Waist Deep in the Media Swamp

Kevin Smith - writer, director, internet entrepreneur

The Holy Grail for anyone involved in media has been how to monetize internet entertainment. Independent filmmaker, writer-director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Dogma, and many others) has created his own model for a successful entrepreneurial internet show business enterprise that works for his audience. He has become the ringmaster in a multi-ringed comedy circus that is starting to make real money.

Silent Bob (his movie character) is silent no longer. Starting with a single, free podcast, 3 years ago, he now has a network of over nearly a dozen weekly podcasts, has his own theater to record them live with paying customers, tours the country doing live shows, and that’s just the beginning…

The TV talk show format is moribund, to say the least. Though Conan’s reincarnation on cable is interesting, it is still following the same, boring-ass format everyone else uses that was originally set in the 1960′s. Guests are booked to plug their latest movie/TV show/book/whatever. There are no conversations, hosts read pre-screened questions from cue cards. The few who attempt conversations (like Charlie Rose) tend to be extra-dull or so full of themselves you can’t stomach it for long. It’s not entertaining.

Talk radio, with a few NPR-like exceptions, is no better. If it’s not screaming ideologues from all sides of the political spectrum, it’s infomercials. Maybe a few sports talk hosts attempt actual conversations.

Then came podcasting on Apple iTunes. Free, original, niche, DIY programming.

Regardless of the fact that all Apple cares about is selling you the devices to play podcasts, the tools to create them, and owns the major distribution channel for them, an immense amount of creativity was unleashed – most of it bad, but that was not the point. For virtually no cost, anyone could now create anything they want and have it distributed around the world.

You Tube is similar. But despite all of Google’s as well as many other third party aggregator’s efforts, there still is no easy way to curate and organize the content there. Apple TV, Google TV and others still have not gotten it right. It will happen someday, but has not yet.

Enter Kevin Smith.

I’ve had a lot of respect for Kevin Smith for many years. He has always taken his own path – regardless of the critics (and the box office). And he is funny. Since early 2007, he and his partner/producer Scott Mosier created their own podcast, called SModcast. What began as essentially weekly hour-long two guys sitting around shooting-the-shit, profanity-laced, sometimes gross, humorous conversations where no topic is off-limits, has just had its 150^th episode – quite a feat for any show. I started listening about the time they released their third or fourth show.

At the time, Smith had also gotten a reputation for his no-holds-barred, funny, live Q & A sessions at ComicCon and a few other places. A few months after he began SModcast and while I was a VP at Final Draft, we hired him to be our keynote speaker at our Screenwriter’s Showcase. As I was escorting him from the Green Room, I mentioned that I had listened to all the shows and that they were great. He seemed a bit surprised and said, “You’ve listened to them all? ” (As a keynote he killed, BTW)

Since then Smith has slowly expanded this single podcast into a media mini-empire:

• A network of at least 10 regular, free, mostly weekly, different SModcasts, with various characters & associates from Smith’s life (my favorite is Hollywood Babble-On – HBO with Ralph Garman of KROQ/Kevin & Bean Show)
• Live SModcasts and Q & A’s across the country – including Carnegie Hall (Smith travels by bus like a rock band since his Too Fat To Fly Incident on Southwest Airlines)
• Leasing the SModcastle Theater in West Hollywood last summer – where the podcasts are recorded in front of live, admission paying audiences
• In the past month, Hollywood Babble-On & Jay and Silent Bob Get Old have moved to the Jon Lovitz Comedy Club at Universal CityWalk – bigger venue, higher admission cost

The amazing thing is Smith participates in many of the podcasts every week – even while shooting a movie this fall (Red State will premier at Sundance in January). Of course, there is a podcast for the movie, too.

This week four of the shows made the iTunes Best 2010 Podcasts in the Audio category (out of the top 25) – Hollywood Babble-On, Jay and Silent Bob Get Old, Tell ‘Em Steve-Dave, and Highlands: A Peephole History.

