“…there’s something about perimenopause that brings me back to that teenaged girl who loved to sit in her room, or anywhere really, and write poetry, without caring if it’s good or correct. I mean this literally and figuratively, whether it’s poetry or just me being me, dressing how I want, etc.”
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The case for giving yourself an artificial constraint
“One of the more effective ways to force yourself to have better ideas is to create an artificial constraint.
For many years, I wrote two articles per week and it would often take me over 20 hours to complete each article. Then I said, “If I only had 2 to 4 hours per week to write my newsletter, what would I do?”
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Getting found in the age of AI search
Although Kaleigh’s advice is written primarily for business marketers, it’s important for anyone who’s trying to sell anything. And that includes music, books, videos, any creative outlet. Getting found in the age of AI search means understanding who you’re up against and how to make yourself visible across a variety of tools that people use to get their needs met.
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Where to find something real in a world of AI slop
In a world of AI slop, where do we find something real?
Beyond that inciting question, Ted Gioia drops a thesis-level longread that challenges our assumptions about “authenticity” in music. Set aside some time for this one, it goes far beyond the usual hot takes and suggests that our hunt for real creativity transcends this moment in time and technology.
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subCULTURE: an anthology at the collision of comics, music, and style
Shelley Bond was a few years ahead of me at Ithaca College, and wrote an incredible comic about what it was like at the college radio station that forged so many unusual careers at the height of the alt-music era.
Her latest project is, in her words: “a tribute to the social disruptors who razed the art and style status quo in order to form a more perfect cultural revolution. It’s about survival in a world we no longer recognize.”
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Silence Where a Story Might Have Been
“No AI system has ever felt the wind on its face, or the touch of someone’s hand. All it can do is recalibrate what someone else has written about what that feels like when asked to do so…” -
Music’s Next ‘Disco Sucks’ Moment Is Near
Every generation discovers music publicists its own way. -
Los Campesinos! Break Down What It Actually Costs To Tour North America
Solid accounting — here’s a “we did okay” set of numbers from a band that SOLD OUT a two week run across the US. -
Paul McCartney Banned From Reddit After Promoting Himself in Paul McCartney Subreddit
Yup, that tracks. -
The Indie Alliance
“Nashville is not happy, it doesn’t want to give up its stranglehold on country music.” -
YouTube’s CEO Has a Blunt Message for Creators: The Platform Is the Only Home That Matters
“But as creators diversify and AI reshapes content production, the permanence of YouTube’s dominance faces questions the company hasn’t fully answered.” -
Today they banned my book. It was not the first. It won’t be the last. Here’s what I want you to know.
“When books and thoughts and people are suppressed, we all lose. Keep fighting the good fight, friends. It’s worth it.” -
How To Save TV News: Moneyball
The death of TV news is a self-serving prophecy told by those who don’t know how to save it -
Antitrust trial begins that could lead to breakup of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation
The shame here is that after the House of Blues crew took over what became Live Nation, those venues were run better than ever. It’s the handcuffs for artists—you want to play the venue we control in Town X, you better play our venue in Town Y, Town Z, and Town A—that have them on the ropes here. What will that do to the smaller promoters and venue owners who’ve adoped the same strategy? -
1 Million Monthly Listeners. 12 Tickets Sold. Here’s The Scam.
Some of us have been talking about this since the 00s. -
A ‘Cease Operations’ notice was posted on World Cafe Live’s door this week
This whole episode is so aggressively sad.I worked at and consulted for WXPN through the period where Hal and the original team were planning this venue. I walked through this space when it was just a shell. I have had so many positively wonderful experiences in this building. Seeing it end like this is just tragic.
The handoff after Hal’s retirement to a team of folks with zero experience in running a venue threw kerosene on a fire. This is one of the nightmare scenarios my former colleagues worried about.
Flipping the venue from for-profit to non-profit a few years ago should have opened up a track to keep the place solvent. But I’m not entirely sure that anyone realizes this is an organization that LICENSES its name from XPN and Penn. Most folks I talk to assume that “Penn will just pay the bill.”
And they probably will, but only as part of taking over the venue entirely. (Which, at this point, is not a terrible idea. There were so many concerns in the 90s and 2000s about how direct ownership of a venue would raise business and political issue. After all of this, I’m not sure how you would do it otherwise.)
