Jonathan Coulton

Well, that transition was smooth until the fans stopped working and the processors got hot. There was a little downtime last night while my agents conspired to fix it and I slept peacefully, but I think we’re mostly back in business today.

Thank you for your alerts about what was broken and your comments about what has changed. Team JoCo is fixing things as they come to our attention, please let me know in this thread if you’re still having trouble with something and we’ll see what we can do. I have other long term plans for a bunch of stuff around these parts, this is really phase one we’re looking at now, so don’t panic.

In fact, save your panic for 12 noon because that’s when I am throwing the big switch that puts a bunch of new cabins on sale for JoCo Cruise Crazy 2. You may have noticed, we sold out of most kinds of cabins really quickly and have been out of them for weeks. We’ve got another round of cabins for you to decimate, and hope that you will do so. Expect me to report back here later about what I did wrong, or broke, or learned about how to not do things next time.

Whee!

Just a heads up for those of you who spend all day refreshing this site to see if anything new happened (nope!): late tonight and tomorrow, some server monkeys are going to do some stuff and move this site over to a new server. While the DNS propagates some things will be read-only – the forums, the wiki, the comments. Don’t panic! Once your corner of the web gets the new info you’ll be back to read-write mode. You might not even notice.

Actually you will, because the site will have a little teensy weensy bit of a visual change, not a redesign mind you (which is long overdue), just a bit of a haircut. And we’re moving to Vanilla V2, which should be nicer looking, more secure, faster, and just different enough to make some of you COMPLETELY FURIOUS. But nothing should be broken and really we’ll all be better off.

Or, this whole thing could come crashing down. We don’t really know. You know what, why don’t you fill up the bathtub with fresh water just in case?

Hello fans of JoCo news item updates! Here are some for you.

Artificial Heart (the new record):

Waiting on the mastering folks right now, but it’s done from my end of things. Shooting for a release date roundabout the end of August/beginning of September, but waiting for a couple of last minute things to happen before I announce any actual date. I’m really excited about it – working with Flansburgh was fantastic fun and incredibly fruitful. I think you guys are going to like it.

I will be doing presales as soon as I can get that ready, most likely sometime in August. I’m working on a kinda sorta premium superfan pack that will contain a bunch of extra exclusive goodies. The CD packaging and all those extra goodies are being designed by friend, design genius, and crazy person Sam Potts (www.sampottsinc.com). It’s going to make for a very smart looking package of stuff. I’m not even going to call it a package of stuff, I’m going to call it an EXPERIENCE, because that’s what it is. More on this soon.

JoCo Cruise Crazy 2 (the new cruise):

We quietly launched our new Scarface-built booking site on June 17th and were immediately overwhelmed with bookings. The first 250 sold in a few hours, before we even had time to figure out what was going on and promote it to anyone. Soon after we sold through our inventory of cabins, and have been waiting for gears to turn and checks to clear so that we can get more inventory up and for sale. That is happening very soon. (I know we’ve been saying that for a while, but it has always felt true – all I can say is, we’re closer to it now than every before. Believe!)

Confirmed talent onboard includes me, Paul and Storm, John Hodgman, David Rees, Paul F. Tompkins, and MC Frontalot, with plenty more yet to be announced. It’s going to be a ton of fun. Watch our various blogs and twitter feeds for the announcement about when those new cabins will go on sale, and get yourself a seat PRONTO!

Touring (the new touring):

I’ll be doing a few of my own shows, as well as an awful lot of opening for They Might Be Giants over the next few months. A complete list follows, and details and tickets for all shows can be found on the shows page. Here are a couple of highlights for you, and then a list that nobody will care enough to read all the way through.

A Smaller Boat – on August 19th I’m playing a show on The Jewel, which is apparently a boat of some kind. It’s a band show, a rock cruise in the East River starring ME.

PAX Prime – it’s confirmed, I’ll be at PAX again this year the end of August, playing with the band. Wouldn’t it be great if I could sell you the new album that weekend? What a smart business thing that would be for me to have planned.

Dragon*Con – for the first time ever, I’ll be there. Please be gentle. On Friday the 2nd I’ll be with the band at my favorite Atlanta venue, the Variety Playhouse for the incredible ALBUM RELEASE PARTY, where history will be made. Paul and Storm will be there too. I’ll also be playing acoustically as part of a larger on campus evening show on Saturday night, plus a couple of panels and things. I will also slay a dragon.

