Thursday, June 11, 2009

Hypebot’s ‘10 commandments of music 2.0’

  1. Thou Shalt Not Worship False Prophets - Neither a record deal or auto-tune are your saviors.
  2. Thou Shalt Worship Only One God - He (or she) is called The Fan.
  3. Thou Shalt Giveaway [sic] Free Music - Like Jesus and the loaf of bread, give your flock a gift that multiplies as they pass it around.
  4. Thou Shalt Not Steal - Borrowing a beat is one thing, but stealing...
  5. Thou Shalt Blog - Your flock wants to know what you’re doing.
  6. Thou Shalt Create Profiles - Wherever your flock may go, you must be there.
  7. Thou Shalt Upload Photos - Staged, unstaged, backstage, from the stage and at every stage of a project.
  8. Thou Shalt Upload Videos - Longs Ones. Shorts Ones. Tall ones...you get the idea.
  9. Thou Shalt Share Thy Bounty. Share gigs. Share ideas. Share with your fans.
  10. Do Unto Others As You Would Have Others Do Unto You - You meet the same people on the way down that you did on the way up.

He asks for an 11th. My suggestions:

  • Thou shalt not make sudden and outrageous price hikes.
  • Thou shalt not foist weird formats and technologies upon thine customers. For it will be harder to pass Clive Davis through the eye of a needle than to get people to embrace slotMusic.
  • Thou shalt keep ticket fees down. And when thou sayest “no fees,” thou shalt mean it.
  • Thou shalt not exploit fans’ loyalty by reissuing the same product again and again with minor permutations.
  • Thou shalt have good radio stations, and not flip them unless really necessary.
  • Thou shalt have music videos on TV.
  • Thou shalt not leak thine own music while also waging crusades against piracy.
  • Thou shalt maintaineth good record stores. For even though people download music, they also liketh to browse thine physical product.
  • Thou shalt not foist poorly designed, ad-supported online services upon thine customers. SpiralFrog and QTrax, we are talking to thee.
  • Thou shalt get thine Grammy categories under control. Considereth a maximum of 30 or so awards, including technical. The reason that thine Hollywood neighbors coveteth one another’s Oscars is that scarcity createth competition.
  • Thou shalt openly debate the fairness of “dynamic pricing” in all of its forms, including the so-called Radiohead model. For the best idea that anybody hath had about the value of music was Steve Jobs, who said that everything should costeth 99 cents. Why he caved on that, only the Lord thy God knows.

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