Don’t know if you’ve noticed… but New Music Strategies posts have been pretty thin on the ground of late. In a way, that’s been a really great thing, because the comments have come in and taken over.
It seems I now write a 500 word post, and 50,000 words of really smart, critical thinking over a wide range of opinion kicks in from all around the internet.
Can’t ask for better than that.
Annual reflection
Every year around this time (a bit earlier usually, actually) I sort of second-guess myself, change tack and end up doing something different to whatever I did the year before. It’s taken me all the way through to the end of January to figure out what that is this time around.
But in part, my apparent waywardness on the blogging front has been part of a concerted attempt to get 2009 all in order before I really commit to it. I’ve had quite a few projects hanging around that I wanted to close off, a couple that I needed to walk away from – and one or two that I had to consider very closely.
It all involved a good deal of soul-searching, reflection and mapping things out on bits of paper. In fact, I had to give myself the kind of intensive consultancy I often give other people.
You’ll be pleased (I hope) to hear that New Music Strategies is continuing and has survived the rather brutal culling process that saw the demise of several of my most beloved but less rewarding ventures. But I’m not promising any resurgence of effort or amped-up regularity of posting. In fact, I’m even reneging on a couple of things.
I’m not going to write that book
I don’t know if you remember, but I was going to write a book. Those ‘Questions I Keep Getting Asked About Music Online’? There were going to be 100 of them.
I was going to say what I thought, and then once everything was all written, I was going to bundle it all up and turn it into another ebook for your downloading pleasure.
But you know what happened? You guys came along and made it better. Even when you disagreed vehemently with my central point, having that range of opinion available here massively contributed to the value of every single post.
Remember when I talked about copyright being 5 years long? 140-odd comments. Most of them longer than the post. That’s an amazing ROI for a blogger. Most of them disagreed with me, but I was making a provocative point, and the debate made the internet just that little bit smarter.
So… I think we should all write a book together.
We can bring up the different opinions and viewpoints and try and manage that in a dispassionate way as best as we can, but we can reflect the range of viewpoints within each topic as we go.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to draw your attention to the all-new, completely fresh out of the box…
Click the link, and then go ahead and start tapping away at it. I’ll be adding stuff in there too – bits and pieces of knowledge from blog posts gone by, new snippets of information and opinion – and you can add to, change and develop anything that’s in there.
I’ve set it up so that I’ll be able to bring bits of the wiki into the blog as well – so any really interesting and apropos bits of information and insight will appear as guest posts here – though they’ll be guest posts that may change over time as new authors edit and rearrange the text.
But for now, it’s so very brand new, I’ve hardly had a chance to take the plastic off.
Look forward to seeing what we come up with. Oh, and (finally) Happy New Year.
Download Andrew Dubber's new book Music in the Digital Age - or, if you already have and you've been enjoying it or finding it useful, please consider paying for it here.
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19 Comments
Love it Andrew! Great Idea! i will immediately start brainstorming what possible gems of insight i could bring to such a venture!
this is gonna be great!
//Fred
This is an ingenious idea; I just signed up. I hope it goes well.
Interesting idea. I’d need to know the copyright status before I contributed: Creative Commons (which license)? GFDL? Public domain?
All contents copyright Andrew Dubber?
Great idea! But I agree with D — copyright license is a key component.
Personally, I vote for CC BY-SA. That’s the license that Wikipedia is likely transitioning toward.
Wow, this is a cool idea! I would love to contribute sometime in the future.
~Marilyn Roxie
Hi Andrew,
I found this link on twitter last night and your blog and idea are a godsend. I am working with marketing my web site and now I have more strategies to explore and to share with others.
I will be attentive and see what I can add or share from my experience.
Please enjoy your morning coffee, do not spill it on your lab top and visit my website at http://www.PatrickSmithMusic.com.
Patrick
Hi Andrew, i hope this is not out of context and am not sure if you care. But since this is a wiki e-book, please consider this as my first contribution :D.
You can change the site logo in /wiki/skins/monobook with NMS’s logo. The standard size is 130x135px .png file.
To make ‘pretty permalinks’, you can check out this wiki. I think in NMS’ case, this trick could do the work (sorry if i’m wrong).
Hope it’s useful & good luck with the book.
Cheers.
Certainly not out of context – and greatly appreciated. I’m spending the afternoon getting my head around the context, layout and structure of the wiki, so that there’s a suitable framework for content to be added, changed and worked around.
I’m also giving a lot of thought to the issue of rights. On the one hand, it amuses me that this is such a point of contention before there even exists anything to own, but I understand the importance of agreeing this right from the outset. I’m reluctant to start the conversation myself, because I think that it’s important that the people for whom it really matters get to state their case… but I do want to give you an idea of where I stand on the matter.
I’m inclined towards an open-source / free access solution, and I think that anyone should be able to add knowledge to the pool without the nagging doubt that someone else is going to financially profit from their work (other than the people who take and apply their good advice, of course).
But I’m also keen that no barriers are put in place for this to become a traditional dead tree format book, and I’m aware that there is reluctance among publishers to get involved with anything where authorship is unclear.