Very impressive. And he is making money, too.

Some facts from an interview he recently did for Fast Company:

• SModcastle shows… 50 seats at 10 or 25 bucks a head depending on the show, one or two performances a night, four nights a week, in a place that rents for $4,000 a month
• SModcast gets $2,000 for an advertising spot, with two spots for Adult Toys running in a typical hour
• He performs weddings (SMarriages) at SModcastle for $5,000 each
• There’s plenty of merchandise for sale (of course)

With all this talking, Smith has honed his skills as a talk-show host. Early this month, he recorded an almost 3 hour SModcast with science fiction/fantasy writer Neil Gaiman and Neil’s wife, self-described art chick & member of Dresden Dolls, Amanda Palmer. It was called Starfucking with Kevin Smith.

This is a good example of what 21^st Century entertainment can be – especially for talk shows. It is intimate & engaging; targets a niche audience; contains intelligent, witty, adult conversation; and offers interesting music and entertaining readings.

Brilliant. Not your father’s Tonight Show. Definitely not for everyone. But perfect for Kevin Smith. And his audience.

That audience is huge. He has over 1.7 million followers on Twitter (that’s as many people that watch the new Conan most nights). He tweets humorously, obsessively, and interactively. He is a very creative and clever writer and he plays this 140 note instrument very well.

He is a true internet media mogul.

What’s next? Slowly, more multimedia elements – jingles, audio and video clips, etc. – are being incorporated into the shows (even though you can’t see the clips on a podcast). Perhaps someday they will begin video podcasting. Now that will be interesting…

Smith seems to be having a ball running the whole deal. He loves talking & entertaining people. He can geek out when he wants to. He is making a living creating an entertainment product that a lot of people enjoy. He is doing it his way and making money. That’s what every internet entrepreneur strives to do.

Update – Monday Jan 24, 2011

It was no surprise to hear Smith’s announcement after the Red State premier at Sundance last night that he was going to self-distribute the movie under the Smodcast Pictures banner. Many people immediately jumped on him calling ‘bullshit’ while others applauded.

I think that is a logical progression that evolved naturally given what he has accomplished in the last few years.

As he says, Indie 2.0 (as he terms it) is going back to the past business model when movies went from town-to-town as part of a larger road show. He will have value-adds at every performance (Q & A’s, other Smodcast celebs, artifacts from movies) and – no surprise – ticket prices will be considerably higher.  His fans will consider it a great bonus and he will probably succeed.

Anybody can make a movie… What we aim to prove is that anybody can release a movie now as well.

Anybody with almost 2 million Twitter followers should be able to do so. He’s worked hard to develop his audience and now he will reap the rewards. His is a ringmaster of his own circus.

It will also be interesting to see how he reacts when it is pirated.

Over the last few months, I have been blogging about my adventure in getting my buddy & independent musician Jimmy Z on iTunes Ping.

I was asked to condense all my tribulations into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

BTW – Michael’s site has lots of great resources & suggestions for independent musicians.

The business and tech blog, Silicon Alley Insider, has sited Ping as being the sixth biggest tech flop of the year and site it for utterly failing to gain traction.

As my previous posts have indicated, post-launch communications to independent musicians was mishandled, the integration with Twitter is lame, no one can really use it other than to promote music sales as is is not truly social and open, etc.

It isn’t like Apple to continue to support lame initiatives and products, so my hope is still that they might get it all together. But the clock is ticking. Loudly. I still hold out some hope they will pull it together on 2011.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

Read Write Web analyzed recent Twitter data regarding the new Ping integration.

In brief, so far there is low volume and no retweets. Here is their graph of English language results, yellow being the 1.41% Ping retweets:

They compare that to a 6% retweet rate for the Instagram photo-sharing program over the same period.

Though not discussed in the report, maybe its because when you click the link in Twitter it takes you to iTunes. What if you don’t have iTunes installed? And most people do not. Fail.

Read the complete post here.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

Today, Twitter and Apple announced that iTunes Ping can now be integrated in Twitter.

