Should I sue?  I’ve always wanted to sue someone for something, especially something vague like “intellectual property.”

The idea was proposed by Jim Griffin, a “digital music strategist”, i.e. a guy who gets paid to do what a bunch of us do for free (lucky bugger).  He came up with a similar idea in March to add a fee to internet service bills.  Perhaps one day he was browsing the internets and came across a Tweet or link to my article at AHM and said, “Stupendous!  I will steal his idea.”  I doubt it.  It seemed like he pounced on the Tennessee bill thing in the same way I did.

Jim Griffin, if you are out there, tell me if I am the muse to your idea!

(On a side note, I apologize for my lack of posts recently.  I just started working at my new job and thus have no time to be bored and thing about stuff to write about.)

Trifecta is a blog that I’m trying to get my friends to write for, that’s about art, food and sports.  So far no one has written anything besides me and Charlie.  Hopefully this will change soon…

Tomorrow is — Decemberists!  And capture the flag!  And Buffy rehearsal.  Gah, long day indeed.

I had a good Thanksgiving, thanks in part to my wonderful friends Maarvi and Paul, who kept me from spending the day all alone.  Actually, if Paul hadn’t given me the ticket to M83 I would’ve gone to Astoria with my brother and his wife, but eh, it all works out in the end.

But as I was writing the page I thought, “Gee, Josh, not everyone is Christian.  Some people might not want to download your album because it’s about Jesus and stuff.”

I don’t usually think about this because I myself am not a Christian — I’m a pretty laid back agnostic, if anything.  In the long run I don’t care if there’s a God because his existence does not change the fundamentals of morality and how we should utilize our lives.  I will stop talking about that now, cause I could write a whole other post about my feelings on objective morality.

Instead, I will offer up my separate, seemingly cutesy term for Christmas — Chrimmis.  I started saying Chrimmis years ago, for no real reason other than my family (esp. my father) is big on malopropisms and so we’re always substituting one word for another (e.g. “horse pistol” for “hospital” and so on), and so it seemed natural to say Chrimmis instead of Christmas.  But it ultimately has a separate meaning for me as well.

Christmas is a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ.

Chrimmis is a secular holiday celebrating the spirit of family by giving presents and/or generally hanging out with the ones you love.

Some will say, “But Christmas is about family too!” and I would agree.  But it’s more about Jesus.  And while I think that Jesus was an a-okay dude (had some nice stuff to teach people that unfortunately got twisted by fanaticals into slaughter, rape, pillage, and general mayhem), I think that Christmas leaves out all the other religions of the world, and thus the other people of the world, which is awful.

So, instead, I celebrate Chrimmis.  The term “Chrimmis” makes me think of my six-year-old self, waking up before dawn on Christmas Day, sitting by the pile of presents under the tree, waiting for my parents to wake up so that I can open them (the presents, not my parents).  The term “Christmas” however makes me think of old people singing dull hymns in church.  Not the place I want to be.

Anyway, I just thought I’d put that out there.  I understand that most of the songs on my album are Jesus-specific, but they’re also just songs.  Good ones, too.  So no matter what religion you may be, I hope you’ll download it and at least take a listen.

I also didn’t want to step on any toes with this post, so I apologize if you feel offended at all.  Generally I like offending people, but not with this one.  :)

I have, at this point, about thirty to forty songs that have been unreleased and generally not heard by anyone except FAWMers and 50/90ers (and some songs that haven’t been heard by anyone!).  So I thought that next year, 2009, I would come up with a year-long project, which I call the Twelve EP Project.  It’s not about selling EPs so much as it is coming up with a solid tracklist for a new album, which is why I need your help.

Here’s my plan.  On the third day of every month, I will release a new EP with three songs on it (three on three, if you will — a vague basketball reference perhaps?).  The EP will be free to stream, but if you would like to buy a high quality MP3 copy for yourself, it will cost about two bucks or so.  Nothing extravagant.  There will be official album art, done by myself and friends of mine, I hope, and that will all come with the album should you choose to buy it (maybe with some other goodies too, I haven’t decided).

But here’s the cool part.  I will also have a poll with each EP, which simply asks, Which song do you like the most?  You, the listener, get to choose your favorite song out of the three!  The idea being that by the end of the year, I will have twelve songs that you, the listener, really enjoy.  From that I will create a full-length album, and this one will be Official, meaning, iTunes/AmazonMP3 placement, actual physical CDs, maybe even a bit of touring.  The whole nine yards.

It effectively gives me a year to construct an album — with your help!  It’s a lot like Jonathan Coulton’s “Thing A Week” idea, really.  I guess I’m blatantly stealing it for my own good.

