Photos from yesterday’s DIY Days Philadelphia are now available in my Flickr photostream (as well as in the ‘diydays’ photo pool in Flickr).
The conference, sponsored by the Workbook Project and hosted by filmmaker and industry commentator Lance Weiler, included presentations on the production, distribution, and financing of independent cinema and other art forms.
For more information and updates, see the DIY Days website and the conference dashboard.
As the old joke goes, everyone knew the floating crap game was crooked but played anyway — because it was the only game in town. This came to mind with a Wall Street Journal report earlier this week that Sony Pictures has entered into a distribution agreement with kiosk video rental firm Redbox. In addition, according to an earlier report in the Journal, Walt Disney and Lions Gate Entertainment may have made similar deals with Redbox.
To date, most studios have not viewed Redbox as an ally. Universal Pictures sued to force the company to stop distributing its movies. The case is currently awaiting a ruling.
The issue, naturally, is over money. Mass distributors such as Blockbuster and Netflix pay the studios a percentage of their rental fees and, in return, receive bulk shipments of popular DVD titles directly from the studios. Redbox, on the other hand, buys from distributors such as Ingram Entertainment and only pays the purchase price of the DVDs.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal, the new arrangement with Sony allows Redbox to buy directly from the studio at a lower price than it would receive from distributors. The deal apparently does not include a revenue sharing arrangement. But it does, according to the article, require Redbox to destroy (rather than retain the rights to resell) the DVDs once they are removed from the rental service.
Although the pricing details weren’t announced, it’s unlikely that Redbox is receiving the same discounted rate as revenue sharing partners such as Blockbuster. Nonetheless, one suspects that companies like Blockbuster and Netflix will look askance at such an arrangement. When the time comes to renegotiate their contracts with Sony, expect these firms to come to the bargaining table with renewed demands.
For its part, Sony is trying to make the best of a bad situation. Despite the lack of revenue sharing, the arrangement with Redbox is an opportunity to eke out a little more profit from the declining DVD market. As revenues from physical media like DVDs continue to erode, deals like this may represent the only game in town.
In “The Hulu Effect at Fox TV? Less is More in TV Advertising” last December, I observed that Fox television appeared to be following the lead of online video services like Hulu in running fewer ads per show. By having shorter commercial breaks — and communicating at the outset that the program would, for example, “return in 60 seconds” — the network hoped viewers would sit through the ads rather than changing channels, zapping past the commercials, or just walking away.
Comcast, which along with Time Warner plans to go online with some of its cable programming, apparently has a different view. According to the Wall Street Journal, Comcast plans to include the same complement of ads online as when the programs are originally broadcast.
Andy Heller, vice chairman of Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting, is quoted as saying, “We spend billions of dollars buying and making these programs. And if we give this stuff to consumers for free with limited ads, it’ll go away.”
Television programs on Hulu, the free alternative to these cable-subscription services, typically contain less advertising than when they are shown on broadcast television. According to Jean-Paul Colaco, senior vice president of advertising at Hulu, the company has no immediate plans to change this scheme. The Journal states that “Mr. Colaco says Hulu’s focus is on increasing the effectiveness of ads and the amount of revenue they produce, rather than increasing their number.”
The issue, then, is one of quality versus quantity. If online commercials prove to be more effective than their broadcast counterparts, networks can run fewer ads per program. In theory this should be the case. Online ads can be targeted more narrowly and measured more accurately. And, of course, they can’t be skipped over as can the ads in recorded TV programs. Because of this, as the Journal piece points out, web ads typically command higher advertising rates per view.
The networks and cable companies are reluctant to leave money on the table, however. They are concerned, in the now famous words of NBC Universal president and CEO Jeff Zucker, about “trading analog dollars for digital pennies.”
While individual ad spots may command a higher CPM (cost per thousand views), the overall revenue-generating power of online content remains to be demonstrated. Until online programming can prove its ability to generate revenue on a par with conventional distribution methods, expect the traditional media to be reluctant to change the rules of the game as they move their content online.
