From: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org (ecto-digest) To: ecto-digest@smoe.org Subject: ecto-digest V13 #422 Reply-To: ecto@smoe.org Sender: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-ecto-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk ecto-digest Tuesday, March 11 2008 Volume 13 : Number 422 To unsubscribe: e-mail ecto-digest-request@smoe.org and put the word unsubscribe in the message body. Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Fwd: 1000 fan theory [andrew fries ] Recent changes to the Ectophiles' Guide ["The Ectophiles' Guide" ] Re: 1000 fan theory [Doug ] Re: 1000 fan theory [Bernie Mojzes ] Re: 1000 fan theory [meredith ] Re: 1000 fan theory [meredith ] Re: 1000 fan theory [Carolyn Andre ] reply-to-list [gaseous clay ] Re: 1000 fan theory [Bernie Mojzes ] subject tags [gaseous clay ] Re: 1000 fan theory [Tim Jones-Yelvington ] Re: 1000 fan theory [meredith ] Terami Hirsch: FW: Album Announcement: A Broke Machine ["Bill Mazur" ] Re: reply-to-list - respectful dissent [gaseous clay ] Re: 1000 fan theory ["Paul Blair" ] Re: 1000 fan theory [neal copperman ] Re: 1000 fan theory [Yngve Hauge ] Re: reply-to-list - respectful dissent ["F.J.Fornorn" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:32:40 +1100 From: andrew fries Subject: Re: Fwd: 1000 fan theory Excellent article. By 'excellent' of course I mean that it agrees completely with my thinking on the subject :) It was a good few years ago when thanks to the progress of technology it started to become possible for artists to not only do much of their studio recording and mastering in their home studio, but also press and sell their own decent quality CDs. Right there I noticed that selling, say, 2 thousand CDs for a major label would not only net zero profit for the artist (quite possibly a negative profit in fact - they'd end up in debt) but would also most likely result in them getting dropped by said label at nearest opportunity. But selling the same 2 thousand CDs directly to the fans and keeping nearly ALL of the profits would be roughly equivalent to a national average yearly earnings. Which a lot of us manage to live on, somehow. It clearly indicated to me what should be the way to go. Forget about world-wide tours, top-whatever charts, massive sales and front-page news. Forget about music as industry. Let music go back to being a craft: performed and distributed on relatively small, human scale. That's all it needs to be. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 04:17:32 -0700 From: "The Ectophiles' Guide" Subject: Recent changes to the Ectophiles' Guide Latest changes to the Ectophiles' Guide 09 March 2008 New Guide entries added for: * Carrie Akre * Annie Barker * Priscilla Hernandez * Shannon McNally * Jenny Owen Youngs Changes made to the entries for: * Melissa Ferrick (new live album) * Hem (new ep) * Jenn Lindsay (new album) - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- You are receiving this email because you have asked to be notified of updates to the Ectophiles' Guide to Good Music at http://www.ectoguide.org/. If you are no longer interested in receiving these notifications, please unsubscribe yourself using the form at http://www.ectoguide.org/guide.cgi?newsubscribe&action=unsubscribe ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:38:12 -0400 From: "Paul Blair" Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 2:10 AM, Kevin Kelly via neal copperman < neal@swcp.com> wrote: > > A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything > you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the > super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have > the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They > bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come > to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, > and > the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They > are true fans. By that definition, for Happy to live off her music she'd need 1,000 Vickies. That is not an easy goal to reach! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:13:01 -0500 From: Doug Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory This article makes no sense to me, because I have NO IDEA what is meant by "long tail". Huh? - --Doug P.S. - If this list has a moderator, I'd appreciate it if they'd change it such that replies would go to the list, not to a person. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:26:09 -0400 (EDT) From: Bernie Mojzes Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail > This article makes no sense to me, because I have NO IDEA what is > meant by "long tail". > > Huh? > > --Doug > P.S. - If this list has a moderator, I'd appreciate it if they'd > change it such that replies would go to the list, not to a person. > - -- brni i don't want the world, i just want your half. http://brni.livejournal.