ElliottWould you put Supernova in the hands of this man?
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Promoted Tweets... Not Cool
Posted on Apr 13/10 0 Comments / 472 Views  Can't say I'm a fan of having Twitter's attempt at monetizing itself, the recently launched "Promoted Tweets" show up in my stream. A majority of others agree with me. The idea is this: presumably a Coke ad will appear if you search Twitter for cola or a Paramount Pictures tweet will show up if you search for one of the studio's latest releases. Only one promoted tweet will be displayed per search results page. However, if users don't perform some sort of action to re-tweet, favorite, reply, etc., the ad is pulled from the search results. Ok, I have no problem with this. Google uses this model, it is pretty widely accepted. What I do object to is seeing any such ads appear in my personal stream! That is phase two of this ad network plan, and that's the part that will enrage most Twitter users. Will it do so enough to drive them away from Twitter? It just might. At which time I foresee Twitter pulling that aspect of it. The content stream must be kept pure for Twitter to maintain it's lure. Yeah, I'm a poet and I didn't even know it. So if you are like me, and resent this horrible, alienating, un-twitter-like sell out concept, please RT this blog. Those Twitter folks are smart, they will stop it before it gets too far, and just keep to the search results version.
My top 10 favorite comedies of all time
Posted on Jan 21/10 0 Comments / 260 Views  In honor of finally just seeing The Hangover (the best comedy since Superbad) here are my top 10 fav comedies of all time: 10. The Jerk 9. There's Something About Mary 8. Airplane! 7. Superbad 6. Blazing Saddles 5. Swingers 4. This is Spinal Tap 3. Groundhog Day 2. Annie Hall 1. Animal House Honorable mentions: Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, The Big Lebowski, and The Breakfast Club If you haven't seen every single one of these films, you haven't seen comedy, sir.
It was 17 years ago today...
Posted on Dec 07/09 1 Comments / 280 Views  December 5, 1992, my brother and I pulled off Supernova's first concert, an eight band showcase at the long defunct Spectrum club on the Danforth in Toronto, Canada. 600+ people attended with only one week's promotion. We were elated. Still in high school and university, my brother and I found a means to do what we love and yet, make money doing it. A dream come true. Since university was still heavily subsidized in Canada at that time, I had made enough in that one show to pay for my whole year's tuition. I was self sufficient. And we earned it all ourselves. It was a great feeling. The music biz was different back then. CDs and international super bands ruled the roost. The Internet was a grey background with blue text links. Nobody even had email. We advertised a "hotline" on colored flyers around town, looking for bands looking for their first gigs (the hotline was a new phone line that lead to my bedroom of my folks' house where we both still lived). Our "database" of bands comprised of an old school binder with looseleaf paper and hand written names and numbers. It would be nearly three months before we could find enough bands to mount another show. Young indie bands were hard to find, and they certainly weren't in demand. Today of course, it's all different. Indie bands are all the rage. They're everywhere. Bands sign up on Supernova.com daily, a robust social network for bands, fans, and industry about 80 pages deep on a .php platform. Bands use their admin home page to request gigs from a schedule and are featured in complex social music promotions and marketing campaigns aligned with some of the biggest brands in the country. There are 21,000 in a MySQL database playing in 20+ shows a MONTH, across North America. I'm out of my bedroom and in a 4,300 sq. ft. office in downtown Toronto in the trendy West Queen West area with some 20+ booking, production, marketing, and interactive staff. I deal with cash flow, financing, strategy, technology, product plans, client pitches, human resources issues, hiring and firing, and lots and lots of meetings. I've gone from promoting my friends' bands to promoting 30 Seconds to Mars, Breaking Benjamin, Three Days Grace, Gym Class Heroes, Finger Eleven, Moneen, Silverstien, Theory of a Dead Man, gob, Sum 41, Billy Talent, Mariannah's Trench, Down With Webster, Faber Drive, and so on... We've come such a long way, and yet, compared to the vision, it feels like there's still such a long way to go. We're still way under the radar compared to music greats like MySpace, Live Nation, or iTunes, and even much smaller successes like Reverbnation, iLike, PureVolume, Ourstage, etc. But momentum seems to be on our side. Could 2010 be the year Supernova finally breaks out into the mainstream? That would be a great feeling... but part of me wonders if we'll ever have the same pure, raw, innocent feeling of that first time we encountered music business success, like we did that night back in 1992.