As the oft-repeated story goes, in the latter half of the 1990s, Netscape co-founder Mark Andreessen boasted that Netscape would reduce Microsoft Windows to “a set of poorly debugged device drivers.” What he meant, of course, was that software development would move from native operating system applications to the web. The web browser would become the new software platform and the underlying operating system would be relegated to providing basic services like device support.
Although Andreessen may have been overly optimistic about the time frame in which software would move from the desktop to the webtop, announcements this past week — from two of computing’s fiercest competitors — may indicate we’re finally on the verge of Andreessen’s vision becoming reality.
On Friday, July 10, Microsoft launched version 3 of its Silverlight platform, Microsoft’s answer to Adobe Systems’ Flash. Like Flash, Silverlight is a browser-based plug-in for delivering high quality video and rich interactive applications over the web. Silverlight 3 includes, in the words of Microsoft corporate vice president Scott Guthrie, “a ton of new … features” for software application development and enhanced user experience. Included in the list of the new capabilities available with Silverlight 3 is “out of browser support.” With Silverlight 3, Microsoft joins Google’s Gears, the Mozilla Project’s Prism, and Adobe Systems’ AIR in moving the web experience beyond the confines of the browser.
Earlier this week, Google announced — or rather, released a few tantalizing hints about — the company’s planned Chrome Operating System. Although the details are scarce, Google’s intent seems to be to revive Andreessen’s aspiration of establishing the web browser as the locus of software development.
Despite all the press it generated, the basic architecture of Chrome OS doesn’t seem particularly radical. Google’s announcement states that the OS will be built on “Google Chrome [the company's web browser] running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel.” Since you can already run Google’s Chrome browser on the Linux operation system, one might wonder, “What’s new here?” Google’s answer lies in the next few sentences of the announcement:
For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.
And there it is. Andreessen’s dream: The web is the platform.
The list of partners Google announced as part of its Chrome OS initiative includes computer manufacturers Acer, ASUS, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Toshiba, along with semiconductor companies Texas Instruments and Freescale. In addition to these hardware vendors, the list of partners also includes Adobe Systems. What the two companies are working on is not stated, but Adobe’s AIR currently brings web development to the desktop, and this may indicate how Google’s aspirations differ from those of Microsoft.
Google’s Gears, Mozilla’s Prism and Microsoft’s Silverlight are all closely bound to the capabilities of the browser — adding features such as desktop shortcuts and local data storage to what are, essentially, browser-based applications. In contrast, Adobe’s AIR allows developers to use web technologies to develop desktop applications — with deeper integration with the local computer system — yet with the ability to run on Windows, MacOS, and Linux operating systems.
The partnership between Adobe and Google may rest on this shared vision of software that is not bound to a particular operating system. When I spoke with Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie a little over a year ago, he stated that he saw a clear differentiation between web applications and desktop software, stating: “I do see a sharper cut between what you do inside a browser and what you do inside a dedicated Windows or Mac application shell.” Despite Microsoft’s newly announced “out of browser” capability of Silverlight, Microsoft wants to maintain a distinction between the desktop and webtop. Adobe and Google, on the other hand, are interested in moving the line that separates the web and the desktop toward increasingly web-based software.
The history of computing is one of progressive abstraction. To program the first computers, you needed to toggle switches to enter programs in machine language. Assemblers eased the task by introducing mnemonic “opcodes.” Later came higher level programming languages — FORTRAN, PL/I, Pascal, and then object-oriented languages, extensive module libraries, and language frameworks. In parallel with these developments, operating systems grew from basic input/output systems to rich sets of application programming interfaces and system capabilities.
And now we may be on the verge of another leap in software abstraction, one which will combine the richness of traditional desktop applications with the ubiquity and platform independence of the web. To what extent this emerging webtop platform will complement traditional desktop software as Microsoft envisions, or begins to replace it as Google and Adobe contemplate, time will tell.
