BasBasBas.com

Happy new year to everyone! Today while reading The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying I ran into a good poem to remind you how to deal with new year’s resolutions and figured it would make a great post to start the year off with.

Autobiography in Five Chapters

1) I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I fall in.
I am lost… I am hopeless.
It isn’t my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

2) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidealk.
I pretend I don’t see it.
I fall in again.
I can’t believe I’m in the same place.
But it isn’t my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

3) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I see it is there.
I still fall in… it’s a habit
My eyes are open
I know where I am
It is my fault
I get out immediately.

4) I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk
I walk around it.

5) I walk down another street.

One of my own resolutions is to blow more life into this blog, since it has been gathering digital dust for quite a while due to personal circumstances. No more though, just subscribe to the feed (I recommend using Feedly) and stay in touch!

Happy 2010!

I’m borrowing one of my favourite Twitter memes called Follow Friday, though I hardly ever participate. On Fridays, many Twitter users recommend their followers to follow interesting people that they themselves are following. It’s kind of like networking. Actually, it’s more than just ‘kind of’ like networking!

I always find it really tough who to recommend, but I love the principle. That’s why I have decided to recommend some of the blogs I subscribe to so I stay in the know about developments in the (new) music business. Maybe you can recommend some to me too?

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Billboard.biz
A rather traditional source of information – not too forward thinking, but has some interesting case studies every now and then.

Digipendent
Looks at trends in music & the digital world.

Digital Audio Insider
Describes itself as a blog about the economics of digital music and I think that’s quite an accurate description.

Digital Music News
Definitely one of the best blogs out there on this topic! So I gave it some sweet italic loving!

Digital Noise
A CNET blog about music and technology. Hightlights lots of interesting innovative initiatives in the digital music business.

FileShareFreak
A blog about filesharing, piracy, torrent sites, lawsuits and other fun stuff.

Future of Music Coalition
A non-profit organisation looking at the future of the music business and how artists can cope with the rapid changes.

Hypebot
A blog about the new music business. Hardly misses a thing. Very impressive!

Make It In Music
Artists have to take more and more control of the tasks record labels previously used to take care of. This blog educates them on how to do that. Also interesting for people who are simply interested in the music business, but not as an artist.

me*dia*or
Kind of a monitor of the music business blogs. Everything in one place here, but I prefer visiting the individual blogs / reading their RSS feeds.

Media Futurist – Gerd Leonhard
The blog of Gerd Leonhard, who’s a media futurist. He appears to be touring constantly, speaking at conferences about technologies and how our society could adopt them. He shares many of his presentations, slideshows and ideas on his blog. Great material! Also check out the interview I had with him about the future of music distribution.

MIDEM(Net) Blog
MIDEM is one of the world’s biggest music business conferences. MidemNet is its simultaneous digital music business conference. The blog is filled with interesting analyses by industry experts.

Music Ally
The corporate blog of this digital music business information and strategy company.

Music Business and Trend Mongering
A blog about the great ideas and trends in the new music business.

Music Think Tank
Awesome blog about what works and doesn’t work (and why!) in the music industry. Highly recommended.

MusicBizGuy Speaks
A music business veteran’s view on the new music business. Very impressive track record and highly insightful articles.

Net, Blogs and Rock’n'Roll
A blog about the digital discovery of music and entertainment.

New Music Strategies
The name more or less speaks for itself. Sporadic posts, but high quality guaranteed.

P2P Blog
Lots of news about innovation in peer to peer technology.

p2pnet
About filesharing, peer-to-peer technology, RIAA madness, and innovation in the sharing of digital information.

Remix Theory
A blog about remix culture.

Rocketsurgeon’s Music 2.0 Directory
A listing of all the tools and services participating in the ‘new media revolution’. Very cool.

RouteNote’s Blog
RouteNote’s a company specializing in the distribution of artists’ music to (digital) music stores. Their blog offers a great look into the world of digital music distribution.

