Topspin test - 3rd it.

Bboy Joker - smartest use of YouTube yet?

This video isn't showing up properly due to formatting issues, so click here to see it as it was intended.

The amazing stop motion, set design (all green screen), music, lighting, reflections, and shadows make this "video" captivating from the start, but about 20 seconds in you realize that Bboy Joker is not only a bad-ass video idea but also an online advertiser's wet dream. It doesn't take long for your mind to start reeling with other ideas for great applications of the interactive video concept.

In addition to being extremely well-executed, creative, and fun to play, it's pretty incredible to think about how well this game lends itself to a platform like YouTube. Each individual visitor is almost guaranteed to generate several impressions, and the level of engagement is high. The game squarely hits a specific target audience (in this case, Batman and/or break fans) while still offering enough mainstream appeal to reach almost anyone. Using high profile characters like comic book heroes positions the game incredibly well for upsell opportunities from related companies.

You can also view The Making of Bboy Joker, which succinctly depicts the execution of the project - including Batman's prosthetic hip replacement. Patrick Boivin, the developer, has also created YouTube games for Street Fighter and Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee, as well as an interactive video for Iggy Pop's "King of the Dogs".

Given the inherit limitations of YouTube, the arcade game format may not be the best long-term application of the interactive video concept. For me personally, it's mostly the breakdancing that keeps Bboy Joker interesting after the first few plays, and without being exceptionally clever with the choice of subject matter, the novelty of the YouTube video game will quickly wear off. But the interactive music video (or story-telling) concept, while it may initially seem to lack the same mass appeal, can be taken in so many directions that I'm surprised we're just now seeing it.

At the very least, it's a new millennium, visually dope Choose Your Own Adventure. And if it also makes a little ad revenue in the process, you can't be mad at that.

The Ecstatic - Mos Def's comeback

First thing's first - I always thought that Mos Def was the singular best entry on the SWPL list.

A decade after dropping his 10/10 debut Black on Both Sides, Mos Def comes back with an album that is equally era-defining and sounds like nothing else out right now. The grandiose ambitions (rich instrumentation, world music influences, diverse arrangements) of The New Danger are still here, but are channeled in a way that makes a much more listenable album. Rhymes are top shelf throughout the record.

I'm not really a Black Star fan, it took me several listens to like more than 1/4 of The New Danger, and I didn't even check True Magic. That said, this record is on par with Black on Both Sides, represents a benchmark for 2009 hip hop, and puts Mos' career in a new light. Very few other emcees have been able to truly make "that next shit" and stay ahead of the curve over the course of a decade.

The Ecstatic features Slick Rick and Talib. The beats and production are ridiculous - Dilla, Madlib, and Oh No kill it as expected, but up and comers Preservation (don't sleep) and Mr. Flash also contribute some of the best music here.

The Ecstatic - Mos Def

Jay Stay Paid out today

A+ game. If you don't have all the post-2000 beat tapes and the Thank You Jay Dee podcasts, this is all pretty much new material. And even if you do have all that, this is probably the best (and definitely the hardest) posthumous album they've put together yet.

Mixed and arranged by Pete Rock. Executive produced by Dilla's mother. Featuring Raekwon, MF DOOM, Black Thought, Havoc, and some of the dopest emcees you've never heard.

Bump that.

Jay Stay Paid - Jay Dee

Data: Market Analysis for Musicians

Returning to the discussion on data, and why data can be critical in achieving the primary objectives of getting your music in front of as many potential fans as possible and converting them into active, long-term fans (possibly with the hope of paying rent in the process), let’s look at marketing and how musicians should be using it online.

