BasBasBas.com

Drew this model up for my thesis, to basically summarize the way the new music business works for most labels. Does this look right to you? Am I forgetting anything?

Click picture to enlarge. Click here for Suzanne Lainson’s post, mentioned at the bottom of the model behind the asterisk.

I plan to draw up a bunch of other seperate models to incorporate theories such as the long tail and 1,000 true fans. Things will also become much clearer once a diffusion of innovations model is worked in there, like I did with my paper titled Best practices of the online promotion of new musical content.

Any pointers would be great. My thesis is due very soon!

And he’s somewhat immature about it.

Yet another reason to become fan of the pickle.

Edit – it is claimed that this is a hoax. Consider yourselves warned.

Last week I read about Die Antwoord on the Birthday Party Berlin blog. The first time I watched their video, I was immediately convinced I had witnessed something I needed to share, to spread. Apparently I wasn’t the only one… One week later and the blogosphere is blowing up with posts about Die Antwoord.

In one day, they have doubled their Facebook fans from 5.000 to 10.000 and it seems like they’re still picking up steam, with blogs like Boing Boing, Dlisted and Mad Decent writing about them. Why is that? It is very simple. Die Antwoord is unique. They offer something fresh, in a remarkable way… In the digital age, where we can share all the music we want, being remarkable is THE most important characteristic for a band, group, musician, producer, etc. You have to be worth talking about.

So what did they do? Not much. They created a unique concept (or maybe this is just an extension of their personalities), uploaded their songs to YouTube, do a lot of performing and try to get people to spread the word. That’s probably why they give away music at live shows: “First 100 zeflings thru the door get a free hand-drawn full-length $O$ album (16 tracks) burned by die fokken rap-rave meesters NINJA en YO-LANDI.”

That’s it! Do something remarkable, connect with the fans and give them a reason to buy. Their album is due soon on Magnetron Music and I expect it to sell quite well for a debut, but of course it will be downloaded for free much more often… The “reason to buy” for now is going to be their live performances until they’ve built a considerable fanbase and they can start applying freemium on a bigger scale.

So who else are doing this? In The Netherlands we have an act which is quite similar, which also generated a lot of buzz when they first came to the scene; De Jeugd van Tegenwoordig. They’re actually label mates of Die Antwoord, just like a bunch of other great acts.

Another act that the music industry can learn from in my eyes, is MENEO, although MENEO is a bit less reachable for fans. Same goes for belladonnakillz.

Anyway, to conclude this post… I suggest you head over to the website of Die Antwoord and listen to their album. You can stream it in its entirety on there.

ONE TO WATCH!

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.

Yesterday I had an interview with Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist, and probably the foremost thinker on the topic of my thesis; The Future of Music Distribution.

He had some interesting things to say, like his principle of Music Like Water, which states that in the next few years, users will be paying a tax in some way to collectively license musical content. I had a talk with him for about 25 minutes which I posted on my thesis blog.

If you want to have a listen to it also, you can download it as an MP3 or use the stream below.

A few weeks ago the Bulgarian psychedelic trance community, OUIM.org, celebrated its 5th birthday. They invited a bunch of great progressive psytrance DJs like Vibrasphere, Sandal Wood, Kalumet, Kliment and there were also some harder sounds from Bulgaria and Macedonia (see it here). Well, I went there and made a video… so without further ado, I present to you………. ME!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHLH31PKNvY

Like it? Are you in Bulgaria also? Then come out to the Astral Projection party on the 4th of April!

BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

I posted about this before, but they wanted me to make a shorter version, so I did. It’s a lot better I think. Have a look and get to see a more vivid version of me (compared to the ‘writer’).

Shot at Club Dirty, 13-Dec-2008 for SPIN Earth.

Music by Fukkk Offf (Rave Is King): myspace.com/fukkkofff

Here’s the old Fukkk Offf in Istanbul video. What do you think, is this one better?

Do you live in Istanbul and are you interested in getting into music shows for free, in exchange for making similar 2-4 minute videos? Email me at and I’ll get you in touch with the right people.

BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.

Long time no blog. Woops You should know that I’m always active on Twitter though, so be sure to follow me there.

In the past I used to blog about all of my newest music mixes on here, but recently I had so many posts to share, that I decided to just leave the mixes on The MiX-Files. Today, however, I decided to give you an overview of all the recent DJ sets I did.

The last time I posted a mix was December 5th, I believe, when I posted an experimental mix where I set speech to music to create an experience that’s different every time you play the mix. Check it out. Since then I’ve posted a lot of stuff.

How about…..

AdeptDepth – a heavy drum ‘n bass set. BumpBump – a dirty yet fresh electro house set. My DJ sets from New Years Eve in Istanbul! Or some stuff I intended to play on NYE, but didn’t get around to: NYExtra. Then there’s boombooty, a booty-shaking breakbeat and house mix. Then came the night that I decided drum ‘n bass is dead, which led to me making MindWarp, in which I attempt to confuse your conscious mind with all kinds of eclectic beats & breakcore. And most recently I produced a steaming hot house mix to keep you warm this winter (ScoopMeUp) as well as NuclearMeltdown, in which I explore the darker & harder sounds of music.

Or you can just click whichever picture appeals most to you and see what kind of mix it redirects to.

I’m also actively blogging about The Future of Music Distribution for my thesis and I’d love to receive some comments on that blog.

I’ve also set up my own radio station for my spacescape project on blip.fm. Check it out!

Finally, some of my mixes are available as streams on a new (and awesome!) service named Soundcloud. Click here to check me out on Soundcloud.

And that’s that! Be sure to check out a few of the links and let me know what you think! You’re feedback is so valuable to me; you cannot imagine.

Right now I’m quite busy with writing my thesis as well as working on promoting the content of a record label online, but I’m also getting very settled here, out a lot, with a lot of stories to tell, so will be blogging more soon… and posting some pictures again, finally.

BasBasBas.com is about my life abroad. I regularly write about my adventures in Istanbul, Bulgaria and travels in the region, but like to ponder about the future also. If you’d like to stay up to date, you can subscribe to my RSS feed or get email updates in your inbox. You can also follow me on Twitter.