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“Little-Known Redbox Proves the Power of In-Between Technology” in the current issue of Fast Company describes the rapid rise of video rental kiosk vendor Redbox. As indicated by the title, the article underscores how Redbox has succeeded using “in-between” technology, focusing on what works now rather than chasing the latest vision of the high-tech future:
Ask any entertainment bigwig where the movie-rental business is going and you’ll hear one thing: digital streaming. Amazon, Apple, Netflix, the cable companies, and many startups are gearing up to send every movie to your home on demand. But Hollywood’s byzantine licensing structure precludes that from happening anytime soon. Redbox has positioned itself as the perfect in-between technology — the next best thing to on demand.
To drive home the point, the author describes the Redbox kiosk as follows:
This sorry contraption doesn’t run peer-to-peer software; it doesn’t do Blu-ray; it won’t stream anything straight to your house. It’s a vending machine in a supermarket — as old school as you can get without actually involving vacuum tubes.
One of Redbox’s leading competitors is Netflix. The article cites a Hollywood Reporter article in which Netflix CEO Reed Hastings identifies Redbox as his company’s “fastest-growing competitor” stating, “It’s really scary.”
For all the emphasis on Redbox’s success as a transitional technology, the Fast Company piece fails to note that Netflix’s current model also rests largely on “in-between” technology. Like Redbox, Netflix distributes physical media. Shipping DVDs through the U.S. Postal Service is hardly the epitome of high-tech.
Like Redbox, Netflix built a business based on the practical realities of the current technology environment. Both companies realize that while distributing physical media may seem antiquated to forward-looking futurists, it is an efficient method of distributing digital content.
It is surprising how often the drive toward the future blinds us to the value of these low-tech “in-between” solutions. As Andrew Tanenbaum observed back in 1996 when comparing computer networks to old-fashioned physical transportation of media, “Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.”
But the future will ultimately arrive, and Netflix has cleverly positioning itself for that eventuality. While generating a steady revenue stream by embracing the old — that is, currently practical — technology, Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature builds a bridge to the on-demand streaming future.
There are impediments that still need to be overcome, of course. We need more bandwidth and better video compression. We need an easy way to send streaming content to any screen in our homes. But the seeds of these capabilities are already being planted. For example, Netflix’s streaming capabilities currently come bundled with selected Blu-ray players, game consoles, and large screen televisions.
On-demand will eventually overtake media-based distribution. When that happens, Netflix will be able to gracefully transition its business model — and its paying customer base — to the streaming future. The long-term outlook for Redbox is less clear.
Deciphering the Cosmic Number by Arthur I. Miller from University College London is an intriguing, yet occasionally frustrating, book that tackles a fascinating and complex subject. The book explores the personal and professional relationship between physicist Wolfgang Pauli and psychologist Carl Jung during the first half of the 20th century. In doing so, it examines the origins of scientific discovery and the nature of reality.
In the early twentieth century physics had become increasingly detached from what most of us think of as the “real world.” The subatomic particles described by quantum physics exist beyond our direct perception — their nature can only be inferred as a side effect of their behavior. And their observed behavior was increasingly bewildering, even contradictory.
With his famous “uncertainty principle” Werner Heisenberg demonstrated that we can never know both the position and the momentum of a subatomic particle beyond a certain degree of accuracy. An elementary particle such as a photon or an electron behaves both as a discrete particle and as a wave of energy. It was difficult to imagine. As Heisenberg wrote to Pauli in 1926, “What the words ‘wave’ or ‘particle’ mean we know not any more; [we are in a] state of almost complete despair.” Scientists debated whether a mental model of the world of quantum events was even possible.
Pauli found in Jung’s theories of the psyche a way to reconcile the worlds of science and intuition, of mathematical rationality and intuitive understanding.
Pauli originally sought out Jung as a therapist to address his personal problems — his self despair, his drinking and carousing, and the tragedy of his mother’s suicide following his father’s abandonment of the family for another woman.
But long after the psychological counseling concluded, Pauli stayed in contact with Jung. He saw in Jung’s theories — such as “synchronicity,” the connectedness of random and yet meaningful events — a way to comprehend the increasingly bizarre world of quantum physics.
Although well-researched and copiously annotated, Deciphering the Cosmic Number is, at times, desultory and confusing. The chronology of the narrative is occasionally jumbled. Although some of this is to be expected from a dual biography, the book jumps around more than is necessary, even within the narrative of one of its subjects.
