today’s vegetable

Ok, “Amanda Fucking Palmer v. Roadrunner Records” might have been a more accurate title, but allow me a little poetic license. This just sounds better.

If you’ve followed Amanda Palmer lately — and if you haven’t, you should start — then you’ve no doubt heard the phrase ‘please drop me’ said, sung, and maybe even chanted. She’s actively trying to get dropped from her label, Roadrunner Records, so she can be an independent artist. There are plenty of explanations as to why she’d want this and they’ve all been floated out there. What I haven’t seen as much is the explanation for why Roadrunner should want to drop her or why it makes sense for everyone involved.

Most of the established metrics for artists are based around sales. Since we’re talking about business that makes some sense. But we’re also talking about art that generates business, so I’d like to focus around the fans — the patrons who support that art and ultimately generate commerce for the artist and for the label.

There’s a big difference between AFP’s audience and that of a typical Roadrunner band. I’ll pick on Nickelback because, well, they seem utterly typical of a Roadrunner commercial rock band.

So I guess we’ve got a new, third title for this post: “Amanda Fucking Palmer v. Nickelback.” I think everyone can live with that.

Measuring the intangible fervor of a fanbase is a difficult thing, so to stay objective I’m looking at raw numbers from online services. First we’ll look at P2P usage, then social media. The goal being not to say who has more fans (hint: Nickelback) but rather find what sort of group in each fanbase is committed and active. Because it’s not just about quantity.

P2P
This was interesting. In truth I’m a little surprised by the numbers I found looking at torrents, and there are different conclusions to be drawn. But open up your copy of Vuze and do a search. (Be sure to use the SafePeer plugin so no one snoops. I’m not condoning downloads here…I just don’t want anyone getting in RIAA trouble for research.) Here’s what you’ll see:

Notice that Nickelback returns 265 results to AFP’s 164. And looking closely, a lot of those 265 are true results whereas the vast majority of Amanda’s results are false or at best for collections where one of her MP3s was included. Now look at the ‘Seeds’ column. Seeds are folks who are not just downloading the file, but sharing complete copies for everyone. Nickelback has four torrents near 2000 seeds, and many more with numbers in the hundreds. AFP tops out at 45 seeds. These results cover Bitjunkie, isoHunt, Mininova, and PirateBay. That’s a pretty comprehensive list of searchable torrents, so it’s clear that Nickelback has far more P2P activity, almost disproportionately so.

It’s hard to say just what that means. It might be that Amanda Palmer has cultivated a fanbase that shies away from unlicensed downloading, but it might also mean that the band with greater visibility is simply more vulnerable to people sharing their work without permission. Either way, it’s interesting that AFP has such an Internet savvy crowd yet filesharing of her work is so low.

So enough P2P. All you can establish is that Nickelback is clearly pushing a lot more traffic via torrent. These are only interesting in perspective with social media numbers. So without further ado:

Social Media
The thing about ‘social media’ is that there are varying degrees of social. Myspace is basically broadcast with comments, and those comments are such garbage that they’re generally unread. Some use it well with the blogging features, but there’s really no emphasis on relationships. Facebook brings more of a people-driven, true social experience. Your wall is filled by your friends and there’s a clear route to finding and connecting with new people. And Twitter is the furthest from broadcast, with every feed populated directly and exclusively by other users creating a true peer-to-peer experience.

If you look at Myspace->Facebook->Twitter as a good representation of social media moving from broadcast to a direct relationship, you’ll find that Nickelback dominates in on the broadcast end of the spectrum while AFP has cultivated an audience that thrives and actively participates in a in a direct peer-to-peer model. Prove it? Ok.

Myspace
Ugh. There’s really not a lot you can say about Myspace numbers. Nothing interesting here. Myspace has become a required sample tray that all artists fill, but there’s no innovation and even less two-way participation. Specific numbers:

Nickelback has 188,885,022 plays to 577,807 fans, and AFP weighs in with 3,361,897 plays to 74,928 fans. Oddly enough, the hugely backed commercial rock act crushes AFP in terms of numbers. Nickelback has 56x the plays and almost 8x the fans. The discrepancy between the rates is easily explained by the Clearchannel hits of Nickelback sitting on profile pages. Nothing here is bad or good per se, but the message is clear: Money and marketing win in a pure broadcast arena.

