is this a plant by the RIAA to make us think we need them?
Nope, it's an honest question.
1) I listen to the radio to LISTEN TO SOMETHING. If you're talking about something else I can listen to, and it costs money, I'm going to tune it right out. Would you put an ad for bottled water on a Coke can?
No, but it would be pretty dumb not to put an ad for coke on the side of a soft drink machine, don't you think? Why do you suppose Amazon.com puts "if you like this, you might like that" links on their website? Because putting an ad in a symbiotic marketing environment is generally a good idea.
I'm not saying that you, or a lot of people like you, don't have a right to listen to the radio without buying anything from the sponsors. But the reality is that radio ads work for a lot of things, and I thought that this idea might extend to my music. But the real question was, are people not buying my music because of the availability of free mp3's on my website?
2) People are up to their armpits in music. Your music won't "sell itself" (*especially* to the 107.9 audience). I haven't listened to your music but I'd imagine it sounds a lot like a whole bunch of other music I've heard.
Jumping to conclusions is dangerous exercise.
You gotta have a "story" and a "personality". You gotta PLAY LOTS OF GIGS.. at least for a few years. Create a buzz in the underground version of whatever music scene you're into.. be sure your name shows up in the little alternative newspapers and such. Put up stickers and shit. Figure out how to get all the hipsters to know your name and drop it when chatting with their hipster pals. It doesn't matter if you're singing gospel music or you play folk music or you use a laptop to make techno, there's a "scene" were you need to make a buzz.
This is very true, and something that I will make happen very shortly. But as I mentioned in another response, Britney Spears sells a whole lot more albums than concert tickets. How does that happen? Marketing, especially radio marketing. Now I haven't been played a whole lot on the radio yet, so that's part of the problem. But while you are correct that creating a buzz in a specific community is a great idea, it's not the only way to make money selling yourself. (Hell, Steely Dan did it for more than 20 years without ever touring once!)
Just remember this: no matter how much you love your music and how much you put into it, the audio waveform itself is just a commodity.
This is very true. But like all commodities, it can be bought and sold, even if it isn't for much. What the waveform lacks in individual value, I'll more than happily recoup in volume. And I'm really above all trying to figure out how to do is maximize the bang for my buck. That's why I was asking about the whole mp3 thing - am I diminishing my value, despite what I and many others here on/. think, by making my music freely available?
Unfortunately you've already left a bad taste in my mouth (I live in Charlotte) so I probably will associate "Matthew O'Reilly" with "guy on slashdot", rather than "guy with cool tunes" from now on. Oops!
I'm sorry to hear that, I really am. I had hoped that the tone of my post was taken as an honest question, not something offensive.
3) PRE-ORDER???? I'm sorry, pre-ordering a CD is like pre-ordering a head of lettuce from the supermarket. Forget about it. Have the damn thing ready to sell. AT YOUR GIGS!
I worked in retail for a couple of years, and garnered a few "top sales" awards for my performance. One of those awards was for pre-sales of a movie. Pre-selling works in some situations; I know it for a fact. Now, I made my mp3's available before the ad ever ran, so people could download and listen for free three weeks before the album was even available. Anyone that pre-ordered would only be waiting for the physical disc, not the ability to listen t
Well, it's not a paid placement, but I can't say that I'm disappointed that people are checking out my site.
Honestly, I did it because I wanted to find out what the people in the/. community thought about my ideas, and where I went "wrong". And I've gotten a lot of great feedback.
You're right, this has been a priceless set of links for me, but I think the real value is in the suggestions, not in whatever sales might or might not derive from it.
I mean no offense by any of this... hopefully you'll take it constructively.
Certainly.
First, I listened to the ad on the website... I'd assume it was produced by the station itself and frankly, it's horrible. It generates no excitement and it isn't catchy enough to stick out of the crowd of other ads. In short, few people even heard the ad. I did radio work for many years and I think you were screwed by the station production people. That ad could have been formatted in a dozen other ways and had more impact.
I was somewhat unpleasantly surprised that the ad I have is exactly what ran. Live and learn, I guess. I was hoping that the music itself would be catchy enough to warrant listening, but you might be very right about the music not fitting the station format/demographic. On the other hand, I've been told that The Link has played more Nora Jones than nearly any other station in the country, so it's tough to tell...
