More I’s CUBE ahead

Rich Pav 10 Comments

I met with Kana (I’s CUBE’s manager) yesterday at a Starbuck’s in Hiroo. I brought my laptop intending to show her music.podshow.com and hopefully convince her to upload some tracks to it. But Starbucks here don’t have wireless access (campers aren’t profitable) and I couldn’t siphon off enough bandwidth from an nearby unsecured access point. One of these days I’m going to have to buy myself a card with an external antenna jack that I can plug into a Pringle’s can.

We talked about the legal issues that come with playing and recording music. She’s far more familiar with the details than most artists are about their own music and warned me to be very careful. On of the things I want to do is help indy artists sell their music online, either by setting up a Zen Cart store or by helping them take advantage of iTunes, CD Baby, etc. by helping them getting set up with TuneCore. The question for me right now is, how do I find the time? I barely have enough time to even blog.

She also sent me a song from I’s CUBE that I’ll play on my next podcast–the one I recorded last night but need to edit.

Kana is someone I feel lucky to know. Her drive to achieve her goals is greater than her sense of fear–something I’m working on, so it’s good to have a role model. She president of her own record label to promote the bands she loves the most. This is no small feat, considering that the music industry is rife with organized crime and profits are small unless you have a runaway hit. But I have a strong feeling that she has what it takes to be successful. I doubt she’s the kind of person who looks at herself in the mirror every morning and repeats affirmation mantras. She seems to just naturally have confidence. (For the record, I force myself to fake it, kicking and screaming all the way.)

I’m spying on you…

Rich Pav 15 Comments

A while ago I learned about the site Crazy Egg through a writeup on TechCrunch. Crazy Egg is similar to Google Analytics but more visual. You add a line of Javascript to your blog’s template and Crazy Egg will keep track of exactly where your visitors click and show you through a heatmap or an overlay of click statistics. With a free account you can track up to 5,000 clicks per month. For bloggers, that’s plenty. Frankly, if they offered only 2,000 I’d probably end up paying for an account instead of leeching.

From the roughly 3,000 clicks in the past 20 days I’ve learned a few things:

  • More people click on my Technorati Profile than I expected. I should make an “About Me” link at the top with short profile page.
  • People can’t resist clicking on images that accompany a post, so I will be sure to always link them to something.
  • Far more people read comments than post them. I had no idea. But the “Recent Comments” sidebar isn’t used as much as I anticipated.
  • People need to be re-introduced to I’s CUBE. That post didn’t get nearly as much attention as I expected. I know visitors are interested in music because they click on the “music” category in the sidebar.
  • The links to other gaikokujin podcasters are frequently used. That’s some pretty prime real estate! Maybe I should put the Google ads above it instead.
  • Interestingly, far fewer visitors go for my links to other video blogs, although they do click on the videos I post. I might link my videos to pages with ads. (Don’t complain. I’m paying more than you are for all this. The Ninja makes $300,000 a year, mind you.)
  • A heck of a lot of people hit the “next” link at the bottom of the page. That’s a very good sign.

So as you can see, Crazy Egg is offering quite a useful service for free. I suspect it won’t stay that way forever.

My Online Fantasy

Rich Pav 13 Comments

If I were doing what I really want to do, if I could throw caution to the wind and overcome my fears of criticism, failure and success, this is what I’d be doing:

  • More videoblogging
    • Take requests
    • Make them accessible to hearing impared: fully bilingual subtitles, beneficial to EN/JA language students too
    • Debunk commons myths about Japan once and for all (there are no goddamn used panty machines!)
    • Further research into stories about Japan that make the front page of digg.com
    • Make enough money to cover travel, equipment and time expenses
    • Foster videoblogging among international high school students in Japan
    • Corporate-sponsored online international student film contest/festival
  • Discover and uncover independent artists in Japan with potential
    • Create high-quality recordings of their live performances for promotion and sale
    • Interview them in English/Japanese to develop a personal bond between them and their fans
    • Create a library of live performances and behind the scenes videos to show them in real life: a new kind of “personal promotion” that goes deeper than traditional promotion
    • Sell exclusive DRM-free tracks online, split the profits as if I were a traditional record store.
    • Eventually create a virtual record label that’s focused on benefitting everyone, not just me
    • Offer back-office services to independent artists so they can focus on making music for a worldwide audience and I can make a living
  • Create a thriving online community
    • Change the focus from me to the community: I want to be Tom
    • Use the podcast as the community newsletter, like Diggnation
    • I have ideas, but need a establish a mutual trusting relationship with a PHP/MySQL developer who will work for free in exchange for a huge payoff that might (or might not) come in the future.
  • More podcasts
    • Language learning
    • (Secret)

I’ve heard it said that you’re a different person every ten years. In the next ten years, I want to be the person who achieves all the above. But there are still some lessons I need to learn, and people I need to meet. That’s what I’m working on now.

One thing I’m starting to realize is that fame, although intangible and ephemeral, has real value. For a reason I don’t yet understand, people are willing to spend money to associate themselves with a figure they trust and admire. Entertainment, in all its forms, is a gold mine. People want to feel better about themselves, belong to a group, feel closer to others and vicariously explore the world outside their daily lives. I enjoy helping others more than anything else, but I have to figure out a way to make money doing it. I see that as a necessary evil, and that’s my greatest psychological barrier right now. Adam Curry doesn’t have that barrier, and that’s the greatest difference between him and me.