The Internet: Predicting Content Trends for Fun and Profit

any press is good

Wired Magazine makes its living off of provocative predictions and proclamations about where things are going. Take their 2010 announcement that "the web is dead".

Recently, though, they ran a couple of interesting prediction pieces about content (on said dead web):

1. Long Form Writing is Back
   The rise of ultra short form communication tools such as Twitter has increased demand for really long pieces, not reduced it, as some have lamented. What tools like Twitter do is remove the need for middling pieces -- articles that don't say much (like weekly news rags) -- and increase demand for in-depth analysis. Let's hope so!
   Read Now >> Clive Thomson on How Tweets and Texts Nuture In-Depth Analysis.
2. Crowd Accelerated Innovation (with online video)
   The new killer web app? Video. Video has come of age in what Chris Anderson calls 'crowd accelerated innovation'. Basically, most innovation happens when there is a community of people that can learn from one another. The growth of user-generated video means that for any subject or area of expertise, you'll be able to tap into an enormous community, and watch the best and the brightest. It has the potential to change humanity! Well, they have to sell magazines. But there is something to it. I know from my limited experience playing and learning guitar how much I've improved because of online video. 
   Read Now >> TED Curator Chris Anderson on Crowd Accelerated Innovation.

Why the Best Music Service in Europe is not Available Here

Why is the best music service ever invented not available to US and Canadian consumers? Surprise, surprise, the music industry doesn't want you to have it.

According to Wired Magazine, Spotify is pretty much the best thing since sliced bread. It's like Napster, but better, and legal (well, in Europe). You have free access to basically all music.

So, right off the bat, as a free user, you can listen, share, discover music from an inexhaustible library. It is basically the dream of music-as-service, something the consumer has been waiting for ever since Napster showed them the possibilities, back in the day.

It's a 'freemium' service -- you get a free account, in hopes that you will upgrade to a premium package. You can listen all you want online, but, if you want to, say, load your collection onto your IPod for when you don't have access to the Internet, you pay a bit extra (a small monthly fee). I would pay -- that is, if I could.

The reason the music industry is able to block it in the Americas is that the negotiation of rights is different here. In Europe, you don't negotiate with each company, you negotiate with an intermediary. In other words, the music biz has to go along in Europe.

In the Americas, you have to negotiate each time with every company. And, they don't think its in their interests to use the freemium model. So, it seems like Europe's way of handling digital rights is better for both the consumer and for innovation. Old world kicks new world's ass.

The Wired Article gets into all the details. Read it: "Spotify is the Coolest Music Service You Can't Use".

Looking for Creative Inspiration? Mau on Mistakes and Creativity

Cool, or Creative?

If you're engaged in a creative pursuit (writing, art, design, music, film -- or entrepreneurs) you have probably dealt with a fear of making mistakes.

If so, you may want to listen to Bruce Mau talk about the nature of creativity and how mistakes play a crucial role in the creative process. More than that, mistakes basically ARE the creative process. It's from his CBC Tapestry interview with Mary Hynes.

Mau talks about how 'cool' is the antithesis of creative (and also to a full, rich life). 'Cool' people do what is known to work and try to maintain a hold on it. It's conservative, rather than inventive. You want to be creative? Give up being cool.

Dear Plutocrat, Please Accept My Friend Request

Old School

I grew up in an era (I was 15 in '85) when the general consensus was that class was dead. In fact the concept 'class' wasn't really even in the popular imagination. If it did come up it just seemed comically outdated and nostalgic.

In those days, when class did come up in conversation it meant that you were probably talking with the offspring of some aged leftys. They dressed different. They didn't watch TV. In short, weird.

New solutions required new thinking -- for starters, moving beyond class war and coming up with a new paradigm for understanding the world and for building a prosperous society. I didn't think that -- I just sort of absorbed it.

Looking back on it now, it seems just horribly naive. While we were all living the classless society, there were some clever people diligently working to rig up a pretty good game.

After the financial crisis and Iraq, it all seems, sort of -- obvious. Was the spin machine just that good? Or was it a collective ostrich moment? For those with some sense of history, of course, it's all just a continuum of shifting 'interests'.

If you're like me, though, you're playing catch-up. Curious how it is all shaping up in the 21st Century. How are these shifting class interests going to play out? Here's what some analysts at Citigroup say about that:

In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.

Anyway, this is all a lead-up to why this month's Atlantic Monthly article, "The Rise of the New Global Elite", is a must-read. Author Chrystia Freeland reports on the winner-take-most-economy, plutocracy now, philanthrocapitalism, the revolt of the elites, backlash, and bridging the divide.