I am hoping that WNCW will pick up a track or two for their playlist - that should help a great deal.
You're very right, and that's exactly what my next step is. However, it seems to me that Britney Spears sells magnitudes more records than concert tickets, based on traditional marketing approaches. I figured, in my naïvité perhaps, that I could jumpstart things by taking the same approach.
Now there are a couple of possible differences here - 1) I don't have much radio play yet, 2) I don't have the budget that Sony et al. have, or 3) I don't know what the hell I'm doing in the marketing business. (I don't think it's #3, but it is a real possibility, I suppose.)
I suppose I wanted to best of both worlds - make money fast while doing what I love. But if I have to take one or the other, I'll make my money slowly. I love playing music, and despite the "lack of talent" posts here, I know I'm at least pretty good at it.:-p
You raise some very good points. In retrospect, I wish I could have waited to run the ads *after* the release date of the album. I just don't have the advertising budget to do the media blitz and anticipation that a big studio does.
Problem is, the ad dates were set in February, when the release date was originally set for April 15, and the ads would have run after it was available in several retail stores and Amazon.com. When the album was delayed for a month (unforseen design and printing issues), I think it hurt me significantly, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.
The reason I chose emprecords.com as a website address is so it would be easier to remember. My personal site is much harder to spell. *grin*
Last but not least: how does your website handle orders? Do you hid things behind layers of Flash and Javascript? Do you work only with Exploiter? Do you not accept credit cards?
This is the one area where I think we got things right, or nearly so. I used Fat Chuck's Music (which was featured here on/. a few weeks ago) for the ordering pages, and the website was tested with every browser (including Opera, my current favorite) we could think of. It's also designed with the visually impaired in mind, and I think the layout is particularly good. (Just my humble opinion, that last one.) No flash, no java/script, and credit cards are happily accepted.
That's exactly why the flat sales really threw me - from my perspective, there really aren't that many impediments to sales. (The previous lack of retail coverage notwithstanding.) Tell you what, why don't you check out the ordering process and tell me how it is for you?;-)
First off, sorry for the/.'ing on emprecords.com - 500+ megs of traffic in a matter of hours takes its toll.:-) I will soon have sample tracks available on amazon.com; sorry for the wait.
Now, to answer the questions: One radio commercial to 10,000 people is hardly likely to. I don't see how that's relevant though. The question is whether or not P2P hurts sales. It's not whether or not paid advertising helps sales.
Well, it was more like 44 radio commercials... Twelve of which were during peak afternoon driving times (@$250/apiece) on the #1-rated show during in this marker during that time period. Average listening audience is projected between 9,800 and 13,500 or so for those times.
She's an apologist.
As far as Janis Ian goes, perhaps she is an apologist, perhaps not. But I was approaching this from my own viewpoint - that I have downloaded many mp3's in my time, and never in my life did I buy more than when I was able to sample new music while Napster was alive. I spent more in a single month during that time period than I have in total since Napster shut down.
Copyright infringement is another issue entirely. I don't think anybody can go after people who trade my music for free - and I don't want them to. Perhaps it is naïve of me to try to increase my brand recognition and increase my income by selling CDs at the same time, but I'm not 100% convinced either way right now.
The question is whether or not P2P reduces sales, not whether or not it eliminates them. To use the bottled water analogy, would bottled water companies make more or less money if we couldn't get water from our faucets? It seems to me that the only answer that makes sense is that they would make more money.
Let's put this mp3 business in perspective. 1) Trading mp3s is a good way to increase brand recognition; if the songs are good, people will turn other people on to them. Pretty much any marketing book published in the past 50 years will tell you that brand recognition is an important part of sales. 2) No form of music listening is going to have a 1:1 relationship with sales. Radio ads, mp3's, live shows, MTV, etc. will all increase public awareness, and therefore, according to marketing theory, sales. However, no music anywhere is good enough that every person will want to buy it the first time they hear it. 3) I subscribe to the Richard P. Feynman school of disclosure: the more information people have, the better their decisions will be. The people who buy my CD after hearing the mp3's will be doing so because they want to support the artist and the music.
So, as you say, the real question, the piece I haven't been able to figure out yet, is how much (if any) the free mp3s are hurting my business. The only way I can say for sure that it is is by knowing that people who would have bought the CD "sight unseen" did not because a) they listened to it an didn't like it enough to purchase it, b) don't put it as a priority in their budget, or c) didn't like it. All three are very real possibilities. And that's why I came to you guys here at/. - it is one of the best ways to get real feedback. And I see some good possibilities here as well.
