It feels like Justin Bieber is at war with his own fans: I’m gonna make my Instagram private if you guys don’t stop the hate this is getting out of hand,” Biebs wrote on the final picture that he posted on Instagram. “If you guys are really fans you wouldn’t be so mean to people that I like.
Source: Hypebot, 08/16/2016
by Crystal Abidin
Influencers are everyday, ordinary Internet users who accumulate a relatively large following on blogs and social media through the textual and visual narration of their personal lives and lifestyles, engage with their following in digital and physical spaces, and monetise their following by integrating “advertorials” into their blog or social media posts. A pastiche of “advertisement” and “editorial”, advertorials in the Influencer industry are highly personalised, opinion-laden promotions of products/services that influencers personally experience and endorse for a fee.
Although influencers are now a worldwide phenomenon, .
This paper investigates a subset of them, namely women influencers of the “lifestyle” genre in Singapore. Source: Ada, A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology.
Less than 7 weeks ago, a small and underfunded but dedicated team started work an app that will apply blockchain technology to the music industry, and establish a globally distributed database of music rights via an open source architecture. Today, founder Benji Roger announced that a first public alpha iteration will be available prior to August 22.
Benji Rogers, PledgeMusic & Dot Blockchain Music founder, writes: “ The best analogy I can think of to describe what the Dot Blockchain Music Projects Protocol will do is to compare it to email … What will be released late this month will be our first stab at a set of the rails upon which much of the digital music trains will be able to run. A way of working with the raw data of music that will allow for not only the birth of a globally distributed database of ownership rights, but also the trains and engines that will allow fast and fair commerce to scale for all who participate in the system.”
“Much like I imagine the BitCoin Blockchain and other systems that are open sourced and collaborative have done before us, the Dot Blockchain Music Project has been “Growing Up In Public.” Personally this is the first time that I have ever been involved in building a product out in such an open and public way, and it is equally both terrifying and amazing. From the embryo of an idea to what I would call its current awkward toddler phase as it gets ready to walk, I could not be more grateful to my teammates, the engineers and designers, and all of my fellow music industry friends from whom I learn more and more each and every day for all that they have brought to the project.”
Source: Hypebot, 8/15/16
When promoting a show via social media, it can be difficult to tell how much rampant posting across the various platforms actually translates into attendance at shows. Ultimately, it does make a difference, but using said platforms correctly affects dramatically affects the size of that difference…
… While we do believe that promoting your shows and music on social media is beneficial to gig turnout, it’s a little more complicated than that.
For instance, musician Augie Pink, of the garage-pop band Plastic Pinks, doesn’t find Facebook event numbers to be totally reliable. “A lot of the times people just say ‘going’ to be able to get more info on the shows and end up not going,” he says. “But the same way happens vice-versa: people don’t join the event, yet know exactly when the show is and make sure to go.” June Summer, vocalist the Plastic Pinks, adds: “It’s good to use all tools and it does provide some type of insight to what you will be working with. I would say it’s a better way of knowing how good you are promoting more than how well you are doing at the show.”
Our advice: If you’re doubting the influence of social media on your draw, it may be time to reevaluate how you’re using it.
Source: Hypebot, 8/11/2016
Gig promotion resources:
How to Promote Your Music: A Beginner’s Guide to Best Practices
The 10-Step Guide to Perfect Show Promotion
By Ryan Calo (University of Washington – School of Law; Stanford University – Law School; Yale Law School), 8/9/16. DL here.
Abstract:
This essay, prepared in connection to the Clifford Symposium at the DePaul University College of Law, begins to unpack the complex, sometimes contradictory relationship between privacy and vulnerability. I begin by exploring how the law conceives of vulnerability — essentially, as a binary status meriting special consideration where present. Recent literature recognizes vulnerability not as a status but as a state — a dynamic and manipulable condition that everyone experiences to different degrees and at different times.
I then discuss various ways in which vulnerability and privacy intersect. I introduce an analytic distinction between vulnerability rendering, i.e., making a person more vulnerable, and the exploitation of vulnerability whether manufactured or native. I also describe the relationship between privacy and vulnerability as a vicious or virtuous circle. The more vulnerable a person is — due to poverty, for instance — the less privacy they tend to enjoy; meanwhile, a lack of privacy opens the door to greater vulnerability and exploitation.
