Adventures in Writing, Filmmaking & Travel

When I was a kid, every Saturday meant tuning into Casey Kasem to hear the weekly rundown of the top 40 songs on the charts. If we weren’t listening to our parents’ old records, then we were rocking out to whatever was available on cassette tape (and sometimes that was whatever we could stay up to bootleg off the radio on our boombox). Later, upon becoming a culture snob, “radio” meant listening to the college station out of Boulder while tooling around in my 1975 Chevy Malibu and the “charts” were a hell of a lot different than the manufactured pop of mainstream radio. My car didn’t come equipped with a CD/cassette player, much less the FM radio signal, so I was fortunate to hear only the tunes that we might now label as “hipster cool”. However, that was close to ten years. I remember getting a survey call at some point asking me what radio station I would listen to and the woman on the other end couldn’t believe that I didn’t listen to the radio. Perhaps ten years ago that was a little uncommon -most of my music came in the form of old vinyl, mix CDs, or DJ mixes from some house party or rave. Internet radio was available, but didn’t exactly have a place in every vehicle and mobile device, as it does today.

The last time that I actually listened to the radio was cruising down the highway en route to Napoli, Italy from Roma back in 2007. How many people actually listen to the old school radio now? Nearly everyone I know listens to some sort of Internet radio -whether it be Last.fm, Pandora, Sirius, or something else. Most of us will purchase our tunes (for those of us actually buying our music) from iTunes or Amazon or Lala (which is also owned by Apple now). A good chunk of us acquire our tracks via blogs through the use of Hype Machine and other venues and still, vinyl wins out at records stores everywhere… you just can’t beat the gritty, imperfect sound that wax tracks have. Tracking music popularity has moved to a seemingly intangible level as traditional radio continues to die out.

So who will win the battle of charting the most-blogged, most-listened to music?

We Are Hunted is one of the more obvious competitors in the chart industry -they track the “99 most popular emerging songs in the world”. They comb blogs, Twitter, and other venues to create the list and do the same for most-Twittered songs, most-requested Remixes, and genres. Users can even create their own personal “hunted” list, if they like. WAH also recently launched their Hunted Research section, which provides a more than comprehensive overview of music-related stats for sixty artists for the second half of 2009 and the option to email the team for info on other musicians not already listed. The data includes everything from Twitter stats to article shout outs to providing information on the top publisher mentions from the likes of Pitchfork and Clash.

The Hype Machine comes in next, as their purpose is to serve as an MP3 & music blog aggregator. I used Hype Machine quite a bit before WAH launched last year and while it not only links to blogs posts & allows you to stream the blog posts in a playlist, its servers are down more frequently than I like. HypeM employs similar features such as Spy, which provides a live feed of songs being blogged about right now, as well as Twitter tracking. A couple of days ago, I tweeted a link to an Autechre song on HypeM and got a reply from @hypem_scorebot telling me that I’d added 7 points to the track on Hype Machine. Further investigation tells me that Hype Machine has created a new charting method for music based upon a Twitter user’s popularity -the more influence a user has, the more points they contribute to a track within HypeM. I have mixed feelings about this new system of tracking -there is black hat Twitter & white hat Twitter, if you will. Some people have a lot of followers legitimately (e.g. Ashton Kutcher) and some just have a lot of followers/follow a lot of people out of spam purposes. Beyond this, just because you have X-reach on Twitter with the amount of people you follow and the amount that follow you, does not equate to guaranteed exposure for the song (or blog to whom your linking to via Hype Machine). It seems very speculative and thus, this type of isn’t very credible.

Last, but not least is a new startup out of Boulder, CO: Next Big Sound. Next Big Sound’s entire purpose is to provide the same type of data that WAH has recently provided -except that they have made it more accessible. Not only can you track data for one artist, but you can compare it against three other artists at the same time. NBS tracks fans, comments on pages, and plays via Last.fm, Hype Machine and others. While Next Big Sound doesn’t have near the coverage that We Are Hunted provides in their PDFs, it’s a bit more user-friendly and I love the fact that I can compare multiple artists at the same time on the same charts. NBS has funding from several VC firms, including Boulder’s own Foundry Group and their VCs (like Jason Mendelson) are really talking them up, so it should be interesting to see what changes over the next year.

Honorable mention includes Last.fm, although they seem to only chart the number of times a track/artist has been listened to.