On an up note, even though I haven't seen a flood in the way of sales yet (though there have been some orders since I wrote this ask slashdot), the brand recognition I've received has been very good. I am currently scouting management firms in the area, and an agent at a very large management firm with an office here in Charlotte heard my ads on the radio and was very interested in meeting me. And it has been very good for local retail sales, where business (like Borders) have increased their initial orders from me based on my advertising. Mp3's or not, I think this is going somewhere, even if it's not the overnight sucess I would have liked.
Well, mine uses VI. Of course when I say "mine" I actually mean my right hand, but as it's my only regular sexual partner these days I think it should qualify as an honourary girlfriend. My left hand also helps out with VI sometimes, but I try to keep it quiet to avoid making my right hand jealous. Women, eh? =snip= I'd probably stop thinking of girlfriends as sexual partners if they'd stop getting so damned jealous when I fuck their best friends. =snip=
Yet another case where the right hand shouldn't know what the left hand is doing...
I figure the best thing I can do is to set up the system with a set of "eyes" that are not my own. I would really rather that my personal biometric information not be in a database somewhere.
Nope, that's not the idea. The idea is to bounce a message exactly the same way *as if the user did not exist*. Any mail server that receives a message for a recipient it does not recognize will send the originating account a message back saying the user doesn't exist.
My idea is simply to delay that message, pending the decision of the receiving user to flag the message as spam.
This way it looks like an automated server message, instead of an active move by the user. The spammer won't be able to tell the difference between true bounce messages and these, because essentially, there won't *be* a difference. (Obviously this approach works better the sooner the user bounces the email.)
...are being developed and/or deployed by ISPs to combat spam?
I always thought that a good way to combat this plague would be to allow a user to review a message, mark it as spam, then send a "user does not exist" message back to the originating account through the user's mail server. (Sort of like a "telezapper" for email.)
While this would not work to stop all spam, it would significantly cull the spammers' ability to maintain a quality list of active email addresses. Selling known active email addresses is a big part of unsolicited emailers' revenue, so this tactic could well hurt them in the wallet, where it counts.
True, I hadn't thought about that. How closely do the chipset manufacturers keep the specs? Do Intel and the others charge for access to chipset specs?
I agree that it's a wonderful idea. I think this is yet another call for open hardware - especially an open-source BIOS! Heck, the specs are all out there - there isn't anything about BIOS programming that is proprietary or costly, so it just plain makes sense that a group should make an open bios.
Will the recording process suffer due to the hurry?
Yes, it will. Time is the *only* thing that helps an engineer/producer make a recording better. I've listened to some of my recorded works for weeks before catching some things that needed to be fixed. Of course, if you're comparing it to bootleg recordings, the sound quality will probably be pretty good overall.
How will the RIAA react to this, seeing as this is legitimizing one of the oldest forms of music pirating?
I'm guessing that the RIAA will see that as a "legitimate business" b/c it's run by such a big corporation. Of course, with Hillary stepping down, one never knows...
Also, what kind of equipment will have to be used to produce these so fast?
You can be 99.9% certain that a digital audio recording will be taken from the live sound board to produce a master copy. This will most likely be burned onto CD or perhaps another digital medium (perhaps a USB ROM chip or something?) in a high-production environment somewhere in the back of the stage... Remember, ClearChannel owns a *large* portion of the large capacity music venues in the US right now, so it will have the room, and oddly enough the clout to require that a band allow them to record/sell the show in order to play at the venue! (Chilling thought, eh?) Look for an increase in the number of venues that prohibit bootlegging, BTW, even for bands that would otherwise allow it. (Phish, Dave Matthews, etc.)
Yet another source of NTR (Non-Traditional Revenue) for ClearChannel... Gotta love a monopoly!
That's funny, they cite google as a "multinational company" with lots of money... But wait, didn't google just start putting small unobtrusive ads on the service relatively recently? How, then, did they get to be this big corporation?
With gaming you have an object that's computer generated, whose APPEARANCE you're trying to recreate, with lesser regard to the properties within that object. For instance, most gaming models consisting of polygons have hollow insides...