Freeland blends big-picture economic and social observations with an insider's knowledge of the world of the power elites (she's been on the beat for over a decade, meeting with them on their turf). It's a window into a bizarre world, truly fascinating.

New: The Guardian Short Story Podcast

For those who like listening to stories: you'll love this new short story podcast series, created by the Guardian. They pretty much copied the format from the New Yorker (see here):  A famous author reads a short story by another writer, and they talk a bit about why they like it.

But, the Brits will not be out-done, particularly with literature and acting (or in this case 'reading'). The stories are excellent, and I hate to say it, they are just better readers than Americans.

So much lovely nuance in their interpretation. Nothing heavy-handed. Just stories very well read. That kind of depth comes from a longer tradition of reading stories out loud in the UK, particularly Ireland and Scotland (where many of the Authors come from).

I subscribe using ITunes but you can also listen online on the series page.

Alan Lomax and Early Folk Recordings

Alan Lomax

Folklorist, and musicologist Alan Lomax made some of the most important recordings in the 20th Century, traveling around the world with an early version of the 'portable' recording device (which was so small it could easily fit into the back of a pickup truck).

He'd drive around the countryside (all over the world) and ask townspeople if there was anyone around who played music. He'd then track them down and record them. These recordings were funded and preserved by the American Library of Congress. Amongst the people he brought to the wider audience: Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly. I have about ten albums of Lomax recordings, and they are some of the most cherished parts of my ITunes collection.

There's a new biography about Lomax, Alan Lomax, the Man Who Recorded the World, by John Szwed. That gave NPR the reason and opportunity to re-play Terry Gross' 1990 interview with Alan Lomax. Lomax, who died in 2002) talks about how he and his father began doing it, and the early challenges they had with born-agains who used political pressure to shut them down because of their Woody Guthrie recordings. Terry and Alan also introduce and play a couple of the recordings - Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Jellyroll Morten.  [21mins - Highly Recommended]

The Voice From Nowhere: American Journalism's Failed Objectivity

Unlike pundits and bloggers, mainstream news ideology for decades has been a certain type of objectivity. Media critic Jay Rosen calls it "The Voice from Nowhere".

Objective?

Rosen's critique is that objectivity just doesn't work to produce good news. Objectivity is something a journalist can't achieve. They have bias, interests, prejudice, even as they try to professionalize that away. The reading public knows they have a bias. So what you get is a lack of trust.

The alternative, argues Rosen, is to just come out with it, so everyone knows where the journalist is coming from: their background, who their heroes and villains are, their beliefs. Rosen calls it "the discount factor" - the degree to which you take their position with a grain of salt based on where they are coming from. You'd have more, not less trust.

He's not advocating punditry (hopefully), or endless ranting on subjects, but a different relationship with the reader and the subject matter. It might also get around that impotent formula: reporting from the sidelines about what other people are saying."The President says there are WMDs".

Interestingly, the rise of objectivity in newspapers seems to have come about as a product of economic choices:

Downie and Rosen agree on one thing: The principle of impartiality in the legacy press is an accident of economics. A century ago, there were several newspapers in every big city — and each allied to a political faction — but as papers died off, the surviving dailies sought to strip blatant opinion out of their news pages to appeal to a wider audience. And for decades, such opinion-driven publications as The Nation and the National Review have carved out influential roles in political discourse.

I got this from an NPR bit on Morning Edition. You can read more and listen to the 5min podcast here:

American Media's True Ideology? Avoiding One.

Looking for New Music? An Online Collection of Unique Live Performances

If you're looking for some new bands or songwriters, you might want to check out a website called The Black Cab Sessions. The slogan on the website sums up the concept: "One Song, One Take, One Cab".  Musicians on their way to or from gigs play a song in the back of a cab. Brilliant!

Listen to great artists, 'unplugged'

Without all the props of production and post-production, you hear how the artists really sound. Turns out, a London cab is the ideal soundbox for intimate recordings. It makes you wonder, sometimes, why people do all the production to their recordings in the first place. It's so vital, alive, real. Some go off the rails, but most are excellent. It really comes down to the quality of the performance.

For example, I never really thought much of Badly Drawn Boy (Damon Gough) until I listened to his performance in the back of a cab, a song called "Born in the UK". Now I'm a huge fan. What was missing in his pop recordings was his amazing ease with his voice and the guitar.

You get the bigger acts, like Weezer, Brian Wilson, Bon Iver, and more. But, you also get these little gems, artists you've never heard of, that are totally compelling. A new addition to the site is a female duo called First Aid Kit. A simple song, sung so well, with a minimalist, but rock-solid guitar accompaniment.

Most of the performances are acoustic-based. It makes sense, given the context, so it favors players who know their way around a fretboard, and who have a unique approach. Highly Recommended.