How the Charts Are Like Walmart

The charts are similar to the Walmarts of the world; they curate a list of music that is selling or “setting trends” and are getting radio play.  Clear Channel has a huge role in who gets airplay and in what part of the country.  This in turn has a huge impact on whether they make the charts.  What does this have to do with anything?  Clear Channel owns more than 800 nationwide radio stations.  They control what you’re hearing.  If they don’t think it will make them money, whether it’s good music or not, they won’t put it into their rotation.  You have to tickle the fancy of Clear Channel to even have a remote shot at making the charts.  Kind of like Walmart.  Without selling your product to Walmart at a deeply discounted rate (and sometimes even taking a loss just to get their nationwide distribution), the small vendors have to sell their souls to Walmart.  It is eerily similar to the music industry, really.  People call in to the radio stations to request the music they like the most, out of what they’re hearing the most.  If they haven’t heard a new artist, how can they request that artist?  So we’re stuck with the same handful of pop artists making the charts, getting the airplay, and getting the major label record deals.  Kind of like the suppliers with cushy relationships with Walmart.  All the while the boutiques and mom-and-pop stores are going under because they can’t compete with the big boys any more.  The small guys often have superior products, but this doesn’t matter.  The independent artists just cannot afford to compete with the majors.

How the Independent Artists Are Like Mom & Pops

There are thousands of artists that we haven’t heard of.  Many of them would likely melt our faces if we listened to them.  Will they make the charts with their face-melting music?  No.  Instead, they will scrap together what they can to buy a broken down van, do a few show dates, and hopefully build a decent enough following to make enough money to pay for the gas to get home.  The independent shops that are beat down by Walmart go through the same thing.  They have a local following, but can’t compete with a nationwide distributor that has connections and deep pockets.

The independent and small artists might not look a certain way, have a certain sound, or talk about sex and the club enough in their music.  Unfortunately, the major labels are creating this sick culture in music.  A culture where the artist writes about going to the club and dancing to a song.  Then they go to the club and dance, all while their song is playing on the DJ’s rig.  It’s almost like looking in a mirror when there’s a mirror behind you; it keeps going and you’re not quite sure which reflection is the first reflection.  People like the music they hear because it brings back emotions and memories from events.  Someone enjoyed themself at the club.  What song was on?  A song about enjoying themselves at the club. It’s kind of weird, don’t you think?

What Can We Do?

There are pop artists playing on the radio that are truly talented.  People that are amazing.  But for every one that is great, there are 10 that are just a pretty face.  Stop buying into the notion that just because an artist is on a major pop chart they must be good.  Here are a few brief things we can do to help the independent artists survive:

Listen for yourself.  You know what you like.  You know what you don’t like.  Start asking for new recommendations from friends.  When you hear a song that you really like, listen to more of the album.  Buy another record from their catalog.

Find those undiscovered artists and invest in them by going to their shows and buying their albums.  They can’t continue to write, record, and play without money from fans.  Period.

Buy local. Go out and find the artists in your area that are playing shows and get to know them.  Getting their music heard is more important to them than anything else.  Ask around about some of the best local bands you haven’t seen yet and check them out.

Tell your friends. Word of mouth is the absolute best form of advertisement.  We trust the opinion of our friends over the talking heads on TV and radio.  Help these independent artists gain new followers by talking about them and sharing links on Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, blogs, and anywhere else you can think of.

Thanks for reading.  I would love to see your comments, thoughts, opinions, and stories about this topic.  Also, shoot me a tweet on Twitter; I’m @josh_walker. I’m always looking for new people to follow and engage with online.

I am beginning a new series of blog posts regarding the new music industry.  In it I will layout some definitions, myths, and truths as they pertain to the music industry, record industry, radio industry, and more.  These industries are notorious for confusing the musicians, fans, and businesses that work in them.  Let’s try to get some things cleared up.

First, the music industry is not the record industry. Let’s get that straight. The music industry is comprised of musicians; the record industry is made up of corporations and business people.

Secondly, CD sales do not mean the music industry is in a dismal state.  The way that the numbers are skewed is ridiculous.  Rather, the music industry is booming. The major labels want you to believe that they are a product of the economy and the piracy issue.  Even the state of radio has changed dramatically.  We have changed the way we as listeners consume music.  We have changed the way we hear about new music.  Failing companies have tried to change their models while others have stuck to their guns.  The bottom line is that the fans won’t wait for them to catch up.

How many new artists did you hear in 2010 compared to new artists in 1996? The music industry is alive and thriving, regardless of what you read about music downloads and CD sales or radio.  Let’s talk about the condition of radio.

1996

The number of commercial radio stations? Roughly 6,100.

