8Sided Blog

thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

The Seven Book Challenge

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You’ve probably seen this floating around on social media: “Post seven books you love, one book per day, no explanations, no reviews, just covers. Each day you will ask a friend to take up the challenge.” I was challenged before and participated on Twitter. Since then I’ve been challenged a few more times, so I thought I’d make it into a blog post. Here are my seven books:

I do want to give a quick explanation. Yes, these are books I love, but I also chose the books that had the most significant impact. I read most of these as a teenager or in my early 20s. All of these books changed the way I looked at the world in some way. Someone (I can’t find the reference) called these types of books ‘earthquake books’ because they shake your foundation. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend them all — I bet the Industrial Culture Handbook hasn’t aged well — but these books perfectly lined up with my age and what I was pondering at the time. These books are a window into what shaped me.

And books continue to shape. I was an avid reader the first 25 years of my life, but let it go as my eyesight worsened.1 I suffer from an eye condition called keratoconus. And I never warmed up to audiobooks — I don’t retain information through listening as I do with reading. About three years ago, thanks to improvements in available contact lenses and apps like Marvin for the iPad, I picked up the habit again. It wasn’t easy to get back on the book train — out of practice, I was a slow reader at first — but now I’m catching up on all the recommendations I’ve gathered over the years.

The seven books above are quite different than what I read now, but make sense in context. Presently I’m finishing Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others and Ryan Holiday’s new one, Stillness Is The Key, is on deck. I update my recent reads in this blog’s /now section.

Speaking of Ryan Holiday, his article How To Read More — A Lot More is a classic. It helped inspire me when I started reading again and was frustrated by my slow speed.

And check out the podcast 3 Books, which is all about impactful books. Ryan Holiday is the guest on a recent episode. And Seth Godin was a guest a while back — I’ve heard Seth on a lot of podcasts, and this is my favorite of all his appearances.

PS – Oh, right — I’m supposed to challenge someone in return. I challenge you. Please reveal a book that impacted your life in the comments. I need new recommendations!

PPS – I’ll be attending MondoNYC in New York this Thursday and Friday. If you plan to be there, too, hit me up.

Choosing, Not Chosen

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Here’s an informative video that inspired a spirited conversation in my household:

I can understand the overwhelming temptation to appease and filter for THE ALGORITHM when you’re making a living off your YouTube and online efforts. But there’s a loss of voice, akin to the loss of agency that casual listening creates. Rather than choosing we’re being chosen.

There’s an SEO plug-in installed on my blog, and it tells me that I should optimize my titles and my content for traffic-catching metrics. I was paying attention to its demands for a while, changing snappy short titles to longer (less fun) ones that complied with SEO-recommended character limits. I was told to insert keywords into the content and always attach eye-catching featured images (I was never good at that aspect). I’d get stressed out when the plug-in told me that I wasn’t adhering to the internet’s mysterious ordinances.

But, here’s the thing: there are many blogs and newsletters that I love, and none of these follow the rules. Some of these authors have a voice that flies in the face of these rules — one-word titles, blog posts with only a few sentences, the minimalist of minimal site layouts. I frequent these outlets for the voice of the author, not any click-worthy title or high search rank. I fear that if we all follow the SEO or algorithmic guidelines, then these voices would disappear. Pleasing the SEO computer is trying to please everyone, and we all know the cliché about what happens when you try to please everyone. But it’s more than ending up not pleasing anybody — it’s about not connecting with your people, to not have a flag on the map of your territory, to be invisible from your tribe.

There are those who are going for mass and, according to their goals, choose to follow the rules. That’s cool. Derek Muller, in the video above, is doing so grudgingly but he’s in the machine where 5 million vs. 10 million views have a direct impact on his project’s budget. Veritasium is a channel with — at the least — staff and travel requirements, so there’s a good reason to keep the views and funding high.2And it’s a well-done science channel, worth your subscription in my opinion. But my needs — and the needs of the bloggers and channels I follow — are different. We’re looking for that longterm connection and an audience that’s on board because of our way of saying things. It’s not that Derek doesn’t want that — it’s evident from his video that his voice and point of view are essential and he’s struggling with maintaining these — but the success of his platform is affected by more important things. On the other hand, at this point, I measure my success by people enjoying what I do and, to paraphrase Seth Godin, missing me when I’ve gone quiet.

I’m thinking about the direction of this blog all of the time. I change my mind about it constantly. But what always sticks is that I want it to be fun for you and — most importantly, if I’m honest — fun for me. I’m using this to find my people, to have conversations, and make those connections. And I’m using it to find potential friends, collaborators, clients, and employers. An SEO plug-in’s suggestions won’t be much help there. I see these imposed guidelines as a detriment and I’m happy to resist. So expect the blog to get more personal, more specialized, and obtuse — my private-made-public playground. No holding back the freak flag.

