8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

Forget ‘Inbox Zero’: Your Empty Email Account Means Nothing

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The Next Web:

The real point of Inbox Zero was to move you away from “living in your inbox.” (Merlin) Mann said the zero was about “the amount of time an employee’s brain is in [his/her] inbox.” The key to his thinking was that you shouldn’t indulge your inbox as if it were a demanding toddler, allowing it to cry for your attention constantly.



Merlin’s video talk embedded in this article did really change the way I thought about my work (not just my email) when I first saw it many years ago. A recommended watch / listen if by chance you haven’t run across it previously.

Everyone’s Getting The Music Streaming Business Wrong

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Marketplace:

(A) new report from the Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship says these (streaming royalty) squabbles miss the point. In fact, there are a bunch of other players, complex accounting and backroom deals that stand between the royalties services pay out and the artists’ paychecks.



Here’s the rub: those royalties are passed down a line of rights groups, publishers or third-party distributors before they make it to the label and then the artist. These players are supposed to divvy up the royalties companies like Spotify are paying out, which is complicated; the composition and recording are usually two separate copyrights, or there might be several co-writers or publishers. All the agreements dictating those payments are secret, and researchers found that royalty statements were difficult to parse.


As the music landscape converts to streaming, the advantages of the self-released artist become even more apparent. May you live in interesting times, indeed.

Flying Nun: The Untold Story Of A Trailblazing Indie Label

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The Vinyl Factory:

Flying Nun, based in Christchurch on the south island, turned out to be New Zealand’s Rough Trade, Mute, Factory, 4AD, Creation and Postcard labels all rolled into one, without any label competition. Its range embraced exquisite psych-pop, cantankerous quasi-goth, warped folk, experimental synth warfare – and such consistent quality, and this from a population of less than four million.



In its own quite, stealthy fashion, Flying Nun’s influence – especially in the US – has spread outward, and not just on bands like Pavement, but on indie labels such as Sub-Pop. And like the south island’s famous Jurassic reptile, the Tuatara, Flying Nun lives on today, having survived the growing pains that afflict every independent label trying to retain its autonomy in a changing marketplace, and even losing its founder, Roger Shepherd, not once but twice.


There was a point in my life (early ’90s) when this label’s output had me dreaming of running off to New Zealand. I did end up visiting a couple times and the place didn’t disappoint. By coincidence, I ran into an ex-manager at Flying Nun my first time there in the very early ’00s … he was astonished at this American fan’s knowledge of the label and its bands, and I was a little freaked out by how surprised he was.

It’s a bit of an obvious choice to those who also know of Flying Nun, but my favorite song from their catalog is — hands down — “Pink Frost”:

Meet the Man Who Flies Around the World for Free

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Rolling Stone:

Schlappig, 25, is one of the biggest stars among an elite group of obsessive flyers whose mission is to outwit the airlines. They’re self-styled competitors with a singular objective: fly for free, as much as they can, without getting caught. In the past 20 years, the Internet has drawn together this strange band of savants with an odd mix of skills: the digital talent of a code writer, a lawyer’s love affair with fine print, and a passion for airline bureaucracy. It’s a whirring hive mind of IT whizzes, stats majors, aviation nerds and everyone else you knew who skipped the prom.



For more than 30 years, the commercial airline industry has been mulling how to solve a problem like the Hobby (what the art of travel hacking is known by in this world). This past winter, however, the airlines seemed to have unveiled a new strategy. Following the example of the music industry in the early 2000s, they have taken to suing small fry in the interest of making an example.

That’s one way to do it. Here’s another, via Atlas Obscura:

Like stowaways on ships, trains, and planes, people have attempted (and sometimes succeeded!) in mailing themselves as recently as just a few years ago. It’s not easy, nor legal, nor permitted by any major shipping company, but that hasn’t stopped a very special group of people from trying.



Whether to escape slavery or merely the cost of a plane ticket, people have been trying for over a century and a half to package themselves like so many rolls of toilet paper from Amazon.