Net, Blogs and Rock'n'Roll

Fan communities interview: Andy Aldridge

Chapter 3 ("Fans as Creators") of my book uses fan activities around Galaxie 500 as an example of the dynamics and evolution of a community of listeners. In particular I portray Andy Aldridge, who has played the central role in catalysing the community, as both a 'Savant' — one of the tier of super-fans (outlined here) — and an 'Originator' — one of the 1% of online community members who create original content off their own bat. [In the photo: Andy Aldridge (right) with Dean Wareham of Galaxie 500, Luna and Dean & Britta — used with permission, see original.]

I've been a member of the Galaxie 500 mailing list since 2000, but I'm very much in the 90% of 'lurker' members who just 'listen in' to the conversation without contributing. Since I moved to London four years ago, Andy and I have met at a few gigs (and Last.fm now lets us see each other's gig diaries), and he kindly spared me an hour or so over a drink in a West London pub last October, when I was writing the book. Below are my notes from that discussion.

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.

Of personality and (unshared) playlists

Revelations about the contents of George W Bush's iPod were, one suspects, a fairly carefully managed media exercise — notwithstanding the disclaimers urging people not to psychoanalyse them. But if you look at the way people have responded to alleged new discoveries of Adolf Hitler's private record collection, you get a very clear idea of how impossible it is to resist such analysis.

One of the things that makes Hitler's 'playlist' so salient is precisely that it wasn't intended to be shared. If it had been published while he was alive, the inclusion of Jewish or Russian performers would have undermined his public pronouncements that denigrated the talents of those ethnic groups. Now the collection appears as a 'text', subject to interpretation both in terms of Hitler's hypocrisy and in terms of his preparedness for compromise in the private sphere and acknowledgement that the views he espoused in public were not as clear-cut as he pretended. He is either even more or slightly less of a monster than we thought before. (To be clear: I am not suggesting that either option mitigates the terrible crimes that Hitler orchestrated or the man himself. Arguably, exposing the traits that he shared with 'normal' humans makes the lessons for the rest of us all the more grave.)

Another thing that makes analysing playlists so irresistible is precisely their lack of context and their openness to different interpretations. As Steven Isserlis says of Hitler's collection, it's a puzzle. A playlist is both a projection from someone's personality and something you can project personality onto. If we had access to Hitler's blog (someone's bound to say they've found it sooner or later!) describing his record purchases and what they meant to him, his playlist might not be such a perplexing and portentous artefact.

Are you a Believer? How Sellaband sources its crowd and its cash

Almost a year ago, Stefan Kolle of Futurelab (who syndicate many of my blog postings) suggested that I blog about Sellaband, a new model for financing the recordings of new artists that relies on lots of small investments from fans — or in the Web 2.0 jargon, raising funds through "crowdsourcing". In the end, Stefan himself wrote about Sellaband, but I held my fire. Now that Sellaband is approaching its first anniversary we have a better idea of how the model works in practice. Prompted by a discussion over coffee last week and this Sunday Times article [thanks, Babs_05], here are my thoughts.

First, for a brief introduction to Sellaband, you can read the full account of how it works on their website, but Digital Music News provided this summary:

The artist makes their own profile on Sellaband.com including pictures, a bio and a maximum of 3 demo-songs. There is no charge to the Artist. The profile is meant to appeal to potential "Believers" who are invited to give money in $10 increments ("Parts") to pay for the production of a complete album. Anyone who wants to support the project can buy one or more Parts for $10. Once $50,000 is raised Sellaband will provide an experienced A&R person to guide the recording process. Of the $50,000, $30,000 is used for recording the CD. The A&R manager will book the producer, studio and mastering facility. The rest of the budget will be used for manufacturing, packaging and sending up to 5,000 CDs for the Artist's Believers. [This division of funds is shown in the graphic above.] At any time before the Artist reaches the goal of $50,000, the Artist can leave the service and shut down his profile page, and the Believers' money will be returned to them.

One of the criticisms that's sometimes levelled at the recording industry is that they've hollowed out the people that really care about the music and all that's left is the accountancy skills and some questionable promotional tactics. Sellaband was created by ex-recording industry executives, but they are delegating their responsibility for part of the A&R process: if it's the fans/Believers that determine which artists get recording deals, then the A&R has less of his/her personal judgement on the line. You could argue that Sellaband is taking the criticisms of record labels at face value and behaving more like a bank.

Universal access to all media will kill our culture: discuss

In time-honoured tradition, the final chapter of my book rounds things off by asking where we're heading with the latest wave of technology and how it may affect the prospects for renewal and development in our culture. I quote three white men of varying stripes and ages — Joe Boyd, Noel Gallagher and John Harris — who each give a different take on the "things ain't what they used to be; something has been lost" riff.

In an article last year, John Harris worried that popular music was running out of steam, with the rate of change slowed to a crawl:

Older readers will attest to the fact that 1977 was very unlike 1967: in the intervening years — and this is somewhat crude, but bear with me — psychedelia turned to prog, which was in turn avenged by punk, while glam-rock strutted about and the music industry inaugurated the age of the singer-songwriter. This year, by contrast, isn't that different from 1996: Blur and the Gallaghers are still here, the cranked-up guitar remains king, and it's still just about acceptable to walk around with a Britpop haircut (I should know — I've got one).

Today Harris is back on the same theme, and this time he's blaming the over-30s for not acting their age:

That's right: rock is dead, or it definitely might be. One or other must be true, because Glastonbury wasn't very good. The main problem, to hear some people talk, was the preponderance of those responsible for our Great Rock Crisis: people over 30, who are apparently buying most of the tickets for great musical events, taking the kids and a hamper, and thereby ruining their essential ambience.