The text occasionally struggles to explain its difficult scientific theories clearly (admittedly a challenging task given the complexity of these ideas). You may find yourself turning to Wikipedia or elsewhere for more lucid explanations of some of the concepts described in the book.
In other instances, details are glossed over. After explaining Jung’s concepts of introversion and extroversion, Miller correctly observes that “Jung was the first to coin these two terms, which have since become common currency.” True enough, but it is worth noting that the way these terms are commonly used differs from Jung’s definition. Jung’s personality traits focused on whether the individual gives primary value to external sensations or internal experience — which is different from common parlance which uses these terms as synonyms for being outgoing or shy. There exist, for example, shy extroverts.
Miller explores at some length the contrasting world views of the late Renaissance thinkers Johannes Kepler and Robert Fludd. Kepler’s work, although rife with astrological, alchemical, and mystical allusions, relied on mathematics as its foundation. Fludd’s views were based largely on his mystical and spiritual insights. Fludd preferred to demonstrate his ideas using pictures rather than mathematics, and condemned Kepler as a “vulgar mathematician” who relied on “quantitative shadows.”
In Jung’s categorization of personality types, Pauli found a model for the differing views of Kepler and Fludd. Miller writes:
Pauli recognized Kepler and Fludd as opposing psychological types — Kepler the thinking type and Fludd the feeling type. Thus his knowledge of Jungian psychology had revealed to him the limitations of modern science.
Elsewhere, however, opportunities to explain the often divergent views of modern science in Jungian terms are left unexplored.
For example, at an early age, Pauli is intrigued by the ideas of his godfather, positivist Ernst Mach. As Miller explains:
As a boy [Pauli] was spellbound by the scientific equipment in Mach’s apartment. Its ultimate purpose, said Mach, was to eliminate unreliable thinking — to demonstrate that the only thing that was really out there was what you can experience with your senses. The rest was all metaphysics — quite literally beyond physics and not worth considering, mere illusion.
With the unfolding of relativity theory and quantum physics in the twentieth century, science was increasingly concerned with events beyond direct perception. Miller describes Pauli’s puzzlement over this as follows:
Atoms could not be experienced with the senses. Did that mean they were merely “metaphysical” in Mach’s pejorative sense? Were they not part of the elaborate scientific theories which made predictions that could be proved in the laboratory? … The message of relativity theory seemed to be that scientists should look beyond what was immediately perceptible by the senses.
This divergence of viewpoints can also be viewed in terms of Jungian personality types, with Mach the “sensation” type Pauli the “intuition” type. Yet this point is never raised (perhaps because Pauli himself never reached this conclusion).
The “mystical” or “cosmic” number 137 that forms the book’s title and is the focus of its final chapter refers to the fine structure constant of atomic spectra. This discussion, however, comes across as more of a diversion than a unifying theme of the book. The lists of coincidences of Kabbalistic words and torturous interpretations of equations that can produce 137 are particularly vexing. It’s hard to fathom the relevance of the fact that 8π(8π5/15)1/3 happens to be 137.348. Or why it matters that 1082943.99629/(32×666)/666 = √137.
Furthermore, it turns out that the pattern of spectral lines that gave rise to interest in the number 137 isn’t actually 1/137 as originally believed. This fraction is only an approximation of the actual sequence of lines (which, we learn, is closer to 1/137.035999084). As Miller himself states, after many more examples of calculations that yield results containing the number 137, “Sadly, all these are pure coincidence with no scientific basis.”
Miller may have been drawn to using this device to frame his tale because Pauli died in room 137 of the Red Cross Hospital in Zurich. This coincidence (or would Jung and Pauli have seen it as synchronicity?) may have been too tantalizing to resist using as a literary device to shape the book’s narrative. However, Pauli’s puzzlement over the appearance of this ratio in nature seems like a tangential detour from the book’s main theme of the blending of science and psychology in the first half of the twentieth century.
Despite these shortcomings, the book addresses an important topic in the history of scientific discovery — the conflict between rationality and intuition, scientific reason and mystical insight.