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:15:33 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory Hi, Thanks for posting that article, Neal! I saw a pointer to it on WWdN a few days ago, and have been pondering it ever since as it applies directly to my life in many ways, on both sides of the equation. Paul Blair wrote: > By that definition, for Happy to live off her music she'd need 1,000 > Vickies. That is not an easy goal to reach! I dunno, I can think of several more ectophiles than just Vickie who would do/have done most of that for Happy over the years. I know that definition applies to me for several other artists, as well. I do wish the author had picked a different term for that than "True Fan", though. I hate the notion that "you're not a *real* fan of ___ unless you have THIS exceedingly rare, quite expensive item that *I* have and *you* don't". Perhaps "Most Loyal Supporter", instead?? But more to the point, I think 1,000 Most Loyal Supporters is a realistic, achievable goal for a lot of independent artists willing to put in the work to get there. And the amount of work required to get there isn't unrealistic, provided that the artist is doing work that is appealing to at least 1,000 people on the planet. And if they're not -- well, as the article stated it's scalable, so if an artist who is happy keeping a day job can get by with occasional temp work when they're not on tour doing house concerts put on by some of their 500 Most Loyal Fans, then in that case that's cool, too. - -- =============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth =============================================== hear at the HOMe House Concert Series http://hom.smoe.org =============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:16:54 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory Hi, Doug wrote: > P.S. - If this list has a moderator, I'd appreciate it if they'd > change it such that replies would go to the list, not to a person. This comes up every few years. ecto was deliberately set up this way to keep replies that were meant to be personal from inadvertently going to the whole list. Believe me, it's best this way. It's one of the reasons we've managed to remain a (relatively) flame-free zone since 1991. - -- =============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth =============================================== hear at the HOMe House Concert Series http://hom.smoe.org =============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:34:56 -0500 From: Carolyn Andre Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory At 09:13 AM 3/10/2008, you wrote: >This article makes no sense to me, because I have NO IDEA what is >meant by "long tail". > >Huh? Aha! had to look it up myself. Here's a short summary by the fellow who first proposed the concept in Wired magazine (in 2004): http://www.thelongtail.com/about.html >The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare. IOW the Internet, distributors like CDBaby, and new home recording technologies have changed the traditional model away from commercial media and selling a small group of "one-size-fits-all" hits at Best Buy. The author of the forwarded article is positing that this model may shift the bulk of product away from the traditional sources but at the same time it also shifts the costs and competitive disadvantages to the individual producers and magnifies their impact. Also Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Tail >--Doug >P.S. - If this list has a moderator, I'd appreciate it if they'd >change it such that replies would go to the list, not to a person. And I'd appreciate if the Subject line could be changed to include [ecto] so that my spam filters don't regularly dump messages with the unique and creative titles that pass through this list. Regards, Carolyn Andre - --- candre@house-of-music.com Chicago, IL / USA Support Independent Music! Use the Internet http://house-of-music.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:56:59 -0400 From: gaseous clay Subject: reply-to-list one time at band camp, Doug (dbailey4117@gmail.com) said: >P.S. - If this list has a moderator, I'd appreciate it if they'd >change it such that replies would go to the list, not to a person. ecto doesn't have a moderator per-se but it does has me turning the gerbil wheels behind the scenes. adding a reply-to-list is not a good idea for a number of reasons. the primary one is that the potential damage from a personal message misdirected to the list is significantly higher than the inconvience of resending a public message misdirected to the poster. the secondary one is that sometimes people set reply-to: headers of their own and it's not cool to mess with them. modern mail programs should have a reply-to-list function. if yours does not, you just have to remember to change the addressee of a reply to the list address. woj ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:07:01 -0400 (EDT) From: Bernie Mojzes Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory I got the feeling that "True Fan" was somewhat of a riff on the the old Marvel Comics "True Believers" line... I've been wondering for some time whether there was some way of doing this on a collective basis, i.e. artists who have some commonality, whether it's, say, Ecto, or geographic (Philly area local indie) or whatever. Something to minimize the amount of dealing with developing and maintaining the infrastructure needed to do this sort of thing. Bernie > Hi, > > Thanks for posting that article, Neal! I saw a pointer to it on WWdN a few > days ago, and have been pondering it ever since as it applies directly