In 1996 the top ten radio companies controlled only 600 or so radio stations.

2010

The number of commercial radio stations? 6,479.  That’s an increase of just over 300 new stations.

Today Clear Channel owns more than 800 radio stations.

One company today controls more radio than the top ten companies of 1996 combined.

I am not happy with the current way that radio stations are run. The majority of major market radio stations nation-wide (USA) are owned by Clear Channel, reaching the majority of the country. I would classify that as a monopoly. Fifteen years ago there was diversity among the markets. Today, the stations are owned by a few large corporations and play the same tracks by the same artists all day long, all over the country.

Number of markets reached by radio in 2008

I for one do not like to be “sold” something. Especially music. I like what I like. I don’t need some major record label spending millions of dollars to tell me why I should buy the latest pop record that the 13 year old girls are buying. I will go to shows, talk with friends, and work with artists. These are a select few ways I find new music.  On a side note, here’s a related post I wrote on buying songs versus buying artists.  Remember that the music industry is changing daily.  Bands need to find new ways to make a dollar.  We all know at this point that it’s not going to be from your next album.  It will be from partnerships, collaborations, integration, and networking.

There is little chance for an independent artist to get serious exposure on the radio without being endeared by Clear Channel. The upside to this situation is that the radio stations in their current format, and as we know them, are on their way out, just as are the major record labels.  The music industry is changing, not dying.

If you haven’t noticed, Internet radio, Pandora, AOL Radio, Shazam, Last.fm, and other digital music outlets are exploding.  These platforms are affecting the way we consume music.  Why would someone listen to a Top 40 station anymore when they can pull up Pandora and have a highly customized library of music literally catered to them?  Why buy a physical CD when you can have your music streamed to you anytime and anywhere?  Services like these are intelligent and adaptive. This is what makes them appealing. Major record labels, and in turn major radio, tells us what to listen to. The digital platforms allow us to decide what we listen to. Pandora and similar platforms listen to the user and adapt. They are embracing social media in its truest sense, encouraging constant communication from both sides.

The old way of doing things is changing.  Major record labels, FM radio, and traditional print advertising will never cease to exist completely. They will, however, cease to be the norm.  CD sales are declining.  Radio is becoming just one big playlist.  Illegal downloads are thriving.  Yet in spite of this we are discovering new working bands on a daily basis and purchasing their music, tickets, and merchandise.

The music industry IS NOT the record industry.  The record industry as well as radio are losing out.  The music will prevail.

That’s a wrap for the first post in the series titled “The New Music Industry Series”.  Coming up, I’ll be writing about how an artist can make money and survive in the new industry without a record label, how to use social media as a band, whether or not you need a manager, and much more.

I’ve got a lot of ideas bouncing around in my head.  Some are pretty solid while others are still blobs of unformed thought.  Regardless, I have had a difficult time in the past trying to make something out of these ideas.  I would wait on them (or forget about them altogether) while someone else accomplished them before I did.  This was extremely frustrating.  I didn’t get frustrated with that other person that did it before me; I got frustrated with myself for not devoting the time and effort to that one, singular idea.

My wife is always right alongside me, hearing my crazy ideas and business plans as I spout them out at the most random times.  I think she might have grown tired of them which led her to make a fantastic suggestion:

Use an “idea journal” to keep track of all my ideas and thoughts.

Genius!  I am now able to jot down that million-dollar idea that I got after talking with someone about an issue at their company, or in the middle of taking a shower. (I come up with some weird stuff at some random times.)

With an idea journal my ideas have started taking much more shape and are taking off in their own directions.  Without this outlet I’d still be tossing them around in my head instead of holding brainstorming meetings with other people.

Shortly after starting my idea journal, I realized that I was still not able to actually accomplish any of them; I was only able to keep track of them.  This prompted me to scrutinize how and on what exactly I was spending my time.  I am still in the process of this evaluation and am always trying to improve the use of my time to better facilite the cultivation of my ideas and projects.

I’ve started implementing the following habits that have helped me increase my productivity:

1.  Limit your interaction on multiple social networking sites.

This could very well be the biggest timewaster of them all.  Facebook.  Twitter.  LinkedIn.  MySpace.  Four Square.  Ning.  And the list goes on and on.  A lot of the data is duplicated from one site to the other, which leads to overlaps that could waste more time.

I evaluated what I used (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Foursquare) and how/why I used them.  This evaluation led me to to a 30-day break from Facebook and delete my Foursquare account altogether.  My time spent on MySpace is very, very minimal (though I make plans to interact more but never do), and Twitter is one of my main sources for gathering news and local updates from businesses and individuals.  It’s easier to sift through Twitter than it is Facebook.  LinkedIn is another site that I use with minimal time spent on updating.  I’ll do the occasional search for jobs and gigs in the area, but this is time spent being more productive than it is wasteful.

