I’d argue that changes in our communication technologies are enabling this home brew entrepreneurship revolution. For example, the so-called “Web 2.0” paradigm shift on the Internet, describes a new way of creating wealth with tools such as wikis, blogs and interactive content portals, where the bulk of content is generated by users.

In other words: today, it’s participation, collaboration and “user-generated content” that make or break new brands on the Internet.

More important for a musicians: Web 2.0 services and apps have helped break the traditional isolation of the DIY’er and the amateur. Think of all those home bodies putting up their latest musical achievements on YouTube, and the feedback they’re getting as a result.

Three years ago? Unheard of.

the pro-am revolution

This new social norm of active leisure and “user-generated content” is one of the main themes explored by British think-tank Demos in its publications. In their Pro-Am Revolution, Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller (published as a .pdf document) describe the demographic, economic, educational and technological trends underpinning the increase in participation by previously marginalized actors in all areas of the knowledge economy.

And who are these previously marginalized upstarts? Simply dedicated amateurs?

Better. Leadbeater and Miller call these “new knowledge agents” Pro-Ams: passionate amateurs working within professional standards.

As a consultant to industry and goverment in the UK, Leadbeater has been a major proponent of the concept of an “innovation commons”. In a presentation at TED, he describes the new culture of Pro-Ams with examples from the fields of science, manufacturing, and law, and further provides policy recommendations, applicable to both public and private sectors.

a manifesto for makers

The macro-trends described by Leadbeater and Miller help us situate the culture shift in the larger context. But that doesn’t necessarily give voice to the experience of the New Amateur (or “Pro-Am”), or describe the psychology of making as a way of life.

In other words, is Pro-Am activity simply “occupational”, or is it a new ethic?

I turn here to University of Helsinki researcher and blogger Ulla-Maaria Mutanen for some help. On her Hobby Princess blog (republished in Make Magazine) you’ll find a curious Craft Manifesto.

The Manifesto is Mutanen’s attempt to encapsulate – in the plainest language possible – the conditions, rewards and implications of making, as an economic activity and as a way of life.

Though I encourage you to read it in full (it’s short), here are some highlights as they relate to my talking points (note: though the statements below mostly apply to the making of physical craft objects, musicians should be able to “transpose” these insights at the level of music-making activity and creativity. If you simply replace “objects” and “things” with “music”, you’ll get my point):

1. People get satisfaction for being able to create/craft things because they can see themselves in the objects they make. This is not possible in purchased products. [...]

4. People seek recognition for the things they have made. Primarily it comes from their friends and family. This manifests as an economy of gifts.

5. People who believe they are producing genuinely cool things seek broader exposure from their products. This creates opportunities for alternative publishing channels.

6. Work inspires work. Seeing what other people have made generates new ideas and designs.

7. Essential for crafting are tools, which are accessible, portable, and easy to learn. [...]

10. Learning techniques brings people together. This creates online and offline communities of practice.

11. Craft-oriented people seek opportunities to discover interesting things and meet their makers. This creates marketplaces.

12. At bottom, crafting is a form of play.

What’s relevant from these statements (individually and taken together), is that we gain insight on the amateur as a passionate maker or crafter, engaged in his/her art or craft as a way of life (as I like to insist upon).

Further, this ethic of making can today become widespread and cross-cultural, as we gain new tools for socializing and sharing knowledge.

Finally, the communities of practice that arise from the new communication tools enable us to rediscover old forms of wealth that emphasize “relationship capital” – that is, what Mutanen refers to as the gift economy.

the cathedral & the bazaar

By all means, Mutanen isn’t the first cultural commentator on the (new) gift economy block. Indeed the concept of a “potlatch economy” most famously took off recently with the publication, in October 1999, of Eric Raymond‘s book The Cathedral and the Bazaar – another manifesto, this time for the open source movement in software and (networked) IT development.

Despite the brouhaha it generated around open vs. proprietary code and business models, the Cathedral and the Bazaar had the merit of analyzing the motivations of inter-connected individuals who dedicated time, talent and resources for the benefits of robust software, with no financial rewards in view.