We naturally look at history through the filter of the present . We study scientific advancement by looking back at the trail that led to our current beliefs. In doing so, we tend to emphasize the “scientifically correct” and ignore all else.
Yet the path to modern science travels through religion and mysticism. School children learn of Pythagoras because of his geometric theorems. His mystical ideas about numbers, the music of the spheres, and the reincarnation of the soul after death are not as emphasized. We often see Copernicus as an early rationalist because his views of a sun-centered universe were considered heresy by the Church. But for Copernicus, placing the sun at the center of the world mirrored his view of an all-seeing God at the center of creation.
Even though based on scientific analysis and quantitative data, the insights of scientists and philosophers nonetheless spring from their psyches. Pauli found in Jung’s psychology a way to unite the disparate worlds of rationality and intuition, of science and mysticism, of Kepler and Fludd. As Miller states, “Pauli’s focus was the process of scientific theory and particularly its irrational side. Though scientific theories are expressed in mathematical terms, the initial discovery of the theory is essentially an irrational — not a rational — process.”
The book is a valuable addition to the history of science and psychology for those fascinated by these topics, but its occasionally opaque explanations and disjointed chronologies may be of little interest to the casual reader.
In today’s Adobe Systems Q2 earnings call, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said that Adobe is seeing “tremendous adoption” of Flash across not just PCs, but all kinds of devices.
Narayen stated that Adobe has ported Flash Player 10 to multiple smartphone platforms, including Google’s Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and Palm WebOS. A beta release of Flash Player 10 for smartphone platforms will be available to developers at Adobe’s MAX conference this October.
In response to a question specifically about the Apple iPhone, Narayen declared that Adobe is “absolutely committed” to bringing Flash to the iPhone but went on to state, “We need more APIs and cooperation to bring the capabilities of Flash to the iPhone.”
“We think it is in Apple and Adobe’s best interest” to make Flash available on the iPhone Narayen stated, adding “We are constantly reaching out to them.”
Updated 8:52 PM to add links and make minor corrections to quotes based on audio released by Adobe from the session.
As noted previously, IMAX is extending — some would say blurring — the IMAX brand by retrofitting existing multiplex theaters with larger screens and upgraded sound systems. The Wall Street Journal reports that competitors are moving into the territory of what might be termed “low-end large screen” cinema projection.
The converted IMAX theaters have generated a considerable criticism since, while their screens are larger than those of the typical multiplex, their dimensions pale by comparison to traditional IMAX installations. Confounding the issue, the company doesn’t communicate that difference in their marketing, branding both types of installations simply as “IMAX.” (See “The IMAX Conundrum.”)
According to the Journal, other companies are following IMAX’s lead and are introducing larger screens — and charging a premium ticket price. Cinemark Holdings has introduced their Cinemark XD — Extreme Digital Cinema — with large screens and an enhanced sound system. And AMC Entertainment has introduced their ETX, or Enhanced Theatre Experience, in IMAX’s home turf in Toronto.
The article doesn’t include information on the dimensions of screens on these new systems, so it isn’t clear how they compare with IMAX’s retrofits.
But this underscores the brand dilution peril IMAX faces if the company fails to differentiate its original IMAX format from the newer, smaller format upon which competitors are now encroaching.
The photo illustration above is based on the IMAX logo, the copyright for which is most likely owned by IMAX Corp. It is believed that its use as modified here for critical commentary qualifies as fair use under United States copyright law.
When industries converge, there is often a collision of terminologies. Different traditions have their own ways of describing the same thing. In the latter half of the 1980s, personal computing converged with the typesetting industry. While the latter talked about points and picas, the former saw everything in terms of pixels.
Now computing is converging with entertainment media and, again, we find a heritage of looking at the same thing in different ways.
Consider the resolution of digital video.
Anyone who has recently purchased a Blu-ray player or a large-screen television is no doubt familiar with the numbers used to characterize high-definition television — 720p, 1080i, and 1080p — even if the exact meaning of these figures may remain elusive. And most people know that, for a given resolution, ‘p’ (progressive scan) is better better than ‘i’ (interlaced).
