Moving the checkers!

I was talking recently with a young artist who was frustrated with his lack of progress. “There just aren’t enough hours in the day to get everything done”, he said. I explained my concept of “moving the checkers”, a strategy that has worked for me, a husband and father with a full time job. The idea is simple; imagine a checkerboard with two lines of checkers. The first line of 8 pieces closest to the center of the board represents all of the things you need to establish and begin moving forward across the board. I’ll list a few examples:

1. Painting 2. Studying 3. Making contacts, attending art events. 4.
Finding commissions. 5. Entering contests 6. Creating a website 7.
Contacting your clientele 8. Updating your blog (check!)

It’s easy to feel like you aren’t making progress because there’s so much to do. Here is the critical concept of this whole approach; DON’T MOVE ONE PIECE TOO MANY SPACES BEFORE WORKING ON SOMETHING ELSE! In the past I spent months painting but neglected other critical pieces, often because they weren’t “fun.” While one piece was racing across the board other pieces were dormant for months at a time.

The second row of pieces represent things that are related to the first row but can’t begin moving forward until the other pieces have made room for them. For example, after studying and taking classes, I’ll not only improve, but eventually get to the point where I could begin teaching a beginner. I can only do that if I move my learning piece a few spaces across the board.

If you sometimes get overwhelmed or frustrated with the numerous facets of being an artist, create a list of your personal checkers and begin moving them across the board.

Bio: James Lane is an artist living in Sacramento, California.

Internet Radio. It’s not going away.

These days, technology is playing a huge role in how the music industry is shaping up. And it’ll have an even greater impact as we move forward. A big player in this imperial shift is internet radio. While sites like Pandora and Jango are fighting the good fight against the RIAA and Soundexchange over royalty fees, consumers are moving ever so quickly to the next trendy site that will enable them to get their fix of music. This could be a simple rogue blogger who broadcasts a modest internet radio show every Sunday night at 8pm Pacific on blogtalkradio.com (ahem) or a bigger site who caters to underground music like idobi radio, people will always seek out the latest in music.

And as technology continues to bring new venues and applications to bring the music to the masses, the more the Record Industry is going to have to embrace and explot it to make money. Especially in these tormultuous times they need to find a way to help their bottom line without alienating the fans that help make the industry great.

Webpro News ran a great little article about how Pandora is in an increased decline and now a year later we see this is not really true. Pandora is still just as popular, maybe even more so, and the RIAA has no idea how to stop it. Their idea has always been sue, sue, sue! But as they’ve found that’s only increasing the bitter taste in the fans that could easily drive the music industry in an upward swing if they would just find more ways to make money rather than sticking to a very dated business model.

We live in a digital age and there are ways that bands, publishers, producers, and managers can all get their fair share without destroying the relationship between the fans and the bands. It’s called getting their heads out of their asses. Step 1) Find crowbar! Step 2) Insert said bar in ass! Step 3) Pull! I’m available on weekends to assist if need be.

New broadcast available.

This week we talked to West Indian Girl on blogtalkradio.com and spun tracks from BOAT, Black Milk, Far, and West Indian Girl. Sorry we ran out of time this week. The interview went a little long. The interview went really well though, and I want to thank Rob and Amy for sitting down with me to talk about what’s going on in the world of West Indian Girl. We’re going to set up an interview with Mark, their drummer to talk about some of the Flight of the Conchords stuff he’s been working on. Should be a pretty interesting conversation.

As I said, last night was a lot of fun. I ran into some great folks last night including Jim Greer who pointed me out for having a Crudo shirt (he plays bass in the band). We’ll likely pull him into the studio and talk to him about what he’s been doing. If you’re in the San Francisco Bay Area, check out his other project the Rondo Brothers. They’re going to be playing Bottom of the Hill this Friday (2/6/09) night. You can come by and buy me a drink.

