I made a post a while back expressing my frustration with the hoards of people in Hollywood who attempt to peddle their rap albums to innocent passersby, often aggressively, and generally unsuccessfully. Not only is it just not a great way to sell your album, but it’s a horribly saturated market. I have never once been to that part of Hollywood without seeing tons of people doing so.

Anyways, the other day I was back in that area, once again being bombarded by the same.

Except for one guy.

This was a very nice guy, an immigrant who would very kindly tell his story to anyone who would listen. He was selling not a rap album, but a book of his poetry. They were actually quite good, and he was selling them for a mere $2. Furthermore, he would let anyone interested read several pages before deciding whether or not they wanted it. It was totally refreshing.

I bought the book. So did a lot of other people around me. I’m not even into poetry, but his story was so captivating and his approach so good-natured that I felt compelled to support him and his work. Is he just a damn good salesman? Maybe. Is his work any better than anyone else’s? Maybe not. But that’s the point. We’re talking about marketing.

And that’s when I got to thinking — by changing just a few simple things, this man was able to transform a market that I hate and generally avoid, into a successful sale, for not only me, but for the others I saw around me who did the same. Instead of having to create your own market somewhere, it is still quite possible to form your own niche within an existing market, so long as you have something new to offer.

This is also interesting and related to new media because the methods he used were the same methods often being used by web startups and indie record labels. Try before you buy. Sell something with a story rather than aggression. Oh, and lower prices don’t hurt either.

In the age of donationware, “pay what you want” capitalism, and in a world where you can profit while helping developing nations at the same time, it is increasingly making more and more sense to not just carve out a whole new market, but just change your approach. Focus on the customer rather than your wallet, because in the end, your wallet will end up happier too anyway.

One little change. It costs a lot of money to change target markets, change distribution avenues, or change how you build your products. But it won’t cost much at all to start listening to your customers instead of yelling at them; to give your product a story and a face rather than just a price tag. And more and more, while much of it is subconscious, the masses are choosing to go where they get the best quality of service rather than just who provides the product they want.

Whether it’s one main selling poetry on Hollywood Boulevard or a production company trying to create content for the 21st century, the same principles apply. Make use of them. You’ll be better off.

Branching off of Dan’s recent entry re: Coldplay’s videos, it seems to me that this has been the sad standard for some time now. The more artists that leave record labels to galvanize their own fan bases however they see fit, the more that the task of the music video falls into the hands of a friend or assistant who records some blandly candid backstage footage, which more often than not winds up buried in the band’s MySpace page. And even when the suits do throw a little Thanks-For-Not-Doing-Heroin-This-Era money at their bands, the videos just look like the same low-budjy turds, only polished. Shake the camera a lot to cover up the lack of a set, overexpose to cover up the lack of a set, pack the thing with tight close-up shots of the singer’s face to cover up the…well, you get it.

What’s it worth anyway, when these days the largest window you’ll ever see the video play on is about the size of a burrito?

But it’s not just the money disappearing or the format changing. The faith has been lost, if only temporarily, in the power of a music video to brand a new artist or transform an established one’s perception. Maybe people collectively think of music as a barrage of emotion-information, instantly available and meant to be processed at speeds approaching ADHD, but that’s a little cynical. My guess is that, now, always and forever, people only get out of music what they put into it: They can tire of a hit single after digesting the catchy hook enough times and move on quick, but should they choose to really apply what a group’s saying to their life experiences, they connect with it more and start looking up show dates or blow all $25 of their remaining retirement savings on the hoodie.

See, it used to be enough to buy the record on the release date and throw a listening party with your like-minded friends. But I think the era of the more passive listener now has to share room with the new breed of consumer, who wants to vote for the next American Idol, who wants to download the song on Guitar Hero and interact with the chords, who wants to chop and screw their own versions of the song/video and put it online for their friends/one guy in Michigan who hates it/family to see.

