Caffeine Paves Over Bad Habits

Over the years, I have quit caffeine for years at a time.  I slip back into the habit when I forget how unnecessary it is to functioning at a high-level.

A big desert after lunch…coffee.

Too much booze the night before…coffee.

Not enough sleep…coffee.

Lots of time behind the desk and not enough time at the gym…coffee.

Staying out extra late…expresso martini.

Not making time to meditate…coffee.

Not enough fruit…coffee (beans).

Caffeine paves over bad habits, and conversely the absence of it make living well...essential.

Defining Property from @paulg - a Pro Copyright Perspective

Paul Graham, a Y-Combinator founder, just wrote a tidy anti-copyright essay titled Defining Property.  Unfortunately Paul convolutes the tactics of the RIAA and the MPPA with the practical / impractical debate over copyrights.

For rightsholders I have this to say:  copyrights enable you to scale via minimal increment investments.  Recorded music is an instantiation of your musical works; it's an instantiation of your software and your source code.  As the rightsholder of your source code you should expect respect of your copyright wishes.

To all the Y-Combinator startups:  release all of your source code tomorrow so anyone can freely profit from it.  Or enable anyone to freely embed (stream) your engineering - unencumbered by your terms of service - into any app or site that can freely profit from it.  After all, you can scale by selling t-shirts or by performing live on stage to pirated organ music; with small monkeys, on large tricycles, and whilst wearing little blue hats.

#copyrights and the scalability argument

There's a portion of the population that doesn't respect, doesn't believe in, or that simply desires to abolish copyrights altogether; they have their non-rivalrous resource argument to bring to the debate; now here's something to toss back at them…

Every investor wants to invest in ventures where the incremental costs of scaling to infinity and beyond are minimal to zero.  In other words, $100 buys you the first 100 widgets, but the cost of producing the next 100 widgets is de minimis.  In fact, the competition for investment capital is often won or lost on a cost-to-scale analysis basis.
 
The problem with the "to hell with copyrights, you can make money from live performances" argument is that this thinking limits an artist's ability to scale to: his or her capacity to perform (live) on a consistent basis.  If music (for example) is consistently stolen borrowed or free, where does the capacity to scale through minimal additional investment come from?  T-shirts?
 
One might argue that if you reach the top tier of the profession that the capacity to generate easy, incremental income scales far beyond the income generated via performances.  However nobody wants to invest in a business or an industry where the only way to obtain a financial exit is to hit a home run.  There are far too many investment alternatives where you can pile up rewards by hitting singles and doubles…while preserving the opportunity to hit a home run also.

Art requires investment, as somebody always has to pay the bills.  Investing in artists has to appear attractive on a cost-to-scale analysis basis.  Every attempt: legal, cultural or otherwise, to weaken copyrights is an assault on every artist's capacity to scale via minimal incremental investments, and thus the capacity to compete for investment dollars.  

Who wins the race for investment money, the artist with the epic song or the software developer with the snazzy iPhone app?  Which took more time and skill to create?  It's all software to me.

For those of you that detest dumping art into an investor equation, simply substitute the concept of investment dollars with a personal time-cost / benefit analysis and ask yourself why so many artists become hobbyists prior to obtaining traction; the key reason is: the lack of copyright respect results in the sinking perception that scaling one's digital entertainment business by shoveling time (or investor money) at it, often results in a negative return.  For many, there simply ends up being…better ways to make a living.

@brucewarila

Effective Music-Connected Ad Targeting

This post outlines the components necessary to enable effective music-connected targeting.

Any company hoping to succeed at music-connected advertising will need to continually dedicate resources to building a flexible music-connected-keyword-suggestion-tool (similar to the Google Keyword Tool, but for music) that uses a combination of all the methods outlined below.

In addition, labels and artists need to target on a geographic basis to succeed.  However geo-targeting constrains impression flow. More on this later.

How Google Enables Targeting...  In really simple terms, Google indexes all the pages on the web by putting every word, and every phrase, on every indexable page, into a giant keyword dictionary. Google then enables advertisers, through a refined keyword suggestion tool (rock music example below), to create a list of keywords that can be matched against this keyword dictionary.  Google does not auto-magically process a few keywords into an unseen, mushroomed list of keywords to target (no human intervention required); instead Google relies on advertisers to curate the list of suggested keywords.
Music-connected targeting should work the same way.  Advertisers should be enabled to pick and choose the list of music-connected keywords to target as they are suggested by an advanced music-connected-keyword-suggestion-tool.  
 