Opening for They Might Be Giants – I’m a fan, you’re a fan, listen, these are going to all be great shows. July 29th at the Williamsburg Waterfront is a free show with me on acoustic. July 30th at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park is the same, except it isn’t free or in Williamsburg. The rest of the Giants shows in September and November will be band shows all. I hope you like rock.

Complete list of shows that involve me:

July 29 Brooklyn, NY – Williamsburg Waterfront with TMBG (acoustic, free show!) – bit.ly/join-us-brooklyn

July 30 Asbury Park, NJ – Stone Pony with TMBG (acoustic) – bit.ly/join-us-asbury-park

August 19 New York, NY – aboard The Jewel, under the stars on the East River (band) – tktwb.tw/qii5ci

August 26-28 Seattle, WA – PAX Prime, merch boothin’ it, big show, etc. (band) – prime.paxsite.com

September 2 Atlanta, GA – Variety Playhouse ALBUM RELEASE PARTY with Paul and Storm (band) – bit.ly/kFAulc

September 3 Atlanta, GA – Dragon*Con, location TBD, with Paul and Storm and others (acoustic) – www.dragoncon.org/

All the rest of these are band shows opening for TMBG:

Sept 8 New Haven, CT – Toad’s Place – bit.ly/join-us-new-haven

Sept 9 Great Barrington, MA – Mahaiwe Theater – bit.ly/join-us-great-barrington

Sept 10 Concord, NH – Capitol Center for the Arts – bit.ly/join-us-concord

Sept 11 Norwich, VT – Upper Valley Events Center – bit.ly/join-us-norwichvt

Sept 13 Ithaca, NY – State Theater – bit.ly/join-us-ithaca

Sept 14 Pittsburgh, PA – Byham Theater – bit.ly/join-us-pittsburgh

Sept 15 Rochester, NY – Harro East Ballroom – bit.ly/join-us-rochester

Sept 16 Cleveland, OH – Beachland Ballroom – tktwb.tw/join-us-cleveland

Sept 17 Detroit, MI – Majestic Theater – bit.ly/join-us-detroit

Sept 18 Grand Rapids, MI – Intersection – bit.ly/join-us-grand-rapids

Sept 20 Cincinnati, OH – Southgate House – ticketf.ly/join-us-cinci

Sept 22 Indianapolis, IN – The Vogue – bit.ly/join-us-indianapolis

Sept 23 Chicago, IL – Riviera Theatre – bit.ly/join-us-chicago

Sept 24 St. Louis, MO – The Pageant – bit.ly/join-us-st-louis

Sept 25 Tulsa, OK – Cain’s Ballroom – bit.ly/join-us-tulsa

Sept 27 Nashville, TN – Cannery Ballroom – bit.ly/join-us-nashville

Sept 28 Asheville, NC – The Orange Peel – bit.ly/join-us-asheville

Sept 29 Richmond, VA – The National – bit.ly/join-us-richmond

Sept 30 Philadelphia, PA – Theatre of Living Arts – bit.ly/join-us-philadelphia

Nov 4 Salt Lake City, UT – The Depot – bit.ly/join-us-slc

Nov 5 Boise, ID – Knitting Factory – ticketf.ly/join-us-boise

Nov 6 Spokane, WA – Knitting Factory – ticketf.ly/join-us-spokane

Nov 8 Vancouver, BC – Venue – bit.ly/join-us-vancouverbc

Nov 9 Seattle, WA – Showbox SoDo – bit.ly/join-us-seattle

Nov 10 Portland, OR – Crystal Ballroom – bit.ly/join-us-portland

Nov 11 Arcata, CA – Van Duzer Theatre – bit.ly/join-us-arcata

Nov 12 San Francisco, CA – Fillmore – bit.ly/join-us-san-fran12th

Nov 13 San Francisco, CA – Fillmore – bit.ly/join-us-san-fran13th

Nov 16 Anaheim, CA – House of Blues – bit.ly/join-us-anaheim

Nov 17 San Diego, CA – Belly Up – bit.ly/join-us-san-diego

Whew.

In the UK I did a song from the new record called “Nobody Loves You Like Me.” A few people have been asking about the technology – it looks like what’s happening is that I’m singing into a microphone and fiddling with my iPhone and something weird comes out. That’s an accurate technical description, but here’s a little more detail.