As expected, the next wave of artists, bred to appeal to the next wave of young fans, are establishing that kind of interactive presence. Soulja Boy is a self-made man and Paramore lent their name to promotional segments for the Rock Band launch – as seen, coincidentally, on TRL, a once-humongous music video show soon to be cancelled. (Unfortunately, Paramore, your rock advice to video-game band Carrie Me Home was in vain! Muahaha.) Bang Camaro, in a daring bastardization of the last bastion of musical integrity, invites members of the audience to come onstage and sing all the lyrics to their songs, the clearest synthesis of Artist and Consumer there is. Of course, that kind of sharing has been going on since Green Day was first putting their fans on bass in packed stadiums, but never before has the presence of the audience been invited to overtake the identity of the band with oppressive gang vocals.

Remember when bands used to get pissed at your for stealing the spotlight by stage-diving? Not anymore. They really need you to like them these days.

Twenty-somethings see hardly any of the bands they grew up with getting promoted (except maybe Weezer, which continues to produce the sound of an empty pistol clicking against their collective temple, album after album). The reason: We had our chance to absolve a long time ago when the labels successfully ass-punished Napster. Instead we retreated into the untold glories of Morpheus, Bearshare, Limewire, and other P2Ps, because we seriously, seriously thought music should be free all of a sudden. So with radio all but dead and the industry moving on to new, youth-skewing forms of promotion, we’re left to our own devices and the blogs of many a well-meaning hipster to figure out what the hell we want to listen to next – oh, and this new bone we’re getting thrown in the form of iTunes’ Genius App and Pandora. Not sure how those will work or evolve yet.

Point is, it’s all about the next demo now, and the next demo doesn’t care about music videos. They only knew them as Disney Channel commercials, or as locations for singers’ boyfriends to hang out and wind up in the gossip pages of OK! Their relevance has diminished because the community that once touted videos as art (that’s us if you’re not keeping track) dove into torrents and ditched the support of artists to save cash on their albums – and visionaries like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry gotta eat too, so any ambitious, creative voices simply traded up for film or went home.

Those and similar video directors’ collected works stand, in my opinion, as the last great gasp of music videos, an important series of artifacts that occupy the screen at dorm room parties as a reminder of how we used to process the identities of bands we liked and how, even in the act of commerce, they could excel at art. It’ll take a lot more than the next set of fresh video ideas to bring it back; we’re going to need to come to the conclusion as a generation that we ourselves are not nearly as clever or talented at interpreting music for ourselves as we currently think we are, and that we need both the help of the directing wunderkinds to do it and the labels to put it in front of our faces enough times.

So essentially, we’d have to get over ourselves and spend money doing it. Yeeeah. That’ll happen.

Anyways, the guys from Coldplay are holding a fan-music music video contest. This makes me rather happy, because not only is it an example of one of the biggest bands in the world jumping into social media, but perhaps it’s also an acknowledgment that their music videos for “Violet Hill” and “Viva La Vida” were not very good. Or at least that’s what I thought. These days, it takes a lot to get me to enjoy a music video, and for whatever reason, Coldplay’s have definitely not come through for me. I love their music, but I just don’t feel their music videos have been good lately.

Regardless, I’m glad to see them giving their fans a shot.

TrueAnthem is a relatively new company that believes music should be free to download, artists should still get paid for it, and that advertising is the way to allow both of these things to happen. While I tend to agree with most of that in theory, the way it worked in practice left me wishing I could just pay my $9.99 to get the album on iTunes.

In order to download the Ultraviolet Sound album, I first had to register for an account, which is annoying all by itself. (Take a lesson from Radiohead: Because it’s free doesn’t mean people will come running.) Once I did this and logged into their somewhat-buggy MySpace widget, I attempted to download the album. It was hardly seamless. You are forced to download every single track separately, and it asks you for the download destination each and every time. It took several minutes to actually acquire the entire album.

They also weren’t kidding about bringing in advertisers.

Each MP3 on the album begins with an advertisement for Adidas Originals, with the exception of one track on the album, which isn’t a song at all, but a giant ad in MP3 form. Annoying? Yes.

Furthermore, the MP3’s themselves are encoded in low-quality 128kbit, and also lack album art or complete metadata. I don’t get that part. It’s super easy to encode music in a higher-quality format. If TrueAnthem really wants to compete with paid music by providing a similar experience at less cost, they need to at least give us decent-quality music.

