtain music, whether it’s stored in the cloud or whether it will be on a hard drive,” said Larry Kenswil, an attorney at Loeb & Loeb in Los Angeles, who was the former head of Universal Music Group’s digital unit.”

- Wow, this source is really on top of his game. Good quote. Great accomplishments at UMG.

lol

Incredibly unsurprising that this guy is a lawyer.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=ax4zVVSzx8XM