While what you're saying has been true traditionally, it seems to me that more and more game creators are (re-)discovering that it's the physics and structure of real life that give rise to the best appearences.
IOW, the more appearances need to be real, the more real the models need to be. It turns out that more often it's actually simpler to model reality than to recreate its appearance in some other fashion. That's why research institutions and governments spend so much money on exabit computers to model reality better.
[ramble]Hmmm... I wonder if someone has already done a proof that the mathematical calculation of a reality is more expensive than the reality itself... That it's more efficient to have actual reality than to try to model it on a computer. [/ramble]
Ok, I guess I had my facts wrong. I think it's more that the data I had was old, though... Those numbers were pretty much on last time I checked (which was awhile ago). But at the same time, the fact that I am not aware of any new information is partially why these companies are having trouble - they may not be reaching their intended audience very well.
I know it was sort of a cheap shot about the ads, but I also know that one of the two services puts ads on the most popular channels, which I think is unconscionable (sp?) if I'm paying a premium for the service. If it weren't for that one fact, I probably would have signed up when it first came out, price be damned.
I'm also lucky that I live in a heavily populated area with a lot of (10+) radio stations that are very clear. The selection isn't great, no thanks to ClearChannel and Jefferson Pilot, but it *is* free... and I can (and do) turn off the ads whenever I want, regardless if anyone in Hollywood thinks I'm "stealing" from them. Heh.
Thanks for the insight, though. Maybe I'll check it out next time I'm at the electronics store...
What does XM offer that traditional radio doesn't?
Let's see, no subscription - no wait, I have to pay a per-month fee. Traditional radio is free.
I don't have to listen to ads? No, wait, I am paying for my airtime to listen to people trying to sell me stuff. Same as t-radio.
Quality of music? I must be able to listen to indie artists and hard-to-find cutting edge stuff, right? Gee, that doesn't seem to be the case either.
Static free? Hmm, most of the time my FM is static free, too.
So I'm just not seeing the value of paying $300+ for a receiver and $120/yr for the service. The cost-to-benefit ratio is just to high.
If they got rid of *all* the ads, I would probably do it in a heartbeat. But I'm not paying to have someone push product on me. (Note that I don't have cable TV either...)
It used to be imperative to keep bloat down and executables small and fast when we had XTs and 360k floppies. But even then, some people went to extremes... Anybody remember "jet.com"? 76 bytes, and it was a complete game. I never did figure out how they did that.
I agree that OSS isn't really the issue, but I think the point in this particular question is a little different.
If the family members can get used to using these applications under Windows, then when the techie guy moves them to an OS OS, they will more accepting of the 'new' environment b/c most of their apps will work the same.
I can see the commercial now...
[Scene of a computer desk in a cozy room filles with knitting needles, knitting material, and pictures of children and presumably grandchildren. A middle-aged woman walks into the room and sits down at the computer.] {announcer whispering}"This morning we've switched Mom's regular high-priced gourmet desktop with the new "KDE Windows-Flavored Desktop". Let's see if she notices a difference. Look, she's using her favorite open-source email client and word processor..." {slightly louder} "Yes, she seems to be enjoying it, the same great flavor she's used to - but without all the [DRM] additives and [monopoly] preservatives." [Cut to announcer.] {in normal voice}"Yes, now you too can enjoy the rich, full featured ambiance of that expensive desktop you've been using, [Cut to woman happily typing away. ] but without paying gourmet prices. Try the new and improved Open Source Software today!" [Fade to black.]
(My apologies to anyone who isn't old enough to remember old coffee commercials.)
No, BeOS is the best around. (The company may not still be around, but the OS is...) Linux is thousands of times harder to use, configure, and work with than BeOS. (Although it certainly is getting better...)
Slashdot Mirror
Hey - Bon Jovi may not have the corner on insightful lyrics, but I'll take his paycheck over mine any day!
Have a look at "Serien" - I think you'll find it a a little deeper...
Matt
is this a plant by the RIAA to make us think we need them?
.. be sure your name shows up in the little alternative newspapers and such. Put up stickers and shit. Figure out how to get all the hipsters to know your name and drop it when chatting with their hipster pals. It doesn't matter if you're singing gospel music or you play folk music or you use a laptop to make techno, there's a "scene" were you need to make a buzz.
