DbTwang: Guitar Collecting Goes Online

Fintan Blake Kelly explains on video the idea behind DbTwang, a soon-to-be-launched allowing collectors worldwide to track and trade guitars. They are looking for investors.

The Irish Times recently quoted Fintan:

While straight statistics on guitar sales are hard to find in Ireland, we are lucky to have the prospect of one of the few specialist guitar-sales auction websites, which is based in Kilkenny. DbTwang.com, which is due to launch in late April-early May, is being developed by local entrepreneurs Keith Bohanna and Fintan Blake Kelly and the site will allow guitar collectors worldwide to auction quality guitars.

Blake Kelly points out that modern guitars, namely those made in the past 20 years, are generally of a far lower quality than the classic guitar, but the expansion of interest in guitar ownership is driving a vibrant secondary market in quality guitars.

“The availability of quality guitars is almost entirely due to the internet,” says Blake Kelly. He claims that 20 years ago the main mechanism for accessing a quality Gibson or Fender was through people returning from the US.

“What eBay has done,” he continues, “is create a global information source on these instruments. It’s created a market in quality guitars.” It’s also made it possible to own a variety of instruments, knowing that the capital tied up in them can quickly be returned to cash. In other words, eBay and similar sites have brought liquidity to a new range of cultural objects.

The internet is helping people to find their way into music through informal education. Budding guitarists can fire up the video site YouTube and watch their peers demonstrating a range of songs and styles, replicating the musical peer culture that Blake Kelly says has dropped off in the physical world.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Technorati Tags: dbtwang, Fintan Blake Kelly, guitar, Music

Ulf Ekberg: Ace of Base’s Online Music Strategy

Ulf Ekberg, lead singer of Ace of Base, explains the radical idea behind the band’s new website.

Although Ace of Base made the Guinness Book of World Records for the most copies of debut album sold, but now they plan to give away their music for free.

Fans can download all the band’s new music for free from the website. So where does the money come in? The band sells - for $4.99 - versions of the songs that have all the tracks and are remixable. In other words, Ace of Base if encouraging fans to download and remix their music.

There are no CDs involved in the process and no record companies. Is this the future of music sales?

Popularity: 5% [?]

Technorati Tags: Ace of Base, Ulf Ekberg

MTV: Internet kills the Video Star

If video killed the radio star, this week the Internet just killed the VJ.

I just had a great nostalgic moment playing the Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” on the new MTV Internet platform that was launched on Tuesday. The platform is intended to counteract YouTube’s defacto dominance as the best place to find old music videos.

“Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first music video shown on MTV in North America, so it seemed the best song to test the new MTV platform. The platform is nice, if minimalist. There seems to be little advertising, but I presume that will come over time.

More from Ars Technica:

MTV has launched a new site Tuesday called MTV Music that opens up the company’s massive video archive and puts it on the web for free.

MTV Music expands upon the music video offerings already posted to MTV.com by offering an entire back catalogue of videos that go all the way to when music videos were born. The library includes more than 16,000 videos, sprinkled with ‘exclusive’ MTV concert footage and MTV ‘Unplugged’ performances that used to be all the rage.

And that’s just the beginning. According to a blog post on MTV’s Splash Page, more videos are being added by the day. In addition to the consumer-facing side of MTV Music, the company has also launched an API that allows developers to build applications that make use of MTV Networks Content.

MTV is owned by Viacom, the company that filed a USD 1bn lawsuit against YouTube for ‘brazen’ copyright infringement in 2007 (the suit is still pending).

Among other things, Viacom wanted to have full control over any of its content that gets posted-something that YouTube could not provide. MTV Music is also differentiating itself from YouTube by being light on the ads.

All 16,000+ videos lack any form of advertising except for banner ads at the top of the page, while Google is currently testing video ads on some of its videos in order to monetize the massive (and otherwise un-monetizable) amount of content on the site.

Like YouTube, MTV Music allows users to not only watch videos on the site, but to also leave comment, give ratings, and embed the videos on their blogs or personal websites.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Technorati Tags: MTV

Why Neil Young hates iTunes, Apple and the Steve Jobs effect

One highlight of the Fortune Brainstorm conference for me was the final speaker, Neil Young, the musician.

I knew Young would be obsessed with music, but I did not know technology was an obsession as well. He is currently figuring out how to make his boat-sized convertible (a Cadillac?) into a hybrid.

Young does not, however, see technology as a necessarily good thing, particularly in terms of music.

iTunes, Apple and Steve Jobs have a lot to answer for, Young said:

The CD was great when came out. Music could go to a little disk. but that same convenience has taken us on a detour down the convenience highway and quality has taken a complete back seat now.

The music sold on iTunes and other platforms degrade the quality of music to an extent that most people do not even realize, Young said. If listeners could see music as we can see an image, the resolution would be too low for consumers to accept.

Journalist John Huey, who interviewed Young on stage, raised the question as to whether Jobs is a hypocrite: In visiting Steve Jobs’ living room a few years ago, Huey had seen an incredible high-end stereo, complete with vacuum tube, vinyl records and amazing speakers.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Lera Auerbach on the meaning of music

The morning after I heard her in concert, I had a chance to do a video quizzing composer, pianist and poet Lera Auerbach about the meaning of music.

As a non-musical person, this quest for the meaning of music has become a bit of a crusade. I asked the same of the Chinese composer Chou Wen-Chung.

The video is much better value, but here is a compressed resume of our discussion. (Which concluded with my opening question unanswered!)

