Alternative Medicine

Kickstarter 2011 Stats - Vindication?

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 19:23:00 -0500

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 video, but only 5 were in Music. I also saw that most projects that were funded were in the $1000-$5000 category, which I assumed, was mostly music. Well the 2011 numbers are out, and they broke it down a little better for us.

Total Pledged

$99,344,382

Music

$19,801,685.21 pledged

3,653 successful projects

260,178 backers

Film & Video

$32,473,790.40 pledged

3,284 successful projects

308,541 backers

So here’s what we can decipher from these numbers. One is that Music was about 19.9% of the total money pledged. Film and Video was 32.7% of the total money pledged. That’s obvious math. But now look at the projects VS backers. FIlm and Video had about 400 less projects, but about 40,000 more backers. The reason is because Film and Video projects are bigger projects that require more pledges than a Music project, yet the cost of the standard reward is about the same. Think about it, an album and a DVD cost about the same amount. So most people will be pledging the amount it takes to get those items. Therefore you need more pledges to fund a Film and Video project.

I think I was vindicated by these 2011 numbers. Clearly my thoughts were correct. I also have a theory that they didn’t release the actual dollar amount for each category in their last press release, because it showed exactly what I stated in my previous post, that Kickstarter is really Filmstarter. These 2011 numbers do bring Music & Film and Video a little closer. A third of all money pledged is for film and video, but a fifth of all money is music. Not bad for music.

Christmas Eve Hike

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 13:31:00 -0500

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 nose on a low hanging tree limb.

I use this really good iPhone app called GPS Kit. It’s like a $20 app, which is pretty expensive for an app, but it’s worth it if you hike a lot. I have no idea why it thinks my max speed was nearly 40 mph. But the average speed is dead on. Also another interesting thing is it says we were stopped for almost 50 minutes, which we weren’t. But I guess it counts all the times you’re in one spot for a few seconds. Hmmm I think I just figured out why it thinks my max speed was 40 mph. If it thinks I was stopped for say 10 minutes, but I was actually moving, then when it saw that I was moving, I would be very far away from where I was when it thought I was last moving. Therefore it would assume I was moving extremely fast. I bet there’s something in the settings about accuracy, that might help this.

I think Tom and I are going to try and get on a hiking schedule. 7+ miles wasn’t that bad. Hither Woods in Montauk has longer trails. Maybe we’ll hit that once Blydenburgh gets real easy.

Hybrid Moments

Mon, 31 Oct 2011 12:39:00 -0400

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 I’m in my early 30s, I was still not around for the Misfits, Samhain, or into the original Danzig lineup that toured prior to 1995. I didn’t start liking these bands till the late 90s when the local bands that I grew up loving started to break up, and I began to look elsewhere for music to listen to. What’s even more interesting than getting tattoos from a band I never saw live, is I had never been to a concert before. Live music of course. I’ve probably seen more live music than 99.9% of the world. But an actual “concert” I had never been to. From my teens to my mid 20s I probably saw 7 to 12 shows a month. All local shows from touring bands or bands based out of Long Island. Never more than a 1000 people and most of the time no more than 200. I grew up on a steady dose of Punk and Hardcore. There was only one time where I questioned if I had been to a “concert” and still to this day, I’m not completely sure. The year was 2003 and my buddies from a Canadian band named Moneen invited my friend Brian and I to see them play with Taking Back Sunday and Saves The Day in Asbury Park, NJ. This was the largest show/concert I had ever been to. I’ve went to fests sure, but that’s a fest, this is just 3 bands. There might have been 2000 people there. I felt pretty out of place. I didn’t even go out into the crowd, just hung out behind the rail near an emergency exit. Maybe that was my first concert, but since it was my friends playing, who really aren’t huge or anything, I never really saw it as a concert. I could have been in denial. Either way, seeing Danzig is a concert and I think no matter what that Saves the Day tour was, the cherry is no doubt popped.

A couple of things of note about Saturday night. One is that, even though I love Misfits and Danzig, for some reason the Samhain set was my favorite. Most people think this is his worst band of the three, and I might agree with that, but Saturday night it was his best. It might have been Tommy Victor. That dude can play. He handled the tempo change well. Danzig was smart about the set layout too. They did new Danzig, then went into Danzig I – IV stuff, then went directly into Samhain material. Basically it allowed the entire band to slow down naturally with the songs. It also allowed for less guitar changes which helps keep the crowd into it. And maybe this tempo changed worked on me as well. By the time they got to Samhain material I was ready to jump over the railing with anticipation. They played Let The Day Begin and I didn’t stop smiling till I paid my $41 parking garage bill and Tom and I hit the LIE for a rare October snow storm.

Last thing of note. We’re about an hour into the set when they lowered the Misfits backdrop and I was amazed to see how many people pulled out their cellphones to take pictures. Lot of punks out there grew up, got jobs, and turned into adults. Yet they still get gitty when they see the crimson ghost.

What Separates Us From The Trolls

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:05:00 -0400

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 necessary, or even that interesting. What I do find interesting is the information one can extract from the very public cross pollination of Arrington’s new blog and TechCrunch’s still active news site. A very odd and completely out of the ordinary thing is going on right now with these two sites. They’re existing as separate entities, but they’re promoting each other and trading employees, almost like they’re one entity. For example MG Siegler, one of the main reasons I read TechCrunch, has joined Crunchfund, which is Arrington’s VC firm. Yet he still writes for TechCrunch. Huh? Yeah, I said it was odd. Well, between the promoting and the employee sharing, it makes me think that readers of the old “Michael Arrington” version of TechCrunch, are still reading TechCrunch, but are now reading Uncrunched as well. Why else would they continue to send you back and forth unless it was working? This brings me to the point on my post. Commenting.

Back in March, TechCrunch removed it’s Disqus commenting system and switched over to Facebook commenting. There were many pissed off people. I don’t think I was pissed, more like annoyed. I liked commenting on TechCrunch articles, but since I didn’t have an account with Facebook(or Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, cause they’re available as well. Yeah I don’t get that either.), I couldn’t do it anymore. In their pros and cons article they stated one of the great things about FB comments was it allowed people to automatically post their comment to their FB page. Which they said was increasing traffic for them. But a week later, they said that it really isn’t affecting traffic. Which makes me think most of that autoposting was by accident. To their credit, they did say that adding facebook commenting was not an attempt at getting more traffic, it was about something entirely different. Trolls. Trolls that come to the site just to puke negativity all over the comments area. TechCrunch thought the best way to curb the trolls was to make it more difficult to post anonymously. Anonymity is what TechCrunch believes to be the root of all negativity in the comments area. And in a way they’re right. Sort of.

I’ve had a lot of experience with Trolls over the years. Message boards are obviously still a huge part of independent music. One because they’re free, and two cause they’re very easy to setup. But they do create the ultimate place for anonymous garbage. The interesting part is these people aren’t even anonymous. They have signatures and links to their website, blog, twitter, etc. But they still rev up their feigned ego and take a shit on anyone they feel like. In fact, you could make a completely anonymous post on a message board by creating a fake name, but people don’t. You know why? Because then no one will know it’s them. It’s like playing a joke on an enemy, but not telling anyone. What good is that? The truth is anonymous posting is not the root of the problem, it’s just the fruit the plant bears.

The real reason people are able to consciously shit publicly on news sites like TechCrunch is because of separation. If posting anonymously was the real problem, then a post like the one Arrington released last week would have received the full force of the assholes. Not found? That’s because he deleted it. Let me explain. About a week ago Michael ran a post about an incident that happened on an American Airlines flight, and because of this incident, twitter was block by the airline. Michael got his information from a friend or an acquaintance, I’m not sure which one. But after the story ran, the comments area blew up with a discussion about how this was impossible. It was a hundred intelligent comments, by 40 intelligent people. Then the icing on the cake. The person who gave Michael the info retracted their statement in the comments area. Guess what happened then. The entire comments area ripped Arrington to shreds? Nope, nothing happened. The story just died and I guess seeing that it turned out not to be true, Arrington deleted it. Imagine that story ran on TechCrunch. WOW, it would be chaos. People wouldn’t debate the possibility of this incident happening, they’d tear TechCrunch a new asshole for not fact checking enough. Could people have posted anonymously on Uncrunched? Yep, he uses a wordpress plugin that allows “Guest” comments. So where the hell are the trolls? They’re still in the comments area, but now there’s less separation because only one person is running the blog. It’s just Michael. Insults are directed at him, not an organization. It’s not even that they know who’s behind the curtain. It’s that there is no curtain. On TechCrunch you knew who was behind the curtain. You knew who wrote the column. You knew who ran the company. But you didn’t know the politics behind the story. Who made them write the story. Who’s really at fault. And that’s enough to protect an asshole from embarrassment. On Uncrunched, there’s no protection. It’s just you and Arrington. And that changes the game completely.

Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist and professor at Duke University, did a presentation on a related topic a couple years ago at the Ted Conference (starts at 4:00).

If you haven’t watched it, I’ll summarize some of it for you. Dan wanted to find out what made people cheat, so he gave a test out to a bunch of students and said he’d pay them for every right answer. Most people got 4 answers right. Then he started to let people tell him how many answers they got right, and not bother showing him the test. People suddenly started getting 7 answers right. Then he did a few more versions of this experiment. One was making people swear on the bible, or recite the ten commandments before taking the test. Cheating went down. Then instead of paying them in cash, he gave them tokens which they could exchange for cash. What happened? Cheating doubled. He did a few more interesting experiments using the test, but long story short, what he learned was that people have a moral code, but only when they’re reminded of it. When you put the subject further and further away from what would remind them about their moral code, like for instance giving them tokens instead of cash, they tend to act very different. He gives us a very simple example too. Taking a pencil from work, or taking 10 cents out of the petty cash draw. It’s the same thing, but we don’t think of it that way. It works the same with internet trolls. When you put them further away from face to face contact, they tend to feel like they can say whatever the hell they want. It’s exciting for them. It’s like giving someone the middle finger when they cut you off. Inside your car you feel safe. There’s separation from the outside world. We’re bold and care free. Laymen call it road rage. TechCrunch might call it strength of anonymity. But if you two were outside your car, you’d still be anonymous. Would you give them the finger then? Probably not, since there’s no way to escape without looking like a coward and running for the hills.

So what does all this garbage mean. It means that if TechCrunch and other news sites want less trolls, the solution is not make it more difficult to comment, it’s be more personal with your readers. Remind them about their moral code. Remind them that you are human beings behind that story, not some faceless news organization. I have an experiment. Go back and look at all the guest posts done on your news site and see how much negativity is in the comments. I’ll bet you anything there’s virtually none. Why do you think that is? It’s because they’re a “guest”, and “guests” should be treated with respect. Least that’s what my mom told me.

Misinformation is Power

Sun, 09 Oct 2011 13:05:00 -0400

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 you with up to the minute revenue numbers, you’d get frustrated and pull your music. Spotify wants you to tell your fans that their music is on Spotify. They want your fans to get used to listening to the music on Spotify. They want everyone to get comfortable, and just forget the fact that you’re not making any money.

Here’s a list of misinformation provided to the world by articles and comments.

Fair Play? A Million Spotify Streams Earned Gaga $167

“According to Swedish paper Expressen, 2009’s standout breakthrough artist Lady Gaga and her songwriter Redone made just SEK1150 (£100.76; $166.56) in songwriting royalties from one million Spotify plays of her hit Poker Face in Sweden in the first five months after Spotify’s launch in October 2008, according to figures from the Swedish Performing Rights Society (STIM).”

