We’ve talked about this in the podcast, but I thought it might be good to mention it again anyway: I’m writing a book called Music in the Digital Age, which you can download and read as I write it.
Apart from the subject material, which will be of interest to readers of this blog, it’s worth bringing it up here because the section I’m writing at the moment is the long overdue update to my ‘20 Things You Must Know About Music Online‘ e-book, which was released here nearly 5 years ago.
There’s a lot more to the e-book – and plenty of content to be added as the year progresses – but you can get your copy now as a PDF or in Kindle and iBooks format for whatever you want to pay for it, and you’ll get the updates automatically. Hope you enjoy it.
They interviewed me for the series, and there’s a lot of stuff in here that is pertains to my Music As Culture interests and the Deleting Music book as much as it does to the general tone of what I research and discuss as part of the Interactive Cultures team at BCU, and what I usually write about on New Music Strategies.
The series is definitely worth watching, and features some good insight from some interesting people from different parts of the British digital music world – and it’s presented for your entertainment below.
This is a follow-up post after yesterday’s piece about who you should send promos to. While we’re thinking along those lines, I thought I’d also get you thinking about your other possible points of influence.
It’s a great idea to send free promos to your friends and acquaintances and get a bit of buzz happening that way – but there are other things you can do to start that conversation going in ways that can spread your music and your brand to new audences.
If you’re in a band, and you play the kind of music that’s most likely to be enjoyed by university students, then I’m clearly not your target audience. I’m a 41 year-old guy with a wife and a teenage son. But, if you think about it long enough, you’ll realise that I do happen to come into contact with several hundred of your target audience members on a fairly regular basis…
Just a quick post to let you know that with thanks to my friend Ismael Valladolid Torres, The 20 Things e-book has now been translated into Spanish.
If you know anyone for whom that would be helpful, feel free to pass it around. Like the English and Chinese versions, the e-book is totally free. Enjoy.
It was translated months ago. I was the bottleneck. I was quite nervous about formatting and laying it out, and so I put it off for ages. For which I apologise.
It’s a bit of an epic. 120 pages. The English version comes in at 96 pages. I had professional layout assistance with the original. I’ve had a go at the new version myself in true DIY style. My guess is that I’ve introduced some errors along the way, not reading Chinese and all…
Sometimes speculative public funding works. Friends of mine went to South By Southwest Interactive. They’re smart people, they’re from Birmingham, and the idea was that they would bring back new perspectives and new technologies that would help the creative and economic wellbeing of the city as a whole. As far as I’m concerned, this was a resounding success.
Yesterday, they met up to chat about what they’d learned from it – and they put it online, live, as they chatted. I saw it after the fact, as you can here. Sadly, three of the six participants spend most of the time off-camera – but even so, I actually found this inspiring.
And here’s the important bit: I’m actually going to do try and do something interesting because this happened.
Its aim is to provide useful resources, advice and strategies for innovation and success in the independent music sector in a rapidly changing technological environment.
NMS examines emerging technologies (and buzzwords) such as AI, blockchain, metaverse and 'Web 3.0', but focuses primarily on sustainability, music as a tool for social change, participation, equality and inclusion, and the ways in which music technologies can build better worlds.
We’ve talked about this in the podcast, but I thought it might be good to mention it again anyway: I’m writing a book called Music in the Digital Age, which you can download and read as I write it.
