I realized I wrote enough songs over the past few months to put together a CD, so that's what I did.

Love & Truth: a collection of 14 songs -- 7 for love, and 7 for truth. The love songs are meant to be stuff that's more commercially viable, stuff that would be radio-friendly if it was fully produced. Also more yin energy, i.e. soft, gentle, water-like, etc.

The truth songs are meant to get the word out, and to help out with the cultural revolution that is needed (and more yang energy, i.e. hard, firm, etc). I had a lot of trouble writing truth songs, because I didn't want to do the whole angry "9/11 was an inside job, yeah I said it, how you like me now" type of song that is characteristic of most contemporary truther music. I am down with that style, but I wanted to do something more optimistic, more "everything is going to be okay" type of thing. Reassuring, but not passive -- still firm. Still got a lot of work to do, but I think I'm getting better at it.

The songs are all CC-BY licensed. After all, love and truth are meant to be shared.

Love & Truth and the Economic Revolution

Love & Truth is also an experiment for me in music marketing in the new economy -- the economy built on free distribution of non-personalized information products (see our myth for more). There are some key aspects to this:

1. Low cost of production. It costs almost nothing to make aside from my labor

2. Leveraging external services. Much can be accomplished by leveraging all the external web services designed specifically for music marketing. Services I'll be using include:

Last.fm
Tunecore
Lulu
iMeem
MySpace
YouTube
Zazzle

As we discussed in our business strategy reports, success in the new economy will be dependent upon the ability of the firm to leverage assets external to itself. Accordingly, I would expect record labels of the future to be more focused on finding ways to integrate the various services out there to accomplish their objectives, rather than focusing on owning and developing those assets internally.

3. Revenue model is based on share of wallet. Those familiar with the concept of the longtail -- the notion that the Internet enables the proliferation of niche markets -- is another way of saying that the Internet will enable the proliferation of niche brands. Just like Nike slaps its logo on shoes, running shorts, water bottles, and any other product that can benefit from the perception of Nike (cool and athletic), so too will publishers be able to develop a similar brand. Imagine: you'd buy a lie detector test branded by Kid Mercury, wouldn't you?

Anyway, I think musicians are ideal for having niche brands, because music is largely about selling a lifestyle and psychological ideals. The key to success for niche customers is not the number of customers, but rather the "share of wallet" of each customer. Meaning: it's not about having a million customers, each of whom you get $1 from. It's better to have a thousand customers, each of whom you get a thousand dollars from, through the sale of branded merchandise. This will enable artists with a smaller audience to become more financially viable, and why free music will ultimately lead to more and better music -- not less.

To help communicate this concept, I wrote the song, "Aimee Mann, Turn Yourself Into a Brand." Quite possibly one of the worst songs ever written in the history of recorded music, but at least it conveys the message lyrically, which may make it easier to understand.

4. Focus on creating community to get share of wallet. Getting more revenue from each customer through the creation of a brand that they will buy into requires creating a strong online community, so as to sell them on the psychological ideals your brand represents, and to profile their interests to know what products in your storefront are appropriate for them. There are plenty of musicians out there with great and passionate fan communities, but few if any of those musicians do a very good job of owning that community. Usually, YouTube, MySpace, and independently owned fan sites get the communities, because they encourage file sharing, posting sheet music and creating "how to play" videos, making remixes, etc. Free content is a pre-requisite for getting both attention and passionate communities. With this in mind, I've tried to set things up so that Love & Truth is a community album of sorts, as you can see on the album page on this site.

5. The coming end of the artist vs label war. When the economic revolution the music industry is experiencing reaches its peak point, the result will be a world in which the only true cost is attention: it costs nothing aside from labor to make and distribute; the only scarcity is the attention of customers and marketing channels that can serve as distribution outlets. In such a world, musicians who have passionate communities will naturally be in a position to leverage the attention they are getting by creating their own branded music channels (Shade45 is an example, although it can be much simpler -- eventually a simple YouTube channel will be able to do the trick). This will result in a world where musicians can easily use their brand to launch other musicians, and invest in creating the brand of other musicians. In other words, the artist becomes the label. The duality is merged.

In the mean time, go fill yourself up with some Love & Truth.