Techdirt
About innovations in technology and how this affects government policy and the economy around us. Probably my favourite blog of this whole list.

The Daily Swarm
A bit like me*dia*or, in the sense that it aggregates content from other places and links back to the full articles. Sometimes they catch something I had missed, so I try to keep up with them as much as I can.

The Forrester Blog for Consumer Strategy Professionals
Not necessarily about the music business, but definitely gives great insight into marketplaces that are changing because of technology. These guys are really on top of the trends and give valuable insights into them.

TorrentFreak
Another favourite blog. They ask some very tough questions to the music business about how they deal with filesharing. Also has a lot of news about torrent trackers, politics, what’s hot in the filesharing networks, and much much more.

TuneCorner
TuneCore also specializes in distributing signed artists’ music to digital music stores. On their blog, great tips about music and technology, insights into the new music business, and how to use the web to your advantage.

Wired | Music
Wired is a technology news website and has a music section too. Great read! They have a very talented staff.

ZeroPaid
Another (good) blog about filesharing.

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Whenever I spot a great article worth reading in one of these (and other) sources, I share them via Google Reader, so have a look at my shared items and subscribe to them!

What are blogs you would recommend? Did I miss any good ones?

Recently I released a paper titled the best practices of the online promotion of new musical content. I pushed it through some networks and sent it to contacts I’ve made while studying the music business and the results have been phenomenal. Giving away something good for free really does work! Some highlights.

I submitted it to Techdirt, probably my favourite technology blog, where Mike Masnick blogged about it. This blog post was then mentioned in the daily newsletter of the ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.

It was also posted to the great Make It In Music blog, as a guestpost. Students of the music business course at the NYU were given this paper to read. Someone is even making a Spanish version of it to increase the reach of the paper, especially in Latin America. Thanks Pp! I’ve also been spreading it around LinkedIn with some pretty good results.

Wow!

To be honest, part of the strategy of my thesis was to build some momentum, release it, make it go viral and brand myself as an expert on this topic, but even this paper is making some ripples.

The ironic thing is that in the paper I say that giving away something of value for free can be a great promotional tool… especially if what you’re giving away is easily reproduced and easy to share. The reception of the paper proves exactly that.

Extremely motivated to get that thesis done asap and start utilizing the momentum I’ve built! More soon!

P.S. If you’d like to read the paper, click here for the PDF.

As the regular readers of my blog probably know, I’m writing my graduation thesis about the future of music distribution. Due to some setbacks and unforseen circumstances, this thesis has suffered some delays. However, using the knowledge and insight I gained in the past month, while studying my thesis’ topic, I have compiled a paper called the Best Practices of the Online Promotion of New Musical Content.

It looks at artists like Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, Mos Def, and Groove Armada, and analyzes what they’ve been doing right and wrong and why they’ve been doing it in the first place.

So while you wait for the thesis and the launch of FutureOfMusicDistribution.com, how about going through this 20 page paper?

To download and read the whole paper, just use this link:

http://www.basbasbas.com/online_promotion_of_new_musical_content-Bas_Grasmayer.pdf

And feel free to redistribute it, it’s licensed under a Creative Commons license!

Love,
Bas

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Image by Gary Simmons, shared under a Creative Commons license on Flickr.

Alright, lesson learned. If you’re going to start barefoot running, start slow. REALLY slow.

If you’re following this blog, I bought them. Not just that, I even started a site dedicated to barefoot lifestyle. I’ve become convinced that going barefoot is a very interesting experiment (plus it feels great) and that it’s an upcoming trend. Why? Well, I ended up buying the Vibram Five Fingers. When I first saw them, I ridiculed them, more or less like everybody else. However, I bought these shoes for a great reason and my reasons make sense (you can read about this on my Squidoo lens). The product itself catches the attention of people, just before they start ridiculing it. I’m quite evangelical about my choice though (as with all my choices), so once I have their attention, I explain WHY I bought it, creating interest. Suddenly I find people quite open about  the shoes and suddenly not ridiculing them anymore. As a matter of fact, they’ll start asking questions instead.

