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learn aikido in north devon

Learn Aikido in North Devon

 


Section :: Rants and Raves

- Format For Printing...

Publish (Yourself) And Be Damned!

Now’s the time to make your movie and write your book...
Thursday 14 September 2006.
 

The record, TV, movie, magazines and book publishing companies have every reason to be worried. In the past it was difficult and, often, cripplingly expensive, for aspiring singers, actors or writers to get themselves onto vinyl (or whatever CDs are now made of), celluloid, video tape or the printed page.

These days, who needs all that plastic and paper anyhow? If you want to reach a global audience, you can bypass the physical medium and go straight-to-blog, podcast or YouTube.

What a fantastic thing YouTube is! Not to mention highly addictive.

Admittedly, a lot of the stuff people put online is sheer nonsense. One of the most popular videos recently showed a Scottish student making pancakes! Nonsense, yes, but more fun than working…

YouTube also has a great collection of obscure pop videos – everything from the original Weather Girls video of It’s Raining Men to Taco’s wonderfully creepy version of Putting On The Ritz.

For more serious content – I’ve recently watched entire programmes made for the UK’s Channel 4 TV and the US’s History Channel – Google Video is a good place to look.

If you’d rather listen to music, try Pandora. This constructs customised ‘online radio stations’ that play tracks based on your stated preferences. For example, I told it to create a station of music similar to The Human League; Pandora has created a station that mixes in authentic Human League songs with a similar style of electro songs from artists with whom I was previously unfamiliar (such as Psyche, 16 Lovers and New Musik). Similarly, I created another custom radio station by telling Pandora to search for Johnny Cash; it now plays songs both by Cash himself and by the likes of Sammy Kershaw and Waylon Jennings. Terrific!

Up to now, the established companies (the record, movie , book publishing companies et al) have largely tried to suppress online means of distribution, though gradually, this is changing. Realising that this simply is not something that’s ‘going to go away’, the companies are forced to finding ways of adapting to the new world. We’ve seen this as Napster goes from pirate to mainstream; as iTunes becomes a moneymaking venture and Pandora, I note, is very much a commercial enterprise (you can click links to buy albums; and if you have an advertising budget, I believe they would like to hear from you).

I can understand why record companies and established recording artists might be very wary of online distribution of music (the word ‘money’ comes to mind). But think what it means for unknown musicians struggling to make an impact. They can cut straight through all the barriers and bureaucracy that might prevent them from getting a record deal – in one fell swoop they can get rid of all the middle men and either put MP3s on their own web site (or podcast) or even make their own pop video and bung it up on YouTube.

Similar opportunities now exist for struggling authors. In the past, the publishing business took a very dim view of ‘self published’ authors. But these days, thanks to Lulu, self-publishing is coming out of the dark ages. If a public exists for an author’s work, the author can connect with his or her readers without having to prostrate themselves beneath the egos of agents and publishers. I’ll have more to say about Lulu at some other time (just as soon as I’ve finished writing this darn’ novel)…

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