Senator Wyden Promises To Read Out The Names Of Those Who Oppose PROTECT IP

from the sign-up-now dept

As stories begin to circulate that the Senate is about to make a big push to get PROTECT IP (aka PIPA) through while everyone's been focused on SOPA over in the House, Senator Ron Wyden has reiterated his commitment to being against the bill, and promising to actually use his allotted time to filibuster on the bill if he has to. Too often these days, Senators have been able to get away with a sort of fake filibustering, where they say they will and everyone just assumes it's as if they did stand up and talk for days on end. However, Senator Wyden has said that he'll really filibuster if the Senate really does try to move forward by standing on the floor and talking. While, in the past, the "standard" is to do something like read names from the phonebook, Wyden is promising to read the names of people who signed petitions against PIPA. So if you'd like your name to go into the official record of the US Senate as being against PIPA, here's your chance... You can sign at that link.

Filed Under: filibuster, grassroots, protect ip, ron wyden, sopa, support

Funny How All The Senators Supporting Anti-FCC Bill, Have Raised Lots Of Money From AT&T

from the just-saying dept

We mentioned, when the recent FCC report on broadband came out, that it seemed notable that the first politician out of the gate complaining about it, Rep. Cliff Stearns just happened to have had massive financial support from the biggest broadband players around when it came to raising money for his political campaigns. Given that, it seemed worth looking into the sponsors of a new bill designed to prevent the FCC from implementing net neutrality rules. Now I'm still not convinced the FCC really has the authority to do what it's trying to do, but I find it even more troubling when a group of Senators get together and call a new bill the "Freedom for Consumer Choice Act (FCC Act)," and it seems like they're all funded by AT&T. Somehow, I don't think that AT&T is supporting "freedom for consumer choice" when it comes to broadband. Over the years, they've done exactly the opposite, and worked hard to limit competition.

So, let's see. The bill's main sponsor is Senator Jim DeMint. Over the course of his career... AT&T is the second largest contributor to his campaigns. Ditto for Senator Tom Coburn. John Cornryn no doubt knows that AT&T is the 4th biggest contributor to his campaigns over the years, and Orrin Hatch must be happy that AT&T is the fifth largest contributor to his campaigns over the years (amusingly, AT&T is the only non-healthcare company in the top 8 on Hatch's list).

There are three other co-sponsors who don't have AT&T among their top contributors, but apparently they all want to start. If you drill down and look at campaign contributions this year all three -- John Ensign, Jeff Sessions and John Thune see AT&T appearing on their list of top contributors after being absent in previous years.

Funny how that works.

Now, of course, you could argue that AT&T contributes to politicians who have the same views as AT&T, rather than that these politicians are responding to AT&T's bidding. But, either way, it's hard to argue with a straight face that this particular bill has anything to do with protecting consumers, when it's pretty clearly designed to protect AT&T.

I've seen people suggest in the past that elected officials should have to wear "sponsorship patches," like Nascar racers, to show who funded their campaigns. While I think the idea was a joke, I have to admit, it's growing on me. Also, a special thanks to Karl Bode for inspiring me to write this post, in noting that none of the press coverage of the newly introduced bill seems to note the AT&T contributions to these Senators...

Filed Under: cliff stearns, contributions, jeff sessions, jim demint, john cornryn, john ensign, john thune, orrin hatch, senators, support, tom coburn
Companies: at&t, fcc

Apple Deletes Thread About Consumer Reports Not Recommending An iPhone [Updated]

from the we-were-always-at-war-with-eurasia dept

Apple, of course, became a household name with its infamous 1984 commercial, about how Apple equipment would make sure that "1984" wasn't like 1984. However, now that it's 2010, apparently it's fine. As you may have heard, Consumer Reports yesterday posted that it could not recommend the iPhone 4 due to the widely discussed antenna problems. Apparently that was double-plus-ungood to the folks at Apple.

Ragaboo alerts us to the news that Apple has deleted a thread discussing this at the Apple support forums. And when they delete it, they mean it. People created a new thread, and it got deleted again. And again. And again and again. At least six such threads have been deleted, according to that TUAW article. Of course, all this is doing is drawing more attention to the issue and the fact that Apple is trying to deny it exists. Oh, and we were always at war with Eurasia.

Update: Apparently some of the threads have now come back... and people are suggesting that it may have been a glitch with Apple's forums, rather than anything malicious... We haven't yet seen a full explanation, but perhaps that's the case.

Filed Under: iphone, support
Companies: apple, consumer reports

Public Enemy Not Selling Well Enough On Sellaband: What Went Wrong?

from the connect-with-fans,-give-them-a-reason-to-buy dept

There have been a bunch of companies popping up lately that have allowed bands to help "pre-finance" an album, by getting fans to commit to pay up in exchange for some sort of added benefit. We've covered in great detail how Jill Sobule successfully used just such a method (on her own, not with a startup) to finance her last album. Earlier this year, though, the concept got a lot of attention when the group Public Enemy signed up with the company SellABand to try to raise $250,000 by the end of the year to finance its latest album. While we were impressed by such a well-known act trying such a system, we did note when it was announced that the "benefit" given by the group didn't really seem that compelling. The pricing seemed quite high for what people were getting, and there was little effort to actually "connect with fans." It was really just a very high-priced way of getting people to fund the next album.

So it doesn't come as much of a surprise that Public Enemy is struggling to reach its goal. It has raised over $70,000, which is nothing to complain about, but that's well short of the $250,000 goal.