Marketing is a practice that is often misunderstood and carries negative connotations, especially by artists that have an aversion to advertising and corporate business practices. A market is nothing more than a centralized forum that allows (and ideally facilitates) the trading of commerce between parties that wish to do so. When it comes to “marketing”, the aim is in easing the facilitation of that trade – identifying who has needs and constantly reevaluating how to best meet those needs, through analysis of data. Marketing is not just code for "finding consumers to shill products to" – it can be utilized for purposes completely devoid of commercial exploitation, like band (or brand) promotion and engagement optimization. The classic example is trading a free mp3 for an email address. The exchange is one of art for collateral information (the email address, the website from which the address was collected or the user was referred, lifestyle trends of the users that frequent that site, etc) that is both inherently valuable to the artist for maintaining and growing a direct relationship with their fans, and is also marketing collateral for the collector.

Whoever controls access to this data has a large stake in your music, even if it doesn’t immediately seem to be a financial one. As we increasingly see monetization occur *around* music instead of directly from music, the access, control, and use of this data will become more important (and lucrative) than the actual copyrights associated with the music in many cases. While licensing will continue to drive revenue for many artists, several online media companies are not as dependent on controlling rights if they have abundant content (which is currently easy to come by), traffic, data visibility, and even minimal advertising connections.

Online traffic statistics on the web and within many media end-destinations are readily available (and, to a lesser extent, the geo-demographic information of those users), and the right segmentation of that info alone can be illuminating. But the goal is to move beyond that to complete addressability on exactly who engages with your content, where, and how – and to use the analysis of data feedback to inform your strategies. Increased visibility of traffic, click-through success, and engagement patterns should be used to devise formulaic methods for the distribution of your music. Access and insight to this data will help you understand where your efforts are most effective so that you can apply the 80/20 rule to reap maximum benefit. Then if you want to monetize it, go do that.

Of course, with zero traffic your barometer is rendered useless, so you need to get people to talk about you and share your music, art, performances, and stories. Other possibilities without touching a stage or tour bus – video game and soundtrack collaborations, finding graphic animation video collaborators, CC licensing campaigns, personal webisodes, multimedia bundle downloads, Twitter giveaway contests – there are thousands of independent artists innovating media distribution every day. Open browsers and active fingers (plus a little knowledge about the people behind them) now often serve as the new currency of leverage in the music industry, not record sales (nor MySpace friend counts) - and that opens great opportunities for those that apply creative thinking not just to their writing but to how they spread their message.

Two companies that are clued into this shift in thinking and priority are ReverbNation and Topspin Media. While ReverbNation is a great service that anyone can check out for free, it is thoroughly branded and could benefit from some development on aesthetic, features, and transparency. Topspin is extremely promising and is staffed by some of the best-equipped minds in the music, marketing, and technology industries – but the service is also both highly exclusive and elusive.

Review: Coalesce – OX

Since the last rant was all about getting your shit together, I figured we’d break from our two-part discussion on data for some Coalesce. Hear this:




OK, if that cut isn’t enough to convince you the wait was worth a decade, let me recap on the Broken Fader post and provide some more info on the new LP.

The album clocks in at just under 36 minutes and brings everything an old-school Coalesce fan could ask for. OX combines the aggression of Give Them Rope (my personal favorite) and the technicality of Functioning On Impatience with a nod to the polish and groove of their catchier A Revolution In Just Listening. 14 songs on the album – each one is supposedly representative of a different prayer.

The writing has definitely advanced, and the songs stay raw while feeling a bit more balanced throughout the album than in past efforts. Production is clear, warm, and heavy. There are some clean vocals scattered throughout the album, but nothing offensive (I admit, I was skeptical). Jangly ass, searing guitars are provided by Jes Steineger, one of the most distinctive and expressive guitarists in the past two decades of heavy music. Nathan Ellis’ wrenching bass seems heavier than usual, and expands perfectly behind the wiry guitar riffs.

Coalesce’s past albums would give reprieve from the onslaught with lukewarm, non-committal ambient noise tracks. The two acoustic instrumental breaks on OX are two of the album highlights, and fit perfectly within the greater context of the album. OX will be released on vinyl and digipack CD, and the artwork and packaging are exceptional.

