the ball in my mouse is not rolling properly, in fact it hasn’t been rolling properly for a long time. is this some kind of weird allegory for my mental state? is the proverbial “ball” in my proverbial “mouse” busted? perhaps. but my actual real mouse is also busted, so i’ve had to buy a new one.

i’ve never been so acutely aware of how much i rely on my mouse when making music. it really is the main physical thing that mediates my creation of music - i’ve got keyboards and knobs and faders and pads too, but an unnervingly large amount of my work is done via the frustratingly fine movements of my shaky hands, trying to wrangle a little white arrow to do my bidding. drawing envelopes, grabbing hold of virtual pots, tapping in tempos and drawing midi notes with the unreliable click of the mouse button. now that i’ve got this new mouse, i’m finding that i have to learn its movements - its sensitivities are subtly different, the shape of the mouse in my hand is different. i took for granted how transparent my use of my mouse had become. now when i’m trying to navigate my way around music software i’m finding that my formerly trusty motor memory can no longer be trusted - i can’t make the fine and immediate adjustments i used to, because when my hand moves to where my brain thinks that things are, the mouse pointer now consistently misses the mark. i feel like a guitarist who wakes up to find he has webbed fingers. i must resolve to become less reliant on my mouse.

this, combined with the unseasonal heat, has plunged faux pas productivity to record lows in the last weekend but it means i’ve been doing a lot of reading. i’m learnin mama i’m learnin. a friend of mine - lets call him an ‘academic’ though that might make him shudder - he told me the other night that he wished that he could just learn knowledge and not be expected to do anything with it. i feel the same way. i have a tendency to suck knowledge in and then struggle to find meaningful ways to re-express it. knowledge just cumulates and confuses in my mind. i’m not sure what practical or specific use most of this knowledge has - i hold on to some lame hope that one day something will spring forth from my subconscious thanks to years of the gestating knowledge-mess. my mind is like the compost heap that i continue to pile shit on to, hoping that miraculous flowers will emerge despite my complete lack of interest in gardening.

–

i find this whole trent reznor thing that happened last weekend really exciting and fascinating. i’m not a NIN kind of guy, though i’ve got a soft spot for the perfect drug (admit it, you do too). reznor still gives me the willies for sure. his $1.6 million windfall points to a couple of things. firstly, if you are a musician with control over the distribution of your own material, and you also happen to have a huge, obsessive, internet-savvy fanbase, new digital distribution options give you the opportunity like never before to suck millions of dollars out of your plebs.

now, let me stop here for a sec. i’m going to riff a little bit on music and money. if it makes you uncomfortable reading about this stuff, look away now. i, like many others, am trying to make sense of all of this because it feels like somewhere in there, with all these new options, there might be a way in which i can set myself up to have a sustainable music career without making artistic compromises. thats a pretty big carrot dangling, so i’m not ignoring ‘the new model’ or leaving it to someone else to figure out. i’m no expert; lets figure it out together.

click to follow me down the rabbit hole (mice hole?):

750,000 or so people bought or downloaded the NIN release, either for free or at one of the various tiers of reznor’s pricing model. at the top end, 2500 people paid US$300 for the deluxe reznor-doodled edition of the 4-CD set. straight up, in aussie dollars, thats $800,000 right there. obviously you got to minus the costs of production, but still, thats a lot of money. its really those 2500 obsessive fans - whatever their motivations - and not the 750,000 or so others that have made the most important contribution to the reznor windfall.

can this kind of tiered model be adapted for struggling indie artists at the much much lower levels, who would be more than happy with a return of $8,000 than $800,000… ? eerily, a few weeks before the NIN release a guy called kevin kelly wrote up a great article called 1000 true fans. (thanks to ryan for the link):

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version… Let’s peg that per diem each True Fan spends at $100 per year. If you have 1,000 fans that sums up to $100,000 per year, which minus some modest expenses, is a living for most folks.

now if you’re starting to squirm in your seat, you’re not alone - when you start talking about capitalising on ‘true fans’ it starts to feel like you are painting these people as kind of mindless cash holes, ultraconsumers that somehow you brainwash into buying everything you produce, or as kevin says “the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat”. we can only guess at the motivations behind those 2500 mega-reznor-fans who paid premium but its probably fair to say that they weren’t motivated by the thought that their $300 was going to help reznor to keep making music. i mean, he’s doing ok.

but as a bedroom DIY indie, i think the tiered pricing model is pretty exciting. lets say we have three pricing options. give away some of your music for free. lets say half of your album. then, offer a very attractive low cost option for people to buy your full album on CD. here’s a crazy idea: sell your CD for the costs of production and postage. you’re a bohemian artist, you’re not in it for the money, you just want to get the music out there. make this clear to your potential customers. they are getting what they are paying for - they are paying for the cost of production and postage. thats where the money is going, not to some imagined coffers, not to retail middle men. let them know. you’re not going to make any money off this level of the model but as long as you don’t lose any…

and then you offer a premium package, for $50 or something, where you throw in some bonus things with the CD, like providing the tracks from your songs as separated parts for potential remix (a pretty cool element of the reznor idea to be honest), or some handmade artwork or extensive notes or something. charge a (reasonable) premium amount for this package but don’t spend heaps of money in the production. this is the level with the profit margin. and make this point clear to your fans and prospective benefactors. if they spend $50 on the premium package, make it clear to them that most of it is going into your bank account. they are not exchanging money for your product - they are, in fact, donating to your cause, and receiving your CD as a thankyou gift. they are benefactors. this is a more noble vision of ‘true fans’ - true fans want to be your benefactors. and never mind 1000. just get 100, including your nan, who wants to see you succeed. if you’re making $40 on each purchase, then you got $4000. thats small change to reznor, but that amount opens up a lot of possibilities for bedroom artists to take steps towards bolder plans.

perhaps the key here is transparency in the costs of production. is this a revolutionary idea? - when someone comes to your online store to buy your CD, tell them exactly where the money gets spent. give them a breakdown on the costs of digipaks, of shiny discs, of envelopes, stamps, bubble wrap. show them that you are willing to give your music away for free - because you are, because you really just want it to be heard - but then give them a clear opportunity to make their own informed decision to put a much higher value on your music. show them the math.