In the olden days (a few years ago), posting photos to the web was a bit of a chore. And when you did post them, the images lived on your separate web space -- far from other photos posted by other folks around the world. Just those few years ago, posting videos was a distant dream, as bandwidth (the speed of your internet connection) and storage space was expensive.
Two web phenomena of the past few years have addressed both challenges, adding a whole new world of opportunity, connection, and social interaction in the process.
Both sites, Flickr and YouTube, are well beyond mere dumping grounds for photos and video content. They are social networking systems, designed to encourage users not only to post their content and browse the content of others, but to connect, comment, and cluster the content of others in a hundred different ways.
Flickr
Flickr is a photo-sharing site with both free and ''pro'' account options. An upgrade to the "pro" account gives you unlimited storage, uploads, and the like for about $2 per month. Best to try the free account until you know you need more. Essentially, Flickr is a bundle of software and web scripts that help you upload digital photos to your account (through a web browser, by e-mail, or even from your photo-ready mobile phone), and then add elements to those photos like captions, text, tags, and keywords. You can invite anyone to view your photos, or you can limit access to a select group.
The cool part comes once the photos have been posted. Flickr has features to help you share your photos with friends and colleagues, and to view the updated photo streams of your friends as well. If you open up your photos to the world, then a whole world of users can find your images, comment on them, subscribe to your photo stream, or add you as a "buddy."
Having such a large user base contributing and browsing images makes Flickr an addictive place to visit, with photo galleries of the ''most interesting'' images on the site ("interestingness" is determined by how many links, comments, tags, and visits an image gets each day), and connections with amateur and professional photographers.
As a socially active site, Flickr is also an obvious ground for marketing people, events, shows, and other entertainments, which makes it a natural place to advance your organization, your artist, or your events. Imagine creating a Flickr account for your performing arts venue or your artist agency, posting promotional photos as well as images from the most recent events and performances. Flickr offers easy ways to include your evolving photo stream in your own web site, on weblogs, or anywhere else on the web. And the effective use of image tags ensures that your events or your artists show up on major search engines like Google.
For an example, check out the Flickr account of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.
YouTube
On the heels of Flickr came YouTube, a web site and system that does many of the same things, but with full-motion digital video. Users can post digital video to their free account, adding captions, descriptions, and keyword tags, and also view and connect the videos of others.
The synergy of this idea made YouTube the site to watch in 2006, as user-generated videos flowed in surrounding major news stories (London bombings, Hurricane Katrina), often with more speed and depth than network news could manage. The low barriers to entry also made YouTube a massive cultural phenomenon, with the rise of "video bloggers" (individuals posting video diaries of their lives, their opinions, and their creative expressions) and social networks built around favorite funny videos or long-lost film -- think America's Funniest Home Videos, on steroids.
For the arts presenter, manager, or artist, YouTube offers opportunities that were, until recently, too expensive and complex to consider. With a YouTube account, any arts presenter, manager, or independent artist can post videos for the world to see -- demo songs, performance excerpts, guided tours of a facility, video interviews with artists, and on and on. And as with Flickr, once content is posted, it can be dynamically included on your own organization's web site, promoted through e-mail, and linked to a larger world of arts lovers, business colleagues, or enthusiasts.
Already, Hollywood studios are posting movie trailers on YouTube, encouraging fans to spread the word about upcoming releases (remember Snakes on a Plane?...sorry if you do). Imagine a similar network of artist performance excerpts, interviews, and documentary footage, all connected to performing arts organization web sites at no cost to the agent, the artist, or the presenter.
A Caveat about Copyright
As Flickr and YouTube have grown, so has the challenge of protecting copyrighted creative work. Still images and moving images with sound often have complex ownership issues. And just because you have a digital copy of something, doesn't give you the right to post it for the wider world to see.
So, as you dip your toe into the content-sharing worlds of these two sites, be sure you have the rights or the express permission of the various owners of the content to post their work (the composer, the artist, the designer, the producer, the union, and anyone else who played a role in creating the image or video content).
Sharing is a wonderful thing. But you can only share what's yours.