1 – The Plot Against My Love
2 – The Comedian In Question
3 – Wild Ox Moan
4 – Designed to Break a Man
5 – When Satire Sours
6 – The Villain We Won’t Deny
7 – The Purveyor of Novelty and Nonsense
8 – In My Wake, For My Own
9 – New Voids In One’s Resolve
10 – We Have Lost Our Will
11 – Questions To Root Out Fools
12 – By What We Deny
13 – Dead Is Dead
14 – There is a Word Hidden in the Ground

Here’s more Coalese 2K that may have slipped by you – Salt and Passage (2007).

Salt and Passage - Coalesce

OX drops June 9.

Data: Syndication and the Fragmentation of Interconnectivity

As a hobbyist musician and label owner, I recognize “Web 2.0” as my broke-ass MIDI hardware studio in college – from the era right before computer software DAWs really started coming together. For an artist or label trying to effectively distribute their music and handle their business online, there are a few decent attempts at all-in-one platforms analogous to Fruity Loops or maybe even Reason. But to really have a solid set-up to distribute and monetize your content the way you should be able to, you have to use numerous different proprietary services and spend an immense amount of time stringing those “solutions” together into one cohesive unit.

Two major hurdles left for musicians in the new digital era - syndication, and data analysis (which I’ll discuss in a forthcoming post).

Not all artists have the same objective, so this discussion makes the following assumptions about “the average musician”:

1 – He wants to get his art in front of as many potential fans as possible.

2 – He wants to convert those potential fans into active fans that are engaged with the music, and are hopefully engaged with the artist (or label) in the long term.

3 – He hopes to make money from his art, so that he can continue doing #1 and #2.

Speaking strictly within the confines of “digital music”, I’ve been thinking about the increased ability to achieve all 3 of these goals – even without live performances or traditional merch sales. By limiting discussion to digital, we’re also omitting terrestrial radio (which is dying), and brick and mortar retail (which is still important, but not longer critical).

First and foremost, artists need to handle the licensing and distribution of their digital media to retail stores and other online end-destinations (iTunes, Pandora, YouTube, Rhapsody, Last.fm, etc). Like it or not, people hang out, experience, and occasionally buy media in these places, so if you want to connect with as many new fans as possible your art needs to be there. The good news is that this is extremely easy to accomplish – between CD Baby, IODA, and Tunecore, any artist can find an affordable digital distributor.

Artists also debatably need access to promotion and advertising, though these walls are quickly collapsing as the traditional forms of media become less and less relevant (as do their gatekeepers).

Due to the surge in online streaming radio and evolving recommendation services like Pandora and Last.fm, many music fans are exclusively discovering new artists online. As the music services that favor peer and smart-filtering recommendation continue to rise over those that rely on curators and editors, we finally approach the age where good music can find many of it’s relevant listeners automatically - without promotion or advertising.

Back to syndication. There is an over abundance of end-destinations where people go to discover, buy, and engage with media online, and trying to keep a cohesive, updated profile across these platforms and destinations is exhausting. It’s easy to pinpoint Facebook as the most egregious offender of interconnectivity, but regardless…the playing field of a fractured landscape has been set for the foreseeable future. Until it's either cost effective to host/fulfill everything under one's own roof, or possible to easily maintain constant accuracy and quality while outsourcing, the tools that make it easier to synchronize content and syndicate messaging throughout these destinations will proliferate and thrive.

Below this post is “The List” of companies I’ve been looking into recently – each service provides a distinct and critical feature, most of them overlap in someway with several others on the list, and many provide botched interoperability with other platforms. A few of the companies may not provide any one feature that is completely unique, but are viewed as absolutely necessary due to their dominant positioning (MySpace, YouTube, etc).

Note that this list excludes tools for both the creative process (Pro Tools, Logic Pro) and direct commerce sides – the latter of which is also vastly important and under-supported in independent music. While CD Baby’s 2009 plans look promising and Audiolife has a great offering for DIY musicians, providing artists with the ability to sell customized physical/digital media bundles should be a no-brainer in this era.

Also note that I’ve left out anything related to mobile/ringtones, ad platforms, torrents – all of which are important and some of which I’ll touch on soon in part 2 - Data Analysis).