I am speaking at Music Biz 2018 in Nashville next week –
This conference may be considered one of the most important music business conferences of the year, this particular stanza being the 60th.
Successfully Managing Your Releases: Best Practices and Obligations for the Independent Label or Artist
Successfully releasing your music as an independent label or artist is often times coupled with a unique set of challenges and obligations. This presentation’s aim is to highlight and discuss these obligations, while focusing on the implementation of “best practices” to ensure your music is released legally, and your projects run smoothly.
Items include choosing the right distributor, registering your original compositions with the PRO’s and Streaming Services, registering your master recordings with Sound Exchange, getting a publishing administrator, YouTube Registration and Collections, and acquiring an accounting team assembled to handle the distribution of your earnings, to name a few of the topics.
Please come say hi after this panel or drop me a line if you’ll be at the conference to connect at another time. A sneaky, adult beverage may be in order.
Selling Your House For More Than It’s Worth –
I found an interesting article recently that was a bit of a “Buyer’s Beware” message, explaining that features often listed in homes for sale may not be worth it, if purchased a la carte.
https://www.realestate.com/articles/finance/design-features-that-increase-home-value
And then a neighbor began to ask for advice from me, a younger person, on what they might do to bring their home up to snuff to maximize value, as they prepare to sell. So, here! Consider these ideas.
Here’s a sampling of ideas that may pronounce the value of real estate you’re selling. Of course, if you’re in the market to buy, you may push back when negotiating price, relative to items you know you can (and will probably enjoy) find at the flea market.
| Design Feature | Sold For (Percentage More Than Home Value) | |
| 1. Solar panels | 40 percent | |
| 2. Craftsman | 34 percent | |
| 3. Coffered ceiling | 29 percent | |
| 4. Claw-foot tub | 29 percent | |
| 5. Mid-century | 28 percent | |
| 6. In-law | 28 percent | |
| 7. Landscape/path/outdoor/deck lighting | 26 percent | |
| 8. Exposed beam or ceiling | 26 percent | |
| 9. Farmhouse sink | 26 percent | |
| 10. Wainscot | 26 percent |
Larry Harvey – 1948 – 2018 –
What the man built changed the course of my life. The friends I’ve made and lessons I’ve learned as a result of that gathering in the dust has forever enriched how I view and move through my days.
Individually, I can thank Doug Campbell (http://projectfresh.com/) for inviting me along to my first Burn. We met in the Mexico City airport in 2010, I on my way home to LA from Buenos Aires after a round of footie and he on the opposite route on a vision quest. We made fast friends and said goodbye, as you do. But we stayed in touch, which is a bit more rare in the transient nature of back packers sharing a laugh at a lay-over airport. Doug returned home several months later and invited me, as promised, to Mind Share LA, a monthly TED-esk event that he curated. I began to volunteer on my second visit and he generously invited me to the rest of his crew, mostly whom were burners – a group of people that I admire and rely on and have become my family and that I miss dearly at present. That next burn he invited me to join him to camp with the Phage (our camp name). And the rest is history, as they say. I still call Doug one of my best friends and we always laugh so big at the hijinx and realizations and acts of muppethood we’ve committed since we last made time to hang out. One ritual he’s been awesome at is scheduling at least a FaceTime session in the future during the current hang, to give us something to look forward to.
While Burning Man is most certainly the biggest party on earth, it is so much more. For the uninitiated:
https://burningman.org/culture/philosophical-center/10-principles/
Burning Man co-founder Larry Harvey wrote the Ten Principles in 2004 as guidelines for the newly-formed Regional Network. They were crafted not as a dictate of how people should be and act, but as a reflection of the community’s ethos and culture as it had organically developed since the event’s inception.
Radical Inclusion
Anyone may be a part of Burning Man. We welcome and respect the stranger. No prerequisites exist for participation in our community.
Gifting
Burning Man is devoted to acts of gift giving. The value of a gift is unconditional. Gifting does not contemplate a return or an exchange for something of equal value.
Decommodification
In order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.
Radical Self-reliance
Burning Man encourages the individual to discover, exercise and rely on his or her inner resources.
Radical Self-expression
Radical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.
Communal Effort
Our community values creative cooperation and collaboration. We strive to produce, promote and protect social networks, public spaces, works of art, and methods of communication that support such interaction.
Civic Responsibility
We value civil society. Community members who organize events should assume responsibility for public welfare and endeavor to communicate civic responsibilities to participants. They must also assume responsibility for conducting events in accordance with local, state and federal laws.
Leaving No Trace
Our community respects the environment. We are committed to leaving no physical trace of our activities wherever we gather. We clean up after ourselves and endeavor, whenever possible, to leave such places in a better state than when we found them.
Participation
Our community is committed to a radically participatory ethic. We believe that transformative change, whether in the individual or in society, can occur only through the medium of deeply personal participation. We achieve being through doing. Everyone is invited to work. Everyone is invited to play. We make the world real through actions that open the heart.
Immediacy
Immediate experience is, in many ways, the most important touchstone of value in our culture. We seek to overcome barriers that stand between us and a recognition of our inner selves, the reality of those around us, participation in society, and contact with a natural world exceeding human powers. No idea can substitute for this experience.
Thank you, Larry.
Make your web surfing faster and more private –
Cloudflare.com just launched an important option to default settings you may employ to browse the web.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/announcing-1111/
From their site:
DNS: Internet’s Directory
Nearly everything on the Internet starts with a DNS (Domain Name Service) request. DNS is the Internet’s directory. Click on a link, open an app, send an email and the first thing your device does is ask the directory: Where can I find this?
Unfortunately, by default, DNS is usually slow and insecure. Your ISP, and anyone else listening in on the Internet, can see every site you visit and every app you use — even if their content is encrypted. Creepily, some DNS providers sell data about your Internet activity or use it target you with ads.
We think that’s gross. If you do too, now there’s an alternative: 1.1.1.1
We will never log your IP address (the way other companies identify you). And we’re not just saying that. We’ve retained KPMG to audit our systems annually to ensure that we’re doing what we say.
Frankly, we don’t want to know what you do on the Internet—it’s none of our business—and we’ve taken the technical steps to ensure we can’t.
We’ve built 1.1.1.1 to be the Internet’s fastest DNS directory. Don’t take our word for it. The independent DNS monitor DNSPerf ranks 1.1.1.1 the fastest DNS service in the world.
Since nearly everything you do on the Internet starts with a DNS request, choosing the fastest DNS directory across all your devices will accelerate almost everything you do online.
Go here (https://1.1.1.1/) to learn how to change the settings on your computer of phone to have a faster, more private experience.
What’s on the radio –
Band of Horses – No One’s Gonna Love You – https://youtu.be/cuZo7pLnL7c
Imogen Heap – Hide and Seek – https://youtu.be/UYIAfiVGluk
These two songs are special to me, lately. Ask me in person.