Blame it on VEVO? The demise of iMeem.com...
Posted on Nov 19/09 0 Comments / 238 Views  When I read that iLike was acquired for $20M by MySpace, I thought, "hmmm, that seems low." When I read that iMeem was acquired for $1M by MySpace, I thought, "holy shit, that's too low." I understand the iLike acquisition. They were a Facebook app, they had no real membership of their own, if Facebook ever decided "hey, I'm a little bored with this iLike business and the way it's leeching off my membership (presses "off" key)" they could. Would there be backlash? Probably. But there hasn't been much backlash on the recent "net-neutrality" blocking for certain types of iLike auto-updates. When iLike figured, "we'd better do something with this before the window runs out and our investors get pissed, and we'll have no exit, no jobs, no realization of our blood, sweat, and tears", they quickly sold to rival MySpace after talks wtih Facebook yielded nothing. Facebook doesn't need iLike. But due to it's footprint in the largest most successful closed social network in the world, MySpace does. So the founding brothers made a couple sheckles, got MySpace jobs, and the investors didn't lose any money. But I digress. iMeem is a completely other story. Unlike iLike, this was not a simple "app". This was a full blown, MySpace derivative social networked site focused on media and playlisting. It's robust, it's several pages deep, and it's expensive to maintain and upgrade (trust me, I KNOW). Originally, I liked the concept. MySpace was clunky, and could let me have a "radio on demand" experience. It didn't allow me to discover new music via the community. It didn't let me create my own playlists and bookmark playlists of others I liked and respected. iMeem did all that. What it didn't do, is have a workable revenue model. So while the general public enjoyed all the free streaming music and playlisting manipulation, iMeem bled money from the day it was born. Investors plugged in $25M into it over it's lifespan. Why did it die? I am surmising this is inadvertently part of a major label powerplay. It's nothing against iMeem in particular, but rather against anyone looking to make money off their glorious catalogue, particularly in a potentially lucrative new media way. "If we don't own the revenue stream, we'll just make it very expensive for you. Good luck and where's my check?" Originally, in the early days of the wild west of music online iMeem just let people post music at will, but eventually copyright law dictated this was not legal. So iMeem went to expensive task of doing deals with all the music publishers and copyright holders. Those they couldn't get, the songs mysteriously turned into near useless 0:30 second samples (so useless in fact, they installed a "skip 0:30" button for people who wanted those samples automatically skipped in their playlist") But these deals were expensive. One strategy was to seek funding from Warner Music, thereby potentially lessening the cost and increasing the cooperation of at least one major. At the end of the day, $25M was flushed down the 2.oilet. Label/network owned projects like VEVO (and major partner projects like MySpace Music) will not face this threat. While $25M is nothing to sneeze at, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the budgets of these giants. Let me make this abudantly clear, and I have learned this first hand as well... Ad supported music models (including integrated ad campaigns) as the exclusive revenue stream DO NOT WORK. First of all, the ad revenues are too low, and face competition from CPM threatening giants like Google and Facebook. Second of all the streaming music is too expensive, even when you have one major label as a partner. Sobering reality for anyone looking to create a music discovery and sharing platform on the web where fans actually get to listen to music.
