Project for an ILM blog/site/publication

I keep thinking about this idea, don't know why. I think podcast is the most interesting idea - I don't personally listen to podcasts more than once in a blue moon unless they're all-music (RA & Ultima Thule), but a lot of people do, so I assume that it's possible for there to be some income of some sort from a podcast. OTOH for anybody to give a shit about your podcast you need to have on-mic charisma & the time & will to put together a decent-sounding, well-produced (edited) presentation. But with hurdles accounted for - not just presentations but really good ones, rigorous adherence weekly or maybe bi-monthly presentation - I think something pretty cool is possible.

A website, on the other hand, seems likely to go the way of lots of other well-intentioned music websites - if you don't keep relentlessly current, i.e put in actual labor-hours daily, your website will not get a lot of traffic. Certainly not enough to be paying anybody.

Have we discussed an app yet? This also could be a big moneymaker, I propose the app OTM which OTMs you sporadically throughout the day via your iPhone. Presently developing a similar top-secret app under the code name XL-C-OR, mum's the word on that one

it would be cool to have people submitting spoken comments on music or doing creative takes on records in that way.

Datamining for Insight -- not to be confused with Bowling for Dollars -- is fairly trendy (c.f. sabermetrics and Nate Silver). I could see some interesting stuff coming out of examinations of the artist poll results numbers.

I had a podcast idea a while back to do 'album commentary tracks' -- basically have a couple critics listen to and discuss an LP in real time, and you can either play the album simultaneously Rifftrax-style or listen to the podcast by itself -- that I almost started doing earlier this year but put the idea on ice for the time being. Would be happy to offer up that concept if people like it.

I actually really like the idea of an app. There's a lot of different possibilities for what form it could take.

Datamining for Insight -- not to be confused with Bowling for Dollars -- is fairly trendy (c.f. sabermetrics and Nate Silver). I could see some interesting stuff coming out of examinations of the artist poll results numbers.

God, if he was a regular commenter here -- which he isn't, more's the pity -- Chris Molanphy would have a field day.

This is all nice and idealistic and cooperative and so on and so forth, but who's going to actually drive this forward? Because in my experience, which is not vast, getting something like this from idea to implementation is very, very fucking difficult, and needs at least one, if not two or three, people to really motivate and push things forward. One or more of those people will probably need to work pretty much full time initially, and that's very difficult to reconcile with day jobs, other interests, families, etc etc. anyone can set-up a blog at th drop of a hat, but design, content, scheduling, logistics, etc etc is bloody difficult.

This is all nice and idealistic and cooperative and so on and so forth, but who's going to actually drive this forward?

ha, yes, well

http://deadhomersociety.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/thetelltalehead11.png

Datamining for Insight -- not to be confused with Bowling for Dollars -- is fairly trendy (c.f. sabermetrics and Nate Silver). I could see some interesting stuff coming out of examinations of the artist poll results numbers.

God, if he was a regular commenter here -- which he isn't, more's the pity -- Chris Molanphy would have a field day.

― Ned Raggett, Sunday, September 16, 2012 9:11 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark

i should mention, Chris and I have enjoyed the chart columns Maura had us doing for the Voice (and before that Idolator) so much that we've been discussing trying to figure out a way to continue that work somewhere else, so I would definitely make an effort to rope him into that stuff. Glenn McDonald would probably be able to do great stuff w/ stats too*

* which once again raises the question of whether VV is still going to do Pazz & Jop this year and/or if another 'Jackin' Pop' type alternative should be organized

i think there is a lot of potential in this idea. and i also think that if there is logic, discipline and structure at play, the combined energies of different writers here could amount to something that would truly stand apart in the digital world.

personally, i'll only contribute to ILM these days when something occurs to me on the spot. if the moment lapses, i'll move on. i'll very rarely stew over an idea, linger at the keyboard or mentally prepare what i'm going to write on here. so a lot of the things i come up with are kind of cursory, impulsive and well... half-formed. if i take an afternoon to really collect my thoughts for a more organised piece, i like to think the result is different. that said, i spend a great deal of time reading the insights of others and often marvel at how quickly a lot of writers here are able to develop and expand their thoughts in complex, insightful and wholly original ways. as others have already mentioned, i'd love to see some of these thoughts given even greater consideration in a different format.

as for Sick's "who's going to do the work" question -- at the moment i've got a job with weird hours that leaves me with a good amount of free time during the week to stay at home and write, so if there was a need for people who can put the time in to edit or organize or whatever, i'd probably offer my time

This is a good idea, I think. ILM has always had broadly-affiliated group blogs or websites or whatever associated with it - Freakytrigger, Stylus to an extent, Singles Jukebox, the early incarnation of House Is A Feeling etc. I don't see why it would change ILM radically because it's something that's always orbited the boards in one way or another.

fuck a website, let's buy some land in the south pacific and call it the Isle of Music

agreed. how badly could a commune of that nature really end anyway?

