A few years ago, my first novel was published. It did pretty well, won an award, was translated and sold around the world; the movie rights were even optioned. Now I want to put it online — no charge, no hook, no catch. My motivation is simple: greed.
- Apocalypse Soon by Jon Evans, The Walrus, September 2007
I had grand plans to do a post a day about my favorite 2007 things starting about 2 weeks ago but life got in the way. It's hard to write when grandma's in town and a Felicia returns and you're stuffing your face all the daggone time.
So, here's what I would've gone into more depth about.
Best Albums of 2007
- Untrue - Burial (Yeah, it creeped on up)
- Play With The Changes - 4Hero
- Version - Mark Ronson
- The Reminder - Feist
- American Gangster - Jay-Z
- Kala - M.I.A.
- Our Earthly Pleasures - Maximo Park
- Koop Islands - Koop
- Writer's Block - Peter, Bjorn & John
- Ear Drum - Talib Kweli
- Neon Bible - Arcade Fire
- Introducing... - Joss Stone
- Under The Black Light - Rilo Kiley
- The Fragile Army - The Polyphonic Spree
- The Undisputed Truth - Brother Ali
- Desire - Pharoahe Monch
- The Weatherman LP - Evidence
- Those Things - Miguel Migs
- Proof of Youth - The Go! Team
- Volta - Bjork
Best Record Label of 2007 - The Numero Group
Best Hip-Hop Album of 2007 that you probably don't have
Best Albums of 2007 that didn't come out in 2007
- Bees + Things + Flowers - Incognito
- Keep Reachin' Up - Nicole Willis & The Soul Investigators
- The Only Thing I Ever Wanted - Psapp
- Set Yourself On Fire - Stars
- Best Kept Secrets: The Best of Lam 1996-2004 - Lamb
Best Songs of 2007 (based on actual spins)
- Innocence - Bjork
- Black Mirror - Arcade Fire
- Unlike Me - Kate Havnevik
- Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You) (featuring Outkast) - UGK
- Give It To Me (f/ Nelly Furtado & Justin Timberlake) - Timbaland
- The Show - Talib Kweli & Madlib
- Don't Act (F/ Freeway) - Skillz
- I Still Love H.E.R. - Kanye West
- Ancient Curse - Peter, Bjorn & John
- Lookin' At Me Sideways - Brother Ali
- Innocence - Bjork
- Paper Planes - M.I.A.
- Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You) (featuring Outkast) - UGK
- I'm A Flirt (Remix ft. T.I & T-Pain) - R.Kelly
- He Can Only Hold Her - Amy Winehouse
- 1 2 3 4 - Feist
- Champion - Kanye West
- Young Folks - Peter, Bjorn & John
- Look Inside - 4Hero
- Roc Boys (And The Winner Is...) - Jay-Z
- Michael Clayton
- Ratatouille
- No Country For Old Men
- Superbad
- Lars and The Real Girl
- The Heart of the Game
- Who Killed The Electric Car?
- Dixie Chicks: Shut Up & Sing
- An Unreasonable Man
Best Read of 2007 - The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and The Awakening of a Nation
Best Website of 2007 - Last.fm
Best Website of 2007 to hate to sorta like - Facebook
Best Blog Podcast Vlog Content Site of 2007 - Undercover Black Man
Best New (to me) Content Site of 2007 - Away with Words
I'm exasperated every time FTW is used as "For The Win." Every Time I see it, I think "Fuck The World!"
Gwen finds proof that I'm not crazy. Everybody else is.
Michelle's Consuming Louisville post about her local radio station's UGC photo promotion prompted a pretty impassioned response from me in her comments so I figured the topic deserved a longer treatise from me here. I should be working right now but the Holidays have already captured my brain.
And I will open this with a caveat - while what I'm going to discuss is informed by my work at the mouse nothing I'm going to say is specific to any of our current, past, or future projects.
For the purposes of this conversation, let's consider UGC this - copy, images, and video created and submitted by website guests who do not have a formal relationship, state of employment, or contract with said website or it's parent company.
Professionally generated content in this conversation is material sold to or produced in partnership with a website or it's parent company. It can also be content that passes the "professional" smell test and/or has it's own brand. UGC content is 99% of what gets posted to youtube. The other 1% like Epic-fu and Tiki Bar TV is PGC.
Understand this about Traditional Entertainment Mainstream Media Companies and UGC promotions: for them, user-generated content is almost never about the content.