Perhaps the worst part about working with TrueAnthem is that you need to sign an exclusive contract with them. For a period of about a year, you cannot sell or distribute your music in any other fashion than through TrueAnthem. No CD’s, no Amazon, no iTunes. Regardless of how forward-thinking TrueAnthem thinks they are being by providing music totally free of charge, exclusivity undermines the spirit of music distribution on the internet, which is about choice. Consumers of music have the option right now to buy music on CD in stores, or from whatever online music store they prefer.

In fact, the whole reason why the music business is in the mess that they are is because of exclusivity. Rather than giving consumers the power to choose how they wanted their music, the business forced it upon them until the consumers revolted. It’s 2008, and this does not fly.

While I have to applaud TrueAnthem for finding a way to get paid while giving music away for free, listening to an album of low-quality MP3’s with an ad at the beginning of each one is annoying, and I would much rather have paid $10 for the same album with no ads and higher quality.

Would most people? Perhaps not the majority, but many people would — which is why you shouldn’t be forcing the artists into exclusive contracts.

TrueAnthem is attempting to infuse traditional label business practices into a new distribution method, rather than recognizing that this is a whole new ball game. The rules have changed — not just the players. They also are providing a record label experience without providing their bands with much marketing assistance, which is the one thing that traditional labels still excel at. In addition, there are various technical hurdles with their MySpace widget and the resulting files that make it even harder to use their distribution system. They are a record label in sheep’s clothing, and while I admire their intentions, I hope to see them change their ways.

If not, then I await the day their contract with Ultraviolet Sound expires so I can pick up their album elsewhere.

Glenn Wolsey is a young blogger from New Zealand who has gained quite a following with his own blog and web show, as well as Desktop Vibes and various projects he works on. I have personally worked with him. But lately, his reputation on the internet is slowly being chipped away at, due to the very dilemma many of us have — mixing your personal life with business.

Already having public relations issues thanks to a failed practical joke and the absence of good content on his site (a problem I myself battle, I will admit), now would be the correct time for him to take a look at his image — his brand — and take the measures necessary to restore it.

How has he done this? Well, after spending a couple months writing relatively off-topic blog entries to keep his content stream flowing, he has used his personal blog to plug a celebrity website he now works for.

It’s by far the longest entry he’s written in a while. The worst part about it is that it is misleading. Rather than explaining that he works for them, he makes the post sound as if he just “stumbled upon” this celebrity website and loves it. Only after his readers [rightfully] get upset about this does he admit it and address the fact that he is now employed by them. (He does quite a lot there, it seems.)

There’s a lesson here, folks, and that’s what I’m attempting to get at. We’ve all been in situations where we need money or a career advancement, and it requires doing some… interesting jobs. Hell, I work in Hollywood, I know a thing or two about working less-than-noble jobs for less-than-noble people.

The problem with Glenn’s situation is that his company and his persona are one and the same. If his personal blog becomes known for garbage, then Glenn himself becomes known for garbage. And since that reputation is personal, it transcends the blog itself. Any new endeavor that Glenn might undertake or become apart of will be painted with the same brush. It is a situation from which a person might never recover.

Of course, the celebrity website knew this before hiring him. They probably said to themselves, “Hmm, this kid already has people watching him. Instead of building our brand from scratch, why not get a leg-up by buying this kid’s audience?” It can be a smart business move. It’s just not good for the potential employee.

The moral failure occurred when Glenn accepted, and allowed himself — and all his projects — to become the face of something that his readers and fans don’t give a damn about.

The problem is not that he works for a celebrity site. I certainly would if they paid me enough. The problem is that he was willing to sacrifice the online persona that we know of him — his website, his Twitter account — in order to become the public face of this new endeavor. He is not merely working for them. He is transforming his image into theirs.

Please, Glenn, fix this before it’s too late.

And to those of you getting into the new media world, don’t sacrifice your own image. Because in a world where your business, your image, and your persona can essentially be the same thing, you only have to destroy one to destroy them all.

While they certainly have more of the local market than Danoo, a competing company I have previously written about, their choice of locations is just such that I haven’t run into them as often. Until they invaded my favorite coffee shop.

A couple weeks ago, I strolled into a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. After ordering my drink, I attempted to get on the wifi, which was previously a paid service through AT&T.

Except this time, it wasn’t. I opened my browser and was brought to a page that said my internet here would be totally free — all I had to do was go look at the RippleTV screen across the room, find the small number in the corner of it, return to my computer, and enter it into the browser. Only then would I be able to get online.