So!  January 3rd will be the first release.  Mark your calendars!  Tell your friends.  Construct a robot that travels the countryside!  Make a hot air balloon.  Purchase space on your local newspaper!  Throw things at people!  Do other things! ]]> http://zornog.net/blog/2008/11/the-twelve-ep-project/feed/ 7 http://zornog.net/blog/2008/11/simple-ways-to-idolize-me/ http://zornog.net/blog/2008/11/simple-ways-to-idolize-me/#comments Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:08:02 +0000 Josh http://zornog.net/blog/?p=195 UPDATE: This post is getting a lot of attention!  If you’re here from some website or re-Tweet, I hope you stay and check out my site, and download my free Christmas CD!

I also have a permanent continuation of this page here.

I’m sure at some point in your lifetime, you’ve thought, “Gee, I really like Josh Belville’s music, and I really want to help him become rich and famous, but I do not understand these Internets.  What can I, a simple beggar, do?”

It’s easy!

First and foremost!

last.fm!

Let me know that you’re listening!  One easy way to do this is to get the last.fm scrobbler.  I could explain to you why it’s called a “scrobbler” but that would be boring and nerdy, so I won’t.  I’m not sure if you have to sign up for an account, but even if you do, it’s worth it (for me, at least .

All you do is download the software and install it.  Then when you’re listening to music, it puts what you’re listening to on last.fm.  This may freak you out if you listen to Britney Spears every day on repeat forever, but don’t worry, chances are there’s another dude in Germany who does the same thing.  You guys can be friends!

They also have software downloads for your iPod and iPhone, so there’s no excuse to say, “I can’t scrobble you cause I have an iPod!” Plus almost every song I’ve ever recorded is available for listening there. For free! So if you wonder, “Should I buy such and such album?” well, just go to last.fm and listen to the whole thing!

What This Does for Me:  Two things.  First, it lets me know how many listeners I have, and how many times my tracks have been played, either through the last.fm radio, or through scrobbling.  Second, I get a very teeny royalty for each track that is played.  So the more tracks that are played, the more money I get!  It’s not gonna pay the bills or anything, but it could buy me some new strings for my guitar, something I desperately need!

Second, and slightly more obviously!

BUY MY MUSIC!  

I had a discussion with my friend Rhett about getting an audience, and my thoughts basically boiled down into one sentence, which was: 

do i offer my albums for free for anyone to download, and by doing that, feel like my stuff isn’t good enough to be bought, or do i sell my albums and risk losing listeners because they can’t get it for free?

(I type in lowercase in chats and IMs because I am ultra 1337)

songs for autumn! yeah!

The truth is, if I could, I would offer everything for free, but then I couldn’t have a website, because I would go over my bandwidth every month, which would require me to get more bandwidth, which would require the cost to get bumped up, which I can’t do.  Plus the psychology of the whole thing does get to me.  By giving away things for free, I feel like I’m lessening the value of my work, which is kind of ridiculous, because it’s art, but unfortunately these days value is measured in money, which we all need to survive.  So if you have a couple of bucks and can spare those bucks for some good music, then I encourage you to do so.  That way I can keep making more music!

What This Does for Me: Pays for my website, future pressed CDs, future uber-digital distribution (iTunes, AmazonMP3, etc, instead of Snocap),  gives me more time to tour and make new songs!

UPDATE: After giving it a lot of thought, I’ve decided to scrap Snocap.  Or as I shall now call them, Snocrap.  Ingenious, I know.  I’ve had too much trouble with their system.  I’m currently looking for an e-commerce site specifically on my website.  So DON’T BUY FROM SNOCAP, er, SNOCRAP.

Thirdly!

 Twitter — Facebook — Myspace!  Use them!  Add me to them!  Pay attention to updates!  Ultimately, this may sound stupid and hokey, but I want to be your friend.  (Okay, it does sound stupid and hokey.)  I would much rather talk to you through social networking sites than write a long blog here about how you can listen to me on last.fm.  It’s more fun and I get to meet a lot of very cool people.

There are a lot of cool new sites out there too, that offer a lot more for fans than those three do.  Sites like ReverbNation, iSound, The Next Big Sound, they’re all out to help listeners like yourself find new and exciting music.  So do yourself a favor and check them out!  I can’t guarantee that you’ll enjoy every one of those sites, but if you do, I heartily recommend you establish yourself on those sites.  If you like ReverbNation, then join a street team!  Sign up for a mailing list!  Make yourself known, because if you do, the artist (i.e., me) will pay attention and appreciate that.

