January 2012
1 post
4 tags
Kickstarter 2011 Stats - Vindication?
A while back I did a pretty long and in depth review of Kickstarter. Well they just released their stats for 2011 and I thought I’d quickly revisit what I thought was true, but couldn’t prove.
In that post I claimed that Film and Video was the driving force behind Kickstarter. The only proof I had was the Top 100 Most Funded Projects, which said that 35 of these were in film and...
December 2011
1 post
2 tags
Christmas Eve Hike
Yesterday morning Tom and I went for a hike in Blydenburgh County Park. We use to mountain bike there a lot when we were younger, and in better shape. Now we’ve been reduced to hiking. In a way though it works out cause it’s easier to think and talk while hiking. When your mountain biking on a single track, you’re really just doing your best not to fall into the lake or bust your...
October 2011
4 posts
Hybrid Moments
This Saturday the 4 show Danzig Legacy Tour made it to the Hammerstein Ballroom in NYC and Tom and I went out to catch it. If you don’t know what this is, it’s Danzig doing songs from all three of his bands, Danzig, Samhain, and Misfits. I love all of his bands a great deal. Enough to spend thousands on shirts, artwork, and tattoos, yet I had never seen them live. The problem is that even though...
What Separates Us From The Trolls
Unless you’ve been living under a System 360 (aka rock) these last few weeks, you know that Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch and current venture capitalist, has left TechCrunch (which is now owned by AOL) and started a new blog called Uncrunched. The whole story leading up to this move has been well documented, so going into here on my little old tumblr blog, is probably not...
Misinformation is Power
One of the reasons the adoption of Spotify has been so widespread is because the terms under which the bands and labels get paid are so secret. No one wants you to know what they get paid. Not Spotify, not the bands, and not the labels. This is why they don’t release information to the bands and labels for 3 months. They want you to get use to leaving your music up there. If they provided...
More Distractions or More Piracy?
About a week ago Digital Music News put this image article up comparing Broadband penetration to album sales.
This relates to my recent post on I Live Sweat where I argued that distractions are a big reasons we do listen to music the same way we did in the past. When most people see this graph they immediately think about the growth of piracy. And I agree, piracy is a big part of it. But I also...
September 2011
2 posts
Digital vs Vinyl - It's Not a Competition
Here’s an excerpt from a guest post I did for I Live Sweat that they just published today.
The fine gentlemen* at I Live Sweat gave me the opportunity to write an article comparing digital to vinyl, but, to be honest, as I started to think about it, I realized that the only time you see articles comparing these two things is when someone has a passionate opinion about one or the other. And...
The Vinyl Bailout - Part 5 - Pressing Amounts
One of the most difficult things about pressing a record is knowing how many to make, over how many different colors. There’s so many different styles and theories out there, but I’ve never seen anyone write about the subject. Which is so strange! Why would someone not want to write 2000 words on vinyl pressing amounts?! Sarcasm aside, I think it’s pretty interesting, so I picked...
August 2011
3 posts
The Vinyl Bailout - Part 4 - Kickstarter
Last post I nerded out big time on Test Presses, and how I thought bands and labels should embrace them as a way to create revenue. Collectors, like me for instance, pay absurd amounts of money for them. Once I had my brother Tom bid $1500+ on a Test Press cause I was on a train and couldn’t access the internet safely. I won it for $500. That shows you how much I wanted it. And I believe...
Focus Builds Momentum
Yesterday evening Adam(@getsick828) on twitter said he had a new label and asked if I had a good tip for him. I have a lot of tips, but the one that immediately came to mind was Focus. A lot of new small labels don’t have sub genre focus. Which I think is fine if you’re a label from your local scene, and you don’t care about going all over the genre map. Meaning, you might...
The Vinyl Bailout - Part 3 - Test Presses
In my last post I discussed how I believe digital and vinyl serve two different purposes to most buyers, and ways you can use this information to your advantage when selling music. Now I think I want to talk about Test Presses.
I guess I should begin with what a test press is. A test press is a test record made by the pressing plant to check to see if the plate was grooved correctly. It’s...
July 2011
8 posts
Loose Lips Sink Sites
Something I’ve noticed a few times in recent months, that I wanted to quickly bring up and discuss, is this trend to announce new features or redesigns before they’re ready to release. Maybe some people have realized Tom and I never talk about anything prior to it being ready for the public. Are we excited for new stuff? Of course we are. I’m literally jumping out of my skin with...
The Vinyl Bailout - Part 2 - The Digital Release
My first tip slash trick concerns the practice of giving the digital version of an album away for free with the purchase of vinyl. Now beware, if you hate hearing how to make money with music sales, then go no further than this. This post is for someone that actually thinks about ways to keep their band or label financially stable. Imagine that right? A band or label trying to increase sales so...
The Vinyl Bailout - Part 1
About 3 months ago I wrote a post called Currency of a Culture, where I discussed “Flipping”, which is one of the biggest problems currently plaguing vinyl collecting. At the end of that post I briefly talked about preorders, and why they began. Ever since then I’ve been thinking about preorders, the problems with them, how they got a bad rap, and what drives the continued need...
The Userblame Game
As many of you know we removed user account sign ups from Limited Pressing this past sunday. It was a huge change to, not only our service, but also our outlook on the future. Dropping user account sign ups when we’re growing this fast, is basically us saying they’ll never be coming back. The reason being is if we stop now, and then decide 6 months from now to bring them back,...
Your Best Foot Forward
Auctions can be compared to gambling in so many different ways. Most people just point out that there’s no guarantees on how much your item will sell for, therefore you’re taking a gamble by auctioning it. That’s the easy one. But I think there’s some psychological proof to this claim as well. I have a lot of experience with gambling, and game theory, cause for a while I...
eBay's Incredible iPhone Gap
As incredible as it may seem, people actually use the eBay web interface. I know, I know, not possible right? But they do. They login, they use that mouse thingy, they wait for pages to “load” HA! Suckers. The eBay web interface is for dudes that still have an angel fire fan site about Pearl Jam. But if you live in the second decade of the 21st century, like me, you only use the eBay...
The Currency of a Culture
In the early 1800s, the US economy was growing fast and coin money was becoming increasingly hard to deal with. It was heavy, terribly difficult to transport, and it wore during handling so it needed to be weighed every time it changed hands. The US wanted something light, and more like a promise of money. This is when they started letting banks create paper money and the term “Bank...
Second Chance Scams
A couple of weeks ago I decided to sell some things I didn’t need and buy myself a Macbook Air. It was a good decision, the Air is a great computer. One of the things I decided to sell was my iPad 3G. I rarely ever used it and I only bought it cause I thought the 3G would be cool for traveling. But now I hear that AT&T is going to launch wifi hotspot to compete better with the new...