virtualmusic.TV » counterculture

Hip Hop Bloggers “If I Ruled the Blogosphere”

Ryan Van Etten — Wed, 26 May 2010 15:44:45 +0000

If they’re stealing from you, then you’re on the right track.

“You’ve just got to be open and free, because that’s the way people want to get content on the web”, says Dallas Penn. “Don’t be afraid of someone stealing your work so much, just have more work to give, and, if people are stealing it, you know what you’re onto something. You’re moving in the right direction.” continued Penn, who runs the vlog internetscelebrities.com. Frank Talk summarized it in poetic terms, “If they’re stealing from you, [then] you’re on the right track.”

Everything can be adapted into digital content—think YouTube or think Flickr. Take hip hop producer Oddisee, who describes his internet-centralized strategy as being circular, wearing many hats, and promoting himself with content: “Everything I do is circulatory…You can’t just rap, you can’t just make beats, you can’t just do one thing anymore. It’s just impossible.” Oddisee uses free content as a means of promoting paid content. He distributes his music via oddisee.bandcamp.com.

If I Ruled the Blogosphere was a panel discussion hosted last month by the Future of Music Coalition and Words Beats & Life. The talk covers many sides of producing/curating music-related content on the web. It’s a bit long—in two parts below—and includes Q&A in Part 2. But when it came up in my Reader feed (via Digipendent) I put it on play while I was working and listened to it all. Anyone involved in blogging, music, or using the internet—pretty much everyone—should find insight from it.

The price of music on the web is heading towards zero. Artists need to use the web to centralize their fan base and reach out to them. But for that to work, fans need to connect with the individual as much—or more than—the music itself. “If people invest in you as an individual before they invest in you as an artist…you know…I mean’s there’s a lot of talented rappers out there…there’s a lot of talented poets…you know…painters…illustrators, but if nobody can connect with that person’s individual story, then they’re just another person doing it.” says blogger FWMJ of Rappers I Know.

As far as avoiding blog shutdowns, Meka Udoh from 2dopeboyz.com encouraged embedding players from other sites rather than posting mp3′s on your own server. I gave similar advice in February when several blogs were shutdown because of the DMCA. Especially in the case of Bandcamp embeds, the data goes back to the artist. It’s a win-win-win—it helps the blogger, the readers, and the artist.

Gaming For A Better Real World

Ryan Van Etten — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 20:30:59 +0000

Game designer/researcher Jane McGonigal asserts that collaborative videogames are the key to solving our real-world problems. In the video below, she outlines why she considers World of Warcraft to be an “ideal collaborative problem-solving environment.” She discusses four key factors in gaming culture that give gamers an edge at problem-solving—urgent optimism, social fabric, blissful productivity, and epic meaning. An underlying theme throughout the talk is motivation, and McGonigal’s research squares off soundly with Daniel Pink’s theories on motivation—namely the importance of mastery and purpose—and also with Will Wright, who in 2006 wrote that “the gamers’ mindset—the fact that they are learning in a totally new way—means they’ll treat the world as a place for creation, not consumption.”

Excerpts From Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk
3/17/10 Gaming can make a better world

3:30: This is a problem that a lot of gamers have: We feel that we are not as good in reality as we are in games. And I don’t mean just good as in successful—although that’s part of it. We do achieve more in game worlds. But I also mean good as in motivated to do something that matters—inspired to collaborate and cooperate. When we’re in game worlds, I believe that many of us become the best version of ourselves, the most likely to help at a moment’s notice, the most likely to stick with a problem as long as in takes, to get up after failure, and try again.

McGonigal’s recent videogame design: Urgent Evoke—a crash course in changing the world.
Image: flickr/avantgame

Die Antwoord Ups The Music Game To The Ninja Level

Ryan Van Etten — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:59:58 +0000

These people are awesome: South African rap-ravers Die Antwoord (translation: The Answer) have dazzled the interwebs in a matter of weeks with their latest music video Enter The Ninja. A literal butterfly effect is happening—Die Antwoord is rippling the music world.

Many people don’t know how to react—a sign of great art—and many are obsessed. Albeit R-rated, Enter The Ninja is uplifting and upbeat. It has all the key components to music video greatness—originality, emotion, energy, dance moves, realism, symbolism, shock value, humor, balance, and masterful execution. It’s a musical blend of deft artistic expression formed by four creative friends having fun. On DieAntwoord.com you can listen to their 16-track beat-heavy album $O$. The site is in-your-face artistic euro-style and includes 20 fun facts about the Zef-rap crew, which consists of dynamic rapper frontman Ninja (Waddy Jones), sexy profane blonde singer Yo-Landi Vi$$er, and PC-beatmaker DJ Hi-Tek. Also appearing in the crew is Leon Botha—a Cape Town artist with the hyper-aging disease progeria. Each member is a unique persona fueled by their own inner Zef—a term best described by Ninja in the video interview below the break. Ninja says, “If you love it, we love you too, and if you hate it, it’s because you’re not on my level.” Pitchfork posted an email interview.