Let me write that again: for them, user-generated content is almost never about the content.
MSM gets much more value from professionally generated content. It's extendable, distributable, licensable, and has tried and true copyright agreements around it. In the online space, professionally generated content is thought of the same way. Professional content makers that are selling their existing products or producing in partnership with MSM websites bring with them their own cache - built-in audience, expertise in the online content model, and the level of creativity and "professionalism" that is the equivalent of their television or movie content creation counterparts.
So, what does MSM get out of user-generated content promotions? If they are smart, they are getting what good UGC models provide - a dedicated and invested audience, increased page views, increased time spent on the site, a committed community to market to and sell advertising against, and, lastly, interesting enough content that passive users like to see (although probably not pay for). MSM is not looking for professional work to come in from professionals through UGC promotions and, in fact, have to protect themselves against those kinds of submissions in their disclaimers and terms of use.
A fan or hobbyist wants to participate. A professional wants to get paid. UGC is for that first audience and explicitly not for the second.
Also, realize that in the online space, it's cheaper to get professional content, particularly copy and photos. UGC promotions/applications are expensive to create and manage. Professionally generated content has set costs. I can buy one photo from a pro for what? $50, $500, $5000? How much does it cost me to sort through and manage complicated usage rights for 5,000 user-submitted photos? 50,000? 500,000? And for how long?
If I'm MSM and I want pro content, I'll hire a pro. It's quicker, costs less, and doesn't come with huge legal hurdles.
Understand this as a person who creates content, you don't get to be both. You either are an amateur or you're a pro. If you're a pro, copyright your material, protect your intellectual and creative property, determine your own rules about distribution. I post my pictures to flickr under a creative commons license that pretty much marks me as a hobbyist. You can take my pictures and do what you will with them as long as I get credited. If, at some point in my life, I decide to become a professional, I would change my license and probably limit the amount of work I have available online for free. I'd understand, though, that my material from before I considered myself a pro, is probably open season.
I don't post my writing anywhere without a prior agreement about that work. I don't consider writing a hobby. I've been paid for my writing, hired for my writing, speak about my writing. It's professional work. I give it to you for free here. I'd fight it's appearance elsewhere tooth and nail if I thought it was without permission (this gets a little hinky with RSS feeds but that's for another day).
As I said on Michelle's post, don't look for a MSM company or website to protect your rights. They are far too busy (and scared) protecting their own.
I miss television. But the web makes it all better. Via a tweet by calinative, I present Yarg Y'Cam:
if it's the reclusive life that Burial seeks, he might just be his own worst enemy, because his new album, Untrue, bests Burial's fans' wildest hopes for the followup. Burial was a worthy, sometimes thrilling record-- an impressive debut-- but it sometimes lost focus, particularly when it attempted to carve out something closer to "proper," clubwise dubstep. But Untrue maintains the style and the vibe of the first album and yet does it better. It's a deeper album-- richer, more complex, more enveloping. The irony is that almost nothing has changed. Burial still makes his beats (at least, so he claims) with relatively lo-fi audio editing software, eschewing the comfort of sequencers and MIDI clocks. His string sounds, which on Burial let many a critic to call his music "cinematic," sound as unabashedly canned as they did last time, and his manipulated vocals-- warped, time-stretched, pitch-corrected-- are just as unabashedly emotive.
-Pitchfork Record Review (8.4/10), 11.13.07
I've only had this album for a week so I'm not ready to call it "Album of the Year" but it just might be. It's haunted me since the day I bought it (8.99 in the Amazon mp3 store, also available on eMusic) and I find my mind constantly returning to its complicated rhythms. Right now, it falls as #3 on my 2007 album chart.
It's just that good. When listening to this track, I want to sing along. I randomly break out in dance. I head nod. I listen intently. I listen casually. I listen all the time.
I haven't sat with the album enough to form a compelling review and maybe I'll get to that later. For now, I just want you to enjoy as I am.
