8Sided Blog

thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

He Provides the Soundtrack, We Make the Movie

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Be sure to check out this mini-documentary from Mixmag on the enigmatic Detroit producer Moodymann. I love his vision for his city, his ruminations on record shops, and how the staff at Archer Record Pressing warmly welcomes him. But mostly I love this, said to Gilles Peterson:

We went to the club to get down and dance. Everybody knew the DJ and we didn’t sit there and look at the DJ. He provided the music … we was more into the room. He provides the soundtrack, we make the movie. Well, nowadays everybody just stands there and looks at the DJ. It’s not like that’s Prince up there performing live. That’s the fucking DJ.

I got into DJ’ing via punk rock. That may seem like a non-obvious association, but hear me out. What I liked about underground punk rock was that the band wasn’t the star — the band was merely the facilitator, and everyone in the club was on an equal level. We were all part of the show, and together we made it memorable.

There was a similar feeling in underground dance music when I started DJ’ing. It was fine — even preferable — if the DJ was in the dark or behind a wall looking through a slit.1Many clubs in the early ’90s had ‘the slit.’ I admit that I hated this at first as it seemed like a (literal) wall between the DJ and the audience. But I’ve grown nostalgic for a time when the nature of the booth implied that the music was the true star of the show. We were there to come together, every person as necessary to this party as the next, rejoicing in the feeling of the music. That vibe, combined with the fiercely independent distribution and economy of underground dance music, was, to me, a new kind of punk rock.

I’m not shaking my fist at a cloud or feeling like things are worse or better than ‘back in my day.’ But it’s different. And I feel Moodymann’s frustration here. A couple of decades ago the role of DJs changed, elevated to stars as punk rock bands eventually were. And more and more it’s a DJ’s responsibility to be the movie. When that happens, who’s the soundtrack really for?

Related: On the Music Tectonics podcast The Verge’s Dani Deahl mentions, with trepidation, a new AI engine that selects, programs, and mixes music from a DJ’s predetermined selection. That way the DJ can focus on ‘performance’ rather than pesky details like queuing up and beat-matching songs. Canned performance is nothing new — the draw of many DJs and music artists is a cult-of-personality anyway — but the thought of such an app has me looking testily toward the sky.

Opening Up Content ID for Everyone

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Complete Music Update:

The eight Congress members who wrote to [Google CEO Sundar] Pachai last week acknowledged the benefits of Content ID, writing in their letter that “we appreciate Google’s efforts to combat the illegal distribution of content on YouTube”. However, they then said: “We are concerned that copyright holders with smaller catalogues of works cannot utilise” the copyright tools. […]

Expanding on this point, the Congress members’ letter goes on: “It has come to our attention that access to the Content ID system is only granted to companies that ‘own exclusive rights to a substantial body of original material that is frequently uploaded to the YouTube user community’. We are concerned that copyright holders with smaller catalogues of works cannot utilise Content ID, making it more difficult or impossible for them to effectively protect their copyright works from infringement and, ultimately, impacting their livelihoods”.

I’ve faced this issue as a music publisher. I’d rather directly submit my works to Content ID than through a third-party distributor, especially as many of our tracks are production music and not commercially released. I’ve reached out and received crickets.

YouTube’s requirement that an applicant’s catalog has to be already ‘frequently uploaded to the YouTube user community’ is a head-scratcher. Applicable music should be in the Content ID system in advance. If it takes multiple viral videos to get an acknowledgment from YouTube, then there’s money due to songwriters left on the table.

Prolific music producer Kevin MacLeod brings up another problem in his interview on 2 Girls 1 Podcast. MacLeod lets anyone use his music for free in videos as part of a Creative Commons license. As an independent music creator, he didn’t have direct access to Content ID. And using a third party for Content ID made no sense. Most of his music is not commercially available and, as anyone could use his music — no questions asked — there’s no money to be made on the distribution side.

The dilemma for MacLeod appeared when other people started claiming his music using Content ID through third-party distributors. That’s right — nefarious folks were seeing this unregistered music racking up views on YouTube and took advantage by registering it as their own.

