Those of you that venture beyond this blog to other parts of this website will probably know I’m currently working on a limited edition series of handmade artists books.

In this post I want to show how all the elements of this website will work together to help promote this new artwork, and a possible freeconomics model I’m looking at for selling the artwork.

Public documentation from the beginning of the project

Public documentation on my website

Firstly, I’ve been documenting the whole process in the Notebook section of this site.  The Notebook section is free open-source wiki software called Mediawiki - the same wiki software originally written for Wikipedia.

I chose to use wiki software because it meant I could simply log into it, create and edit pages, and cross-reference between pages very easily.  Unlike most wikis, I have turned off the ability for other people to edit it.  This is because I just want to use it as my notebook rather than as a collaborative tool.

I’ve also just started a thread in the discussion forum.  This only has an introductory post at the moment, but I expect that side of things to get busier as I progress with the project (I don’t expect to finish the artwork until around November/December 2008).  The discussion forum thread will enable people to ask questions, creating a dialogue rather than a monologue.

It’s important to note that public documentation starts the moment the project starts - it’s not something that is put together afterwards.  The Notebook section especially makes the creative process itself open and transparent.

Public documentation on Social Networks

As well as documenting the project on this site, I’m also documenting it on various social networks.  My DeviantArt profile was the obvious first choice—it’s an applied social network dedicated to artwork—so I’ve uploaded some of the initial photographs and text, and also explained the project in journals entries.

MySpace and Facebook are perhaps less immediately useful, but still important.

MySpace bulletins and blogs provide a space to explain the project and give updates, and images can always be uploaded to your MySpace photo albums (so long as they comply with MySpace’s somewhat restrictive photo policy), but linking out to your own website for further information is a grey area - MySpace seems to allow it for some sites, but not for others.

Facebook is also useful - and the ability to create groups and pages is something that should be investigated.

Using a Freemium model

I’ve blogged about Freeconomic/Freemium models before, but I’ve never suggested how they can be used to sell artwork.  So now I’m going to explain how I’m going to use them.

In the my blog post A Summary of Freeconomic Models I described the “multi-tier freemium” model used by the Trent Reznor’s band Nine Inch Nails:

Nine Inch Nail’s recent Ghosts release. 9 free tracks are available for download for free. The full 36 tracks are available for download for $5. Various limited edition high-(visual/tactile aesthetic)-standard production CD/DVD versions are available for higher prices (full details on Techdirt).

So, how do I apply this to a limited edition series of handmade artists books?

Well, having turned pale when adding up the costs of my materials so far, I am resigned to the fact that the thirty to fifty handmade artists books I create are going to have to be priced quite highly.  I’m not sure how much yet (because I haven’t finished spending), but for the purposes of this post let’s presume each one is going to be around £200 ($400 US).

Now, not everyone can afford that, or is willing to spend that much money on artwork, or—let’s be honest—likes my artwork enough to spend £200 on it.

So, here’s a possible multi-tiered freemium model I’ve been considering:

• A downloadable PDF ebook.  It’s not tactile, it’s neither handbound nor letterpress-printed by the artist, it’s not got the high production standards of one of the 30-50 books, it doesn’t even exist in hard-copy format (unless you chose to print it out on your printer) but it’s free.  This is for people who—for whatever reason—would never buy my artwork but quite like it.
• A print-on-demand hard-copy book.  Again, it lacks a lot of the high-(visual/tactile aesthetic)-standard production of an original piece of handmade artwork, but it’s printed by a professional print-on-demand publisher for around £25 (I’ve spent more than that on a round of drinks).  I need to do some research into the print quality of images in print-on-demand books.
• A Limited Edition series of thirty to fifty handmade artists books, finished to a very high standard, with photographs collaged in and the text letterpress-printed.  Each artists book will be uniquely and individually hand-bound by the artist.

I may slot some other options in there as well. How about a more expensive print-on-demand book, but with a limited edition set of postcards of some of the images?  Or just a set of postcards of the images as something people could buy separately?

By providing various options, from free to expensive via a mid-range of prices, I can not only get my artwork out to as many people as possible, but also make money as an artist.

Freeconomics took another step into the mainstream this week, as Multiplatinum-selling pop group McFly announced they would be giving away their new CD with The Mail On Sunday on July 20th.

Now, in terms of brands that combination is enough to make me vomit (I hate McFly and I hate the Daily Mail/Mail on Sunday’s small-minded right-wing bigotry), but putting my personal hatred aside, it’s got to be said that it’s another big step forward for the mainstream adoption of new business models.

Taking a (probably well-deserved) shot at their former record company, Universal, McFly said that “Setting up our own label allows us to rip up the rulebook and find new ways of reaching an audience.”

Adapting a freemium model most famously championed by Nine Inch Nails, the band are giving away the basic CD to an estimated 3 million newspaper customers (for which the newspaper will obviously pay McFly a hefty lump sum), then selling a deluxe version of the album a month later as a CD, featuring four extra new songs, a bonus DVD and a 32-page booklet.

Obviously the record companies hate this (just like they hated the same newspaper’s free giveaway of Prince’s last album).

The BBC reports Music consultant and former Sony executive Neil Cartwright saying “The record industry invests in new artists, and if that money disappears you’re going to find it a lot more difficult if you’re a young band to find support. That really is the danger the industry faces.”

Well, yes, the record industry does face disaster if it refuses to engage with new business models (other than suing music fans), but musicians—both new and established—can easily continue to make money, and music fans can continue to enjoy new music.

It’s just the middle men who won’t be taking a big fat cut any longer (unless they start engaging with the internet and new business models in a positive way rather than ranting against them, and even turning against their biggest promotional tool - music radio).