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Apple’s 30% Commission Mandate Forces Patreon Into Contentious In-App Purchase Migration
“Apple continues to aggressively defend its commission structure in markets where it maintains the legal authority to do so, arguing that the App Store provides valuable services including payment processing, fraud prevention, and customer acquisition that justify its fee structure.”The gambit here is to get Patreon creators on board with the same revenue split as software developers — the latter being incentivized by the logic that if the iOS platform didn’t exist, there wouldn’t be a market.
In service of protecting that profit margin, Apple’s calibrating this percantage across anything that takes a payment from their metwork. Creators have to very quickly figure out if it’s worth it to maintain access to an audience of impulse buyers, or if they can afford to cultivate an audience on their own platforms.
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Scoring Big on the Secondary Concert Ticket Market – spinme.com
Because I somehow found myself this week agreeing with Kid Rock and what not… (even a stopped clock?) I wanted to resurface this post from ~15 years ago and lament that some of these things have gotten better but somehow the bad things are way, way worse.
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Scoring Big on the Secondary Concert Ticket Market
Because I somehow found myself this week agreeing with Kid Rock and what not… (even a stopped clock?) I wanted to resurface this post from ~15 years ago and lament that some of these things have gotten better but somehow the bad things are way, way worse.
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I’m Building an Algorithm That Doesn’t Rot Your Brain
What happens when the For You page isn’t “for you” anymore? -
Preparing for the Creator Economy Apocalypse
I put this blog into archive mode nearly ten years ago, thinking I’ve said everything I’ll ever need to say on any of these topics. But a lot of stuff’s been buzzing in my head lately, and Chris Gethard says…
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Government arts funding’s going away. It’s our job now.
We knew it would happen someday. Back in 1989, Andres Serrano busted open a simmering debate over whether it’s right (or even effective) for tax dollars to support arts. As a high school student at the time, I got worried…
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Getting music picked for branded content platforms
Morning Edition’s Allyson McCabe dropped a five minute mini-documentary about how “pay for play” at radio stations has evolved from the scandalous “song plugger” systems of the 1950s, through the bizarre indie promotion world of the 1990s, and into today’s…
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Fighting for the freedom to make music, art, and words worth sharing
spinme.com turns twenty this year. Our mission, when we first launched this thing, was to try to expose the work of artists who weren’t getting enough attention from mainstream radio and television. Today, it seems like radio’s the last place…
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Avoiding music business scams
I just posted dozens of “classic” coaching call recordings to our membership area, and even though some of them are over a decade old, many of those conversations hold up really well! (If you take some of the specific technology…
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Get up every night.
Excellent advice for comics from Brent Morin, who released an excellent Netflix special not long ago: Get up every night. Bar shows and coffee shops apartment shows etc. avoid comedy clubs for a year or so. https://t.co/eVk05M7xqp — Brent Morin…
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Stop worrying about ticket scalping bots. Make an even better show.
Nathan Hubbard, former CEO of Ticketmaster, dropped a scorch-the-earth essay on the state of concert ticketing on The Ringer. Lin-Manuel Miranda, who’s about to haul away a whole bucket of Tony Awards for Hamilton, penned an op-ed piece for the…
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Caring for your core.
I’m posting some early chapters of Audience Supported for spinme.com members… It doesn’t matter if you follow every other step in this book to the letter, and it doesn’t matter if you benefit from the best coaching and mentoring you…
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Powers of Ten (What are the “right ears” for your music?)
From our “Ask a Question” mailbag, Joey M. writes to ask: “I guess my query is the same as many others. How do I get my music to the right ears?” I think there’s a deeper question behind that question.…
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Under new management.
I’m posting some early drafts of chapters from Audience Supported just for supporters of spinme.com… The new boss looks a lot like the old boss. We’ve only been handing out Grammys for about six decades. The Oscars started about twenty…
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Finding corporate sponsors without sacrificing authenticity.
I’m posting some early drafts of chapters from Audience Supported just for supporters of spinme.com… Elvis Presley only recorded one commercial in his life. It was for Southern Maid Donuts, a Dallas chain that advertised fresh, hot donuts at 4pm…
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Playing the money game for musicians.
I’m posting some early drafts of chapters from Audience Supported just for supporters of spinme.com… “You don’t need a hit to survive.” That’s the crux of the argument Kevin Kelly made in his 2008 essay, 1,000 True Fans. Kelly’s influence…
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Surviving the squeaky-clean NACA convention
I caught a little bit of the dust-up on Twitter today about this article in the Atlantic that targets the—shall we say—sanitized nature of the National Association of Campus Activities conventions. Today’s college students can’t seem to take a joke…
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What’s your perfect day?
