Rain Poems Limited Edition CD

I will pick up the covers today. Since everything fits together the way I intended I ordered fresh CD media and more envelopes. On Tuesday I will burn a CD and then I will try to play it in every CD player I own and a few I don’t, to make sure the CD works in the widest variety of players. I have a few days before the start of the California tour and should be able to burn a bunch of the CDs before I leave. 

Edition of 100. Each CD burned by me, signed and numbered. Offered for sale to Backstage members at $54, which is the price of a CD from the 1980s adjusted for inflation. Anyone who isn’t a Backstage members can buy the CD for the price of $108. Shipping is a flat $20. The album can be purchased on Bandcamp on March 1st. First come first serve. When they are gone they are gone.

Better start a TikTok

Want to sell a book or release an album? Better start a TikTok. – Vox

The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do — from nine-to-five middle managers to astronauts to house cleaners — you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand.

For some, it looks like updating your LinkedIn connections whenever you get promoted; for others, it’s asking customers to give you five stars on Google Reviews; for still more, it’s crafting an engaging-but-authentic persona on Instagram. And for people who hope to publish a bestseller or release a hit record, it’s “building a platform” so that execs can use your existing audience to justify the costs of signing a new artist.

and

Corporate consolidation and streaming services have depleted artists’ traditional sources of revenue and decimated cultural industries. While Big Tech sites like Spotify claim they’re “democratizing” culture, they instead demand artists engage in double the labor to make a fraction of what they would have made under the old model. That labor amounts to constant self-promotion in the form of cheap trend-following, ever-changing posting strategies, and the nagging feeling that what you are really doing with your time is marketing, not art. Under the tyranny of algorithmic media distribution, artists, authors — anyone whose work concerns itself with what it means to be human — now have to be entrepreneurs, too.

I added the emphasis. 

It’s the industrial revolution all over again, perhaps, only with carpal tunnel and screen addiction instead of black lungs. 

The Way

The word Buddhism was only coined by Europeans in the last few hundred years. For two millennia Buddhists were simply known as people who followed the Dharma. The word Dharma, like many Sanskrit words, has a wide range of meanings and can’t be translated into a single English word. However, a general description that works well enough for this purpose is path. It’s a path or prescription that can be followed. 

This meaning led to an interesting story when the Dharma arrived in China, because Tao means The Way. Some Taoists believed a story (early conspiracy theory!?) that claimed Laozi traveled east after writing the Tao Te Ching and taught a young man named Siddhartha about the Tao, which later came to be called the Dharma. It was suggested that the Dharma was built on the Tao or, to take the image of a path or road further, that the Dharma connected to the Tao. This is not at all likely but, like all good conspiracy theories, remotely possible. Siddhartha Gautama is said to have been born between 563 and 480 BCE and Laozi was born sometime between the 4th and 6th century BCE. 

Something else happened, however… Dharma met Tao in China and became Chan and then Zen. Instead of extending the path into India, a new path was forged. 

Streaming Fraud

It’s estimated that almost 10% of streams are fraudulent. We have the Swedish example of criminal gangs laundering money via “fake” streams, and cases such as the Bad Dog fraud, highlighted in the New York Times. A former Spotify employee in the audience appeared to think the onus lies with the distributors. I suggested a more rigorous identification procedures of uploaders, and the distributors said they’ve formed a working group where they can share information on bad actors, in order to prevent them simply jumping from one distributor to another.

@helienne Has a Serious Panel Discussion with Spotify, Deezer and WMG Reps About Artist Centric, Streaming Fraud and the New Free Goods – Music Technology Policy

Here is another interesting paragraph:

Lucian Grainge called those having an issue with his royalty distribution model “merchants of garbage” (great band name, by the way), and a couple of my fellow panelists said the threshold would get rid of “the garbage”. I find using that term about music quite offensive. Also, haven’t we been told for a decade that one of the great things with streaming is that it got rid of the gatekeepers? What happened to that “long tail” that was going to make it a more level playing field? I especially find the minimum threshold of having to have 500 unique listeners every month problematic. This favours those who have the marketing powers to continuously get featured on editorial playlists with unengaged lean-back listeners over those who have a smaller but highly engaged fan following. 500 unique listeners every month may not sound like a lot but try to get 500 people showing up at your gigs, and you’ll realise it is. 

 

When I’m Sixty Five

I was going to post a photo of myself to be taken on my birthday, today. But I like this one and it’s less than two months old. My partner took it in Ginza, Tokyo, on December 4th. That day I bought new sunglasses by Matsuda, a Japanese eyewear company I have long admired. The sunglasses I had been wearing were at least twenty years old and the lenses had to replaced once already because the dark grey color had been turned into purple by the sun. I waited to get new sunglasses because it was a chance to bring something home that would always remind me of this trip. 

65. My dad was retired by this age but musicians don’t retire. We may have to adjust our music to the age of our hands but that is an interesting challenge, too. Less can be a bore but less can also be more. Walk, don’t run. Look for depth rather than dazzle. Not that I was ever a dazzling musician. There are lots of others who do that better. 

Thank you for being on this journey with me, for accompanying me and for enabling me. To many more years together. Cheers. 

PS: Yesterday the check out person at the grocery store called me the Sake guy. Is that why this excellent bottle of Sake is on sale for 25% off, I asked, because I am the only person who buys it? Yes, she said. That’s fine by me, I replied, more for me…