Alternate title: Being Indie Doesn’t Mean You Have to Be a Stupid Business Person

XMU is my third favorite source for indie music behind WOXY (RIP) and NPR. I love the ever-changing music, the Download 15 and the endless interviews with great indie bands. I was listening to an interview with a member of the band Mountain Goats this afternoon. I assume it was John Darnielle promoting their recently released “All Eternals Deck”, which you can get for $5 right now (sorry if the deal expired when you read this) on AMZN. I got ripped off by iTunes. I caught the end of the interview, so if it wasn’t Darnielle, I apologize and will correct the post, but I’m going to refer to the speaker as Darnielle because he is the leader of the band and would probably make the kinds of strong statements that I am going to talk about…

Cliche Tired

Darnielle started disparaging twitter, Facebook and tumblr specifically as mediums to release an album. He was attacking marketing. He talked about how using channels that businesses have discovered is tired. He generalized about how businesses do not understand how to use the mediums, manning their accounts with people who only exist to ask people to buy products. He encouraged artists to considered bolting from the channels simply because businesses are on them and that they are becoming another avenue for advertising. Seriously? Testing into new channels constantly is very indie and smart, but leaving them just because others see the value is cliche indie behavior and it is backwards and it has already been done by the likes of Trent Reznor and Edward Droste of Grizzly Bear, the latter of which was using twitter brilliantly and left suddenly and unexpectedly.

Artists: Darnielle’s behavior is so indie cliche.

And he is dead wrong.

The thing that Darnielle is failing to remember is that not only does everyone in social media have a unique presence, but that everyone has a unique experience. We do not all follow the same people and we do not all see/hear/touch/taste/digest the same messages. Mountain Goats have been on twitter since August 21, 2009. They have spent 590 days amassing followers who are interested in creative random thoughts, interactions and their music. And by the way they have been building trust to the point where OF COURSE they can ask their followers to buy their new CD, which they do in this very tweet:

Success is OK

Being indie does not have to mean being a stupid business person. And thinking about how you are going to monetize your music does not mean you are not indie. All it means is that you do not make compromises with your music, style, ideals to get where you want to go. It does not mean you have to throw everything away. It means you need to have a plan and stick to your guns without whoring yourself out to everyone who would throw a dollar at you. Do not throw something away just because some people you do not like get into it. Reinvent it. Keep leading. Keep doing it better.

Guess what? If you do things right and if you are good, at some point the mainstream finds out about you and starts to like you and starts to buy your stuff. What are you going to do? Give the money back? Of course you will not. You will buy some new clothes and equipment that you have been dreaming about. You will schedule a larger tour, make a new album and you will give some money to causes you care about.

In other words, you will succeed, but you will do it on your terms.

PS: File this post under tough love (and buy the album).
PPS: Mountain Goats +10 epic geek points for MtG reference in their album title!

<sarcasm>Shocker.</sarcasm>

Trent was a vocal advocate for spam controls in twitter. Twitter users know that twitter is not going to implement a big new feature like that in the near future. He announced back in June that he was leaving. He came back in July to announce his last shows and to talk to Dave Navarro. No “wave wave wave wave goodbye”. The @trent_reznor account is just gone. The @nineinchnails still persists though as he said it would.

Good to see he has not gone soft.

People complain about #FollowFriday because people just throw out a bunch of names without giving any reason to follow the people on the list. My solution has been to provide a reason or theme with each person I recommend. For instance,

#followfriday @agrahamwilcox <- Must follow for NBA fans

Today, Brad Ward decided to take it all up a notch.

The story begins at SXSW. SXSW is the conference that keeps on giving. In the past I have equated it to cramming a whole semester of college into 2 weeks. The people that you meet are the people you want to meet, the experiences that you share are meaningful both in the “classroom” and in the bars and social events.

On the night of the mashable party, Not only did I sing Ziggy Stardust with a live band, meet Seth Rogen and Joseph “Cobra Commander” Gordan-Levitt, I met Brad J. Ward.

I was heading to the bar to pick up my 4th (or so) and I was in queue to sing with the band. Well, the video tells the story

Did I think he was going to gank my charger? No. But my own phone was low on juice and I couldn’t hear the bartender. The band was RIGHT in front of us and Brad was looking to disappear. What good is a business card if I can’t charge my phone later? I decided to chill out about it, sing my song and have fun at the party instead of worrying about whether I would be connected later. Glad I did. Brad is an amazing person that I met at the conference and I am having a good time getting to know him better through twitter. Follow him!

It all started a month ago when @melkirk tweeted:

YASMMeT /yaz’ met/ 1. (acronym) yet another social media messaging tool

Plurk is the latest yasmmet. It’s clearly a “competitor” to the popular twitter system. Twitter essentially is an open version of popular instant messaging platforms like MSN Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger. Plurk has an opportunity to capture social market share, [Notice that I did not say anything about revenue share as neither currently has a revenue model to speak of] primarily because twitter is horrible about stability.

Plurk has had the benefit of watching twitter flop around like a fish on the beach, but twitter has a big head start. Plurk’s user interface is a lot different. Twitter’s advantage is that most of its users are already longtime instant messenger users and bloggers who understand the technology and have easily adopted and embraced its value proposition. Because Plurk takes a few times to get used to, it puts it at a huge disadvantage in a space where people will give you about 90 seconds before they decide if they want to pursue something– unless they get some of the Twitter elite to convert people.

Was Mama Cass an inspiration for twitter? My 5 year old was singing this song the other day and I immediately thought of twitter. I find myself putting things on twitter just to see if someone else will identify with my references. Other times because I tweet just because I need to get something out of my head and move on. It’s not exactly singing, but the whole tweeting for tweeting’s sake is a lot like making your own kind of music.

I may never need to write a software application again! It turns out that flavors of two ideas that I had have already been done (sort of). The API to twitter is so easy and intuitive, applications are popping up all over. In fact, twitter is actually a part of a sub dimension of the blogosphere that I (would) call the twitterverse (if twitterverse wasn’t something else, but more on that later) or maybe the twalaxy.

Stepping back: Direct marketing guru and Internet junkie, Gregory Ng, introduced me to twitter. After a couple of days of use, I got the general gist of it, but I really wanted to figure out what I could learn from it. After all, this was really close to my dream of being able to work all day mining AIM or MSN conversations and then return home with my 6 friends to our dark haired princess who washes our clothes and makes us supper. I just want to learn how to serve you better. I promise I am only quasi-evil!