Disqus - Latest Comments for Komuso Tokugawa

Re: How to handily tell tech bloggers to STFU

Komuso Tokugawa — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 11:50:17 -0000

I always thought they should be called twit-ers...

Re: State of Music Now | BBluesman/Mark Forman

Komuso Tokugawa — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:20:37 -0000

Interesting and some valid observations/conversations.

"Whether they were really wearing underwear or any article of clothing is superfluous-the key point is it was perceived that way. It was perceived as too easy, hence limited value of the art performed and experienced."

No, YOU perceived it that way;-) And then you left;-))
Your opinion on this is no less valid than Morris Vig's opposing one here:
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/02/weekend-open-f... (not to beat my own drum, but thanks Mr V)

Despite the drama's inherent in the "SL Music Scene" there are quite a number of us who just keep playing and connecting with true fans one by one, as Lefstez would say - whether by twitter, sl, vw's, facebook or whatever.

The Record Industry is Dead, Long Live the Music Industry...more on this to come;-)

Re: State of Music Now | BBluesman/Mark Forman

Komuso Tokugawa — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 21:52:06 -0000

oh...and here's another viewpoint from the SL gigs I did with Moshang:
"he finds the time to come in-world and, together with MoShang Zhao, put on the chillest events I'd never imagined possible."
http://npirl.blogspot.com/2008/01/synaesthasia-...
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/02/bettinas-choi-...

Re: State of Music Now | BBluesman/Mark Forman

Komuso Tokugawa — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:14:52 -0000

The "problem" with many musicians in SL with regards to the business side (ie: money and "fame" as the primary motivations for playing music) can be pretty much summed up by JJ's article here: http://www.sparklefox.com/advice-music-1.html

I quote:
"The sad truth is most musicians today won't work that hard. They erroneously believe that the public should accept whatever they do and make little effort to win over audiences. And the major labels are only interested in a quick buck, they won't develop an artist. Why are the sounds of yesterday dominating today? Because the current state of the music industry is a sad reflection of America's general decline, our culture of instant gratification- corporate greed on one hand and the childish notion that success should be automatic on the other. Nobody wants to work hard to earn something of lasting value."

sl is rl is sl etc etc

Anyone who aspires to rise above competency in ANY field and aspire to high level performance has to be motivated beyond the mere extrinsic motivation of finance. This not to say that finance is not important and is obviously a key business metric (among others) for the successful indie musician - real or virtual. Some people in SL make the amounts you say, some less, some more, some charge ridiculous sums to play in what is a developing economy, others are free. Don't assume anything without knowledge would be my advice;-)

re: motivation
There are many books that cover this area (and no, Malcom Gladwell did not invent with the 10000 theory of field mastery, he lifted it from many years of research in the studies of performance analysis and psych - will someone please tell Lefstez this!)

Enhancing Trader Performance: Proven Strategies From the Cutting Edge of Trading Psychology. is an excellent book relevant to anyone who wishes to know more about the process of developing mastery and motivation in any field. It's focused on trading but he draws on many fields to illustrate.
http://www.amazon.com/Enhancing-Trader-Performa...

Back in my dim dark past I was once a world champion skydiver, competing in three world championships for Australia, and from personal experience in that field know a little about the topic;-)

Re: State of Music Now | BBluesman/Mark Forman

Komuso Tokugawa — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:04:20 -0000

re: The biz aspect I'm writing a white paper atm on exactly this topic.

As I finished the above post I literally just got this in my inbox, so hot off the http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/ it's not even archived on his site yet.

What can I say but...he gets it;-))

"We've got a clean slate. Don't try to reach everybody, because everybody isn't interested. Don't care if the A&R man doesn't hear a single, just worry if you've got an audience that wants to hear your music. Don't focus on your SoundScan number, but your bottom line. How many t-shirts did you sell. How many deluxe packages. You've got to get people into the gig so you can sell them other shit. It's no different from a supermarket putting cheap items by the cash register. That's where you are, that's where you check out!

So the deafening roar of complaints by the oldsters should be completely ignored. The glory days are never coming back, certainly not in the old way. The major labels are marginalizing themselves, by clinging to the model of distributing hit product, when hit product is almost an oxymoron. Unless you sell the ones and twos, unless you're in the marginal world, you're screwed. It's kind of like Google. Imagine if they only provided a few searchable sites, and were looking for people to pay ten bucks for a direct hit. That's the model of the music business. Whereas Google serves everybody, exactly what they want, and makes its money on servicing a zillion niches. Everybody doesn't click on the same ad, you just click on what you want to.