Top Artists
| 1 |
|
Björk |
559
|
| 2 |
|
Jay-Z |
509
|
| 3 |
|
Common |
440
|
| 4 | NPR |
438
|
|
| 5 |
|
Madlib |
365
|
| 6 |
|
Talib Kweli |
350
|
| 7 |
|
Little Brother |
345
|
| 8 |
|
Sufjan Stevens |
312
|
| 9 |
|
Mary J. Blige |
276
|
| 10 | J Dilla aka jay dee |
273
|
|
| 11 |
|
De La Soul |
271
|
| 12 |
|
Incognito |
264
|
| 12 |
|
Jay Dee |
264
|
| 14 |
|
Zero 7 |
256
|
| 15 |
|
Murs |
237
|
| 16 |
|
Miguel Migs |
227
|
| 17 |
|
Evidence |
225
|
| 18 |
|
Oh No |
216
|
| 19 |
|
The Arcade Fire |
211
|
| 20 |
|
Joss Stone |
210
|
| 21 |
|
Justin Timberlake |
209
|
*plus 1 because I don't really count NPR as a music spin.
Top Tracks
| 1 |
|
Björk – Innocence |
50
|
| 2 |
|
The Arcade Fire – Black Mirror |
42
|
| 2 | Kate Havnevik – Unlike me |
42
|
|
| 4 | UGK – International Players Anthem (f/ Outkast) |
38
|
|
| 5 |
|
Incognito – Always There |
37
|
| 5 | José González – All You Deliver |
37
|
|
| 7 | Justin Timberlake – My Love (ft TI) |
34
|
|
| 7 |
|
DangerDoom – Vats of Urine |
34
|
| 7 | Bonde do Role – Melo do Tobaco (Paul Devro Sweet Mango Mix) |
34
|
|
| 7 | Timbaland – Give It To Me (f/ Nelly Furtado & Justin Timberlake) |
34
|
|
| 11 | Mary J. Blige – Free (Interlude) |
33
|
|
| 12 |
|
Zero 7 – Crosses |
32
|
| 12 | AYA – 45 Parade Place |
32
|
|
| 12 | The Foreign Exchange – Foreign Exchange End Theme |
32
|
|
| 12 |
|
Incognito – Raise |
32
|
| 16 |
|
Dilated Peoples – Back Again |
31
|
| 16 | Talib Kweli & Madlib – The Show |
31
|
|
| 16 |
|
Sleater-Kinney – Modern Girl |
31
|
| 19 | J-Love – Return Of The Theodore Unit (f/ Ghostface, Sean Wiggs and Trife Da God) |
30
|
|
| 19 |
|
Björk – Aeroplane |
30
|
| 19 | Terry Callier – Just As Long As We're In Love |
30
|
|
| 19 | The Foreign Exchange – Be Alright |
30
|
|
| 19 | Madlib – Tape Hiss (Dirty) |
30
|
Top Albums
| 1 | J Dilla aka jay dee – Donuts |
272
|
|
| 2 |
|
Incognito – Bees + Things + Flowers |
198
|
| 3 |
|
Jay Dee – Ruff Draft |
157
|
| 4 |
|
The Arcade Fire – Neon Bible |
149
|
| 4 |
|
4hero – Play With The Changes |
149
|
| 6 | Robin Thicke – The Evolution of Robin Thicke |
127
|
|
| 7 |
|
Brother Ali – The Undisputed Truth |
122
|
| 8 |
|
Jaylib – Champion Sound |
119
|
| 9 |
|
DangerDoom – The Mouse And The Mask |
118
|
| 10 | The Foreign Exchange – Connected |
110
|
|
| 10 |
|
Björk – Volta |
110
|
| 12 |
|
Common – Be |
104
|
| 12 |
|
Mark Ronson – Version |
104
|
| 14 |
|
Sia – Colour the Small One |
90
|
| 14 |
|
Sufjan Stevens – Illinois |
90
|
| 16 |
|
José González – Veneer |
84
|
| 17 |
|
Mary J. Blige – My Life |
83
|
| 18 |
|
Common – Like Water for Chocolate |
81
|
| 19 |
|
Björk – Vespertine Live |
80
|
| 20 |
|
Mary J. Blige – Love & Life |
79
|
*note - just like last year, I'm not so sure about the albums list although it looks more accurate. That said, half the albums in my critical top albums list are no where to be found on the full chart despite what I know about my listening habits the second half of this year.
More in depth discussions begin in the morning.
My heart had grown two sizes too big.
Yo Yo Yo Kids FTW
p.s. mock this at your own risk. You might force me to post some Disney Channel Holiday tracks. I don't want to but I'll do it, you grinches.



















































