- Holyshit holyshit holyshit… El-P posted the first finished copy of “Cancer For Cure” tonight:
- A new Tumblr by some guy depicts literary characters via a computer based Police composite sketch machine. Except instead of using witness testimony, he’s using descriptions lifted straight from classic novels. My favorite so far is the celestial and creepy “The Judge” from Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian:
Yep, creepy as hell.
- Warren Ellis recently thought aloud via social networking on the idea of Podcasting/making DJ mixes and including artists’ work without asking them. I don’t think it’s a big deal, and I’m a musician. Obviously if you’re making money off it, then that is a whole ‘nother can of worms. But if one makes mixes, posts them to a blog or website with no advertising what’s so ever, I really don’t see the harm. And yes, I am even of the opinion that this applies to podcasts which are downloadable (again, as long as the podcaster isn’t making money off it). It’s called marketing. In the 21st century — now well into decade 2 — marketing and publicity have morphed so much, I’m not sure if a marketing executive from 1995 would recognize them. To apply the Old Models to the New World is foolish and naive. Artists of all kinds, but especially musicians, need to get examples of what they do out to the buying public through as many alleyways possible. Hell, even corporate backed artists use Twitter and Facebook.
This reminds me of a situation I ran into about a year ago. 2010 was wrapping up and I was scraping together a batch of my favorite music of the year. I thought it might be cool to do songs as well, since I never really do. So I made a DJ mix — where I tied the songs together as seamlessly as I could — ripping through 10 of my favorite songs that came out in 2010. It was all one track, about half an hour long, available for download on my Soundcloud. It was up for a while (maybe 4 or 5 months?), then all of a sudden it disappeared; the same day I got an e-mail from Soundcloud. The e-mail talked about how one of the bands I included in the mix saw it and asked Soundcloud to remove it (I think threatening legal action?) immediately. Ironically enough, the band in question turned out to be probably the second least famous band of the bunch. I won’t say who they are, but they’re local and probably have to work day jobs on the side. The way I see it, I put some amount of money in their pocket: there’s no way at least one single person didn’t buy one of their CDs, attend one of their shows, or tell a friend about them at the very least as a result of listening to or downloading the mix. As I said, the Old Model is trivial at this point. Adapt or face natural selection.
-Sonny