Do you have to completely give up one or the other?  This is up to you.  For me, I don’t get enough value back from Foursquare to justify the time spent interacting with it.  Maybe you do get a lot of value out of it.  Free wine or parking?  Each service varies from person to person and how they use it, so there is not definitive answer.  I do believe, however, that as a whole we’ve become infatuated with the newest services popping up and trying to be beta testers and early adopters.  For the record, businesses need to engage on many different platforms simultaneously in order to best reach the widest audience possible.

2.  Get into a routine.

Even if it means making your coffee at the same time every morning (or programming it the night before) and writing out the next day’s agenda on a real piece of paper.  Sometimes it can be beneficial to abandon technology for simple tasks such as to-do lists and similar items.  I’ve tried many iPhone and Mac OSX apps to help with this but find that I wind up getting sidetracked and eventually waste more time.

My routine is as simple as setting my coffee the night before and then sitting at my desk (not the kitchen table; I believe that your surroundings do affect your ability to focus in on things) to write out my list for the next day.  Otherwise I wind up getting up in the morning and spending 20 minutes trying to lay out my day instead of jumping right into it.  That first 20 minutes could have been spent knocking off an item from the list had I laid it out the night before.

3.  Track your results.

If you make progress on something, make a record of it.  Use Google Analytics to track extremely useful data on your website.  Use that data to make informed decisions regarding your next marketing campaign and where to focus your efforts or which pages to revamp that are not getting hits.

By tracking your progress you are able to look back over time and see how far you’ve come.  You’re able to see what worked and what didn’t.  Those things that didn’t work so well?  You’ll know not to do them again in the same context because you documented it.  Without this information, you might very well do it all over again in a similar scenario and fail again.  We want to avoid this.

Update your ideas and make notes regarding your progress.  If you don’t know how far you’ve come, you run the risk of losing motivation that could otherwise be just what you need to make it over the hump and release your product or service to a new market.

To keep up with me, follow me on Twitter – @josh_walker.  What are some of your ways you improve productivity?  Let’s hear them all.

The surface answer would be that the labels are taking all of the money for themselves. How much are they taking? How much does the artist get? It varies from artist and label, but typically it’s to the tune of pennies per album sold to the artist and the rest is divided up between the label, management, producer, etc. That huge advance that the artist got for signing a contract? That’s not really their money. The label just loaned it to the artist so they could make a record and eat for a couple of months while doing it. The band has to pay all that money back. Meaning usually they need to go platinum before they even see a penny in profits.

We need to make sure that we don’t just believe whatever it is that we’re told.  There’s always a spin on just about any argument.  So are digital downloads robbing the music industry blind?  I believe that the industry has taken awhile to realize that there are adaptations that need to happen in order to appeal to the consumer and still turn a profit.  If people are downloading music illegally, find a way to capitalize on it.  And lawsuits are the worst way to try and make your money back.

Is the RIAA For Real?

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has been complaining for years now that illegal downloads were killing their CD sales. Sure, I can believe that.  But are they really hurting that badly in comparision to the independent labels that are trying to sell albums to the same consumer base?  You tell me.  Just look at the major record labels share of the market below.

Image from http://wikipedia.com

But then they started complaining the legitimate digital downloads are the cause of the decline in CD sales. Really? Maybe they need to restructure their sales pipeline and focus more on what people are actually buying in that case. Just a thought.  The RIAA and major record labels should have struck a deal with Napster right off the bat to develop a system where everyone wins.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation has put some serious thought into such a system.  A system where you can download all the music you want and the artists still get paid.

Have the record labels considered that the rest of the country is in a recession?  They’re not the only companies losing money!  Consumers will buy less products overall and opt for cheaper alternatives, i.e. iTunes, Rhapsody, and other digital music services when their dollar doesn’t stretch as far?  Not to mention that it’s easier to acquire these digital files in the first place.  No hopping in the car and driving to the store, only to find out that they don’t have it in stock.

The Downward Spiral

Image from http://money.cnn.com

When cassette tapes started being outnumbered in sales to CDs, did the industry try to keep pushing tapes? Or did they instead start manufacturing more CDs and releasing older albums in CD format? They embraced the new format and pushed it (while hiking the cost each year, of course).  How are they making up the difference?  If you want to take a look at their year-end physical CD shipment numbers, they’ll charge you.  If the labels are being hurt by digital downloads, and their sales numbers and cost per unit reflected that, why not make this information free to the public instead of charging $25 for a week of access just to view the very data that could corroborate their claims?  That’s one way they’re trying to make up some lost sales.  Another is by suing people for downloading music online.  We’ve seen time and again where the RIAA slams a huge fine on a person and then spends five times that amount in litigation costs.