I’m not convinced it will help independent musicians, but it will surely generate more revenue for Apple.

It will be interesting to see how deeply this is adopted. We’ll be watching this closely over the next few months.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

[this is a continuation of a previous post and other previous posts about my saga with iTunes Ping]

Apple has responded to more of my questions about how our iTunes Ping profile for independent musician Jimmy Z can be best utilized.

I asked, “How can an artist have their page customized (like Jack Johnson’s)?” The reply:

The profiles with different backgrounds are transferred automatically from artists pages in the iTunes store that have artwork and backgrounds applied. This application of art/background is based on decisions by our editorial team and usually occur around a new release.

My followup  – “How can we apply/request to have art added to the Artist Page, etc?” They replied:

You will need to work with your label rep to see whether this is something to consider for the next release.

This was the same gray area we found ourselves in when I initially attempted to get Jimmy Z a profile, so I wrote “We have no label rep. We have digital distribution via CD Baby.”

The person that replied is in the Independent Artist & Label Relations department:

You should route your request for an artist page through CD Baby & they can discuss with their rep here. I can tell you in advance that Artist Pages take a lot of work from our Designers & UI Engineers, so we’re only able to do a very limited number of them.  They are usually reserved for the most popular artists, who have an extensive sales history (Jack Johnson, Kanye West, U2, etc. being examples of the kind of artists).  We’d love to do more, but we just don’t have the resources to do those types of pages for every artist.

So the answer is essentially – you don’t have a chance to get use of our resources unless you make lots of sales.

I replied back that “In my opinion, if Ping if to every really take off (and help) indies, you need to be able to let them do the things you now do for major artists – customizing, event listing, etc. Otherwise, you may be never be more than a “nice’ feature of iTunes – but not very social. It appears that Ping today is simply a vehicle for helping boost sales in iTunes – which is fine – but helping indies sell their products there would also considerably help Apple’s bottom line too.”

There will be more to this story, I’m sure… so stay tuned.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

[this is a follow-up to a previous post]

It is clear now that iTunes Ping could care less about supporting independent musicians with anything but iTunes sales of their products. Their reply to me about having a gig listed with tickets available At the Door is disheartening, but not surprising:

Thanks for sending. We’re collecting information about the shows that aren’t currently included in iTunes so we can better understand which ticketing companies we should pursue adding. We will only list shows that include online ticket sales. At this point we are only able to support shows ticketed by Ticketmaster.com, LiveNation.com and TicketWeb.com.

This adds fuel to my presumption that Apple is taking a cut of any ticket sales listed on Ping.

Since the beginning of the year, Jimmy Z and the ZTribe performed at over 50 shows, only one of which had tickets sold online.

Getting new fans to shows is one of the most important methods to promote independent music – not networking sales through iTunes.

Regardless, we will continue to post many items, including information about forthcoming shows on Ping, as we need to take advantage of every avenue for marketing we can.

In my mind, Ping is far less useful than MySpace is  – even in the abysmal condition it is today. At least they let you list all events easily so that fans can view them.

Until Ping integrates with Facebook & Twitter, there is not much that is social about it. It’s just another way to add to Apple’s bottom line.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

[previous related posts  - Post #1 & Post # 2]

In my continuing quest to configure (and figure out)  iTunes Ping for  Jimmy Z and the ZTribe, now that we have a profile on Ping and a few fans the next hurdle is how to get our shows listed. Featured artists have concert listings, but not independents.

As per an email from Apple, I wrote to concerts@itunes.com and got this auto-reply:

Thanks for your message regarding the concert feature of iTunes Ping. We currently have shows listed for the US iTunes Store from Ticketmaster.com, Livenation.com and TicketWeb.com. We are planning on adding more concerts in the near future. If your show is ticketed by one of the companies above, pls follow up with your contacts at the respective ticketing companies.
If your show is not ticketed by Ticketmaster, Live Nation or TicketWeb, please send us the information below:
Artist Name:
Event Date:
Venue:
Ticketing Company:

Once again, Apple is the gatekeeper, controlling information that gets posted. And if you are not touring major venues, then you have to go through hoops. It makes me wonder if Apple getting kickbacks from the major ticket vendors to do this.