[Ed note - for those visiting YouTube for the first time and wondering where to start browsing, Terry Teachout has compiled a wonderfully absorbing index of hundreds of amazing performances uploaded onto YouTube including Maria Callas, Louis Armstrong, Blossom Dearie, Edward Elgar, Leadbelly, Astor Piazzolla, Frank Zappa, and Stevie Wonder, among many many others. Just follow the link and scroll down nearly to the bottom and look on the right.]
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blogs. Show all posts
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Untangle the World Wide Web with RSS
There will be more on RSS posted in the future - how to set it up for your own site, reviews of news aggregators (such as Netvibes). But in the meantime, below is a great article from Reuters about RSS that ran December 29th.
Untangle the World Wide Web with RSS
From Reuters, December 29, 2006
By Robert MacMillan
“RSS” is one of the coolest things you’ve never heard of when it comes to the Internet.
Short for “Really Simple Syndication,” a name that seems designed to induce maximum eye glazing, RSS is in fact one of the best time-savers online. And it’s getting easier to use.
RSS is a way for Web surfers to keep up with the latest news or catch hot deals on travel packages, concert tickets and nearly anything else people use the Internet to buy.
Instead of typing in 20 different Web site addresses every time you want to see what’s new on washingtonpost.com, craigslist.org or your cousin’s blog, just get “RSS feeds.” Every time a page updates, you get an alert.
Media blogger Jeff Jarvis is one of the converted.
“I don’t use bookmarks at all, ever,” said Jarvis, who offers RSS as a way to read his blog at Buzzmachine.com. “If a site doesn’t have RSS, I find it a great irritant.”
RSS comes in handy in a variety of everyday situations, said Forrester analyst Charlene Li.
“I’m currently looking for tickets for The Jersey Boys,” she said. “And it’s completely sold out. But every once in a while something shows up on Craigslist.”
Instead of constantly checking Craigslist, Li sets up an RSS feed searching for four tickets, and if someone posts an ad for tickets, the feed will alert her.
LITTLE ORANGE BUTTONS
So, why are so few people using it?
Only 2 percent of online consumers bother, according to Forrester, and more than half of that group is 40 years old or younger.
For starters, the name is deadly for attracting “average” Internet users — people who use the Web and handle e-mail, but quail at inscrutabilities like “service-oriented architecture” and “robust enterprise solutions.”
Then there are the orange buttons you find on Web pages. Clicking one produces a jumble of computer codes. It’s hardly the path to popularity.
“RSS is a horrible name,” said Li. “And those little orange buttons don’t do anybody any favors.”
People often do not realize that the computer code is useless. What they must do is copy the Web address in their browser, and insert it into their RSS reader. The lack of clear instructions on many Web sites dooms the service to obscurity.
Some of the top U.S. news Web sites are changing that, including The New York Times site.
The site’s managers plan to offer readers feeds dedicated to topics, reporters and columnists sometime in the first half of 2007, but in an easier way.
“Once we start doing that, you won’t get that very geeky screen,” said Robert Larson, nytimes.com’s vice president of product management and development.
“It should be incredibly easy for anybody, no matter what their technical level, to click a button and add a feed to their MyTimes page,” he said.
Washingtonpost.com is sprucing up its RSS system for sometime in early 2007, said Ann Marchand Thompson, the site’s editor for discussions, e-mail and RSS.
“We want to let people sign up for the news that they want to receive without having to feel like they need a technical background to do it,” she said. “They don’t need to know the code behind it.”
Getting RSS going on your computer is also simpler today. The two easiest ways are using newer version of the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers, which contain RSS readers.
Yahoo and Google also offer easy-to-use RSS options. Specialized RSS readers like Bloglines and Newsgator are slightly more sophisticated and take a little more experimentation, but are tough to put down once you get the hang of them.
Untangle the World Wide Web with RSS
From Reuters, December 29, 2006
By Robert MacMillan
“RSS” is one of the coolest things you’ve never heard of when it comes to the Internet.
