Another Cool Music Venture

In the wake of the breakdown of what has been the traditional model of record-making for the past 50-or-so years, there are a whole lot of new methods being tested.  One such method is Crowdfunding

CNet has a review of a number of the sites exploring this model and a link to a very cool post on KnowTheMusicBiz:

“Crowdfunding is related to Crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee; or, say, a record label) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

Crowdfunding grows out of crowdsourcing and occurs for any variety of purposes, from disaster relief to citizen journalism, and from political campaigns to artists seeking support from fans.”

If you want to see some of these sites in action check out Slicethepie, ArtistShare, and SellaBand.

Schick Contest and Another Example of Fail

So AdRants led me to this new contest being run by Schick razors.  It’s basically yet another UGC campaign to get people to send in videos showing why they think this razor is great.  There is a $25K prize.

While there is nothing especially noteworthy about this I was somewhat surprised to discover exactly TWO entries to the content, both of which sort of appear to be professionally produced or at least produced by professionals.  Now, the contest has only been running a few days, but with so few entries and a pathetically low number of views for their promo (42,000) it might be a sign that this sort of campaign is just not gonna cut it any more.

Revisiting MyDamnChannel

So, MyDamnChannel had a little news a few weeks back with the launch of two new web-series, the soap-spoof “Horrible People” and the hiphop cooking show “Cooking with Coolio.”  I thought I’d head over to the site and see how things were going.

I gotta say, it doesn’t look like things are going all that well.  I know that they syndicate their programming so view-counts aren’t completely reliable but here’s what I found:

Horrible People #1 : 10,668 views

Horrible People #2: 10,576 views

Horrible People #3: 3,576 views

Yikes.  That’s terrible.  And the news for Coolio is even worse, with his most recent video barely making it to 3000 videos.

And what about the other shows on the site.  Well, Andy Milanakis doesn’t have a single video over 10,000 views even with his supposed MTV fame and even David Wain’s highly vaunted “Wainy Days” is only averaging 25,000 views an episode.

Interestingly, the one show that seems to be very successful is Harry Shearer’s “Found Objects”, featuring video of newsmakers just before they go on live.  These episodes are getting hundreds of thousands of views per post, sometimes into the millions.  Of course, this is the only show on MyDamnChannel not to feature any original content.  It’s really just outtakes and bloopers.

So, what do we take away from all of this.  One, it is not easy to get viewers for web series.  Two, if the webseries is mediocre or just plain bad you can simply forget about building a following (unless you feature girls in bikinis). And, three, there is no consensus yet as to what is required to make a series on the web viable.

Podcast Alternative in the Air

BeetTV has a look at the new Adobe Air video player.  I haven’t really had a chance to play around with this yet but it sounds like it could be another viable option in the growing world of distribution possibilities.

“Unlike podcasts, which are downloaded and saved as files along with some enclosed metadata, the new AMP environment will appear as a sort of rich, Web-like environment.  It is on the desktop, but connected to the Web and updated via RSS.”

Live, From Anywhere, It’s the Internet

Wow, this is my second post today about Livecasting.  Mashable has a look at extreme sports site GO211 and their live-streaming embeddable player that is currently showing live coverage of a snowboarding event in Nippon.

Although the player is nothing to write home about in terms of resolution it is watchable and, considering the fact that it’s coming out of Japan and I am watching it at my desk in NYC with no special effort, I’m impressed.

Live coverage of sports and news is something that TV still does a lot better than the net but this is definitely a big sign of things to come and should be giving ABC’s Wide World of Sports a big wake up call.

FM78 Comes Out Swinging (and not much else)

Media powerhouse Justine Bateman (ha!) and her friends are launching a website called FM78 with the slogan “The Greater Force is creative content”.  Here is what they have to say about it:

“The internet will shortly become the ONLY point of distribution for TV and Film fare in the near future.

In anticipation of that, FM78.TV is a new “station” and will soon contain straight to internet (STI) content. Stay tuned.”

It’s a pretty bold statement for a site without any actual content, video or otherwise.  I’m gonna place a bet right now that FM78 will launch no more than two projects and be gone before the leaves start to fall in Vermont.

Musical Middleclass

Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type pointed me to an interview with Feargal Sharkey of The Undertones.  He is trying to make a point that music piracy does really hurt independent musicians, not just the labels.

“But the brutal reality of life is: according to the Musicians Union, 80 per cent of musicians will make less than £10,000 this year. And according to the MCPS, 95 per cent of composers and songwriters will earn less than £15,000 in royalty income.”

Now, I’m not saying open music piracy is fine and dandy but the fact that the majority of musicians make less than $20,000 doesn’t strike me as wrong.  It means that 20% of them are making something in the realm of a living wage.  I would also bet that a lot of the ones earning less aren’t necessarily the most talented or marketable or driven.

Making a living as a musician has never been easy.  The fact that anyone can now bring their music to the world makes this easier but it doesn’t promise more income.

The other factor missing from the interview is the question of whether or not the sales of recorded music is really where the future money will come from. We’re already seeing a number of experiments with ad-supported music (aka “the radio” no?) and a realization that the big money is in live performance – something you just can’t pirate.

Pop17 Goes Live

I’ve really been enjoying the first week of Sarah Meyer’s daily web show Pop17.  Yesterday’s episode was a nice fast look at what’s going on in Livecasting, a pretty amazing technology whose ramifications are just peaking over the horizon.  Sites like Justin.TV and, more recently Mogulus, have begun to make some noise.

Sarah actually breaks the news that UGC giant YouTube has plans to add Livecasting sometime this year.  Considering their market share that could be the proverbial tipping point.

Check out Sarah’s show if this is all new to you or just to get up to speed.

Then check out Sarah herself doing some lifecasting of her own today at 3pm.  Head over to Pop17.com/live to check it out.

quarterlife Obits for Ya

So, news all over about NBC pulling quarterlife after one episode and bumping it to Bravo.

You can read a number of takes on the demise here, here, here and here.

It seems to me that only Mashable is cutting to the chase:

“While online videocasters that aspire to mainstream stardom may take the news as a bit of a hit to their field, it seems there is a solid argument to be made that NBC simply picked a show that wasn’t very good.”

I’ve been saying for a while that quarterlife is a bad test-subject largely because it isn’t great.  You can argue whether or not it stinks (many think so) but it certainly isn’t great.  Do we really need to say more?

Social Networking Sites Becoming Networks

WSJ has a look at the growing trend among social networking sites like Bebo and MySpace using original video content as a way to grow and expand their user base:

“The growing popularity of YouTube poses a particular competitive threat to social-networking sites. Roughly a quarter of users who view videos on MySpace also watch shows on each of the major television networks’ Web sites, while more than 80% watch them on YouTube, according to Nielsen Online.

What’s more, the average MySpace visitor spent 10% less time on the site in January 2008 compared with January 2007, according to comScore Inc. The average YouTube user spent 57% more time on YouTube during the same period. To reverse the trend, social networks want to engage members with compelling shows they hope can generate the level of buzz of other Web video hits.”

This strikes me as another signal that the traditional TV network is going to be going through a pretty serious shift over the next few years.  Right now we’re all still going to outside sources for our entertainment – basically “tuning in” to a site or a channel.

I believe the big shift will be when the entertainment simply comes to us.  Each of us will have a personal portal (like your Facebook profile) where all the possible entertainment you might be interested in or subscribed to could be accessed and viewed.  No more turning to channel 10 for news then channel 22 for cartoons then going online for gossip.