That’s the positive side of the experience. The other is a lesson. If you’re going to start barefoot running (or using minimalistic, barefoot simulating shoes, like the Vibram five fingers), then START SLOW. Imagine how slow you should start. Then HALF that. I normally do a 2 kilometer lap every two days or so. Just a 10 minute run, because I enjoy it. So when I went to try out the shoes, I loved the new way in which I was running. I ran about half and walked the other half, but I overdid it. Next day: terrible muscle ache. Day after that: STILL terrible muscle ache.

Really, do yourself a favour and start slow! But not before doing yourself a bigger favour: go barefoot!

I’m an information junkie. I don’t think I can say that I love reading, but I adore absorbing information. Today I read a great review of ugly shoes, which led me to look into a Mexican tribe and into the achievements of an Ethiopian athlete hero.

It started with a review on CrunchGear. It’s basically about a type of shoe that wraps around every toe and why it’s so great for running. The article argued that we’re natural long distance runners and that before we had weapons, we’d chase animals for such lengths of time and distances that the animals would collapse after which we could kill them and eat them. This is no longer necessary for us in the west (both the running great distances to get food and the killing animals to use their meat for survival), but it doesn’t take away the fact that we have evolved as long distance runners.

Next I looked at a book called Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen which is in part about athletes that run ultramarathons, which are 40 miles instead of 40 kilometers. One of these athletes joins a tribe of Native Americans in Mexico who are known for their long-distance running abilities.

Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a lost art. For centuries they have practiced techniques that allow them to run hundreds of miles without rest and chase down anything from a deer to an Olympic marathoner while enjoying every mile of it. Their superhuman talent is matched by uncanny health and serenity, leaving the Tarahumara immune to the diseases and strife that plague modern existence.

So the author trained with them and he learned a great deal. The Tarahumara Indians run barefoot, which apparently means less injuries and better running. Why? Modern shoes apparently cushion our heels so that we start running on our heels, sending shocks up our ankles, knees, hips and spines. Man is not supposed to run this way naturally, but instead we’re supposed to use the balls of our feet. We’re endurance runners by nature.

So I explored if there were any famous athletes that are barefoot runners and one story in particular amazed me. It’s the story of Abebe Bikila, an Ethiopian athlete who was the first black African to win an Olympic gold medal and the first athlete to winning the Olympic marathon twice. The first time he was a bit late with picking out his shoes and the pair he had were uncomfortable, so he couldn’t run a marathon with them. He decided to run barefoot, since that’s how he had practiced in Ethiopia anyway and he ended up breaking the world record. Four years later, just before the Olympics, Bikila had a case of acute appendicitis and was operated on. He then started practicing again almost immediately and won the marathon a second time.

There’s surely something to be said for barefoot running. We are born as barefoot endurance runners, with tons of nerve endings in our foot to give us stimuli and instincts to help us interpret and act according to the stimuli. Now I want to start trying it out… I’m sure my neighbours must think I’m crazy running through their street on my bare feet, but not as crazy as if they’d see me in those shoes. I could always cycle a bit out of town of course.

Love running? What do you think? Ever seriously tried barefoot running? What are your experiences? Will you consider barefoot running?

By the way, in case you didn’t check out the link to the book I mentioned, you really should. Read the description and the interview with the author, it’s so fascinating. This will be the next book I buy!

I just had my attention directed towards ‘Troogle‘, via Pixites, who are uncovering the truth about Google on a Wordpress blog. The first post on their page basically states Google (and 4 other companies) are conspiring to take over the internet (mirror) and they’re going to start talking about it on a site called The New Web Project (mirror). It urges people to keep an eye on that site. That’s when my bullshit alert went off. Maybe earlier. Someone dropping some secret papers right in front of the feet of an anti-Goole blogger seemed a little too convenient.