Beyond who will win out in the music charts, come questions about how this will effect the music industry and musicians in general. Will these data services remain free? When you apply this information to the monetary value of a musician as seen by labels? Will record labels remain relevant to current and future markets? How will this effect the positions of music supervisors and the budgets with which they have to work for film and television?

In terms of viability of social media outlets -whether they be Facebook or Twitter or your very own blog- I have to wonder what ultimately wins out at the end of the day: quality of original content or simple popularity? Eventually, yes, quality of content will gain in popularity, but so much of it flies beneath the radar rather than being plucked from obscurity. Yet, how does so much become “popular” or (cringe!) “viral” without said substance?

Sadly, I think so many people give up on whatever their outlet may be (social media related or not) because remaining faithful to your own content is sometimes easier said than done when faced with chasing the ever mighty scarlet letter that is popularity.

I have debated a bit about a proper response to Senator Mary Hodge after she replied to my email urging her to vote against HB 1192 -otherwise known as the Colorado software tax bill. The little kid in me wants to respond with very juvenile taunts and thumbing my nose at her whereas the “responsible” adult in me knows that this doesn’t solve anything. HB 1192 is a recent bill that was fast-tracked through the House & the Senate and pertains to the taxation of software and specifically, removing tax exemption status on software -downloaded software in particular. You can find it here.

Colorado is one of the lushest tech hubs in the country, in my opinion, with our darling Boulder being something of the epicenter between all of the many companies that have relocated their HQ’s here over the last decade and the tremendous amount of startup activity. I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved with a small handful of Denver startups over the last five years, including my own financially-unsuccessful production company. Startups -whether they are technology-oriented or otherwise- are insane environments to work in and you have to genuinely believe in your product or service to give so much of yourself to them. Regardless, startups encourage innovation and spark something magical for those involved with them -whether it be the actual builders or the simply the end users. Our global culture is currently in transition -moving from the tangible (e.g. print products) to the intangible (i.e. digital)- and with the digital age comes a phenomenon where we simultaneously decrease our sense of distance between countries, cultures, and civilizations and yet also decrease actual physical, in-person contact. Technology, social media, and all of the drama that is attached to these things is here to stay -these are not fads that will simply go away if we ignore them long enough. Because of this, many heavy hitters in the tech industry hear spoke out about it.

My own schtick? You want to remove tax exemptions to balance the budget? Fine. Find someone that knows how to write bill properly. Why not be specific instead of leaving the bill as vague as possible so that you can exploit the loopholes in the future? While I don’t think the prospect of taxing software is earth-shattering, I have no tolerance for intentional generalization within legal actions that will affect so many. Everyone uses software. You use it to type up your documents, to make presentations, to post your what you’re eating for breakfast on your Twitter feed. Below I have posted Senator Hodge’s personal email back to me from two days ago. Even in the email, she is not specific. She has found a way to appear specific without going into many details. My biggest problem with this? Neither the bill nor Senator Hodge state how much this tax percentage will be -not to mention the addition of tax percentages of cities & counties leveled on top of it. (CSIA touches upon this briefly, but has not posted sources for any of their information.

Thank you for taking the time to write me.

I appreciate your interest in balancing Colorado’s budget. The current
recession has created a shortfall of $1.5 billion in the state’s
roughly $8 billion budget. As you may know, in our efforts to balance
the budget over the last 12 months more than 75% of the savings has
come from cuts to existing services including the Departments of
Education, Higher Education, Corrections, Health and Human Services.
We have had to close schools, release prisoners early, and close some
of the state’s only remaining mental health facilities.  Even after
all these cuts we have still not done enough to fill the hole in the
budget.

We must have a fair and evenhanded approach to keeping the budget
balanced.   As one step toward this goal, we passed 9 bills that will
end or suspend some tax exemptions and save the state $130 million.
House Bill 1192, which eliminates certain software exemptions, is one
of those bills.