Fair Play? A Million Spotify Streams Earned Gaga $167

“STIM told paidContent:UK that Universal Music-signed Gaga actually generated SEK 2,300 (£201.53) through plays of Poker Face—she keeps half while the other half goes to STIM, which handles songwriters’ copyright payments in Spotify’s native Sweden. STIM points out to us that Gaga has her own separate deal with her label when it comes to streaming—I asked Universal to tell us what that relationship is, but have yet to receive an answer.”

How Much Does Music Artist Earn Online?

Projekt Records: Spotify Is ‘Not a Viable Way Forward…’

“Let’s discuss the economics. For a play on Spotfy…. NOW READ THIS CLOSELY….. $0.00029 is paid to the label/artist. There is the math, plain and simple! 5000 plays generates around $1.45. In comparison, 5000 track downloads at iTunes generates almost $3000. You have probably seen this article in The Guardian; over a five-month period, 1-million plays of Lady Gaga’s hit ‘Poker Face’ earned just $167. Really.”

Projekt Records pulled their music from Spotify and sited the Lady Gaga article as it’s reasoning. But after this press release got posted on every big digital news site, a lot of people were disputing the numbers provided. Then magically Projekt pulled their latest streaming numbers from their distributor and released a correction.

“After pulling the latest reports from our Digital Distributor, I have revised numbers for what Projekt is paid per Spotify stream. It is “better” but not “better enough” to change my beliefs. These all-you-can-eat services are an unworkable business model for labels & artists.

However I do want to be clear about what the pay out is:

For a play on Spotfy…. NOW READ THIS CLOSELY….. on average $0.0013 is paid to Projekt. 5000 plays generates around $6.50. In comparison, 5000 track downloads at iTunes generates almost $3000. To be clear: I am not suggesting that every stream would have been a sale at iTunes. Believe me, I understand the reality of the music business. I am providing that as a comparison for you. Let’s look at this another way: To earn the U.S. monthly minimum wage - $1160 - 892,307 plays a month are needed at Spotify. This is not a viable number for artists.”

Notice the issue? Projekt didn’t want to tell the world how much they were making, nor how many streams they were getting. So they just quoted and linked to the Lady Gaga article. But under intense scrutiny from readers, they had to release it.

Funny and confusing comments from that Digital Music News article.

The funny part is, that reply was actually made by a Spotify shill that owns a sites that tracks Spotify music tweets and displays them as a stream on their site. How do I know this? Cause the screen shot he posted was originally from his blog post. He seems to be making a lot more than the rest of the world. Wonder why?

How about comments on same press release via Hypebot?
“$0.00029 is simply false. I’ve received $79 from Spotify so far, and there’s no way a little indie artist like me had his songs streamed 273,000 times!

Glancing over my CD Baby accounting info, it appears to range from $0.0010-$0.0125 per stream.”

Hold on, there’s a range? In all the articles I’ve seen, there’s been no mention of a range. Now this commentor is talking about a range with a 1200% difference. Can we get any more misinformed than that? What I think he means is he’s been working with CD Baby for a while, and Spotify has grown during this time, which means their per stream value has gone up. But if you read that comment without any context, you could get very confused.

How to get your music on Spotify, and how much it pays
“For Spotify, the artist earns 0.02p per play. That means you’ll need 50 plays to earn 1p, 5,000 plays to earn £1, or half a million plays to earn £100. You’ll also get a percentage of advertising revenue, but we can safely assume that this will be even more negligible than play royalties.”

This article resulted in confusion in the comment section.

This was explained by Neil Goldman when he linked to this YouTube video. Nice job Neil!

There’s a million more articles posted recently about the per stream value of Spotify, as well as other music streaming services competing in the same space. I’m not sure how the controversy will end, but it’s definitely going to be interesting to follow.

More Distractions or More Piracy?

Sat, 08 Oct 2011 15:41:00 -0400

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 think it’s about having a whole new way to be entertained. The internet is our shiny new toy and we just can’t put it down. Not only this, but since it’s getting faster and more robust every day, it opens it up to more engaging technology, which in turn, distracts you more.

Album sales are also going to be fighting broadband because of all these new music streaming platforms. Many people say these platforms should increase music sales, but this hasn’t been proven yet. And If they don’t start charging users more for their service, I highly doubt it will ever improve sales. The reason being is, if the service is close to free, or completely free, why would you need to buy the album?

Digital vs Vinyl - It's Not a Competition

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:21:00 -0400

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 yes, I could do that kind of article, but what good would it do us? Not much. My opinion on which is better or worse will not change anyone’s mind. It’ll just be another ranting piece of drivel falling on the deaf ears of those opposed to my opinion. So I thought it might be a better idea to do an article about how digital and vinyl serve two different purposes, and it’s those purposes that we actually have passion for, not the medium in which we experience them….

Full Post on I Live Sweat. And yes, I have no idea how to reblog.

The Vinyl Bailout - Part 5 - Pressing Amounts

Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:06:30 -0400

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 three scenarios to discuss and dissect. Nerd levels set to 11? OK, hit it!

I Can’t Have it, Therefore I Must Have It

If you press a record across multiple colors, the most limited version is usually the most desirable, but by who? This is important to think about because a lot of bands don’t attract collectors. And collectors, flippers, and superfans, are the only people that really make it a point to go for the rarest version. They’re the ones that sit on that “Coming Soon” page clicking the refresh button like a 14 year old playing a first person shooter. Yeah, don’t pretend you don’t, I have analytics. This most limited version is like the kickoff to the sale. If all your vinyl buying fans are superfans and collectors, like for instance American Nightmare, then the rarest version shouldn’t be out of 50 or 100. It should be out of 250 or 300. The reason is these people want all the colors, and if you shut them out of the rarest one, they’re just going to go to an auction site and pay 4 times as much. They’re willing to give you the money, so let them. Not only that, but as I’ve pointed out in my post called The Currency of a Culture, money is cooler than eating. Which basically means, flippers win over fans every single time, and if you go too low on that rare version, the flippers get their fill, and the fans will have to pay stupid money on auction sites. The goal is to produce enough of the rarest version to fill the flippers, the collectors, and the superfans. One great example to ponder is the Converge - Axe To Fall release from late 2009 by Deathwish Inc. This album had leagues of rabid fans clamoring to expel their collective loads, and Deathwish didn’t deny them even a single orgasm. For round 1 they pressed 7100 records across 8 different colors. Here’s the breakdown:

Now if you remember this release, you know that as soon as the orders started going out, that clear w/ shards was being flipped for major cash. It was interesting to see what people would pay for it, cause that let’s you know if you made enough of them. If the rarest version is going for 30 or 40 bucks, you probably made a decent amount. It turns out that the average price for Axe To Fall, back when it was first flipped to right now, is about 200 bucks. This means there wasn’t enough made. The problem is you can’t make more, without making more of the others. You see how close the numbers are up there? They couldn’t of done 200, because it’s too close to the blue, beer and yellow version. There needs to be a lot of separation between the rare version and the one right above it. If you make them too close, it won’t stand out and give you the shock and awe that creates pandemonium among dude’s with free expedit space.

Unfortunately, Deathwish was in a bind here. They couldn’t make the clear shards out of 200 or they’d have to add another 1000 records to the amount pressed. Not only that, but I assume that clear w/ shards cost more to produce than the others, and therefore yielded them less profit. So why in the world did Deathwish, a very smart label with tons of experience in vinyl releases, do this seemingly ridiculous thing of pressing 100 copies of the most desirable vinyl release of the year? Well, I haven’t asked them, this is just my theory, but I believe it was sort of an after thought, not a mistake. If you look at the total amount of records pressed, 7100, and you also look at the colors they pressed, it seems like the clear w/ shards is out of place. Everything besides that release is either blue, beer or a combination of blue and beer. Those releases are also 7 colors, over 7000 units. The last 100 is for a variant outside of the colorway, and pressingway. I think Deathwish thought they could do something fun and exciting in the hole between 300 and 0, because in reality, 300 is the perfect amount for the rarest variant of this release.

There’s also something else that might have forced their hand. I assume Epitaph owned the rights to this album and Deathwish licensed the vinyl. But in the deal, Epitaph negotiated an exclusive pressing of 500 cream, which I’m guessing is just a strange variant of beer(see pressing info). That means Deathwish had to work around that amount. That’s almost like an “Anchor Variant” in a way. The variant that decides what the rest have to be. And 500 definitely throws a wrench in the works. Deathwish needs the rarest records in their store and I think this is why they made a 400 variant, and a 300 variant. But I also think they wanted to do more, but couldn’t because of the range between 500 and 0. This is when they decided to do a promotional hype variant. Something that would make the internet go nuts and have people talking non stop on forums. AKA Clear W/ Shards out of 100. Who knows what they would have done if they didn’t have to do 500 for Epitaph. I’m guessing the entire pressing would have been different. What would it have looked like? Not sure, but I know how I would have done it, given the information we have now. I wouldn’t have done the clear w/ shards (sorry!) and I would have made 500 instead of 400 of the Beer with Blue, White, and Yellow splatter variant. This would mean you’d have 6 colors, and the biggest fans wouldn’t be spending crazy money on flips. Then instead of doing 2 colors on the second pressing, I would do 4 colors over the same total. Maybe even 5. The logic is if superfans have the money, then they’ll buy every variant you press.

Something else I might have done. I might have went ahead with the pressing of the clear w/ shards, but only include it free with a purchase of a full color package. Buy all the records in one giant package, and you get the clear w/ shards for free. I wouldn’t discount the package, like most labels do, just give the clear w/ shards away for nothing. This does two things. One, it neutralizes the flippers. People that aren’t into Converge, and are just sitting on that clear w/ shards with the intent of buying it and flipping it, probably won’t want to pony up all that dough to risk on one, maybe two flips. It would also leave the true fan’s funds secure for future pressings.

A Planned Pressing Economy

The next style I’d like to talk about is where each variants has the same amount pressed. The idea is that you press 4 or 5 colors and not give any of them preferential treatment, which essentially makes them all equally as desirable from a collector’s and flipper’s point of view. This pressing theory works extremely well when the album is from a band that isn’t touring anymore, the band has stalled on growth because of a hiatus or maybe their newer material isn’t producing more interest. But the main reason to use this method is when you’re releasing an album that’s been out for a long time, just not out on vinyl. The reason this works well is this album has probably picked up the bulk of it’s fans already. It’s out there, and people have listened to it and decided if they like it or not. Therefore the amount of superfans and collectors isn’t going to change because of outside influences.

There are a few labels that have used this method, but the one that comes to mind right away is Mightier Than Sword and their represses of all the Blink 182 albums. Most of these variants were based on 500 copies each, which I think is a great number. It’s just enough for people to consider them rare, but also enough for all the collectors to get one. Then they just keep adding pressing runs. It’s a great move. Collectors will keep buying, and non collectors don’t care what color they get. The only issue is your cost per record is going to be higher on 4 variants at 500 each, than on 2 variants at 1000 each. But it’s probably worth it if you consider that you wouldn’t sell all 2000 records if it’s only over 2 variants, because collectors and flippers are leaving money on the table.

The Gumball Machine

Another way you see labels pressing records is doing a whole ton of colors, but only making 20 to 30 of each. Sometimes even less. If you read my collecting blog, Alternate 1995, you know I did a big two part post about Trip Machine Records and their Incendiary - Unrestrained split 7” and their Most Precious Blood Demo 7”. This style was definitely utilized in the Incendiary - Unrestrained split.