RIP John Hughes: My Generation's J.D. Salinger
Posted on Aug 07/09 0 Comments / 655 Views  When I was 14 I read J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. It became my favourite book of all time and still is. Despite being written some 30 years before I got my hands on it, it spoke to me. Never before had I read something that portrayed the young male under glass in such a real and relevant way. At the same time, movies played a huge role in my life. Particularly, current movies. And none were more real and relevant than John Hughes' movies. When I heard of Hughes' death yesterday, I was instantly transported back into the '80's, when I was in high school, but more importantly, I again literally FELT the mix of teen angst, uncertainty, and exuberance that only could be felt when one is actually a teenager. It caught me off guard. I knew this was an important death, yet I hadn't thought of the significance of John Hughes until now. And now that so many of us are in positions of significance professionally, combined with the current era of social networking, the ripples of Hughes' death will be felt over and over, stronger and stronger, from yesterday onwards. I was curious and a bit sad when Michael Jackson died, my generation's Elvis. But his music didn't embody my high school years. I didn't identify with MJ. I identified with the Breakfast Club. I danced to Oingo Boingo at school dances. I quoted from Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, and still do to this day. The legacy of John Hughes, his characters, his stories, his soundtracks, his images, really gives me and my generation reason to pause, and consider how valuable these contributions were to making us into the people we are today. Hughes' movies genuinely tried to present the world of the teenager and young adult, and did so in a timeless way. The impact of these movies, released at the precise point and time that we as teenagers were not only susceptible to their messages, we desperately needed them. That is me on screen. I know the geek, the heartthrob, and the girl trying to come into her own from Sixteen Candles. I know the jock, the freak, and the princess from Breakfast Club. I often wrestled with issues of class, just as Pretty in Pink did. I had an annoying friend with his heart in the right place, just as Planes Trains and Automobiles did. To know that someone out there recognized it and put it up on screen for the world to see and identify with was comforting to say the least. John Hughes became quite a recluse in his last years, much like Salinger did. The parallels are obvious, but isn't as obvious is the effect John Hughes had on my generation and for generations to come who rediscover his classic films. This isn't the same as John Lennon dying, or JFK, or Princess Diana. But I think this one caught more than a few of us by surprise on how genuinely saddened we are by this news. Collectively, how often can the news of the death of one person transport so many of us back to such a precious time in our lives in a meaningful way?
Yours truly, quoted on the new AUX.TV on the role of record labels
Posted on Dec 15/08 0 Comments / 341 Views
I can't believe every GTA band isn't doing this
Posted on Nov 25/08 13 Comments / 267 Views Ok bands, I've been running Supernova for 16 years now and I've heard the same thing day in and day out: "how can you help me breakout?" So we team up with the Canadian arm of the most credible artist management organization in the world, the Music Managers Forum to create Indie Music Pulse, a two day workshop covering topics such as "How do I get paid?" and demo critiques of Indie bands music, and access to panelists who happen to be some of the top music industry people in the country. There's promoters, publicists, A&R, managers, booking agents, all in an intimate setting just sitting there, waiting to accosted by you bands with info, demo tapes, tales of your passion and virtues, and so on... And yet, it's not sold out yet. I'm not seeing bands chomping at the bit to be there. It's only $20 for the whole two days, including a cocktail schmooze and TWO live showcases. Where are all you bands?!? This is your chance to participate in a very low key yet super credible event -- this isn't CMW or NXNE or any of those expensive, intimidating music conferences -- this is one for YOU, the humble and struggling Indie band, the one that NEEDS the help. And yet, many tickets still available. I... am... very... confused. Can someone please tell me what is going on? What am I missing? Is the word not getting out? What is it? Please comment!
How do you discover new music?
Posted on Aug 12/08 0 Comments / 221 Views  I want you to go to Supernova's panel submission for SXSW 2009 and vote for "Music 2.0 = music discovery chaos?" Why? Because we're passionate about Indie music, music discover, and artist development and all the crazy and wild things that go into it, that's why! Because this topic is a very current, relevant, and far-reaching one for the music industry, artists, and especially the fans! "The way we discover music has entirely changed in less than 10 years. Radio's aging demo is presented with safe mainstream offerings. Music discovery is at the ofrefront of technology and social networks, yet no new standard has successfully been adopted. Websites abound attempt at both data and user generated rating/filter systems. Human VS algorithm: what method can save us?" If this kind of discussion stimulates you then vote for us and leave a comment at the SXSW panel picker website here. What's your opinion? Are you in music discovery hell? How do you discover music in today's world of music 2.0?