What This Does for Me: Keeps me in touch with YOU, the listener.  The age of untouchable celebrity is waning.  The future is connected.

There are all sorts of other things you can do, like giving my music to your friends (burn CDs!  trade MP3s!  I don’t care), coming to a show of mine, putting up flyers for shows, etc, but in the end you will only do those things if you like my music (and, by extension, like me, I guess).  So before you go crazy, take a listen.  If you like it, follow through, please.  If you don’t, no harm done!

And that is the end of that.

But there aren’t a lot of sites out there allowing listeners to act as music moguls.

Check this out: The Next Big Sound.  It’s a site where listeners get to choose which bands to put on their “record label”.  A pretty ingenious idea, if I do say so myself.  For some reason it makes me think of, and miss, Muxtape a whole bunch (the old Muxtape, I mean, obviously).

I, of course, have set up an account on TNBS.  Put me on your label!

My post on AHM didn’t really augment the visits to my own site, which is fine, but it adds to  my theory that people generally don’t check links back to something.  I could be wrong.  I’m not expecting Slashdot levels of hits, of course, but it’s always interesting to see how many people become interested in this site through other sites.  So if you found this site because of the Artists House Blog or some site relating to the article I wrote: hello and welcome.  I hope you enjoy yourself.

I was thinking about whether or not I should write a second part to that article, a “how to” piece about what would be needed to successfully create a music service superprogram for college and universities, but then I remembered that I don’t know anything about computer programming.  I’m just the idea man.  Still, it would be fairly simple.  You’d just need the students to login with their student ID number or e-mail address, thereby confirming that they are who they claim to be.

The College Music Network, as I’ve been calling it in my head (or CoMN for short, pronouned “Common”), could possibly be a humongous multiversal social networking site if launched correctly.  Think of all the fun things you could do with it.  First there would be “hubs” for specific colleged.  Boise State, for example, would have its own homepage and specialized music centers (and would, in my world, have info on new and established bands from Idaho, major or indie label).  Then you could have statistics from all the universities regarding what’s popular.  This would be available for all students to look at, but would obviously benefit music labels as well, since they would have concrete evidence of what is popular in what section of the country, to the most egocentric and money-spending demographic in the country.

This is essentially a thing that Facebook could’ve easily integrated into their social networking site back when it was a college-only site.  I applaud them for taking it in an obvious direction and making it into a global networking site, but now, because of Facebook, we have a solid architecture that we can study and build upon for our own goal of creating a secure music sharing website/program.

I’m still wrapping my head around the logistics of the entire thing, but I think it’s more than possible.  If anything, it’s probable.  And if anything more, some smart programmer somewhere out there has read this or already come up with a similar idea, and will make it happen and I will receive no acknowledgement whatsoever.  It’s okay, I can deal with it!

I guess you have to patent intellectual property, don’t you?  Or copyright it?  Stupid law stuff.

AND THE REST WAS HISTORY.

So I’ll just reprint what the article says, since it’s pretty short and some people (like me) don’t like to click on a bunch of links sometimes.  It reads:  

A few legislative notes:

Yesterday (the very day the CMA Awards were hosted in Nashville) Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen signed into law SB 3794, a bill that requires all public and private universities and colleges in the state to take proper steps to assure that their networks are not being used to illegally trade copyrighted material. It also requires each school to develop and enforce a policy for computer usage, network usage and ethics. The House IP subcommittee was abolished and will be bumped up to a full Judiciary committee.

My immediate thought upon reading this was: they’re gonna screw it up and get a bunch of college students pissed off at them.

Why?  Because politicians can be lazy.  They don’t want to explain what the policy is for computer usage, network usage, and “ethics” (what a gloriously general term that can be!), they just want you to make one.  Now.  So that they look good to the RIAA and MPAA, and can get re-elected by elderly people who hate rap music.

So they’ll throw this amorphous policy into the hands of a judiciary committee who will not take into account the fact that college students like to listen to music.  Rather, they’ll take into account that college students like to steal, which is simply not true.  Well, somewhat.  Anarchists like to steal.  I know a couple of college-aged anarchists, and they love stealing from “the man”.  But they’re a relatively small community of people, unless you go to Reed College, in which case they’re the entire student population.

In other words, instead of viewing this potentially devastating bill in a positive light, they are going to use it as an excuse to infringe on personal liberties.  Now, before you say, “Stealing is not a personal liberty,” let me say that I’m not talking about stealing.  Stealing is the tip of the iceberg.  The real issue here is the definition of terms — “computer usage”, “network usage” and “ethics” (especially ethics) – and how they choose to define them.  This will ultimately grant them the right to broaden their horizons, so to speak.  In essence, this bill could potentially further damage the music industry, instead of helping it.

