Jonathan Coulton, a Day in the Life

The New York Times is running a look behind the scenes with singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton, creator the somewhat popular "Thing a week" songs on his blog. Coulton describes a bit of how he got started and what daily life is like maintaining relations with his fans. "Along the way, he discovered a fact that many small-scale recording artists are coming to terms with these days: his fans do not want merely to buy his music. They want to be his friend. And that means they want to interact with him all day long online. They pore over his blog entries, commenting with sympathy and support every time he recounts the difficulty of writing a song. They send e-mail messages, dozens a day, ranging from simple mash notes of the "you rock!" variety to starkly emotional letters, including one by a man who described singing one of Coulton's love songs to his 6-month-old infant during her heart surgery. Coulton responds to every letter, though as the e-mail volume has grown to as many as 100 messages a day, his replies have grown more and more terse, to the point where he's now feeling guilty about being rude."

Comments

100 a day?

[magarity]

Coulton responds to every letter, though as the e-mail volume has grown to as many as 100 messages a day, his replies have grown more and more terse, to the point where he's now feeling guilty about being rude."
 
And now you've gone and slashdotted the poor fellow. Here come his 15 minutes and there goes all his prexisting fan base.

Re:Who?

[StringBlade]

His most popular song of late is called Code Monkey

Personally, I like re: Your Brains better and the WoW version of Code Monkey as well.

Stick it to the man

[Richard McBeef]

All on one page, no ads:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/magazine/13audie nce-t.html?ei=5090&en=1d5b4728dc04dc8d&ex=13367088 00&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print

Coulton Rocks :D

[Magneon]

I must say, I did email Mr. Coulton after purchasing a number of his songs one day. I just fealt like explaining my quirky selection and justifying my buy. The next day (I sent the email late at night) I received a nice and well thought out email in response.

We really should support artists like Jonathan. He's talented, his songs are interesting (bills, bills, bills or creepy doll for instance) and funny (such as code monkey), and best of all when you buy them, he gets every cent. (well, most of it. Paypal takes 2.5% :P but that's a far cry from the premiums that record labels extort from their artists). Also, you can listen to all of his songs before you buy them. The whole thing. Not to mention quite a few of his songs are free downloads.

Check out http://www.jonathancoulton.com/ today! :)

/advertisement ;)

Losing His Segment

[mfh]

John has to know that with popularity will come the pressures of fanmail. Do not answer all of it. Pick three a day, MAX, that are worthy of response, and archive/backup the rest (mainly for legal reasons).

You have to delegate your time when you're a public figure. Don't waste it by talking to people who idolize you. At the very best it will make them STILL LOVE YOU. At the very worst, it could break the illusion of your stardom and cause them to lose interest (and you lose your fan) -- or even cause them to get a wrong vibe from you that could lead to some serious personal safety ramifications.

Sometimes stars need to be up in the sky. At night.

Re:Losing His Segment

[Rob T Firefly]

Speaking from personal experience in both directions, I'd have to disagree.

I'm certainly no Jonathan Coulton in terms of unusual Internet celebrity, but I do semi-regularly receive what might be termed "fan mail" from people in certain circles, I've been approached at conventions by people who dig my work, I have been recognized on the street, and I once got to autograph a particular body part. I'm also famous enough that a stranger started a Wikipedia article on me, though not famous enough to escape said article being deleted for non-notability. Taking all that with the massive grain of salt you should take with any Internet celebrity's assertions of their own Internet celebrity status, read on..

Since I really am grateful to hear from people who like something or other I've done, it just wouldn't feel right to leave these things unanswered. You think I rock? Thanks for thinking so! You think I suck? Thanks for letting me know why! Any input from outside is valuable in some way, especially on the Internet where there's such a massive glut of material and a post about the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything can get lost among a set of photos of one's cats. Feedback is the main payback for most of what I do (thanks, Slashdot mods!) and what drives much of the Internet's independenty-produced free content.

You talk about "breaking the illusion" of one's stardom.. personally, I love breaking whatever illusions come about from my peculiar brand of noteriety. A good friend of mine named Mark Lyons once said "the higher a pedestal someone has you up on, the easier it is to knock you down from it." I don't crave pedestals at all, and I'd much rather promote an honest image of myself to the world rather than letting people paint some People Magazine bullshit with my face on it. I really don't have any interest in the amount of work and deception it would take me to live up to some glamourized image loosely based on me, and take every opportunity to throw whatever monkeywrenches I can into that sort of goings-on. Have illusions about me, good or bad? I would like to smash them!