Eventually, after repeated appeals to YouTube, MacLeod was able to work something out and get direct access to Content ID. But only after the nightmare scenario of video creators using his music, trusting there would be no issues, and then having their videos monetized or pulled by an unknown party.

I planned to set up a Creative Commons catalog for non-commercial user-generated content through my publishing company. But MacLeod’s story gives me cold feet. There’s no way I’m allowing our music used on YouTube without an assurance the rights won’t be questioned. Perhaps Google will heed Congress’s concerns and give rights-holders a choice — to use a third party for Content ID or go direct. That’s not so different than how SoundExchange operates. So, file this story under ‘fingers crossed.’

Taking Your Fans by Surprise

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Craig Snyder has launched a blog and one of the first posts has terrific observations on forming a community around a creative project:

So you want to build a community? Be human. Talk with your fans. The beauty of a community is that they start small. So it doesn’t matter if you have 10 listeners or 500. But your goal should be to grow your community. How do you do that?

You talk with them. You get to know them. You ask them to invite their friends that will also like your music/podcast. You don’t need any membership sites to do this. Invite them to email you. Or chat with you after a performance.

Craig recommends that performers meet fans at the merch table. That’s how I met Mike Watt circa 1987. I wrote him a few letters over the previous year — which he responded to — and I let him know I’d be at the fIREHOSE show in Baton Rouge. I found Watt at the table hocking his band’s shirts and shyly introduced myself. He yelled my name and gave a warm bear hug. Then, the next surprise: he was hungry and asked if I’d like to have a snack with him at the restaurant next door. Just me and Watt, talking about life and music over french fries for thirty minutes before the show.

That experience solidified my Mike Watt fandom. And I’ve repeatedly run into him at his shows over the years and he was always generous. The last time I saw Watt, a couple of years ago, he didn’t remember me. Understandable as I was just ‘a kid at the gig’ and it had been over a decade since our previous encounter. But he still put me in a warm bear hug, just like the first time we met.

However, the point isn’t that you can only attract fans for life by inviting them to dinner or giving bear hugs. But these experiences, including others that Craig mentions in his article, do have an essential element in common: surprise.

An unexpected gesture goes a long way toward building a bond with an audience. For a touring band, this could be meeting fans at the merch table, or enjoying the opening band with the audience2I was watching the opening band at that fIREHOSE show, after the fries, and Watt wandered in and stood next to me. “Great band!” he yelled as he shook his fist in the air to the rhythm. It could be inviting people on the mailing list to the show with a personal email or postcard, or even pulling out an unexpected cover song that the group rarely plays. Think of actions that will create surprises, both one-on-one with individual fans and to an entire audience at the show. Not only do these experiences make fans feel special and members-of-the-club, but they also create stories told to future fans.

Thinking in terms of ‘the surprise’ allows non-touring acts to participate, too. If you don’t do shows, what are ways that you can surprise your listeners? Know that it’s tough to be surprising on social media — that’s by design — so think outside of Facebook and Instagram posts.

Your mailing list is a powerful instrument of surprise, whether you’re touring or not. Gather physical addresses in addition to email and send fans out-of-the-blue postcards or stickers or other trinkets. Make sure you personalize everything with a short note or autograph. Random personal email messages work, too, but make them fun and mysterious. Invite fans to private live hangouts with only an hour’s heads-up. Send them to secret websites to download unreleased music or videos — and (poof!) the site is gone the next day. Keep your fans on their toes and they’ll remain engaged.

How about a birthday text message, or a pre-show scavenger hunt, or an unannounced stream of a practice session? The surprise is fun, and it’s organic. Thankfully, the surprise doesn’t rely on social media or paying publicists. And the surprise can be simple and remain special. Mike Watt once surprised me with a bear hug, and I joined his community of fans. That’s as simple and special as it gets.

PS – Check out Watt’s new project with Graham Lewis of Wire … it’s called FITTED and it sounds great.