LOLst

the nearest thing to a music periodical successfully kickstarted seems to have been the (previously - 'da capo') best music writing series, which just managed to make $15k to go independent

Lord Of The Flixors

a group of Baltimore newspaper writers raised $24k (from a $15k goal) on Kickstarter for a local news website

there's a boston arts one as well. ( i think local and kickstarter suit each other, and will continue to, once it all dies down a bit people stop giving money to amanda palmer or being angry at people giving money to amanda palmer ... )

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ricleichtung/ad-hoc

Right, I think we need proper hands in the ring offers of labour and support, and to establish a proper project team with defined roles and responsibilities. Yeah? Get a Kickstarter set-up, get some marketing work done, someone to do a site / blog design, etc etc?

we sort of need to agree what it will be first, don't we?

That's important and an early decision, aye, but we need to know who's going to make that decision first! Otherwise we'll keep throwing ideas in here for months.

Right, I think we need proper hands in the ring offers of labour and support, and to establish a proper project team with defined roles and responsibilities. Yeah? Get a Kickstarter set-up, get some marketing work done, someone to do a site / blog design, etc etc?

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Sunday, September 16, 2012 10:57 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think it might also be cool to propose or even present some content ahead of time -- see if a few writers that people generally love want to write some interesting long form pieces on spec, and either release or excerpt them before doing any fundraising, so that people have some idea of the caliber of the work that's being promised.

dare to dream ilx, then worry abt the details

you know you're jealous of my totally sweet wings made of wax over here

That's important and an early decision, aye, but we need to know who's going to make that decision first! Otherwise we'll keep throwing ideas in here for months.

U shld poll it

or you could allow people to throw out ideas for an outrageous up to and even exceeding 24 hours

lol seriously

Xposts good idea some dude.

fuck a website, let's buy some land in the south pacific and call it the Isle of Music

― nutrition aziz (some dude), Sunday, September 16, 2012 10:02 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Like Lord of the Flies but everyone's Piggy.

I stole that joke, but I wanted to share it.

what do people think of the numbers I ran upthread? If they're realistic, they're substantially more than the best music writing kickstarter. This is because A) paying people on an ongoing basis costs more than paying them once B) there's no end product to sell and C) those number include paying actual writers actual money per article rather than, i guess, tiny amounts of royalty and residuals?

we could slash the writers fees by half and turn it more into a "appreciation" on the principle of the matter than an actual paycheck. That feels icky to me though.

anyone who pays actual money to have a physical copy of a message board needs Suze Orman to stage a fucking intervention

When ilx is on the coffee table

OK guys let's scratch the idea of selling hardback copies of the Ween vs. Phish vs. Primus thread, sounds like the buyer i thought we had in the bag just pulled out

whiney, nobody's talking about a physical copy of a messageboard. nobody's saying physical anything, and nobody's saying "straight from the messageboard" anything.

yeah, you could buy Spin for that.

good "zing"

haha!

"huh huh, I know where you work" is especially creepy coming from the guy who 's entire posting history is stats from RateYorMusic_metal.xls

b4 i forget - the chucks oral history was pretty awes

Why are some of you thinking about monetizing so early on? First you need an actual audience and a group of steady writers. Money doesn't come first.

ya just do it for like six months then sell to facebook for $100m

Yeah nobody knows who you work for. You kept it super quiet.

if it took the ebook route, a preview issue of some sort could be put together - make it say half the size of whatever the full release would be, make it a free release as a bit of a taster, and see what the reaction is like.

Why are some of you thinking about monetizing so early on? First you need an actual audience and a group of steady writers. Money doesn't come first.

― Moka, Sunday, September 16, 2012 12:19 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

this isn't like a band or something where you do gigs for peanuts until you can work your way up and make a profit -- you either set up a model from the beginning that might make money or at least pay for itself or that's never gonna happen.

is there any way we can get lurkers to pay for this?

ya moka we have an actual audience, theres like a million assholes who read this site everyday

that said, having some central person set up an actual business that money will go into, to be distributed to contributors living in a bunch of different countries, is pretty daunting to consider.