R.I.P. Vic Chesnutt. Make a Donation to the Family.

Vic died yesterday (Christmas Day) at the age of 45. From RollingStone.com:

Vic Chesnutt, the Georgia-based singer-songwriter known for his darkly comic songs, died yesterday in Athens, Georgia, after spending several days in a coma caused by an overdose of muscle relaxers.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Read Kristen Hersh's tribute and make a donation to the family here.

Listen to an audio interview by Terry Gross of NPR's "Fresh Air", recorded earlier this month. If you had any doubt about the state of health care in the U.S., listen to Vic's experience of being not only a quadriplegic, but a musician with limited access to health care coverage.

Michale Stipe remembers Vic.

Visit/Donate/Learn more about musician assistance programs:

• Sweet Relief Musicians Fund
• Musicares
• Wanduta
• more links

Testdrive: Free All Music Ad-Supported Downloads

I got beta preview invite for the new Free All Music web site which lets users download a free MP3 after watching a short video ad (think of the 15-30 second spots you watch while on Hulu). The site's homepage touts that I'm only one of 250 people testing the service before it goes full-beta next week (really? wow, don't I fee special!).

Here's a few screenshots of the entire process:
Step 1: Choose a song. I opt for "Daniel" by Bat for Lashes...



Step 2: Choose which sponsor's video spot to watch.


Step 3: The video spot plays.


Step 4: Following the video, you advance to a download page.


Step 5: Once you initiate the download process, you are presented with a sponsor-branded download page.


The downloaded MP3 is 320kbps/44.1khz and is powered by Neurotic Media, which powers many consumer-facing download stores.

Overall, a pretty painless process for a free song. While the selection is a bit thin, we'll see if they can expand on the catalog over the next few months. As for a financially viable model involving user data collection and branding impressions, I'm curious to see how the math and rev-splits work.

Touring Bands: Use Your Cell Phone to Accept Credit Cards for Merch

TechCrunch had a interesting piece on a new product/service called Square that lets anyone with a mobile phone accept credit card payments with a simple attachment. For bands on the road selling merch, this is the perfect solution for the non-cash carrying plastic crowd.

Read the post here and watch the video demo below:

Crafting Your Band's Online Presence and Strategy

I came across an amusing post on Andrew Dubber's blog "New Music Strategies" that details his and Ben Walker's renegade tactics to create an online presence for a band they had just seen live who had NO web presence whatsoever (so, first lesson: make sure you have something online before you play your first gig). In a few small steps (none of which are technically difficult and easily accomplished by the average web/Internet user), they had purchased a domain, set up Posterous as the site's main blogging/content manager, uploaded a few videos to YouTube, pulled in some Flickr pix and even created a t-shirt.

So that was easy --- and they hadn't even started to create and incorporate a Twitter account or create profiles on the usual suspects like MySpace, Facebook, ReverbNation. In the past, you may have felt this was simply over your head or too technically complicated for your skillset, but I urge you to take another look. Over the years (even the in past 1-2 years), the technical barrier for the average user to set up a domain/website with simple tools to manage it has dropped dramatically.

By now, most bands already know how to set up their profiles on social networks so I won't go into great detail, but simply setting up your profile is only the beginning. If you're not reaching out to fans and engaging them on a regular basis, you're not maximizing the tools and the access these sites provide to build your fanbase. Techdirt has a great summary of a study in Australia conducted with 99 indie artists describing the importance of engaging your fans on social networks (read the full PDF report here), with the following key points:

• The highest proportional returns to artists corresponded with the use of multiple inter-linked sites, including a dedicated website or blog as well the use of mailing lists and the provision of free content. Of the artists studied, few had developed this type of integrated or strategic web presence and many of the artists studied could be making more effective use of the tools available to them.
• When viewed in isolation, the use of popular web services such as Myspace, Facebook and YouTube to promote an artists music did not correspond to a dramatic increase in artist earnings. In fact, as a whole, users of Myspace or Triple J's popular Unearthed website actually received proportionally lower returns than the median. However higher levels of fan or audience engagement -- for example in the form of Blog coverage, YouTube views, Facebook fans or Myspace friends -- tended to correspond to proportionally higher artist earnings inclusive of services whose users tended receive lower returns overall.
• Finally, the level to which higher earnings corresponded to online activity appears relative to artists off-line profile. That is, artists who perform and tour regularly, receive radio airplay and off-line press and media coverage tend to receive significantly higher returns and appear more likely to benefit from online promotional activities.