Music is wonder, magic, life, without the limitations of words.
Music expresses emotion without the brain betraying the heart.
Music does not have the limitations of language because it is free of words.
Music allows you to communicate through time, allowing a composer from hundreds of years ago to move us to tears.
Don’t expect anything from music, just let it take you to places in your soul that you didn’t know existed.
We sometimes cry while listening to music and we don’t even know why.
Sometimes music just touches a string of the soul that needed to be released or relaxed.
The more you know the work and the composer, the more powerful the impact of the music.
The beauty of performing is that your relationship with the work changes as you change.
At the same time, music is close to science and based on mathematical ratios.
Why is it that Mozart’s requiem has such a profound effect on its listeners?
I don’t think we can really know what music is.

Popularity: 7% [?]

Technorati Tags: Auerbach, Chou, Chou Wen-Chung, Lera Auerbach

Jimmy Buffett Hong Kong concert organizers apologize to Buffett fans

Photo by Clay Chandler

Apology from Thomas Crampton and David Garcia

We, as members of the committee organizing for Jimmy Buffett’s Hong Kong concert on January 18, would like to apologize.

Why apologize for a sell-out concert organized in less than six months raising more than HK$420,000 for Hong Kong’s neediest children?

Why apologize for a concert that had normally rational people wearing tailor-made Hawaiian shirts and going hoarse belting such hits a “Margaritaville” and “Come Monday”?

Just ask the many devoted fans who couldn’t get a ticket to the show.

As messages begging for tickets were left on Tom Crampton’s blog and strangers started tracking down Dave Garcia’s personal phone number, we understood our major miscalculation Jimmy Buffett’s appeal to devotees in Hong Kong, China, Thailand, the Philippines and beyond.

Buffett himself was confident of success from beginning. So confident, in fact, that he not only flew out with his band and gave the concert for free, but he also paid for the beer and tequila and donated the proceeds from the sales to the charity.

Every time we faced a problem, Jimmy emailed back: “But there must be a Parrot Head who can help us out with this.”

For those who don’t know, Parrot Heads are die hard Buffett fans. They wear colorful Hawaiian shirts and follow Jimmy Buffett around everywhere he plays. One such fan flew from Florida to Hong Kong with her daughter for three days to attend the concert. It was her first visit to Asia.

Truth is, we had no idea how big Jimmy’s first-ever appearance in Hong Kong would become. The concert outstripped all expectations, drawing fans from around Asia and we now realize that we could easily have sold 3,000 tickets instead of 650.

Convincing Jimmy to come to Hong Kong started with journalist PJ O’Rourke, a friend of Buffett’s, telling him on beach in Mexico that he should come to Hong Kong and support the FCC Charity Fund. Tom Crampton followed up when meeting Buffett in Paris last summer. Merrill Lynch and Dennis Ziengs then stepped in as lead sponsors and the party was on.

Our first warning signal of Jimmy’s popularity came when the “coconut telegraph” sold one third of the tickets within a week and before we even publicly announced the event.

Since the concert was held to support the Foreign Correspondents’ Club Charity Fund, we did not want to spend money advertising. Advertising costs money that should go to scholarships and supporting the FCC Language Center.

The second warning sign came when the original venue fell through and the Football Club came to our rescue. Despite the extra size of the Football Club, we managed to sell all 650 seats in no time.

Another warning: Stephen Engle of Bloomberg, Robin Lynam of The South China Morning Post, Clay Chandler of Fortune, Scott Murphy of Beatsmag and HK Magazine all lined up to interview him. In addition to the highly enthusiastic fans for his music, Buffett runs a series of very successful businesses, ranging from the Margaritaville restaurants to his own brand of tequila.

There was also a nice article by Robin Lynam of the South China Morning Post (stuck behind the publication’s firewall), a piece in HK Magazine (can’t find a link on their website) and a of Fortune magazine.

The final warning - when it was too late to change anything - came with Jimmy’s arrival in Hong Kong.

Never have so many offers flooded in to help out an artist playing for the FCC Charity Fund. People called to offer sailboats, cars, vacation homes and even said they planned to outbid the top sponsor for the next ball.

One fan said he would make a $50,000 donation to the Charity Fund in exchange for just shaking Jimmy’s hand.

While visiting the orphanage during his visit, Jimmy led the kids in singing the Hokey Pokey and had such fun we actually had trouble getting him out.

From the first strum of his guitar it became clear this was no ordinary concert. Not only did fans dress up in elaborate Parrot Head outfits - Hawaiian shirts and flip flops - but they sang all the lyrics to songs louder than Buffett himself.

He played for more than two hours and added the song “Somewhere Over China” to the playlist for the first time in 14 years.

The good news for Buffett fans: Jimmy loved the fans, Hong Kong and the charity so much, he plans to return next year.

ENDSsssss

Technorati Tags: Beatsmag, Clay Chandler, Dave Garcia, David Garcia, Dennis Ziengs, fcc, FCC Charity Fund, Foreign Correspondtents Club, Hong Kong, Jimmy Buffett, Merrill Lynch, Robin Lynam, Scott Murphy, Stephen Engle

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Great unplugged interview of Jimmy Buffett in Hong Kong

Above video is a great interview of Jimmy Buffett done by Stephen Engle of Bloomberg shortly before the concert he gave here in Hong Kong to support the FCC Charity Fund.

Buffett plays a few “unplugged” versions of his songs on an acoustic guitar. Worth a watch/listen for this and the second part. (Thanks to Leo Bellan for the links). In the background you can see several of the concert organizers, including Andy Chworowsky, Dave Garcia and Scott McLean.

Technorati Tags: Andy Chworowsky, Dave Garcia, fcc, FCC Charity Fund, Foreign Correspondents Club, Jimmy Buffett, Robyn Lynam, Scott McLean, Stephen Engle

Popularity: 3% [?]