SO. I did some stupid cut and pasting of javascript, making the maps stop working... But it is fixed now. Its a little slow, but hey, my compsci degree is an AA from the University of Google.com, so I am pretty satisfied with it all. Thursday was my last day at Iris, and Friday my last day at Dolby. It was really a great summer, albeit busy. I learned a lot and had a blast doing it! I am glad that I get time off to travel and hang out before going back to school.
Thursday we got to talk to the Programming Director over at a popular music download service. The most enlightening part of the conversation involved how he chose to feature various artists. He said 75% of the features come directly from Billboard rankings. His logic was that the labels are putting a lot of money behind some of these artists, to make them popular, the music store then features these artists to give consumers what they want. This sounds fishy if you ask me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “a lot of money behind these bands” means he is seeing any of it... but it just seems that a popular band need not be featured because they are already well known and don’t need “free” marketing from some retailer. If people want it, they will dig for it (And by dig I mean click on an artist on the Top 10 board on the main page...SO MUCH DIGGING!). Sure, maybe some Billboard artists have actual quality music and therefore deserve features on the main page. But 75% of all features coming directly from Billboard? Makes me a little sick. Yeah, big names will get big features. But if you have control over what people listen to, why add to the machine when you can give young minds new, good music?! It just lets you know how great of an industry this all is.
One of my coworkers sent me an essay written by about Tony Brummel, CEO of Victory Records, one of the largest indie record labels. Its by Brummel’s VP, Ramsey Dean, who has since left due to the horrible working conditions. The essay surfaced a few days ago, but Victory had it taken down. Its in Google’s Cache, but its starting to resurface. If you have a some spare time and are wanting a good horror story, check it out. If the link dies, or you dont want to read it in this hip-hop blog, let me know and I’ll email you the story!
Thursday we got to talk to the Programming Director over at a popular music download service. The most enlightening part of the conversation involved how he chose to feature various artists. He said 75% of the features come directly from Billboard rankings. His logic was that the labels are putting a lot of money behind some of these artists, to make them popular, the music store then features these artists to give consumers what they want. This sounds fishy if you ask me. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that “a lot of money behind these bands” means he is seeing any of it... but it just seems that a popular band need not be featured because they are already well known and don’t need “free” marketing from some retailer. If people want it, they will dig for it (And by dig I mean click on an artist on the Top 10 board on the main page...SO MUCH DIGGING!). Sure, maybe some Billboard artists have actual quality music and therefore deserve features on the main page. But 75% of all features coming directly from Billboard? Makes me a little sick. Yeah, big names will get big features. But if you have control over what people listen to, why add to the machine when you can give young minds new, good music?! It just lets you know how great of an industry this all is.
One of my coworkers sent me an essay written by about Tony Brummel, CEO of Victory Records, one of the largest indie record labels. Its by Brummel’s VP, Ramsey Dean, who has since left due to the horrible working conditions. The essay surfaced a few days ago, but Victory had it taken down. Its in Google’s Cache, but its starting to resurface. If you have a some spare time and are wanting a good horror story, check it out. If the link dies, or you dont want to read it in this hip-hop blog, let me know and I’ll email you the story!
2 comments:
Can you please send me the essay you are referring to that was written by Ramsey Dean about Tony Brummel as soon as possible. I might be doing some work with Victory and would like to hear this "horror story" first. Thank you very much, I really appreciate it.
Wow. Old post. I don't actually have this anymore, but if you go to archive.org, you might be able to find it there, maybe. Perhaps if you search for http://www.motokoaoyama.com/ on the waybackmachine and look in December 2007, you might be able to find a link to it... If I were looking, I would consider looking near the top right section of that archived page... But I can't confirm nor deny if you could or could not find this paper there.
It's very hard to kill things once they get put on the tubes.
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