Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll

Short notice: speaking about Digital Discovery at EuroBlog 2008

Next week I'll be speaking at the EuroBlog 2008 Symposium in Brussels. The full programme runs from 13-15 March, and I'll be discussing the future of digital discovery on Friday afternoon (though the programme doesn't yet mention my name at the time of writing).

The Symposium is organised by the European Public Relations Education and Research Association and other speakers include David Weinberger, Philip Young, Neville Hobson and Steve Rubel.

Past and upcoming talks

An MP3 of my talk at the RSA last month, plus those of Andrew Collins and Claire Tchaikowski and the Question & Answer session, is now available via the RSA site (look for the 11/10/2007 entry or take this direct link [42 MB MP3 file]). If you're really clever, and I know you are, you can follow the audio and work out where the transitions between the slides, below, should be…

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In the next twelve days I'll be talking in Bratislava (with Gerd Leonhard and others), Vienna (with Peter Jenner, Feargal Sharkey and others) and London (with Baroness Susan Greenfield, Will Hutton and maybe even Kevin Spacey, though not in the same session as me!). See the events page for full details.

See also the reviews page for recent reviews in The Guardian and Wired blogs.

Full line up for my talk at the RSA on Thursday

At the very end of last week, the RSA told me that music and film journalist and broadcaster Andrew Collins (left of the three pictures) had accepted their invitation to give a short response to the talk I'll be giving there in a few days time. That completes the line-up, which also includes a response from unsigned (or should that be unlicensed?) singer-songwriter Claire Tchaikowski (right), and is chaired by Paul Hitchman (centre), co-founder and managing director of Playlouder MSP.

I've created pages for the event on Upcoming and Facebook, but the only one that really matters if you're interested in attending is the RSA booking page. Currently this says the event is full, and you can only join the waiting list. I find this surprising, having seen relatively little publicity for it myself, so I'd encourage you to join the waiting list: if there is sufficient demand, I guess the RSA may move it into a bigger room (I'll check this on Tuesday and update here). [Update, 8 October: the RSA page has now been updated with all speakers, and is no longer showing as fully booked.]

The creative crowd: discovery and anarchy

I'm preparing materials for upcoming talks I'm doing, and my presentation at the Creative Clusters conference — in the Creative Crowd session — requires a 500 word summary of what I'm going to say.

In theory I ought to be able to compile such a summary from stuff I've written before. In practice, in the time it takes to find the right excerpts, then edit them so they fit together and fit the audience, I might as well start from scratch. Plus there is the possibility that, in forcing yourself to improvise, you come up with a better way of expressing an idea that has previously eluded concise articulation.

So that's what I did. I'm not sure how successful it was — feel free to tell me in the comments. Since I'm speaking to an audience primarily concerned with policy and the 'creative economy', I thought I'd emphasise the anarchic nature of discovery and Web 2.0 to see how that grabs people. My summary is below (click the "continue reading" link if you're reading this on the home page).

Meanwhile a quick mention that I apparently can invite two guests for next week's MusicTank discussion — featuring Tom Robinson, Andrew Keen, Paul Brown from Pandora, me and others — for free. If you'd like to be my guest (it's in London), please add a comment or get in touch

The architecture of digital discovery

This graphic is a draft from a presentation I'm preparing on the themes of the book, showing how Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll provide a kind of architecture of digital discovery.

• The Net is the stuff that goes on under the surface: things like the algorithms that generate Flickr's "interesting" page, creating some order out of chaos just by tracking patterns of viewing and interaction.
• Blogs are the human level of personality, conversations and word-of-mouth: how people discover culture through their friends' opinions, and how tastes 'rub off' as they make new friends and eye up potential partners.
• Rock'n'roll is the attitude that keeps things fresh and ensures that, just as mass opinion is swarming towards the latest Coldplay or Kanye, an influential minority are breaking from the conformity of the crowd and uncovering new and more challenging areas.

As publication of my book approaches, I've put together a reviews page to collate all the comments about the book that I'm aware of. If you know of any that I've missed, please let me know. And if you've read the book, please add your own reviews via the comments or via one of the Amazon pages (amazon.co.uk, amazon.com).

MusicTank Event: Too Much Choice?

In a couple of weeks, on 3rd October, I'll be taking part in a panel discussion organised by MusicTank here in London, about the role of experts and filters in helping us sift the massive quantities of music being produced. Here's an extract from the blurb:

Most people would agree that choice is a good thing, but there is a flipside to this vision of a musical consumerist's paradise. While aficionados and geeks might relish the challenge of judging vast swathes of music for themselves (choosing, aggregating and selecting between an array of filters, e.g. Pandora, Pitchfork, online communities), would more casual consumers (and thus the public majority) not prefer a bit of guidance, not just in terms of the music itself but also in terms of which filters are to be trusted?

I'm looking forward to meeting several of my fellow participants. First and foremost, Tom Robinson is giving the keynote. Tom is probably still best known as a songwriter and performer, though in the last decade he's become a well-respected DJ and radio presenter. In that respect, you might expect him to back the role of 'gatekeepers'. However, he has also been critical of the mainstream music business and has praised MySpace.

New music search and search-by-example services

Still a few weeks to go until publication, but nevertheless there are a few areas where I've know for a while that Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll as a book is slightly behind the times (I submitted a "final" draft in February this year, and further revisions on 2nd April).

Even when I was reviewing the proofs I knew that Weedshare had ceased operations and BurnLounge were changing theirs, but I didn't have scope to do the fairly substantial rewrites these would have required.