/. think, by making my music freely available?
Nope, it's an honest question.
1) I listen to the radio to LISTEN TO SOMETHING. If you're talking about something else I can listen to, and it costs money, I'm going to tune it right out. Would you put an ad for bottled water on a Coke can?
No, but it would be pretty dumb not to put an ad for coke on the side of a soft drink machine, don't you think? Why do you suppose Amazon.com puts "if you like this, you might like that" links on their website? Because putting an ad in a symbiotic marketing environment is generally a good idea.
I'm not saying that you, or a lot of people like you, don't have a right to listen to the radio without buying anything from the sponsors. But the reality is that radio ads work for a lot of things, and I thought that this idea might extend to my music. But the real question was, are people not buying my music because of the availability of free mp3's on my website?
2) People are up to their armpits in music. Your music won't "sell itself" (*especially* to the 107.9 audience). I haven't listened to your music but I'd imagine it sounds a lot like a whole bunch of other music I've heard.
Jumping to conclusions is dangerous exercise.
You gotta have a "story" and a "personality". You gotta PLAY LOTS OF GIGS.. at least for a few years. Create a buzz in the underground version of whatever music scene you're into
This is very true, and something that I will make happen very shortly. But as I mentioned in another response, Britney Spears sells a whole lot more albums than concert tickets. How does that happen? Marketing, especially radio marketing. Now I haven't been played a whole lot on the radio yet, so that's part of the problem. But while you are correct that creating a buzz in a specific community is a great idea, it's not the only way to make money selling yourself. (Hell, Steely Dan did it for more than 20 years without ever touring once!)
Just remember this: no matter how much you love your music and how much you put into it, the audio waveform itself is just a commodity.
This is very true. But like all commodities, it can be bought and sold, even if it isn't for much. What the waveform lacks in individual value, I'll more than happily recoup in volume. And I'm really above all trying to figure out how to do is maximize the bang for my buck. That's why I was asking about the whole mp3 thing - am I diminishing my value, despite what I and many others here on
Unfortunately you've already left a bad taste in my mouth (I live in Charlotte) so I probably will associate "Matthew O'Reilly" with "guy on slashdot", rather than "guy with cool tunes" from now on. Oops!
I'm sorry to hear that, I really am. I had hoped that the tone of my post was taken as an honest question, not something offensive.
3) PRE-ORDER???? I'm sorry, pre-ordering a CD is like pre-ordering a head of lettuce from the supermarket. Forget about it. Have the damn thing ready to sell. AT YOUR GIGS!
I worked in retail for a couple of years, and garnered a few "top sales" awards for my performance. One of those awards was for pre-sales of a movie. Pre-selling works in some situations; I know it for a fact. Now, I made my mp3's available before the ad ever ran, so people could download and listen for free three weeks before the album was even available. Anyone that pre-ordered would only be waiting for the physical disc, not the ability to listen t
Well, it's not a paid placement, but I can't say that I'm disappointed that people are checking out my site.
/. community thought about my ideas, and where I went "wrong". And I've gotten a lot of great feedback.
Honestly, I did it because I wanted to find out what the people in the
You're right, this has been a priceless set of links for me, but I think the real value is in the suggestions, not in whatever sales might or might not derive from it.
Matt
I mean no offense by any of this... hopefully you'll take it constructively.
Certainly.
First, I listened to the ad on the website... I'd assume it was produced by the station itself and frankly, it's horrible. It generates no excitement and it isn't catchy enough to stick out of the crowd of other ads. In short, few people even heard the ad. I did radio work for many years and I think you were screwed by the station production people. That ad could have been formatted in a dozen other ways and had more impact.
I was somewhat unpleasantly surprised that the ad I have is exactly what ran. Live and learn, I guess. I was hoping that the music itself would be catchy enough to warrant listening, but you might be very right about the music not fitting the station format/demographic. On the other hand, I've been told that The Link has played more Nora Jones than nearly any other station in the country, so it's tough to tell...
I am hoping that WNCW will pick up a track or two for their playlist - that should help a great deal.
Thanks for your comments!
Matt
You're very right, and that's exactly what my next step is. However, it seems to me that Britney Spears sells magnitudes more records than concert tickets, based on traditional marketing approaches. I figured, in my naïvité perhaps, that I could jumpstart things by taking the same approach.
