Monthly Archives: May 2008
The Whitburn Project: 25 megs of OCD
Andy Baio has two great posts analyzing the Whitburn Project that will have all music data junkies salivating.
One hit wonders and pop longevity
The Whitburn Project
What is the Whitburn Project? From Andy:
For the last ten years, obsessive record collectors in Usenet have been working on the Whitburn Project — a huge undertaking to preserve and share high-quality recordings of every popular song since the 1890s. To assist their efforts, they’ve created a spreadsheet of 37,000 songs and 112 columns of raw data, including each song’s duration, beats-per-minute, songwriters, label, and week-by-week chart position. It’s 25 megs of OCD, and it’s awesome.
Hypebot’s “Top 10 Issues Facing Music 2.0″
On Hypebot’s blog, there is an interesting post entitled “Top 10 Issues Facing Music 2.0″. Ethan Kaplan astutely observes that these are not so much ‘issues’, but rather a laundry list of virtually untapped possibilities.
Of particular interest to me is “issue number 11“, as is suggested in the comments section of the post: Patronage.
Music patronage is an idea that I’ve been thinking quite a lot about for a number of years, and perhaps its time is coming. There’s certainly a few startups taking a crowdfunding or micro-financing approach to creating music: Sell A Band, Artist Share, and the slightly mysterious, stealth project from Throwing Muses singer, CASH Music, to name a few. An informative round up on these, and other similar services can be found in this great post by Peter Spellman.
As a tangent, I can’t help but contrast historical music patronage (wealthy lords and land owners in a Feudal society hiring court musicians), with modern day licensing deals (Britteny Spears singing for Pepsi). Many individuals have suggested an analogy between the Corporation and the Feudal Estate. Perhaps then, massive, contemporary music licensing deals are simply the inflated version of a very old practice.
SF Music Tech Summit wrap up
The latest SF Music Tech Summit was a total success. Great people, interesting panels, fantastic hallway conversation and free (as in beer) wine. What more could one want?
The panel I moderated was great fun, and we looked at all sorts of technical issues one faces when developing a “music2.0″ site. Tom Conrad had all kinds of great stories about scaling Pandora. Shaun Haber from Warner Bros. did an admirable job filling in for Ethan Kaplan , earning him the dubious nick name “Virtual Ethan”. In the audience, personal hero Derek Sivers told the story of his journey from php to rails, and back again. Paul Lamere took some notes as well, for those interested. All in all, very enjoyable time spent.
There were many great comments floating around throughout the day, but a one that stuck out in my mind was Michael Petricone stating that:
“IP is like chocolate cake. A little can be good, but too much… look out.”
I’ve also been thinking about Tim Westergren from Pandora who suggests that every four piece rock band should get a 5th member whose primary role is to act as blogger, videographer, and online marketing ace, working all the social media sites. Truly good advice, in my opinion.
Corey Denis had an interesting panel on the new music economy, in which part of the panel was devoted to coming up with a new wikipedia entry for the term “new music economy”. Nothing like some panel participation to get things going.
I also had a few good conversations about Microsoft’s “Plays For Sure” fiasco with conference attendees, but the best description of the whole ugly mess is written by Mark Pilgram in a post entitled “the day the music died“. It’s a spectacular story of a truly epic fail. There’s many lessons in there - of what *not* to do.
Thanks Brian! Looking forward to next time.
SF Music Tech Summit tomorrow
Just a reminder to everyone in the bay area that the second SF Music Tech Summit, hosted by the talented Brian Zisk is taking place tomorrow, May 8th at the Kabuki Hotel.
I have the pleasure to moderate a “tech talk” panel at 1:00pm on building music related web apps with:
- Tom Conrad - Pandora
- Marc Urbaitel - In Ticketing
- Ethan Kaplan - Warner Bros.
- Jack Moffitt - Chesspark / Xiph
- Jeremy Riney - Playlist.com
Lessons learned from last SF Music Summit: Easy on the soju cocktails…
Should be a blast, and I hope to see you all there.
Grand Theft Auto IV grosses more then Star Wars!?
In it’s opening week, Grand Theft Auto has taken in more then $500 million dollars. That’s a lot of loot. To put it in perspective, let’s compare this weekend take to earnings from various films. The top 5 grossing films of all time (based on US sales) are:
- Titanic - $600,788,188 (1997)
- Star Wars - $460,998,007 (1977)
- Shrek 2 - $441,226,247 (2004)
- E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - $435,110,554 (1982)
- Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - $431,088,301 (1999)
So Grand Theft Auto just grossed more in it’s first week, then Star Wars has (domestically) since it’s release in 1977? Sure that’s some big numbers, but the game probably cost a fortune to make right? Grand Theft Auto is rumored to be the most expensive video game ever produced, with estimates nearing the $100 million mark. But films are not cheap to make either of course. Consider the 5 most costly films:
- Titanic (1997) - $200,000,000
- Waterworld (1995) - $175,000,000
- Armageddon (1998) - $140,000,000
- Lethal Weapon (1998) - $140,000,000
- Godzilla (1998) - $125,000,000
So while Grand Theft Auto still has a ways to go to catch up the highest world grossing film (The Titanic at $1,834,779,000), it also cost half as much to produce, and has only been out for one week.
The moral of the story? Start a video game company now.