The microphone goes into my laptop through an audio interface. The laptop is running Ableton Live. I’ve got an audio track in there that’s listening to the mic input and running a plugin called The Mouth. That plugin does a lot of awesome things, but in this case it takes the audio and um. I don’t know exactly what it does. It sounds to me like it’s taking the audio input, and using some algorithm to retune the input to a single pitch at several different octaves, the relative volumes of those octaves being determined by the frequency content of the input. You know, robot voice. Kind of a vocoder I guess? But more juicy. I’ve listened to just the 100% wet effect, and it’s almost like it’s carving out space for whatever the input note is – it’s like you can hear the shadow of the melody as it shifts up and down the octaves.

Anyway, put that all in a box and say the effect is weirdifying the input and outputting a repitched copy of what I’m singing. That pitch is determined by midi messages. So I also have a midi track in Ableton Live. The iPhone is running an app called TouchOSC which is sending OSC data over wifi to an app on the laptop called Osculator, which is set up to translate certain OSC messages into midi note events, and then sending those events to the track in Ableton Live, which is then routed to the midi input of The Mouth on track 1. I’m playing a little onscreen keyboard, and that changes the note that The Mouth plays when I sing.

I am also texting three wives and two girlfriends at the same time!

Hope that explains it. It’s probably more than you wanted to know, huh?

On Friday the Planet Money podcast posted an episode about me and my business model, focusing on the question of whether my scene is the future of music business or just a fluke. Alex Blumberg came to JoCo HQ a couple of weeks ago to interview me about how things work for me, how I got here, where the money comes from, etc. He then brought in Jacob Ganz and Frannie Kelley from NPR music blog The Record, to do a little analysis. Their assessment was that while it was obvious this business model worked very well for me, it was probably not something that could be easily replicated. Frannie made an analogy to illustrate her point: I am kind of like a Snuggie. I’m a blanket with sleeves that we didn’t know we all wanted.

A few people were offended on my behalf by this comparison. I’m certain that Frannie’s choice of the Snuggie rather than say, a Mini Cooper or an iPhone, was meant to underline the geeky novelty song aspect of my appeal, to which I say: snarkity snark snark! I confess it stings a little. I’m aware that many people think of me as “merely” a guy who writes novelty songs, which is annoying for a couple of reasons. First, writing novelty songs is actually a real thing that you can do, and many talented people have had fine careers doing it, so let’s not go around denigrating it, shall we? Second, it’s a rather lazy and facile way of labeling me that fails to fully describe what I do.

That said, leaving aside the pejorative nature of the comparison, I think it’s accurate in some respects, in that a Snuggie is a new thing that somebody invented and marketed and sold to enormous success. Do you know who else is a Snuggie? Nirvana, Ben Folds, Madonna, and the Grateful Dead. You have to do something new and unique and valuable in order to get anyone’s attention in this business, in fact that’s sort of the point. Just because I did it with “nerds on the Internet” instead of “teenagers in Seattle” or “hippies at ren faires” or “13-year-old girls on YouTube” is incidental, and beside the point. Similarly, Jacob Ganz says in the podcast that I “won the internet lottery,” which is like saying the Beatles won the British Invasion lottery. It’s accurate but unhelpful, because it fails to draw a meaningful distinction between me and anyone else who has had success in this business. It has always been about winning the lottery, and it has always been about being a Snuggie.

The thing that I think most got in the way of what could have been a much more interesting discussion was some confusion about what a business model is. “Writing a song that gets discovered on Slashdot” is not a business model, any more than “putting sleeves on a blanket” is a business model. It is a thing that happened to me, that part is true, but it’s not really much of a strategy. I make songs that are good and then I sell them (and concert tickets, and Tshirts) to the people who want them – that’s my business model, and it’s patently obvious that it’s replicable because I stole it from every other recording artist in the world.

Here are some things I do differently from some other artists: I own all my music 100%, which means I have complete control over how I sell it (or not). I can give it away, I can bundle it on a USB key or in a zip file, I can allow people to make and post music videos, and I don’t have to deal with lawyers or labels to do any of that. I also get all the profits. During Thing a Week I released every single weekly song that I wrote for free, whether they were good or not, without worrying about whether people would buy them (though I hoped they would). I am extremely public about my creative process, hopes and fears, victories and failures. I communicate directly with fans as often as I can without letting it become my full-time job. I’ve never made a music video. I have extremely low overhead. Most of my sales are digital, which means there are almost no distribution costs. I have never spent any money on marketing and rely completely on blogs, podcasts and social networks to spread the word. I tour solo with an acoustic guitar (used to anyway), and I only play in cities where I have already ascertained there is going to be an audience. I record by myself at home (again, used to!) using equipment that is not very expensive, and that I don’t know how to use very well.