Genius? Annoying? Both, I think. I’m not a big fan of services that are free because they force you to do something else first that could earn them money, but then again, it wasn’t so bad. I just had to go look at a TV screen for a minute.

RippleTV seems to present a pretty good variety of news, events, and some targeted advertising. I haven’t spent a lot of time around one yet — just the hour or so I was at the coffee shop — but at first glance I did notice that the information seemed to be less targeted and precise as Danoo’s but more interesting, and with a prettier interface. I enjoyed glancing at RippleTV a lot more, but I can’t say with any certainty that it informed me of anything I might actually want to pay for.

But since I practically live in one of many Coffee Bean locations, they will get their chance.

According to their website, they have 180 locations in the Los Angeles area, with many other locations spread pretty nicely across the country. As I’ve been saying, it will be very interesting to see just how fast these types of services grow, as well as how useful to the public they are — and thus, how profitable the advertising segment will be for them.

The Bleinstein Company, no stranger to disappointing revenue, now plumbs its reputation as a champion of independent cinema and the voices behind them in press releases for their DVD distributions banner, Third Rail Releasing (not an offending party). That reputation, however, was earned back when the Bleinsteins ran Bliramax. Now, with their chips relatively down and no Oscar prospects on the foreseeable horizon, they’re quick to regard their straight-to-DVD acquisitions as mere cash grabs, and Third Rail’s work as “a good way of differentiating between what we really believe in, and what has been for ancillary value.”¹

I am quick to respond.

Look, I get it. Every burgeoning outlet for struggling independent filmmakers gets laughed at, almost as a point of necessity. Most people who watch movies on their iPhone aren’t necessarily quick to admit it. A Craigslist post looking for editors on a “dramedic web series set in high school circa 1980” is like the professional kiss of death to smug freelancers. We remain in love with the thought of a theatrical premiere. You won’t find searchlights and red carpets at Mooviez4Phree.com, or near the monitors of an upscale Starbucks. You’ll just find eyeballs, watching your work for what it is. And who wants that, since everyone’s a comment box critic these days, and meaner too? I’ll take Michael Rosenbaum, Jan Stuart and J. Hoberman, thank you.²

Those who are opposed to their life’s work beaming out of unvarnished digital screens to a crowd of disinterested Chipotle victims (and one or two attentive young viewers in the back) have taken to self-distribution, a method so fantastically rebellious and astonishingly ill-advised that it just might work…that is, if you have a cast that includes Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman and Eliza Dushku. Not to slight the makers of Bottle Shock, the film which I reference and haven’t even seen, but casting Severus Snape and the president from Independence Day can’t help but grease the wheels at a few LA art houses here and there. If director Randall Miller settled for faceless, summer stock mannequins instead, I would think it hard just to finance a living room screening in Des Moines.

But that’s another rant devoted to the commercialization of indie film. It must be said: the accomplishment involved in designing, approving, and financing the rollout of your own film is genuinely impressive.

However, it seems the drive to do that stems from the disgust indie filmmakers nurture by falling in love with their art, to the point that they can’t stomach releasing their baby through DVD outlets or streaming it for ad space pennies. The way I see it, if you have a property so genuine, exciting and fresh, there’s no harm in opening the source and letting Netflix vultures eat it up like so much carrion. I’m not suggesting one has to devise the killer business model and direct the best movie they can at the same time, but even if it just means piggybacking your way into Old Media, the first person to approach new methods of distribution with confidence and swagger is going to make a killing. My worry is I won’t get the script for my violent barbarian action flick ready in time to be at the frontline.

Third Rail, you know my name.

1. Recent iterations of the Third Rail launch story paint a different picture, one that describes the company as a portal for “inventive and edgy vanguard films” to find their audiences. Whether or not this is a cover-up so the Bleinsteins don’t piss off the very people actually making them money, it sure doesn’t erase the bite marks on that hand. Hey Blarvey, how are the numbers looking on Hell Ride? What’s that? It only got distribution because Quentin put his name on it? I was wondering why you let a Grindhouse knock-off slip into theaters. Okay, this footnote’s about to require its own footnotes.
2. Oh wait. The internet killed their jobs.