Since most of Jimmy’s gigs are in small venues with no advance ticket sales, I wrote them about what to do and have not heard back (5 days so far).

I also submitted one gig with “At Door” as the Ticketing Company and we’ll see what happens.

Update – I got my answer.

Also, iTunes 10.01 was released and has some Ping related features – a sidebar and a Ping drop down menu button on each song in iTunes.

Are they useful? Where is this heading? It’d be nice to see a blog by Apple on all this …

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

[Update December 13, 2010 - I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.]

After all I went through previously, a few days ago I got official approval from Apple for a profile for Jimmy Z, the independent musician I help with marketing & social media. The email had the subject – Your Artist Profile on Ping is waiting for you.

Summary – The process is simple. The only glitch I found so far has to do with text handling of the bio area. There are no hints on how to customize and add shows. I have written to Apple for further guidance. Jury is still out on usefulness, especially since there is no access from iPhones and no way to group videos together.

The steps and more follow…

Official approval for a Ping profile from Apple

I feel like I should print it out, frame it, and post it on the wall – but that feeling quickly passed.

Their first suggestion was to create a separate Apple ID for the profile, so it would not be confused with my own. In a follow-up email I asked how could other people share administration of the profile and they said

“Presently, the only way to have multiple people access the account is to share this Apple ID and password, which is why you will want to make it dedicated to the artist.”

I created a new Apple ID and clicked the link in the approval email:

Ping Profile Sign In

A confirmation screen followed:

Ping Profile Confirmation

No surprise – a Terms & Conditions Agreement was next:

Ping Artist Terms & Conditions

This is one of the few online agreements I actually read. Nothing onerous or surprising in it. I liked the fact you could email it to yourself.

The Create Artist Profile screen appeared:

Create Profile Screen

I selected Group from the You Are pop-up:

Ping 'You Are' Pop-up

When I clicked the Add Photo button, the iChat image chooser appeared. I browsed and chose Jimmy’s standard head shot:

iChat choose image dialog

The About section is limited to 2000 characters, only it was not obvious to me until I had cut and pasted in Jimmy’s standard bio:

Error Message

I was working on my Powerbook and did not notice that the bottom of the About section had the limit indicated:

About - 2000 character limit

I finally got the bio to the correct length, but discovered a glitch – it does not handle carriage returns consistently. More on that later.

Continuing to the My Favorite Music section, I chose one of Jimmy’s influences, the harmonica great – Little Walter (I need to get a longer list from him to complete it), and selected the genre categories:

My Favorite Music

Done!

Initial Profile Completed

Shortly after, I received the following message:

Successful Profile Creation Email

Before beginning to post, I wanted to check how things looked to others. I wanted to first see how the bio appeared – it did not handle carriage returns well. Though I edited a few times a few ways, it did not change:

Bio in Edit Mode

Bio as it appears if you click 'More"

Bio as it appears to a fan

Since there are no guidelines,  trial and error will have to suffice to attempt to fix this.

Next, I wanted to try the three kinds of posts offered – Photo, Video & Music.

For Photo, I wrote a message about an upcoming gig and added the ZTribe Jaguar symbol – all straight forward (I’d normally add more text, but I simply wanted to see what happened). The results did not appear immediately as the photo needed to be processed. An email was sent when it was completed (5 minutes or so):

Hi Jimmy Z and the ZTribe, You recently uploaded a photo and it has finished processing. To view your upload, go to: http://ax.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtistProfile?socialId=xxxxxxThanks, iTunes Ping

Text & photo added

For Video, I write a bit of text an uploaded a Flash video of Jimmy playing Missionary Man with the Eurythmics live in 1986, just to see if a Flash video would show up  – being aware of Apple’s anti-Flash position. I clicked Video and immediately it asked me to select the video and then uploaded it:

