The big news this week is the return of the legendary Oliver Arditi to the world of regular music news posting. Okay, that’s bollocks. I don’t know what the big news is, because I haven’t been paying much attention, but here’s some links I found what you might find interesting.
http://music3point0.blogspot.com/2011/08/5-big-qr-code-mistakes.html QR codes are the new post-hipster meta-ironic infra-techno platformery. Which is to say, they’re a relatively mundane way of pointing a smartphone at a URL, and here’s a post with some advice on making use of them.
http://www.cackblabbath.co.uk/2011/08/11/devin-townsend-project-to-headline-damnation-festival/ I don’t usually post links to articles about bands and what have you, but Devin Townsend is probably the most ridiculously creative man in extreme metal, and there’s a chance to see him in the UK very late in the festival season.
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/stories/081211sherman#OjNqx1dLR373KMD2wMcJVw It’s decidedly interesting that music sales are up in the wake of Limewire’s demise: whether there’s a causal relationship is unclear, but it’s certainly possible. However, we are in the very early stages of this process, and it seems likely that there will be future illegal distribution methods that will be convenient enough for the end user to undermine paid models: killing them off as they arise, like a game of whack-a-mole, seems like a partial response, at best…
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2011/08/concertcrowd-turns-concert-discovery-social.html This looks quite an interesting mechanism: personally my hope would be that people will be into music too obscure for this to function, but sadly, that’s not very likely…
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2011/08/11/new-rules-2/ The New Rules! According To Bob Lefsetz! Oh Yes! And actually, he talks a lot of sense…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/aug/10/german-right-wing-fans-tshirts This is, well, extremely funny. Talk about viral marketing.
http://www.giganecdotes.com/content/beware-audience-harmonicat This is also funny: I’ve been in similar places. The moral of the story is, don’t own a PA.
http://www.liveunsigned.com/blog/2011/08/how-to-promote-your-music-using-online-forums/ Splendid, sound advice from the bestest blog in the little ol’ intarwebz.
Oliver Arditi 