kidmercury

We've talked before about the new publishing industry will be financed -- see our previous post on Bowie Bonds. I am currently in the midst of developing our plan for raising money for my trading site, which will involve issuing bonds denominated in our own currency, and thus will test out the aforementioned concept in action.

Of course, the virtual currency route is a bit radical at this point in time, or at least so it seems. Over on Fred's blog, Fred recently talked about how an indie band he liked, Royal Alberta Advantage, was funding their new album by collecting revenue from their fans. This type of fan funding is, in my opinion, definitely a part of the future of finance and investing. The bonds we issue for our trading site will be purchased primarily by people we know who just want to feed this concept (supporters more so than investors, although we have every intention of giving them a positive return on their investment), and we expect that we will be able to get fans and believers of the site to buy bonds as well, either now or in the near future as the community continues to mature. So I think this type of thing works beyond music and entertainment, and is a viable model for anyone who has fans -- which any popular publisher, regardless of their niche, will have.

This leads me to SlicethePie, which lets you invest in helping a band make an album; you invest now, and get a portion of the album sales. The problem with SliceThePie and most models like this is that they are still trying to sell albums. Instead, the "pie" that needs to be shared is the brand of the artist. Tracking the brand value is a murkier proposition. This is why ultimately the new financing stuff like SlicethePie cannot, in my opinion, be executed properly until we get the other pieces of the puzzle in place first -- the most important one being how music is financed when it is distributed for free.

Basically, the finance revolution needs the free media revolution first. And so, a bit of patience is needed.

And so, the song for the post is "Patience" by Guns n' Roses. Below is a video of their performance at CBGB's in 1988. I got to play CBGB back in the day before it closed, which I enjoy reminiscing about, only because I can say I played the same place GNR played. That's fun!

Yang

Hey KM,

I have always enjoyed your blog however much more so in recent months as at least in my eyes you have focused your message and made sure to always include a positive message to balance out the negative, making it much easier for a career optimist like me to stomach and open up to some truth.

So anyways in return for everything you have helped me with from reading your blog, I am going to start tip toeing out of the closet in the hopes that others who read and benefit from the information on this blog will do the same.

If I see progress and others joining in and rallying around your message then I will see this as a sign that that the general population is moving in a positive direction and I will up my "risk to business reputation" bets here accordingly as I want to be recognized as one of the first people who left the closet even if when I came out I had a mask on

Keep doing what you are doing I can feel the positive energy start to build here and that is from my experience how great things always get started.

Look forward to doing my part to help begin the discussion.

Yang

Yang

Why is it that the hip hop industry seems to get this so well and has plenty examples of people who have found success selling lifestyle but other genre's have not?

Anyone have any thoughts on this or am I off base?

Yang

kidmercury

Glad to have you with us, Yang!

Yes, hip-hop does seem to have an edge in terms of understanding new media marketing. I think this is the real reason why hip-hop is so popular, more so from good marketing than good music. But of course, that is a subjective opinion.

As to why hip-hop gets it, I think it simply comes from the fact that hip-hop comes from poor people (or at least it used to), and poor people, by virtue of their environment, have the most street smarts. The Internet is a bit of an anarchic place -- the kind of place where street smarts reign supreme.