Category Archives: Music

Disruptive Distribution – a Shareable.net Interview with Michel Bauwens and Neal Gorenflo

Posted on February 4, 2012 | 1 Comment

I met Michel Bauwens over at Marvin Brown‘s place when Michel was in town giving a talk on The Future of Peer Production. Talking with Michel (and reading some of his work) was part of the inspiration for my recent post “Watching Open Source Destroy Capitalism.” I forwarded the post to Marvin, who sent it on to Michel, which eventually resulted in the following interview with Michel and shareable.net co-founder Neal Gorenflo. The original can be found here.

Civilized comments from any point of view are welcome as always.

Michel Bauwens: You are a music entrepreneur, and reportedly doing quite well. Can you explain the basis of your success and whether you use music that can be shared, for example based on Creative Commons Licensing?

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Posted in Culture Rant, Music, Utopian Speculations

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Watching Open Source Destroy Capitalism

Posted on January 15, 2012 | 32 Comments

Theft, or post-capitalism?

About twenty years ago one of my college housemates, Jerry, had an idea.

“What if you could send music over the internet?”

This was the age of 2400 baud modems that made crazy high pitched noised while they tried to connect to the internet. My 20 megabyte external hard drive for my MacPlus computer had set my parents back about five hundred bucks. High quality digital audio files were about the same size as they are now (about ten megabytes per minute of audio). In other words, I couldn’t even fit a single digital audio track on my expensive hard drive — I worked exclusively in MIDI.

So I forgive myself for my lack of vision at the time. I thought Jerry’s idea was ridiculous, and I let him know. Digital audio files were way too big, bandwidth was way too narrow. It would never happen.

Jerry persisted. What if a music file could be compressed? What if bandwidth increased? He pointed out that it would change everything about the way music was distributed, maybe even the way it was made.

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Posted in Culture Rant, Music, Utopian Speculations

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What Is “Self-Branding” Anyway?

Posted on November 10, 2011 | 1 Comment

One approach to self-branding.

There is an enormous amount of confusion about the topic of self-branding, and much of it, until recently, has been in my own head.  I’ve delayed writing this post for over a year because I knew that “self-branding” was important, but I didn’t understand how or why.  Lately I’ve come into some clarity on this topic.

“Self-branding” doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with how your website looks, what clothes you wear, or how you are perceived by the general public.  In fact, you don’t even have to have a public personae to effectively self-brand.

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Posted in Creative Work/Career, Culture Rant, Music

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Ambient Music I’m Madly In Love With

Posted on August 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

Just a quick post to turn you on to a new artist we’ve signed to Loöq Records.  As soon as we heard Kleidosty’s music we knew we had to get some of that for ourselves.  His music is textural, emotive, and other-worldly (without being too spacey).  Part of what keeps the music grounded is that the sound sources are entirely analog, but with digital manipulation (guitar reverb tails that are warped and otherwise manipulated).  It’s a unique sound.

We’ve just released the first Kleidosty EP (self-titled).  We’re giving away one of his tracks at looq.com (if you join our email list), but the whole EP is available on iTunes for only $2.97.  Music is so inexpensive these days — it’s insane!  Even though we’re on the label side, we fully appreciate what an incredibly bountiful time this is for music consumer/appreciators.

We’ll be following up the EP with a full-length release entitled “Edifice of Artifice” towards the end of the year.

Let me know what you think of Kleidosty’s music.  We’re considering signing even more of his material.

If you’re feeling it, please consider recommending this release to your friends, and/or writing an iTunes review (as a small independent label, word-of-mouth is a HUGE help to us in terms of getting the music we love out to the world).

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Are You Excluding Yourself From Top-Tier Success in Your Field? Why Exactly?

Posted on June 13, 2011 | 8 Comments

Claude VonStroke (aka Barclay Crenshaw) -- founder of the dirtybird label and a guy who has done a few things right.

Becoming massively successful in your field is never as easy as just doing x, y, and z.  There are no fail-safe formulas for success.  Luck, timing, connections, and things outside of our control play a big role.

However …

1) A good part of luck, timing, and connections actually aren’t outside of our control.  They’re just outside of our comfort zone.

2) If we notice that all the top players in our field are doing x, y, and z, and we’re not doing those things, we may be excluding ourselves from top-tier success by choice.

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Posted in Creative Work/Career, Metaprogramming, Music

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