The Tech
First off, thanks to the folks at Hypebot, I’ve won a 3 month subscription to Bandize, which advertises itself as “Basecamp for Bands.” Basecamp is a very awesome system for doing group projects online. We use Basecamp at Back Brain Media, because our creative team is located in Detroit, Boston, Burlington, VT and Springfield, IL—so meetings are not an option.
The focus for August will be tools and systems. In addition to Bandize and Basecamp, I’ll be digging through tools like Soundcloud and Bandcamp, a simple, solid and dope site where albums outsell singles by around 2 to 1.
Fun Fact: How did SOHH.com get the #1 spot for overall website traffic? Was it design, user experience, or quality content? Actually, it was shit porn. No joke. Check out Oh Word’s summary of how 2 Girls 1 Cup helped SOHH.com get on top.
The Process
For a hip hop collective working to make a professional website from the ground up, it’s hard to beat this post from Galapagos4 on The Making of Their Website. For anyone working on creating their own label, check out this collection of insights from Invincible and her DIY label Emergence. (I’m glad to report there will be a follow-up interview with Invincible coming up this month, too.)
Finally, here’s something I’ve been re-reading every few days for weeks now: Wendy Day dropping science on Artist Management. Her writing is always clear, honest, and full of useful facts. I can’t offer higher praise—the woman is dope! There’s a long-overdue Wendy Day tribute I’ve had on the back burner for months now: that, too, will be dropping in August.
The Business
Audible Hype focuses so much on the practical that I neglect my inner business nerd. I read a small handful of magazines constantly: Fast Company, MIT Technology Review, and REMIX all have a place on my collapsing bookshelves. I don’t go into the big-picture, economic macrocosm because 95% of that shit is totally irrelevant to making a living off music. The driving question here is what works? so my focus is different from most music business sites. As much as I mock the old-guard visionaries, there’s also the undeniable fact that I still read everything they write.
There’s very few “Big Picture” thinkers I do endorse. One of my favorites is the artist formerly known as Bruce Warila, who has written a lot of great articles over the past several years. I’d recommend starting with Crush Your Local Radio, a very necessary antidote to social media hype.
For the best metaphor to understand the future of the music business I’ve found so far, check out his article on Auto Parts Recycling as a real “new model” for future business innovation.
You can get educated by another hustler-friendly visionary just by reading this extended interview with Terry McBride from PBS...that’s a very tasty meal right there. For those of you who enjoy nuts-and-bolts details, check out Kieth Jopling’s take on “The State of Independents.” His blog, Juggernaut Brew, is excellent reading for tech/data heads.
One last gem for the business nerds: check out Topspin Media’s “Are You Ready” Checklist—a great reality check for anyone’s operation. See how you measure up:
The list of questions below will help you determine if you have the tools needed to execute a rock-solid direct-to-fan marketing plan.
1. Do you have 90-120 days before your next project launches?
2. Do you know the cost of goods sold for your digital and physical content?
3. Do you have accounts on social networks like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter?
4. Do you have uncompressed WAV or AIFF files of your master recordings?
5. Do you have the means (or access to a designer) to create web-ready artwork?
6. Are you the person who grants approvals throughout the entire planning and execution process?
7. Are you able to provide accurate stats on your Web site traffic and past sales history?
8. Do you currently have marketing services, Web development, and physical distribution partners?
The Spotlight
First and foremost, the coolest news on the hip hop business front is definitely the West Coast banger specialists Blue Scholars partnering with not only a record label, but also a coffee company. There’s more details on the Blue Scholars blog, and from this Hypebot update.
Finally, I leave you with three cautionary tales from hip hop history. Take mental notes as Dart Adams breaks down the rapid fall of Charles Hamilton, who is basically God’s official 2009 poster boy for What Not To Do.
Remember Lady Sovereign? If not, here’s why:
Source: Guardian UK
“I went on strike and stopped doing stuff, so Def Jam got the hump with me,” Harman shrugs, sipping on a vodka and Red Bull in a pub in Wembley, north London, near where she grew up. Her initial meeting with Jay-Z took place in front of R&B;star Usher and producer LA Reid, and was, she remembers, an uncomfortable experience. “All these executives, on the top floor of a high-rise building, all eyes on me. It was like an audition. Jay-Z is a cool guy, but we only hung out properly once - it’s not like we were best friends.” Her mother was (and still is) seriously ill with a brain tumour. Meanwhile, Def Jam had spent vast amounts marketing her debut album, Public Warning, and saw little chance of profiting from its 300,000 sales. The pressure was on.
The tipping point was a disastrous performance at New York’s Studio B in May 2007. Harman told the audience she was broke and bored of performing the same songs; she left the stage after two tracks to a chorus of boos. “I lost the plot a few times. I was cutting myself and stupid things like that. I was tired,” she says now. “I felt like it was just push, push, push. I didn’t have a chance to record any new stuff, it was the same old songs.”
The Kansas City News published a timeless classic in 2008: “How Not To Be a Rap Star.” It’s the hilarious and painful story of Paul Mussan, who lived such a cinematic meltdown that you can’t even call it failure. As pretty much everyone from the state of Vermont has advised me at least once: “If you’re going to fuck up, do it big.”
On that note, welcome to August, ladies and gentlemen. Get ready for the sprint to the 2010 bumper crop of January Christmas money and college town gigs. Here’s a toast to everyone going crazy because they insist on doing it right. Let’s hope the economy doesn’t collapse before we make it. LMFAO, right?