Privacy can protect against vulnerability but it can also be invoked to engender it. I next describe how privacy supports the creation and exploitation of vulnerability in ways literal, rhetorical, and conceptual. An abuser may literally use privacy to hide his abuse from law enforcement. A legislature or group may invoke privacy rhetorically to justify discrimination, for instance, against the transgendered who wish to use the bathroom of their choice. And courts obscure vulnerability conceptually when they decide a case on the basis of privacy instead of the value that is more centrally at stake.
Finally, building on previous work, I offer James Gibson’s theory of affordances as a theoretical lens by which to analyze the complex relationship that privacy mediates. Privacy understood as an affordance permits a more nuanced understanding of privacy and vulnerability and could perhaps lead to wiser privacy law and policy.
With average payments hovering around $.00575 per play, its easily arguable that Spotify, Apple Music and others music streamers are not returning sufficient revenue to creators. But in aggregate, music streaming has quickly become a major source of revenue for both independent and major labels.
Note: Independent record labels represent 37.6% global recorded music market share according to a recent WIN study
Source: Hypebot, 8/3/16
By Jonathan Mavroudis, Esther Milne
Abstract:
The term “microcelebrity” describes a broad range of practices, platforms and social relations that includes but is not limited to the increasing significance of public performance in everyday life, the monetisation of social media and the widening scope of what constitutes celebrity culture. While contemporary research on microcelebrity has introduced important ways of discussing the cultural impact of these new forms of visibility, the methodological focus has generally been on discourse analysis and social media analytics. In response, this paper reports on the early stages of a research project which involves interviewing microcelebrities living in Los Angeles about their profile creation on Instagram and YouTube. We argue there are significant issues at play in relation to gaining access to the interview subjects. The paper outlines the methods used and explores how the issue of access is negotiated by the interview subjects and the researcher. Since one of the authors, Jonathan Mavroudis, himself identifies as a microcelebrity with over 25,000 followers on Instagram he is in a unique position to interview these people. This high level of access to a specific cohort of microcelebrities has not been easy to gain for many academic researchers. Jonathan’s microcelebrity status opens up the possibility of conducting autoethnographic research and this is framed as a discussion of relational ethics. Although the primary focus of the paper is on method we also want to discuss early suggestive themes arising from the data including the obligations felt by these microcelebrities to enact a particular mode of identity and how this is experienced as labour. We highlight these initial topics in order to bring context to the discussion of method. Access enables and constrains certain forms of research to occur and in so doing raises questions of trust and friendship. With only 3 interviews conducted to date this is not, of course, representative of all microcelebrities. However it can function as a snapshot of early findings that we hope will inform future research methods and conceptual debates. The paper concludes with some suggestions for future directions of the field more generally.
Source: First Monday (7/4/16).
An excerpt from an alternate universe where Bernie Sanders runs for president of the 8th grade at the fictional USA Middle School and encounters a new student and rival named Donald Trump:
“What could any of that possibly mean … Who was this strange, wealthy, balding boy? Bernie collapsed to his knees in despair. If Trump made a meaningless yet awe-inspiring speech like that in the election, he wouldn’t even need his mountains of cash. The presidency would be his.
Visions of a Trump-controlled class overcame him. Overpriced textbooks, expensive student loans, walls closing their classroom off from the rest of the school … A tear dropped out of Bernie’s eye. Just as the thought that he should give up on his campaign entered his mind, Bernie heard a voice.”
NPR continues, ‘In the 2016 presidential cycle, where everything seems unpredictable, fiction allows voters to determine exactly what happens next – whether it’s set in the present day or some kind of alternate universe where sharks rain down in a natural disaster. “I think to some extent it’s an opportunity to act out alternate realities,” said Amber Davisson, an assistant professor of communications at Keene State College. “A lot of the fan fiction I’ve studied seems to be people asking themselves, ‘What if we did this conversation a little bit differently?’ They’re playing with various scenarios to see what works.”‘
Source: NPR (7/2/16).
[M] oney isn’t everything. Elsewhere in the world, creators may enjoy a separate set of rights known as “moral rights.” The term comes from the French language and might actually be better translated as “personality rights”; this set of rights ensures that artists are able to protect their reputation by ensuring that they receive attribution when their work is used and that they can object to uses that they see as harmful to their name … Moral rights are a major focal point of copyright law reform in the United States right now. However, while moral rights are common in most of the world, their limited application in the United States means that many there are not familiar with them.
To those ends, the following primer: “Moral Rights for Musicians” by Jonathan Baily of Future of Music Coalition (FMC).
Beautiful and Strange 