SPOTIFY Fans plan 400m streams to pay Nelly $2m tax

Personally I wouldn't fancy hearing it once, but fans of the nose-adorned rapper are pledging to try and play just one of his tracks 400m times to pay his $2.3m tax bill.

So, Nelly takes money out of your pocket twice over - smooth work.

A single fan could achieve the same outcome by streaming in constant repeat for 2076 years...great figures for bringing the streaming debate to life...

And how many times is that? Somewhere between 280m and 403m.

That’s quite a lot of Nelly. Yes it is. Indeed, it was calculated that if one person were to pay off Nelly’s tax debt by themselves, simply by streaming Hot In Herre over and over again and accumulating the microscopic royalty that goes with each stream, it would take 2,076 years to settle the debt.

Nelly fans hope to pay his taxes – by repeatedly playing Hot In Herre on Spotify http://www.theguardian.com/technology/shortcuts/2016/sep/14/nelly-fans-hope-to-pay-his-taxes-play-hot-in-herre-on-spotify-savenelly?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

AUDIENCE INTERACTION Stepping into the world of Little Monsters

Through recently reviewing the Lady Gaga US and UK websites I went through the process of applying to become a Little Monster, allowed to enter the hallowed cyberhall of intelladytual conversation.

It truly is a slightly weird moment in life to get two emails informing me that, after reflection and consideration, I'm in ... I'm a Little Monster.

I've no intention of being snotty or patronising about those who take this all very ... very seriously indeed. Each to their own, and there is a strong emotional attachment between much of Gaga's fanbase - not just to/with the star, but with each other as well, a sub-culture that deserves study just as Hebdige (a pioneer of the notion of sub-cultures as a concept and subject for study) did with punk. Gaga herself expends considerable effort on interacting with and encouraging her Little Monsters ... though I have a wee doubt as whether it was Gaga herself (Herself? I don't know the LM rules!) who wrote and sent this email ...

Thanks though ... and I'll try to be brave!

Below - screenshots and some analysis of this phenomenon...

INDIE RETRO Before blogs there were zines...

Great, in-depth interview with Bruce 'Sub Pop' Pavitt (that's where Nirvana started if you don't know the name).

Simon Reynolds' writing, notably the book Retromania, is a good way of getting a handle on how the music industry and fandom was, back in the day; this interview is a great starter for any such wider reading.

The appeal of retro media and technology, from zines to vinyl, and that ridiculous music movement that insists on using only primitive 80s sequencers, is a marked feature of our postmodern, mashed-up era of pastiche and bricolage. Digitisation has ironically boosted the appeal of analogue technology, at least once it has almost entirely obliterated it from mainstream retailing and usage.

SOURCE: Diffuser.fm.

Fanbase not Audience the future say YouTube

Various web 2.0 theorists have signified the end of the old analogue/early digital producer-consumer paradigm through such bold statements as "the former audience" ... now one YouTube's top honchos says we should abandon the very term audience, with its links to scheduled programming, and think in fanbase terms instead...
Simon Cowell and Disney are picked out as exemplars of the new more copyright-flexible order, in which UGC is seen as benefitting copyright-holders, not cannibalising their revenue streams.

“An audience tunes in when they're told to, a fanbase chooses when and what to watch,” said Carloss at the MIPTV television industry conference in Cannes. “An audience changes the channel when their show is over. A fanbase shares, it comments, it curates, it creates.”
...
He also praised Simon Cowell’s You Generation brand, a YouTube-focused global talent show, and Disney for the way it encouraged fans of its film Frozen to post their own cover versions of its songs on YouTube. One by musician Alex Boyé has been watched more than 30m times.
“The studio could have very easily issued copyright claims against this video and any others and taken them down, but they made a different choice: a fan-friendly choice. They chose to let those videos stay,” said Carloss, suggesting that the buzz around Frozen on YouTube contributed to its strong performance at the box office.
“Creators everywhere can make the choice Disney did. Allow fans to pay tribute, and you will see the incredible benefits of their passion.”

A lot of this closely echoes some of the arguments put forward by Anita Elberse (a Harvard economist) in her fascinating (a highly recommended read) book Blockbusters, published in December 2013.