Uploaded video

Like with the photo, it had to process it and sent an email when completed (10 minutes or so). When you play it, it opens a separate area:

Flash video playback

Of course, the whole purpose of having a social network in iTunes is ultimately to sell more product. When I chose Music I found I could insert music or a music video:

Music or Music Video

Presuming the music or music video is on iTunes to being with, I searched for the original music video of the Eurythmics Missionary Man. It came up with 2 selections (both appeared identical):

Music Video from iTunes

Since the video is on iTunes, once I clicked Post, it appeared immediately. Note that my screen capture was prevented from showing a video still.

Playing an iTunes Music Video

I wanted to see how the Pros did their profiles, so I looked at Jack Johnson’s – what a difference:

Jack Johnson's Profile

I have written to Apple about how I can customize the background color and add Jimmy’s shows.

Note:  It took at least 4 hours before the profile was active and be able to be found via searches.

Conclusion – It was all easy once I got the account approved. I still do not know how Ping will survive as it is currently worse than MySpace Lite would be, especially with no iPhone support.

I’ll be posting a number of videos to the account and moving ahead to try and get Jimmy’s current fans to come on board.

More to come, I’m sure… But with no interactivity, I do not have any idea how useful Ping will be.

Related posts:

Amazon Artist Central Has Easier Profile Creation Than iTunes Ping

Concerts for Indie Musicians on Ping?

Ping Slams Door on Concert Listings for Independents

More Answers From Apple

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

Bottom line – Apple is being very careful about allowing the creation of indie artist profiles on Ping, just as they do with evaluating apps, but I think I am on a pathway to success.

[Update December 13, 2010 - I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.]

–Update– we have received some clarification via a comment from Jeff Price, one of the founders of TuneCore (see below)

I assist the legendary independent blues and rock musician Jimmy Z with his website and social media. His music has digital distribution via his membership on CD Baby.

As soon as I upgraded iTunes earlier this week, it became my mission to get his profile on Ping and was very, very frustrated to begin with – like everyone else. No clues on the Apple website.

My first call was to CD Baby and they told me they did not have any solutions as yet.

I started writing Apple iTunes Support early Thursday morning, essentially asking how an independent artist who had his music on iTunes could get a profile created. I got a reply quickly. This person was an  ‘iTunes Store Adviser’ who termed me an ‘iTunes Store Content Partner’ and he suggested I contact my label representative.

When I replied that I had no label representative and CD Baby was the entity that arranged the digital distribution, we went back and forth for a few rounds of emails before my request was escalated.

I finally got a reply Saturday morning from someone who understood the situation and what CD Baby was. They are treating CD Baby, TuneCore, Reverbnation, et al, just as they do major labels – which does make sense – sort of – since faux-profiles have already appeared and going through the label ensures authenticity.

He asked for some basic information from me and about Jimmy Z and assured me that  “this will be in our first CD baby batch” without giving a time-line.

I also mentioned that I had many friends who were independent musicians and asked what they should do.

The reply was that they should “contact their person at CD Baby to get going…” Well, there is no specific contact at CD Baby. We don’t have an assigned rep and I told him that.

He then replied that…

For now, you can give them the address:

itunesping@apple.com

We’re manning that one for inquiries now.

I await more replies and, of course, my ability to create a Ping profile for Jimmy Z.

–Update– on Monday morning, September 13, I sent an email asking Apple for a time-frame for when we might approved. I got an email back an hour later, “Congratulations, you’ve been approved to create your artist profile on Ping.” So it only took 12 days & about dozen emails. I hope other people have a smoother experience going forward.

I have now completed the profile and detailed the step-by-step process.

Related posts:

Amazon Artist Central Has Easier Profile Creation Than iTunes Ping

Concerts for Indie Musicians on Ping?

Ping Slams Door on Concert Listings for Independents

More Answers From Apple