I’ve been a fan of Ghostly and Spectral records since the labels first launched. I remember going to their parties in Detroit and Ann Arbor when I lived in my home state of Michigan, and buying their records when 99% of techno djs would gag at the thought of spinning with CD’s or MP3′s.
The labels have since expanded the eclectic repertoire of their musical catalog in ways that have co-evolved with the technologies used by their artists and listeners. Ghostly Discovery is arguably the best application I have seen to provide a functional service to a label’s fans while also showcasing its artists.
Simple functionality allows users to select moods based on colors, and then adjust speed/tempo and to find a balance between synthesized and natural sounds. The application also allows users to create favorites as illustrated in the following demo:
Perhaps Ghostly is one of the only labels who could pull this off with the unique variety of artists, tracks, and styles, and in my opinion the app in many ways is representative of the genre-defying innovation the label has supported since its inception.
Ghostly plans to do sneak peaks of upcoming releases exclusively through Discovery, and enables listeners to connect to iTunes to purchase individual tracks that go immediately into your permanent musical library. Now if only Ghostly would sponsor an open bar somewhere in NYC to do a launch party – hey, just gradually turn up the tempo on the app and they don’t even need to book DJs!
If you’re not familiar with the label get the application, and if you don’t have an iPhone check them out. Here’s a great video from School of Seven Bells, Enjoy!
The Wallstreet Journal recently published an article proclaiming the end of internet investing. Author James Altucher’s wholesale dismissal of “the internet,” from MySpace to Time Warner’s selling of AOL to the troubles of Facebook and Twitter to monetize their platforms, is both alarming and interesting.
I would agree with Altucher that “the internet” is dead as destination websites are suffering due to decreases in advertising revenue across the board, but Marketing across social media has skyrocketed at a meteoric rate and offers the best opportunity to reach consumers. I would go so far as to say that most brands waste millions of dollars designing and driving traffic to fancy destination home pages when they could invest significantly less to reach consumers in the communities where they “live” online such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, forums, and across the blogosphere.
The truth is, there is no “internet,” there is a vast ecosystem of billions of people connecting with one another and contributing to a radical de-centralization of media publishing. Recognition that consumers are now content creators helps contextualize the reasons why properties such as MySpace and AOL have failed. MySpace ran itself into the ground by not protecting the privacy of its users from SPAM and has effectively become little more than a default homepage for musicians and artists, with little semblance of a real online community. AOL similarly ran into the ground because, after being acquired, it did little to add value to its members. Both properties along with numerous others proved to be unprofitable in the long run because short-term gains of expensive advertising were not balanced with long-term commitments to producing quality content and adding value to their audience.
Most “internet” acquisitions are based on traffic volume, reach, and other performance-driven metrics which do not take into account that quantitative analytics are a measure of strong commitments to qualitatively pleasing their consumers. In contrast, online properties, like nightclubs or fashion brands, cycle and burn out. They’re usually “hot” among tastemakers and influencers and once they get on an investor’s radar most likely they have already peaked.
As the “cool kids” – broadly speaking – move on to other things, masses flood in and owners need to cash out. The continual impulse to squeeze every dollar out of an online community in the form of advertising across internet properties needs to be tempered by respect and ongoing effort to add value and retain users. Blanket dismissals of “the internet” in publications like the Wall Street Journal are unfortunate, because they place an overly simplistic set of assumptions on something they do not understand.
I for one, will not be a hypocrite, though I would like to know from the Wall Street Journal and writers like Altucher whether I should abandon equally dismissive assumptions about the financial industry and investment bankers.
As of now, it seems to me like they’re a bunch of greedy and manipulative bastards who set the country on a disastrous course for their own personal gain. I’d like to think finance is more comlex than “the internet,” but perhaps it’s not if we look at short-term botton line and disregard the interests of consumers and share holders.
Britain’s new M16, Sir John Sawers, has been called into question due to information sharing on Facebook by his wife. Entries exposed where they lived, places they frequented, personal details about family members, including a brother that is a known Holocaust denier, and his bathing suit of choice that led the Guardian to publish the story “A Spy in Speedos and Other Sartorial Misjudgments.”
The BBC contextualized the faux pas with reference to the man who coined Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, “Yes we can,” Jon Favreau’s posting of a cardboard cut-out of him and Hillary Clinton on his personal Facebook profile.
Meanwhile, secret forces in Iran have tried using geo-tracking of IP addresses and other targeting to pinpoint people sharing information around the recent elections. The Nation’s blog provides an excellent coverage of how tweets, texts, and video uploads have spawned a worldwide counter-revolution.
Although slightly off in his vernacular with a reference that the revolution was “twitted” instead of “tweeted,” Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic provides an excellent recap of the butterfly effect and the potential implications Iran has for grassroots politics:
as Iranian authorities shut down internet servers, it allowed younger protesters, particularly those affiliated with universities in Tehran, to organize and to follow updates by Mir Hossein Mousavi; by spreading the word about the location of government crackdowns and the threat of machine-gun-wielding soldiers, it probably saved the lives of any number of would-be revolutionaries.
We don’t know how many Iranians belong to Twitter; there seems to have been about two dozen active voices from Tehran, but if we assume a multiplier effect — these 24 people can coordinate with their 20 friends — the use of the technology as a central organizing hub that circumvented official channels of communication cannot be understated. In this way, Twitter served as an intelligence service for the Iranian opposition.
Now TechCrunch, the Christian Monitor, and a host of others are making reference to the Twitter founders deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize. Two polar opposite uses of personal publishing with drastically different consequences for national security! Thanks to Jeff Malmad for originally alerting me to the story of John Sawyers published in the Jerusalem Post.
