payola |pāˈōlə|
noun
the practice of bribing someone to use their influence or position to promote a particular product or interest : if a record company spends enough money on payola, it can make any record a hit.

A tweet-link from the prolific, intelligent, and fine-looking independent music revolutionary Ariel Hyatt caught my attention today, linking to an article by Bobby Owsinski about Payola. In a nutshell, the fact that 60 million people have watched that godawful Rebecca Black “Friday” music video and yet radio stations aren’t running with that ball into the endzone pretty much proves how out of touch they are with what music consumers actually consume.

Owsinski also links to (and quotes) another article where a radio Program Director admits that a song doesn’t make it to radio unless a major record label “brings all of its resources to get it played.” Having interned at a well-known label, I heard all kinds of stories about non-payola payola. Even a decade ago the industry was rife with “this big-screen TV is totally just a gift and has nothing to do with the new single we just sent you (*wink wink*).”

Slimy? Of course. Illegal? Nope. Promotional expenses are as tricky to control as campaign financing; the line between legitimate contribution and vote-buying is purely subjective. Payola is still alive and well despite the laws against it.

And I’m all for it.

Competition Is Good

Payola might have been bad when no competition existed for music radio. Now we have terrestrial radio, satellite radio, podcasts, internet streams, and the vial of liquid awesome that is Pandora. Rumor has it iTunes and Amazon will be duking it out for market share in this field soon.

With all these venues gaining traction to compete with terrestrial radio, record labels could go broke bribing (or totally-not-a-bribing) all of them, if they even can. Pandora’s playlists are picked by algorithm, not by meat-based decision makers. It’s hard to bribe a robot, I’ve tried. At the end of the day it will be the consumers that drive the industry, not the program directors. The days of dictating taste from on high are over.

I say Payola should not only be legal, it should be encouraged. Let the stupid record labels funnel so much money into radio that they bankrupt themselves and flood the airwaves with mediocre over-compressed crap (*cough* Nickleback *cough*). People have options now- I can listen to Pandora through my refrigerator, for shit’s sake. I’ve already abandoned everything but NPR on the airwaves because half the artists I’ve fallen in love with lately (see my recommendations below) don’t get played.

The smart record labels (yes, they exist, somewhere) will focus on helping good artists develop their craft into music that stands on its own. Or they’ll spend money outside the music stream, promoting the artists where it makes more sense. Who knows, they may even come up with creative marketing ideas. If the airwaves are a known paid-for entity, the public at large will gravitate towards the organic sources of good ideas.

Payola on the Internet

Oh yeah, and it’s not like Payola isn’t thriving on the internet either. A new music site seems to pop up, function, and die about every month or so, nearly all of them taking bribes- sorry, Premium Artist Payments -for better playlist positioning. Nothing ever changes.

Anyone remember MP3.com? Anyone? Beuller? At the turn of the millennium they were big- so big, in fact, they couldn’t cover their bandwidth costs. So they opened up a pay-for-a-promoted-chart-position system that didn’t actually move your songs up in the charts, but placed your song just below the legitimate #1 spot. Payola? Maybe, but as you can imagine it guaranteed that the people with the most money got more plays.

A decade later we have the shitty music service Jango. If you’re a consumer, it’s totally free. If you’re a band, you have to pay for guaranteed plays on their service. Wait, let me get this straight… musicians that are most likely barely paying their bills are providing your website with thousands of hours of content and not only are you not paying them anything for it, you’re asking them to pay you? Count me out.

Robots (and humans) to the Rescue

With the explosion of new media, the signal-to-noise ratio of bad music versus shining stars has grown almost unbearable. Radio once functioned as the sole taste-maker, but everyone knew the system was corrupt. As the industry’s adolescence catches up with it, two new taste-makers will arise: Robots and humans.

Like I said, robots can’t be bribed. Services like Pandora force the listeners to decide what they like based on a complex algorithm. It also forces musicians to produce material that can survive on its own merit. On the human side, there are disc jockeys everywhere. Not the talking heads that sit in broadcast booths playing a pre-set playlist, I’m talking about your BFF on Facebook that puts up a link to a track. That podcaster whose show you like and whose taste you trust. That artist you’re already listening to that recommends another artist she’s fond of.

I believe that opening the floodgates of Payola will simply accelerate a process that’s already happening: Corporate douchebags will blow all their money promoting tepid product while smart consumers move on to greener pastures. The situation’s like a boil that needs to be lanced.

Let the money flow, let the system devour itself, and let the music live or die on more level playing fields.

Welcome, Rolling Stone readers and Pandora fans! In case you haven’t caught the Feb. 17 issue yet, RS ran an article on “Pandora’s Digital Kingdom”, all about the cutting-edge internet radio service that’s been making me happy for years now.

