The SoupASonic

I walked by a neighborhood coffee shop on the Upper East Side the other day, and saw a "No Laptops Allowed" sign. For a moment, I felt chills, and just then, I realized that I was staring future in the face.

What does it tell you when a neighborhood coffee shop doesn't allow laptops? -- that their users tend to buy one drink (anywhere between $2-6) and stay for hours. That was certainly the case at alt.coffee in the East Village, until they decided to plug all of their electrical outlets shut, citing "insurance" concerns. Working on a laptop at a cafe combines at least three important life activities into one: caffeine consumption, people-watching, and work. With free wifi, the cost of that $6 latte is practically tax deductible, and getting work done actually feels like a vacation, not to mention that, while hooked into the internet, you can read more magazines, and hear more amazing music, than you could ever try to in your lifetime, almost without cost..

And yet, that model is increasingly becoming unsustainable for the coffee-shop owners. Some start charging for internet services (like Starbucks); others get rid of the internet entirely, others turn up the music so loud that you can't think... Other coffee shops simply close, or re-open "with a new concept". My neighborhood coffee shop on the Upper West Side (the old Columbus Bakery) re-opened with such a new concept, as a marriage of "Pinch" and "S'mac" - a pizzeria and a mac-n-cheese joint...

I tried at length to write a post about how musicians are similar to coffee-shop owners, how we all seek an intimate connection with their listeners and customers. But on closer examination, that comparison fails - the upfront hard costs of starting and running a coffee shop cannot compare with the fairly negligible costs of making music. Where the coffee-shops are trying to monetize their tables by shooing away laptop-laden cyborg freeloaders or asking for a fee, we try to woo them with free downloads, videos, and podcasts -- we *hope* they will monetize one day, and celebrate each of their purchases as we would the first steps of a child.

It's great to live in hope, in faith, in innocence -- just wish that they still lived in a coffee shop.

Check out the song "BEYOND" by the MySpace band Fear & Desire. Totally bizarre production! I hope you'll enjoy.

This morning, I've finally figured out something to cure one of my recent frustrations - accepting friend requests on MySpace.

Key frustrations:
-- each friend request is an imposition to check out someone else's page.
-- each band page has four songs, or about 15 minutes of music.
-- I get 10-15 of these requests a day.
-- if I skip a day, I get 20-30 requests.
-- if I go away for the weekend, you do the math.
but perhaps the biggest frustrations are:
-- I'd *really* like to listen to everything, and read about all of these wonderful people.
-- I know that once I hit "approve", chances are that I'll never hear this music again.

But life is short, and since there's much to do outside MySpace, here are some tips to surviving the onslaught. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

technical points:
-- I'm on a Mac, and find that the Camino browser works fastest for me.
-- set your browser to open links into tabs. have those links "load in background", if possible.

non-technical:
-- I always do something else - write emails, blog, eat breakfast, wash dishes (quietly), read, do crunches - while surfing MySpace. I have enough capacity to listen to music like this -- if it grabs me, I'll quit what i'm doing and listen attentively.
-- I try to give each band enough time to show me a verse and a chorus. If I like them, I'll stay for more. If I'm really in love, I'll listen to another song.
-- I only comment on bands I like a lot. Relentless commenting used to bring in a lot of add requests from bands and fans whose music I didn't really enjoy. By keeping it somewhat small, my friendbase and my musical tastebuds grow organically.

and finally:
I wrote to Beyonce via MySpace, but she didn't respond. However, my appreciation for her work has not waned a bit. I've written to others, and sometimes they listen, sometimes not. Regardless, I've learned that I'd much rather hear new music from people I admire rather than hear about their day, or how much they enjoyed my counterpoint.

It goes both ways -- my MySpace friends are also overwhelmed with music to listen to. They're grateful for the four tracks I've put up, but I'm only one of the 10,000 bands they're "friends" with... I'd be excited to compare their MySpace wealth with their CD collections, where I'll be lucky if I find even 10 CDs from those MySpace bands.

The real trick on MySpace is how to convert these "friends" into proactive fans, the kind that help set up shows and man merch tables, and bring their friends. These people are jewels, pillars, and our best hope.

See you out there!

Guilty - I was swamped with work + moving, and neglected to look through my friend requests on MySpace for about a month. I've received approx. 500 new friend requests, approximately 8% are from people I actually know, or have met. The rest are various bands, and folks of all ages who somehow heard of me through the grapevine. 99% excellent people.

I wish there was some good way to manage all of these wonderful strangers, but alas there's not. I have to add them in, 10 at a time. Which is not terrible, as that way it forces you to take a look at people at least in batches of ten. If someone catches my curiosity, I visit their page.

But then I want to leave a comment, and face the ire of CAPTCHA - the woeful "anti-robot" verification system MySpace uses to make sure I'm not an evil auto-commenter. Every time I have to squint my eyes and take a look at those oddly-shaped letters and numbers, I feel like a 2nd-grader in a writing class, hoping the teacher won't slap me on the wrist for incorrectly typing back a "g" instead of a "y", or a "t" instead of an "r". I literally see CAPTCHA code in my dreams!

For musicians, MySpace is a fact of life. If you're not on MySpace, you don't exist -- but for all the trouble artists go through to set up pages, accept friends, comment, etc. -- I can't say that they get much in return, other than positive praise.

1) For starters, I get ZERO friend data -- I have 5000 MySpace friends, but I have no idea where they live, how old they are, or how often they listen to my music. Do I know how many friends I have in New York? No. Texas? No. Anywhere? not a clue.

2) There's no way to communicate with everyone on my list at once - only through bulletins and event invites. But that is not effective. To send everyone a private message - the equivalent of an email -- takes forever. You can only send 200 messages a day... to reach out to my fanbase, that'd take 25 days!

3) I'm not sure that we get much in return. If 10% of my MySpace friends bought a CD, I'd have to order a new run. I can't say that I've met anyone at my NYC shows who heard the music on MySpace and came explicitly from MySpace.

4) Who needs positive praise? I need negative comments, things that push me harder.

All in all, there are some great folks out there.. if only MySpace were a little more useable.


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