kidmercury

I tell people I'm a songwriter, astrologer, entrepreneur, and writer. But as of yesterday, I got a new job that needs to be added to that list.

I got hired as a security guard.

That's right, folks, Fred Wilson, venture capitalist and high profile blogger and Twitterer (he has almost 10,000 Twitter followers and over 168,000 FeedBurner subscribers to his blog) agreed to let me be his blog security guard after I volunteered for the task.

So now, if you leave a mean comment hatin' on Fred, you're going to have to deal with Kid Mercury.

And you know I got game when it comes to putting punk ass chumps in their place. I put the government in its place everyday. And don't even get me started on Jay-Z, after he dissed my boy Noel I gave him a musical beatdown so bad word on the street is that he's still crying to Beyonce over it. No wonder why he didn't reply. He can handle a diss track from Nas, but from Kid Mercury? No way, Jay doesn't stand a chance. His game is weak, his talk is cheap, he just can't compete!

But enough about Jay, I ain't got time to waste on clowns like him. Instead I want to talk about how my role as security guard is a sign of things to come, and how it's going to change the media business forever.

Security Guards and Social Hierarchies

Obviously my role as security guard is largely ceremonial and the whole idea is just a joke. Still, though, there is something very important to note about my role as security guard from an Internet business standpoint. Mainly it's that my compensation is not monetary; instead there are other forms of remuneration. Such as:

Humor. Fred's blog is a laugh riot for me, I leave the kookiest comments there and amuse myself to no end. The whole security guard bit is just another step in that direction. Laughs are a big motivating factor for me, always have been and always will be.

Truth. As a 9/11 Truther I am deeply motivated by the opportunity to spread the Truth. In many ways I use this to justify flamboyant behavior, as if I can draw attention to myself I can draw attention to 9/11 Truth. It is a common strategy used by Truthers and I recommend it wholeheartedly to those who feel comfortable with it (though it will work best if you are genuinely motivated by the Truth rather than simply drawing attention to yourself). Already in my brief tenure as Fred's security guard, I've managed to call other people cowards for hating on Fred while being too afraid to speak out about 9/11 Truth.

Status. Though I wouldn't really say status is what's being afforded to me, it is worth noting that it is a HUGE way to get people to do stuff for free, and is the defining element of a community, as we've discussed before. The challenge in building a productive niche community that works for free is in creating a status hierarchy, and finding a way to manage this hierarchy to suit your business needs. This is the new face of management. I'd also argue that as the economic crisis deepens, companies that know how to develop this capability will be much, much, much better positioned to survive than their peers that are trying to hire people and manage them internally.

Fred Wilson vs Alicia Keys

Musicians, because they have niche communities and have deeply passionate fans, are well-positioned to create their own productive online community, complete with a social hierarchy, which can then be leveraged as a free source of labor. This is particularly true as physical retail for the music industry is on its "last legs," as Bob Lefsetz recently noted. Here's a passage from Lefsetz's post that sums things up:

Blame it on the economy. Be my guest. Bury your head in the sand. But sales were off before it turned out the Wall Street masters of the universe were raping and pillaging our country, creating undervalued derivatives comprised of mortgages that people couldn’t pay.

Yes, they’re not going to buy CDs either, but they will still acquire music. Digital files. Albeit for free.

This is the end my friend. This is the last hurrah. And the record business does not employ enough people to warrant a government bailout. Sure, GM has been mismanaged for even a longer period of time, but by digital standards, the record companies were exposed to the canary in the coal mine first. But they’d listened to too many hard rock records to realize the chirping was gone, they only heard the tinnitus in their ears.

No one’s got any sympathy for the record companies. Who are now in land grab mode, their 360 deals no different from kings hoarding the goods of peasants. As for the acts… Too many had lifestyles equivalent to the Wall Street players. Consumers like supporting your music, they’re not so happy about financing your lavish lifestyle.

But musicians think they’re immune. Very few remember the pre-Beatle days. When stardom did not mean vast riches, diamond selling albums, private jet lifestyles. They just can’t believe they’re not entitled to wealth. So, when record sales tanked, they just raised ticket prices, as if the public didn’t notice. But it’s interesting, people only want to pay a lot to see the legendary, classic acts. Or maybe the new ones once. We’re not building any infrastructure. We’re just throwing crap against the wall. And now our cupboards are bare. The audience has moved on. They’d rather buy wiis. They deliver more entertainment value.

Sales last week were off THIRTY THREE PERCENT from the equivalent week last year.

Check the whole post.

The free media revolution, as we've noted many times (recently in our post on the five steps to the future of social networking), involves building a real community as part of the way to make money. I was reminded of this when I recently visited Alicia Keys' MySpace page, with the intent of spreading 9/11 Truth. I came to find that Keys is holding some contest where she will randomly select contest entrants to be in her top 8 MySpace friends. While this is great in terms of being a lead capture and getting people's email address for future marketing efforts, it's terrible from a community building perspective. Random selection means there is no incentive to work hard to be Alicia's biggest fan; the only incentive is to create a bunch of MySpace profiles and spam the contest in hopes of increasing your chances of being randomly selected. On the other hand, some other artists, like Guns n' Roses, have listed administrators of independently operated fan web sites as being in their top 8. Ultimately, though, using MySpace friends list as a social hierarchy is not enough. They need their own full blown community -- their own version of MySpace, so to speak -- to really get the job done. And even then, it is going to require a very different psychological mindset in terms of how to interact with fans.

In the end, Alicia Keys may want to take some advice from Fred Wilson on how to build a community and leverage it to do free work for you. She can't hire me as a security guard, though; I'm not a big enough fan. But with over 30 million album sales, a whole bunch of meaningless awards (Grammys, American Music Awards, MTV awards, and all that crap), and over 600,000 MySpace friends, I highly doubt Keys will have much trouble getting people to work for her for free. After all, status can be compensation, and status can be monetized by both the issuer and the receiver.