Will someone roll up the acts to his and their advantage? That's Irving Azoff's play. That's what the merger is about. Is it the only way out? Of course not. But the alternative starts at the grass roots. With bands that generate followings. And finding a way to monetize those followings. Irving's a sexagenarian. The twentysomethings will inherit this business. But so many would rather work in Silicon Valley, the odds of success, the number of zeros on the paycheck, are so much higher...

I don't want you to believe in your record. I want other people to. And they come to music not by being hyped, not by being marketed to, but by word of mouth. It's a whole new paradigm. Radio broadcasting is a dying medium, just like network TV. Oh, there's still a business there, but it's not the future.

The handwriting is on the wall. Don't be dazzled by what's on TMZ, most of those people don't make any money. Don't look for an advance. Just look to make music so good that when someone hears it, they need to tell others about it.

How many people are going to tell their friends about Prince's new album? None. No one has hipped me to a new Prince track in fifteen years. The release of his album is a dead end. He's abused our trust. When you e-mail me an unsolicited track you abuse my trust. When you add me to your mailing list without asking first, you abuse my trust. When you focus on marketing as opposed to music, you've got your head up your ass."

Re: State of Music Now | BBluesman/Mark Forman

Komuso Tokugawa — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:05:39 -0000

no;-))

Re: State of Music Now | BBluesman/Mark Forman

Komuso Tokugawa — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 23:34:16 -0000

I like your new photo style btw. What you using?

Re: Second Life, Meet The Social Web

Komuso Tokugawa — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:51:38 -0000

It's true that the real force driving the virtual live performance experience is a primal need for "Connectivity" while the art itself (music, interactive, or whatever) is to some degree secondary. It is the context within which the need is fulfilled.

Connectivity + Context = "KIller App"

There is no cookie cutter checklist in order to implement this as the new breed artist who has the artistic/social and technical skills can create infinite experiential variations for their 24x7 globally distributed/connected virtual tribe, but it's a no brainer that certain pieces of the underlying infrastructure need to be available in order to fully actualize and capitalize on the emerging possibilities.

Linden Lab continually drops the ball in this regard, and putting a virtual boxed product manager on the job just confirms his (however competent CL is in general, which he seems to be more than).

LL has had more than enough feedback with regards to enhancement to the social infrastructure tools needed to enable a solid tribal connectivity experience, and also on the technical side for context (standard graphics interchange formats, standardised avatar rigging/animation controls, interactive audio/midi system, etc etc)

Maybe their new web interface integration will implement some of these issues. Maybe not.

With their apparent focus on 3D enterprise technology and service provision (beyond the Hosting and community freesourcing model that has made them profitable so far) you would think that anyone with half a brain in LL would understand that the same connectivity needs/tools that exist for new breed artists are also fundamental to the needs/requirements of the new breed agile business that will rely on the 3D web as part of their core infrastructure.

As we see more viable competition in this space, open source or commercial or combination, evaluating their offering on the connectivity dimension will be one of the key criteria.

Onwards and Upwards!
PC.KT

Re: Second Life, Meet The Social Web

Komuso Tokugawa — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:04:59 -0000

& for the record I believe that genuine "True Fan" Connective Tribal Ties are a Lifestyle Strong Tie, not weak;-)

Re: Second Life, Meet The Social Web

Komuso Tokugawa — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 22:19:36 -0000

Sure, you need to have a robust weak tie infrastructure for enabling bidirectional Artist/Fan discovery and exploration, but it's the strong ties that bind!
(aaaaarrrrrrrrghhh- could not resist a chance for a bad pun;-)

Re: Long Live The RIAA?

Komuso Tokugawa — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 13:07:58 -0000

This is a very good topic, but I'm not sure it's all to do with RIAA.

Read this research paper titled "Is the price of recorded music heading towards zero?"
http://www.mcps-prs-alliance.co.uk/whatshappeni...

from Will Page of MCPS-PRS, the UKs version of ASCAP. It's a little dry to read, but it explains in economic terms what you have highlighted and possible solutions, at least from the perspective of a rights collecting agency - which gives you the link to RIAA I guess, but there is more to it than that.

The basic premise is that music is becoming little more than a commodity [duh!], and as such the value in the music business in the future will be in the services that surround the music and the performance of the music itself not the formats in which its delivered [ie:cd, mp3 etc etc].

A combination of factors technological and social have also combined in a lot of cases to cause people to even perceive live music as being of little value. Opportunities for playing live in rl have shrunk in most countries due to the above factors.