to my > life in many ways, on both sides of the equation. > > Paul Blair wrote: >> By that definition, for Happy to live off her music she'd need 1,000 >> Vickies. That is not an easy goal to reach! > > I dunno, I can think of several more ectophiles than just Vickie who would > do/have done most of that for Happy over the years. I know that definition > applies to me for several other artists, as well. > > I do wish the author had picked a different term for that than "True Fan", > though. I hate the notion that "you're not a *real* fan of ___ unless you > have THIS exceedingly rare, quite expensive item that *I* have and *you* > don't". Perhaps "Most Loyal Supporter", instead?? > > But more to the point, I think 1,000 Most Loyal Supporters is a realistic, > achievable goal for a lot of independent artists willing to put in the work > to get there. And the amount of work required to get there isn't > unrealistic, provided that the artist is doing work that is appealing to at > least 1,000 people on the planet. And if they're not -- well, as the article > stated it's scalable, so if an artist who is happy keeping a day job can get > by with occasional temp work when they're not on tour doing house concerts > put on by some of their 500 Most Loyal Fans, then in that case that's cool, > too. > > > - -- brni i don't want the world, i just want your half. http://brni.livejournal.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:33:11 -0400 From: gaseous clay Subject: subject tags one time at band camp, Carolyn Andre (candre@house-of-music.com) said: >And I'd appreciate if the Subject line could be changed to include >[ecto] so that my spam filters don't regularly dump messages with the >unique and creative titles that pass through this list. i'm not a big fan of those subject tags since they look ugly and some mail programs do stupid things with them when replying. be that as it may, this list's name is short enough that it wouldn't be too bad to add it if people wanted it. here's a tip for all though: if your spam filter (or mail program) knows about the Sender: header, that's the way to filter messages from the list. any message from ecto will have the Sender: header set to owner-ecto@smoe.org. and if you can't, whitelist any message with ecto in the To: or Cc: headers for the same result. woj ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 09:30:35 -0700 (PDT) From: Tim Jones-Yelvington Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory meredith wrote: ecto was deliberately set up this way to keep replies that were meant to be personal from inadvertently going to the whole list. Believe me, it's best this way. It's one of the reasons we've managed to remain a (relatively) flame-free zone since 1991. Agreed. It's not THAT difficult to hit "reply all" instead of "reply." As far as this article goes, I don't entirely know how to feel. It is certainly quite provocative and offers some new ways of thinking about these complex issues. I've only had time to scan it, but I didn't see any data showing how or why the author settled on 1,000 as the magic number. It's also doesn't offer any new ideas for transcending or escaping from a market-driven approach to the creation and dissemination of art, but perhaps that is too much to hope for. ~tim j-y www.headyheart.org ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:40:18 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory Hi, brni wondered: > I've been wondering for some time whether there was some way of doing > this on a collective basis, i.e. artists who have some commonality, > whether it's, say, Ecto, or geographic (Philly area local indie) or > whatever. Something to minimize the amount of dealing with developing > and maintaining the infrastructure needed to do this sort of thing. I believe at least the geographic version of this is the point of the "street team" concept that most indie musicians have latched onto. You find your big fans in an area, lure them into your fold with promises of free tickets and special swag, and in return they put up your posters when you come to town and spread the word about your show and your music to all their friends, and get the word-of-mouth machine going. Some artists are more successful at cultivating their street teams than others, but in general it's a very useful thing. - -- =============================================== Meredith Tarr New Haven, CT USA mailto:meth@smoe.org http://www.smoe.org/meth =============================================== hear at the HOMe House Concert Series http://hom.smoe.org =============================================== ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:19:05 -0700 From: "Bill Mazur" Subject: Terami Hirsch: FW: Album Announcement: A Broke Machine FYI my fellow Ectophiles - from one of Terami's 1000 fans ;-) - -----Original Message----- From: Terami Hirsch Music [mailto:info@terami.com] Sent: Monday, March 10, 2008 9:45 AM To: wpm@value.net Subject: Album Announcement: A Broke Machine Hello! As quietly as possible, I've spent the last two years writing and recording my fourth album, A Broke Machine. Just a few days ago, the final CDs were shipped to me, and now I have them in my hands. A Broke Machine will be released through online retailers