String Theory Media

Selling CDs without the CDs

I saw my friend Kyle the bass player at a party on Saturday night (my god that was five days ago) and he had some interesting things to say about marketing music from the point of view of his employer, the fabulous Americana/folk singer-songwriter and fiddler Carrie Rodriguez.

His observation: at show after show, fans who are about forty years old and up buy CDs at the merch table in great numbers. Those under 40 much more rarely. He doesn't think this is because Carrie's sound has any kind of age-specific appeal (I don't think it does, and Carrie is a babe in her 20s, for the record). It's because, we both believe, Gen Y doesn't want CDs.

His idea, or at least an idea he picked up in the traffic of the music biz: sleeves on the merch table with a distinctive piece of original art, full liner notes and song information, and a download code for the album printed in the back, priced at say two thirds the price of the CD. The cost of trying this idea would be almost negligible, and you could invite fans' contributions to the design and art on the tactile part of the purchase. It's easy to imagine people collecting albums of keepsake liner notes, or just taking them home like a concert program. And it would be no big deal if a buyer used the booklet only to access the download and discarded it. The point is you've given the fan another option at the merch table and increased the points of contact with the consumer.

Kyle is urging Carrie's record label (an EMI imprint which I don't recall offhand) to try this CD without the CD experiment. We'll see if a major label is willing to listen to a bass player.

By the way, do be sure to check out Carrie Rodriquez's solo debut "Seven Angels On A Bicycle." It's really fantastic.

Music in Second Life

I'm only beginning to get familiar with the huge world inside Second Life, but on my way I reported this story which aired today on WPLN:

During the recent 25th anniversary celebration of the Bluebird Café, the famous songwriter's venue became a test case in the ever-changing digital music business. Country star Dierks Bentley performed for a packed room at the real Bluebird, while simultaneously appearing at a computer-generated Bluebird in the virtual world known as Second Life. WPLN's Craig Havighurst reports. Click HERE for the audio stream of the story.

Big picture, meaning of life, etc. etc.

The best-of-times/worst-of-times quality of today’s media and art is almost shockingly paradoxical: More participation and creation than ever, but agonizingly diffuse attention on the best and brightest. More vacant, banal, hyperactive and tawdry entertainment options than ever in history, but probably the best-written, best-produced television ever as well. News is largely a disaster (I’d wager there are more serious musicians working at serious music in America than serious news reporters doing excellent work), but blogs are becoming society’s watchdog, and documentaries have never been stronger.

Somewhere in between these opposites, where the commercially viable meets the communally valuable, is culture, that slippery but vital idea that seems always on the verge of being snuffed out. And for me, music is the very signifier of culture, the uber-art, the one with the most facets, the most entry points, the greatest accessibility and participation factor. As goes music, so go we the people, is how I tend to think of it. I’m sorry to say it, but if painting or one-man plays just vanished and nobody did them for fifty years, I’d be dismayed but not distraught. Music, however, is on par with food and oxygen.

What brought that on, you may be asking. The answer is a blog-based conversation going on all this week at the beloved ArtsJournal.com news site called “Engaging Art.” After the jump is my slap-dash summary (posted just now to the UNCOVERED blog) of the first slate of speakers at the live session on the issue being held right now at the American Symphony Orchestra League. It’s a timely and vital forum. Check it out.

Something New from STM and the NCO

String Theory Media is proud to announce a new partnership with the NCO, in which we will produce and manage the behind-the-scenes content for its new UNCOVERED project, which debuts this week.

Through Uncovered, fans worldwide can get an intimate look inside one of America's most innovative musical groups as it develops and stages its season. Through video, audio, documents and slideshows, Uncovered gives music lovers a chance to see so much more than the final performance (though we want you to see that too). It's a new kind of patronage, a new kind of record label, a new kind of documentary.

Watch the video, directed and edited by STM, and read more after the jump. Then visit the new NCO UNCOVERED blog for more information. I sincerely hope this helps a unique and important group build a new source of support in this new media economy. We'd appreciate it very much if you would pass the word about Uncovered to the music hounds in your life. Write me with questions. More after the jump...

Sweet job dept.

Our Sunday New York Times went missing this morning - pretty much the only bad thing that happened on an otherwise fine early June day. And the newspaper, for all its virtues, couldn't have delivered me this wonderful multi-media portrait of Andrea Mosconi, whose daily business is to play the 300-plus-year-old violins in a museum in Cremona, the violin making capital of the world. It's a nice reminder that every instrument, from the humble to the historic, will deteriorate if not played. And that doesn't just hold for music. See the print story HERE.

Musical tributes to Hammerin' Hank

The closer Barry Bonds gets to "breaking" the all-time home run record, the more I want to ignore the artificially-enhanced jerk and celebrate the life and staggering achievements of Hank Aaron, my first boyhood hero (I met him at a celebrity golf tournament when I was about 8 and I was dumbstruck). Now I've run across two musical tributes to the bravest of Braves, one of which I've heard and love, one of which I'll have to go out of my way to hear. The first is a song on the very new debut album Mission Door by my former Tennessean colleague Peter Cooper. The Hank song isn't up on his myspace page at the moment, but keep checking. It's a spoken word masterpiece.

The other Hank Aaron tribute getting coverage right now is a new piece by 51-year-old composer Richard Danielpour, pictured here as a bat boy for the Braves many years ago. His composition "Pastime," which also celebrates Josh Gibson and Jackie Robinson, was performed this week by the Atlanta Symphony, the actual home of the Braves. This story offers a portrait of a fascinating artist motivated by passions for baseball, civil rights, and the American idea. Which for me includes not cheating at music or sports.