Short for “Really Simple Syndication,” a name that seems designed to induce maximum eye glazing, RSS is in fact one of the best time-savers online. And it’s getting easier to use.
RSS is a way for Web surfers to keep up with the latest news or catch hot deals on travel packages, concert tickets and nearly anything else people use the Internet to buy.
Instead of typing in 20 different Web site addresses every time you want to see what’s new on washingtonpost.com, craigslist.org or your cousin’s blog, just get “RSS feeds.” Every time a page updates, you get an alert.
Media blogger Jeff Jarvis is one of the converted.
“I don’t use bookmarks at all, ever,” said Jarvis, who offers RSS as a way to read his blog at Buzzmachine.com. “If a site doesn’t have RSS, I find it a great irritant.”
RSS comes in handy in a variety of everyday situations, said Forrester analyst Charlene Li.
“I’m currently looking for tickets for The Jersey Boys,” she said. “And it’s completely sold out. But every once in a while something shows up on Craigslist.”
Instead of constantly checking Craigslist, Li sets up an RSS feed searching for four tickets, and if someone posts an ad for tickets, the feed will alert her.
LITTLE ORANGE BUTTONS
So, why are so few people using it?
Only 2 percent of online consumers bother, according to Forrester, and more than half of that group is 40 years old or younger.
For starters, the name is deadly for attracting “average” Internet users — people who use the Web and handle e-mail, but quail at inscrutabilities like “service-oriented architecture” and “robust enterprise solutions.”
Then there are the orange buttons you find on Web pages. Clicking one produces a jumble of computer codes. It’s hardly the path to popularity.
“RSS is a horrible name,” said Li. “And those little orange buttons don’t do anybody any favors.”
People often do not realize that the computer code is useless. What they must do is copy the Web address in their browser, and insert it into their RSS reader. The lack of clear instructions on many Web sites dooms the service to obscurity.
Some of the top U.S. news Web sites are changing that, including The New York Times site.
The site’s managers plan to offer readers feeds dedicated to topics, reporters and columnists sometime in the first half of 2007, but in an easier way.
“Once we start doing that, you won’t get that very geeky screen,” said Robert Larson, nytimes.com’s vice president of product management and development.
“It should be incredibly easy for anybody, no matter what their technical level, to click a button and add a feed to their MyTimes page,” he said.
Washingtonpost.com is sprucing up its RSS system for sometime in early 2007, said Ann Marchand Thompson, the site’s editor for discussions, e-mail and RSS.
“We want to let people sign up for the news that they want to receive without having to feel like they need a technical background to do it,” she said. “They don’t need to know the code behind it.”
Getting RSS going on your computer is also simpler today. The two easiest ways are using newer version of the Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers, which contain RSS readers.
Yahoo and Google also offer easy-to-use RSS options. Specialized RSS readers like Bloglines and Newsgator are slightly more sophisticated and take a little more experimentation, but are tough to put down once you get the hang of them.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Is This Really Helping Us? Mp3 blogs and the sublime chaos of online music
2006 has been a big year for music. Everything is changing so fast that it’s hard to know what’s a fad and what’s a fundamental shift in the way musicians and fans do business. Myspace seems ubiquitous. YouTube has made celebrities out of nobodies. Mp3 blogs are everywhere, and now they are all being archived and aggregated. Microsoft has entered the mp3 player fray, and what the hell is a mog? The New York rock scene is burgeoning, and the RIAA is kicking and screaming and scrambling for any penny it can find.
The question that I hope to answer is how, out of all of this confusion and over-saturation, do musicians stand to benefit? Call me an anarchist, but as a composer I can’t help feeling intensely optimistic about the chaos surrounding music this year. And here’s why:
Among musicians and record executives alike there is an idea that people have a limited amount of room in their lives for music. (So by extension, access to free music will fill some if not all of that space). The problem with this is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that digital music isn’t just changing music, it’s also seriously changing us. The fact that iPods create instant and random access to vast music collections, and that google and myspace create instant access to artists and their music means to me that musical “meta-geography” is drastically compressed. We get more music in less time and less space. But what does that mean?