5 Bands I like on Supernova Right Now -- Are these bands awesome or am I on crack?
Posted on Jul 14/08 6 Comments / 235 Views  Bands are adding music at the fastest rate ever since we launched this website, and there is no shortage of quality tunes! We are working hard on our filtering system for a site relaunch in September (please God!) along with a smattering of other goodies (more to come on that later). But in the meantime, if you are in the mood for some choice tracks by some hard working very talented musicians who need your support, check the following profiles out. Give these bands a listen and if you aren't humming them on the way home, let me know - I'd be really surprised. If you are humming them on your way home, do the bands a favor and let them know, any and all feedback is appreciated! If you are in the mood for some POP-PUNK: > Look no further than The Shammys. Remeniscent of Simple Plan, Blink-182, Eve 6, and Lit, these guys useharmonies without whining, and hook you with choruses without sounding repetitive. Familiar sounding yet original, The Shammys look and soundpoised to make a run in this genre.  If you are in the mood for HEADBANGING: > Try Double Eagle Standard. If the borderline X-rated picture is not your cup of tea, neither is the classically guitar driven heavy metal style of DES. Everything about this band is pure metal, you can feel the passion, and you can hear it in the throaty vocals (as well as the Metallica influences).  If you are in the mood for JAM: > Try either The Peach Band or The Woodrunners. Both make you want to spark up, lie back in a field in nothing but cut off jeans and birkenstocks, and spend some quality time before My Morning Jacket takes the stage.     If you are in the mood for R&B: > James King is for you. The sound is robust but groovy, not overwhelming, great use of horns, and Gyles' lead vocals are velvety smooth.  I'll blog again about my other faves soon, list is way too long for just one blog! Tell me what you think, are these killer tunes or am I on crack? Let me know your picks of top 5 tunes you like on Supernova right now.
Are you doing your Rock N' Roll duty?
Posted on Jun 26/08 3 Comments / 571 Views  Bands! Are you doing your Rock N' Roll Duty? The song by Canadian rock legend and now Q107 DJ Kim Mitchell resonates in my ears as I blog about it's essence: it's your DUTY TO DIY! "I'm just doing my Rock N' Roll duty, creating a buzz buzz buzz." Even in the Internet-less '80's where LP and cassette sales were the benchmark for success, Kim knew that bands STILL had to create their own buzz. It was hard to do then, and it's hard to do now, the objective is the same, but the methods are completely changed. WORK YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS You still have the old faithfuls of gigging, flyers, posters and mailing lists, but the #1 addition for today's scene is to WORK YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS! Naturally utilize supernova.com, but others as well. And working means, interaction, content, and constantly updating. Interact with your fans and make new ones. Post your content (thoughts, music, video, pictures). And constantly provide new content. Release an Internet only track. Blog about a gig. Take a picture of your drummer passed out at a party. Whatever, just keep engaging your fans so they RETURN to your site. It's challenging. It requires dedication. I requires tenacity. But good music isn't enough. Create your own buzz, buzz, buzz... it's your Rock N' Roll Duty. THE LYRICS For the whole song (it's an '80's beauty eh?) released on the "Rockland" album in 1989, I've pasted the lyrics below. I haven't asked Kim if I'm allowed to re-post his lyrics here, but what the hell, it's on a million lyric sites right now anyways: my Rock N Roll heartaches end up in song sometimes i get it right sometimes i'm wrong and my love of Rock N Roll makes me a one-night-stand sometimes i'm enriched sometimes i'm tanned i'm just doing my Rock N Roll duty i'm just doing my... i'm just doing my Rock N Roll duty creating a buzz buzz buzz some say i'm in it for the money man i'm in it for love love love the love of Rock N Roll is never right or wrong that's why you can identify as the day is long so this is for us the hard-driving beauty we can dance in our minds we can do the tutti-frutti i'm just doing my Rock N Roll duty i'm just doing my... i'm just doing my Rock N Roll duty creating a buzz buzz buzz some say i'm in it for the money man i'm in it for love love love i'm just doing my Rock N Roll duty creating a buzz buzz buzz |
