While the death throes of the recording industry become more frantic the music industry itself is quite vibrant, and in the new paradigm only two things ultimately count: the artist and the fans.
As such, it pays to take a pause and consider the nature of this relationship and music culture a little more deeply.
A very useful resource on this topic is Nancy Baym’s pdf of a talk she gave recently on online fan music communities. Grab it here.
This NYT article also touches on some interesting points related to getting in closer contact with your fan base and the issues in managing it.
I’ll be writing more on this key topic as I digest Nancy’s doc a little more.
Impress R&D had a great celebration party at BarTube last night for the second edition of their SL™® ;-)) Magazine.
I had a lot of fun playing with a prototype of a new interface that a team working on Softbank’s sim had going.
It was using a 3-axis accelerometer hooked up to a modified client to send control data via chat, driving a big robot holding a box full of avatars and physical objects. The objective was pure and simple - get them all out of the box, while they keep trying to get in! Lot of Fun - go here to check it out. Excuse the quality of the images, taken on a mobile!
Update 05 April 2008: Tori Teatime, one of the developers, has just released a demo video:
Then we had a little boogie blues jam - Komuso Tokugawa [me!] on Harp/Slide/Vox, Hayashi-san from Impress on drums, Kanda-san [owner of BarTube and well know IT/Video journalist] on bass, and Yabush Yamdev on guitar along with japanese rock guitar legend Hatake-san . I left Hatake-san, Kanda-san, and Hayashi-san to finish off the night with some wild 70’s rock classic renditions.