New Media Economist

With all the changes happening in the market today, we often get into the mindset that we need to completely change the game in order to compete. Much of this is rebellion against the traditional way of doing things. Much of this is a survival method for artists who feel they won’t get noticed unless they do something completely groundbreaking. And much of this is from people who just aren’t sure what the best way to market their work is. But we lose sight of the fact that in reality, often times you only have to change one little thing in order to change the game.

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Before I begin, I should acknowledge that “Whither the Music Video” is not a complete sentence, yet has come to gain legitimacy through years of misuse in cool titles for articles about the sorry state of [insert dying/in-transition art form].

Branching off of Dan’s recent entry re: Coldplay’s videos, it seems to me that this has been the sad standard for some time now. The more artists that leave record labels to galvanize their own fan bases however they see fit, the more that the task of the music video falls into the hands of a friend or assistant who records some blandly candid backstage footage, which more often than not winds up buried in the band’s MySpace page. And even when the suits do throw a little Thanks-For-Not-Doing-Heroin-This-Era money at their bands, the videos just look like the same low-budjy turds, only polished. Shake the camera a lot to cover up the lack of a set, overexpose to cover up the lack of a set, pack the thing with tight close-up shots of the singer’s face to cover up the…well, you get it.

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Holy cow, it has been forever since I updated. My apologies…I will try my best to change that.

Anyways, the guys from Coldplay are holding a fan-music music video contest. This makes me rather happy, because not only is it an example of one of the biggest bands in the world jumping into social media, but perhaps it’s also an acknowledgment that their music videos for “Violet Hill” and “Viva La Vida” were not very good. Or at least that’s what I thought. These days, it takes a lot to get me to enjoy a music video, and for whatever reason, Coldplay’s have definitely not come through for me. I love their music, but I just don’t feel their music videos have been good lately.

Regardless, I’m glad to see them giving their fans a shot.

I was perusing MySpace last week for new music, when I stumbled across a catchy electropop group called Ultraviolet Sound. After deciding I wanted to buy their album, I was surprised to discover it wasn’t on iTunes or Amazon, nor was it available on CD. Instead, the band had a widget on their MySpace page powered by a company called TrueAnthem that allowed me to download their entire album for free. But like all things free, there is a catch. Or several.

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Gary Vaynerchuk may have proudly declared that you are your own brand, but it is important to realize this is a double-edged sword. Use your personal image for your brand, and you can get a lot of attention and be recognized personally for your business accomplishments. But if you find yourself sacrificing quality for money, as many companies need to do at one time or another, your own image and reputation could be at stake.

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Amazon currently has over 3,000 songs available for download totally for free at their MP3 store. Most of the stuff is either old or independent, but there’s definitely a lot of good stuff to be had. The thing that interests me the most about this is how poor the advertising on this is. Finding that “free” page is kind of difficult, when Amazon should be plugging it left and right to try to attract customers. There are a few other bizarre things about these tracks, but for now just go grab yourself some free music.

The current leader of the retail-advertising-via-plasma-television market (do we have a better name for this yet?) appears to be RippleTV, an El Segundo-based company that has over 1500 locations nationwide, with the largest concentration of displays located here in Los Angeles.

While they certainly have more of the local market than Danoo, a competing company I have previously written about, their choice of locations is just such that I haven’t run into them as often. Until they invaded my favorite coffee shop.

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A good way to watch your company die is to bite the hand that feeds you. In order to protect my integrity as a lowly bit player in this industry, I will change the names of the offending parties to which I refer.

The Bleinstein Company, no stranger to disappointing revenue, now plumbs its reputation as a champion of independent cinema and the voices behind them in press releases for their DVD distributions banner, Third Rail Releasing (not an offending party). That reputation, however, was earned back when the Bleinsteins ran Bliramax. Now, with their chips relatively down and no Oscar prospects on the foreseeable horizon, they’re quick to regard their straight-to-DVD acquisitions as mere cash grabs, and Third Rail’s work as “a good way of differentiating between what we really believe in, and what has been for ancillary value.”

I am quick to respond.

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Last October, Radiohead gained a good amount of fame when they decided to release their album, In Rainbows, online for whatever price you felt it was worth — including $0.00 if that’s what you decided to put in. So effectively, you could download the entire new album in MP3 format, immediately, for free. So then, why in the world did millions of people opt to download it illegally via BitTorrent anyway?

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I love the iTunes Store. Well, most of the time.

The easiest way to buy music online can also be a massive headache if you’re one of the people out there who care about DRM. We already know that music purchased through iTunes is riddled with it, but what many people don’t know is that iTunes Plus — Apple’s pricier alternative to their DRM’d music — has a dirty little secret: Your personal information.

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