For those who don’t know, Twitter is a service that lets you post bursts of random nonsense onto the internet in a format called a ‘tweet’. Tweets are limited to 140 characters, so it’s an exercise in succinctity for people who have a lot of nothing to say. Tweets can be sent/received from the web, cell phones, and automatically (as this blog post does through twitterfeed) 

The real-world equivalent of Twitter would be: standing in the mall courtyard, shouting out short sentences along with everyone else, as if the whole world had suddenly come down with Tourette’s Syndrome. It’s interesting to simply watch the rolling stream of collective consciousness going absolutely nowhere in thousands of small steps.

Even when you understand it, it still doesn’t make sense. Twitter about as useful as a wet-nap is to a scuba diver.

I’ve been on Twitter since middle of 2008 www.twitter.com/conradzero, and its undergone quite a shift in both popularity and purpose. People everywhere are scrambling to see how they can use Twitter in new and different ways. I have to admit that part of me finds it exciting when some new odd open-source project comes along, and the innovators dive in headfirst trying to twist it into usability. 

The number of Twitter-ish applications are growing at a preposterous rate, and you can keep track of them at twtbase.com. Lots of people are desperately trying to integrate music and video ability into Twitter. And of course you can’t help but be amazed at people trying to figure out how to use Twitter to make money. I can tell you there will always be a market for idiots buying books on ” How to make money using Twitter,” even when the only obvious way is to sell a book titled, “How to make money using Twitter.” 

I was surprised to discover this message in my inbox last Monday: “The Dalai Lama is following you on Twitter!” My surprise was only matched by my disappointment when I found out that it wasn’t the Dalai Lama at all. [UPDATE: Turns out the account was turned over to His Holiness, so you can color me re-surprised!] I’m guessing God and Satan on Twitter aren’t really who they say they are either.

One of the more interesting uses of Twitter that I’ve seen is people using it to release short stories, fiction or poetry in small, 140-character pieces. I might consider doing that myself later this year, with a tie-in story to my upcoming Demonslayer’s Handbook.

So, what’s the future of Twitter look like? Looking into the Magic 8-Ball; I can imagine where my cell phone is programmed to post tweets for me based on my GPS location and a wetwire connection to my central nervous system, requiring no interaction on my part:

• 1:31AM – Still at the computer. [Mood: Passive/Receptive/Gathering | Elapsed time: 2hrs 41min)
• 1:38AM - Wandered into bathroom [Privacy mode activated]
• 1:42AM – Standing in front of open refrigerator [Mood: Hungry/Active/Hunting]
• 1:51AM - On the couch, eating Ben and Jerry’s Heath Bar & Coffee Ice Cream (Yum!), watching Pray For Daylight. [Mood: Sated]

Basically my entire day getting poured out into the rolling consciousness cesspool of Twitterville. From there, it would be searched/scanned/filtered for target marketing purposes and aggregated Sociology studies, and the important bits tagged and stored in Evernote for future reference.

Privacy issues notwithstanding, we’ll be able to pull up every moment of our lives, and/or stalk anyone on the planet without bothering them.   This should be handy for settling court cases (where were you on the night of August 6th?) and interpersonal arguments (When did you eat the last of the Ice Cream?), not to mention any debates on how boring our lives really are. 

Add some audio/video ability to Twitter, and now you’ve really got something. We’ll get together for the holidays and pull up Twitter to play back “The Infamous Shaving Cream Incident” from each persons’ point of view. We can even pass these moments on to future generations, so instead of telling our kids what it was like heating the house with gas or electricity instead of an in-home fission reactor, we’ll be able to show them. Over and over again. And we’ll all wonder how we ever got along without it.

That’s when someone will look up this old blog post and read my quote:

Twitter is about as useful as a wet-nap is to a scuba diver. – Zero

So, what do you-all think of Twitter? Any predictions about it might evolve into? Comment below or throw me a tweet.

Sounds like it’s only a matter of time before you get rid of DRM and the idiot who signed off on it. You don’t have a choice really, you simply are not going to stop file sharing.

Remember when CDs came out and people could make high-quality copies of new releases from CD to cassette tape ? Remember how you cried yourself to sleep thinking of all those lost dollars? What did you NOT learn from that experience?

Remember Buisness 101 Law of Supply and Demand? Until the price of songs comes down to meet the demand, people will simply P2P their music, or pass on it. Its a mixed blessing: the internet has INCREASED THE ACCESSABILITY of music, and DECREASED THE VALUE. Accept it, and bring the prices down enough that your customers will gladly pay to download the song from you, rather than to try and figure out how BitTorrent works. Hell, if songs were a quarter apiece, I’d pay you to download it instead of walking out to the car to get the CD!