So I looked up who registered The New Web Project. A quick Whois (mirror) showed John Nijenroode. So I figured I’d check out who he is. So I ran his name through Google (ironic, I know) and found his Twitter account, even the username matches his email address. In his bio he claims to be a blogger for Troogle (mirror) and the Troogle blog says the same (mirror).

If you’re gonna invent conspiracies, at least be more crafty and make it believable… And turn on domain privacy!

I should be working on my thesis right now, but I feel I would work more effectively once I get this out of my system.

Yesterday there was a tragic accident as a 30 year old bus cut its way into a group of tourists in Southeastern Bulgaria. Brake failure. 16 people died. 4 are still in the hospital. For the specifics, see Martin’s blogpost. Now this of course made some impression on me, but not as much as what happened after I learned about the accident.

I continued working for an hour, maybe two. I decided to take a nap. By now, the newsstory had already left my mind or at least gone to the background. While I took my nap, I had a strange dream. Just before I woke up, we were in a coach pulled by horses. There was one carriage in front of us with two women riding it which crashed into the shrubs in the roadside, but it didn’t look bad, so I didn’t think much of it. What stuck with me most, is what happened inside the coach I was in. We were about 6 people in there, two families – mine and another it seemed. A girl of about my age was on the phone with a friend of her and said: “Sofia is doooooood” (dood is Dutch for dead). She said it in a strange way and her parents commented on it, disapprovingly. Shortly after, I woke up.

I immediately started thinking… Does this have something to do with the recent tremors and earthquakes here? Will something bad happen to the city of Sofia? But this was maybe 2% of how I felt, because for the other 98% I felt that Sofia was a person… So I thought of the bus accident again. I tried to see if there were any names of victims released yet. Not yet. I became convinced that something happened to Sofia – either in this bus accident, or in some other way. As I woke up this morning, there was a list of names of the casualties.  Including a Sofia.

Creepy. On the one hand I’m a very logical person, on the other I do have a believe in the paranormal and spiritual. And I have been experiencing a lot of synchronicity lately… Which I haven’t really experienced in nearly a year (and I’m very happy it’s back – it’s a good sign in my eyes).

Don’t know what to make of it. Given the increase in synchronicity, I have a feeling I’ll be able to put it into perspective through future experiences. For now… It will remain a mystery.

How about you? Have you experienced such things before? What do you make of your own experiences?

As promised, here is the video of my recent travels in the last month. One month ago I was in Prague for a conference and some sightseeing, then went to Greece for a weekend a few weeks ago and I spent last weekend in the Bulgarian countryside! I’m having a great spring!

Since I didn’t upload any pictures yet, I decided to 1 UP my promise and to deliver a video.

Enjoy!

Or go see it on YouTube or Vimeo.

How’s it going, everybody?

Over the last weeks I’ve been in Prague, in Greece and have also been working hard on my thesis about the future of music distribution, which is due in about 2-3 weeks. This weekend I’m going to the Bulgarian countryside, which I’m very excited about, since I’ve lived in this country (off and on) for a year in total, but have never seen the core of Bulgaria. The countryside is very important to Bulgarians and I love seeing it, because you see some old practices that have left our western societies for decades.

When I come back, I’ll make a video compilation of all the pictures we took in the last few weeks, in Prague, Greece and then the Bulgarian countryside. It will be great. I promise!

And now a request

I’m doing a survey for my thesis about the future of music distribution. It takes about 9-10 minutes to fill it in and as a reward I offer you 9 free songs of a great variety, one for every minute you spend on the survey.

So go fill it in: http://survey.futureofmusicdistribution.com/

Do me a HUGE favour and spread this link around a bit, to music lovers or people that don’t care much for music… It doesn’t matter, I’m interested in all of them. Please consider blogging about it, putting it in your Facebook or Twitter status, etc. and give your friends some free music and help out a student in the name of music and education!

Thanks a lot!

Speak to you after the weekend

Bas