While the record labels are claiming a decline in sales due to pirated music, the RIAA then turns around and spends almost $1.4M in lobbying costs in the second quarter of 2010!  Seriously?  They’re dumping millions into lawsuits that only return a couple thousand dollars per settlement, all in the name of “making an example out of someone.”  Are these “examples” working?  Apparently not. (Note: They also forget to mention that one of their top label executive’s very own children were pirating music illegally. I didn’t see the news article on that one.) The RIAA has abandoned its peer-to-peer monitoring and is instead now working with Internet Service Providers (Comcast, Verizon, etc) to deter pirating.

I am a big proponent of artists and musicians being fairly compensated.  An industry group or third party organization can be a great thing for all musicians and everyone involved in the music industry.  Is the RIAA that organization?  I do not believe it is.  They’re deteriorating and not adapting to the ever changing industry like they should be.  As a result, the artists have been conceiving their own ways to further their careers.

I’m here for the artsist.  I love working with independent musicians.  And I will continue to keep a pulse on the industry that I work in.  All of you artists are too busy creating music and trying to avoid being taken advantage of.  Let me help.

Cheers,

Josh

Do I take my budget and go to a real recording studio or use the cash to buy my own recording gear and have my friends help?

Recording studios are closing more and more often these days.  The reason?  Artists don’t have the money to spend $125 per hour and make a full-length album.  But they do have enough money to buy enough gear for a 16 channel rig.

So is the “bang for your buck” tradeoff worth not having your album recorded in a proper studio?  Here are some things to consider:

• The acoustics of your friends living room are not equal to those of a recording studio designed by Lawrence P. Swist, no matter how much egg crate you staple to the walls.
• You can buy a set of monitors for cheap, but they won’t reproduce all the frequencies that you need to hear while mixing. And they’ll be affected by the acoustics of the room that you’re in. (See above)
• While your laptop is great for Facebook and email, that Dell or HP machine is not designed to handle 11 tracks of simultaneous recording while playing back the other 27 MIDI tracks in your next #1 pop song.
• Not all microphones are created equal.  Believe it or not, you usually get what you pay for.
• You little sister is great at singing along with the radio, but she is not a studio vocalist.  She can’t even read music for that matter.
• You can watch YouTube videos for ways to tie a tie, but not so much for how to mic a drum kit or acoustic guitar.  It’s all about experience and actually hearing the placement of the mic.
• Studios have people with highly trained ears and technical abilities.

Audio engineers and producers are in these roles because we have the ability to take your idea and performance, capture it with the highest sonic integrity, and then help interpret that into a final mix.  We do this day in and day out.  We go to bed thinking about the best way to EQ the kick drum so that it’s not competing with the bass guitar track.  Believe it or not, the EQ we do on instruments changes from song to song, from band to band.  So please don’t call me asking for “settings” so you can really make your song slam.  I can hear it, and I know how to manipulate the sound.

At the end of the day, home recordings are home recordings.  If you’ve read about bands that have self produced their albums in their home, chances are that: 1. They brought in an engineer to do the entire project, or 2. One of the band members is also a legitimate audio engineer.

If you don’t know how to change your oil you probably wouldn’t risk swapping out a transmission on your own.

So why then would you risk harming the overall quality of your art that you’ve invested so much of your time and energy in?  Make it the best it can be.  Call the professionals.  You can reach me here.

If you’re not even sure where to start when it comes to parallel compression on drum tracks or microphone placement to get some natural reverb on your vocals, you need to book some session time at a studio.  Give me a call.

Recently I was listening to a podcast in which Tom Silverman of Tommy Boy Entertainment was talking about the music industry and album sales. He touched on the idea of “buying songs vs. buying artists.”

When you go to the record store (wait, what’s that?  I thought those were mythical places that people only dreamed of) or iTunes, what music are you buying?  Are you buying the stuff that you’ve loved your entire life, or songs that you have heard ten times a day for the last three weeks?  Are you getting the Top 40, or are you getting the latest stuff that nobody else has heard of?  Do you buy music for the content and what the artist stands for, or do you buy it because it’s the coolest new thing?

A Look at the Numbers

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) posts some key information on their website.  This is important when considering trends in the music industry because it helps show how different mediums or formats are doing in their respective sales.  According to the RIAA:

CD singles have decreased by 12.5% ($3,500,000 to $3,100,000) from 2008 to 2009, while digital download purchases increased by 20.2% ($1,032,200,000 to $1,220,300,000).

