TeledyN

Here’s what happened…

Last week, a friend told me about a Craig’s List ad that stated an “unnamed network” was looking for children’s music to use in a “popular television series.” I responded, like hundreds of others, by throwing my hat in the ring with You Tube links to animated versions of my children’s songs with Debbie and Friends. Five days later, I have signed contracts with Fox Television to use two of my animated songs on their hit series “24″ in January!

I know “24″ is probably the last show you’d expect to find Debbie and Friends music. Our songs are written for the preschool set and their families. However, there will be a scene in an episode of “24″ next season with a young child watching TV, and that’s where my children’s music videos will come into play.

Notice the pre-requisites: first is the training and competence to produce a quality work, which probably goes without saying, and then second is the public sharing of that work, freely, openly, and in a collaborative effort with an animator friend, the essence of the One Track Universe her illustrated songs are given out, without restriction or expectation, on YouTube. Oh where is the 'Business Model' in that? and sure enough I will wager the actual return from all that effort was minimal, perhaps some casual feedback.

But the key thing is, Debbie was now primed and ready should the opportunity knock and the serendipitous then did indeed happen, the friend calls up with the tip to Craigslist. And only that. As we learn from The Roots Band blog, network TV is aching under increasing license fee pressures from the 'big' names, so they are actually eager for something new, and cheap, to fill these little incidental spots, walk-ons, embellishments, musical errata. But notice there was no knocking on doors, no lining up for hours for auditions or interviews, no active seeking or even any notion of Debbie casting a net expecting a catch. Sure, there was a hope, but dig, the 'hope' found her, through her network of friends and their networks of feeds, wearing, as McLuhan said it, humanity as a skin, as a sensory network. There's a tickle, there's a relay, there's a response to the itch. We don't scratch just anywhere.

And Debbie is ready to respond instantly, she can respond with skills, and with credibility and credentials of the best kind: actual public instances of her work as close as a mouse-click on her response letter. Done deal, the rest is just details.

Priced applications are currently only available to users in the following countries:

• Australia
• Austria
• France
• Germany
• Italy
• Japan
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Spain
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States

Notice any obvious omissions?

On reading this list a big flashing light of Obviousness went up and here is my guess, and I'll bet I'm right: Rogers.ca likely does not like the idea of allowing other people to make money from 'their' phones, and thus there are no 'paid' applications in the Android Market. Not, at least, until they 'negotiate' some deal whereby Rogers gets a cut of the pie. This is the same basic reason why Bell dis-allows Skype from purchasing bulk Canadian telephone numbers to allow Skype subscribers the incoming call feature, thereby ensuring that none of their subscribers will have any option to dump their landline in favour of a free USB Skype phone.

I wondered why this great new phone was only optioned to run largely quite amateur software, although much of it is still better than the RIM proprietary, nonetheless, a lot of it appears written by students, by kids, miminally functional just to get their name in the game. Naive fool that I am, I thought, "oh, that's just because the Android is 'new' and it always takes a while before people really find their way around any new computing platform." but that's not true, is it. Android 2.0 may be new and uncharted, but we Canadians only get the dregs from the wealthy industrial nations: Our 'latest' Android is only 1.6, maybe even 1.5.

Oh well ... patience is a virtue!

"We see in the future a much better experience; holistic offerings," White said.

Fans will be able to interact with artists in more rewarding ways, White predicted.

Creative Allies plans to soon launch a test version of software that lets artists hire fans to create anything from concert posters and t-shirt designs to music videos and biographies, according to the startup.

The amount of money raked in from live concerts has rocketed, triggering an array of commission-based online services for hunting down tickets, according to JamBase chief executive David Rosenheim.

The JamBase mission is to be the ultimate online resource for live music fans.

The availability of recorded music online pressures musicians to deliver live shows that go far beyond playing songs from their CDs.

"Definitely, you have to put on a show," said Diaris Alexander of Youth Movement Records, a group that works to cultivate music business savvy in young members of the Hip Hop generation.

"We look for interactive media...we need a greater experience otherwise why not just listen to their music online?"

For me this is a great flashback to the days when everyone said they didn't need email, and then they didn't need a website, and then, all of a sudden, we had university professors teaching hungry execs $600/day courses in basic internet skills and html coding, all of them insisting this was a really great idea they just had. My best metaphor is that of someone in a railway tunnel who hears a rumble and sees the light ahead of them and then considers themselves brilliant and innovative because they turned around and ran like hell.

I still applaud them, but they still just can't see the locomotive behind those headlights:

"There are tons of new models around recorded music; most haven't worked," Rosenheim said. "People are consuming more music than ever before. Unfortunately for the labels, they are not paying for it."

And that is a trick question, because I know what it tells them. It tells them the One Track Universe juggernaut is bearing down on them at highspeed, headed for glory, it won't even notice them cluttering the rails. Eventually a few of them might get a clue, I see very young bands who already have, and one or two of the old timers too, and what we see universally among those willing to run with the mammals is an instant global recognition they can transmute into fame and then, if they're shrewed and if they want it (many don't, which does shock some 'musicians'), into fortune.

For those new bands, they aren't even really thinking about it; GarageBand or a TASCAM and some Shure mics is the only world they have ever known, so it doesn't occur to them that the reason they can be so successful is precisely because they have leveraged the absurdly low production costs of the modern consumer-grade music gear, and through that they have discovered a truth about recorded music that nearly the entire industry has forgotten in their lust for ever higher sales: the listener is listening for the music. We can be swayed into impulse buying by clever ear-candy, but like fast food, it doesn't satisfy unless it meets the need. The magic exceptions are where talent, skill and insight are combined on both sides of the studio glass, but those exceptions are rare, and as we all know, all of us who pour over old recordings, unless you're a recording engineer yourself, the really key side of the equation is the musicians side of the glass. That's the name on the label, that's the name people ask to hear, and there is a reason for that.

The Industry, on the other hand, has it backwards. Pouring ever more resources into the technical relaying of the musician's waves, they have escalated the costs of their ear-candy to astronomical levels, preposterously so in the music sold to hormone-sensitive teen audiences, and so there they sit, crying in the rubble that was once their great cash-cow empire, unable to chart a course that lets them all keep their parasitic jobs and meanwhile some kid they don't even know where has a thousand times the listenership from a track put up online for free, 'mastered' on a Zoom H2 in his basement studio, streaming out the door to eager hearts out there because he's got spirit.

You buy an online number in one of over 25 locations and your friends, family or business contacts can call that number and only pay for a standard rate call – the online number uses the internet to route the call and so saves them money. It makes absolutely no difference wherever you are, you can pick up the call at no cost to you wherever in the world you are logged into Skype.

Yes, folks, sad but true, 'Canada' is not in that list. Out of 25 countries, it is a great wake-up fool slap in the face to learn that the Great White North is less technologically with it than Malta, than the Dominican Republic, than Romania.

ah ... so ... that explains why I was unable to find any vendors willing to sell Skype/WiFi phones! I was most shocked when the clerk at The Source gave a flat 'No' to the query, and here I was thinking maybe it was something only politely sinister like a backroom deal that gave them rights to sell the Sympatico USB Stick-it providing they skipped on the Skype (kinda like why you could buy Guiness but no Beamish here in Ontario). But no, boys and girls, it was far more sinister than that, as Bell is the Gatekeeper of the Numbers, so they could nip the skype in the bud way before it got to the retail level!

Anyone want to join me in a big sigh?

I suppose, for all the land calls I get, I could just get a Brazilian landline phone number. Or South Africa. Would cut down on the telemarketing ... or at least make it more interesting.