So, as a bit of an open letter to the policy makers in Tennessee, allow me to explain to you exactly how you should use this bill, in a positive way, rather than a negative way.

It’s actually quite simple.  Throw away attempts to define “computer usage”, “network usage” and “ethics”, because you will spend more time quibbling over those definitions than you will getting things done.  Instead, do one simple thing: have the college subscribe to a licensed music distribution site, like eMusic or Rhapsody.  I’m sure they could get some kind of massive education discount for subscribing.  Then, put that subscription cost onto the student tuition.  ”Oh god no!” I hear you scream, but hear me out.  eMusic subscriptions start at $11.99 for 30 downloads, and $24.99 for 100 downloads.  One hundred downloads is a lot of songs, but it seems to be around what the average music listener might download, and it’s even pretty good for a heavy music listener/hipster.  So let’s assume a college opts for this.  Now let’s say it’s a college like Boise State, which has around 20,000 students.  Let’s also assume that since it’s a mass subscription, eMusic is awesome and knocks the price down to $19.99/month.  That’s $240 dollars per year.  $240 per year x 20,000 students is an egregiously large number — 4.8 million dollars.  That definitely sounds like a lot, but if each student is only charged $240 a year, then it’s not so bad.

Some schools might not like this, like Boise State, where tuition is only about $5,000 per year.  But other schools, private ones and ones with higher tuition costs might benefit from this added cost.  Imagine, colleges across the country spending upwards of 2 to 4 million dollars subscribing to your music service (I’m talking to you, eMusic).  The profit there would be incredible.  I’m sure eMusic could even lower their monthly price to $10 or $11/month and still make a tidy profit.

This now solves two problems, not just one: it solves the problem of illegal downloading on college networks by establishing a certified, licensed music service which becomes the premiere way students get their music.  Perhaps they’re only limited to 100 songs a month —  I don’t think students will object to that.  Secondly, however, there is a bonus solution to record labels: a new, widely used place to promote their bands!  And not only that, a site that is 100% guaranteed to be used by all college students on the campus.

Even better, this promotes healthy capitalism because it allows the colleges to choose which music site they wish to subscribe to, which in turn forces the music sites to get off their ass and make their subscription programs better, which lowers prices and increases demand.  It’s economics in action!

Of course, there are still some kinks to work out: obviously not all of the 20,000 students at BSU want to download songs online.  There ought to be a way to waive their subscription fee, then, in much the same way one would waive health insurance.  Plus the server requirements would be off the charts, but that’s easily handled these days.

My idea right now is grand but I think it honestly could be done.  These policy makers have the ability to push music distribution truly to the new millenium.  They just have to view the situation in a positive, forward moving light, rather than thinking of all music downloaders as “pirates.”

So to Tennessee and to you, Governor Phil Bredesen, I say this: there is a fair argument that online piracy is hurting the music industry.  But the damage is beyond repair.  We are facing a new and extremely ingenious way for millions of people to listen to new, amazing music, cheaply and quickly, and that way is digital distribution.  Rather than try to fix a sinking ship, why not join the rest of us who are leading the way and build a newer, sleeker, stronger ship?  Only then will the music industry rebound, like a phoenix rising out of its own ashes.

Some of you may be thinking that I spend countless hours crouched over my guitar, thinking hard about the next lyric, the next melody, how to go into the chorus, etc etc etc.  This is partially true.  I do spend a lot of time thinking about that.

But sometimes I just try desperately to figure out how to play the Bubble Bobble theme song.

I still can’t quite get it.

(apologies for the loud whistling)

So on November 15th I am going to reopen my Christmas covers album, Get Behind Me, Santa! for people to download.  It’s my little Christmas gift to everyone.  Not surprisingly, it is probably my most popular album, partially because people love Christmas music, and partially because my covers don’t suck.  :D

I think I’ll record some extra tracks for it, too, just to be extra nice.

That’s only eight days away!  Get ready for some sweet Christmas action!

CHRIMMIS!

TRACKLIST:

1. Silent Night
2. O Come O Come Emmanuel
3. We Three Kings
4. Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree
5. Sister Winter
6. Angels, We ‘Ave ‘Eard on ‘Igh (Oi!)
7. Away in a Manger
8. Christmas All Over Again
9. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
10. Christmas Must Be Tonight
11. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) 
12. O Holy Night
13. White Christmas