kidmercury

Since I've been listening to just Green Day for the past couple days, I said to myself, "hey Kid Mercury, why not make a rock opera as a part of your adventures in bedroom rock stardom?" And so that's what I'm going to do, to bide the time here at KidMercuryBlog.com.

Below is the basic outline of the rock opera. Ideally the story/songs can easily be turned into a game and the brand and imagery can easily be merchandised. We are making progress down this path; there are plenty of companies like Zazzle that are continuing to make it easier and easier for people to create their own merchandise. Hmm, I wonder what the service that is going to make it easy to turn a story into a game is going to look like. In a way I think that's what may end up being the primary point of competition in the social networking industry -- quality of game play.

But before we can do any of that we first need to create the story. So here's the game plan:

1. The primary purpose is to communicate The Business Plan that Saves the World. So that's the intro.
2. Nine songs. The whole thing is done in song format -- typical Kid Mercury format, i.e. me with an acoustic guitar and a flip camera in my bathroom. Plus the intro, and maybe some interludes between acts. But those won't really be full-fledged songs (i.e. under 2 minutes...maybe under 1 minute). Nine full songs though.
3. Three acts. We'll follow classic three act structure here, i.e. beginning in which the problem is introduced; middle in which the conflict takes place; conclusion in which the conflict is resolved. Ideally there would be a sub-plot, preferably one that in ways creates tension with the primary plot. My favorite example of a well-created sub-plot is that in the movie Ocean's 11. The primary plot is the 11 guys robbing the casino. The sub-plot is gang leader Daniel Ocean (George Clooney) winning back Tess (Julia Roberts), the wife of Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), the villian. But, we don't have time for a sub-plot. We might not even have time for this whole thing, but I think we do. But definitely not for sub-plot.
3. In terms of character arc, we will go with basic monomyth story, i.e. the hero's journey, the transformation of an ordinary person into a superhero. The basic idea is that the hero discovers The Business Plan That Saves The World, and uses it to become a hero who saves the world.
4. First act introduces the hero. We'll tell the story of a working class person. As an exercise in branding, we can also think of who the target customer is here, what problems we want to identify, and what solutions we are selling them. As this is branding (i.e. imaginary stuff) we should think of what psychological problems the target demographic has, and how we want to go about solving them. The hero would also be hugely important for the video game, movie, and developing the brand overall.
5. Three songs in each act, so three songs introducing the hero and his struggles. I'll start with those. I'll listen to some "working class struggle" songs to get inspiration. I'll create playlists and share them here. If I had the time, I would monetize this, i.e. affiliate marketing for the songs/artists in the playlists. That would be another source of revenue.
6. Second act has to be the discovery of the enemy, the problem. Basically, that means discovery of the New World Order. This I think will be the trickiest part for me. I'm looking forward to the challenge!
7. Final act is the resolution, in which the hero realizes that he holds the key to his own prison, and through greater expression of conscious awareness in his everyday life he can defeat the villian and create the utopia he was destined to live in. The purpose of the final act will be to communicate that by living in awareness of the truth and taking actions accordingly, that is all we need to do to defeat the enemy (i.e. New World Order).
8. Putting the songs out for free would is the primary marketing. We'll also do a television ad. The person I was working with on this bailed on me, man it's such a pain getting good help. I could spend more money, but that ruins the charm of it, and the more I spend the more I have to look at this as serious business rather than a fun hobby -- definitely want to keep it in the hobby department, unless I can find an easy way to get paid for doing this hobby, then yeah sure I'll take that. But I have my real business for my real business stuff. Anyway, I'll try to find a new video person to get a video ad via saysme.tv.
9. I'll be blogging the process of creating this rock opera, and those blog posts can be put into a book and distributed via Lulu and similar services. This is both marketing reach and revenue.
10. Likewise, TuneCore for digital music distribution.
11. The real kicker would be creating gaming elements, i.e. if you do a cover of each song on the rock opera you get a prize, some badge, some virtual currency (MercBucks!), etc. But that's not possible unless a community develops, and that's a lot of work too.
12. I'll probably write a bunch of songs and select what I think are the best of the bunch. I might even have Act III done already with some of the songs I wrote last year. We'll see.

But the point is that this will be an experiment in seeing how brands, virtual communities, and digital media intersect and create entirely new value chains -- value chains that disrupt current economic ecosystems in the media industry, and thus are great investment opportunities, according to those who believe that line of thinking (like me!). So it's a bit of an experiment in this idea, i.e. how much it takes to do this, how easy it is to monetize, to get traffic, etc.

Of course, this is the Internet, land where co-creation is the name of the game. In other words, the real game plan is for someone else to do all the work and for me to sit back and print the MercBucks. So folks can participate as they please. But since most people are lame and stupid I'll probably have to do this all by myself. Damn.

Unregistered

Heh! We'll take a rock opera. Or a ballad. Or anything else you'd like.

Thanks for the mention. We built TuneCore to be that easy, and that's just how we want it.

--Peter
peter@tunecore.com