Facebook
Now Facebook gets a lot more interesting. There’s a fine line between official and unofficial on Facebook. A person has their personal profile, but artists generally create what are called ‘Pages’ where there audience can interact with one another and, if they’re present, the artist. So when you search for an artist you find fan forums alongside official pages. Here are the top two search results for each artist:

The raw numbers for Nickelback are still much bigger. They will be everywhere, including hate clubs apparently, so that’s not what we’re looking at. Digging down into the pages themselves is revealing and finally starts to shed some light on each artist’s following. The Nickelback page is 4 posts, each clearly a press release. AFP’s page is actually 3 screens of posts, with 17 posts (not including dates) on the first screen.

So here’s where I get all math nerdy. Let’s compare numbers for the first screen of each artist’s page:

Wow, a bunch of numbers. What do they all mean? Amanda Palmer’s fanbase generates one comment for every 50.6 fans, opposed to Nickelback’s 1:824.8 comment ratio. The AFP folks take an action (like or comment) once for every 10.1 people, opposed  to a 1:275.8 ratio for Nickelback. That means that if we’re looking at Facebook as one big conversation then Amanda’s crowd is 16.3 times more likely to comment on her posts, and 27.3 times more likely to take an action. The most impressive bit? These numbers are based on all of Nickelbacks posts/actions compared to just one page for AFP, so long-term the ratios grow even greater in Ms. Palmer’s favor.

Of course looking at all the posts as one big conversation is really just one view. We should also look on a post-by-post basis. Nickelback averages 281.5 comments and 841.8 total actions per post as opposed to 18.4 comments and 92.1 actions for the Amanda Palmer camp. A win for Nickelback? Hardly. Speaking in terms of averages we need to normalize the size of the fan population to see behavior. Nickelback’s base is 58.6 times the size of AFP’s. Normalized, you get 1078.2 comments and 5397.1 actions per AFP post. That still leaves her audience 3.8 times more likely to comment, and 6.4 times more likely to take action.

None of these numbers take positive/negative comments into consideration, and maybe they matter. I sort of think they don’t. The bottom line is that AFP’s fanbase is at least 3.8 times more active on Facebook, and I think that’s a very conservative number. Her people are active and empowering her as opposed to staring blankly, waiting for news from on high.

Twitter
The most direct of all social media outlets right now is Twitter. Hands down. And there’s not a lot to say in terms of AFP v. Nickelback because Amanda uses the service about as well as possible, and Nickelback simply isn’t present. There’s a Nickelback fan feed with 1130 followers and most of the tweets are spent defending Nickelback’s honor. Really. AFP had 23,000+ followers when I took the screenshot two days ago, and she’s currently just a few people short of 24,000.

But there are a couple amazing things about Twitter. First, the direct connection it allows is absolutely vital to the success of smaller artists. Twitter isn’t vital, but the model, the connection. And Amanda creates that connection so well. According to twitter-friends.com, she receives an average of 50 replies (comments) per day — and that average spans the life of her account, not accounting for the growth in follower numbers. But let’s pretend it’s a constant. That still means she’s getting more comments per month on Twitter than Nickelback have ever gotten on Facebook.

Want more compelling? AFP’s been doing guestlist giveaways and spontaneous concerts by simply announcing them on Twitter. Giveaways are over almost instantly and crowds show up for the impromptu concerts seemingly no matter where she goes. You can’t find more conclusive proof that the direct connection to her people is alive and well — and that her activity and interaction with them is directly driving her success.

Conclusion
The biggest point of this all:

Amanda Fucking Palmer is doing something very fucking right.

But the scale doesn’t work for a major, and it never will. Her success is based on real connections to her audience, nurturing those, and growing that core through art rather than shameless promotion. The major label proposition is based on an economy of scale. Big money in, bigger money out. Nickelback can still move some CDs at Walmart and big box stores, and they still sell giant venue shows. And no, none of the numbers are what they used to be. They never will be, but a band like Nickelback can anchor a major as long as they’re clogging drivetime radio with their wares.

Amanda Palmer has been riding crowds and headlines lately, getting press and recognition for her efforts. But her sales will never match or even rival a band like Nickelback, and that’s the bottom line for Roadrunner. This ‘please drop me’ campaign being put on by AFP is no doubt drawing extra attention to Roadrunner. They probably don’t mind, but the attention will fade, the sales will never grow to the range they need, and both sides are better off without one another.

Roadrunner should drop Amanda Palmer, not because it’s what she wants, not even because they’d be freeing worthy art, but because it’s the proper business decision. They can take AFP development money and turn it to building up a new act that can fill Nickelback’s radio slot once they’re playing primarily in dentist’s offices. Best of all? They can even claim to be dropping her because it’s what she wants as an artist. Roadrunner can gain credibility by dropping an artist while simultaneously looking savvy and sensitive to the arts.

And Amanda Palmer? The numbers work when you take away the major label cut from her sales. Everyone wins.