The live music scene in the emerging metaverse, such as sl, does provide new performance opportunities and income potential but it is very early days and time to experiment. It's also a micro-payments mindset at the moment, so you have to be open-minded and flexible. I also have my own views on this area but that's an evolving topic for my metaverse music blog -> http://www.sonicviz.com/blogs/

I think giving away a certain amount of your work is the only way to get some marketing traction in such a crowded commodity market. There are many ways to do this, as you have identified. However, giving away everything for free, if you are a pro/semi-pro doing it for a living, may not be a wise move either tho considering the way people generally look at value, but that would depend on a lot of factors I think.
Personal branding, community building and relations, how you actually make money from performing and tie ins, etc etc.

And giving it away for free does not mean signing your rights away in one sided contracts in the hope you may get "discovered" via "exposure", as the recent farce with SLCC07 live music has turned into. These sort of deals are written to advantage people keen to maintain the old paradigm of control over artists, especially artists still under the illusion that if they can just get discovered they will be a "star". If you think this way you not only fail to understand how the record industry fundamentally works [or doesn't as the case is now], but also fail to understand how the media and general entertainment industry machines work. You need to educate yourself as to how they do so that anytime you need to sign something you are fully aware of the risks and rewards and have judged them accurately, not clutched at a hollow straw in desperation.

You now have all the tools at your own disposal to get out there. The downside is, even if you are good, you may have to be satisfied with the fact that your market may not be as big as you think it should be;-)

Welcome to the niche market century!

Re: Long Live The RIAA?

Komuso Tokugawa — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 13:21:28 -0000

And good link Rich...http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/icst/icst-6/icst-6-full.html in on the right track.

Especially in relation to SL and the emerging new virtual performance mediums, given they are micropayment economies and may remain so, at least in some respects, for a while to come.

Gotta start somewhere and the best place for a musician is playing live and connecting with people I think. Live music isn't dead, its just evolved.

Good Copy Bad Copy http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7522 also has some interesting points on this.

Re: Long Live The RIAA?

Komuso Tokugawa — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 20:27:50 -0000

Actually there are some possible flaws with the Magnatune model.

The biggest one is their manual submission and filtering process.
It is scaleable only to a certain point, due to the following.

I asked John Buckman about this, at a web 2.0 conference in Tokyo a few months back, in relation to the next point, and he agreed that even their system was based in part on an old model if I recall correctly - and could be done differently if it was implemented now.

One of the hottest trends in music at the moment, tho not on everybody's radar, is music recommendation services. These can range from simple user playlist sharing to sophisticated taste recommendation services combining playlist sharing and sophisticated Artificial Intelligence algorithms to parse huge music audio fingerprint databases like http://www.musicip.com/

Due to information overload we are experiencing on all levels I predict you will find more and more people turning to systems like this, combinations of personal trust systems and automated analysis/recommendation, to filter the mass of content out there. The old model of "exposure" via mainstream media as the only path to success is failing both due to overload and the fact that people, to a large degree, do not trust what they see in the media.

2d/3d Social networks mean people can build customised trust networks to get filtered content they believe in and not have to rely on thinly disguised advertising such as the tradition media "article" system has been ie: payola for play or write still exists.

Which probably makes http://www.bob-baker.com/musicpromotionblog/200...
a very timely topic:-) [tho one of the commenters has a very good point also in relation to songwriters, but that is a different career path from musician really]

Re: Long Live The RIAA?

Komuso Tokugawa — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 13:02:35 -0000

"Ive always liked the idea that you could record a song one night at a show and upload it and set a price to start selling it as soon as possible with the music going right into your pocket. I have yet to see that happen."

I've done this but not charged, free giveaway.

I also released a live recording policy of CC 3.0 by-nd-nc on my website ages ago
http://www.sonicviz.com/music/members/6/blog.php that releases the users to record their own "album" live and bypass the selling/download stage. Trust them to pay you, if not now at some point in the future maybe. And they may share it which is free marketing.

They do it anyway, may as well go with it because you sure ain't gonna fight it.
It gets back to my first post about the value not being in the download anyway, and you always have the option to release higher quality recordings for sale later.

Re: Long Live The RIAA?

Komuso Tokugawa — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:03:19 -0000

Any thoughts on today's column from Lefsetz? [always entertaining, and to the point]
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives...

Re: Piano music - play while answering email

Komuso Tokugawa — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 08:58:49 -0000

http://www.silenceofmusic.com/

Re: [OLB] How to report bugs better

Komuso Tokugawa — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 10:59:12 -0000

Good post.

Just so you know I'm not all Mr Negative Jira poster coz my groups don't work properly still [arrrrrrrrghhh;-(] I had a nice experience testing Voice Busking the SL Main Grid -> http://www.sonicviz.com/blogs/index.php?catid=4...

Early days, but going to be interesting.

kt