Raymond’s conclusions? In the bottom-up, “bazaar” model of massively distributed collaboration, the sharing of resources, tools, techniques and knowledge are the new social norm. He saw that this type of wealth-creation followed the patterns of what anthropologists called “reciprocal exchange”: the gift economy.

In a nutshell:

• The more you give, the more prestige/value you have in the eyes of your peers.
• If making implies giving: the more you make, the more you are capable of truly bonding with all your significant others, since your gifts are personalized.

In other words, making is as inwardly focussed (creativity, self-expression) as it is outwardly (gifts, social prestige).

Thus, we can now measure the richness of our culture by the respect and recognition given to the most dedicated and unique makers – whether professional or amateur – in our midst.

So imagine this: I’m a musician, and I just woke up to the fact that I still don’t own an mp3 player. Pow! How could that be? I love music, and I don’t have an mp3 player!

After a bit of head-scratching, I came up with the following rationalizations for my outstanding mp3 player non-purchase decision:

#10 – Yet another object to dangle along when I leave home.

Does it seem that leaving home takes forever these days? Think of all the little stuff you’re sweating over at each and every home departure.

#9 – I don’t see the point of digitizing and compiling all my music in one place.

I’m (finally!) getting smarter with my computer system back-ups, and make digital copies of everything I can… except music. After years of iTunes use, I realize I actually only listen to a small portion of my iTunes library. Same goes for my CD collection: within the variety I only listen to a small segment, whatever’s relevant to me as a musician.

In other words, in terms of my music habits, there’s vastness in depth, not in coverage.

So – by and large – whatever I get on CD, I keep on CD, whatever I download stays in my iTunes library. And the whole point of having an mp3 player is about having your entire music library at your fingertips, no?

#8 – Self-inflicted noise-pollution seems a little pathetic.

Interesting that Apple should even risk getting sued for not putting an ear damage volume threshhold warning on their pod-thingies. What’s up with you, iPodders?

Seems to me this “self-inflicted deafness” phenomenon has a bit to do with addiction to loud music. People don’t just listen to their music anymore, they are their music. Better, they experience total identity-dissolving fusion with their music, in an act of sheer cosmic union. Just like in the Joy of Sex.

Great way to go deaf.

#7 – I have a lot of other things I need (and would like) to buy, before an mp3 player.

Yes, an mp3 player is in the “luxury expense” category for me, not the necessities. Not even leisure necessities

#6 – My daily commute (work, shopping, etc.) is pretty groovy as is.

Montreal is always pleasant to do the non-motor-vehicle commute through. And you miss a lot of interesting stuff on the way somewhere when you’re in your own little movie.

Not that I’m against having a (personalized) soundtrack for travel. On this topic, I usually prefer European film over American movies, for the following simple fact: as a rule, Euro-flicks give their audiences more emotional space by not filling in every dramatic moment with music.

#5 – I like quiet.

I live in a city. There’s always plenty of aural stimulation going on. My favorite city experiences are: quiet at home, or quiet in the park.

Besides, I grew up an avid reader of books. Reading books requires relative quiet. Now that my internet habits have mostly killed my reading habits, I still relish the (solitary) quiet that a reader grows accustomed to.

#4 – I do other things than turn on music when I get bored.

Even if I do listen to music on a daily basis, turning on the tunes isn’t a reflex for me.

#3 – Everybody seems to have one!

Always a big disincentive for me: mob rule. Oh sure, the variety of the stuff you can listen to on your mp3 player is infinite, but the trend itself seems rather conformist.

Well, perhaps this reaction of mine is a response to Apple’s pervasive and highly-successful iPod marketing campaign(s). And according to the iPod gospel, every self-expressive rebellious individual must have an iPod.

#2 – I’m a (slow learning) musician.

In my experience, listening to music is a more focussed activity when you’re a musician.