I'm never going to control whether people like or dislike me or my work, but so long as people base their judgments of me on something that actually has to do with me, they've come by their opinion honestly. And what's more, I've made some of my best friends this way. And this isn't the MySpace/Livejournal/Web2.0 definition of "friendship" which basically means "I clicked on your name once" but the real-world definition about the privilege of having great people involved in one's life.

Looking at this from the other perspective, I've had the pleasure of corresponding with people I've been a fan of for whatever reason. I don't expect personal replies back because of the realities of the situation, but that makes the few that do stand out so much more from the rest, and simply strengthens my support of whatever made me write them in the first place. I've even made some good friends this way as well.

And his music is great, too...

[TobyRush]

Coulton's success isn't just a "right place at the right time" sort of thing, either... his music is actually very good. The lyrics are witty and original, the progressions are more than just I-IV-V-I, and his tracks are extremely well-produced. My favorites include "Bacteria" (which uses a KFC training tape as the source material), "That Spells DNA," "Ikea," "Shop Vac," "Creepy Doll," "Under the Pines," many of which are geeky and most of which are funny. But he very often churns out more serious stuff: "When You Go," "Drinking With You," a cover of Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat," and "I'm Your Moon," a song sung by Charon to Pluto reassuring the newly-christened dwarf planet that it's still the most important thing in Charon's life. (Okay, that one is geeky, too, but just you try listening to it without getting a little lump in your throat.)

The article doesn't mention (I guess it's a little off-topic) that Coulton also serves as Popular Science's "Contributing Troubadour" and is good friends with John Hodgman.

Re:And his music is great, too...

[sobachatina]

I'm glad you posted this. I thought there was something wrong with me for getting choked up about "I'm Your Moon". At least if there is something wrong with me I'm not the only one.

I would add to your list of favorites:
Skullcrusher Mountain- a mad scientist sings to his captive.
The Future Soon- A junior high kid imagines his future as a cyborg
I Crush Everything- A giant squid that hates himself because he destroys the things he loves
Re: Your Brains- Imagine your most annoying coworker coming back as a zombie.

And of course the link: Where you can listen to them all.

Re:Excellent article

[Critical Facilities]

I think there are a lot of musicians that have this mindset and that it is not necessarily unique

I'd second that. As a musician/composer myself, I have found that the advent of the internet (combined with my growing a little older and hopefully more mature) has changed my goals as an artist. In 1989, all I wanted to do was get my band signed to record deal so we could open for Guns N' Roses on their next world tour. Now? I'd just like to license enough songs to filmmakers/producers or sell tracks to people who dig cool/interesting/unique music and make a decent middle class living (as I do now in my day job).

I used to think I wanted to make millions of dollars with my music. Now, while I wouldn't turn down the millions, I'd feel like I hit the lottery if I could just provide a decent living for my family by exclusively selling/licensing music. It's no longer wildly optimistic for this to happen with the internet. It makes it possible for an unknown to become known. It also makes it possible for people to contact others in the industry that they would not otherwise have been able to get in touch with. I've made a number of good contacts in television and independent movie forums that would've been next to impossible 10-15 years ago, all because I took my old piece of crap Compaq and made it a server to host my own website.

Hey, it hasn't happened yet, I still need the "straight job" to help pay the bills, but it builds every day. Hopefully, I'll garner enough interest to be able to quit and concentrate on making music and being a father. With guys like John Coulton leading the way, there's hope for guys like me.

The Internet Fanclub

[Mahjub Sa'aden]

This is the reality we live in now, as artists. I do a little bit of singer/songwriter type stuff, and though I've never received a red cent for it (and never asked, as I'm pretty much just a hobbyist), but when I do get mail or whatever, I respond. It's good PR, it keeps people in the loop, and you know what? People like people, not just brands masquerading as people.

On a more tangential note, the internet is spelling the end of the traditional fanclub. Now you have widely available software that's capable of creating good, if not great music. And the people interested in your music probably have access to that. Music is an interactive thing now -- like it used to be before labels existed, I might add -- and people who enjoy music sometimes enjoy doing things with that music.

I multi-track my music, as it's pretty much the only way I can cost-effectively produce it. One thing I found is that if I say, "Here are the tracks, the vocals, the instruments, the effect, whatever," and add that I like people remixing or redoing the song, people actually do it. One guy (I assume a guy, but who knows) actually took a soft guitar and voice song I did and made it into a dance track. A pretty good one at that.

I like the fact that he did that. It validates my art. He likes the fact that he could do that. It validates his interest in me. And it's the sort of feedback loop that only becomes more exponential as time goes one, the sort of thing labels are unable or unwilling to do. And also the sort of massive opportunity they miss because of it.