A powerful music-connected-keyword-suggestion-tool that enables optimal targeting should derive keyword suggestions from the methods (1 through 5) outlined below.

Method 1) Similar Song Keyword Suggestions
In the music business today, song promotion is a primary goal of music marketers.  To derive a list of similar songs to target, an acoustic processing and matching machine would compare songs against a database of similarly processed songs to yield a constellation of similar songs.  A refined keyword suggestion tool would enable advertisers to sort the suggestion list against multiple acoustic characteristics such as mood and tempo.  The software to enable acoustic analysis is readily available.  Song preview-play buttons next to song keyword suggestions are also necessary.

Method 2) Similar Artist Keyword Suggestions
A list of similar artists could also be derived from acoustic analysis or via social recommendation.  Successfully suggesting similar artists, songs or videos via social recommendation technology relies upon obtaining a significant flow of up-to-date end-user preference data.  Social recommendation algorithms have been readily available on the web as open source for 4 to 5 years now, and large accumulators of preference data (e.g.: Apple and Amazon) already have refined algorithms.  Moreover the remaining source of preference data (outside of Spotify) are much smaller and are headed toward consolidation or extinction.  However, the processing of aggregate Twitter data may yield a trough of user preference data.  

Method 3) Within-Genre(s) Keyword Suggestions
The within-genre method relies upon a data source such as Wikipedia to extract a list of artists or titles within a genre.  A within-genre suggestion tool will often either 1) suggest a very long list of obscure names and titles to select from, and/or 2) may not be up to date enough to satisfy the needs of a music advertiser.  Further testing combined with advertiser curation needs to be done.

Method 4) Similar Lyrics
A music-connected keyword suggestion tool would analyze a song's lyrics against an extensive dictionary of existing lyrical phrases, and then suggest other songs and lyrics that have similar phrasing.  Lyrics are consistently one of the top searched-for items on the Internet.  Lyric matching is proven and available technology.  Lyric matching may also yield a very long list of obscure names and titles to select from.

Method 5) Keyword (other) Suggestions
In all reality, vanilla keyword targeting (like Google enables) against words or phrases that the advertiser thinks will resonate with any given music fan have proven to be effective.  Songs cross-appeal and resonate with music fans for a myriad of social, musical, lyrical and cultural reasons.  When considering the breath of the English dictionary, the artist or the songwriter will always know better than a machine which keywords may succeed and fail.  Third-party keyword suggestion tools may facilitate music-connected keyword generation? This needs to be researched and tested.

@brucewarila

Non Disclosure Agreements, Patents, Secrecy and Idea Sharing

An entrepreneur recently asked me the following question: "When you think you are sitting on one of those extraordinary ideas, how freely do you discuss it with others?"  Here's my response:

After being involved in startups for the last 15 years, I have come to the conclusion that there are very few people you need to truly worry about.  Once in a while, I run into someone that I just don't freely share (fully baked) ideas with.  However this is extremely, extremely rare, and when it happens, I just wait until I am more certain of the other person's motives and integrity.

Two things...

1) Ideas are like ears, everyone has two... Your idea is probably never completely unique; almost without a doubt, someone someplace else is thinking nearly the same thought... I have found this repeatedly; especially on the Internet.  However quickly filing a super-cheap provisional patent is worth doing, if only for piece of mind.  I personally don't bother with NDAs anymore (giving them or signing them).  Most investors won't sign them either, as they see far too many duplicate ideas.

2) Execution is everything... Your ability to execute is what really matters when it comes to beating the other guy (with the duplicate idea).  There are so very, very, very few people that can execute (raise money, build it, take it to market, and grow it) that the benefits of sharing ideas with almost anyone (and getting critical feedback), outweighs the risks.  Moreover if you meet the RARE person that can truly execute, he or she is usually executing on...some other idea...and does not have the time to do yours.  

There's millions of entrepreneurs sitting on piles of NDAs and truckloads of patents or patents pending, but there are very few entrepreneurs that succeed on the web.  99.999% of the time, speed and relationships are more important than secrecy. 

Now watch my attorney friends tell me this is bad advice...

songs for past valentines

From Reed Foehl - "Days Are Like" on iTunes

Days Are Like by Reed Foehl

MusicXray is the real deal!

I have known Mike McCready the CEO for MusicXray for the last four years.  Instead of commenting on my blog or contacting me, Mike is the type of concerned CEO you can contact directly for any reason.  He can be reached mike@musicxray.com.  MusicXray is growing rapidly (disclosure: I own stock).  I recommend MusicXray and the humans behind the service.