But what’s interesting about this style is, while on the outside it seems gimmicky, it’s actually just a variation of what Deathwish did, only with reduced quantities because of a reduced fan base. But since the numbers are small, people that don’t collect see it as strange or cash grabby. I don’t agree, I think it’s actually pretty fun. Especially when done with 7”s. With LPs it’s a little bit more difficult, because your spending 12 to 18 bucks every single time. But with a $5 7”, preordering 4 or 5 of them, and then hunting down a couple rarities that you missed, isn’t really that bad. In fact, I sometimes wish all my favorite bands from the past were pressed on 10 different colors, just so I could keep searching and have them stay fresh in my mind.

One thing of note with this method. Never do it unless you’re prepared to have good, and easily accessible, pressing info. I just mentioned that I would have loved if all my favorite bands from the 90s were pressed on 10 different colors. Well I can think of one that has, and it still pisses me off to this day. This record is the Shutdown - Indecision split pressed on Back To Basics in 1995. Back To Basics is owned by infamous traveling junk dealer Rick Ta Life, who in 95 thought it was a great idea to press this 7” on a million colors, wrapped in a million different photo copied covers, and then never release the pressing info. I owned 12 copies before I stopped buying them. Son of a bitch.

Let’s Mess With Nick’s Sanity

As many of you know my two favorite labels of all time are Exit and Wreck-age Records. They were both owned and operated by Pavlos Loanidis, until he shut them down in the late 90s and moved back to Greece. Every one of my favorite bands released a record, on one of these labels. And to make things even more interesting, the way Pavlos released the records created an ongoing battle for my sanity that’s lasted for more than 16 years. How exactly did Pavlos create mass hysteria, and cause me to spend 1000s of dollars across a dozen countries? This is how…

This is the most up to date pressing info currently available for these two labels. Pavlos sent it to me about a year and a half ago and I haven’t published it till now. Please direct your attention to the far right column. See anything unlike anything in the history of record collecting? Let me help you. Who releases Madball - Droppin’ Many Suckers and presses 6250 on black and 250 on burgundy?! Who releases Mind Over Matter - S/T on black out of 3100 and gold out of 200?! A crazy person, that’s who. A person with evil ingrained in his DNA. A dude that has nothing better to do than fuck with the obsessed. You know what though? I love him for it!

You’ll never see a label do this now a days. Pavlos had an insane distribution deal with Lumberjack, and his releases were shipped all over the world. Even that Madball record on black is still kinda tough to find. But the colored variants weren’t really about sales. It was more about doing something fun and exciting. Just like I think happened with Deathwish’s clear w/ shards. I also don’t think he thought collectors would still be searching ebay Germany, or translating Belgium message board posts, looking for that one missing variation that has eluded them for more than a decade. Not sure if he would have done it if he knew what would happen.

Side note: This is a very old image. Nothing is “Still Available”.

The Vinyl Bailout

I think my Vinyl Bailout series is done. There are a few more things I want to talk about, but I’m going to leave them for a future project. Maybe a digital book for the winter. Not sure who’d be interested in reading an entire book on the buying, selling, and collecting of vinyl, but it would be fun to put it together and release for free or name your own price. Let me work on it and I’ll keep everyone posted. Until then, I got a bunch more articles coming so stick around!

Edit: I’ve received information post email newsletter, from the master of all things Converge, Juan, that the clear w/ shards was confirmed by Deathwish to be an afterthought.

The Vinyl Bailout - Part 4 - Kickstarter

Tue, 30 Aug 2011 11:30:00 -0400

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 there’s someone like that for almost every test press. Someone that’s willing to pay 3 times as much as the next person. You just got to have the guts to charge them for it. Now we’ve reached Part 4, and I’ve finally collected my thoughts on Kickstarter. Got your calculators ready? Ok, let’s begin.

Kickstarter is a platform that enables people to get projects funded easier. The platform is based around a simple structure where fans can commit money to a project, but the creator of the project is not able to access the money unless the goal has been met, and the allotted time to reach that goal has been exceeded. On July 19th they announced on their blog that they reached their 10,000th successfully funded project. That’s a great number, but what really interested me was the amount of money they said changed hands over those 10,000 projects. $60 Million. Yeah, that’s a lot of freaking money. And when I saw that, I thought I should take a more in depth look at this platform, see if the music industry could utilize it, and maybe pose some interesting theories of why Kickstarter is thriving in the online tech industry.

Kickstart An Album

Let’s get right to it. Out of the 10,000 projects Kickstarter has funded, 3110 has been in Music, which is the most in any category. I myself have contributed to a Kickstarter. My buddy Mike, who owns a label called Dead Broke Rekerds, wanted to release Explosivo - If the Devil Had a Guitar on vinyl. This album was recorded in 2000, but never saw the light of day. He decided to give Kickstarter a whirl, and it worked out well…sorta. There was one issue. Time. Since Mike wasn’t sure how many people had an interest in supporting it, he couldn’t really make a move till the project was funded and the cash was released. And if I remember correctly, the project had a 2 month time frame. So people needed to commit money to the project, then wait and wait and wait, until the time was over before the funds were removed. Now don’t get me wrong, the feature of not taking the money till the end of the Kickstarter, is a great feature. But for a small label, I don’t think it’s the correct model. I’ve already stated that a lot of labels are using preorder money to fund projects, not help cash flow, so the idea that they can’t get the money till the end of the Kickstarter is counterintuitive. I think it works yes, but I don’t think it’s an ideal situation. Obviously the best situation for a label will always be to release something they think people will want to buy. If a label isn’t sure, send an email out to everyone and ask, or put a poll up on your site. There are exceptions I think too. If you’re a label that releases a lot of music from your hometown, then I could see it working out a little better. A lot of people know you personally, so their reaction to you using Kickstarter, as a revenue generator, won’t be as harsh. Incidentally, Dead Broke releases a lot of local bands, and my contribution to the Exlosivo project was about 25% of the goal. Tom, my brother and partner, also contributed 25%. Since Explosivo was from Long Island, and we’re all about supporting Long Island bands, it seemed like the right move. I’m not completely positive that the project would have reached it’s goal on Kickstarter if not for Tom and I, but I do think it would have been released by Mike either way.

Kickstart Your Album

How about bands? Does it make sense for them? Well this is where it starts to get interesting. Mostly cause there’s been a lot of research done by some really smart people and news sites. Let’s begin with an article that ran on Digital Music News back on June 8th of this year called The Lessons I Learned from a $10,000 Kickstarter Campaign…. Caren Kelleher, who’s a manager of unsigned bands like True Mad North, and The Lighthouse and the Whaler (I guess her speciality is bands who name themselves after ocean related nouns), wrote about her experience doing a Kickstarter that raised more than $10,000. In this article she points out some really interesting things she’s uncovered. One being the fact that only about 1.3% of online fans contributed to the project. And the second being that about 30% of the contributors to Kickstarter projects didn’t ask for a reward. Meaning people either contributed, just to contribute, or bought the merchandise afterwards. Caren’s reasoning for this is that “superfans simply aren’t that motivated by merch.” Well that made me think a little. One could definitely come to this conclusion. But I have a couple alternate theories. In my above section I pointed out that Tom and I helped fund a project started by my friend Mike. We contributed about half to the project, but didn’t select any merchandise compensation. So if Caren looked at that Kickstarter, she’d say, “See, superfans aren’t motivated by Merch.” And she’s right. Like I said Tom and I wanted to support Long Island, which we did. But we were also compensated outside of the Kickstarter project. We made a deal with Mike to receive a whole bunch of records, and have the Limited Pressing logo on the back of the jacket. Sort of like a split release, but from our perspective it was more like an ad. I’m not saying this happens a lot, it’s just something to think about. My second alternate theory I believe does happen a lot. I think projects get contributions from the people who start them. These contributions wouldn’t be for rewards since they’d be rewarding themselves with their own rewards…yeah I just said that. And If you think about it, you know these people are contributing at some point, so why not do it on Kickstarter? It’ll boost the legitimacy of the project to fans, as well as create buzz within the Kickstarter community. And just to inject a little more logic into the second theory. Usually when someone releases a physical music product, the standard mark up on that product is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20% - 40%. And by that I mean that if someone wanted to use their own money to help fund a project, the logical amount to contribute and still break even is the exact cost you could mark up that item. All things considered though, I think Kickstarter is pretty good for bands. Bands are viewed more like an art project, then a business project. So when people view a band trying to get funded for an album, they’re less likely to think or care about where the profit is going.

Public View

So if bands should try and embrace Kickstarter because it could work out well for them, then one would think that the fans appreciate when a band uses it too, right? Well let’s look at a questionnaire my friend Justin August did on Punknews.org. A little background first: Justin has been an advocate of Kickstarter in music for a while now. I’m not sure of his view on labels versus bands, but I know for sure he likes it for bands. Well he wanted to see if others shared in his perspective, so he asked Punknews.org’s readers to answer a few questions. Here’s a couple of the more interesting results.(I boosted these very beautiful pie charts directly from the article)

So in this case readers got a yes or no question. These are tough some times cause most questions are not easy to answer with a “yes” or a “no”. But to be a part of the poll you need to answer it. So you do. And the results look good for bands….I think. 65.2% of people said they’d contribute to a kickstarter project if it were for their favorite band to release a record on vinyl. On the outside that seems great. I mean look at all that blue. But if you really think about it, it’s pretty pitiful. Wouldn’t you donate to your favorite band if they wanted to release their album on vinyl? Well 35% said no. 35%! To put some actually numbers behind that percentage, this means that out of the 752 who answered this question, 262 said no. That’s mind boggling to me. And it sort of goes against Caren’s theory of fans not caring too much about merch. Cause if that were true, almost all 750 would have said yes. The reason is, a lot of the people who don’t care about vinyl, would still say yes cause they don’t need to be rewarded to contribute. Meaning it wouldn’t have anything to do with the type of product the band was looking to get funded. Not only that, but remember we’re talking about someone’s “favorite band”. What could possibly motivate you more than your favorite band? It’s almost like the only people who do care, are the superfans. And if that’s true, I think we need to redefine what a superfan is. Now it seems like anyone who contributes is a superfan. How about another one?

This is a great question. It provides a whole lot of choices, and it still requires some thinking. I would have put this one at the top though. The more difficult questions should be at the top, cause by the time the reader gets to the bottom, they don’t want to think anymore. So what about the results? Well once again on the outside it looks good for bands. That is, until you really think about the results. How about the fact that more people would rather see a band not use Kickstarter, then to use Kickstarter to fund a tour to their city? Remember, the question is not “what would you rather contribute to a kickstarter for”. The question is what would you rather see a band fund with Kickstarter. 120 people said nothing. NOTHING?! How is anyone even choosing this answer? The only conclusion I can come up with is 120 people out of 752, think no band should ever use Kickstarter. Not for a new album. Not for a tour. Not for a new van. Nothing. That’s a terrible result in my opinion. It makes me want to question all the people you hear talking about supporting bands and labels. We need an IRS for music. Internal Records Service. They’ll just go around to everyone’s house and audit the hell out of their iTunes account. Oh wait, we do.

Anyone interested in more of these questions and results should definitely study that post by Justin on Punknews. I have to hand it to the man, he grabbed the ball and ran his ass off with it. Not only is it great information, direct from the independent punk community, but it also created a huge stir in the PN comments sections. I mean it’s no White Crosses review, but hey, what is?