18 responses to "August is Nerd Shit Month at Audible Hype"
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Aug 04, 2009 at 5:45 AM
squid viscous
man, okay, dope article, but the true WTF moment of the whole thing is the shit about 2 girls 1 cup. that is both fucking amazing and sort of totally sad at the same time. am i the only one who feels like that?
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Aug 04, 2009 at 7:50 PM
Clyde Smith
Didn’t know you were back. Yay!
On the 2 girls 1 cup topic, it’s not just SOHH.
A year or two back a publicist who I knew contacted me to let me know he was taking on some key role at a hip hop website with great traffic and lots of forums.
What he hadn’t discovered at the time, for some reason though it was easy to discover, is that the site had great traffic because it had a section where people were posting links to rapidshare porn files and so forth that required you to join the site to access the links.
There’s probably more of that happening than folks realize.
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Aug 08, 2009 at 8:20 PM
Justin Boland
Yeah, I know that’s what kept Cage’s forum going for awhile, too. Porno is definitely the pulse of the US economy. Back when I was running Hump Jones I was amazed to find out the biggest porno profiteers were mainstream companies like GM running subsidiary business that licensed porn material to hotel chains on pay-per-view. They occasionally get caught, apologize quietly, and even more quietly re-start new fronts to do the exact same thing.
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Aug 09, 2009 at 10:16 AM
Evolvor
Definitely want to see a bunch of World Around coverage for the Nerd Shit month.
* Promo Calendar - how do you guys plan ahead? How far ahead, how do you organize projects?
* Communication Protocol - what is working for your team? I know you’re all over the US and into the UK, right? What keeps people on the same page?
* Artist Management - to what extent are you “in charge”? Maybe the mistake I am making is working with young/inexperinced artist, but I feel like I am “managing” on them too much, almost interfering.
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Aug 10, 2009 at 7:38 AM
Mister Piven
That “How not to be a rap star” was fucking funny stuff!
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Aug 10, 2009 at 10:06 PM
JFK Trajectory
As long as it’s nerds who know their shit, I’m looking forward to it.
Just don’t go talking to amateur nerds.
That would break my heart man.
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Aug 11, 2009 at 6:11 AM
Justin Boland
@Evolvor
I appreciate the laundry list, seriously. That’s dope, I dig detailed requests like that. Analyzing my keywords on google analytics is like dowsing or casting runes, you know?
@JFK Trajectory (is that a Canibus reference?)
No amateur nerds, I promise. Got a lot of professional business nerd material to drop this week, focused around hip hop production and the hustle behind selling beats. Etc.
Next week will be the harvest of all the “Best Practices” documents we’re brainstorming now. Been re-thinking the obligatory bullshit and consensus trance “common sense” of Myspace + Facebook + Twitter + Etc. I think artists have sleeker, easier options that work just as well and we’ll be...yeah, you’ll read it soon enough.
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Aug 16, 2009 at 4:24 AM
Martian
Blogs, man. CSS, SEO, WTF. Please go in on that shit. Nobody else in my crew is doing shit and I gotta learn myself before our album drops this fall.
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Aug 21, 2009 at 2:31 AM
Dougie Dougal
This was an amazing post! I currently have about 20 firefox tabs open just from all the links you provided. I almost feel like I should be paying tuition but intstead I’ll just leave a short comment to ease my conscience.
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Aug 27, 2009 at 12:25 PM
Mackadocious
If you could just do a summary collection of tutorials, THAT would be fucking rad. Just like a list of 20-30 articles I need to read, that will give me the goods and not send me to a dozen other sites and blogs searching for context and more info. I get frustrated trying to learn. I hear you on the “information age” being some BULLSHIT HYPE.
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Aug 30, 2009 at 12:20 AM
Purgatory
I’ve been following and appreciating your riffing on Twitter about the “Monkeysphere” and the limites of the human brain. Could you do an article about this, about the barriers and “bandwidth limits” of humans and our perseptions? I think this is something that gets ignored in every article on social media and this information age they say we live in. I don’t have the time and I don’t think anyone does. I used to read Brainsturbator, and Skilluminati, and Pizza CEO, and Hump Jones, and you don’t have the time, either. I do not mean to be insulting by that, just observing those sites don’t get updated anymore. Life is a very busy thing.
Anyways, I think that would fit perfect for the nerd topic. Nothing is more nerdy than neurosceince!
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Aug 31, 2009 at 6:40 AM
Chennai
Hi, here for some information,
Promo Calendar - how do you guys plan ahead? How far ahead, how do you organize projects?
Communication Protocol - what is working for your team? I know you’re all over the US and into the UK, right? What keeps people on the same page?
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Sep 14, 2009 at 11:23 PM
Sherman Rogers
So what are the technologies and sites that really matter? I guess everyone is playing their mp3s these days and CDs are dead, is that true? What matters other than the holy trinity of Facebook/ Myspace and Twitter? Where do I find music fans who are into my style of rap specifically? How can I get their damn email? How do I organize all the email addresses I get from fans? How do I magically transform that list into some rent money? What in the hell is going on in this country and did Wall Street kill hip hop?
Yeah, I got a lot of questions.
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Sep 15, 2009 at 5:05 PM
Hang Lied
Shit yeah I cosign on getting a collection of web tutorials for a rapper dude who does not know SHIT about html because that’s the story of my life.
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