In other words, this isn't some kind of Field of Dreams If-You-Build-It-They-Will-Come approach.

For some ideas ideas on how to engage your fans, check out:

• 7 Ways to Connect with Your Fans (GrindEFX)
• Best Practices In Online Promotion of New Music Offerings (another great summary on Techdirt)

And, if you're on MySpace, a few suggestions on setting up your page here.

Also, if you're tired of trying to keep track of, and updating, all your different band profiles' blog posts, tour dates and calendars, check out Artist Data.

The Artist as Start-Up: DIY Bootstrapping Remixed & Mashed-Up

The term "artist as start-up" has been bandied about recently spawned by the coverage of Polyphonic, a new label founded by Brian Message (Radiohead manager), Terry McBride (Nettwerk), and Adam Driscoll (MAMA Group) that intends to operate on a venture capitalist model. Brad Stone's piece in the NY Times summarizes the model in this way:

Under the Polyphonic model, bands that receive investments from the firm will operate like start-up companies, recording their own music and choosing outside contractors to handle their publicity, merchandise and touring.

Instead of receiving an advance and then possibly reaping royalties later if they have a hit, musicians will share in all the profits from their music and touring. In another departure from tradition in the music business, they will also maintain ownership of their own copyrights and master recordings — meaning they and their heirs can keep earning money from their music.

While all agree the model is innovative, others are more skeptical about its viability -- indeed, David Pakman, former eMusic CEO and now partner at VC firm Venrock, has an excellent post that crunches the numbers like any good venture capitalist would to measure the potential upside and downside of prospective investments.

However, the intensity of the focus on the Polyphonic model as it relates to artists as a start-up venture ignores the other model most start-up companies adopt, not so much out choice, but necessity: bootstrapping. Actually, when you think about, it seems that artists actually pioneered the concept and called it DIY long before tech companies ever yanked their first bootstrap.

Coming full circle, there are a few lessons that artists operating as a start-up of the boostrapping variety can learn from the techies:

• Your innovations and intellectual property are your lifeblood: artists are empowered more than ever to be shrewd and maintain control over their copyrights and licensing
• Experiment and challenge your revenue models: seek revenue models not based on the traditional recorded music industry
• Outmaneuver the big fish: technology has made it possible for the artist to perform many tasks that once required huge man-power (music distribution, marketing), expertise (recording music, building a web presence), or time (building fan relationships, manufacturing product)

There's probably more, but these three stand out most to me.

For more on Polyphonic:

• Guardian.co.uk | Radiohead manager launches new label
• Techdirt | Radiohead Manager, Nettwerk Launch New Label: Artists Get To Keep Their Copyright
• Hypebot | The Artist As A Startup & Label As A Venture Fund
• Hypebot | Guest Post: Why The Band As A Startup Model Doesn't Make Sense
• Digital Music News | Resnikoff's Parting Shot: Less Ownership, Less Long-Term Value...
• Billboard.biz | Analysis: How Much $ Is In The Middle?

Main-Streaming the Future of Music Consumption

Last week, the blogosphere was all abuzz over a recent study in the UK that indicated streaming music was supplanting downloading music (legal or otherwise) as the preferred method to consume music. The New York Times follows up its own article last week with another one yesterday which nicely encapsulates various opinions around the net.

The proliferation of on-demand streaming services (ad-sponsored for a "feels like free" experience, or subscription-based) has mainly put this option of music consumption in the forefront. As I mentioned before, the appeal of streaming over downloading is that streaming offers access to music faster and simpler than downloading, and eventually, even confronting this choice will fade into a non-issue as Internet access becomes ubiquitous with respect to location and device. When you have to compete with free (i.e. illegal downloading/P2P), you have you to look at value propositions other than price -- namely, access, breadth of content, and ease of use.

For further reading:

• hypebot: Survey Say Streaming Music Cutting Piracy
• billboard.biz: Survey: File-Sharing Down In U.K.
• Ars Technica: UK file sharing drops, even among teens
• The Guardian: Collapse in illegal sharing and boom in streaming brings music to executives' ears
• BBC NEWS: I needed music 'cos I had none
• Music Ally: Filesharing down by a third among UK teens
• TechDirt: Is Streaming Really Replacing Downloading?
• Mashable: Do we Really Need All Those Anti-Piracy Measures?
• Ars Technica: Streaming, not P2P, behind mobile broadband data usage surge
  

Knitting Factory Hollywood To Close

Digital Music News points to a story on the LA Times music blog Pop & Hiss about the impending closure of the Knitting Factory in Hollywood.