This Sunday we’re going to be expanding the show to an hour long. We’ll have The Frail in studio to talk about their 2009 plans and a very special announcement from San Francisco Radio Icon St. John will announce where he’s going now that he’s left Wild 94.9. It’s going to be a great show. Don’t miss it. I’ll try not to fuck it up too bad.

Micro blogging. It’s not just for the trendy anymore.

So last week I was having a great conversation with a friend who still hadn’t heard about Twitter and what it could do for businesses, bands, and general marketing of their product. It seems that micro blogging is something that has been going on for some time and it had taken me a while to catch on.

These days it seems that nearly everyone is now on Twitter and the list is growing. Even celebrities like Jimmy Kimmel, Greg Grunberg, and Kevin Smith have all chosen Twitter as their chosen way to get their quick updates to the masses. And so far it’s working.

There are even Twitter accounts for products and it’s now being used as a ploy to get more followers. One user conducted a contest where the winner would receive a mac book if they helped get him in the top followers spot. Of course he never did get there but he got thousands of followers from it.

These are just some of the examples on how technology is changing the way we interface with our fans. And with applications that can be loaded onto your PDA like Twitterberry (which I use pretty frequently), and you get constant contact and constant updates from the people and things you didn’t even know you cared about.

By the way, make sure you follow us. We’re important.

Want to be a contributor?

We’re looking for more people to contribute to LML. If you’d like to add content, talk to cool bands, review CDs, or talk about what you think about the Independent creative world in general, go to the contact page.

LifeMUSICLove Radio Launches!

LifeMUSICLove Radio launches Sunday January 25, 2009 at 8pm PST on www.blogtalkradio.com/lifemusiclove

Your host JC will take you through Indie bands covering hits! More interviews will be coming including guests West Indian Girl, MC Lars, The Matches, and a speacial in-studio interview with the Heiroglyphics. Also, look for LifeMUSICLove Radio to cover this year’s Noisepop Music Festival.

The state of things and random thoughts

Boy, when are they going to get it? The big major labels are happy now. Well, at least they’re happy with iTunes. You see, now that iTunes has raised their prices and turned off the DRM (which was a compromise) the major labels are happy that they’ll get a bigger piece of the pie and thus get more towards their bottom line. Yet with all this happening the major labels still have not embraced technology to their advantage.

Now there’s word that Microsoft will get rid of their Zune media players and that more and more mp3 makers are going out of business due to the weak US Economy. This would be a great opportunity for the major labels to get in on some this action. I mean, maybe not making their own mp3 players but offering different choices for the consumer who are clearly driving the change within the market. More and more the digital sales are rising while the hard sales of CDs are going down. The increase is far outpacing the decline with regards to digital sales vs. physical sales. So what can be done?

Last year I went to a ton of shows. More shows than at any point in my life or career. One of the greatest things I saw come out of it was the fans and their interaction with the bands. More and more bands are spending much more time with their fans and allowing them unprecedented access. And more bands are selling their music via jump drives. Yes, I said it, jump drives. You know those little USB drives that you put all your crappy little documents that you want to save. Bands are using those to sell their music. And you know what? It’s working.

These little devices can be custom made at a very reasonable rate. And as solid state memory is becoming cheaper and cheaper, the ability to make some money off these devices is getting easier. I spoke to a few bands who said their fans love the devices and the fact that they can just plug it into their computer and move their files into the mp3 player of their choosing.

The next question is security. How do you keep these files from being copied and protect the music? The easy answer is that you’ll never be able to completely secure the files so that they won’t be copied. As the technology changes there are always people who will figure out how to get around it. It’s the reason why our Federal Government’s network gets hacked hundreds of times a day. It’s not because anyone really cares about reading mindless reports found on some random Government server. It’s because they want to see if they can.

So for now, we’ll just have to wait and see how this new price increase fairs for the major labels. But until they get their heads out of their ass, I don’t see anything changing anytime soon. We’ll continue to see the Independent Labels climb while the major labels continue to fight to stay afloat. Yay capitalism!