> Is it working? I was wondering about that... You see I had a look at your site a couple times, and really, your 'Still Trying To Grasp The Zen Mind' is absolutely breathtaking. I mean, I started listening, and it STARTED ME UP. I went nuts and was calm at the same time. It was similar to when I was playing with a couple of binaural recordings a while back, totally brought me into a different land... Perhaps even the Zen mind! I'm not sure anyone who's not a complete geek (like me) would click on the link though. I'm a total Uber-Geek, even though I have absolutely no idea if I'm even a good programmer (I think I take way too long), I'm totally completely in love with the geek philosophy especially as applies to Open Source. I read essays by Richard Stallman and my heart explodes with joy. I understand what 'simplicity' is and appreciate the beauty of the underlying HTML when I read a site that looks like yours. However, a non-tech-savvy person just sees a bunch of Times New Roman characters at best and is frightened he might be expected to know things he doesn't at worst. I think donation-based musicians sites should look more like CD covers. And actualy have that function. Liner notes, photographs, the musicians should be dressed like they would be in that musical wonderland people get into when they hear a record. I think 99% of the people would not hesitate to throw an Original Van Gogh straight into the trash bin if it wasn't framed and hung in Louvre. I know I would! I know nothing about art (you can't hear). I wouldn't recognize the subtle beauty of its painting... I wouldn't even know what to look for. So I have to rely on the fact that it is framed and hung in Louvre in order to recognize it as art. That's how 99% of the people who enjoy our art will perceive it. It is only proof that the record companies get away with throwing out the Shmock they do. People just don't get the depth of it, except the really rare ones who are soul-mate enough that we probably know them or even live with them. And maybe we are the only physical being in the world who 'get's' the art, and maybe not even we do. We can, however, put a nice frame around our art. If we are artists we will know if it hurts our art or not and we can easily find out which type of frame that will be perceived as 'honorable'. Personally, I find there is a great depth of that kind of art available in the commercial music field. They sure know how to frame things. I like prince :) So heck why don't I style up a little so people at least can appreciate my crazy personality as long as they won't be 'getting' my art anyway :) Point I'm making. Perhaps we need to explain to people what exactly to think as long as they're not going to take the trouble to find that out themselves. I owe you one for that one, Cesare. We need to TELL PEOPLE WHAT WE ARE AND WHAT WE WANT THEM TO DO RIGHT IN OUR MUSIC. That's how 'Die Fantastischen Vier' do it, a band I greatly respect because they are commercially successful (even with the record companies), they are pioneers, and I listen to their music and my heart goes 'WOW'. As far as I'm concerned these guys have it all. (Okay one of their clips is a bit tit-oriented, Troy, but I'm talking about their Live album especially) Anyway, these guys were introducing german hip hop back in the nineties. Back then, something like that was unheard-of. German hip hop would be just like Kraut & Sosse from Downtown Manhatten. So what these guys did, in their lyrics, they actually went out and explained to the people what they were all about. 'Hip Hop' is the music, and 'Rap' is the lyrics, and this guy has a sampler, and he's Rhyming, and this guy's name is Thomas D, blah blah blah... The first two CDs were like "Hi, I'm Carlo, what's your name?" Pure genius if you ask me. They went out and, as a CD, interacted with people who didn't know what they were all about. And rather than getting irritated about that they just went out and introduced themselves. I mean when you think about it it's kind of OBVIOUS, now isn't it! So what I think we gotta be doing is making SONGS saying 'This is the WE DONT NEED NO CDS NO MORE BLUEEEEEEEES!!!' Cuz ya see them people you by CDs from be kissin AAAAASSSSSS all day long n you wanna be listenin to FREEEEE MUSIC! N if ya wanna keep us from STARRRRVING ya betta give ya ten BUCKS AT THE WEBSITE DONATION BUTTON oh yah baby. And then when Richard Stallman's essays have been song over again, and our philosophy is clear to everyone, and we all have a full belly and a warm fire, then may we get back to getting REALLY crazy (like telling people THEY can actually make it as well. They'll try to shoot us. Good luck we don't care). Yes, we have a radically new philosophy and are probably thirty years advanced on the mainstream, and it is OUR JOB to educate people about this. The songs need to be viral, self-perpetuating. Now I know some people knock self promotion, but doesn't it just make sense? I mean better than self-destructive shit that's for sure! We've got to keep in mind that most people DON'T THINK. We tell them something and they take it at face value (we do to unless we do a lot of affirmations or something... Subconsious can be tricky to handle). So we've got to thell them that a) Our music is good b) CDs our out, direct downloads are IN c) They are good people d) waddle over to the button and DONATE already Yep! That's pretty much it! Just because we're not CHARGING doesn't mean we don't need to MARKET our music (MARKETING=Telling people what to think favourable to us). We also need to make it a social standard that musicians on the Internet are to be tipped, and everything else is simply a question of horrific manners. OK, that's pretty herculian... Enough so to be fun :) I think it's simply a matter of deciding what we want to be so... (Music off the Internet is superior to Music from the record so) and REPEATING IT UNTIL IT BECOMES THE TRUTH. Repetition. Repetion. Repetion. Over, and over again. We've got to hook these people. Why? Because other people have already hooked them. They want to be hooked. We're not going to milk them, we will treat them very well. But if we don't tell them what to think, somebody else will. And they can think whatever they want except for one thing: Internet musicians are to be TIPPED and their music is to be LISTENED TO. I mean it's not like I'm not guilty of this. Up until very recently I hardly even looked for music on the interent because I thought there needed to be a record executive saying it was good be fore it WAS good. Then I decided 'Screw That' and I've been finding some GREAT music on the web. INSANELY great music. (Yeah, Cesare, you're part of that one :) Boy this is sounding awfully devious... But Richard Stallman hooked ME on his philosophy, and it has caused me a whole lot of trouble at the University when everyone was using Microshit Word, but I would NEVER EVER EVER want to trade from having heard his words and getting hooked to where I was before. I mean I hated Windows all right but I didn't really know why. He explained it to me. I think we gotta do the same. We know things. These things are good and very wise. We need to explain them in a catchy way. Any ideas, gentlemen and -women? To sum up, mine are: * VERY spiffy web sites, like animated CD covers * Marketing tactic guerilla information ambush strategies (Like the 'Creative Commons' Button) * Song content that does not fight against anything, but simply IMPLIES that the truth is that downloadable music is superior. That nobody should even bother listening to anything else because it will be biased by corporatocracy anyway (I really BELIEVE this, personally) * People will disagree with us but start to agree with us after about the third time we repeat what we say as 'Truth' e.g. FALSE: "Why are these people so ignorant? You bastards!" CORRECT: "Internet music is a superior way to listen to music. Here is why. As an internet music listener, you are part of a powerful avantgarde... blah blah." We ASSUME people will listen. In fact, we should start today. Integrating these messages in our latest songs. Telling people. Writing web sites. Hehe :) I feel REALLY good. Carlo
