Yearly Archives: 2011

My Two Favorite Albums of 2011

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I didn’t procure many albums this year, given my un(der)employment. Most of what I got was purchased when I was working a little or far more often when people bought stuff for me and/or gave me Amazon gift certificates.1 Still, I don’t have a ton of new music this year. I only have two albums that I dearly love: Adele’s 21 and Josh Garrels’s Love & War & the Sea in Between, which I wrote about back in July. There’s not much for me to say about 21 that hasn’t been said better by others. I will say that “Someone Like You” makes me sad because of how co-dependent it is. “One and Only” is a killer torch song and is the best track for my money.

Given that you can still get L&W&tSiB for free, go spend $10 and get two great albums. Go on.

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  1. You know who you are. Thank you. [↩]

Two Quick Thoughts on NHL Realignment

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I often have to get out of bed and write something down before I can sleep; otherwise, my brain will spin about trying to first hash it out and then remember to write at a later time.1

So the NHL has embraced radical realignment. The more I think about the idea, the more I like it. It provides the league with flexibility for future team movement and also returns divisional—now conference—rivalries to the playoffs. The two thoughts rattling around relate to further realignment and conference naming.

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  1. The writing at a later date rarely happens. [↩]

Giving Music Away Is Great; Now Let’s Tackle Findability

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Derek Webb wrote on Wednesday of the benefits of giving music away. He is one of the principals at NoiseTrade, a service that does just that, so you would expect that he believes in the concept. Here is a choice quote from the link, which you really should read if you care about the business of music:

If someone buys my music on iTunes, Amazon, or in a record store (remember those?), let alone streams it on Spotify, it’s all short-term money. That might be the last interaction I have with that particular fan. But if I give that fan the same record for free in exchange for a connection (an e-mail and a zip code), I can make that same money, if not double or triple that amount, over time. And “over time” is key, since the ultimate career success is sustainability. Longevity. See, the reality is that out of a $10 iTunes album sale, I probably net around a dollar. So if I give that record away, and as a result am able to get that fan out to a concert (I can use their zip code to specifically promote my shows in their area), I make approximately $10 back, and twice that if they visit the merch table. I can sell them an older/newer album and make approximately $10 back. The point is, if I can find some organic way to creatively engage them in a paid follow-up transaction, I increase my revenue 10 times on any one of these interactions.

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