Anyway, that’s far more than I ever wanted to write about McFly & The Mail On Sunday.

I was chatting to a good friend of mine yesterday about business strategies for her music.  She’s not planning on chart-topping super-stardom, she just wants to have a plan for getting her music out there and hopefully making some money on it.

So, I thought I’d put together my ideas for a good start-up web strategy for a musician or band.

1. Create a website.

This is about getting your web presence set up.  For your own website I’d recommend getting some cheap (but not free) hosting space with your own domain name.  Hosting space will cost you less than £50 / $100, and a domain name is frequently thrown in for free in your first year of hosting.

You’ll need web space with PHP and MySQL because you’re going to need to install WordPress—the same blog software that runs this site—along with a couple of WordPress plugins created by Illinois developer Dan Coulter.

Dan has two “must have” WordPress plugins for musicians:

• The Discography plugin, which lets you upload your MP3s, publish a list of albums and auto-generate a WordPress page for each song, so that fans can comment, save links to your songs and share them with friends, and
• The Gigs Calendar plugin, which lets bands and musicians manage and display a calendar of their gigs within WordPress, even managing venue data complete with mapping and ticket links.

The normal “blog” section of your blog should be regularly updated to keep your fanbase up to date on forthcoming gigs, progress on new tracks, inside info on the writing/recording etc.

Some sort of email newsletter plugin is also required.  I don’t have any recommendations for a particular plugin here - just one recommendation for strategy: don’t spam anyone.  The only people you want to receive your email newsletter are the people who want to receive your email newsletter.

When you’ve got all this set up (it’s about a 1 hour job for your neighbourhood geek) then you need to get a decent theme for your site - there are plenty of free themes on the WordPress Theme Viewer or you can get one designed specially for you by a decent web designer.

You’re now ready to upload all your MP3s and make them available for free on your website - you’re not going to make any money selling compressed digital files so set them free.  To quote Tim O’Reilly: “Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy“.

2. Create associated social network profiles.

The next stage is to create a MySpace band profile page, a Last.fm profile…  There are other good social networks for music - I hesitate to name them here because in 6 months my list will be out of date.  Search them out and get on them.

Andrew Dubber has some very good suggestions for what to do on your MySpace page, as has Wired magazine.

Your aim (at this stage, anyway - perhaps always) is not to be able to afford a guitar-shaped swimming pool, but to get 1000 True Fans. Or perhaps it’s 500 or 5000 true fans - whichever figure is correct, the point is that you’re looking at an achieveable target, not a dream of superstardom.

3. Keep making music & playing gigs.

No matter how cool your website, how interactive your blog, or how many friends you have on MySpace, you need to keep creating music and making it available as free MP3 files on your site.

Keep playing gigs.  You could try giving away CDs at gigs (make sure your website address is clearly mentioned on the CD or case!) - I wrote about this strategy back in February explaining the rationale behind it.

4. Your first pay-for product.

Now, apart from getting paid to play gigs—and let’s face it, the money you get for paying gigs at this stage barely covers your gig overheads—you’re not getting any money from your music yet.

I think that a good starting strategy is to put together a good CD.  Spend time and money on the packaging (I love card-stock digipacks - they’re so much more appealing as objects than jewel cases).

Seek out local artists who might be prepared to create artwork for your CD.  Seek out graphic designers to put the artwork together with the text.  You might think you can do these things yourself, but the work of a good artist and a good graphic designer makes the difference between something that looks OK and something that looks great.

Small Limited Editions are almost a necessity (after all, you probably can’t afford huge print runs) so make a feature of it.  Hand-number them as limited editions, make the packaging really, really attractive, and sign them all to make them special.

5. Make more music and play more gigs.

You can’t sit back and just wait for your CD to sell.  You need to get out there, make more music, play more gigs, get on the latest social networks and music sites…

Don’t wait for your CD to sell out before you make the next one - otherwise it never will. The more CDs you make, the more opportunities you have to sell both your frontlist (your new CD) and backlist (your previous CDs).

In my first post on this blog I wrote (critically) about ACAP - a thoroughly wrong-headed attempt by some publishers to enforce stringent limitations on the way search engines index the content that publishers make public on their websites.

Today ACAP is completely dead in the water.

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (see those links for details) today jointly announced their backing for the existing Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) which comprises robots.txt, the Sitemap protocol, and individual page meta elements.

The people behind ACAP are probably still claiming that they have the backing of the world’s 4th largest search engine Exalead, but in the words of Bill Hicks “Yeah, maybe, but you know what, after the first 3 largest armies search engines, there’s a REAL big fucking drop-off.”

The decision by the three big search engines to back the existing REP standard—and to clarify exactly how they implement it—is a great example of these three competitors working together to the benefit of both website owners and searchers.

UPDATE - 4th June 2008: I just heard from a colleague that the whole ACAP debacle could have been avoided.  ACAP was primarily conceived as a way to convey rights/permissions metadata when feeding data from one partner organisation to another (for example, from a publisher to Amazon).

For some unknown reason the people behind ACAP decided to try to roll it out as a website technology.

This was obviously a huge strategic error, and it backs up my belief that the people behind this technology just don’t get the web. As a protocol for communicating permissions information from a publisher to Amazon or Google Books (not Google Search!) in a data feed it’s probably fine.  But ACAP has no place on the web.

What prompted the people behind ACAP to try to force it onto the web is unimaginable.  This ill-conceived idea was doomed from the start, especially when combined with their secretiveness (they have a forum on their site, but it’s hidden from view and they only give out logins to selected partners) and their attitude when replying to the tidal wave of criticism they received from bloggers.