:-p
Now there are a couple of possible differences here - 1) I don't have much radio play yet, 2) I don't have the budget that Sony et al. have, or 3) I don't know what the hell I'm doing in the marketing business. (I don't think it's #3, but it is a real possibility, I suppose.)
I suppose I wanted to best of both worlds - make money fast while doing what I love. But if I have to take one or the other, I'll make my money slowly. I love playing music, and despite the "lack of talent" posts here, I know I'm at least pretty good at it.
Matt
You raise some very good points. In retrospect, I wish I could have waited to run the ads *after* the release date of the album. I just don't have the advertising budget to do the media blitz and anticipation that a big studio does.
/. a few weeks ago) for the ordering pages, and the website was tested with every browser (including Opera, my current favorite) we could think of. It's also designed with the visually impaired in mind, and I think the layout is particularly good. (Just my humble opinion, that last one.) No flash, no java/script, and credit cards are happily accepted.
;-)
Problem is, the ad dates were set in February, when the release date was originally set for April 15, and the ads would have run after it was available in several retail stores and Amazon.com. When the album was delayed for a month (unforseen design and printing issues), I think it hurt me significantly, for exactly the reasons you mentioned.
The reason I chose emprecords.com as a website address is so it would be easier to remember. My personal site is much harder to spell. *grin*
Last but not least: how does your website handle orders? Do you hid things behind layers of Flash and Javascript? Do you work only with Exploiter? Do you not accept credit cards?
This is the one area where I think we got things right, or nearly so. I used Fat Chuck's Music (which was featured here on
That's exactly why the flat sales really threw me - from my perspective, there really aren't that many impediments to sales. (The previous lack of retail coverage notwithstanding.) Tell you what, why don't you check out the ordering process and tell me how it is for you?
I'm working on it - I've had to much else on my plate, I didn't think about it. I'm fixing that now.
.ogg format.
Go to the EMP Records website for a directory listing with the songs in
Pleasing customers - that's how I plan to make money. "There's your book, now buy it!*" *grin*
Matt
* "Bookshop", Monty Python's Flying Circus
First off, sorry for the /.'ing on emprecords.com - 500+ megs of traffic in a matter of hours takes its toll. :-) I will soon have sample tracks available on amazon.com; sorry for the wait.
/. - it is one of the best ways to get real feedback. And I see some good possibilities here as well.
Now, to answer the questions:
One radio commercial to 10,000 people is hardly likely to. I don't see how that's relevant though. The question is whether or not P2P hurts sales. It's not whether or not paid advertising helps sales.
Well, it was more like 44 radio commercials... Twelve of which were during peak afternoon driving times (@$250/apiece) on the #1-rated show during in this marker during that time period. Average listening audience is projected between 9,800 and 13,500 or so for those times.
She's an apologist.
As far as Janis Ian goes, perhaps she is an apologist, perhaps not. But I was approaching this from my own viewpoint - that I have downloaded many mp3's in my time, and never in my life did I buy more than when I was able to sample new music while Napster was alive. I spent more in a single month during that time period than I have in total since Napster shut down.
Copyright infringement is another issue entirely. I don't think anybody can go after people who trade my music for free - and I don't want them to. Perhaps it is naïve of me to try to increase my brand recognition and increase my income by selling CDs at the same time, but I'm not 100% convinced either way right now.
The question is whether or not P2P reduces sales, not whether or not it eliminates them. To use the bottled water analogy, would bottled water companies make more or less money if we couldn't get water from our faucets? It seems to me that the only answer that makes sense is that they would make more money.
Let's put this mp3 business in perspective. 1) Trading mp3s is a good way to increase brand recognition; if the songs are good, people will turn other people on to them. Pretty much any marketing book published in the past 50 years will tell you that brand recognition is an important part of sales. 2) No form of music listening is going to have a 1:1 relationship with sales. Radio ads, mp3's, live shows, MTV, etc. will all increase public awareness, and therefore, according to marketing theory, sales. However, no music anywhere is good enough that every person will want to buy it the first time they hear it. 3) I subscribe to the Richard P. Feynman school of disclosure: the more information people have, the better their decisions will be. The people who buy my CD after hearing the mp3's will be doing so because they want to support the artist and the music.