Instead of crying about how the price of music has gone down, rejoice that your distribution costs have reduced exponentially! Rejoice that you can reach markets you never dreamed of, in countries where CDs have to be sent in by carrier pigeon or camel-ed across the desert!

Where are the New Bestsellers?

Now that that’s all cleared up, where is the next “Hotel California”? Where is the next “Jagged Little Pill”? Where is the next “Nevermind”? The crap you put out now is the ‘Reality TV Programming’ of music. You are quick to push shitbands like The Fray, but have you even heard of Vampire Hands? Jagged Spiral? Nothing Gained? Betty X?

Where is the imagination? Where is the experimentation? Is Trent Reznor the only Visionary you could find? You need to MAKE new genres, not try to copy ones which were designed to poke fun at you. Let the kids have their “Indie”, and make something they haven’t even dreamed of.

Stop wasting your resources fighting a losing battle AGAINST YOUR OWN CUSTOMERS, and spend them on making it even easier to get music to your customers!

Get in bed with companies no one else could imagine. Fire your marketing staff, and hire some 16-year olds to run the think tank. Give away free mp3 downloads with Happy Meals or Apple Jacks or Little Debbies.

Figure out why people can’t buy a song the second they hear it, anywhere, anytime. If there was a “MINE!” button on your radio, and it cost a quarter to push it, and whammo-o! people could own a copy of the song they were listening to… If there was a way to access the song purchase via cell phone… If there was a simple way for people to provide access to your downloads through links on their own website or e-mail signatures…

If you diverted your funding away from lawsuits against your customers and into ideas like these… can your tiny minds grasp how much money you would make?

Also, get people to think about music when they are NOT near their computer, because if you read http://lefsetz.com/ he will tell you that radio simply isn’t doing it.

No charge for this advice.

Love,
-CZ

PS: Abolish Dashboard Confessional. In fact, abolish the entire Emo genre. It is the open chancre sore on the the face of music history.

Check out this story in the NY Times by Jeff Leeds, about a group just signed by a record label..

…to do Two songs. TWO. Thas’all.

Sound Familiar?

Singling out the Bestseller

The album distribution model was perfect for hard-copy records, tapes and CDs. So you really liked Pour Some Sugar On Me because you heard it on the radio. You had your mom drive you down to Musicland on 3 August in 1987 and bought Def Leppard’s Hysteria the day it came out, because if you didn’t get it, you swore you would die. You paid $11.99 just like I did.

Why did you pay that much for one song? You didn’t. You only wanted the single, but it was only available on cassette tape, and it cost $3.99. A total gyp. The CD with 12 songs for $12 is a hell of a deal in comparison. Those were your options, and they sucked.

But not anymore.

Thank God For The Internet

On the internet, you preview each song before you buy it, and you pick and choose the songs you want. Who the hell wants to buy the entire CD of Wang Chung’s Points on the Curve for ten bucks, when all you really want is Dance Hall Days for a dollar?

Yes, the time is up for the album. It’s just as well, since few bands use albums to their full potential anyway. The article mentions Tool and Radiohead, but has anyone heard of Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick? The CD has one track on it, about 45 min long. Its not even a concept album. It’s a 45 min SONG.

Concept albums? Pink Floyd mastered the art form, but that was back in the day when people listened to albums. Nobody does that anymore. You’d have to be drunk or stupid to even try that shit nowadays.

Subscribe to the Future

But even buying a single for a dollar is going to become unnecessary:

Another solution being debated in the industry would transform record labels into de facto fan clubs. Companies including the Warner Music Group and the EMI Group have been considering a system in which fans would pay a fee, perhaps monthly, to “subscribe” to their favorite artists and receive a series of recordings, videos and other products spaced over time.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/26/business/media/26music.html?ex=1332561600&en=7a34accc8988c811&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

I wonder if I’ll get any credit for coming up with the idea first.

Blog on,
-CZ

Strange dream last night that something odd happened to Hawaii. Or maybe IN Hawaii. Something Big, and possibly Bad. Like maybe Hawaii sinks into the ocean instead of California. Or maybe Atlantis rises up next to it and attacks. Or maybe Don Ho dies. I don’t know. The harder I try to remember the dream, the more I get: Reply Hazy, Try Again Later.

It did not help to see several people dressed in Hawaiian Shirts today. Maybe my dream was trying to warn me that people would wear Hawaiian shirts?

Anyway, I would rather look like an idiot for saying something then have nothing happen, than to say nothing and then something happens…

Blog on,
-CZ