Still Confused? I Hear Ya

10,000 projects funded for a total changed hands cash amount of 60 Million dollars. And the category with the most funded projects is Music. What does this tell us? It tells us that we need to decipher some more cryptic information. Here’s a graph I pulled from Kickstarter’s blog post I mentioned earlier.

This shows that more than half the projects funded are in the $1000-$5000 range. Which in my mind, is the area where a lot of small market independent music projects would land. We don’t know the true breakdown of these numbers, but if we took the average of 1k-5k, which is $3000, and multiplied that by 5321, we get about $16 million, which is approximately 26.5%. So more than half the funded projects, only generated about a quarter of the cash. Let’s compare those numbers to the $5000-$10,000 range. This range has 2123 projects in it. Well once again we don’t know the breakdown, but the average is $7500. Multiply that by the amount of projects and what do we get? About 16 million. Less than half the amount of projects in 1k-5k, but the same amount of cash. And finally what about $25,000-$100,000? This range had a measly 259 projects. How much could this range generate? The average fund amount would be $62,500, multiply that by 259 and what do you get? You guessed it, 16 Million. Are you as confused as I was when I first figured this out? Probably. But I think I can shed some light on it for you. The light comes in through the Top 100 most funded projects window. Only 5 of these are for music. That’s right only 5. Music has the most projects, but they don’t transfer the most funds. So what does generate the most money? Film and Video. And not by a little either. They have the second most funded projects with 3048, but unlike Music’s Top 100 showing of 5, Film and Video has a staggering 35 of them! So wait….huh? Yes, 35 of the Top 100 most funded projects on Kickstarter are in Film and Video. And if we add in the fact that they basically fund the same amount of projects as Music, AND we assume that most of the music projects are in the most common Amounts Raised range of $1000-$5000, then one can only come to the conclusion that Kickstarter is a Film and Video project funding site. Need a little more proof? Well can you upload music to a project? Sure, but only by video! And how about the obvious fact that if most of the money changes hands through Film and Video projects, then Kickstarter makes most of it’s money through Film and Video projects? Kickstarter is really, Filmstarter.

After processing this information it started to make a lot of sense. Bands usually seek out labels and try and get them to release their music. That’s the typical model. If there’s money to be made through an album, there’s always going to be a label looking to help a band reach it’s fans. Video works differently. There are a million more labels, then movie production companies. The reason is, making a movie costs a lot of damn money. Not only that, but the bridge from production to customer is completely different. Most movie money is made in the theaters. Most music money is made online. It’s a lot easier for someone to own a label and make it break even or be profitable. It can also be a one man operation, like my buddy Mike. Film and Video usually can’t because most of the art of film is in the act of filming and editing, which not only takes artistic skill but physical skill. With a label it’s a mental skill. The physical skill is provided by the band and the studio. Meaning a band, studio, and label can easily exist on separate planes. The process of filming can’t. There’s also no direct-to-fan preordering in film, like there is in music. So it’s no wonder the Film and Video world immediately latched onto Kickstarter.

Final Thoughts

It’s nitty gritty time people. Kickstarter is a place for Artists to get their projects funded. That’s what I believe. Labels are not Artists, but bands are. So bands should try it, but like the above information proves, the average fan may not take to it. Maybe cause it’s still new or maybe cause of the environment that the idea is located. Meaning what if this feature was available in a store platform? Then it wouldn’t have that donation type feel to it. I’m not sure if it would be a total smash hit like Kickstarter is, but I don’t think it matters either, cause it’s not coming to a store platform anytime soon. Reason being is Amazon is the only payment service that currently makes this possible. Which means a platform, like for instance Limited Pressing, would need to add another payment gateway just for a feature that most people probably wouldn’t use.

So that’s it, I just can’t do anymore. I think I covered a lot of cool and interesting facts, opinions and theories about Kickstarter. Incredible service based around a simple idea. I’m not sure what’s next for me in my Vinyl Bailout series. I think I might tackle pressing amounts. One thing of note before you go, I added an email option in the sidebar. If you don’t have Tumblr, an RSS feed reader, or twitter, you could just drop your address in there and I’ll email you my posts. In fact, I’ll email them out before they even get posted! Easy there dude, you’re drooling.

Focus Builds Momentum

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:12:26 -0400

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 release an old school hardcore style record, then you’ll release a metal record, then you go back to hardcore or maybe punk, just cause these are the bands that live around you, and/or are the bands you’re friends with. But if you’re looking to grow a label, it needs focus. The reason for this is releases can’t build off each other, unless they’re liked by similar people. For instance if your first release is punk, and you sell a couple hundred records, what are the chances these same people will like your second release which is metal? Almost none. Therefore your mailing list is toilet paper, and your social network followers are firewood. You now need to start from scratch. What you want is momentum. You want to build a fan base just like a band. Look at Revelation Records. Why were they so successful? Yes they released incredible game changing music, but the key was they released the exact same style game changing music. They hit a specific niche, and they stuck with it for a very long time. Even when they swerved off the path early, like for instance Quicksand ST, they had good reason in that Walter from GB started the band. And GB released Rev’s best selling album ever, Start Today. You think they would have released a post hardcore band if it wasn’t from Walter? Not a chance. What about Orange 9mm? Well that was Chaka from Burn. What about Shelter? Ray YOT! You see where I’m going with this? There was a strong connection that helped create momentum. There was no wavering in Rev’s plan of attack. You’ve heard the saying, “I bought every release, even before I heard it”. Rev was the KING of that. That’s customer trust, and when customers trust you that much, they talk to their friends and spread the word. So I think focus is extremely important in building momentum.
Maybe I’ll push out some more tip posts like this. The tips might be obvious, like this one, but sometimes when you hear the reasoning behind them, it helps you understand it in a way you might not have thought of.

The Vinyl Bailout - Part 3 - Test Presses

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 12:04:00 -0400

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 sent to the label and/or band to listen to and approve or reject. Back in the 80s 100s of these test presses were made and sent to radio stations and wholesalers as promotional material. Then in the 90s, as vinyl became more of a niche industry, there were only 4 or 5 made by plants. Now in the 2000s the amount of test presses have increased slightly, but not because they’re again being sent to radio stations or wholesalers, but because they’ve become the most desirable variation of an album. Collectors love test presses for many reasons, and I think if we know all these reasons, we can figure out how best to utilize them.

How Many is Too Many?

It’s very important that you don’t make too many test presses. The whole point of the record being desirable is because it’s rare and hard to obtain. When a label makes 30 test presses, it loses it’s luster. In my eyes, the ideal amount of test presses is between 10 and 15. 20 is approaching absurdity, but can be done if you’re creative.

Yeah I Said Creative

Making 20 white label test presses and trying to sell them to collectors is a bad move. Remember, collectors are not going to play this record, so the music on the record means nothing. What matters is what makes this variation different from the others. The key is creativity. You must take this record and do something with it. The easiest way to spruce it up is get 20 plain white jackets, send them to the band with some spray paint, and stencils. Sure shipping is a bitch, but it’s worth it cause you’ll be able to say “jackets customized by the band.” If you really want to get nuts, which I encourage, then take a page out of Mike of People in a Position To Know’s Book(pun!). This dude is the king of nuts. Now I’m gonna be straight up honest with you here, you can’t top this guy’s DIY skill, you can only aspire to it.

Stamping and Numbering

Something that I don’t see a lot of people doing is custom stamping the label on the test press. A lot of the time it’s just a plain white label that comes on a test press, so if you wanted to you could custom order a stamp from a company and then hit each one of those labels. A well know user of this method is Deathwish Inc. Take a look at this Blacklisted - Peace on Earth, War on Stage - test press, I pulled from my collection:

You see how simple that is? That’s just a photo copied version of the standard cover, and a stamped label. This brings me to my second point about stamping the label, make sure it has a spot to put the number. You should always be numbering test presses.

Not sure why only a handful of people realize this, but when you number something, it immediately makes it even more collectable. The reason for this is once they’re numbered, not only are all the copies different, but you know which one is the earliest and which is the latest. For instance, this test press of Iron Chic’s Shitty Rambo 7” I just happen to have lying around :).

There’s no custom cover, but the fact that it’s #1, makes this record worth probably double what it would be if it weren’t numbered. And not only do you know that this is #1, but you also know how many copies there are. There’s no guessing or wondering. Numbering also makes desirable versions like “Single Digits”. Why is a single digit more desirable than a double digit? Well cause if there’s 20 made, you’re in the first half, not the second half. Sounds stupid right? But that’s the way collecting is. Are you first, or are you second? Do you have the rarest version, or do you have the second rarest? That makes a big difference to people.

Just Sell Them

The question of when to sell test presses, or even if to sell them, is something I believe a small label thinks about a lot. I personally have no problem with a label selling test presses. They paid to get them made, they have a bunch of them, they can sell them. In fact I bet most collectors have no problem with it either. The reason is we know how hard it is to acquire a test press. So just sell them! In fact, put them in your store for sale. Who cares right? Launch the preorder, and make the test a variation that says “Only 5 Available”, price them at 30-50 bucks each and when people see them there, they’ll buy them. Guarantee they’ll be gone within the first 30 sales. Hell you could even auction them off before you put the preorder up. Work it into your deal with the band. Imagine what the test press of an unreleased record will go for on eBay or The Old LP!

All I’m saying is if you need to make test presses, then put the extra effort in and make them right. Customers will be happy, the band will be happy, and you’ll get a few extra bucks in your pocket when you sell them.

As you can see I didn’t do Test Presses and Kickstarter in the same post. It was just too damn long. The Kickstarter post has all these graphs and numbers. It really deserves it’s own part. See you then.

Loose Lips Sink Sites

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 13:03:00 -0400

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 excitement for what we currently have baking. But we never give out details or release screenshots. The reason is when you’re releasing a big redesign or feature, there’s always a good chance of setback. And if we told the public about it, 2 or even 1 month prior to it’s release, and then we had to delay it, people would lose confidence in us. Look at what we did with The Old LP. That was kept a secret till it was released to the public. If we didn’t do that, we would have pissed off a lot of people cause that was delayed twice I think. We thought it would take a week or two and it ended up taking more than a month. It was a giant project. One that we couldn’t predict the completion of. A lot of inexperienced people forget the fact that if they’ve never done something before, they don’t just have to consider if they can do it or not, but they also have no idea how long it will take. It’s like predicting how long it will take you to drive from New York to California, when you’ve never even driven as far as Pennsylvania. You would never consider driving to California without asking yourself how long it will take. Sure you might ask yourself, and then say you don’t care you just want the adventure of driving to California, but you’ll still think about it. It’s the same thing with changes to your website or service. I think a lot of people just ask themselves if their users will like and appreciate the change, then they ask themselves if they can do it, but then they really can’t accurately predict the eta of these changes before talking publicly about them. There’s just a whole host of issues you’ve never encountered before, and predicting if the journey is physically possible, is equally as tough as predicting how long the journey will take.

One thing of note, Tom and I do something we call Controlled Leaking. Basically if the situation justifies telling someone about a future feature, we’ll explain that it’s coming, but we’re not completely sure when it’ll be released. This usually occurs during a support question or feature request. But we’d never talk about a future feature in a public forum or social network. It invites too many questions and off the cuff requests for edge case features. Things we’d probably never consider cause they’re of such a specific need, it would complicate the service for 99% of the customer base. And it’s never fun telling someone we can’t do X because of Y, in a public forum.

The Vinyl Bailout - Part 2 - The Digital Release

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 13:03:00 -0400

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 they can continue releasing records! Ok enough sarcasm, let’s get started.

