音乐DIY走向数字化

    帮助不精通技术的音乐人在线运营业务是一个不断发展的领域。“围绕这个概念似乎产生了一整套期望和业务，”玛吉•维尔说。她曾经在颇具影响力的独立唱片公司杀死摇滚明星(Kill Rock Stars)担任副总裁一职。去年，维尔离开了这家唱片公司，出任CASH Music基金会联席执行董事。这个非营利性组织致力于面向音乐人开发免费的开源软件，包括“最基础的音乐技术，比如数字销售，实体唱片销售，电子邮件收集，这些都是音乐人运行自己的网站时需要掌握的基础技术，”以及一个教程，旨在向他们展示如何应用这些技术。“这些技术一点都不难，”她说。“有些人仅仅帮助你把贝宝(PayPal)账户和一个亚马逊(Amazon) S3账户连接在一起，就收取15%的佣金，这是完全没有正当理由的。那是管理者揩的一层油。”Shoutabl通过Topspin Media提供实体和数字唱片的销售服务，后者收取15％的费用，但这家网站自身并不提取佣金。

    除了把各类“电子产品”汇集在一个平台之外，Shoutabl还增加了一些有可能产生相当于现场感受的在线音乐场景服务。过去，音乐现场主要是由地理位置的临近性决定的。“音乐人的生意正变得越来越独立，”莫里森说。“但他们不想局限于自身的文化领地，也不想囿于自己的社交圈。”音乐人不仅能够以 SoundCloud那样的方式（MySpace也曾经发挥过这样的作用）发现彼此，互相联络，而且能够结合资源，互相推广。

    比如，肢解计划乐队在Shoutabl 上拥有一个网页。莫里森为自己的独唱作品开设了一个页面，为他的另一支乐队Burlies开设了另一个页面，两支乐队的各色成员都拥有各自的项目。莫里斯表示，Shoutabl 让他们每个人“充分利用维恩图(Venn diagram)”，即相互重叠的粉丝群。比如，在获得他们准许的情况下，肢解计划乐队可以将其公告新唱片发行日期的博客内容推送至每一个与他们相关联的活动页面。乐队也可以使用一个内置于平台的广告系统，在彼此的页面上传播有针对性的广告。多诺万声称，这就好比某位正在舞台演出的音乐人提示观众关注好友即将上演的演出。只不过，它是这种行为的数字化版本。这种方式不仅可以维系一种有机的社区感，还能够放大一场营销活动的辐射范围。结合其通过网页销售商品的能力，Shoutabl能够为歌手提供一种将作品变现的简单方式，几乎没有其他平台具备类似的能力。最终，多诺万和莫里森甚至希望这些歌手网络使用这个平台发起集体筹款活动，为唱片制作募集资金。

    就本质而言，Shoutabl的终极目标是赋予音乐人一种达到专业水准的广告或营销技能，而且无需他们真正学习这些技能，从而让那些不具备自我宣传天赋的音乐人专心致志、心无旁骛地从事音乐创作。

    “歌手可不是互联网专家，”多诺万说，“但我们算是。”

    多诺万说：“我们正在做的许多事情，都是实施一些已经被证明能够非常有效地推送内容的策略。我们正尝试着帮助乐队和歌手逐渐掌握最佳实践。我们其实在潜移默化地向他们传授最佳实践，或者干脆代替他们来完成这部分工作，这样他们就不必操这份心了。”

    莫里森笑着说：“让一位歌星说出‘最佳实践’这个充满商业意味的词汇的确是个好创意！”（财富中文网）

    译者：任文科

    Helping technically un-savvy musicians get operational online is a growing field. "There seems to be a whole set of expectations, and a whole set of businesses, built around that concept," says Maggie Vail, former vice-president of the influential indie label Kill Rock Stars. Last year Vail left the label to become co-executive director of CASH Music, a nonprofit developing free, open source software intended to give musicians, "the most basic layer of music technology: things like digital sales, physical sales, and email collection, basic things that artists need to run their website," as well as an educational curriculum to show them how to apply it. "The technology isn't difficult," she says. "There's no real reason why someone connecting your PayPal account to an Amazon S3 should be taking 15% of your money. That's a manager's cut." (Shoutabl offers physical and digital sales via Topspin Media, which charges a 15% fee but doesn't take its own cut.)

    As well as pulling together assorted "B-plus products" into one platform, Shoutabl also adds in services with the potential to produce the online equivalent of music scenes which in the past have been defined largely by geographical proximity. "Artists are becoming more business-independent," Morrison says, "but they don't want to be on their own culturally, they don't want to be on their own socially." Musicians can not only find and connect with each other in the way that SoundCloud does (and MySpace once did), they can also combine resources and promote each other.

    For instance, the Dismemberment Plan has a Shoutabl page, Morrison has one for his solo work and another for his other band, the Burlies, and assorted members of both groups have their own projects. Shoutabl lets each of them "exploit the Venn diagram" (as Morrison says) of their overlapping fan bases. With their permission, the Dismemberment Plan can, for instance, push blog content announcing Uncanney Valley's release date to the pages of each act associated with them. Bands also can use an advertising system baked into the platform to serve targeted ads on each others' pages. Donovan calls it the digital version of someone onstage telling the audience to check out their friend's upcoming show, a way to magnify the scope of a marketing campaign while maintaining an organic sense of community. Combined with the ability to sell merchandise through Shoutabl pages, it can provide an easy way to monetize their work that few platforms can match. Eventually Donovan and Morrison would even like to see networks of musicians using the platform to launch collective fundraising efforts, for instance to underwrite the launch of a record label.

    The ultimate goal of Shoutabl is essentially to empower musicians with the skills of an advertising or marketing professional, without them actually having to learn those skills, and to allow the ones who weren't born with innate gifts for self-publicity to concentrate their energy on simply making music.

    "Artists aren't Internet experts," Donovan says, "but we kind of are."

    "A lot of what we're doing," Donovan continues, "is taking strategies that we know, that are proven to work really well at pushing out content, and we're trying to ease bands and artists into these best practices. We're trying to kind of subtly teach them best practices or just to do them for them so they don't have to think about it."

    Morrison laughs: "The idea of even making a musical artist say the words 'best practices!'"