So, as you say, the real question, the piece I haven't been able to figure out yet, is how much (if any) the free mp3s are hurting my business. The only way I can say for sure that it is is by knowing that people who would have bought the CD "sight unseen" did not because a) they listened to it an didn't like it enough to purchase it, b) don't put it as a priority in their budget, or c) didn't like it. All three are very real possibilities. And that's why I came to you guys here at
On an up note, even though I haven't seen a flood in the way of sales yet (though there have been some orders since I wrote this ask slashdot), the brand recognition I've received has been very good. I am currently scouting management firms in the area, and an agent at a very large management firm with an office here in Charlotte heard my ads on the radio and was very interested in meeting me. And it has been very good for local retail sales, where business (like Borders) have increased their initial orders from me based on my advertising. Mp3's or not, I think this is going somewhere, even if it's not the overnight sucess I would have liked.
Well, mine uses VI. Of course when I say "mine" I actually mean my right hand, but as it's my only regular sexual partner these days I think it should qualify as an honourary girlfriend.
My left hand also helps out with VI sometimes, but I try to keep it quiet to avoid making my right hand jealous. Women, eh?
=snip=
I'd probably stop thinking of girlfriends as sexual partners if they'd stop getting so damned jealous when I fuck their best friends.
=snip=
Yet another case where the right hand shouldn't know what the left hand is doing...
Where do I get a set of fake eyes to use?
I figure the best thing I can do is to set up the system with a set of "eyes" that are not my own. I would really rather that my personal biometric information not be in a database somewhere.
This is scary stuff...
Nope, that's not the idea. The idea is to bounce a message exactly the same way *as if the user did not exist*. Any mail server that receives a message for a recipient it does not recognize will send the originating account a message back saying the user doesn't exist.
My idea is simply to delay that message, pending the decision of the receiving user to flag the message as spam.
This way it looks like an automated server message, instead of an active move by the user. The spammer won't be able to tell the difference between true bounce messages and these, because essentially, there won't *be* a difference. (Obviously this approach works better the sooner the user bounces the email.)
...are being developed and/or deployed by ISPs to combat spam?
I always thought that a good way to combat this plague would be to allow a user to review a message, mark it as spam, then send a "user does not exist" message back to the originating account through the user's mail server. (Sort of like a "telezapper" for email.)
While this would not work to stop all spam, it would significantly cull the spammers' ability to maintain a quality list of active email addresses. Selling known active email addresses is a big part of unsolicited emailers' revenue, so this tactic could well hurt them in the wallet, where it counts.
...what great things will the blizzard of 2003 spark into being?
I'd bet $10 that this time it has something to do with porn, though... Heh.
True, I hadn't thought about that. How closely do the chipset manufacturers keep the specs? Do Intel and the others charge for access to chipset specs?
I agree that it's a wonderful idea. I think this is yet another call for open hardware - especially an open-source BIOS! Heck, the specs are all out there - there isn't anything about BIOS programming that is proprietary or costly, so it just plain makes sense that a group should make an open bios.
Will the recording process suffer due to the hurry?
Yes, it will. Time is the *only* thing that helps an engineer/producer make a recording better. I've listened to some of my recorded works for weeks before catching some things that needed to be fixed. Of course, if you're comparing it to bootleg recordings, the sound quality will probably be pretty good overall.
How will the RIAA react to this, seeing as this is legitimizing one of the oldest forms of music pirating?
I'm guessing that the RIAA will see that as a "legitimate business" b/c it's run by such a big corporation. Of course, with Hillary stepping down, one never knows...
Also, what kind of equipment will have to be used to produce these so fast?
You can be 99.9% certain that a digital audio recording will be taken from the live sound board to produce a master copy. This will most likely be burned onto CD or perhaps another digital medium (perhaps a USB ROM chip or something?) in a high-production environment somewhere in the back of the stage... Remember, ClearChannel owns a *large* portion of the large capacity music venues in the US right now, so it will have the room, and oddly enough the clout to require that a band allow them to record/sell the show in order to play at the venue! (Chilling thought, eh?) Look for an increase in the number of venues that prohibit bootlegging, BTW, even for bands that would otherwise allow it. (Phish, Dave Matthews, etc.)
Yet another source of NTR (Non-Traditional Revenue) for ClearChannel... Gotta love a monopoly!
Don't forget the first chapter...
Here: http://212.100.234.54/content/55/28835.html
Excellent reading.