There are definitely some important lessons to be learned from this. These sorts of models require a lot more than just putting it out there and expecting fans to automatically support you, no matter how big an act you might be. Jill Sobule worked really hard to cultivate and connect with her committed fanbase, and that's what helped her hit her goal. Public Enemy didn't seem to put much effort into that at all. Second, pricing really does matter. In giving people a "reason to buy" something, that doesn't mean you just slap a price on stuff. The price needs to be reasonable and make sense to people. Public Enemy's offerings just seemed pricey all around, even to fans of the group. At $100 you got a CD and a chance to buy a second CD at 50%, along with your name in a booklet? Eh. What's so exciting about that. At $250 they add in a t-shirt? That's $150 just for a t-shirt? You had to go all the way up to $500 before they would even autograph the CD. Sure, $1,000 for a 3 year unlimited backstage pass could be cool if you were going to see the band a lot, but that was the first offering that really seemed potentially worth the money for a serious fan.

So, I think there are some important lessons here. We've mainly focused on pulling lessons from the success stories, but the lessons from failures can be just as valuable. And, in this case, it goes back to our standard formula of Connect with Fans (CwF) and give them a Reason to Buy (RtB). Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Public Enemy really did much of either. They just expected the fans to come to them, and they priced everything too high, without giving really compelling lower end options. Because of that, they certainly got some people to pay up -- and, again, raising $70,000 is nothing to put down -- but it fell well short of the goal. In some ways, what they did is like a cargo cult: copying all the superficial aspects of what worked before, but not the really important stuff.

Filed Under: connecting with fans, public enemy, reason to buy, support, tiers
Companies: sellaband

Jack White The Latest Musician To Experiment With Smart New Business Models

from the another-exception? dept

Every time we discuss musicians or smaller labels that seem to be figuring out how to embrace modern business models by connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy, we're told that the model doesn't really work beyond a few small "exceptions." Yet, pretty much every day we keep getting sent more and more examples of these "exceptions." At some point we have to wonder what it will take for the disbelievers to recognize that it's not the exception at all. It is the rule.

The latest comes to us care of GrindEFX, who notes that Jack White (of The White Strpies and the Raconteurs) and his own label, Third Man Records, is offering a nice two tiered subscription service, where fans get extra benefits for being members. To be honest, this sounds an awful lot like the business model that we discussed way back in 2003 (and were told it would never work). It's interesting to see this done at the "label" level, where you get benefits from multiple bands on the label. That could definitely work for a label with a lot of bands that have similar sounds that fans are likely to enjoy across the board.

Anyway, we await the explanations in the comments for why this, too, is an exception and why this business model will never work for others.

Filed Under: business models, jack white, raconteurs, subscriptions, support, tiers, white stripes
Companies: third man records

Amanda Palmer Shows How Her Fans Support Her

from the connect-with-fans... dept

One of the most amazing things to me about those who think that we need stronger copyright laws or that the music industry will "die" if we don't enforce copyright laws more stringently is what they're really saying about fans: they're saying that fans don't want to support artists. However, as we've seen over and over and over again, that's simply not true. Fans have no problem supporting musicians, if those musicians make an effort to connect. The idea that fans will suddenly stop supporting artists is shown to be false over and over again. The latest example comes from Amanda Palmer -- who's been on something of a crusade to get out of her record label contract with a subsidiary of Warner Music, Roadrunner Music. In an email to Bob Lefsetz, she talks about the support her fans are giving (voluntarily) as well as how she's better connecting with her fans via Twitter (despite the record label saying Twitter wasn't worth bothering with):

it's a lesson in how the future of music is working - fans are literally (and i mean that....literally) lining up at the signing table after shows and HANDING me cash, saying "thank you".

i had to EXPLAIN to the so-called "head of digital media" of roadrunner australia WHAT TWITTER WAS. and his brush-off that "it hasn’t caught on here yet" was ABSURD because the next day i twittered that i was doing an impromptu gathering in a public park and 12 hours later, 150 underage fans - who couldn't attend the show - showed up to get their records signed.

no manager knew! i didn't even warn or tell her! no agents! no security! no venue! we were in a fucking public park! life is becoming awesome.

also interesting: i brought a troupe of back-up actors/dancers on the tour (we were only playing 300-1000 seaters) and had no money to pay them, so we passed the hat into the crowd every night. each performer walked from each show with about $200 in cash. the fans TOOK CARE OF THEM. they brought us dinner every night, gave us places to sleep. (i couldn't afford to put up that many people in hotels). all sans label, all using email and twitter. the fans followed the adventure. they LOVED HELPING.

so?

the times they are a-changing fucking dramatically, when pong-twittering with trent reznor means way more to your fan-base/business than whether or not the record is in fucking stores (and in my case, it ain't in fucking stores).

twitter is EVERYTHING that you explain in your rants: it is a MAINLINE insta-connection with the fans. there is ZERO middleman. my fans hung out with me all day on twitter today while i unpacked weird tour shit, fan art, gifts and paraphernalia that usually just ends up in my closet or in the trash and took pictures of it for them.

Connect with your fans. Give them a reason to buy and they'll support you. This doesn't require DRM, lawsuits, collective licensing, blanket licensing or even copyright. It's a model that works today and works well for musicians of all stripes (though, you actually have to be good... no new model works that well for bad musicians).

Filed Under: amanda palmer, fans, support

That's A Lot Of Non-Working Technology

from the stuff-breaks dept

The latest study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project says that while plenty of people are buying new gadgets and technology, an awful lot of them are having trouble getting or keeping it working. According to the survey, 48% said they need others' help in setting up new devices. Additionally, plenty of folks noted that when their stuff broke, it was a pain to fix it. In fact, 15% of people said they just gave up and left devices not working when they had troubles. While some may see this as an opportunity for various "home geek services" operations, it seems more like an alarm for the consumer electronics and technology industries that they have to start making stuff that isn't so confusing to set up and use.

Filed Under: broken, frustration, support, technology