Don’t Let Music Become Software

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Above: another pic from the sticks, hope I don’t get ticks. I’m hiding out in this remote location for a couple more days.

I’m a fan of email newsletters — I subscribe to way too many — and one of my favorites is Cherie Hu’s Water & Music. Even outside of the newsletter Hu is one of my favorite music industry writers/pundits, and she seems to reserve her most thought-provoking opinions for the newsletter. And 2018’s final edition of Water & Music, titled ‘The Music Industry’s Inconvenient Truths,’ is a corker.

The premise revolves around answers to the question, “What is one truth about the music industry that very few people agree with you on?” I can’t say I strongly disagree with any of the responses Hu received, and this one bolsters the direction of my consulting work. But it’s Hu’s two answers to the question that elicit the most thought — this newsletter’s been reeling in my head since I read it a few days ago.

Hu’s first answer has familiarity as she’s dropping some Seth Godin knowledge and I just finished his latest book, This Is Marketing. The concept of the ‘smallest viable audience’ is emphasized, which states that an artist should only seek to please his die-hard fans. Musicianship and ‘honing the craft’ remain important, but not at the expense of serving the needs of those who support you. Says Hu:

Let’s put it this way: as long as music can be materialized as an item or activity whose purchase generates revenue for somebody, music is a product. People who buy or engage with a musical product are referred to by the industry as “fans,” so “fan” is just another word for “customer.” Customers buy the products that best satisfy their own needs and desires. So, like in any other industry, the best music products most effectively address customers’ needs and satisfy clearly-defined gaps in the market that other products haven’t filled.

In This Is Marketing, Godin argues that we are all marketers as individuals seeking to make a change in others. For the recording artist, that change is as simple (or complex) as convincing a listener to check out her album rather than someone else’s. Godin then challenges us to think of ourselves as something more than marketers — also as teachers, delivering value and reward to our customers/fans. With a teacher mindset, we’re encouraged to produce meaningful content for those who are paying the most attention.

I could go on and on about this but I’ll save it for a future post. I’m cutting myself short as I can’t wait to get to Hu’s next proclamation: “The word ‘creator’ does more harm than good:”

I understand that the word “creator” might be the simplest, most easily accessible term for addressing all possible users releasing content on a given platform. And don’t get me wrong: democratizing creativity is undeniably a force for good, and the last thing the world should do is give fewer people access to tools for making art and expressing themselves. But who owns and profits from that creativity is an entirely separate debate, in danger of being obfuscated by the widespread adoption and promotion of “creator” as a job title.

It may seem like semantics, but the way we adopt and use language rewires our thinking (hello, George). Hu’s point— which I never considered — is that the more we refer to ourselves as ‘creators,’ the easier it is to submit to the notion that our creations are in fealty to others. Notice how the services almost all use ‘creator’ — a sampling of examples Hu points out include YouTube Creators, Facebook for Creators, Spotify’s “Creator Marketing.’ So when a platform sneakily claims ownership of our work — as Spotify did with its #PraiseV campaign (see Hu’s newsletter) — we’re desensitized against protest. Hu again:

Throughout history, the democratization of creativity has coincided with a dilution of clarity around ownership […] [and] the mechanisms by which other companies can claim IP ownership in a world of democratized creation are becoming much swifter than reading through tens of pages of a record contract.

I feel like the tech platforms — Spotify, Apple, Amazon, et al. — would like us to start thinking of music as software. That is, we’ve ‘created’ something that’s inseparable from their technologies. Just as Omnifocus, my to-do app of choice, won’t run and can’t exist without my iMac, a song can’t exist without Spotify. Then we start thinking of our music as dependent on the platform when, of course, it’s the other way around. 

That’s one thing I love about music publishing. Its framework forces us to think of compositions as separate from the recordings and undetachable from the songwriter. A song isn’t a creation, per se, but an idea tied to an individual (or individuals, if there are co-writers). The tech platforms have had their problems with music publishing, showing that the intimacy of composition may help protect against music becoming software.  But, as Cherie Hu points out, the real battle may be fought through language and how a shift in simple phrasing affects the ownership mindset of future songwriters. Let’s hold on to our ideas and understand that songs are breathing things that exist on their own, platform be damned. Don’t let your music become software.

P.S. — I realize this last bit may seem in contradiction to the first, where it appears I’m referring to songs as product. But it’s not in opposition at all if you understand the type of marketing we’re doing as artists. Godin’s This Is Marketing will help you understand and I recommend it. 

P.P.S.— There’s no disrespect intended to software and software makers. But I feel programmers have a better understanding of their IP rights in the milieu of platform-dependence than songwriters and artists do.