notes: February 2009

The modern approach to making albums

Courtney Pine, interviewed on Radio 4 just now, was asked why his latest album was such a mish-mash of styles and genres.

I paraphrase, but his answer was: "This is how people listen to music these days. They listen to stuff on their iPods and phones, they shuffle from one track to the next. Why should I, as a recording artist, make an album that sticks to one single genre if no-one's going to listen to it like that? This is how people live their lives now. Musicians should reflect that."

The album still survives; genre is still a means of categorising music. But the album that fits within a single genre is fading away. This is good. It promotes experimentation, playing around. Makes things more fun for the listeners.

Friday, February 20, 2009
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Facebook press office++

Last week I found myself very impressed by the swift work of the Facebook press office.

The hoo-hah over Facebook’s renewed Terms of Use blew up last Monday, and I sent an email direct to the press office to ask what their view of it all was. Within 15 minutes I got a personal reply back from press officer Bruce Schnitt - an actual reply to what I’d asked, not a canned response or a pasted-in press release.

What’s more, it was only then that I realised it was a public holiday in the US that day, and that Bruce was answering my query on what should have been a day off for him. Yet he still managed to send a personal reply within 15 minutes.

That’s impressive. Perhaps it’s an indication of the kind of money Facebook has banked, if it can afford press management of that quality. Perhaps Bruce is just amazingly good at his job.

But the good impressions rolled on. Bruce sent me a couple of extra updates in the following days. Again, these were appropriate to the thread and were direct answers to my initial question. Then another member of the press team based here in the UK joined the discussion, sensibly cc’ing Bruce, with her comments and some links to posts on the Facebook blog that were relevant.

Aside from Bruce’s first response, I was impressed by the quality of the information coming out of Facebook. In my experience, huge organisations like that rarely communicate well with individual journalists. I would normally expect - I was expecting - to get lumped on to a press mailing list and have dozens of press statements and releases thrown in my direction for ever more. But instead I got a genuine, personal, useful flow of relevant information, and nothing else.

Top marks, Facebook press team.

(Incidentally, I was also impressed by Facebook’s handling of the whole thing. Their decision to back down, revert to the previous set of Terms, and invite all Facebook users to join a Facebook group where new Terms can be hammered out jointly, struck me as inspired thinking. And I’m not just saying that because the press office treated me nicely.)

((I find it very hard to type “Facebook”. I keep typing “Favebook”. Weird.))

Thursday, February 19, 2009
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Internet ephemera

Let's start with an assumption:

"Everything we post online is ephemeral."

Ephemeral, adjective: "lasting for a very short time". Transitory, transient, fleeting, short-lived, fly-by-night, temporary

Now, if we start with that assumption, how does that change our approach to what we put online?

To me, there are two likely reactions:

(a) post more! It doesn't matter how verbose you are, little of what you say will last very long

(b) post less! There's no point clogging up the net with ephemera; only post that which is essential; keep your ephemera to yourself

Another question, starting from the assumption: if the assumption itself changes our behaviour regarding online content, does it also have an effect on offline output?

I've been wondering about it all. I've been thinking that perhaps I should make paper-based outputs of anything that I want to really last. By all means clog up the net with everything else in the meantime, but don't form any attachment to it. Don't depend on it being there.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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