Full-length album sales for CDs decreased 21.9% ($5,471,300,000 to $4,274,100,000), while digital download purchases increased 18.2% ($635,300,000 to $763,400,000).

What does this mean?  It means that more people are buying digital formats over physical CDs.  As for overall sales, physical CDs are bought in full-length albums more often than singles, while digital downloads are more often single songs than full-length albums.  Physical CD full-length album sales still make up the majority of sales in the industry from a dollar standpoint.  I’m not going to get into it in this post, but there are many factors that impact these sales numbers.  When you’re comparing physical goods to digital goods, you really need to take into consideration manufacturing, shipping, and general overhead costs.  You don’t have nearly as much costs involved with a digital product.  Again, that is another post for another time!

Buying Songs

So, what exactly does “buying songs” mean?  To start, we need to realize that it’s how people perceive the music they listen to.  Is it a commodity like a bottle of soda, or is it a piece of art like a painting?  Let’s try to be objective while defining this:
If you listen to the radio, and especially Top 40, you’re being sold on songs.  Not artists.  The record labels do their research on various demographics and attempt to create an artist and sound that will appeal to that market.  Instead of letting the people choose by way of calling in to radio stations, buying tickets to shows, and showing their support, the labels are increasingly packaging artists to look, act, and sound a certain way.  Then they are marketed to a particular audience and pumped up on the radio stations.  When a 14-year old girl hears the same song over and over on the radio, she makes the assumption that it must be good if it’s being played so much.  People must be calling in to request it, right?  So what does she do?  She calls in and requests it.  Downloads it on iTunes.  And repeats the process with the next song.  She doesn’t buy the full album because she could care less about the other songs on the album.  The rest of the album isn’t being played on the radio.  That one song is.  And that’s what she wants.  Just like that pair of shoes or some McDonald’s.

People who buy songs listen to the radio.

How, then, does this impact the sales for an artist? For an artist on a major label, chances are his or her singles are being purchased much more than his or her full album.  The musician is not making money because the kids are only buying one song at 99 cents (most of which goes to the label, management, producer, etc).  The label gives the group tour support so that the artist can make a couple bucks doing shows, though.  So the musician goes out on the road to support his or her album, most of which a lot of people probably haven’t even heard because they only bought the single.  It seems as though buying singles wouldn’t be as beneficial to the artist as buying an entire album.  Or better yet, going to his or her show and buying the full album.

Buying Artists

People that buy artists are supporting them.  They show that they enjoy the art that these musicians are creating.  By purchasing full albums, we get to experience the full intentions of that artist.  Many albums are written that have a dynamic flow to them from song to song.  I’m all for buying a single of a new group if you’re not quite sure whether or not you like them.  But if you’ve heard the group before and like them, why not buy the full album?  You often get a discount, especially when you go and get the digital format.  On iTunes, single releases range from $0.99 cents to $1.29.  For instance, Timbaland has an album on iTunes.  ”Shock Value II” is 17 tracks (There’s also a 13 track album by the same name).  Each track individually costs $1.29, bringing the total of all songs on his album to $21.93.  But, if you purchase the full album, all at one time, digitally, you’re looking at $12.99 on iTunes.  That’s a savings of $8.94, or almost 41%!  It only makes financial sense to buy the whole album in that case.  Additionally, you as the listener become exposed to more of the artist’s creativity, hearing things you may very well appreciate even more than the single you heard on the radio.

So, what about fan loyalty?  How does that compare with the current Top 40?  If I show you that it’s on the top of the charts, then it must be good, right? Seriously, though.  Take 10 songs from the top 40 and pull them out.  Pretend with me for a second that these were artists you’d never heard of.  Strip away the large marketing budget.  Disable the Autotune on the vocals.  In many cases, the opinion of the general public would probably change.  (But now we’re getting into reasons why artists are artists, and that’s an entirely separate blog.)

Now, take your favorite band that is playing in your home town this weekend.  They work 9-5′s, practice in the evenings, and drive themselves to their shows every weekend.  They are truly talented musicians writing great music that really connects with their fans.  Why aren’t they in the Top 40?  Because the labels have determined that you won’t like them.  Or more accurately, they’ve determined that the 14 year-old girl who will buy the music won’t like them.  And by “determined,” I mean, “we have had our decision made for us.” And those decisions aren’t always based on quality of music as much as profit potential (again, an entirely separate blog).