Musical recordings communicate a finality which is never there in the process of learning or performance. Therefore, for a musician a recording is primarily a record of musical interpretation, not simply a part of one’s identity and/or cultural experience.

For an experienced musician the act of listening to a recording implies hearing in one’s mind’s ear the rich possiblities of musical interpretation. Recordings are thus often used by musicians as reference media: a recorded piece of music can be a model performance, an archival document, or a learning tool.

As for me, I am a slow learner. I takes me a while to learn new musical ideas and techniques. Because of this, my listening pallette is rather selective, as a rule. I like to paint myself into tiny cultural universes, and dwell within many such universes as the course of my musical learning journey changes over time.

#1 – I have ears and I want to use them. In my daily life.

Ever wish you had earlids?

Perhaps this is one of the major uses of mp3 players: as a psychological filter against one’s environment. Many urban environments are indeed acoustically unpleasant, if not atrocious. Most of us usually adapt to the intensity of our aural and visual environment by focusing our attention on something of interest (i.e. bring a book in the subway), so that everything else becomes white noise.

Therefore, a portable digital audio player can be a great way to tune out your environment, or at least make it seem more pleasant, even more personalized.

As for me, I’d rather take in the ugly with the nice. The risk of tuning out is to live pertpetually in one’s own bubble, or inner trip. Ears have a huge survival value, and I’ve seen to many iPodder pedestrians get into near-accidents on the sidewalk (nevermind the street!) to warrant the daily use of a portable digital audio player with headphones.

And if you’ve every been to Montreal, you know that over 60% the car drivers here are clinically insane. Better to err on the side of caution.

top 10 reasons why I don’t own an mp3 player… yet

Ok, I should have said “yet” right from the beginning. You never know, you never know. Five years ago I swore I’d never get a cell phone, and today I can’t leave the house without it.

To be sure, I don’t mean to come across as a Luddite, fearing mp3 player techno-corruption. And I’ve also bluffed a little so far: my Nokia phone actually has an mp3 player, and I’ve even used it a few times while walking to work, listening to podcasts.

Tried it, but never really adopted it.

So perhaps one day my basic perception will change, but for the moment I still see mp3 players primarily as lifestyle and fashion accessories. And beyond the objections listed above, I believe that in the longer term, it is also my commitment to learning an acoustic musical instrument which will prevent my permanent adoption of just such a device.

But that’s just me. I’d be curious to find out if there are other similarly sensory-biased individals out there who identify with the reasons I’ve listed above in choosing to opt-out of the mp3 player habit. Or alternately, acoustic instrumentalists who just love mp3 players, and couldn’t live without’em!

So, you’ve got an mp3 player? What uses do you make of it in your daily routine?

Alas, before Santa Fritz can grab the first gift, your mom stands up, and blurts out to all ears: “Wait, wait! Before we open any gifts… Billy, why don’t you get your violin and play us a few Christmas songs? Wouldn’t that be lovely, everyone?”

pack o’ nerves with a bow in hand

Egad!! What did she just say? Alas, before you can raise any objection, the clamor to hear you summon the Yuletide muse overtakes the room. Every family event needs its music, right? Looks like it’s time to enter the ring and deliver the goods. No way out of this one!

Yes, this truly happened to me, on more than one occasion (different family, only passing resemblance to the characters above). And how well did I play those Xmas carols, prithee?

Here’s a video of truly bad kids’ violin playing, a tad worse than my own chops back in those days. I dare you to listen to it until the end.

Click here to view the embedded video.

know thine audience?

Back to my story. So the impromptu gig is over, everyone’s now fully gaga over the presents. As you pack your instrument, you think to yourself, in ultimate Christmas sag: “now every Uncle Tom, Dick and Jerry knows I play the violin. And badly, at that. Yeah, Merry Christmas, mom.”

OK, why this story? Here’s what I’m getting at.

You know your family. And they know you. A recipe for artistic triumph?

