Information vs Attention. A-List’s plans for staying afloat in the sea of endless Information.
4 January, 2008Information vs Attention. A-List’s plans for staying afloat in the sea of endless Information.
Filtering Information. How, Why and for What purpose.
“…in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it” (Simon 1971, p. 40-41). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy
So what’s my point: 
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Audiences need Music > < Musicians need AudiencesAudiences want music they like > < Musicians want audiences that like their music
Okay- no problems so far… so lets define eutopia as music listeners being able to hear music they like, whenever they want, at home and frequently experience it live. Conversely artists are able to financially sustain continued creation of music, for these audiences, and continue to perform live. Simple, huh. Well the old way of doing this no longer applicable. ie. Fans going to the cd store for music and artists signing million dollar contracts. Hey it’s great news, the pop star is dead, the independent artist revolution is in full swing.
But here’s the problem. The revolution is in FULL swing: We are spoilt for choice. There is too much music out there, not enough of it is good and, to include my perspective, there’s way too many ways to spread and promote it. I mean, I just looked through someones pick of the the Top 40, (yes four zero!) online music social networking platforms. You’d need a huge team of pretty damn creative monkeys to manage that sort of thing. The challenge for the information provider / entertainment professional is to filter their content; music, live performance, art, ideas, etc, so as to make the information they are giving their audience valuable enough to warrant the attention that it consumes.
So, the topic I would like to talk about is the way in which A-List Records will approach this issue. First, the obvious action is to provide my audience with good, intelligent music, and further down the track, provide interaction with artists, blogs, videos, music videos, tutorials. This is all standard practice that will soon be expected from labels and artists.
But here’s what I want to do aswell, 1) to be nice, and 2) in the hope that more people out there are doing the same and are willing to pool resources; I am planning to provide what some would call my assets, but I disagree with them; you, your attention and your connections are where I can find value from my information. So, I’m going to make my business open.
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Open release plans, with lists of connections and contact details, plus ratings of how successful I found them to use
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Tutorials and recommendations for web research and online music promotion
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Lists of resources for selling music, both online and physical CD distribution, and mp3 selling
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Lists of Record Labels to contact with projects
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Lists of ways to get funding for creative projects in NZ
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Provide means to follow research paths and provide relevant links
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plus plus plus
Those are basically the ones I’ve done so far, and each one is a work in progress. Can you see the “A-List” thing starting to pan out. These links are all each just “a list” of information that I needed to compile anyway for whatever project I was doing. All I’m doing is making this information available online in the hope they a) attract some more attention to A-List in exchange for using that attention valuably, b) help other people facilitate the creation of other similar projects, and c) encourage other people that are doing the same sort of work as me to add their information to our resource, with the same goals in mind.
Thats what I’m working towards, free information, as a way to give value to the attention of its audiences.
Just to prove that I’m for real heres a couple to start with.
Online CD sales links.
http://www.jeteye.com/jetpak/43105249-215799110367307992713161946/
Mp3 selling and promoting websites for Independent Artists
http://www.jeteye.com/jetpak/28622180-625925365652062705993088576/
Online research tools
http://www.jeteye.com/jetpak/99507606-329545984414611531430919666/
My web research bibliography
http://www.jeteye.com/jetpak/86491438-360498085003596239614094610/
And a formative release plan for Grouch: The Moof Is Rooving is up on my forum www.openarchivesnz.freeforums.org . The forum is still very much a work in progress but over the next month or so i should have it ready to host all this information.
I hope you find something useful. Watch this space because I’m always writing new lists. Its sorta what I do. Please let me know what you think about my free information approach. And how you found the presentation of the info.
Chur chur
ali
A-List Records