on April 15...just about 5 weeks from now. TRACKLIST: 01. Back to the Start 02. Help Me 03. Fable Moon 04. Chains of Andromeda 05. A Broke Machine 06. What I Didn't See 07. Diagram of Love 08. The Collector 09. Battle for Infinite Time 10. Better Times 11. Wasteland 12. A Hundred Flowers 13. I Am Going to Sleep More information will be announced soon, so please check in on my website or myspace page for updates. In the meantime, you can read more about the making of A Broke Machine on my blog: http://www.terami.com/blog/2008/02/making_the_new_album.html Thank you for listening, Terami http://www.terami.com http://www.myspace.com/teramihirsch - --------------------------------------------------------------- Change your info? Stop the emails? Easy! Just click this link: http://terami.com/hostbaby/i?i=819&p=iC3Gis1H5kK6dP6CAWpc ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:23:31 -0400 From: "robert bristow-johnson" Subject: Re: reply-to-list - respectful dissent > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "gaseous clay" > To: "ecto@smoe.org" > Subject: reply-to-list > Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:56:59 -0400 > > > one time at band camp, Doug (dbailey4117@gmail.com) said: > > > P.S. - If this list has a moderator, I'd appreciate it if they'd > > change it such that replies would go to the list, not to a person. > > ecto doesn't have a moderator per-se but it does has me turning the > gerbil wheels behind the scenes. > > adding a reply-to-list is not a good idea for a number of reasons. the > primary one is that the potential damage from a personal message > misdirected to the list is significantly higher than the inconvience of > resending a public message misdirected to the poster. the secondary one > is that sometimes people set reply-to: headers of their own and it's > not cool to mess with them. all's i can say is that the ecto mailing list is the only mailing list i am subscribed to that does not Reply-to the list. i've gotten into the habit now of hitting Reply All and deleting the individual poster that i am replying to, but it's a pain and sometimes i forget. the only downside that i can think of is if someone goes to Nepal and leaves an auto-reply bot turned on their mail client and ecto posts get auto-replied. when that happens in the other lists and either the moderator notices or someone complains to the moderator, that someone who left their auto-reply bot turned on gets unsubscribed (or at least they don't get posts automatically in their email) for the time being and then, when they get back home, they can deal with it. my $0.02. (you get what you pay for.) - -- r b-j rbj@audioimagination.com "Imagination is more important than knowledge." ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:41:14 -0500 From: Doug Subject: Re: reply-to-list - respectful dissent >all's i can say is that the ecto mailing list is the only mailing list i am >subscribed to that does not Reply-to the list. i've gotten into the habit now >of hitting Reply All and deleting the individual poster that i am replying to, >but it's a pain and sometimes i forget. I concur. If you want to count frequency, I think the number of replies that need to be kept private is probably small when compared to the number of times that people are forced to hit the Reply All button (and then delete the original poster's email address). I think we're sacrificing convenience for a very small return. And frankly, I'm surprised that there is such a concern about posts accidentally being sent to the list. I mean, do the list members here have so much bile and venom to spew that we have to actively ensure that it not be misdirected? Color me confused. - --Doug ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:04:19 -0400 From: gaseous clay Subject: Re: reply-to-list - respectful dissent rbj sed: >> all's i can say is that the ecto mailing list is the only mailing list i am >> subscribed to that does not Reply-to the list. i've gotten into the habit now >> of hitting Reply All and deleting the individual poster that i am replying to, >> but it's a pain and sometimes i forget. so, if all the other mailing lists jumped off a bridge, should ecto jump off one too? ;) i know, i know, i know, reply-to-list is not the same as jumping off a bridge but forgetting to delete or change an addressee of an e-mail isn't really a pain either. one time at band camp, Doug said: > I concur. If you want to count frequency, I think the number of > replies that need to be kept private is probably small when compared > to the number of times that people are forced to hit the Reply All > button (and then delete the original poster's email address). I think > we're sacrificing convenience for a very small return. i dunno. the number is probably small, but the convenience is pretty small too. making sure an e-mail is properly addressed is just good practice and i would say that the ten seconds it takes to check and change the addressee of your reply isn't too much to ask. this debate has gone on for years. google "munge headers bad" if you don't believe me! there's no solution that's going to make everyone happy except migrating to majordomo2 which has personal settings for reply-to (and subject tags too for that