I get this question pretty much every time I go and speak somewhere. It’s generally about MySpace, but it also relates to anything like the automated friend adders, chat bots, scripts and automatic human being replacements in social networks.

Essentially this is about making decisions about the kind of conversations you want to be involved in.

I’m sure you can already guess that my answer to the title question is a resounding “No” - but this is not about making you do all the hard work so that you have to reap the benefit. Believe me - this is not my serious work ethic talking here.

I’m a deeply lazy individual.

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This one’s easy. I’ve been saying this for a while now, and it never fails to get me into an animated discussion. I’ve listened to all the arguments, read all the reports, heard convincing arguments about copyright extension and for complete overhaul of the copyright system.

And I’ve come to the following conclusion: The ideal term of both recording rights and composer’s rights is five years.

That’s right: Five. Not 95. Not 75. Not 50 or 25. Five. That number again: 5.

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Blogging: such hard work

Blog inertia is a real problem for a lot of people. You start writing and updating on a regular basis, but even though you understand the importance and benefits of the practice for your music business, sooner or later you just kind of run out of stuff to talk about.

But it can actually be a breeze, rather than a dreaded chore - if you just take a few minutes to develop a bit of a strategy for those down times when the inspiration seems to be in short supply, it can be something you can do easily, quickly, and at times when you just don’t feel like it.

There’s a simple solution, and it’s one that I’ve recently implemented myself.

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I received a press release from a fairly big record company yesterday afternoon. You’ve heard of them. The release went like this:
_______________________________

Hi blogging community,

Here at [XXXXX] (name of record label withheld), we’re on a cyber-crusade, and we want you to be part of it. We know that blogging has become a massive part of the music community and an important way of spreading word of our artists, and we want to make sure you’re kept in the loop about what’s going on at our fine label.

To make sure we don’t bother you with stuff you’re not interested in, it’d be great if you could answer a few quick questions and give us a bit of feedback on how you think we should do it. Essentially, we want to know what sort of things interest you, what you would like to be sent, how you want it sending, etc etc. This should all help in that you’ll get the best from us.

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