The value is in the conversation. As the monetary value of the the final product goes down. The value of the rest the content, of the conversation, has gone up. As the mass becomes the niche and we are all racing to find our place in Chris Anderson’s Long Tail, we have inadvertently flipped the value curve on its head. We use to be only concerned about the end result, that could be monetized. Artists are guilty of buying into this as well. Now we realize that whats important in the new world is building, engaging and yes, valuing our communities.

Another factor in the change in the measure of value is the of the decline of the Mass Media. As the dollars drain from the intellectual property business our ability to buy mass advertising has gone away. Those dollars we do spend don’t have the same penetration into the market place they once did. Too many magazines, too much cable, too many movies, video games and then there’s that pesky interweb. It’s really hard to get the attention or retention from mass media anymore.

Bottom line…You cant buy attention with ads anymore. You have to earn it.

So as the game has changed the measure of value has also changed. Everything that you put out that engages your community now has greater value. Every blog post, demo, inspiration, micro blog, photo, video are all more important because they are the things that bind your community together. The final product is just the climax of the story.

So, if the real value is in our everyday content, and the community we build is so important, what does this tell us about our how we should conduct our online lives.
Here are a few thoughts…

1. Treat your online community as you want to be treated.

2. Give them content they want.

3. Stop spamming your ‘friends’ with your crappy ads. (I rarely even send my community emails, it always feels like spam to me)

4. And finally. Give them content they want! An honest thought means a lot in this noisy world.

What do you think?

Enough of all this chatter about NIN and Radiohead. They are both doing interesting online experiments. Free music, pay what you want, remix my song, make my video for me. Yes we get it, they both have a truck load of money and are experimenting. I think thats great but…

Both those bands grew up in the old model and their recent stunts dont have any implications for new artists looking for a new model. All they tell us is that the old music business is so f*%ked that established artists with hardcore tech savvy fan bases don’t need an old school label anymore. That is not a model that is going to carry new artists forward. Not every new artist that makes great music is also going to be good at building an online fan base and doing all the things it takes to create Kevin Kelly’s 5000 true fans. There is a money gap in the incubation stage in an artists life. What is going to take those brand new artists with promise and invest in them enough to take them to the next level? It doesn’t happen by “magic”. Now that the money has moved from music business to the isp’s, social networks and mobile companies. Who is going to reinvest in new artists to help them grow? When all the big trees are gone and you haven’t spent anytime replanting, then what? So enough about NIN and Radiohead please. Thats just rich kids rolling around in their money and having fun online. I love to watch but lets not mistake it for a new model for the music business.

Yesterday i got a warning from Facebook that I was spamming. Well of course i wasnt. I have reached the 5000 friend Facebook limit and i was emailing the new people that contacted me wanting to be friends and letting them know that they could join my Facebook Musicians Page instead. All those emails must have triggered a Facebook filter which sent me a spam warning.

If it had been Myspace they would have just deleted my account as they have done twice in the past. I was happy to get the warning and stopped sending my redirection emails.

Robert Scoble has been talking a lot lately about people getting kick of of Facebook with no warning and no recourse. Well this is an example of a welcomed warning. (Also Facebook has also been amazingly good at responding to my emails when i have questions about their rules. “Can i start a second personal page?” answer “No”.

I’ll take a warning over getting deleted any day. I just wish I could have more that 5000 friends. Feel the love:)

Whats your experience been with Facebook?

My friend Fred St-Gelais and i were talking about the last post and he said something that sparked me.

“We spend more time on facebook than talking to our mothers…”

Think about it. What do you do first thing in the morning instead of or while your talking to someone you love. Are we focused on whats important in life?

Im going to hang up now and call my sister in Norway:)

Louis Gray’s post on his social media day depressed me. I went straight to the guitar and started to write a song:) Seth Godin writes about the fading signal to noise ratio

My relationship to social media is love - hate

Love
-the interaction, the learning, the reading, the ever changing exchange of ideas…the community we create

Hate
-that its addictive and self perpetuating
-that it becomes the end, that all the reading, all the feeds, all the comments become so consuming

I spent yesterday looking at how i spend my time.