I spent a lot of time lately thinking about the ways in which many of the common narratives used to frame our perceptions of the present are being called into question. The video above provides a simple illustration with implications for political oppression that seem somewhat obvious, but I think there is a more profound fragmentation going on as a result of fundamental economic breakdowns and subsequent changes in consumer behaviors and the election of the nation’s first black president.
You would never ever see a media critic like Kurtz questioning the ability of white men to cover other white men objectively, or for that matter the ability of white men to cover women or people of color, despite the fact that if newsroom coverage were to be affected, it would be by the prevailing cultural biases of the better represented population in the newsroom
This reminded me of the coverage Jon Stewart provided on CNBC and their choice to consistently feature guests and so-called economy experts who unilaterally provided commentary in support of the banking and mortgage industry during the months leading to its collapse. The call-out quote from Jon was, “If I’d only followed CNBC’s advice, I’d have a million dollars today — provided that I started with a hundred million dollars.”
Jon’s satirical critique is eerily reminiscent of the discourse about embedded reporters on the frontlines of the conflict in Iraq and the ways in which their “coverage” validated an offensive under the auspices of freedom and democracy with 90% civilian casualties.
All of this made me think about the emergence of new media channels and particularly the role Twitter has played in Iran to help facilitate the spread of information following the elections because it calls into question the authority of journalistic sources and their relationships to positions of power. It will be interesting to see what the future holds.
Thanks to Yasmin Hamidi for recommending the Rod 2.0 article
Yakob’s opening presentation appropriately titled “Be Nice or Leave” gave brands the simple advice to add value to communities and to be respectful of the “gift economy” that tends to define communications between members. Just as one would not leave a tip after dinner hosted by friends or family, brands need to be mindful of how they enter conversations and the behavioral norms that key influencers follow.
The rules, quite simply, have changed, and for Yakob a better definition of social media would be to call it “the radical decentralization of the economics of production.” Referencing MIT Professor of Comparative Media Henry Jenkins, Yakob emphasized social media does not consist just of emerging technologies, but emerging cultural practices that disrupt planning and publishing of controlled marketing messages.
Whereas Yakob situated social media in the broader context of postmodern fragmentation of brand identity and content production Ian Schafer created a historical narrative for social media by placing it in the context of the evolving practice of story telling. The ancient art of story telling evolved across different forms of media in scalable ways leading to the addition of advertising as an incremental way to monetize the artform. Rates in turn became based on impressions served.
For Schafer, social media constitutes the evolution of what he terms “fan fiction,” wherein fans come to tell stories using the characters of brands. A playful dialogue emerges in which fans become participants in creating the evolving story of the brand. Paul Worthington, Head of Strategy at Wolff Olins, echoed this sentiment later on by emphasizing that social media not only humanizes brands in the eyes of consumers, but also humanizes consumers in the eyes of the brands.
Brand Exposure was probably the highlight for me during a busy internet week and I look forward to more. Photo above courtesy of Ben Gabbe of Ben Gabbe Photography.
Laughter of Chinese students filled the room following Timothy Geithner’s statement that “Chinese assets are very safe,” reports the Times Online on the U.S. Treasury Secretary’s speech during his first visit to China. China is the largest foreign holder of U.S. bonds worth $768 billion.
Trade barriers with China broke down in the last couple of decades leading to a massive deficit. The country of over a billion people upon whose backs the US built the railroads, exploited for cheap labor, and exoticized in film, media, and literature now appears to have an ace in their pocket and the U.S. by the proverbial balls. That’s the real ancient Chinese secret!
Although the U.S. has the perception of China to be a third-world country their standards of living are comparable to the U.S. statistically as illustrated by the following video from Professor Hans Rosling of Gapcast.
This video covers data captured before the collapse of the U.S. economy. Notably overall infant mortality rates in the U.S. are low because of an inefficient health care system with millions who have no coverage.
Meanwhile recent studies have shown that poor Americans are the country’s most charitable demographic, according to the Philanthropy News Digest. This is particularly noteworthy because these gifts are not tax deductible because they do not earn enough money to justify deductions.
As GM files for bankruptcy and the U.S. government takes control over the sinking ship what can possibly be done to help the economy bounce back?
I came across this video on one of my favorite sites Everything is Terrible and it reminded me how uncertain the future always is. It’s very unfortunate that excessive greed, poor lending policies, and over-spending behaviors culminated in the current economic crisis, but I think we need to remember to be cautious but not constantly in fear over things that are beyond my control.
I had brunch yesterday with my good friends Ed Westfield and Carol Pitts, and we were laughing about a conversation Ed overheard between two brokers:
“Hey, how was your day?”
“Good, the market seems to be leveling out. Flat is the new up!”
It seems that everywhere we turn there are mentions of the current economic crisis. I for one think it’s probably the best thing that could have happened to America in the long term because it’s given everyone an opportunity to evaluate values and behaviors that are ultimately self-destructive.
The Ecomonist’s recent cover story on Business in America is a poignant reminder that bailout money may ultimately lead to a tension between big government and big business. On the flip side Wired Magazine’s recent cover story on the New New Economy points to the internet to be a platform for a new form of socialism. Building upon concepts he laid out in The Long Tail Editor in Chief Chris Anderson paints a picture of an open horizon very similar to 19th-century conceptions of Manifest Destiny and the American frontier.
Somewhere between these two lenses the future will come into focus, and hopefully we’ll all emerge somehow more grounded, aware, and appreciative of life and what we have. And hey, why don’t Americans stop worrying about the economy here for a minute and apologize for messing up the economy of the entire world.
The Wallstreet Journal recently published an article proclaiming the 