Conclusion

So, is it better as an artist to push your singles, or your full album?   That depends, really.  It depends on how the pay structure is broken down, who you have to pay before you get paid, whether your fans are more likely to buy singles or albums, and a whole lot more.  One thing to keep in mind, though, is how iTunes works.  For example, Apple will not let you sell your album in its iTunes store unless you make each of the individual tracks available for single sale.  Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Did you realize that there are artists who don’t release their albums on iTunes or break them down into single tracks?  Kid Rock, AC/DC, The Beatles, Tool, Jay-Z, and more have not released their albums on iTunes.  The usual reason for not selling their music on iTunes? They want their album sold as one piece of work to represent their musical creativity, not split into many fractions.  As a musician, I completely appreciate where they’re coming from.  Tool’s latest release, “10,000 Days” is a perfect example of the previous statement.  After listening to that album I realized very quickly that they had written the entire album with each song in mind.  In an interview between Guitar World and Tool guitarist Adam Jones, they talk about the full album in this way:

“[The songs] start in one place, go somewhere else, and end in a completely different place altogether. It’s as if the songs are telling a story in a linear fashion.”

Think for a moment about the last time you heard a song on the radio, in a friend’s car, or in a restaurant.  A song you’d never heard before.  Perhaps you found out who that artist was and found them for sale online, only to realize that you had to buy the full album in order to get that one song that you’d heard.

Now, say you went on over to iTunes and found that same album for sale digitally.  But you also had the option to purchase the one song that you’d heard.  You buy it for 99 cents (or $1.29) and listen to it for a few days.  Then you go back to iTunes and buy the whole album because you liked that single so much.

Obviously it varies from person to person and artist to artist, but I do believe that it is a good thing to purchase singles and then go back and get the entire album. There are many positive benefits to buying full albums from the beginning. You become an invested fan; you almost feel a sense of  ownership in that artist’s creative output.  I’d say that the tendency to really hear the artist’s music increases when you’re listening to the other songs on the album, when you’re critiquing their work.  But what if you buy a full album and you’re sorely disappointed?  Well, first of all, you probably wouldn’t have bought the album if you hadn’t heard at least one good song you liked.  Secondly, you now have a well-rounded perspective of the band and who they really are.  Plus, at least you made that judgment call yourself–you were able to base your opinion off of your own perspective. If more fans were music critics instead of radio junkies, I’d guess that our world of music, as we know it, would be drastically different.

Conclusion? Stop buying songs and instead buy artists.   Support the artists that you like.  Don’t buy music for the sake of buying music, either.  Don’t get the song because you want to have it at the next party so people think you’re cool, which leads you to create a party mix of overrated musicians just because they get played on your local Top 40 station every hour.  Critique musicians like you critique ball players or actors or politicians. Get music that you like, that connects with you.  Music that moves you and makes sense to you.  Don’t settle for less.

Thanks for reading, guys!  Let’s hear your thoughts and feedback now.

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1.  Set up your Google Calendars

- If you don’t already have one, sign up for Google Calendar.  It’s free and easy to use.
- After you’ve set up your Google Calendar, go ahead and create multiple calendars if you’d like.  For instance, make one “Family”, “Work”, and “Church”, etc.

- Click on the down arrow next to one of the calendars and click on “Calendar Settings”
- Next, scroll down to “Calendar Address” and click on the green iCal button.  A dialogue box will pop up.  Make sure you copy the full address here!

2.  Set up iCal on your Mac

- in iCal, go to the iCal main menu and click on “Preferences”.  From here, you’ll click the + sign in the bottom left of the window.

- Under “Account Type”, choose “CalDAV”.
- For your username, use the Google email address that you used to sign up for your Google Calendar account.  The password is the corresponding Google password that you chose.  For the server, use google.com.
- Click “Create”.  You should see some of your appointments populating the calendar at this point (assuming you already added some in Google Calendar).
- Now, click on the “Calendar” menu and then on “Subscribe”.

- In the dialogue box that opens up, paste the address that you copied from your Google Calendar settings.
- Next, click on the main iCal menu and go to “Preferences”.
- Click on the “Accounts” tab and go to the right under “Delegation”; check the boxes next to your Google Calendars so that you can post to them directly out of iCal.  After this, you’re finished with iCal.

3.  Set up iPhone Calendar

- Click on the “Settings” icon.
- Next, open the “Mail, Contacts, Calendars” menu under “Settings”.
- Under “Accounts”, click on “Add Account”.
- Next, choose “Microsoft Exchange” from the very top.

- For “Email”, use the same address that you used for the Google Calendar.
- For “Username”, again, use that same email address.  And for “Password”, use the Google password you set.
- Under “Description”, I recommend labeling it as “Google”.  Click “Next”.
- When the dialogue box pops up, click “Accept” and then put “m.google.com” in the new “Server” field.
- The next menu gives you the option to sync your Google Mail, Contacts, and Calendars.  For the purpose of this article, turn off Mail and Contacts so that we’re only syncing the calendars.