One of the most common misconceptions in the world of vinyl is the belief that everyone who buys vinyl, listens to the vinyl. You always hear these people in interviews talking about how vinyl is back and it’s because it sounds better. Hmmm really? You think vinyl played on your $50 turntable sounds better than a CD? Trust me, it doesn’t. 90% of the vinyl buying world doesn’t even own the proper cleaning equipment to allow a record to be played at even half it’s intended fidelity. Now don’t think that no one listens to vinyl. That’s ridiculous. I’m saying most don’t. Maybe they throw on a record once a week, but people don’t listen to vinyl now, like they did back in the 60s when there were 4 TV stations. So if it’s not quality, then why do it? Well there’s two reasons actually. The first reason is they collect it. It’s an obsession. If their favorite label puts out a record, they buy it. Their favorite band puts out a special edition 10th anniversary variation, they have to have it. The other reason is memories. People have a huge attachment to times, places, feelings, youth, fun, love, etc, and they like to associate those feelings with an object. You ever save a love letter from your Ex? Of course you have. You save it cause it’s easier to remember that time when you have proof that it happened. People worship objects, and in music, a great object to worship is a record.

Ok, maybe you need real proof of my claim that most people rarely listen to the vinyl they buy. Well there’s no more proof than download cards. Why does basically every single new recording released on vinyl today come with a digital download? Simple, because without the digital download, the customer would never listen to the damn album! Customers are demanding it. But it’s not that they’re demanding they get the digital download with the vinyl. They’re demanding access to the digital version of the release. Free or otherwise. This is such an important point to understand. When people buy a record that comes with a download, they want the record, but they listen to the digital version. So what does this mean, and what can we learn from it? Well if people want the digital to listen to it, and they want the vinyl to remember it, then why are we bundling these 2 things together? These 2 products serve two different purposes. It’s like a company including $200 worth of free food with the purchase of a new refrigerator. Ever heard of this deal? Of course you haven’t. It’s a complete waste of $200. People need the food, so there’s no reason to bundle the purchases. With this in mind, I think small labels should sell the vinyl and digital versions of an album, one of two ways. And both ways involve releasing the digital version prior to releasing the vinyl.

The first way is to use the digital version as a marketing device to spread the word about the album, thereby increasing sales of the vinyl release. A great way to do is by using a share to download feature. For example Limited Pressing has a feature that we call “Social Sharing”. It lets you give away a download for free in return for a facebook post or Tweet promoting the free download. We implemented this feature so labels and bands could generate eyeballs for an upcoming release.

Now I don’t think The Heverchucks maximized their exposure enough here. I think this release isn’t coming out till later this summer, and if I remember correctly, they put this download up in May. There’s just too much time in between those releases. As much as bands don’t want to hear this, people lose interest in most albums. They may love it and listen to it a lot for the first month, but then they forget about it a little. Once this happens, it becomes very difficult for a label or band to sell a memory of that release. Think about it, why would someone buy something to remember the album, if they’ve already started to forget about it? So I think you should use Social Sharing a week prior to the release. Make sure you have the date huge right there in the description. Maybe even put the date of the release in the Tweet/Facebook post. But get the word out there. Spread the word as far and wide as possible, then drop the record.

The other way I think a label or band could release the digital version of a record is to sell it using NYOP - Min $0.00(name your own price), or give it away for free. Some might be saying that this is the same thing. It’s not. They’re actually very different features. Yes one allows you to accept money, and one doesn’t. But that’s not really the difference. The difference is in how the customer views the transaction. With NYOP, some customers think the band/label will realize that they had a chance to give them money, and didn’t. This doesn’t matter for customers that have no connection to the band or label, but for people that always buy from them, it changes the way they feel about getting that release. Those regular customers don’t want to be seen as the person that doesn’t give money. And I think the way you choose which one of these tactics to use, is by knowing how big the band is that recorded the album. If for instance this is the band’s first full length release, but they have some what of a fan base because they’ve got a demo and a 7”, then I would suggest using NYOP. Truthfully the key is getting that email address so you can email everyone when the record is up for sale, but with a band/label with a decent fan base, you’ll be able to get the cash flow going with the NYOP feature. A lot of people don’t realize how well it works. Most believe that they won’t make a dime if they offer it for a min. $0.00. But they couldn’t be more wrong. What I said before about customers fearing the band or label will think they don’t appreciate what they’re getting, makes the customer want to show them that they do appreciate it. This word “Minimum” has a negativity that customers don’t like to be associated with. “I’m not going to do the minimum, or give the minimum. I’m better than that. I think you’re better than that.” This is what they think of when they see “Minimum $0.00”.

Giving the album away for free works well too. Once again, the key is getting that email address. If you’re a band or label that’s brand new, and you don’t have much of a fan base already, giving the music away for free is a great move. Don’t let the customer think you’re looking to collect some cash by using the NYOP feature. Just give it to anyone and everyone for free. Post it on every message board you can find. Make sure to have a music player on the product previewing the best song on the album. Full album streams are a terrible idea. You want them to download the album and give you their email address. The full album stream completely defeats that purpose. Another great way to promote the free download, is to take the best song on the album, and make that it’s own Social Sharing product. Come at it from both angles. You can have the player above the download, and you can have the hit song spreading throughout the social networks.

Then after a week or so, once you start to see the downloads dip a little, dump the free downloads, launch the vinyl release, and contact all the people you’ve collected email addresses from in your promotional campaign. I don’t think the digital download should be discarded as a product, just not be free anymore. When you put the record up for sale, if you take the digital version and sell it for 7 or 8 bucks, you’re going to make that record look very appealing at a price point of $10-$15. There’s a term in behavioural economics called “anchor price”, and what it means is people don’t fully know what something costs. So to figure out if the cost of something is good or not, they judge it against other related items. That price they use to judge all other items is called the anchor price. If you have the digital version of the album for $8 and the vinyl release for sale right next to it for $12, that vinyl release looks real good. Will many people buy the digital version at $8? Probably not, but that’s not what you’re trying to do with it, you’re trying to make the vinyl look like the better purchase. You’ve already given away the album for a week, if someone wants it, they’ll go and find it. But if you continue to give it away while the vinyl is on sale, you make the vinyl look expensive. The digital version is free, but the vinyl is $12. What that means is the music is free and all I’m paying for is plastic. If the digital is $8, then what that means is I’m only paying $4 for plastic. That’s a lot more appealing to customers.

To wrap this up, bundling products that serve two different purposes, is not the right move when no one would buy one, just to obtain the other. Which is what’s happening with the digital + vinyl bundle. No one is buying the vinyl, just to get the digital. Which means the opposite, that you’re using the digital version to sell the vinyl version. You’re saying “Buy this record! I’ll even give you the digital version too!” And when you realize that, you will realize that breaking the digital version away from the vinyl, and using it to market the vinyl, is the better strategy. Remember, if someone wants the vinyl, they’ll buy it. Your job is not to convince people to want it, your job is to find all the people that want it, but don’t know it.

Ok, if you made it through this post, consider yourself reborn as a capitalist! I think I’ll take it down a notch next time. Maybe talk test presses, and Kickstarter.

The Vinyl Bailout - Part 1

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 13:02:26 -0400

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 for them. As I contemplated these things, I then began to consider what preorders do to not just current music sales, but also the future of music sales. Meaning, what happens when the customer thinks the risk now out weighs the reward, and decides to not order anymore. So I thought I’d talk a little bit about preordering from the perspective of a collector, and a internet business owner. Hopefully I can provide some insight into why labels do them, why they sometimes go completely wrong, and then maybe theorize on how these things could potentially hurt the industry as a whole.

The internet has provided the independent music world with the ability to grassroots start any business they desire, and the most obvious music business to start, is a record label. A label that probably has no experience ordering complex products, a comprehensive way to handle customer service, or any pull in the industry what so ever. Good intentions and love for music they have an abundance of, but those things don’t make customers happy or get your product made any faster. But at the root of small label problems is seed money or risking seed money. Either the label doesn’t have money, but has the desire, or has the money, but doesn’t want to risk it. Whichever it is, preorders are used to rectify the problem. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that out. This is just the beginning though. Many things can go horribly wrong post preorder. Especially when you do it too early. Let’s look at some of those.

Getting down to payment

Most people forget that before a plant can even send out the test presses for approval, a whole host of other things require cash up front. For instance mastering for vinyl and getting the lacquers made. And if the label has no cash, they might feel tempted to start a preorder early. The general consensus among collectors and customers is if you’re doing a preorder, you should at least have approved test presses. Most assume you’re in production already. But what a lot of customers don’t realize is the plant has their own money concerns, and the label may not be doing a preorder for profit. Most of the time they’re doing it for the plant’s profit. A label, especially a small one, doesn’t just call up a plant, say they need a thousand records and the plant flips a switch. They want their down payment. Sometimes they want the whole payment. This payment can really screw up a release date if the label tries to use preorder money to release a record. The most common example is if a label needed to sell 250 copies in the first week, and they only sold 100, that would shift the release date out. A release date they’ve already told the world was legit. This is why seed money is so important.

Volume Control

Another issue that can happen post preorder is the plant could push back, or even shut down your order. Yes, it does happen. You always hear about “plant issues”. Which a lot of time is code for “We’re having cash flow issues”, but sometimes it’s volume related. If a plant gets a rush order from an important client, the small label will most likely get bumped because they don’t have the volume to scare a plant into caring about them. The label could also be on the “spare time” list. That’s the list of clients that get their job run at the plant’s discretion. If they have the time, they run it. If there’s someone more important waiting, they’ll bump you. Volume also contributes to down payment amounts. If you have volume, you might have a low down payment, or you might have “Terms”. Terms, if you don’t know, is when a manufacturer allows a buyer a certain amount of time to pay the balance. This will let a label get their product without needing to pay up front. It’s almost like preordering in a way. We both give the label something of value and trust that they’ll return something of value on the agreed upon date. So volume is a major concern for labels. Once again though, a small label is usually the one at risk. It keeps adding up right? A small label with no seed money or pull in the industry, takes a huge risk in releasing a record. So many things can go wrong.

Test Pressing Approval

Sure there can be delays that aren’t related to money. What about test pressing approval? Items get lost or destroyed in the mail all the time. Or maybe the plate was made incorrectly, and you need to reject the test presses. This is why releasing a record for preorder before you have approved test presses, isn’t recommended. I’ve seen test presses get rejected 3 times, and if a plant can’t get a plate right, how can you trust them? You can’t, but if you did the preorder already, how are you going to add a month to the release date? Customers will tear you apart. They don’t care about problems, they care about results. They don’t want explanations, they want their record. They don’t understand that switching plants is the best thing for the release, they just want you to get it right the first time.

This was just a few ways a preorder could get completely screwed up. So how does this affect the future? Well, as more and more people want to release a record, the more issues will arise, and the more pissed off customers will get. This word “bubble”, a word that I hate so damn much, could be used to describe the small label boom we’re going through right now. But credit only lasts so long. At some point, labels that aren’t spending their money, are going to have to get the money back from releases.