Ninja has sculpted, both with his flesh and his music, the ultimate South African. He is everything in the country, “fucked into one person.” That he is willing to go so far to embody this idea is thrillingly, gloriously radical. Cape Flats Calling | The Walrus

Die Antwoord is radical but true-to-life, and personally I can’t get enough of their Zef flow. Enter The Ninja is my favorite track but the whole album is sublimely groundbreaking. I love the lyrics, the vision, the creativity, and the fierce (but IMO positive) energy. Expect Die Antwoord to tour in Europe/USA this year, and if the video below is any indication, it looks like the show will be next level.

Fans Take The Power Back—RATM’s Facebook-Induced No. 1

Ryan Van Etten — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 03:36:48 +0000

Rage gets some air on stage during their encore at Lollapalooza 2008 in Chicago.
Image: flickr/revolute

“Killing In The Name” was the lead-off single from Rage Against The Machine’s 1992 self-titled debut album. The track became a major US hit, and RATM became an icon of 90s alternative music—their one-of-a-kind fusion of rap, rock, metal, and funk with rebellious explicit lyrics was addictive ear candy. I was in high school in the mid 90s, and Rage Against The Machine was a staple—you heard them everywhere. Killing In The Name reached no. 25 on the UK Singles Chart in 1992.

Fast-forward 17 years. 2009. Two RATM fans, Jon and Tracy Morter, decide that it’s time for X-Factor’s dominating influence on the Christmas UK Single to end. They launch a Facebook group and page dubbed ratm4xmas and amass half a million fans in a matter of weeks with a simple agenda: “Fed up of Simon Cowell’s latest karaoke act being Christmas No.1? Purchase Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing In The Name’ on Christmas Week as a protest.” They pull it off. Killing In The Name hits the no. 1 spot and it sets a record as being the first song to hit no. 1 through downloads alone. Compare back to 1992 when the single only hit no. 25 and realize that in today’s music world, the fans want to take the power back.

Bill Burton: “Sometimes we limit ourselves by what we believe we can do. We don’t even start. We don’t even try.” Burton delivered this powerful point in his TEDx talk last week, called How To Have A Christmas Number One Single, where, citing RATM’s rise to UK Xmas no. 1, he exemplified the boundless force of social media, and, through a storytelling memorization activity, he demonstrated the limitless—but often unrealized—potential of the human mind. Nothing is impossible.

Dec. ’09 Press

More than half a million people downloaded the band’s famously anti-authoritarian and expletive laden track “Killing in the Name” in what was seen as a broad protest against the increasing influence of manufactured pop music. It is the first time a non-X-Factor song has made it to Christmas number one for four years and represents a major snub to the show’s creator Cowell who angrily described the campaign to deny him another number one slot as “very Scrooge”. (The Independent)

Personally, I’d love RATM to get to No 1, not because I think it would be a victory for “proper” rock. I actually think a RATM victory would be a triumph for pop. The song might be old, but having a fan-powered campaign propel it to the chart summit against the might of an entertainment powerhouse like SyCo would tell you more about the democratised, downloadable and downright free-for-all nature of the pop charts in 2009 than anything else. (The Guardian)

MusicVita Interviews Jon Morter (excerpt)

MusicVita: This may be an obvious question, but why did you choose RATM as the song? Did you feel that the Xfactor is “the system,” and you “won’t do what they tell you?”

Jon Morter: There were a few reasons why I chose Rage. The main reason was that the tune ROCKS! And I felt how brilliant it would be not only to have the X-Factor single reach No.2, but to have it beaten by a song of this nature. When was the last time we had a furious rap/metal track at No.1? Limp Bizkit pulled it off in 2001…and Iron Maiden managed to knock off Sir Cliff’s seasonal chart-topper back in 1991…but generally this is the exception. The track itself has a fantastic defiant edge to it as well which helped. Many saw it as a rallying cry against ‘the machine’ of X-Factor domination, so yes ‘Killing In The Name’ was a great choice if I may say so myself!

MusicVita: What do you think RATM being Xmas Number One meant to the music industry?

Jon Morter: I think it woke a lot of them up. It showed that a large portion of music fans in the UK were fed up with being fed that particular musical diet. It also meant that social networking, if done properly, can really create waves that can’t be ignored. I’m hoping it will kick-start some other artists/labels to release things at Christmas again and to give the X-Factor a damn good challenge…David CAN beat Goliath, it’s just that nobody was expecting it to be us!