Kevin Daoust (dot) Com

I stumbled on an article on CNN.com called Your blog can be group therapy that talks about how people are using blogs for therapeutic reasons. They write to express their thoughts and feelings, to reach out to others and put their hearts on their sleeves in the hopes that somebody out there will read it. Blogging does seem like the perfect outlet for a couple of reasons: 1) the authors can write with a large amount of anonymity available to them (if they chose to do so), and 2) the opportunities to speak to your readers and have your readers speak to you (through comments) provide an extra degree of support that the author may need. The article does include a few examples of this. I took a quick read of a couple of the blogs mentioned in the article, such as Snickollet, and I can see how this can be helpful to some people. Snickollet reads like a journal, but for the person behind the keyboard, putting their life in writing on the Web for all to read is probably a much-needed release.

Some people do this in conjunction with therapy while some other don’t. Either way, with today’s culture going online more and more, it’s only logical that people use this medium to vent their emotions. Besides, a free Blogger account is a heck of a lot cheaper than a therapist’s fees.

Call me crazy, but I think that Trent Reznor has probably created the near-perfect digital distribution model. He has built upon what some others have done and really took it to the next level.

Consider some of the things that came first. Radiohead releases In Rainbows with “pay what you want” pricing. I don’t know if they were the first to release a record this way (with “pay what you want” pricing), but they did get a lot of attention because of it. Most people paid nothing for the record in which the files were encoded at 160 kbps and were free of DRM. So, regardless of whether or not you paid, everybody got the same product. The digital download was also made unavailable after a few months.

Next, we have Saul William’s record The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust! (which was produced by Trent Reznor). The album was available for free at 192 kbps and free of DRM, and for $5 people could chose between 192 kbps, 320 kbps and Lossless FLAC formats (also free of DRM). As with In Rainbows, the free version of the record is now unavailable, though the album can still be purchased for $5.

It should also be pointed out that In Rainbows also had a physical release with different versions (ranging from CD to vinyl) and The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust! will also get a physical release with additional tracks.

Moving on to Trent, Nine Inch Nails recently released Ghosts I-IV, a collection of instrument tracks in a variety of moods. Along with that variety of moods was a variety of purchase options that included a free edition of Ghost I (at 320 kbps), a full digital edition for $5 (available at 320 kbps MP3 files, FLAC and Apple Lossless), a two-disc CD edition for $10, a vinyl release for $39, a deluxe edition (that includes the multi-track files for remixing and a high resolution edition of the album on Blu-Ray disc) for $75 and an ultra-deluxe edition for $300. Here are some of the reasons why I think that this is one of the best distribution models out there:

• The files on the digital releases are high quality (320 kbps) and free of DRM.
• One volume of the record has been made available for free, rather than the entire work (though considering that the full version has no DRM, one could download the entire record for free if they wanted to. The work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license, so people are free to distribute it.)
• No DRM means that it can be used in any MP3 player without problems.
• He has set a (reasonable) price of $5 for four albums worth of music on the digital release (no overhead to produce = more savings for the customer, regardless of the number of tracks).
• Given that he is selling the CD directly, he has cut out the middle men and set a low price tag of $10 for the CD version.
• He has given the customer a lot of choice on how they wish to purchase the record (Digital release, CD, Vinyl, etc.).

Not being tied to a record label means that offering this much choice and freedom with one’s music is possible. While it can be argued that, because of NIN’s popularity, something like this can work really well for them and not for anybody else. It may be true, but artists interested in distributing their music themselves should take notes on this. If you have a CD to sell, it doesn’t hurt to give people a taste of it (much like the free version of Ghosts I) and sell a full-length digital copy yourself. Again, it’s about giving choice to the consumer. If a person would rather buy the MP3’s from the start rather than a CD, it wouldn’t hurt to give them that option.

I think we have only seen the tip of the iceberg on what he has in store for the future. A few days ago, NIN released their latest single Discipline to radio and as a free download only hours after it was mastered. His blog has also been peppered with the same cryptic “Tic Toc Tic Toc” messages that were posted prior to the release of Ghosts I-IV.

Sure enough, NIN released their new record The Slip today, available absolutely free through their Web site, in a variety of digital formats under the same Creative Commons License as Ghosts I-IV.

And it continues…

I recently heard an unedited interview with Derek K. Miller on the Web site of CBC radio’s Spark where he and host Nora Young talked about one’s digital legacy. (An edited version was featured on the program, though the unedited version has been made available - bravo CBC!) Derek has stage 4 metastatic colorectal cancer and has been blogging about it since his diagnosis (though he has been blogging for years now; talking about cancer is only a fraction of what he writes about.)

With people now doing more things online, it has become important to think about what will happen to one’s digital legacy. Someone like Derek has a huge online presence (blogging, music, podcasting, Flickr, etc.); what will happen to it when he’s gone? The interview does talk about some ideas on how to handle this sort of thing, from possible third-party services to digital executors.

Considering that more people are taking their lives (both professional and personal) online, there is a lot of information that is definitely worth preserving. People now post their life stories, their art, their tricks of the trade, their passions and more. They write personal blogs, professional blogs, start groups on Facebook, write podsafe music, post photos on Flickr, contribute to open-sourced projects and then some. They do it to better the industries that they’re involved in, to contribute to their communities or simply to say what they had for breakfast. They also manage and pay for these services themselves.

The amount of knowledge and information that is shared by different people is very valuable and can find life and relevance long after the author is gone. It just so happens that in today’s culture, that knowledge is now written and shared in an online world rather than on ink and paper. It may be important for the authors to think about how that knowledge will live on in this digital world.

It would be a shame for much of this to be lost because a hosting bill didn’t get paid after the author’s passing.

Blog reading becomes a habit, study says

Really? A habit? Well, I do consistently check my Google Reader after checking my e-mail, so I guess it is true.

I do have a lot of the habits outlined in the article, including skimming posts, tagging messages to read later, etc. (does that make me the typical blog reader?) But, there was one comment in the article that grabbed my attention:

“With the increased popularity of blogs, various tools like Blogger and Movable Type have made writing a blog easy for a wide audience,” said Baumer in a release. “But, until the technology embraces the role of the audience, the full social potential of blogging remains untapped.

I don’t know if it is so much the technology that doesn’t embrace the audience, but rather the audience that does not embrace the technology. The opportunity to leave comments and, as a result, potentially start a dialogue with the author and other readers is available on most blogging platforms. It’s up to the reader to use them.

However, the author does have his role to play as well. There has to be good content and some sort of invitation for the reader to leave a comment and start a conversation. Dialogue can be a good thing. What do you think?

I’ve recently switched jobs, leaving CAPACOA after close to five years of serving the association and its members. On March 3rd, I started my new position as Administrative Office at Health Canada’s Real Property and Facilities Management Division. (From the arts to health - and now for something completely different!)

It’s been three weeks now and I’m really enjoying myself so far. Much of the work that I do has to do with communications within Health Canada, which means a lot of writing in French and English (much more writing than the amount I was doing at CAPACOA.) While the work is different, it has allowed me to try some of the concepts and tricks that I’ve learned over the years through practice, reading, podcasts, blogs and blogging, etc. I really hope that doing all of this work will help the quality of my writing here on my blog.

While it has been slow here, I do intend to continue writing about art, culture and new media, even though I do not work directly in that sector anymore. I also want to try to maintain some sort of consistent writing schedule so that you’ll get some more content to read and I can focus on writing more regularly. Practice does make perfect…

So, change in jobs, change in approaches on this blog… all that’s missing is some change to buy some coffee.