One last title for this post: ‘My Wish for Amanda Fucking Palmer’s Birthday.’

I found out that today is Amanda’s birthday. (Well, yesterday now.) I’ve never met Ms. Palmer, but I sincerely hope she gets her way and is dropped by Roadrunner. As an artist she does inspiring work, and I feel she’s only just started. Go explore what she does…it’s wonderful.

Morrissey saved my life tonight. Music was breaking my heart. Remixes. Remasters. Bullshit upon crap built to suck the last few pennies from my already empty pockets, retroactively taxing me for buying albums that were apparently poorly mastered in the first place. Mediocrity. New albums from old favorites that serve as little more than patina on a precious catalog.

Photo: Dave Bullock (eecue)/Wired.com

It started with Depeche Mode, the Jesus of my personal trinity of holy teenage music love. I had heard little bits of their new Sounds of the Universe and was far from in love. And frankly that’s been the norm since 101 and Violator first made me swoon. But I saw mention of a full-album stream on David Gutowski’s wonderful largehearted boy. Click. Listen. Ugh. There’s nothing so bad about the record, but nothing new either. Not a hint of evolution or glimmer of new ideas. Just more of the same and somehow less than before.

So I dive back into my feed reader and find a post about Coachella. Opening I find a picture of Robert Smith leading the current incarnation of the Cure, hair a-tangle and complete with the standard red lipstick. The Cure are, were, and likely always will be one of my favorite bands. And that credit is almost exclusively earned from Disintegration back. But they’re another band quasi frozen at their peak. They’ve worn dresses, gone (and helped define) goth, done Peel sessions and stadium tours — but now its just 1994 but older. And less flattering. Would no one accept Robert Smith without the hair and makeup? I thought that rule applied only to Kiss. And that sound that seemed to defy evolution and shift so quickly from one early album to the next now moves like tar, complete with dinosaurs.

But now the heart of the matter: Morrissey, I love you.

And yes I know, the repeated standard from Moz is that he’s detestable, contemptable even. And those that profess to love him don’t know him. And I certainly don’t know the man. But the myth? I love the myth. How can you not? From the incredible energy bursting from the Smiths to a lifetime refining and redefining that energy, the largesse that is Morrissey is simply undeniable. At every turn he choses scorn over adoration, poking instead of caressing and always seeming to choose brutal honesty when fluff is demanded or evasiveness when a simple answer would suffice. It’s brilliant.

I imagine he’d hate the comparison, but Morrissey is Sinatra. He would be hated and discarded if only he wasn’t loved so fucking much.

This brings me back to Coachella, the RSS post. Next to Robert Smith is a photograph of Morrissey, included here and taken by Dave Bullock. In it Morrissey looks defiant, whipping a microphone chord across the stage with a sneer on his lips. It’s triumphant. And I hear he was a right prick on stage, just as he should be. His latest album Years of Refusal is one of the best of his solo catalog. If anything it brings an increase to that raw energy, a vital sound that’s lacking to most with a career spanning the years his has. And he must know it. it drips from the speakers.

Music brings such hope to me, and tonight was a bleak and hopeless night until I saw a single photograph of the myth that is Moz — the only real survivor from the adoration of my youth.

All these opinions might not ring true to you, but to me they’re very real and true facts. They matter, and they’re important. And the one fact above all else:

Morrisey endures.

It’s been ages since I’ve posted to this blog — and I’m almost certainly the only person reading it at this point. But I wrote this last night over on the CASH Music curator page at WFMU’s new Free Music Archive, and I feel it’s important enough to repeat. Hopefully it’ll spurn me on to more posts. Without further ado:

As of this writing the Free Music Archive is set to go live in a handful of hours. At CASH we’re busy as ever and in the middle of a particularly vital push right now, but I’m taking the time to make sure we’ve tweaked the little details of our profile, uploaded and properly categorized music, dotted ‘t’s and crossed ‘i’s. Why? It’s simple:

The Free Music Archive is important.

Just in case that seems somehow obvious or overwhelming let me repeat myself with a little more emphasis.

The Free Music Archive is important!

Jason Sigal, WFMU, and the team behind this effort have been working like mad to accomplish this, and it’s no small feat. The development of this site and the principles on which it stands are important now more than ever. The FMA represents an archive of music that is culturally significant and open to the public.

The FMA, backed by one of the finest radio stations in the world, will not only ensure that this music doesn’t fade away, but that it remains visible, accessible, and available for discovery and sharing.

I could go on. And will again. But for now I simply want to say congratulations — and impress upon anyone who reads this just how vital this project is.

Congratulations, and thank you to all who’ve had a hand in building this.