Shakira’s She Wolf Promotion Begins

Clearly inspired by Nine Inch Nails’ ARG-style campaigns (and their results), Shakira has begun promoting her new single virally. The song is ostensibly titled She Wolf, and there are at least three social media sites devoted to spreading the related information:

• http://shewolfiscoming.com/
• http://www.youtube.com/shewolfhunter
• http://twitter.com/shewolfiscoming

I’m eager to see how this evolves. (Can you spot any other related sites?)

I wonder if she has really dyed her hair black now.

Briefcase Joe: Eminem Teaches Jimmy Kimmel to Rap

Two New Sestina Songs

Sestina, one of the rare bands that I used to play in when I was still a performing rocker, has released two new songs.

http://www.myspace.com/sestinaband

Having looped these over and over again I am forced to make a heartfelt recommendation. This is something you will want to hear. And, if you’re anything like me, you’ll spend the rest of the day with a joyful glee on your face.

Solving the Copyright Puzzle

I challenged myself to solve the copyright puzzle within one week. More precisely, it felt a good idea to be able to explain things to myself in such a way that I wouldn’t feel puzzled whenever somebody proposed that music in the internet era should be free.

To begin with, I was confident that both of the seemingly opposing sides have it right. Internet activists propose that inherent nature of digital communication is such that it cannot be governed from above - unless the users so choose. On the other hand, professional songwriters and music producers deservedly feel that they should be in control of how the content they produce is utilized.

I came up with this premise:

“Listening is free, but for using the content you should ask for permission.”

To me, this is how things seem to be currently, anyhow. It is easy to get your hands onto music if the only thing you want to do is listen to it. That is, if you don’t need a physical copy, don’t care for the album covers, or don’t want to run a file sharing system.

This kind of premise also helps us see the challenge clearly. In the Walkman era, there was a proper income tied to products that were targeted to people who only wanted to listen to music. Now, in a world which would follow the suggested premise, this kind of income is approaching… zero. Nada.

Ouch.

But we knew this already.

Thankfully, the premise has a positive side also. If somebody wants to use the musical content in some other way than just for personal pleasure, there (presumably) exists a form of governance that makes sure the producers and songwriters are getting paid for their work.

This kind of premise I’m currently happy to live by. It’s not too puzzling, and it seems realistic.

Differences - City Tour

Rengames, a Finnish indie game house, has today released a straighforward spot the difference kind of flash game called Differences - City Tour. Much to my excitement, the game also sports a sketchy soundtrack I hacked together a few weeks ago.

If my memory serves me correctly, this is the first time any of my works are featured publicly/properly in games. Yay! Go, Rengames!

The game itself can be played here or here. Or search for other potential game sites here.

EDIT: The game seems to be spreading through the web with a nice rapid pace. It has been viewed/loaded more than 60,000 times in a few days. Nice.

Propellerhead Unveils Reason’s Stepsibling: Record

Propellerhead has disclosed a new funky-looking product, Record. It is not a bird, not an aeroplane… and most of all, it is not your everyday DAW. Instead, what it looks to be, is a bad-to-the-bone audio tool with many similarities to Propellerhead’s flagship product Reason. So much so that one could  easily call it Reason’s stepsibling.

At first glance, Record seems reminiscent of ACID - only supercharged. Also I’d sense Record to be a bit more lightweight than Ableton’s Live. It’s a great niche, and I’m somewhat intrigued to see how Propellerhead will be able to deliver on the given promises.

Visitors vs. Listeners

Glenn Peoples ends his recent blog post at Billboard.biz with a diverting comparison:

It is far more valuable to an artist to get 10,000 visitors to his website than have 10,000 strangers stream his music at Spotify.

This nicely adds to my previous post on estimating hits in the internet era. If what Glenn proposes is true - and I’m agreeing to some extent - could this mean that the new hits are not valued by song plays, but by URL clicks?

In another words, could copyright holders be willing to let the songs stream free, and collect royalties from clicks to an artist’s website?

Could This Be A Hit On The Radio?

Create Digital Music posted a nifty piece on the performance rights policies in the US . For one thing, I hadn’t realized that in the States the performers of a particular record do not get paid for radio play. In Finland, for example, performers usually receive their royalties through Gramex.

Anyhow, partially unrelated, CDM’s blog post made me once again think of how radio play has traditionally been one of the milestones of a successful pop song. Many pop-oriented writers and artists have at some point in their careers faced the question “Could This Be A Hit On The Radio?” and - even if one’s incomes didn’t depend on radio play - I’m sure most music professionals are at least half-consciously aware of what are the current hot songs on the radio.

During the past ten years - and the pace seems to be increasing - many have argued that there are new (revenue) models ahead for those who are determined to make their living in some musically oriented way. Even if this were so, the most difficult part for me to grasp is how the new pop successes will be measured. In the future, will everything be scattered and there is no equivalent of a radio hit? Or will there be a new idiom similar to the previous one - something along the lines of “Could This Be A Hit On The Internet?”

The latter doesn’t sound like something that would take off, does it? It’s too abstract and, especially, does not implicitly point to a well-defined revenue model for the professionals behind the product.

One potential future that comes to mind, is that one of the search engines (not necessarily the big G) - or some service capable of indexing the popularity of a song - will become the next radio. Spotify maybe? Or iTunes? Or something else? It would be great to hear your thoughts on this.

A New Site

I came across a rememberthemilk task that said: “set up a better-looking web site”. This is one of the most unenticing chores I can think of, so I’ve been postponing it for a while already. A tad too long, me thinks.

So I took the step, and set up a simple wordpress blog - barbarically destroying the more elegant web.py blog engine I was running in this space before the change. Additionally, to make things more pleasant-looking, I couldn’t resist the tempation of employing a wordpress theme identical to those of Juhana’s and Ryan Leslie’s - I’ve enjoyed the look of those sites a lot lately.

Finally, I put up a black-and-gray blurb picture that should remind me to visit Norwegian fjords as often as humanly possible.

That’s it for now. Let me know if there’s something particular you’d like to read about in here.