- Now, open Safari on your iPhone and in the address bar type “m.google.com/sync”.
- From here, choose the calendars that you want to sync on your iPhone Calendar and click “Save”

That should do it!  Comment below to let me know if you have any issues, or how easy/hard you thought the whole process was.  Once it’s set up, though, you’ll never have to worry about saying “Let me check my iCal when I get home”.  Do it on your iPhone.  On your Mac.  Or on someone else’s computer with Google Calendars.

We’ve been using Facebook and Twitter now for awhile.  Some prefer one over the other.  Some only use one tool.  Others are addicted to both. (Then there’s MySpace.  Remember that?  Facebook needs to take a hint.  But that’s another post…)

Twitter and Facebook.  They’re two completely different platforms.

Like oil and water, they both have their place.  We use both.  Yet they don’t always mix.  Likewise, Twitter and Facebook are two very different mediums with two very different niches.

Facebook.

When Mark Zuckerberg was at Harvard, he had an idea.

He and three classmates got together and developed their idea into a platform that connected them with their friends.  They kept it exclusive to begin with (you had to have a .edu email address).  This allowed them to test it out and have their ideal demographic figure out how they wanted to use it.  Once they were able to set the standards, they slowly started opening the gates to other people.  This exclusivity only helped to build anticipation (can we say Apple?) for the release of updates and the allowing of everyone to participate.

On Facebook you are able to post native pictures, embed links, write comments and replies, send personal messages, and more.  You can see full conversations at a glance.  Entire photo albums.  All within Facebook.  You aren’t limited too much in terms of content length, either.

An interesting thing has happend with Facebook.  The original users (mostly college students) set the standard methods of use.  After a few years, we’ve seen the way Facebook is used transform into something that it wasn’t originally.  This is most apparent with all of the Farmville and Chef’s World updates you probably see in your Live Feed.  The people that started out with Facebook in its early days are easily frustrated by this and many other little things that have popped up, such as privacy issues.  Yet the new Facebook users have no preexisting concept of how it is supposed to be used; to them, it’s a networking/gaming platform.  Others use it specifically to share photos from family trips.  Still others use it for the messaging and chat.  It’s quickly developing into a catch-all platform where you can do just about everything you need.

These things aren’t necessarily bad.  It’s to be expected with anything.  Facebook started with an idea.  Mark Zuckerberg had no idea what it would become. Evolution and growth.  Adaptation.  These all propel success.

Twitter.

If you can’t adapt to this format, it’s probably because you wish it were more like Facebook.  But it’s not, nor is it supposed to be.  Twitter is a different platform where a different language is spoken.  Hashtags (#), replies (@), and retweets (RT) are just a few items.  Then there’s Follow Friday (#followfriday or #ff) and Music Monday (#musicmonday or #mm).  And the ever popular Tweetups (#tweetup) in their various formats and locations.

Twitter was developed to allow people to communicate and update what was happening in their lives at that moment.  It was not designed as a sales tool for businesses. Too often I see companies just using it to throw out their sales pitch in hopes that people will respond to the call-to-action and buy the product or service. These companies spew out their content without adding value to anything other than their own messages.  It’s a shame to see this misuse of a wonderful communication medium.  To use it effectively, listen more than you speak.  Create relationships.  Build networks.  Engage in conversation. Neither was it designed so much as a communication tool where you see a back-and-forth conversation, though this does happen routinely.  It is more of a tool that helps you propagate your content, ideas, and thoughts to the masses.  Let people know what’s going on.  Quickly and efficiently.

We’ve seen Twitter expand and adapt as well.  From the news anchors using it to update the world to the bands keeping fans posted on show times.  Twitter has helped me gain new real life friends and freelance work.  I’ve been able to meet some really great and interesting people thanks to Twitter.  When I first started using Twitter, I was overwhelmed by the fact that I had 13 followers while these other guys had 5,000 or more.  Then I realized that it’s not about how many followers you have, it’s about the relationships you build.  When people see that you’re using Twitter effictively and unselfishly, they will be more likely to follow you.  Then your numbers go up, and all without the help of a third-party app or bot.

If you’re looking to find ways to use Twitter more effectively and live in the Northern Indiana area, the #nwitweetup is a great place to meet people that are using social media in one way or another.  There are many, many more Tweetups around the country.  I encourage you to find one close to you and see what it’s all about.  It there isn’t one in your area, start one!

That’s about it for this post.  I’d love to hear your comments and experiences concerning Facebook and Twitter.  How do you use these tools?  And remember, it’s not that one is better than the other.  It’s not apples to apples here.  We need to learn how to maximize the effectiveness of each tool while realizing what works on one platform won’t always work on the other.  Now, go take a look at this video by @equalman that shows the magnitude of social media today.

