Do you believe crowds of humans will ever (or do now) sway as much control over the rate and depth of media dissemination as the established media machine does now?

When a westerner (an American for example) walks by the office of a co-worker, and the co-worker is quietly sitting there doing nothing, the westerner’s first reaction is that the co-worker is lazy and probably slacking. On the other side of the world…

The Click Control business-copyright model is one in which rightsholders will (someday) simply and easily suspend and reclaim their copyrights. It makes sense to be able to temporarily and selectively suspend one’s copyrights to encourage adoption (including commercial usage), and then (via the click of a mouse) reclaim their suspended rights someplace along the way to becoming a classic…

If someone shows you, you will obtain confidence that the problem or puzzle can be solved. If someone shows you, and teaches you, you will solve the problem. If nobody shows you, and nobody teaches you, the stone can teach you what you need to know.

The formula stipulates that for a song to obtain maximum traction, all the variables in the formula have to push up and max out. If you plug the formula into a spreadsheet and play around with scenarios, you will notice (it’s all multiplication), that a single low variable sinks a song (this is important). In other words, you need ALL the variables to work for you to maximize the conversion rate from listeners to fans.

The more that I read about the latest and greatest music marketing trends, the more I want to stand up on my desk and shout “don’t go over the cliff with the rest of the lemmings!”

The cost of acquiring a music collection is approaching zero, while the cost of listening to whatever you want is no more than a 30 second ad spot for every sixty minutes of music…

In any business, a good manager should be able to tell you the ‘end-date’. The end-date is a hypothetical day in the future when cash reserves will run dry if expenses continually exceed revenues. Knowledge of the end-date is a huge (negative) motivator. When the boss says: "We need to generate X by next Thursday or else...", people respond like soldiers going to battle.

Written in 2013: Today, a great wireless device has to be a phone, a camera, a computer, a GPS, an e-book reader, an application ecosystem, an entertainment center, a social instrument, a business toolbox, and a great music service. Music probably consumes more device-time than any other phone feature. So, it’s clear that device manufacturers understand that music-as-a-service (MAS) is a core feature that’s essential to competing. However, the current music stack that includes: MP3 acquisition and management, playlist management, playback control, music discovery, music recommendation, and social sharing is outdated and cumbersome.

Does death by obscurity really happen to great songs, or does lack of traction only happen to mediocre songs?

I think this is one of the most important questions that we can ask ourselves. Do most fans just want your music, or do most fans want something else from you beyond your music?

Music absorption is the process that occurs between music discovery and the (self) conversion of an average music consumer into an active fan. I believe the music absorption process is radically different now than it was just two years ago, and understanding how this process has changed should impact your approach to succeeding in the music industry.

Music is now the most naked product on Earth. Music sits upon the shelf unwrapped, raw and void of packaging. Consumers can fully try it before they buy it; they can take it home unmolested; and they can pay for it randomly, or not at all. I can’t think of another product that is so fully exposed and vulnerable to quick and precise, pre-purchase decision-making as music.

You don’t need to hit home runs. 10% weekly growth will get you where you need to go.

Here are some of this best startup articles I read in 2013:

A narrow value proposition does not equate to a narrow market opportunity, it's just harder to build.

Every time I go out to move a pile of firewood, I think this is hard labor, but it's not hard work.

Artists, labels and rightsholders, tell the nerds the Internet is already broken. The web is balkanizing around huge ecosystems run by giant companies and paranoid governments.

Facebook is positioned to become the world's attention banking infrastructure. We live in an attention economy where the capacity to attract attention is given, sold, bought and traded daily…transparently and otherwise.

Over the years, I have quit caffeine for years at a time. I slip back into the habit when I forget how unnecessary it is to functioning at a high-level. A big desert after lunch…coffee. Too much booze the night before…coffee. Not enough sleep…coffee. Lots of time behind the desk and not enough time at the gym…coffee. Staying out extra late…espresso martini. Not making time to meditate…coffee. Not enough fruit…coffee (beans). Caffeine paves over bad habits, and conversely, the absence of it makes living...calmer.