To put some stock into the bubble idea, I’d like to give you a theory I have concerning sales of vinyl that’s in stock, and vinyl that’s a preorder. To recap, when preorders were a new practice, customers thought it would be a great way to reserve their copy early, and make sure you got the rarest version. And there weren’t many problems in the beginning. But the combination of the internet and preorders being common practice, made the small label possible for anyone. Now preorders are mainly used in place of seed money, not cash flow. Which means more problems happen. So with this in mind, are people ordering less now that they know there’s a possibility of delays? There’s also the fact that when a label has the records in before they put them up for sale, they usually promote this very prominently. “This is NOT a preorder. The records are in, and will ship this week!” You don’t see many labels really promoting the fact that the album is a preorder. “This is a preorder! Order now and we’ll ship in a month!!” Doesn’t really roll off the tongue, now does it? So why do labels go out of their way to tell the customer that they can get their album now? Well cause they know it’s likely to increase sales. And if preorders are viewed as the less desirable way to create sales, then clearly preorders with delays would be even worse. So why not stop doing preorders and only put the album up when they have it in? Uh Duh, like I said, preorders are now about seed money, where as in the past, they were about cash flow.

Too conclude part 1 of my continuing post about vinyl in the 21st century, I think we all need to ask ourselves a question: Are we creating the vinyl industry by doing preorders? Meaning, are we in a sense giving the vinyl world venture capital to sustain itself? It’s a great question that I’d love to know the answer to. I’m from the time when there was no internet. You got your vinyl at shows or stores. Do I wish more labels had the records in stock before they put them on sale? Sure, anyone would. But I also love the fact that anyone can release a record. If the vinyl industry tanks because people don’t want to preorder anymore, a lot of great bands are going to get missed. Bands that I’ve stumbled across and fallen in love with. Not to mention all the great friends I’ve met because of trading and blogs. So I definitely don’t want preorders to die, if it means the diy label will die with it.

On that note, I will stop here and start preparing for part 2, which will consist of ways for small labels to increase sales, and avoid issues. They’ll be tips and tricks, rules to release by, and probably some theory on the amount of vinyl that should be pressed.

I’d love to hear from any labels that would like to contribute to the next post. Anything you can add as a good rule or tip, would be great. Please get in touch via the contact form.

The Userblame Game

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 12:39:00 -0400

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, we’d lose 10s of thousands of sign ups. So essentially, user sign up is dead, and it will stay dead.

In the blog post we did on sunday we said, in no uncertain terms, that the reason we had kept user account sign ups is because we thought there was a possible future in social networking within the LP community. Whether it be messages boards or even pushing the followable news feature further. But as we thought about it more and more, we realized that we’re just an ecommerce service. No one is going to use us as a social network, because our competition isn’t a social network. We compete against other ecommerce services, and that’s what we’re good at. This brings me to what actually sparked the removal of user accounts. We decided a month or so ago that we’d do it, but we thought we’d couple it in with a future upgrade. Maybe later this summer. I had completely put it out of my mind until a twitter debate between Bryne Yancey from Punknews and Thomas “Hightower” Nassiff from AbsolutePunk & P+P, made me think otherwise. It all started when Bryne tweeted the following:

Ouch bro, that’s rough. But hey, give the dude credit, he called them out right there, he didn’t hide behind a locked account. So here’s some background: Bryne is commenting on the fact that AP.net was requiring people to sign in/up to listen to music streamed by their site from bands and labels. For a news site, this isn’t common practice. In fact most news sites don’t even have their own user authentication system. For commenting, most sites will use Disqus or Facebook. Mashable just recently developed their own and replaced Disqus with it. I can get down with that. I personally like Disqus, but we’re doing a custom commenting system based on twitter/facebook, for this new site we’re working on, so obviously I’m not opposed to commenting outside of Disqus. Well I guess Thomas follows Bryne, and saw that tweet. This caused a raging debate where many punches were thrown, but no KO was delivered. One interesting point from Thomas was this:

To which Bryne replied:

Strangely enough though, not more than a few minutes later, Bryne made this comparison:

Hmmmm very sneaky. Thomas didn’t pick up on this double standard argument. But hey, more power to Bryne for his slick debating skills.

Personally though, I thought Thomas’s point about having to sign up for Facebook, to use fucking Facebook, was a good one. But that’s because I understand where Thomas is coming from. He’s coming from the Jason Tate school of what AP.net is trying to model themselves after. I’ve been following along with all JT’s posts on what the new site will look like when it launches. Not really sure when it will, but it’s fun to read about it. I’ve heard him mention traffic and saying how he knows it’ll never be a Facebook. Interesting comparison. Why not say Pitchfork? Well cause AP.net is not trying to be solely a news site. It’s trying to be a social network that mostly revolves around music. And there’s a big difference. Bryne doesn’t see this. He’s thinking in terms of a news site, that’s only trying to publish content from bands and labels to get more readers, and not an ecosystem trying to get more users. In fact, it’s not even remotely like a traditional news site. A traditional news site uses content and their core view(pro this or that) to get readers. That’s first and foremost. Yes they also do some social interaction like commenting, to get people to come back. But in reality, commenting was originally used by traditional news sites to increase pageviews on the actual act of commenting. Meaning between previewing, and posting, and going back to see if your comment is there, a site can get a bunch of extra pageviews from the simple act of commenting. Readers coming back to read replies and more comments, was a secondary windfall for internet news sites. They didn’t understand social networks back in the day. But my point is, and this is not a knock on AP.net, but content is not what they use to draw users. Their view/focus(pro pop punk) and the social aspects of the site, are what get people coming back. This point is proven by looking at the size of their comment box, compared to the size of their story box. They’re the same size. Meaning they are of the same importance. Punknews on the other hand is the complete opposite. Their stories are very large and will rarely run without a good large photo. Comments are thin and clearly secondary. With AP.net, the stories are more of a talking point. Photos are optional, but when they are posted, guess where they post them? In the comments! So when Bryne looks at AP.net and says, music publications shouldn’t do that, he’s not realizing that AP.net wants to be a social site first, and a news/content site second.

But that’s not the real question is it? The real question is, is it ethical or not? Well it’s a great freaking question. I personally don’t know the answer. If I did, the subtitle of this blog would be “I Have an Answer For That”. Here’s what I think though. When I look at AP.net I see a social network that revolves mostly around music. I don’t think of it as a news site. I think you can get your news on it. But I don’t think of it like a traditional news site. So when you think of it like that, the fact that you must sign up to listen to content provided by the site, doesn’t seem that terrible. If you want to get married in a church, the chruch requires you to do certain things to have that privledge. Since we’re talking in terms of punk music, I should probably come up with a better example, but it’s hard. It’s hard cause this is not normally done in this circle. Maybe a better example is a fraternity. If you want to attend a fraternity party, you usually need to be a member of that fraternity. Or you need to come to the party with a fraternity memeber. Basically, they set the rules cause it’s their party. This is AP.net’s party. And they’re not blasting the music for the people down the street, they’re blasting it for the people at the party. You want to listen to the music, then sign in or sign up. That’s the rules of the party. Now look, do I agree with it? I’m not sure. If the band/label knows that’s what’s up, then I guess I don’t have an issue with it. But it’s new, and it’s different, and it’s tough to think objectively about things, no ones ever tried before.

So what’s the point behind this story and how does it relate to LP getting rid of user account sign ups. Well after thinking about this debate long and hard, I realized that needing a user account to participate in something only available from your service, is something a social network would do. LP provides stores to labels, bands, toy designers, artists, etc, and to require their customers to sign up to make a purchase, is like saying, “If you want this product, you need to join my ecosystem.” And we’re not an ecosystem. We’re not a religion or a fraternity or even a party. We’re just a really good service, for a really good price. That’s what we do, and that’s what I like. So after I came to this conclusion, I emailed Tom and asked him what he thought about taking them down, and not waiting. Incredibley he was thinking the same exact thing. I had emailed him this debate between Bryne and Thomas, and I guess it sparked the same thoughts as I had. A days worth of work later and boom it was done. Never to return again.

Your Best Foot Forward

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 12:37:37 -0400

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 did it for a living. And when you gamble for a living, you start to pick up on little things players do unconsciously to increase the rush. Take a simple game like 5 card draw for example. There’s this standard tell that people still do to this day. When drawing to a flush, they will shuffle up their cards and then fan them out very slowly to see if they nailed their missing suit. Now the actual tell comes when they’re fanning them out, if you see them pause slightly before all the cards are fanned out, and then not look at the rest of the cards, you can be sure they didn’t get their flush. But the question is why do they shuffle and fan them out in the first place? It’s the rush they’re looking for. They don’t want to know what’s coming. They want to be surprised. So how does this compare to auctioning? Well when you have 20 or 30 related auctions to list, and you know what the most valuable item is, when do you list that item, first, random, or last? You list it last. You always list it last. And you do this because you want that excitement, of auctioning the most valuable item, to last as long as possible. You never hear people discussing this terrible practice, so I thought I’d tackle it here and give my reasons why listing the most valuable item first, is the most logical approach to getting the most for your items.

Let’s talk in terms of collectables, because this is the area that I understand the most, and therefore should give me the most ammo to prove my point. If you’re a collector, and you’re going to auction off say 30 items you don’t want anymore, one would assume these items are somewhat related. And since they’re somewhat related, each item will probably attract the interest of related people. Which also means bidders watching your auctions will probably have interest in more than one item. These related bidders can be broken up into 3 distinct categories as it pertains to their budget: Bidders with a large budget, bidders with a set budget, and bidders with little to no budget. The bulk of the people in this world are bidders with a set budget. Now let’s combine these two conclusions. We know that bidders will be attracted to multiple items you’ve listed, and we also know that most of these bidders will be working with a set budget. With this in mind, let’s discuss a few theories I have about the order in which you should list your auctions.

Nest Egging

When the most desirable item is listed last, in a group of items that are related, some bidders gunning for that item have a tendency to protect their budget. Meaning they usually don’t get too heavily involved with auctions prior to the big item because they want to make sure they have the funds available for the big item. I call this “Nest Egging”, and it’s very bad for sellers. If for example 6 people are in the market for that top item, and they’re Nest Egging their funds, then the seller’s other auctions don’t have access to these funds. And by the time these funds are free, there’s no auctions left to bid on. So in this case, listing the biggest item first allows all the heavy hitters to bid on this item, and when that item is over, all the funds that would have been held till the end of all your auctions, are now free to be spent on other items.

Nitroglycerin

If Nest Egging is the act of saving your funds till the end, then there should be a term for getting all hot over an early auction and blowing your wad. Well I don’t have one for this, but I bet a very creative person could come up with something using the word “Premature”. Never the less, this error in judgement or blip in someone’s self control, can really hurt future auctions. Most people who follow auctions know the logic that it only takes 2 people for an auction to explode. No matter what that item is actually worth, if 2 people bid an amount well above the item’s value, someone is going to get hurt. And the more carrots you dangle out there for someone to get hurt on, the more of a chance you’re taking that you will in fact be the person hurting.

I believe these two theories prove that, when dealing with people that have a set budget, listing the most valuable item first is the proper course of action. It also proves that it doesn’t matter if this bidder with a set budget, has a lot of self control, or very little self control. The most valuable auction first is the way to go.

Burning a Hole

What about the other two types of budgets? Let’s start with the bidder with more money than they know what to do with. Well in this case, I don’t believe the order matters too much. This person has the money to bid on all the auctions, so the placement of the most valuable auction doesn’t matter too much. There is an argument that you’re essentially taking the heavy hitter out of the game by putting that valuable auction first. The point is that since you’re putting the valuable first, you’re increasing it’s end of auction value, and there by nullifying the bid of the high budgeted bidder. This is a good point. The argument against this is, the bidder with the high budget now has all the money he thought he was going to spend on the valuable auction at the ready. This bidder thought he was going to win that auction. He is the big player isn’t he? So in the bidder’s mind, that money should have been spent already. This might make him bid more than he would normally bid on the lesser valued items, so he doesn’t walk away with nothing.