What may be less clear is: 720 or 1080 what? What do these numbers measure? As many of you — the technically savvy readers of this blog — are no doubt aware, these figures refer to the number of horizontal scan lines in the image — in other words, its vertical resolution.
If you’ve been following developments in digital cinema, you also know that movie theaters may use what is termed a “1K” or a “2K” digital projector. My recent post on the IMAX Conundrum, for example, mentioned that IMAX Digital uses dual 2K Christie projectors. But what is the “2K” (that is, 2,048) measuring? 2,048 what? Is it the same vertical resolution described above?
No. In this case, the number indicates the number of pixels in each scan line — the image’s horizontal resolution.
Why are consumer displays indicated by their vertical resolution and professional projectors by their horizontal resolution?
Television’s focus on vertical resolution may come from the legacy of traditional TV signals which, although analog, contain a fixed number of horizontal scan lines: 525 for NTSC and 625 for PAL. The new digital formats continue this tradition of thinking of image quality in terms of the number of scan lines — the vertical resolution. Why cinema projectors took the opposite tack of specifying the horizontal resolution is anyone’s guess.
The upshot is that a projector with a resolution of, say, 2048 pixels horizontally and 1080 pixels vertically could be described as either 2K (’2048′) or 1080p.
Differences in aspect ratios add to the confusion. A 1080p digital television may have a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, while a 2K cinema projector may be 2048 by 1080. Sony has a 4K projector with a native resolution of 4,096 by 2,160 pixels. The RED ONE digital camera is also termed a 4K device, even though it has a native resolution of 4520 x 2540 pixels.
Computer monitors and video display cards have long avoided this confusion by simply indicating both the horizontal and the vertical resolution. Thus early VGA displays were characterized as “640 x 480,” that is, a horizontal resolution of 640 pixels and vertical resolution of 480 pixels. An XGA display is 1024 by 768. And so on.
The computer geeks have it right in this case. The convenience of having a single number to indicate resolution — 2K, 1080p — is outweighed by the clarity of giving both dimensions. Let’s avoid the confusion and state video resolution as two numbers — the horizontal by the vertical resolution.
Kat Parsons (left) and Jill Knight (right) perform at the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles in May 2006. Photo: Copyright © 2006, Kendall Whitehouse.
When Variety columnist and blogger Scott Kirsner published his book, “Fans, Friends, and Followers,” he sent a request to other writers to document additional tales of how creative artists are using innovative methods to develop a fan base and establish a sustainable career.
When I received Kirsner’s request, the first person who came to mind was Los Angeles based singer/songwriter Kat Parsons.
Parsons first came to my attention several years ago as a result of my following the career of Jill Knight, another independent singer/songwriter. In 2004, Knight was one of seven finalists in the Acoustic Live competition in Los Angeles. As the final round of the contest approached, I wanted to assess the other six performers against whom she was competing. After listening to the music of each of these contestants I concluded that Kat Parsons presented the biggest competitive challenge to Knight.
When the winners were announced, Parsons took first place, with Knight first runner-up. I remain a fan of both, and have since seen each perform many times. In 2006, I was pleased to attend the only concert the two women have performed together at the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles.
In addition to her wonderful voice, I was struck by the various ways Parsons connects with her audience — off stage as well as on. At every show Parsons passes around a sign-up sheet to garner email addresses from those in attendance. She later follows up with chatty emails and announcements of when she’s performing in your region of the country. As she tours, she posts pictures, songs, and videos on her web site, MySpace page, and YouTube. When she traveled to Australia in 2006, she posted “video postcards” on YouTube each day for 30 days with everything from live performances to amusing travel adventures.
Although not signed to a recording contract, Parsons has self-released two albums, “Framing Caroline” in 1999 and “No Will Power” in 2005. She now works full time performing her music.
I recently spoke with Parsons over Skype while she was performing in Japan, and followed up with additional questions through email. An edited version of those conversations follows.
KW: Fans partially funded your last album. Where did that idea come from?
Parsons: I heard about it through a fellow singer/songwriter named Jenny Bruce.