1. Music is worth less now that the supply lines are so vastly broadened.
2. Fans know about more artists and are connected online to the artists they like.
3. Fans are more connected to musicians’ touring schedules, merchandise and videos.
4. Mp3 Blogs, podcasts, and web radio have created a host of new ways for musicians to get their music to an audience.
5. Internet users are becoming more knowledgeable about music because they hold more artists in their heads (and iPods/computers) at once. Just as how multi-disc CD players made extended and randomized listening possible, digital/online music has taken that plurality to a new extreme.
I won’t argue that this is all good news for major record labels and their artists. Those corporations depend to a certain degree on a uniformity of taste to skyrocket their profits. And the uniformity of taste is in a downward spiral. From the New York Times (December 11, 2006):
“Consumer fickleness has become evident on the Billboard charts, where the old blockbuster album appears to be a dying breed. More titles have come and gone from the No. 1 place on the magazine’s national album sales chart this year than in any other year since the industry began computerized tracking of sales in 1991. Analysts say that reflects the lackluster staying power even among songs in demand.”
I would call this “fickleness” a new plurality in global taste. I'd also call it good news. It’s not that people are listening to less music. It’s that people don’t depend as much on the record labels and Clear Channel to tell them what to buy. Now they can go on iTunes or eMusic and preview the album before they buy it. They can go to Hype Machine or elbo.ws to link to reviews/downloads and hear tracks, or go to an artist’s myspace page. And for the independent recording artists this is huge because they can now compete. The fact is that all of these new avenues are crawling with talented independent acts, which the record industry has managed to keep out of big radio and record shops for decades.
Of course there are problems:
1. A lot of mp3 blogs are just trying to get traffic (and adsense dollars), so they post whatever is buzzing on hype-machine and feed a kind of hyped conformity.
2. Many people are using Mp3 blogs to freeload tracks. (But I think all of that is actually reifying the value and meaning of “The Album” which is rarely posted in its entirety. And in my opinion most artists that aren’t already on a major label benefit from some free downloads of their tracks. I argue that some one would be more likely to see you live, buy your album, pass you along, if they’ve gotten a good taste of your music for free.)
3. Most Mp3 blogs are focused on one sector of taste: indie-rock. So the hip-hop, classical, folk, electronic, experimental, blogs might need to sprout their own hype machines so that their posts aren’t drowned out by Mp3-hunters/bloggers feverishly hunting for the next not-so-big-big-thing in indie rock.
4. The iTunes model of a paid download with restricted sharing capabilities is fading. CDs are things still worth buying and mp3s are everywhere for free, so why buy an mp3 that you can’t share?
So how can independent musicians use the new landscape of digital music promotion?
Find the blogs, podcasts, online zines and web radio programs that feature the kind of music you play. These blogs are always looking for new music, but case them first. I’d say, again, that the majority of Mp3 blogs right now are dedicated to alternative and indie rock. But there are blogs dedicated to hip-hop, dance, electronic, world, folk, experimental, classical, eclectic, country, etc. (post suggestions for non-indie rock blogs in comments), and most of the "indie-rock" blogs are open to many types of music. Read them and take note of what they request of musicians submitting their music. Many have disclaimers like this one from Said the Gramophone “if you would like to say hello, find out our mailing addresses or invite us to shows, please get in touch: (emails here) please don't send us emails with tons of huge attachments,” or this amazing one from Confessions of a Music Addict. Be respectful, send smart and well put together emails, don’t spam and maybe you’ll get some bloggers to check out your CD, come to a show, write a review or post a few Mp3s.
Hype-Machine and elbo.ws are Mp3 blog aggregators, which means they archive the blog reviews and postings that your band receives. These are sites that actually keep track of the kind of press which was previously way under the radar. Of course if your band starts to get serious buzz from blogs, hype-machine will be great help, but that’s kind of like saying if you jump in the lake you’ll be wet.
It remains to be seen what a site like Hype-Machine will contribute to independent musicians’ struggle to connect with people who will like and support them. Hype Machine and friends have helped to fuel the frenzies around bands like Beirut et al but I don’t think the 20 year old who runs it has totally considered the way it’s shaping the hype that it wants to track.