1: How does music affect a person?

Music is just as powerful as smells, sights, and the sensation of touch.  I might even go so far as to say that music is more powerful than the other senses in terms of emotions.  It has the ability to affect our mood  When we have emotional ties to a situation, our brain will associate whatever we were listening to with that emotion. This is why certain songs conjure up feelings of sadness (a song that was on the radio when your girlfriend broke up with you or when your dog died), feelings of happiness (the very next song you heard when you found out that you got first place in something), or just simple reminiscing (songs that you used to listen to when you were younger or lived in a different place).  Music also has the ability to affect us in conjunction with our sense of sight.  If you’re watching a movie, music plays just as important a role as what you’re seeing on screen. It helps take you up and bring you down with the mood of the actors. It can evoke feelings of sadness that the actors are feeling or make you anxious along with them.  Or it helps build suspense and puts you on the edge of your seat. The sounds attached to the screen are powerful tools that build dynamics and ensure that your emotions are going in the direction the filmmakers intended.  Music is powerful!

2: What are some brief issues when downloading music illegally?

By “sharing” files and then propagating those to even more people (without paying), you are literally stealing from the artists, labels, and management companies. Sure, nobody wants the major labels to make any more money than they already are without justly compensating their artists, but the bottom line is that it’s stealing. Period. The artists don’t always make much money as it is, but by using online services (or even swapping external hard drives), we are cheapening the music. We are saying to the artists that their music isn’t worth our 99 cents. We pay $1.50 for a bottle of water, but we won’t pay $1 for a song that we really, truly appreciate? There is something very wrong with this. Pay for the music you consume. Get rid of the illegal music that you’ve traded online or borrowed other peoples CDs. It’s hard, but it’s the right thing to do. If you were a painter, you wouldn’t paint for free and pass out your artwork to thousands of people without expecting even $1 for it. Come on, people. You’d hate it if it happened to you, yet it happens every day. Do something about it.  Don’t help the industry crumble even more; the major labels are taking care of that.  We need to help compensate the artists with what they deserve so that after the industry has evolved into its next form, the artists will still be there.

3: Do we spend too much time listening to music?

I don’t believe so. You can listen to music while driving, working, studying, working out, sleeping, and eating. It helps to pass the time, and often encourages creative thought. At the same time, music can be mathematical and highly structured.  This is one reason that so many people in so many different walks of life appreciate it.  It’s a common bond between us.  It helps break the ice in conversation.  But with all things, one can consume too much.  It becomes too much when we replace conversation with human beings with music.

These are my quick thoughts on the three questions my friend presented me.  I hope they spark some interest in you as they did me!

Cheers,

Josh Walker

If you’ve got hundreds, or thousands, of people in your area that share common interests, why not engage the local businesses and partner together to host events, shows, and festivals? Not only will this bring the businesses revenue from their local (and hopefully regional) patrons, it also shows the community that they don’t need to drive 40 minutes to do something fun. Bringing in regional artists and musicians will help the community remember why art and music are important in our school systems. The arts promote creativity, innovation, and raw emotion. These are characteristics that one carries for a lifetime and are applicable in all different arenas of life.  I am a big fan of all different types of art.  I find things to be art that others might not.  And I truly appreciate it when people take action and create their art in various forms.

Being a part of a smaller community, I’ve decided to help take action and try to help the arts regain that traction that was once great. To do my part, I’m helping put on regularly occurring shows with some regional (and even international!) artists. We’ve got a great venue, art gallery, and recording studio in Indiana (not to mention The Sisters’ Tea & Eatery!) that all come together to make great things happen.  It’s $5 at the door, and there are great local eateries within walking distance that will fill your stomach with their specialties. It’s a great way to reconnect with friends as well as discover the undiscovered.  This month we’ve got The Great Flood Catastrophe, The Rendition, The Jill Hagen Band, and From the Rooftop.  Not only will you get to see and hear some great music, you’ll also witness the visual art of Sayaka Ganz, Angela Leed and Adam Parsons.

I encourage you to do the same in your community. Talk with your local businesses and artists and see what kind of ideas are floating around. Sometimes all it takes is a few like minds to get together. Before you know it you’ve got more on your plate then you can handle and are forced to bring in more people to help make everything happen. It’s a beautiful thing and a good problem to have. If you’re in the northern Indiana region and want to find out how you can help, let me know!  The most simple of ways that you can help make an impact is by going to the local events, shows, and businesses. Just showing up is more than enough support. Let me hear your thoughts about ways to help impact the local communities, businesses and arts!

Cheers,

Josh Walker