Poor Man’s Prayer

The final type of budget is a bidder with little to no budget at all. This type of bidder doesn’t usually affect an auction that has a lot of bids, they affect an auction with no bids. Meaning since this bidder doesn’t have much money, he’ll put a lot of very small bids out on items that not only don’t have bids, but also may not even be an auction he wants that bad. So he’ll put a whole bunch of 2 dollar bids out on .99 starting priced items, just hoping he can score an item on the cheap. Well if we all agree that listing the big items first helps out the other auctions, cause it frees up funds, than essentially what it really does is save items from getting picked off by these cheapo 2 dollar bidders. So bidders with no budget don’t help sellers by increasing the bid, they actually hurt sellers by stealing items that are overlooked or just cold at the moment. And anything you can do to prevent these bottom feeders from getting off easy, the better.

So that’s my theory. List the big items first. And if you know the second biggest item, list that one second. Just go down the line of greatest to least. I believe it frees up cash and allows the bidders with some money, to not worry about their budget when some of the smaller items come their way.

eBay's Incredible iPhone Gap

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 12:20:20 -0400

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 iPhone app. For those that have never heard of this incredible piece of software, I thought I’d show you exactly what you’re missing. Prepare to be amazed…

To understand why the iPhone app is so perfect, you need to first understand what makes designing a mobile app, for a very large website, so great. The key is the removal of clutter because of real estate restrictions. With the web interface, eBay has tons of room that they feel they need to fill with noise. And by “noise”, I mean straight up garbage. When you go to eBay, what would you rather see….

I don’t think there’s any comparison. Give me the simple interface on the right. I don’t need eBay to recommend auctions they think I want to know about. This might be useful for someone who shops on eBay, but not for a collector. A collector knows what they want. They’re collecting for a reason. A reason that a computer couldn’t possibly understand.

For those that have never seen the iPhone app, you might be saying, “You’re not comparing the right screens.” Well I am actually. I’m comparing the first screens you see when you open up eBay. The app shows you an overview, which is helpful compared the web interface homepage. The web interface shows you clutter and noise. If you want to go to a more useful screen on the web interface, like for instance My eBay, you’ll need to sign in. Yes, even if it says your username at the top. Why? I have absolutely no idea. But never the less, you must sign in. On the app, no signing in is needed. Speed is a trend with the app. You’ll see that as we go further.

When we compare the My eBay screens, you can clearly see the ease of the app over the jumbled mess of the web interface. What’s interesting is, this is how the My eBay screen looked when they original released the app. But then they switched to a list view, which I personally didn’t think was that great. That screen looked like this.

I think it’s obvious why they switched back, this screen just delays you getting into Watching or Selling. No need to delay this with a list. So great job by them. I also think they could dump the Home screen. I don’t see much use for it. Especially if they used that real estate for a Messages icon. So I would move My eBay all the way to the left, make that the default home screen, then stick Messages down there.

Speaking of messages, how about communication between users. I’ve seen eBay morph their messaging system a million times over the years. For instance, it use to be that you couldn’t message a user unless you did it from one of their auctions. Meaning, if they didn’t have an auction up, you couldn’t get a hold of them. Which is a great spam blocker. But that changed. Now you can message users that don’t have auctions up. You need to fill out a captcha, but you can get there. Ebay is trying to make their site more social. Did you know you could have a blog on eBay? Yeah, a freaking blog! They’re trying to keep you there longer. I don’t blame them for that. But they have an issue. They’re trying to get users to be more social with each other, but at the same time, they have to make sure sales don’t spill over into emails. When a sale starts on eBay, and gets completed in emails, they lose a lot of money. It’s a very difficult, give and take process, they’re dealing with here. So where am I going with this. Well, with the iPhone app, they don’t have the depth in the app to make it more difficult to contact someone. If you want to contact someone, you just hit the button. There’s no captcha. Mainly because it’s very difficult to automate a spammer in a mobile device. Ebay is not worried about manual spam, they’re worried about automated spam. Which is a mistake in my opinion. Now I love how easy it is to message people on the app. I use it all the time. But it’s a mistake to think they’re not losing a lot of money because of people contacting sellers and dealing off the grid. And the app makes that even easier.

IMAGE ONE IMAGE TWO IMAGE THREE

Ebay has also changed how you contact a user through one of their listings. In the beginning it was just a Contact Seller button and you filled out what you wanted. Now they’ve added a few screens to cut down on the people that don’t read the auctions. Above you can see(click to enlarge) that all they’re doing is taking the information from the auction and breaking it up into specific sections, so it’s easier for the user to take in. This is a complete waste of time for users that read the description. It also says something about the way they’re presenting their auctions. If all they’re doing is dumbing down the auction information, and presenting it to the user for a second time, maybe they should consider dumbing down the actual auction to avoid people missing information. By adding this screen you’re telling the world that a lot people aren’t comprehending or misreading the auction information. Why else would they make the people, who read, suffer? So if we can conclude that a lot of people aren’t fully understanding the auctions, then I think it’s only right to assume that the auction format is too complicated for a lot of users to comprehend.

Something else worth noting, the message screen on the web interface requires a Topic to your question, but only when you’re messaging a seller. If you’re messaging someone for social purposes, there’s no topic required. There’s also no topic required when using the iPhone app. Even if you’re messaging a seller about an auction. So no captcha, and no topic required for the iPhone app. That means speed. Love speed.

How about bidding. Some might think this is the most interesting topic. I don’t believe it is. But there are some fun theories I have that might make you think a little. Let’s begin with the web interface, which isn’t bad. In fact, it’s pretty good. But I never use it because there’s just too many working parts. It’s too heavy. It’s like driving a semi. Pages need to load, there could be login problems, you have to use a mouse, you have to use a keyboard, and I’m probably forgetting at least 3 more things. But basically, the iPhone app is about twice as fast. And when you’re dealing with a sub 10 second snipe, you need speed. Here’s the downside to the app. I don’t trust that count down. I think they pad it by a second or two. I’m not completely sure, but I’m almost positive. I think they do it because if you’re on 3G, they would rather the user get the bid in, and get outbid by a closer snipe, then try and hit it dead on and miss it cause of connection issues. Enabling you to get the bid in does 2 things for them. One, it increases the end price of the auction, which obviously yields them more profit. And two, it keeps both parties happy. The seller is happy because he gets more value, and the bidder is happy cause he just won, or came close to winning, an auction over 3G. You know what, I’m going to say they do pad the time. What I’m not sure of is they pad both the 3G and the WiFi. Tom just said they could do it dynamically. Meaning they could pad the time a half second, and then detect the speed of your connection, then raise the padding as needed. But I don’t know about that. I guess they could, but that seems a little over the top. Wish I worked at eBay.

Here’s something I don’t like about the iPhone app. Refreshing. The original app had the standard apple refresh button(half circle arrow), but they got rid of that and went with the pull down to refresh method. This method was originally invented by Loren Brichter, the creator of Tweetie for iPhone, which if you don’t know, was bought by Twitter and turned into Twitter for iPhone. The method is great for a Twitter app because there’s no room for a refresh button when viewing your timeline.

Stroke of genius. But it’s not meant for what ebay is using it for. In fact it’s extremely dangerous. When you put your finger down on the eBay app, there should always be a spot for it to go. When you use the pull down to refresh method, your finger doesn’t have a place to go. And bad things happen when people have no place to put their fingers. I know why they removed this button. They didn’t want people to press it. Just like they removed the refresh button on the web interface a while back and went with a counter. They wanted users to stop refreshing. It puts a serious strain on the servers when you have people hitting refresh non stop for 3 minutes straight. So I don’t blame them for doing this on the web interface. In fact it’s a better experience. But not with the iPhone app. That button should be there.

Something that I like a lot about the bidding process on the iPhone app is the outbid screen. Normally you have no shot at bidding again on the web interface, if you’re bidding for a snipe. But on the iPhone app, you have a fighting chance because everything is so close together. And also because of my 1 to 2 second padding conspiracy theory.

Well say you weren’t outbid. Hey congratulations! Unfortunately you’re now presented with everyone’s favorite procrastination screen. The dreaded pay button. Ahhh damn, you mean I need to pay for this thing? The web version of this process is so brutal. Way too many screens, and passwords, and choices and ugh god. But paying on the iPhone app is so damn simple, I find myself paying immediately after the auction has ended. I actually believe that a lot of people are paying immediately after they win on the app. eBay can check this if they want. I hope they do cause I feel like I’m right in assuming this. And if I’m right, they should definitely revisit the way eBay works with paypal payments. I mean the app only uses one button. ONE!

Lastly, I’d like to talk about my favorite feature. Saved Searches. This is undiscovered country for a lot of people. Most don’t even have a saved search set up. I bet only 10-15% of people use this feature. Probably less. But it’s easily the greatest peace of mind you’ll ever have as a collector. So if you don’t use it, get into it.

I’m going to begin with the web interface. Here’s my logic. Saved searches are meant to do what? Simple, they’re meant to save time. You’re doing it cause you don’t want to go to the site and search non stop for stuff. So right off the bat, going to the web to manage your saved searches, is highly disruptive. When you’re a person that uses saved searches, you’re a person trying to simplify your life. The web app is the farthest thing from simple. Therefore, the web is not the ideal spot for a saved search interface. I’m not saying that if there wasn’t an iPhone app, I wouldn’t be using the web interface. It would be the only way to utilize the feature, therefore, it would probably be kinda cool. But once they released the iPhone app with saved searches, the web interface became the adjustable wrench of tools. Yeah it gets the job done, but it never fits anything perfect. Ask any true mechanic. The greatest feeling in the world is having the right tool for the job. Using a tool, that’s meant to be used anywhere, is never a great experience.

The next issue with the web interface is the way they deliver the results of your saved searches. Email. Ugh jeez I hate that. I don’t want ebay to send me 5 million emails a day. I don’t want to open them, and read them, and archive them. I just want to know the results. Almost like a 6th sense. God what an annoyance email is. If you don’t realize it’s annoying, then you definitely don’t use the iPhone app. Saved searches on the iPhone app is like a work of art. This is where saved searches were meant to be.

Here’s why I’m drooling about saved searches on the iPhone app. We’re going to go from least to greatest. First there’s the actual act of saving the search. You click that star, and then specify what you want to name the search.

Simple straight forward approach. No needless nonsense that web apps must have like check boxes and pull down menus. They even include an hourly check option. Which some may think is completely unnecessary. Ah but you’re wrong here. Hourly is actually very useful. First I’ll tell you how eBay wants you to use it, then I’ll explain how collectors can use it. Ebay wants you to use it for Buy it Nows. That’s really what it’s meant for. You get extremely specific with your search terms, make sure you select the “Buying Format” as Buy it Now, and then you can use it to pick off low priced items before anyone sees them. And the faster they can get you to buy an item, the faster they can bill for it. So how can collectors use them. Well in sort of the same way actually. When a rare item comes up for auction, a lot of people like to contact the seller and see if they can buy it before the auction ends. This will enable them to lowball the seller and try and steal it before he knows what he has. The best way to do this is as early as possible. Sometimes contacting the seller on the second day isn’t bad either. Sellers get nervous when they don’t have any bids. So a very scared seller might part with the item if they think no one cares about it. Little do they know, buyers will be waiting till the last possible moment to bid, and this is why they’re not seeing any action. But by using this approach you’re taking the risk of another collector getting there first and poaching your steal. Making an offer right away is the better method. And of course, eBay wants you to use neither method. They want the fees associated with a sale. So this hourly option is a double edged sword for them. But, as a collector, I’m really glad they added it.