How does the web and social media effect your creative life? Tell me about what your making and if and how you engage the world online.

The best thing about the web for me is that its still the wild west. If you can dream it you can be it. The big thing today may be yesterdays news by the time the sun goes down.

The money has not left the music business, its just moved around a bit. Its gone from the labels and retail that use to distribute content to the isp’s, mobile and social networks that now distribute content. Music drives traffic and artists hold the keys to musical content. If artists could organize they could redefine the metrics of social networking. Imagine a social network that routed most of the ad revenue back to artists. Even more important that cuts artists in on the equity and multiples of the social network, based on traffic. (and just for fun add non profit component). Metrics are not cut in stone

We artists are an unruly bunch. Individualistic and usually selfish (in that we are possessed by our own work above all things).
So…lets imagine and let our minds wander. If artists could organize.

Thats it, I’m starting my Ning.

I live in information overload. I blog here about art and technology, at davidusher.com about music, emails, IMs, twitters, facebook, myspace. writing songs, recording, producing, consulting, speaking, never mind the rest of life.
I am not alone. I think we are all in a desperate search for balance. How does all this noise effect our creativity?
Does the web add value to our lives or just a billions distractions?
I’m divided. I have trouble keeping up, cutting out the parts of the web that cloud my creative headspace. I end up compartmentalizing my life into small boxes, always reorganizing and prioritizing them, looking for value and meaning. With so much ’stuff’ coming at us all the time its easy to get lost in the ‘freedom’ of it all.
In the end though, I think that ‘freedom’ wins. The ability to have a free flow of creativity and connection between us all is worth all the spam and videos of drunk guys falling down. The fact that we all get to create things and put them out there into the ether is very powerful.

Does the web make you more creative or is it all just noise?

I was thumbing through the March issue of Dazed and Confused, one of those try to be uber hip magazines. I tend to look though scores of magazines of all kinds looking for words and headlines that might resonate and seed a song.

As i was looking though it i realized i was having a really difficult time telling the difference between the ads and the articles. Even the subjects seem to mesh together. Fashion, music, art, writing and advertising all flowed seamlessly together crossing over into one another. It was one picture with no distinction. The final crossover.

Has it all become one? Does it matter? Do we care anymore about the distinction between art and ads?

I think it matters.

What about you?

I spend a lot of time testing, playing really, with different tools and applications and seeing how they can be used for my own website, davidusher.com. Honestly most of them don’t add any value, some add tons of value but have some fatal flaw that makes it usable. (Mogulus is a great example of a tool for streaming video…but because their player crashes internet explorer and 60% of my users are using explorer Ive had to stop using it.)

There is a lot of conversation these days about how integrated the main stream is in social media. Mitch Joel wrote a good post about Oprah and his suprise at how she admitted to not really knowing too much about it, Chris Brogan just posted about Friend Feeder tools. Mathew Ingram talks about twitter verses facebook news feed. Robert Scoble wrote about the important thing about Twitter is how many people you follow, not who follows you. (yeah right, im sure hes spending a lot of time pouring over the streams of his 4000 followers:)

My question and one i ask myself often is what tools work for the mass and what are really just for those in social media. Most of these apps are really for the echo chamber. I like this stuff and I dont have time to follow my friends feeds. I hardly have time to keep up with google reader. The reason Facebook works is because its a mass tool. Its a fully functioning ecosystem that works for the mass. I hate it because its a walled garden but to communicate with my 5000 friends, it works. Thats were they are.

I think its really important to differentiate between the tools for the mass and the niche.

Thoughts?

I don’t know when it happened. Slowly over time. Without even noticing.

I stopped watching television.

I’ve seen the stats of how the web is killing television but its been very interesting to wake up this morning and realize I’m part of that statistic. I spend more time online, writing and reading, searching and discovering. If I want to see a show I usually buy it on itunes and watch it on the laptop. I still have those 300 channels but i find it tedious to navigate and the commercials are endless. I have been spoiled by the web. I want what I want, when I want it. I set up the filters I trust to deliver me content I want.

I think its time to cut the cord…

What about you, are you still watching?