“Pandora is the first true music meritocracy,” says independent musician Matthew Ebel (an artist likely to pop up on a Ben Folds Five station). “The fact that there is no fat guy in a ponytail and suit in Chicago determining what 20 songs they are going to play is a huge thing.”
Rolling Stone

Now I know I should be super-excited about my name appearing in Rolling Stone- even if only in a brief line like that. And believe me, I am. I went out and picked up this issue before getting my morning coffee, if that gives you an idea of how jazzed up I am about it. In this day and age of new media (especially when a guy like me has championed podcasting, blogging, and the like for five years now), should I really be that thrilled over getting a tiny blurb in an old-school print mag? I don’t care, I’m pretty hamn dappy about it.

Truth be told, however, I was more excited to wake up and find a tweet from C.C. Chapman about finding the quote. Having my name printed once in four columns of text in an industry mag is one thing, but having someone with an alarmingly large retweet community mention it? That is far more relevant.

In any case, I encourage you to read the article. My involvement may be small, but the article really nails the direction I think music is heading. One of these days I’d like to meet Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora Radio, and shake his hand. If you want to read the full story, though, you’ll have to buy the issue or subscribe to Rolling Stone online, sadly- they don’t give this stuff away for free.

Update: I go into a bit more detail about Pandora itself here.

I’m typing this blog post right now because, if I don’t, I will murder something. Every so often my studio software decides that little sound files I’ve been using for years are suddenly… imaginary. Gone. As though the stuff I’ve been using on a daily basis was all in my head and I’m now waking up from some really effed up dream.

The conversation I’m having with my computer (out loud, mind you) involves so much obscenity I won’t print an accurate transcript, but here’s something close to it (with only one obscenity):

• Computer: That guitar sample you used as a bedrock part of Surf Chickens? Yeah, that doesn’t exist.
• Me: Wait, what?
• Computer: Never heard of it before. See? I’m searching the hard drive right now and it’s just not there.
• Me: How is that possible? We not only recorded that song but we released it already. I can play back the MP3 in iTunes and you can hear that guitar loud and clear. I know it exists.
• Computer: Nope, you’re wrong. If it existed, I’d be loading those files right now. You must be hallucinating.
• Me: Fine, I’ll look in the Library folders and you’ll see it’s right… HEY! What happened to the entire instrument sample folder set? This was, like, twenty gigs worth of stuff!
• Computer: You are some kind of crazy person and I really don’t want to work with you any more. Also, I’m emailing those photos from last weekend to your mother.
• Me: WHAT?!?
• Computer: Don’t fuck with the robots, little man.

I’ll let you know when I’m having a better day. In the mean time, I’m getting some pho.

Having just read Mitch Joel’s post, The End of Conversation in Social Media, I’ve been inspired to put into words something that’s been bouncing around in my skull for a while now. There are reasons conversation breaks down in the mass-media world of the internet, but I’ll have to explain a bit for you to understand. It’s a little geeky, but my brain runs on GeekOS so you’ll have to translate using whatever software your brain uses.

Ideas Are Just Files

Conversation as defined by the Oxford American Dictionary:

conversation |ˌkänvərˈsā sh ən|
noun
the informal exchange of ideas by spoken words

So conversation is the exchange of data from one brain to the next, like computers transferring files. It’s basic communication, right? Why do we as a human society have so much trouble with this? I’ve read studies that cite “Lack of communication” as the number one reason for divorce. Why is such a fundamental low-level task like exchanging data so complex and difficult for many to grasp?

Try thinking like a computer for a moment. The entire purpose of this blog post is to transfer a file, Conversation.idea from my brain into yours.

I’m typing on a Mac. With only 10% of the market share or less, chances are good you’re not reading this on a Mac. Not only are our brains two different machines, we’re very likely running on completely different software. Instead of three main options- Mac, Windows, Linux -every human being is running a unique version of an infinite number of operating systems. Philosophers would call this a “worldview” but philosophers don’t make the kind of money programmers do, so we’re sticking with my analogy.
Read More…

If you weren’t at the 140 Characters Conference in NYC, you probably missed our little chat about the real-time web and the modern music industry. Fortunately, the modern music industry has the real-time web so I can show you what we did!

I’m on the left, next to me is Syd Schwartz from EMI, then Ted Cohen from TAG Strategic, and finally Steve Greenberg from S-Curve Records.

I’ve mentioned Pandora a few times as the future of internet radio, at least here in the states. If you’re still not clear as to why I’m in love with it, check this video out.

The thought occurred to me the other day that the iPad could be indispensable for home recording studios. Whenever a vocalist needs to record, they’re typically locked in a sound-proof vault while the engineer works the controls back where the computer desk is.

But what if I’m the only one in my studio?