So there’s certainly a conversation to be had.
Let me just say upfront that I’m not asking you to write “my” book for me. There are plenty of examples of collaboratively written books, published under an author’s name and with advice and amendments from an unnamed mass. They’re usually not that great, and it’s not what I want to do here.
The important thing for me is that this becomes a really useful resource of pooled knowledge and (most importantly) good, strategic advice.
I personally think that if this was ever published in print, it would be ridiculous for me to claim all of the royalties on such a venture, just as absurd to try and divide money up between contributors, and entirely counter-productive to let wranglings over something like that prevent anything good from happening with the work.
Likewise, I don’t want to completely public domain it, so that a canny publisher can just copy and paste the whole thing, print it and keep all the profits. Perhaps the answer is for us to agree on collective ownership in principle, an open / CC / non-commercial licence for general use – and perhaps nominate a charity to receive all of the money if any commercial use of the work results.
There’s a place to discuss this, and it’s on the wiki itself. Head to the main page, and click on the WHO OWNS THIS? link. We’re aiming for a clear statement of how it all works. Have a go, and let it be amended and altered until we’re all pretty happy with it.
Now – off to get my head around the rest of the site and how it’s going to work… and to seek a bit of help with Robin’s suggestions from someone who can make it all go for me.
“…without the nagging doubt that someone else is going to financially profit from their work.”
That seems like a pretty negative/pessimistic way to view things. That you have the opportunity to benefit financially from the work seems all the more reason to improve it.
I used to have the same hangups about allowing commercial use, but the more you think about it the less sense it makes. The Share-Alike provision does a lot more to protect a work from exploitation, which the non-commercial provision actually blocks a lot of uses people would want to allow (e.g. usage on blogs or podcasts with ads).
Anyone can package up Wikipedia and sell it, but that adds value, it doesn’t reduce its value.
So I guess the real question is – can we find a solution that we can all agree on?
Personally, I’m agnostic about this, and I do find the arguments at that link to be fairly compelling – but the reason I’ve been inclined towards the non-commercial licence is to initiate a conversation with, for instance, Coca-Cola if they decide to cut and paste their way into a ‘Coke Unsigned Band Guide’. I’m not going to automatically discount such a thing – but I suspect it’s something many of us would want to have a conversation about at the time.
What sort of opt-out levels would we get if it was made completely public domain? Would you still contribute?
Would a CC licence with a simple ‘Share-Alike’ provision be the best answer?
I really want to get this right – so that it provides the most value to the most people – and encourages collaboration and contribution. I’m not predisposed to handing corporations free content on a platter – but the flipside is that the knowledge gets out there.
Thoughts?
First – another great idea, Andrew !
Personally I would be happy to contribute, and I like the charitable contribution idea.
It would be nice if there was a link close to people’s contributions so that anyone interested could find out who they are. I realise this might be tricky in the instances where lots of editing occurs, though – is this dealt with already by the wiki format in some way ?
I don’t see that it needs to be published in a conventional way in order to be available on paper – maybe something like the CreateSpace service could be used ?
Looking forward to seeing where this goes !
Ian
Cool idea Dubber.
I made my first contribution – http://newmusicstrategies.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:Give_Away_Your_Music
Planning on making more in the near future. I’ll also give some thought to the license issue. Possibly a charitable thing – maybe an annual scholarship to artists who best demonstrate, through their web presence, creative and innovative ways to forward their brand and build communities of fans.
Andrew, this is a brilliant idea.
I suggest the proceeds go to the musical and career development of independent artists. I’m not sure how this would be done though I think this would be the most appropriate cause to support.
This is going to be great!
Marius
Might get boring now but… yes, this idea is absolutely brilliant. Looking forward to join anyone contributing. Now I have to sort out my niche…
One question regarding structure… obviously there will be some controversial issues. Do you plan to provide a pro-vs-con corner to them? Or will you stick with the discussion/commentary option to document different points of view?
Wolfgang
It’s interesting that you talk about soul searching, because I am doing the very same thing right now.
Cool idea! It will interesting to see how it grows.
2009 – All change!
I’d happily contribute to this tome.
Speak soon.
Andrew Potterton.
Andrew this is a brilliant idea!
Keep us updated and i’ll be sure to contribute to the wiki ebook!
One thought I have is… the new strategies in music marketing (blogging / podcasting / and direct to consumer relationships) Is all very relevant to many industries, not just music.. Without spreading things too thin, I think many other people in different industries would really benefit from knowing these strategies!
Marcus Taylor
Andrew/all,
I’m sure you’ve come across Technoberga, but it seems to follow an economic module you’ve been discussing for some time!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/7872316.stm
I have the electronic version of the course but is there any way to get a print copy. It has been a while since I went through the course and I never implemented any of the techniques. I am wanting to go through it again but it is so hard to sit at the computer and read it and not be able to make notes on it or anything. I don’t remember seeing an option for that and it is impossible to print from the computer. It goes all weird and prints the color with it using a lot of ink so I stopped after the first couple pages.