Archive for August, 2009
August 19th, 2009
New Media MA Thesis! (final version)
The final version of my MA Thesis is ready!
Copy What Can’t Be Sold (and Sell What Can’t Be Copied):
What Musicians Have Learned From Blogging
Abstract:
The “crisis in the music industry” (declining profits blamed on piracy) has been presented in the media as a crisis for musicians. This thesis challenges such assumptions by differentiating between various components of the industry and by illustrating how some musicians are benefiting from, and sometimes even promoting, piracy and other types of free online content.
Studies of the music industry suffer from a marked inability to comprehend the underlying logic of the Internet when analyzing digital music distribution. Digital music lives within the framework of the Internet, therefore it is subject to the logics of that context. By analyzing this context and looking closely at the influence that the Internet and blogging culture are having on music distribution, this thesis updates outdated concepts and presents recommendations for musicians living in a ‘post-Napster’ era.
Through a wide range of academic texts, empirical reports, interviews and case studies, I equate the current role of the musician to that of the blogger, ultimately arriving at the conclusion: successful musicians must copy what can’t easily be sold, and sell what can’t easily be copied.
Breakdown:
Intro – Explains it all
Section 1 - P2P & Music industry background/history
Section 2 – Free music, and the benefits of piracy
Section 3 – Musicians that blog, and selling what can’t be copied
Conclusion – Sums it up (duh)
August 4th, 2009
New Media & Music: an interview with the Silversun Pickups
As I was preparing for my interview with the Silversun Pickups I received a Tweet acknowledging that they had just rolled into town. Later that day I chatted with the Brian, Nikki, Chris and Joe of the Silversun Pickups before their show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam to discuss what it takes to be a successful musician in the new media climate.
You guys use Twitter quite frequently, can you tell me about your experience as a band using Twitter:
Chris: It is nice to have the photo option, it’s the best, the fact that you can just take a picture and put it out there. It’s so immediate.
Brian: It’s also, at one point we had a journal on our website and it became daunting, we were all daunted by it cause we thought we had to write these masterful paragraphs. But the Twitter thing, it’s like cliff notes. It makes it really easy.
Chris: Cos the twitter thing we can just put one line.
Brian: “hey we’re in Amsterdam.”
What was your motivation for using Twitter?
Chris: I checked it out to see what it was about and if anyone I knew was on it. And then I noticed our booker was on it, so then I kind of followed him and I was like “oh your on this?”. I didn’t touch it for 3 months, then one of our label guys found me on Twitter and was like, “lets have a meeting about this, you should do this more often for the band”, and I was like OK I’ll give it a try. And so we eventually got onto it.
Do you also maintain a Facebook accounts?
Nikki: Chris and I do
Chris: It’s definitely not a personal thing anymore. It’s like we understand people are going to come in and they know who you are through your band and so they add you as a friend. And then all of a sudden they accept you as a friend.
What was really nice about it was, on my birthday about a month ago all these people were saying happy birthday to me. I made sure to say “Thank You” to everyone and people were surprised like, “OMG my friends don’t even write on my wall.”
That was going to be my next question, it seems like it must be difficult to stay in touch with fans this way?
Brian: It does get a little overwhelming. Also, privacy is important too.
Joe: The band is an entity to itself. You have to work hard to keep it separate from your personal life.
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