The app interface is also stripped down to the bare essentials. You can pull down to manually refresh the searches, which unlike the bidding screen, I can appreciate. You can also easily recognize search terms that have received results by the blue dot on the left side. Which is perfect because nothing else on the screen displays in color. That blue dot rings out like a beacon of hope, ahhhhhhh I love when I see that.

The final, and most incredible part of saved searches on the iPhone app is Push Notifications. I can’t really explain how right this is. The idea of saved search results were meant to be delivered in push notification form. They’re undisruptive. They’re kind to the flow of your day. They just pop up on the screen and you swipe them away. There’s no need to open the mail app. There’s nothing to archive. You don’t have to enter your username and password to watch the item. You just get the results, and within a second or two you’ve moved on. And speaking of push notifications. How about ending soon pushes? Can’t get much cleaner than that.

Well there it is. A gigantic run down of how this school bus of a web app, makes the iPhone app, look like a Ferrari. It’s all about speed. Speed is the best part about the iPhone app. And there’s a million ways they speed up the experience. Most you don’t even realize until you think about it. How many times do you put your U/P in when using eBay? There’s none of that on the iPhone app. There’s no “Email to App” loading delays. Essentially, you’re combining mail, eBay, and paypal, all into one app. It changes everything. It changes the way you think about eBay as a service. It becomes part of your day, not something that your day needs to revolve around.

The Currency of a Culture

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 10:22:37 -0400

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 Note” was coined(too easy, sorry). Now imagine that for a second. The Government licensed the right to produce paper money, but they never created a standard. It was a complete free for all. Over 25,000 different designs were out there. Licensed to more than 1500 banks. There was no trucking or shipping or a system that allowed for fast country wide communication. And because of this, people looking to make a quick buck came out of the woodwork to collect. Namely counterfeiters. It was just too easy. One of the major problems was, since there wasn’t a unified communication system, people really had no clue what specific bank notes looked like. It was this simple problem of communication that allowed anyone to get away with anything. And it was like this till the government took over the printing of paper money, and of course when technology caught up with the times.

The world of vinyl collecting has been going through a similar situation for about 6 years now. AKA flipping. If you’re not familiar with the term, it’s when you buy a record on spec, thinking it will be a very desirable item, and when it goes out of stock, you auction it on eBay and retire off your profits. It’s something that’s plaguing the collecting world right now. There’s so many factors that contribute to this problem. Least of which is how big record collecting has gotten. I thought I’d try and dig deep and expose the many hurdles this industry is currently facing, as it pertains to flipping. Here, in no particular order, are the issues as I see them:

The Social Networks a Bitch

As the Internet becomes more and more the number one form of communication, the ways of communicating on the internet increase. And unfortunately, each one of these sites is looking to create their own ecosystem, which makes them separate themselves from other communication platforms. Twitter and Facebook are 2 obvious ones. But it goes deeper than that. Ecommerce sites like Big Cartel, Limited Pressing, Bandcamp, Shopify, etc are plentiful as well. Then you have blog sites like Tumblr, Blogger, Wordpress, SquareSpace, etc. There just isn’t one way to find a band or label anymore. It use to be Myspace. But you can’t contain an industry like independent music to one shitty platform like Myspace. And that’s Myspace’s fault. They should have realized what they had. They didn’t grow with the times. Their brand splintered off and down went myspace’s zeppelin.

All these different sites create cliques inside of independent music, and it makes it extremely difficult to know when something you want will be for sale. You definitely can’t be without Facebook or Twitter, but sometimes you’re just not on the right one. Next thing you know, SOLD OUT! It’s a hard problem to solve. A lot of work goes into staying on top of all the releases you might want to buy. And it shouldn’t be a lot of work. It should be easy as hell. I mean when a band like Green Day is going to put out a new album, everyone knows about it. Why? Cause every news site in the world posts about it. You can’t go anywhere without hearing about this album. There isn’t one diy site that has the juice to match the Green Day publicist. Because once they get the juice, they tend to promote bigger bands cause the juice is addictive. There is one solution, but no one uses it. I’ll get to that problem later.

Money is Cooler Than Eating

This problem works in many ways. Let’s talk in terms of budgets and lifestyles. Say for instance 2 people, who have the same budget(barely any) and lifestyle, both collect vinyl, but only one of them loves “BAND X”. The other one has no interest in BAND X, but follows the collecting scene and flips occasionally. These 2 people will look at BAND X’s next release completely different. One says, “I love this band but I don’t have the cash to spend on their new record. I’ll have to wait till pay day cause damn I like to eat.” The other dude says this, “Well I don’t have too much cash, and I don’t really like BAND X, but this thing is going to be worth a bunch of dough on ebay. I’ll buy it when it comes out and flip it.” See money wins here. This situation happens a lot. People that have no money and want to keep the record, always lose to people who have no money and want to flip the record. And in the world of punk/hardcore/indie vinyl there are a ton of people that have no money.

RSS Feeds, How Do They Work?

That solution to the worlds social network problems? RSS Feeds. Every single social network and blog has an RSS Feed. And you could just put them all into google reader and you’d be on top of everything, at all times. You’d never have to worry about who’s on what network, or who is using what blog. You could get all the news you want. And it’s free too. Not like Newsletters which have serious delivery issues and cost the person sending them dough. So where’s the issue? Well there’s 2 issues. The first is no one gets RSS Feeds. They make no sense to people. The normal human being probably hasn’t even heard of RSS Feeds. The only people I know who use them are anti-social nerds. Yeah, redundant, I know. This brings me to the second reason people don’t use RSS Feeds. They’re boooorrr-rrriiinnngggggg. Most people like being social, and hanging out with their imaginary internet friends. They love getting their info in a social way. RSS Feeds aren’t social. They aren’t fun. It’s like you asked your parents for a handheld gaming device and they gave you a TI-89.

The Distro Gold Mine

One of the best kept secrets is a great distro. With so many small labels and bands out there, people are always looking to dump a ton a copies on a distro. Unfortunately, one never knows when a release is going to go nuclear. You could press 500 copies, predict a failure, dump 200 copies on random distros around the world to reduce costs, and then out of no where you’re sold out, and 2/5ths of your shit is dismembered and buried among a million failed releases never to be seen again. This problem is very much a catch-22. If the distro doesn’t realize what they have, they can’t promote it. And if they do, they’re likely to remove it from the distro and flip it on ebay themselves.

Accurate Assumptions Are Rare

Predicting the amount of records that will sell is such a major issue concerning vinyl these days. No one has any clue how many records they can move, and since pressing takes so damn long, you need to be pretty accurate with your quantities to avoid problems. If you go too little, you’ll sell out too quick, and the record will be an instant flipper. Then depending on how many you missed by, the minimum order amount might be too much for a second pressing. If you go to heavy, you’ll be stuck with a pile of kindling, and no matches. This is one of the main reasons preorders started. That and the fact that every single label has cash flow problems. IMO the best pressing is the one that, not only gets copies to 99% of the people who want it, but also gets some to the flippers, who then, get completely screwed and can’t sell them. Love when flippers take a loss.

These are just 5 of the problems that make it difficult to combat the flippers. Truthfully, the disconnected internet is the main issue. In my eyes, it’s more than 50% of the problem. If there was one spot to find every new release, regardless of popularity, we could almost beat this thing. We need maximum exposure for everyone. We need the Green Day publicist working for Iron Chic. But that’s a long ways away. Building the site is easy. Getting everyone to use it, that’s the hard part.

Second Chance Scams

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 10:11:00 -0400

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 Verizon iPhone. I figured the Air would be a good home and travel solution with this wifi hotspot feature, so I put the 3G up on ebay and something interesting happened.

First, let me say that the scumbags come out for the Apple auctions. You need to be on your toes when it comes to auctioning off anything Apple. Especially phones. The resale value on these products overseas are incredible, and people will try and pull a whole host of ingenious scams on you. I’ve already had a bad experience with shipping overseas, so this time I made sure to note in my description that I would only ship to the US. I still got a couple of people asking me if I would ship to Russia or the UK, but I wasn’t having any of that. Unfortunately for me, there’s a little trick that a lot of overseas people use to convince you to ship to them. They win the damn auction! Very good move actually. They don’t ask you if you’ll ship, they just bid. If they don’t win, the seller will never know. But if they do, they have something to fall back on. The fact that you always want to sell to the high bidder. Those devious bastards.

Needless to say, that’s what happened to me. The woman was from the Ukraine. Well actually her name was female, but if it’s a smart scammer, they’ll always pretend to be a woman because women are more believable. Most people would never think a woman was trying to scam them. I don’t trust anyone. So I never even responded to the winner. What I did was give the person who lost a second chance offer. If you’re not aware of how this works, it’s rather simple. The person who was outbid, meaning the second highest bidder, gets a chance to buy the item for their max bid as a Buy It Now. I gave this person 24 hours to make it happen. And they took it. So I got lucky. But here’s the funny part.

Maybe you can already see the issue here. Well if you can’t, I’ll explain. It’s actually kind of complicated, so if you can’t see it, don’t be ashamed! See the way the second chance offer works is, the person who loses must buy it for their highest bid. But in my case, the person who won, should never of bid in the first place. Therefore the bidder who lost, should of actually won. But it gets better. They should have won the auction for 1 bid increment more than the 3rd highest bidder. Cause that’s who they would’ve been bidding against if the person from the Ukraine wasn’t involved. So what does that mean? Well, what it means is, the second highest bidder could have won this auction for at most $420.00 or at the very least, $378.00! Confused? Let me explain. The first time e***0(the ukrainian buyer) bid was on Feb 12th at 15:53. Which means when he bid, he outbid s***j who had a max of $353.00. But if he never bid, e***s would have bid $373.00 on Feb 13th at 09:37 and would have been the high bidder at $368.00. Then ****d would have bid $500.01 on sunday and would have been the high bidder for $378.00. Now we don’t know if e***s would have come back and bid $410.00 because he would have been in the lead. Maybe he would have forgotten about it. The only reason his bids got up to $410.00 was because he wanted to win. Some psychology here for you. Sometimes it’s not about the item. Sometimes it’s just about winning. So if he had the high bid at some point, he might not have bid again. Obviously we have no idea what would have happened. But we do have an estimate on the dollar range the auction would have ended at, $378-$420. WOWOWOWOWOW!

I think we can all agree that there’s a major issue with this system. Here’s how I think it should work: The second highest bidder should only have to buy it for one bid over the 3rd highest bidders, highest bid(yep you heard me). The reason for this is, most likely, the high bidder should never have bid in the first place. Maybe he didn’t really want it, or he made a mistake, or the item wasn’t what he thought it was, or a million other ridiculous reasons. But basically, it all comes down to the fact that the high bidder raised the price for no reason at all. If eBay took this approach it would reduce the Second Chance Offer scam, where a friend of the seller bids high, and then the seller gives it to the second highest bidder for their max. The problem here is eBay doesn’t want you to sell the item for the cheaper price because they make more money this way. And we know the seller doesn’t want to sell it for cheaper. The only person who wants less money to change hands is the buyer. 2 against 1. Sorry buyer, you’re screwed. You always hear how eBay sides with the buyer in cases of auction issues. Well this is one for the seller I guess.