Today’s top internet marketing gurus emphatically insist that you gotta get to know your market/audience, that “your audience/client is your friend”. Driving this new reality is that we live in a brave new age of transparency, they say, and the trend is only going to deepen in every sphere of life.

Yet have we fully understood what we mean by such assertions? You wanna get to know all these people, warts and all?

First off, are we talking about individuals, or groups? We all know what difference it makes when you’re getting to know people one-on-one versus the round-table approach. How this relates to my point is that the communication tools which allow us to deepen our knowledge of our customers/audience today are both one-to-one and many-to-many, in terms of relationship potential and process. Blogs and wikis are two such examples.

And so in this new, more relationship-intensive marketplace, exactly what kinds of relationships are we looking at? In other words, in terms of my story, are you sure you want to bring everyone into the family?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I love/hate you all!

Professional musicians will attest to this experience, which can be more extreme from their point of view. How many times have you heard a pro say they’d much prefer playing to strangers than to a room full of family members?

After all, as the story goes: “these people know me! if my performance bombs, can I then truly carry the family torch in public?” In other words, in front of your folks a performance is always more than just a performance: there are unspoken expectations to meet, and reputations to carry beyond one’s own. Indeed, I’d argue that in the very nature of your performance and style the family must be able to somehow recognize the image it has of itself.

Indeed, an audience of strangers can provide a professional performer with two routes of escape from such pressures. If the audience doesn’t like it, they can simply bookmark their experience with a quick and dirty label: “it sucked”, or, “waste of time and money”, etc. Beyond faring worse in one’s career if this trend continues, there’s no weighty corporate responsibility to carry for the performer. And if the audience does like it, stranger-ness in itself is worth its own weight in mystique gold. An artist can capitalize upon this mystique effect, esp. in the creation of his/her public image and persona.

At the extreme of anonymity, there’s busking and street performance, particularly in urban areas of high pedestrian density. Here, you’re playing pretty much exclusively to strangers, whether passers-by or temporarily attentive throngs.

Not only does this remove the pressure to play to bolster family pride or to prove your stuff to friends, but at times it even removes the pressure of… having an audience at all. I myself have busked in such situations, in Vancouver, Canada, in Paris, France and London, England. I can tell you that after a while, the experience is pretty much like: “if a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it fall, is there really a tree?”

Therefore, I must inevitably conclude that any musical endeavor, no matter how private, at the very least implies an audience. You can’t remove performance from music.

so you play an instrument?

You know what they say about success: preparation meeting, uh, opportunity. Surely this saying should apply not just to those of us who aim for the stars, but to anyone clockin’ in the hours on their fave musical instrument, week in, week out, “just for the hell of it”.

Seriously. Unless you intend to keep your music passion and leisure activities an official state secret, someone’s bound to ask you someday to play for them. So what kind of preparation do you have up your sleeve for those moments opportunity knocks on your bedroom door?

It’s strange indeed how many amateur musicians don’t think of their learning progress in terms of performance-readiness. Think about it, when you say “amateur musician”, what come to mind? Probably one of two things: someone practicing an instrument at home, in cosy anonymity, and someone playing for family and a group of friends, again in a home setting.

Indeed, probably the most familiar image of amateur musicians in our cultural history is that of youth playing for the family in the living room or parlour. In fact, here’s a pic of me, at age 14, one year after I had formally quit my violin lessons. Apparently the family still craved more “shaky bow” experiences, despite my despondent retirement from dedicated music practice.

Strangers and Acquaintances! Introducing…

In the final analysis, you’re more nervous in front of your peers because it’s the family/tribe reputation that’s at stake. Though reputation is always an issue with playing in public, playing in front of family can be more emotionally distressing because of all that baggage that comes with family pride (or shame!). Not to mention that notoriously elephantine family memory, always ready to make you relive old embarrassments, 60 years down the road.

In terms of performance-readiness, deciding which style of amateur musicianship to go for might then also depend on your “standing” (i.e. the quality of your relationships) in your circles of allegiance, family, friends, etc. In a nutshell: how savvy you are with the high-stakes game of tribal politics.