My business model is designed especially for me, by me, and it constantly changes and evolves – I’m now working on an album, with a band and a producer, I’m spending money at a real studio, and I will probably spend money on more traditional marketing and radio promotion before I’m through. Nobody, not even me, should try to do exactly what I’ve done, because there are parts of it that won’t make sense for who you are or what you’re interested in. If you’re a band with a lot of people and equipment, you’re going to need a different touring strategy. If you don’t write nerdy songs, you will have to figure out what your version of Slashdot is. If you are Steely Dan, you will not want to record onto a Mac Mini through an SM58. If you hate writing, please don’t set up a blog. Know only this: to do this you need to work extremely hard, make music that is great, and find people to buy it from you. The end.

So is it replicable? Of course it is! For goodness sake, even the Snuggie is replicable. In fact, the Snuggie itself is a replicant of the Slanket, how’s that for a mindblower? (See also the Cudlee, and the German product Doojo, which has gloves.) I can’t believe I have to point this out, but there are plenty of artists making music and using unique and creative promotional techniques to sell it directly to fans (say it with me, won’t you?): Trent Reznor, Radiohead, Amanda Palmer, Paul and Storm, Marian Call, OK Go, MC Frontalot, MC Lars, the list goes on and on and gets larger every day. We are successful to varying degrees and we have different ways of doing things, some of us came from labels, went to labels, or eschewed labels entirely, but we are all participating in the same basic re-jiggering of the spreadsheet. I obviously don’t know the details of everyone’s business, but I’m guessing that we have this one thing in common: we’ve all decided that it’s fine with us if we reach fewer people as long as we reach them more directly. The revolution in the music industry (which has already happened by the way) is one of efficiency, and it means that success is now possible on a much smaller scale. Nobody has to sell out Madison Square Garden anymore to make a living.

And that is the point. That is what’s inarguably different today because of the internet. We now have an entirely new set of contexts and they come with a whole new set of tools that give us cheap and easy access to all of them – niche has gone mainstream. It is no longer necessary to organize your business or your art around geography, or storage space, or capital, or what’s cool in your town, or any other physical constraint. And this is not to say that anyone can become a moderately successful rockstar just by starting a blog – success is still going to be a rare and miraculous thing, as it has always been. There are just a lot more ways to get there than there used to be, and people are finding new ones every day.

I don’t know why the “funny geeky songs” thing seems to distract people so much from this reality during these discussions, but it does. I’ve had a lot of conversations with industry analysts and insiders, and this kind of hand waving and designation of “fluke” is a sadly familiar phenomenon. And it’s a shame, because before we decide if the internet is “good or bad,” there are some really important questions we should try to answer first. I don’t know the answer to any of these, but I sure am curious to find out. How much money is actually being made in this space that never gets tracked as part of the music industry? What percentage of full time professional artists are making a living, and how does that compare to the old record biz? From an economist’s perspective, is filesharing/piracy hurting artists, or just labels (or is it hurting anyone)? How can the people who used to work at labels continue to have careers bringing valuable services to artists now that the landscape has changed? What are the efficiency breakthroughs that we have yet to discover, who’s going to figure out how to profit from this shakeup? How can we rethink antiquated intellectual property laws in a way that continues to “promote the progress of science and useful arts?” And finally, how can I keep my arms warm without putting on a sweater, which is apparently such a huge burden to so many people?

I honestly don’t fault Frannie and Jacob for having negative opinions about me or different opinions about any of these issues. And I’m not trying to ignite a flame war or tear anybody down. I’m simply amazed and disappointed that none of these questions ever came up in a conversation about the internet and the music business, on a podcast, here in the year 2011. It just feels like a huge missed opportunity, and it makes me sad.

Actually, I take it back, they did address that last one didn’t they?

I should know better than to write this sort of post, because it will inevitably come across as a peevish and whiney response to being called a Snuggie. It probably is that to some extent, and I’m already sorry about it. I am really trying to transcend that though, because I think this stuff is so important. I wouldn’t have authorized Alex to reveal the horribly embarrassing revenue number that I can’t even comfortably mention here if I didn’t think that it would, to some extent, move this conversation past the point where people equate “Code Monkey” with “Hamster Dance” and call it a day. I’m disappointed that it did not. And it’s not about my personal ego. OK, maybe it is a little, but I truly believe that the sooner we all acknowledge the internet is not actually killing art, the sooner we can get back to making things that are awesome.

Now is a better time to be a musician, or a fan of music, than any other time in all of human history. Discuss…