I’m posting some early drafts of chapters from Audience Supported just for supporters of spinme.com… David Berman has worked with everyone from IBM to the United Nations. He specializes in designing things (like forms, posters, and websites) that serve practical…
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What makes you happy?
I’m posting some early drafts of chapters from Audience Supported just for supporters of spinme.com… Much of what follows in this book involves learning how to make your audience happy without compromising the artistic integrity of your work. It’s a…
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Solving donor fatigue with doner kebab
Here in Philadelphia, a core collection of 160 “arts and cultural groups” has issued an urgent plea for $1.4 billion in philanthropic funding. This, only five years after a report noted the challenges of making significant social impact when creative…
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Brands are the new bands
Maybe it’s a sudden wave of nostalgia, but I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my senior year of high school. At the time, I was taking piano lessons and thinking about film school. So I picked a college where…
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The coming concert cameraphone backlash
Cultivating a relationship with your fans means getting clear about your attitude toward showing up in their Instagram feeds.
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Daniel Miller reveals the new Mute Records; Listener backlash over cover songs; X Factor winner in management contract lawsuit
Today’s roundup of music business news and opinion from around the web: Mute Records has returned as an indie, and founder Daniel Miller explains the complexities of running an iconic imprint while continuing to help major labels with A&R for…
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Linda Chorney tells all about her one-off social media Grammy nod; Texas singer laments industry tunnel vision; Ed Lover would like you not to get in trouble with the IRS
Today’s roundup of music business news and opinion from around the web: Linda Chorney wrote a book about her experience becoming the first artist to get a Grammy nomination via social media. If you’re unfamiliar with the story, Linda used…
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RIAA counts on-demand streams toward Gold and Platinum; music biz execs love cars and tip jars
Today’s roundup of music business news and opinion from around the web: The RIAA will now count 100 on-demand streaming requests as equivalent to a downloaded single for purposes of certifying Gold and Platinum records. [RIAA] Record stores continue to…
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Alex Day’s YouTube success, post-Spotify promotion strategies, and BMG’s big backlist
Today’s roundup of music business news and opinion from around the web: Chancius Drzewucki deconstruct’s Alex Day’s YouTube success. [Music Think Tank] Tony van Veen from CD Baby and DiscMakers explores nine music promotion strategies at the New Music Seminar.…
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Lefsetz to write Variety column, streaming ties radio for young listeners, meet the man who first booked Coldplay
Today’s roundup of music industry news and opinion from around the web: He’ll still be writing the indispensable Lefsetz Letter, but Bob Lefsetz will now contribute a new column to a revamped Variety. [Hypebot] Meet Markus Sargeant, the talent booker…
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Music subscriptions offer industry a foothold, Matthew Knowles speaks about Beyoncé split, and Psych soundtracks help drive ratings success
Today’s roundup of news and opinion for independent music professionals from around the web: Subscriptions from Spotify, Rdio, and other “access services” helped the music industry hold its ground in 2012, according to an RIAA report that shows “flat” revenues.…
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Touring by yourself, breaking new music in the UK, connecting with your natural audience
Today’s roundup of music business news and inspirational stores for musicians and other creative professionals: Dalton Caldwell compares being a solo professional to touring by yourself as a musician in the early 2000s. I’ve seen this connection a lot lately,…
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Maximize music exposure at SXSW, learn from the NCAA’s March Madness, pitch your tent where it’s dry
Here’s today’s roundup of music business news and music promotion resources from around the web: Glenn Peoples suggests that the music business can learn a lot from the way the NCAA delivers live March Madness coverage. [Billboard] Brian Penick and…
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Alex Day beats the industry, pirates shouldn’t keep you up at night, and Red Bull wants to promote music startups
Today’s roundup of music business news from around the web: James Altucher asks Alex Day about how his YouTube-driven album beat Justin Timberlake on the UK charts. [TechCrunch] New European research shows that musicians shouldn’t worry too much about music…
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Nashville music business expands beyond Music Row, one booking agency handles 600 acts, and a band sues former manager over conflict of interest
Today’s roundup of music business news from around the web: Nashville’s music business community is gradually giving up Music Row addresses in favor of more affordable, functional office space. [The Tennesseean] Booking agent Tom Windish reflects on SXSW, where a…
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Managers and labels under one roof, support for music business apps, and life in the music biz after radio
Today’s roundup of news for artists from around the web: Cathy Pellow wants to change the relationship between managers and record labels, by bringing both functions under one roof. [Alarm] Nashville startup Artist Growth lands venture capital funding for musician-support…