There were many ways in which people could contribute. The lowest level was $20 for a signed CD and it went upwards from that. People could [give] $100 and get tickets to the CD release party up to $1,000 where I take them out to lunch and fun things like singing on a track in the studio, coming to watch the recording for an hour, or getting a dedication at the CD release party.
KW: How much money did you generate?
Parsons: About $18,000.
KW: Was that all $20 contributions for the CD or did some people pay for the big-ticket $1,000 items?
Parsons: There were a lot of $20 [contributions] and a couple of people paid for the big one as well. It really spanned the whole offer.
KW: What percentage of the cost of the album did that cover?
Parsons: Most of the album. The album cost about $22,000.
It worked out wonderfully. It’s nerve-racking when you put yourself out there like that. You don’t know: Is anyone going to be interested? I didn’t know what to expect.
It ended up being this experience that was so wonderful. I knew I wanted to do a certain kind of album and I had no idea how I was going to pay for it. It was so exciting that it worked, and I could make the album I wanted to make.
I had so many supporters who were willing to contribute. — it wasn’t [just] my parents and family friends. I was very grateful that people wanted to hear my new music and my heart felt warmed that people wanted to be part of it.
KW: At your live performances you send around a sign-up sheet to get email addresses from everyone.
Parsons: Passing your email list around during a show is a good idea. Often people like what they hear, but they don’t sign up for the email list. Some people are shy, and if [the sign-up sheet] is near where you’re performing it’s embarrassing for [people] to walk close to the stage or draw attention to themselves.
KW: How long is your mailing list now?
Parsons: It’s around 8,000 or something.
KW: Do you have any tips for managing a list of that size?
Parsons: I use this great email program called CoolerEmail. I met them in San Diego earlier in my music career [when] they were just getting started. Their program is really helpful because you can see how many people read the email, [and how many] clicked on it. You can look up someone specifically or the statistics in general. It’s a nice way of knowing what’s happening with your email list.
KW: When you play at a club or a concert venue, how does the revenue break down? Does your money come just from CD sales or do you get part of the door?
Parsons: Different venues have different arrangements. Often it’s a percentage of the door [entrance fee]: after a certain dollar amount has been reached, you’ll get a percentage of the remainder.
It also depends on your status, frankly. If they really want you to come to the venue, they might offer you a guarantee [fixed fee]. Sometimes you get a guarantee plus a percentage of the door after a certain dollar amount has been reached.
Some venues are more generous than others, [and there are] some venues that will never offer a guarantee. That’s just the way their venue is set up. If it’s a $10 ticket, you get $5 of the $10 ticket, or whatever. So, at some venues you won’t get a guarantee no matter how many people you bring — you just get a percentage of the door.
KW: You’ve also toured overseas — Japan, where you are now, as well as Brunei and elsewhere. Is the opportunity to generate income greater overseas?
Parsons: Those are all different gigs. Right now I’m in Japan and I’m playing at a hotel. So it’s a regular gig — I actually have a salary. It’s wild! [Laughs.]
In Brunei it was more like the type of shows [I play in the U.S.].
So far, I have been able to make a lot more money in the overseas gigs because people fly me out to the various places. When I toured in Singapore, Brunei and Malaysia they flew me out, covered all my travel costs, and paid me a nice fee.
Because there were music societies or private parties that were hosting me, no one was charged cover.
There’s very little original live music in Brunei. So it was this opportunity for all their colleagues to come and see some original live music. No one was charged cover. I was just paid a fee. And then, yes, I did sell a lot of CDs in that trip so I was able to supplement my income with CD sales.
Those shows were more lucrative than my U. S. shows.
KW: How do you find gigs like this where somebody’s paying for you to travel somewhere to play?
Parsons: All of those come from people who have seen me play somewhere else and said, “Hey, I’d love for you to come play at such-and-such.”
I was in Thailand and someone said, “I’d love to have you come play in Brunei.” I said, “Great, let’s do it.” I got the person’s email and followed up with them. It’s crazy because you think, “Oh, yeah. I’d love to play in such-and-such.” [Laughs.] But you have to be open to this stuff.
It’s all pretty organic in that way. In fact, everything that’s ever happened in my musical career has happened because of people who have liked my music. I’m very grateful for that.