So my guideline for “knowing my audience” is: whether you’re doing market research, or simply playing in the kitchen, take the “I like you, you like me” principle with a grain of salt. Rather, as Dame Evelyn Glennie puts it, focus on “making a difference” – to both the people you know and don’t know.

So… Ready to raise your fist and chant in favor of a worker’s paradise on earth? Or will a simple drunken picnic in the midst of a sun-baked crowd do for you?

Whatever the case, someone’s bound to break out a tune at some point during the festivities. To remind you that it’s always easier to love humanity in the abstract, here’s The Internationale, as performed by Barbara Scott and The Socialists. (Note that you can’t record your own version for sale and distribution, unless you clear the rights: the song is copyrighted under France’s copyright law until 2014).

Click here to view the embedded video.

Spring Fever Unites the World

May Day! Party time to some, distress signal to others, the mention of May Day celebrations evokes images of popular festivities, where a powerful mix of revelry and populist uprising have caused concern for authorities the world over, ever since the Papacy turned its jaundiced eye on the (spring-)fevered mob in heat.

By and large, the consensus on May Day these days is that there are two types of May Day celebrations, one seasonal or “pagan”, the other political. Historically, of course, the pagan celebrations came first. From wikipedia:

May Day is a cross-quarter day, associated with the Celtic festival of Beltane and the Germanic festival of Walpurgis Night. May Day falls exactly half of a year from November 1, another cross-quarter day which is also associated with various northern European pagan and neopagan festivals such as Samhain. May Day marks the end of the uncomfortable winter half of the year in the Northern hemisphere, and it has traditionally been an occasion for popular and often raucous celebrations, regardless of the locally prevalent political or religious establishment.

As Europe became Christianized, the pagan holidays lost their religious character and either morphed into popular secular celebrations, as with May Day, or were given new Christian interpretations while retaining many traditional pagan features, as with Christmas, Easter, and All Saint’s Day. Beginning in the 20th century, many neopagans began reconstructing the old traditions and celebrating May Day as a pagan religious festival once more.

Bearing no apparent relation to these pagan traditions is the more recent political makeover of May Day – emerging in the late 19th century – as a day to promote the the proletarian revolutionary faith, and as an official state holiday for collectivist regimes. Even today, one may witness in the political celebrations of May Day all manner of righteous causes, slogans, songs in favor of collectivist dictatorship (or, “worker’s rights”, to put it nicely).

Of course, I mention that there is no apparent connection between the pagan/religious versions of May Day and the socialist version. But, as with most popular traditional and religious celebrations – Christmas, Easter, Passover, Ramadan, Summer Solstice – whenever we dig a little deeper on origins, we often witness a protracted struggle over appropriate religious parentage. While there is no official connection between the pagan May Day and socialist May Day, recent research on the roots of socialism seems to indicate that there may exist a trans-historical connection between the two.

As always, the proof is in the pudding. Countries which officially celebrate May Day are usually current or former socialist regimes, or have a strong socialist tradition in their political culture, past or present. In the current socialist regimes, the din of the May Day political trumpets tend to distract from the religious themes implicit in the revolutionary faith. In the former socialist regimes, Marxist political rhetoric now must compete for attention with the revival of neo-pagan festivities.

So if you happen to be geo-located in a collectivist principality, no luck for you. Fist-rising and chanting is your only option. If, however, you are in more loosey-goosey regimes that tolerate all manner of hangovers, then you’re in luck: you can choose your (non-) party allegiance, and (not) get drunk appropriately thereafter.

Pole Vaulting Is More Fun

Hope my bias has been fairly clear so far. My Public Service Announcement to you on this May Day: must you get drunk, get drunk on the stuff of nature. If you truly do take the rhetoric of socialism at face value, then go ahead: raise your fist and sing The Internationale. But if stirring internationalist hymns chill your bones – as they do with me – try a traditional maypole party, good with family and friends. As Linus from Peanuts (or Jean- Paul Sartre) put it, “I love humanity! It’s people I can’t stand!”