Yet I’m still optimistic.
I’m optimistic that people all over the world are activating their own music tastes so much that they are creating serious new media force with mp3 blogs.
I’m optimistic that access to music has become so rapid online that if I want to hear the new Joanna Newsom album I can do it in one second.
I’m optimistic because even after listening to the whole thing on hype-machine I still couldn’t resist buying the album at a small record store in Greensboro.
I’m optimistic that a lot of musicians aren’t being so precious about when and where they are releasing their music. Leaking tracks to blogs and posting works in progress on myspace all draws fans in more and let’s people into the process in a great way.
I’m optimistic that musicians seem to be giving away their music more and more but also seem all the more hopeful about their chances at making a life out of music. I don’t think it’s false hope. The fact that the RIAA is hysterical about falling profits is good news for all the artists who have been and will be shut out of the Major Label Machine. The Internet is allowing those artists to market and distribute a lot more freely and effectively. The Internet is also making it more likely that the average Joe might listen to an independent act.
And finally I think that the more music people listen to the more variety and creativity they’ll desire. So the fact that more music is fitting into the same space in peoples’ lives is good news for anyone making music that is less than conventionally marketable. I hope that the chaos and innovation of online music culture actually goes hand in hand with more chaos and innovation in music making.
www.musicisfreenow.org
further reading:
Mp3 blogs Sell Out!
The Boston Globe on Mp3 Blogs
CNN Money on the Hype Machine
A summary of mp3 blog legality
Music is free now and here's why
How to Misuse the Hype Machine
Mp3 blog list on Hype-Machine
The question that I hope to answer is how, out of all of this confusion and over-saturation, do musicians stand to benefit? Call me an anarchist, but as a composer I can’t help feeling intensely optimistic about the chaos surrounding music this year. And here’s why:
Among musicians and record executives alike there is an idea that people have a limited amount of room in their lives for music. (So by extension, access to free music will fill some if not all of that space). The problem with this is that it doesn’t take into account the fact that digital music isn’t just changing music, it’s also seriously changing us. The fact that iPods create instant and random access to vast music collections, and that google and myspace create instant access to artists and their music means to me that musical “meta-geography” is drastically compressed. We get more music in less time and less space. But what does that mean?
1. Music is worth less now that the supply lines are so vastly broadened.
2. Fans know about more artists and are connected online to the artists they like.
3. Fans are more connected to musicians’ touring schedules, merchandise and videos.
4. Mp3 Blogs, podcasts, and web radio have created a host of new ways for musicians to get their music to an audience.
5. Internet users are becoming more knowledgeable about music because they hold more artists in their heads (and iPods/computers) at once. Just as how multi-disc CD players made extended and randomized listening possible, digital/online music has taken that plurality to a new extreme.
I won’t argue that this is all good news for major record labels and their artists. Those corporations depend to a certain degree on a uniformity of taste to skyrocket their profits. And the uniformity of taste is in a downward spiral. From the New York Times (December 11, 2006):
“Consumer fickleness has become evident on the Billboard charts, where the old blockbuster album appears to be a dying breed. More titles have come and gone from the No. 1 place on the magazine’s national album sales chart this year than in any other year since the industry began computerized tracking of sales in 1991. Analysts say that reflects the lackluster staying power even among songs in demand.”
I would call this “fickleness” a new plurality in global taste. I'd also call it good news. It’s not that people are listening to less music. It’s that people don’t depend as much on the record labels and Clear Channel to tell them what to buy. Now they can go on iTunes or eMusic and preview the album before they buy it. They can go to Hype Machine or elbo.ws to link to reviews/downloads and hear tracks, or go to an artist’s myspace page. And for the independent recording artists this is huge because they can now compete. The fact is that all of these new avenues are crawling with talented independent acts, which the record industry has managed to keep out of big radio and record shops for decades.