KW: You also perform private “house concerts.”
Parsons: Private concerts are generally what I prefer. The fee structure is set up differently [from commercial venues]. At the private concerts, your job is only about delivering a fantastic show and taking a trip with everyone for an evening together. At a club sometimes, where you are expected to provide the audience and get a percentage [of the entrance fee], while your job is about the music, it is also about “bringing” people.
KW: How does the fee structure work at a house concert?
Parsons: It is between the artist and the host, so any arrangement can be made. I have done both a fixed fee — for people who do not want to charge an entrance fee — or [based on] the guests’ contribution, with a guaranteed minimum. Occasionally there are variations if we are doing something for a charity.
KW: In addition to selling CDs at your concerts you also sell them on your web site and places like CD Baby and Amazon.com. How successful is each of these?
Parsons: [In person] CD sales are definitely best for me. That’s where I sell the majority of my CDs. But those other avenues are nice to have. For example, in Japan I’ve sold out of my CDs and I still have a week and half left to play here. Those sites are nice because I can send people to them to buy the CD online or through iTunes.
It’s still better to carry [the boxes] to sell the CDs. People are more likely to buy something if you have it there than [they are] to remember to go to the web site, blah-de-blah.
KW: After “No Will Power” was released, it was carried by some of the major retailers like the Virgin Megastores. How do you get into those outlets?
Parsons: I had a distribution deal with Cleopatra Records. They did a great job and got it in a bunch of stores. They were even able to put a little advertising behind it — for which I was really grateful.
Generally speaking, I don’t think distribution makes sense for an independent artist unless there’s a lot of advertising behind it. Because if people don’t know your music, then they’re not going to buy your CD.
If you have advertising dollars behind it — on a listening station, an advertisement in paper, something like that — then it makes more sense. If you don’t have advertising dollars behind it, it’s probably just going to sit there in the bin, because no one knows who you are.
KW: How profitable is digital distribution through sites like iTunes?
Parsons: The worst is iTunes. You make very little on the digital sales. That’s worse than anything.
KW: Really?
Parsons: Yeah, because you’re talking [a retail price of] 99 cents per track. You’re making, like, 63 cents or something.
If someone likes [your music] and then buys a 63 cent song it’s awesome — except you’d have to sell, like, 101 songs to get any money.
It’s just hard to survive on digital sales.
KW: You’re still an independent artist. Have you had any overtures from record labels?
Parsons: I haven’t talked to a record label in a while.
My purpose changes in life, but generally I really want to connect with people. I don’t really need a label. I enjoy connecting with people on a very personal level.
I appreciate the way in which labels help artists reach a wider audience. They can be really wonderful in certain situations. I am not for or against labels. But the business, in that sense, is not my focus. For me, what works best is what happens organically through fans.
KW: Do you now make enough to be an artist full time?
Parsons: Oh, yes. I’ve been doing this full time for several years.
KW: How long did it take you to get to that point when you didn’t need to have side jobs?
Parsons: I think that if you have no other job, you make it work.
When I started, I would temp for a little bit, then I would stop temping and just do music. And then I would temp again. [Laughs.]
When it becomes a necessity to make a living at it, you do that.
KW: Looking back, what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in terms of your career? If there is one thing you could do differently, what would that be?
Parsons: I try not to think like that. Because we’re all just doing our best, right? A lot of the learning happens in doing.
So, ultimately, I probably wouldn’t change anything. I’ve [learned] so much about myself, this career, and the world.
Sometimes you get caught up in how to make your music go somewhere, and that ends up taking up a bigger role than the music. There have been times where I’ve felt overwhelmed working on getting my music to a larger audience, instead of on what I love to do, which is to sing and make people laugh sometimes. [Laughs.]
The Internet is great because there’s so much opportunity, but it’s hard to know which opportunity is worth pursuing. You can spend all your time pursuing every opportunity.
I guess what I would say, were I to meet my younger self — that’s so funny, it sounds like I’m really old — but were I to meet my younger self, I would encourage me to always be really connected to what it is I love doing, and connected to the music.