More excitingly, some of the developments I wrote about as vague promises now have many tangible examples. This is most clearly the case in the area of music search, where services like SeeqPod and Project Playlist allow you to listen to the tracks found in your search results, while Audiobaba and OWL enable you to find tracks that sound like other tracks or even the parts of songs that you most like.

I've created an updates and errata page to log and point to these developments, and link them back to the relevant parts of the book's text. As and when you read the book and know of other areas where I should add updates, please make comments on that page.

Do you know any events I should be speaking at?

As publication of the book approaches, I'm starting to make arrangements for events (conferences, panels, lectures, private presentations) where I'll be talking about the issues that the book addresses.

Three events are confirmed so far, and listed below, with several others under discussion. I'm keen to add more. In particular I'd like to make the most of my trip to the States, so if you know of anything before or after 19-20 October, public or private, where I could make a useful contribution, please contact me.

I've created an Events page where I'll add each new event as it is confirmed.

11 October 2007 (1-2pm)	RSA Thursday lectures: booking details will appear here shortly (free event)	London, England
19-20 October, 2007	ACM Recommender Systems conference	Minneapolis, USA
12-13 November 2007	DMET: Digital Music Education and Training project conference	Vienna, Austria

Don't you wish you had bookshelves like these?

… in a matter of weeks, you can. Review copies are in, looking new and shiny. If you're a journalist or blogger and would like a review copy, please contact Angie Tainsh by email at publicity[at]nicholasbrealey[dot]com (oh, and Angie can also help with bulk orders). Update: for US enquiries, please contact Chuck Dresner, cdresner[at]nicholasbrealey[dot]com.

The book is available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.

Much more to come here in the way of sample text, 'out-takes' and other materials related to the book. Watch this space over the next few weeks.

Networking the book

The corrected proofs for the book are with the publisher, as is the index. I've had my holiday (very nice, thanks for asking, photos here). So now I'm gearing up to promote the book in advance of publication. (You can already find the book on Amazon US and Amazon UK, though I can't yet vouch for the publication dates given there.)

Obviously I'm under an injunction to practise what I preach, so that means lots of blogging and social networking. I'm sure some sections of the text will also be available online, but we haven't sorted that out just yet.

Today I signed up with Bebo. I'm not sure how well known Bebo is in the US, but in the UK it is either catching up with MySpace or already overtook it a year ago, depending on your measures and sources.

I'm completely friendless on Bebo at the moment, so if you have an account there please visit my profile and befriend me.

One of the unique (among the networks I've used) things about Bebo is that it provides a platforms for authors to promote books in the same way that bands promote music. Hence I've been able to create an initial page for Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll. Watch that space, as well as this one.

Book cover

Here's the latest and probably final version of the cover for my book (click to enlarge). I'm working on the proofs and index at the moment, which is why I've been more than usually quiet here. The book is still on schedule to be out in the autumn/fall (I've mentioned September in the past, but let's not be too bold).

There's some interesting material on the 'cutting room floor', and I'll be editing that to present here in the coming months.

Book update

Yesterday was what is termed the "final delivery date" in my contract with the publisher, and I met the deadline! Many thanks to everyone who helped with this. I've updated the book announcement page with the new chapter outline.

The publisher tells me that publication of the book is pencilled in for September. In the meantime, I'm going to be catching up with my mail…

Human and automated filters

Eliot Van Buskirk of Wired News interviews Josh Madell, co-owner of New York City independent record store Other Music about their upcoming move into digital downloads. Here's an interesting excerpt:

Van Buskirk: I read an article from late last year that included a quote from you about the notorious "Pitchfork effect," in which albums recommended by that site start flying off the shelves. Have you noticed a "MySpace effect," or is that something you'll be going after with Other Music's digital music store?

Madell: Sure, it's undeniable that these days the influence of traditional print magazines has been overshadowed by websites and blogs; they're quick and convenient, and have their ears a bit closer to the ground than traditional media. As for MySpace and the like, I guess I feel like the biggest drawback of these types of social-networking sites is that there is just too much information. If you don't have the time or energy to listen to every band in existence, but you love interesting new music, a place like Other Music can be great, because our staff is paid to sort through all the crap. We can feature the best stuff out there, and hopefully present a convenient, well-maintained site where you can listen, learn and buy.

You could argue that Madell underestimates the filtering capabilities of social networks with recommender systems built in, like Last.fm, but I think what's interesting about this quote is the blending of new technology platforms and informed human guidance.

I'm two and a half weeks from the deadline for the final version of my book — so that's why things are a bit quiet here at the moment.

Why I'm writing this

A press release from the Digital Media Association in the US runs as follows:

Nearly 60 percent of consumers report that they are listening to more music since they started using an online service. The 1,008 consumers surveyed enjoy Internet radio, subscription music services, and pay-per-download music services, including AOL Radio, Yahoo! Music, iTunes, Rhapsody, Zune, Urge, Napster, Pandora, Live365 and others.

The vast majority of online music service users report that enjoying music over the Internet has expanded their musical tastes, allowing them to discover new artists and explore new music genres. About 25 percent reported having discovered a lot of new artists, while more than 60 percent of consumers surveyed say they have discovered some new artists. Nearly 7 in 10 online music consumers are enjoying new genres of music since listening to online music services.

According to the survey, online music listening has increased music fans' overall music discussion with friends and co-workers, with more than 35 percent now talking about music more. And, more than 75 percent of online music consumers report they have recommended a particular service to a friend or co-worker.

Phew, that's a relief. Frankly, if any of those trends were not happening, the case for me writing my book would be pretty slim. Discovered via Digital Media Wire.

Contract signed

I signed the contract today and registered the domain netblogsrocknroll.com.