Until now the only options have been hardware control surfaces like the $1,200 Mackie units that act like a full-featured mixer or boutique wireless units like the Frontier Designs Tranzport. The latter is really the only thing I could bring into a vocal booth with me. If you take a good look at the controls on this thing, you’ll notice a lot of it is hard-wired to buttons. If I wanted to create a few more vocal tracks or select takes while I’m tracking vocals, I’d have to keep leaving the booth. And this thing costs $200. If I want anything else, I’d have to run a cable all the way into the booth and I’d still be limited to the buttons and functions the manufacturer thought I’d want.

Now imagine I’m sealed into the mic bunker with an iPad and VNC. A device with no moving parts (read: vewy vewy quiet), a huge touch screen, and the ability to control absolutely every knob, slider, menu, and button that my recording software has to offer. If I’m recording vocals and suddenly realize that the tremolo on the guitar amp is making it difficult to stay on rhythm, I can shut it off without leaving the creative space. I can select the good takes to keep in my ears while I lay down harmony tracks. I can pull up lyrics or lead sheets as a PDF from my computer or on the iPad itself while I sing. Hell, if I’m feeling particularly masochistic, I could edit MIDI tracks by hand and tweak reverb settings from the comfort of my padded chamber.

When I’m performing my weekly UStream show, the iPad could let me control the chat room and broadcast console without taking CPU power away from my performance machine, the MacBook. But that’s another blog post, I’m sure.

Oh yeah, and it’s a frickin’ iPad too. When I’m out of the studio, I’ve still got games, books, music, movies, etc.

When I first saw the iPad’s launch, I was underwhelmed. Now, stacking it up next to current-model control surfaces, I can’t see myself buying anything else for in-booth control. I know this won’t make much of a difference to the general public, but for guys like me it opens up a world of possibilities. I need to save some money for two pieces of control gear: One bigass Mackie mixer for the desk, one iPad for everything else.

Check out this awesome article on the future of the music business from Techdirt. Here’s an excerpt:

Matthew Ebel is a singer in Boston who started building a fanbase by playing live and actively participating in social networks and other sites…Ebel has discovered that he’s making enough so that music is his full-time job…Connecting with fans and giving them a real reason to buy has made it so that he can have career as a musician.

I especially like the focus on connecting with you guys. Sure, I jumped onto Podcasting with both feet, started a new service over at Matthew Ebel dot net, and I play shows via UStream, but the technology is totally just a means to stay in contact with you. That’s what’s important.

If you remember me asking you via email to bug the folks over at Pandora, I’d like to thank you for your efforts. Even though one representative said they couldn’t find the CD’s I sent them months ago, it seems they must’ve found one. Goodbye Planet Earth is now available on the most cutting edge internet radio station, ready to stream!

(By the way, if you don’t remember me asking you about this, you’re not signed up for my email list yet.)

Why is this a slice of awesome pie? Two reasons: First, Pandora pays its BMI licensing fees like any other radio station, so the more my music plays on their system the more likely I’ll actually see a royalty payment (and, therefore, eat). Since the stations are built around a recommendation engine, my tunes will be played any time someone searches for someone famous like Ben Folds or Keane. They don’t even have to specifically search for my obscure name.

Second, since a lot of people will hear my music because I’m similar to the artists they’re searching for, there’s a good chance some of them might become fans of mine. I know more than a few people who have discovered new artists they like because of Pandora. As much as the RIAA likes to ignore it, people do in fact buy albums via iTunes and Amazon from Pandora recommendations.

So thank you, all of you, who helped raise the awareness! Hopefully some more of my albums will appear in their system soon, but for now you’ve really helped me break into a new playing field!

I am now the proud owner of a large dry-erase board. This is only worth blogging about because a giant blank canvas is a noteworthy thing in our age of little text fields and 140-character microblogging. The best and worst thing a creative person can stare at is a blank page- it represents either total freedom or an intimidating lack of substance.

It’s like looking down from the top of a ski slope. Either you see every twist and turn of the path you might take, or you see a big scary unbroken mountain staring back up at you. The difference, of course, is in the mind of the skier. In either case you’re certainly not going to want to walk down a narrow little path, structured by how someone else might have descended the mountain.

So much of how technology works is centered around the left-brained types. Outlining software, databases, calendars, and to-do lists force us to think in little lines of text. I would lay money down, however, that all of those innovations started life as an idea jotted onto a giant dry-erase board.

This is why we love the iPhone’s big touchscreen but still hate entering data with it. This is why we want Apple to release a tablet MacBook already. This is why, for all we do in front of little LCD monitors, our best steps forward start with a tube-dispensed liquid pigment (or, alternately, a stick of chalk).

If you haven’t invested in a full-size notebook or a dry-erase board large enough to use as a Pilates mat, it’s time for you to head to Staples and pick one up.

Photo by Jeff Kubina