matter!). that'll happen sooner or later but in the meantime, i think it's best to leave it the way it is. woj ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:19:29 -0400 From: "Paul Blair" Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 11:15 AM, meredith wrote: > Hi, > > Thanks for posting that article, Neal! I saw a pointer to it on WWdN a > few days ago, and have been > pondering it ever since as it applies directly to my life in many ways, on > both sides of the equation. > > Paul Blair wrote: > On Mon, Mar 10, 2008 at 2:10 AM, Kevin Kelly via neal copperman < > neal@swcp.com> wrote: > > > > A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and > everything > > > you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy > the > > > super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they > have > > > the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They > > > bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They > come > > > to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the > t-shirt, and > > > the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. > They > > > are true fans. > By that definition, for Happy to live off her music she'd need 1,000 > > Vickies. That is not an easy goal to reach! > > I dunno, I can think of several more ectophiles than just Vickie who would > do/have done most of that for Happy over the years. I know that definition > applies to me for several other artists, as well. > I didn't mean they all had to be Vickie! But 1000 people with that degree of enthusiasm is a lot. I'm an enthusiastic fan of a few bands, but spending $100 per year takes some dedication. A small-name local artist I might get to see for 10 or 15 dollars, so I'd have to see her six or seven times a year plus buy a CD to spend that much. If a bigger-name touring band like Cowboy Junkies comes through the NYC area twice I might get there--say $40 each for the shows, plus $15 for whatever the new CD is. OK, maybe another CD for a gift. And a new DVD if there is one. Oh, and that XX book...and flowers for Margo, of course! ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 20:34:55 -0700 From: neal copperman Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory At 10:19 PM -0400 3/10/08, Paul Blair wrote: >I didn't mean they all had to be Vickie! But 1000 people with that degree of >enthusiasm is a lot. I'm an enthusiastic fan of a few bands, but spending >$100 per year takes some dedication. A small-name local artist I might get >to see for 10 or 15 dollars, so I'd have to see her six or seven times a >year plus buy a CD to spend that much. If a bigger-name touring band like >Cowboy Junkies comes through the NYC area twice I might get there--say $40 >each for the shows, plus $15 for whatever the new CD is. I have probably put in $100 a handful of times on artists over the years. When I am totally gaga about a local band, I can easily see them 10 times in a year. And I'd be happy to give them $100 in that case, particularly in support of a new album. I probably came close to spending $100 on seeing Jewel in the early days at $3 a pop :) >OK, maybe another CD for a gift. And a new DVD if there is one. Oh, and that >XX book...and flowers for Margo, of course! Cowboy Junkies in Albuquerque on June 3. Come out and visit :) neal ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2008 04:16:14 +0100 From: Yngve Hauge Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory > I didn't mean they all had to be Vickie! But 1000 people with that degree of > enthusiasm is a lot. I'm an enthusiastic fan of a few bands, but spending > $100 per year takes some dedication. A small-name local artist I might get > to see for 10 or 15 dollars, so I'd have to see her six or seven times a > year plus buy a CD to spend that much. If a bigger-name touring band like > Cowboy Junkies comes through the NYC area twice I might get there--say $40 > each for the shows, plus $15 for whatever the new CD is. With the current exchange rate I'll have to pay $50 to see Ane Brun next month, so that is halfway to the $100 mark in one go :P Animal Alpha the day after is $40, and that is worth it by far :) Here in Norway you can't get much for $100, so for us that amount won't make us run screaming ... - -- Yngve n.p. Stargate Atlantis - The Ark of Truth ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:17:40 -0400 From: "F.J.Fornorn" Subject: Re: reply-to-list - respectful dissent I side with woj on this. If the possible choices for defaults are: - - the possible inconvenience of having to resend an item to the list after erroneously replying to the individual sender vs - - the probable sense of public humiliation of sending private comments to the list at large then I'll take the former. (Woj, please fwd to the list :) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:46:33 -0400 From: "F.J.Fornorn" Subject: Re: 1000 fan theory The original article is an interesting presentation of things I have thought about for a long time. I sense a sort of contemporary refinement of the concept I attribute to Brian Eno over 30 years ago, the idea of "small, mobile, intelligent units". This was to be the future. Looks like. ------------------------------ End of ecto-digest V13 #422 ***************************