Well, I did it. I flew.

Not really. I sort of just floated on 120+ mph winds, but it felt like flying. There’s an indoor skydiving venue in Denver and they let you pay to float for 1 minute increments. It’s really pretty cool.

Popularity: 10% [?]

I’m not well today. Achy, congested, tired, sore throat, and just wiped out.

Whenever I’m sick, I think about David Wilcox’s brilliant story/poem titled “Cold” from his East Asheville Hardware record. Pure beauty.

COLD
You ever wonder why you get a cold
Look at the word - spell it - C-old.
C-OLD

You’re pulled over by the reaper for a warning
He says,”I clocked you thinking 80″
You know you’re not that old
You’ve been worried about the darkness in the morning

Well, I’ll give you something to worry about, he says
And he flips open his ticket pad
Appreciate your breathing

I’m gonna write you up a headache for those thoughts
Now why you been so worried
What have you been reading
And why do you have to tally all you’ve lost

I’ma write you up a head cold
It comes on like bad weather
So maybe you’ll appreciate the warming
See it gives a new perspective
Soon you’ll be feeling better

I’ll let you off this time
With a warning

He says, But take it easy, alright
People live around here

You won’t see ‘em in time
What I’m trying to say is
You’ll miss ‘em

(c) David Wilcox, all rights reserved.

Popularity: 10% [?]

My drier buzzes when my clothes are done. It’s really not that urgent that I get the pile of dry clothes out of there, but it buzzes. Three times. No simple way to disable it that I know of, so when I put laundry in before bed, it wakes me up. Three times.

On the other hand, my washing machine has no alert feature to let me know that if I don’t get my clothes out soon, they are going to start smelling like dead fish. Consequently, I forget quite often and wash loads of laundry two times–sometimes three times.

technorati tags: laundry, clothes

Popularity: 10% [?]

I wanted to post a little review of Amie Street from the artist’s perspective.

EDIT: I know this is a long post, the bottom line is that I have no regrets about going with Amie Street. I wanted to provide a little extra info from the artist side.

If you haven’t been following my site, I’ve just released a CD on amiestreet.com. I chose them to do my online release because they have a unique pricing structure and they don’t have any digital rights management on their files. When you first release your music, it’s free. Then it increases in price (as the market dictates) to $.98 per song.

First, I think it’s a great idea. I think the pricing structure is excellent and I think it’s a practical way for an artist who doesn’t have much of a following to develop one through free distribution of his music. Also, it’s great for established artists as well, because they can earn a 70% profit on sales of their music there. For the music consumer, it’s a great place to discover indie artists and get their music for a reasonable fee. The non-drm thing is excellent too.

I’ll also say that they have been very responsive to inquiries and technical help. I even had an interaction with “Josh” at Amiestreet.com who offered to help discuss their business model with me for this blog post. I may solicit his input for a future post, but for now, I will say that they have been very helpful.

I do think buying music could be a little more straight-forward. Right now, you can’t just pay for a song or album with your credit card. You have to purchase credits in fixed amounts. For instance, my CD is $5.30 to buy the whole thing right now. However, you can’t buy the cd for $5.30, you have to buy a $10 credit (or a $5 and $3). I’m guessing it’s incentive for the user to check out other music since they have credit on the site, but it’s inconvenient place for me to send someone who just wants my CD.

Additionally, as an artist, there’s no real-time running tally of your earnings. It’s really not that difficult to compute, but it is challenging to estimate how much you’ve made. The gist of the earning structure is this: for each song you upload, you give the first $5 it earns to Amie Street. Since the price starts at $0 and rises one or two pennies at a time, it takes awhile to amass $5 in downloads. After that point, you keep 70% of the sales. When your sales hit $.98 (the top of the rising scale) it’s simple estimate how much you’re making on each download. Prior to that point, though, it’s tough to know if you’ve paid off your $5 and whether you are making any money per download or not. Basically (according to my chart made using their pricing calculator) after 40 downloads, you start making money.

I’ve created a couple graphics to simplify the estimation process. It seems a little trivial since we’re talking about such small scale sales, but many of the artists on Amiestreet.com haven’t distributed enough songs to make much money, so these charts should be quite useful to at least a few people.

technorati tags: amiestreet, music, drm

Popularity: 14% [?]

Check the lab for a couple remixes of “Almost Flew.” Very cool stuff happening in there.

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Well, we’ve reached the end of the party. Thanks for coming everyone. Drive safely.

Before we wrap this up, I want to just tease my next post a bit. I’m preparing to share, specifically for Amie Street artists, the breakdown of profits through this site. I’m still a believer in the music store they have, but according to my math, you have to get to at least around 40 downloads before you see a cent. Basically, the price rises with each download and you have to take that first $5 and give it to Amie St. After that, you’re seeing $.70 on the dollar. It’s plainly explained on the site, but it’s not easy to see how much profit a song has made if your price is at $.85. I’ll explain all this in a coming post. I’m such a nerd…. Seriously. I have graphs.

UPDATE: Incidentally, I have no regrets with releasing my music this way over the weekend. It was a cool way to go and I think I distributed way more music than I would have any other way. All this to say, the trade-off in income was worth the exposure, IMO.

technorati tags: amiestreet, music, drm

Popularity: 13% [?]