Of course there are problems:
1. A lot of mp3 blogs are just trying to get traffic (and adsense dollars), so they post whatever is buzzing on hype-machine and feed a kind of hyped conformity.
2. Many people are using Mp3 blogs to freeload tracks. (But I think all of that is actually reifying the value and meaning of “The Album” which is rarely posted in its entirety. And in my opinion most artists that aren’t already on a major label benefit from some free downloads of their tracks. I argue that some one would be more likely to see you live, buy your album, pass you along, if they’ve gotten a good taste of your music for free.)
3. Most Mp3 blogs are focused on one sector of taste: indie-rock. So the hip-hop, classical, folk, electronic, experimental, blogs might need to sprout their own hype machines so that their posts aren’t drowned out by Mp3-hunters/bloggers feverishly hunting for the next not-so-big-big-thing in indie rock.
4. The iTunes model of a paid download with restricted sharing capabilities is fading. CDs are things still worth buying and mp3s are everywhere for free, so why buy an mp3 that you can’t share?
So how can independent musicians use the new landscape of digital music promotion?
Find the blogs, podcasts, online zines and web radio programs that feature the kind of music you play. These blogs are always looking for new music, but case them first. I’d say, again, that the majority of Mp3 blogs right now are dedicated to alternative and indie rock. But there are blogs dedicated to hip-hop, dance, electronic, world, folk, experimental, classical, eclectic, country, etc. (post suggestions for non-indie rock blogs in comments), and most of the "indie-rock" blogs are open to many types of music. Read them and take note of what they request of musicians submitting their music. Many have disclaimers like this one from Said the Gramophone “if you would like to say hello, find out our mailing addresses or invite us to shows, please get in touch: (emails here) please don't send us emails with tons of huge attachments,” or this amazing one from Confessions of a Music Addict. Be respectful, send smart and well put together emails, don’t spam and maybe you’ll get some bloggers to check out your CD, come to a show, write a review or post a few Mp3s.
Hype-Machine and elbo.ws are Mp3 blog aggregators, which means they archive the blog reviews and postings that your band receives. These are sites that actually keep track of the kind of press which was previously way under the radar. Of course if your band starts to get serious buzz from blogs, hype-machine will be great help, but that’s kind of like saying if you jump in the lake you’ll be wet.
It remains to be seen what a site like Hype-Machine will contribute to independent musicians’ struggle to connect with people who will like and support them. Hype Machine and friends have helped to fuel the frenzies around bands like Beirut et al but I don’t think the 20 year old who runs it has totally considered the way it’s shaping the hype that it wants to track.
Yet I’m still optimistic.
I’m optimistic that people all over the world are activating their own music tastes so much that they are creating serious new media force with mp3 blogs.
I’m optimistic that access to music has become so rapid online that if I want to hear the new Joanna Newsom album I can do it in one second.
I’m optimistic because even after listening to the whole thing on hype-machine I still couldn’t resist buying the album at a small record store in Greensboro.
I’m optimistic that a lot of musicians aren’t being so precious about when and where they are releasing their music. Leaking tracks to blogs and posting works in progress on myspace all draws fans in more and let’s people into the process in a great way.
I’m optimistic that musicians seem to be giving away their music more and more but also seem all the more hopeful about their chances at making a life out of music. I don’t think it’s false hope. The fact that the RIAA is hysterical about falling profits is good news for all the artists who have been and will be shut out of the Major Label Machine. The Internet is allowing those artists to market and distribute a lot more freely and effectively. The Internet is also making it more likely that the average Joe might listen to an independent act.
And finally I think that the more music people listen to the more variety and creativity they’ll desire. So the fact that more music is fitting into the same space in peoples’ lives is good news for anyone making music that is less than conventionally marketable. I hope that the chaos and innovation of online music culture actually goes hand in hand with more chaos and innovation in music making.
www.musicisfreenow.org
further reading:
Mp3 blogs Sell Out!
The Boston Globe on Mp3 Blogs
CNN Money on the Hype Machine
A summary of mp3 blog legality
Music is free now and here's why
How to Misuse the Hype Machine
Mp3 blog list on Hype-Machine
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