So bust out your likable self, and break out the jam!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Magnatune founder John Buckman has just published the 2006 end of the year stats. As an amateur musician, I’m intrigued by the data.

Wait, wait, I know what you are thinking. You too are a musician, and you’re wondering: what’s so interesting about an internet record label’s business data? Business data is available everywhere if you know where to to look, right? And if you consider that corporations are legally beholden to their shareholders to publish quarterly reports, the mass of business data publicly available on any industry is overwhelming.

Or is it? And what kind of data is publicly available, exactly? Have a quick look at the Magnatune data, and try to find equivalent publicly available data from any of the major labels… Let me know what you came up with!

But Magnatune’s sharing of its business data has special significance for me. It has to do with the special pride the Magnatune people take in their open music business model. In other words, without undercutting his capacity to remain competitive, Buckman has made pro-active transparency the credo for his business.

Recall that Magnatune’s tagline is: We Are Not Evil. Magnatune’s business proposition put a special emphasis on palliating against the evils of the music industry. Magnatune’s contrarian stance to the music industry monolith speaks directly to me. Aside from my tendonitis injury that’s affected my career outlook – and the limited set of basic personalities that seem run the gamut of the pro musicians scene (in the jazz world) – the music industry is one of the major reasons I no longer aspire to being a professional musician.

Buckman is straightforward in his declarations that his business is an economic experiment (see “getting the word out”). Therefore, Magnatune business data is revealing of how the experiment is doing, and worthy of our attention.

OK now, what about the data?

One really encouraging trend for me, is Magnatune’s B to B sales data. Music licenses have increased 2.5X in 2006 over pre-2006 levels. According to Buckman, the lion’s share of Magnatune’s business is licensing artists’ work for use in soundtracks of various professional media content, for a variety of contexts – advertising, television, independent films, corporate events, etc. Buckman reports that he is selling on average one license every day.

As well, as Buckman points out in this video, Magnatune is about the only player around who sells micro-licensing of their music products.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Because Magnatune is an internet business selling albums and track licenses through unfettered end-user access to the music, the traffic stats are also worthy of our attention.

Buckman himself found the “unique visitors” stats – 50% increase in 2006 – encouraging. Caveat: as the number of unique visitors increased by 50% and consumer sales did not increase, the conclusion is that Magnatune will have to find creative ways to convert new audiences into paying customers. Strategies for this, such as a subscription service, a “fill-your-ipod” purchase option, free-song-of-the-day promo, a shopping cart purchase mechanism, as well as the entire Magnatune catalog on iTunes, eMusic (and others), are mentioned at the end of the presentation.

Lastly, on the micro-economics scale of things, Magnatune is a great example long-tail business. Witness the trend analysis provided in the 2004 year-end report. In other words, Magnatune is a business model for the internet age.

As Magnatune has a similar slogan to Google (Don’t Be Evil) let’s hope – like Google – that they’ll stay consistently innovative, and – unlike Google – remain sober in their successes. I feel that Magnatune’s positioning as a real alternative to the music industry will make this so.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The moral of the story: if a non-instrumentalist such as Lasse can edit out his performance mistakes to make a song, so can you! Of course if you just want to mix beats and notes, you can always go the way of the DJ, and dispense with musical instruments altogether.

Or if you’re a bips and beats kineticist, get rid of your turntables and mix your own funny noises, like Lasse.

And, why not, throw in my own practical and philosophical two cents into the wisdom-of-the-crowd pot. Since I myself have been active in finding amateur musicians to learn and practice with for some time now. Even played at quasi-official ceremonies, full of pomp and cheer.

My habit will be to research and write in conjunction with music practice, to share ideas and problems that emerge from the dedicated process of learning a musical instrument and trying to master a repertoire, whether alone or with others.

So, if you’re an everyday – or everyweek – perspiring instrumentalist you’ve found a home. Click deep into the links to find what you’re looking for.