ideasarehere

Sometimes thinking up a post takes a little longer because you’re trying to come up with (at least) one phrase that sets it apart, make it stand out, and frame it. Check.

The other day I had a conversation about the previous post with a good friend who has been like a mentor for me over the last years. He said this was all good and true, but there’s one thing the Web can’t do but the old alliance can: Make a star. A real star. Someone (or maybe even something) that people will look up to. What they will buy (including merchandise). The Web might be too specialised, too fragmented to build a massive movement.

Two thoughts — First: Industry has designed stuff that’s average so a lot of people would buy it and it would become a success. Aim for the centre and you’ll land a hit. Limit choice and sales go up, because people want to spend money on something. The Web took away the need to adapt, because now you don’t make the most profit from creating average stuff for the masses, but valuable stuff for small groups who are willing to spend disproportionally large amounts of money on their favourites. Or Amazon’s endless shelf space. We don’t need average anymore.
Second: The central (perceived) idea of the Web is that everything is free. Which is why people or incidents can become famous quicker than ever, free spreads faster than anything, gets passed on because people want to be part of it. This is the downside for the industry — once they decide to pick up the idea and monetize it, it’s over. Now it’s not free anymore, people have been robbed of what was “theirs”. It’s quite an impossible task to persuade somebody to give you money for something that has been free until the day before. This is why the “Web Stars” are rarely successful to cash in via selling themselves to the industry. What works, with music for example, is to go on tour and play hundreds of club gigs in venues you can easily fill. If you’ve got millions of hits on the Web, chances are a number of people in every town know you, some will be passionate enough to tell their friends, and presto! Sold out.

TV has a problem. In and of itself, it’s out of date. TV is Nixon, The Gulf War, Golden Girls, Coca Cola. Because this is what TV has been (most of the time) in the last 40 years. Not only TV of course, the whole system mentioned before. Designed to deliver from factory to family. But it also fed another need which is one of the essential human needs: stories. We all need stories, they’re part of our community, our culture. ManU fans thrash the crap out of Leeds fans during the football season, but when England plays Germany they’re brothers in arms. This is because of a story, the need to belong, to identify.

The Web has a place for everyone, but it’s always distant, not personal. And just because a bunch of people who are passionate about something gather on the Web, it doesn’t mean they will inevitably create something that is of value for them or others. Search YouTube for [insert name of your favourite series] for fan videos. You won’t be watching them for long, I reckon.

And this is where the future of TV is (at the moment). They’ve got enough people to come up with ideas, plots, characters, everything you need to create good stories, and what’s more, stories people can easily relate to because they (optionally) include regional aspects. This is something Hollywood can’t do, they must be bigger, louder, fancier than last time, and more average in their stories. When you’re making a TV programme, you don’t have to. You only have to accept that there is no centre any more. Accept that “safe” is gone and “cheap” has been taken by the cluttered Web.

Some years ago, many musicians were very intrigued by the idea of doing business on their own. Booking shows, doing PR work, writing a song, do some HTML homepage programming, CD layout, write another song… The way of spending your time seemed quite stable and reasonable (whatever that may be).

Then came mySpace. And everyone had to get in. New activity: Figuring out how to have your own layout. Individual artist homepages got dumped. MySpace was the place to be. Then came Facebook. MySpace was declining, everybody went on to create their artist pages on Facebook, allowing for more connections but a less individual look. But hey, content matters, right? Then came Twitter. No look at all, no content. Just… another place to waste your time, figuring out what to say in 140 characters. But you had to have it. Totally connected. Boiling point. And now: Google Buzz! Artists collapsing all over the place.

They start complaining (quite rightfully) that they cannot handle all these connections without spending so much time on them that they practically don’t creeate music anymore. Mission failed.

Here’s my advice: Get off mySpace, it’s no use but a dead end. Have a blog, on Typepad, WordPress, Blogger or whichever you prefer. Just select a theme you like and add your images. Set up a bit.ly account that hooks into your Twitter account and automatically shortens the links you post. Go to a service like twitterfeed.com which hooks into your blog’s RSS feed and automatically posts to Facebook, Twitter and whatever they support. If you’re using Gmail, Google Buzz is now built in and can automatically re-post your Twitter tweets (but not vice versa). There. All done. Now go make some music. The web takes care of itself.