HB 1192 removed a tax exemption on the sale of certain software.  Some
confusion existed around the kinds of software this would affect. To
clarify, there are four major categories of software:
1.      Off-the-shelf software that you buy in a store: Customers currently
pay sales tax on those items (such as Microsoft windows) and will
continue to pay sales tax under this bill.
2.      Purely customized software:  If a software company such as Oracle
designs a software program uniquely for a business, the purchase of
that software does not currently include sales tax and will not
include sales tax under this bill.
3.      Software built by a business for internal use:  For example, if a
law firm’s IT department wants to build software for its own employees
to monitor billable hours, that software is not taxable now and will
not be taxable under this bill.
4.      Modified off-the-shelf software (MOTS): This type of software is a
combination of off-the-shelf and modified software.  In other sectors
of our tax code, an item that is partially taxable and partially tax
exempt is assumed to be wholly taxable, but previous to this
legislation, MOTS was entirely exempt. (This exemption was never
passed by the state legislature; it was put in place by an 11th hour
executive order by Governor Owens before he left office.) Under the
new bill only the part of the software that is off-the-shelf will be
taxable; the value of the modifications done to this software or the
ongoing support provided for the use of this software will not be
taxed.  Finally, software that is purchased off the shelf but is
delivered to you in the form of a download rather than a store
purchase was not previously taxed.  This bill creates a consistent
standard for all purchases of the off-the-shelf software so that they
are eligible for sales tax regardless of how they are delivered.
Currently, 11 other states have similar taxes on software sales, and
many, like Texas and Massachusetts, are viewed as the nation’s leading
centers for software development.  Moreover, Colorado is ranked as the
4th best state in the country to do business based on its very
favorable tax climate.  We know some of the reasons we have been able
to attract and grow so many software companies in Colorado include the
fact that we have a wonderful quality of life, we offer outstanding
research institutions as partners, and we provide strong public
services to make this state so livable.  In order to preserve the
climate that has attracted and grown these businesses, we must make
sure we can provide the core public services of education, health
care, and corrections – the major reasons people move and stay in
Colorado.  We are confident that our pro-business tax climate combined
with a very strong culture of software and technology industries in
Colorado will continue to keep us a national leader in the software
industry.

As you know, the state has already made dramatic cuts to public
services, including a proposed 260 million dollar cut to K-12
education, an 18% cut to agriculture and a 12% cut from health care.
As one step toward balancing our budget, we decided to look at the
more than 2 billion dollars of tax exemptions that the state of
Colorado currently gives to businesses.  The bills we passed today
will remove around 4% of the total amount of tax exemptions that
businesses currently enjoy in Colorado, a smaller percentage than
almost all of the public sector cuts.  We believe this package of
bills is part of a fiscally responsible approach that will share the
burden, protect public safety, and prevent us from making still deeper
cuts to public services that would force us to fire public school
teachers, pull funding for college students or stop payments to
Medicaid patients.

Thank you for input.  Please let me know if there is anything more I can do.

Sincerely,

Mary Hodge

justbreathejustbelieve:

Social capital allows you suggest and ask in order to get people to mobilize around your agenda.

You don’t force or bother or threaten.

And that, my friends, is Power 2.0.

In reference to a recent conversation about audience creation via online platforms, I could not have said this better. It is the very idea of “social capital” -the intangible “monetization” (and I’m not referring to actual money) of social media, its merits, and its latent and obvious network webbings- that too many people do not comprehend and refuse to grasp -if for no other reason than too many believe it to be a passing fad, something cute, something the youth have latched onto out of trendiness.

What have you created with your own social capital? How do you measure its value? Can you measure the value or is it simply priceless?

As many people know, NBC Universal and Comcast are to become one, an event that is now being brought in front of our lovely government officials. We are all aware of the fact that more and more, such content is being viewed online. Bring in all of the drama between Hulu (which NBC has a huge stake in) and Boxee (which I firmly believe will ultimately render cable TV obsolete) concerning Hulu content being “distributed” via the Boxee platform. This little flap was brought up today, “What about Boxee?” and Boxee CEO, Avner Ronen responded appropriately via the Boxee blog. After watching the clip (which Ronen has linked to in his blog post) and then reading Ronen’s response, it begs the question: why is NBC Universal getting so upset over “distributing” via the Boxee platform? Correct me if I’m wrong, but Hulu users have the option of embedding Hulu videos -essentially distributing them- via their blogs, Twitter, FB, and half a dozen other outlets. The ad revenue generated by people watching the videos is still the same -if not more considering the videos are basically getting more exposure through directly embedding them and/or linking to them via blogs and Twitter. It’s the same concept with Boxee -except that people could actually watch the content on their televisions via the Boxee box. Boxee isn’t stealing the content -just providing another venue for accessing it.

Sometimes I think dinosaurs are running these corporations with no regard to the future -except with rather futile attempts at preserving their own (fail).