That's funny, they cite google as a "multinational company" with lots of money... But wait, didn't google just start putting small unobtrusive ads on the service relatively recently? How, then, did they get to be this big corporation?
Very funny, IMHO.
With gaming you have an object that's computer generated, whose APPEARANCE you're trying to recreate, with lesser regard to the properties within that object. For instance, most gaming models consisting of polygons have hollow insides...
While what you're saying has been true traditionally, it seems to me that more and more game creators are (re-)discovering that it's the physics and structure of real life that give rise to the best appearences.
IOW, the more appearances need to be real, the more real the models need to be. It turns out that more often it's actually simpler to model reality than to recreate its appearance in some other fashion. That's why research institutions and governments spend so much money on exabit computers to model reality better.
[ramble]Hmmm... I wonder if someone has already done a proof that the mathematical calculation of a reality is more expensive than the reality itself... That it's more efficient to have actual reality than to try to model it on a computer. [/ramble]
Mattcelt
Ok, I guess I had my facts wrong. I think it's more that the data I had was old, though... Those numbers were pretty much on last time I checked (which was awhile ago). But at the same time, the fact that I am not aware of any new information is partially why these companies are having trouble - they may not be reaching their intended audience very well.
I know it was sort of a cheap shot about the ads, but I also know that one of the two services puts ads on the most popular channels, which I think is unconscionable (sp?) if I'm paying a premium for the service. If it weren't for that one fact, I probably would have signed up when it first came out, price be damned.
I'm also lucky that I live in a heavily populated area with a lot of (10+) radio stations that are very clear. The selection isn't great, no thanks to ClearChannel and Jefferson Pilot, but it *is* free... and I can (and do) turn off the ads whenever I want, regardless if anyone in Hollywood thinks I'm "stealing" from them. Heh.
Thanks for the insight, though. Maybe I'll check it out next time I'm at the electronics store...
What does XM offer that traditional radio doesn't?
Let's see, no subscription - no wait, I have to pay a per-month fee. Traditional radio is free.
I don't have to listen to ads? No, wait, I am paying for my airtime to listen to people trying to sell me stuff. Same as t-radio.
Quality of music? I must be able to listen to indie artists and hard-to-find cutting edge stuff, right? Gee, that doesn't seem to be the case either.
Static free? Hmm, most of the time my FM is static free, too.
So I'm just not seeing the value of paying $300+ for a receiver and $120/yr for the service. The cost-to-benefit ratio is just to high.
If they got rid of *all* the ads, I would probably do it in a heartbeat. But I'm not paying to have someone push product on me. (Note that I don't have cable TV either...)
Matt
It used to be imperative to keep bloat down and executables small and fast when we had XTs and 360k floppies. But even then, some people went to extremes... Anybody remember "jet.com"? 76 bytes, and it was a complete game. I never did figure out how they did that.
I agree that OSS isn't really the issue, but I think the point in this particular question is a little different.
If the family members can get used to using these applications under Windows, then when the techie guy moves them to an OS OS, they will more accepting of the 'new' environment b/c most of their apps will work the same.
I can see the commercial now...
[Scene of a computer desk in a cozy room filles with knitting needles, knitting material, and pictures of children and presumably grandchildren. A middle-aged woman walks into the room and sits down at the computer.]
{announcer whispering}"This morning we've switched Mom's regular high-priced gourmet desktop with the new "KDE Windows-Flavored Desktop". Let's see if she notices a difference. Look, she's using her favorite open-source email client and word processor..." {slightly louder} "Yes, she seems to be enjoying it, the same great flavor she's used to - but without all the [DRM] additives and [monopoly] preservatives."
[Cut to announcer.]
{in normal voice}"Yes, now you too can enjoy the rich, full featured ambiance of that expensive desktop you've been using, [Cut to woman happily typing away. ] but without paying gourmet prices. Try the new and improved Open Source Software today!"
[Fade to black.]
(My apologies to anyone who isn't old enough to remember old coffee commercials.)
Heh. Any company that prints its entire ad copy in 16-point font is selling snake oil.
It amazes me that some people still think that a bigger font makes it more believeable.
No, BeOS is the best around. (The company may not still be around, but the OS is...) Linux is thousands of times harder to use, configure, and work with than BeOS. (Although it certainly is getting better...)