Looks like the news is out. I work for MTV now.

Updated post with a better link: MTV Networks buys Social Project platform

MTV Networks Buys The Rest Of DIY Social Networking Platform Flux (Social Project).

w00t!

Listen while you read: “The Compromise” – The Format

Remember when The Force let Anakin Skywalker down? He was totally all into learning The Force and being a good guy, and then Natalie Portman died anyway? He trusted in The Force and believed it would help him out, but it didn’t so … well you know what happened. Vader happened!

Well, I just found out that The Format broke up! Never mind that they broke up in February (oops). So yeah, I only went to their Myspace like once every six months. Did Stereogum even cover this? Trust me they were one of my favorite jangle pop bands ever! Really, they were! The melodies on the 2006 album Dog Problems were some of my all time favorite. Now they’re gone. Sam and Nate have gone their separate ways.
And, I blame The Force!

In this story, The Force is Web 2.0 or New Media or whatever you want to call it. Myspace and iTunes and muxtape and imeem and Pandora and the Long Tail were supposed to guarantee that hardworking indie bands with limited audiences would be taken care of! Hundreds of thousands of fans were supposed to hear them and say “Oh I’m totally going to spend money on this instead of Call of Duty 4 or Sin City on blu-ray.” They were supposed to make a million dollars! Because they’re totally way better than Fall Out Boy and stupid rappers and if only everybody had a chance to hear them, then tons of people would totally pay lots of money for their music! The Format even gave away an album for free! How 2.0 of them! And, The New Long Social Force 2.0 let me down, and now The Format is dead.

Yeah right.

Truth is, bands like The Format are (were) exactly as popular as they’re supposed to be and no amount of technical ingenuity is going to help them. At one point, I believed in building these cool tools that made technology irrelevant to the distribution of music to the people who consumed and paid for it. It’s where I guided my career. But, I think those problems are pretty much solved now. A band like The Format can produce a single, they can get it on iTunes and distribute their music to a worldwide audience and they can build connections with fans around the globe on Myspace. Then, they go out and play live and build a base. That’s really the end of the story. No amount of recommending it to someone who likes Linkin Park is going to change the bottom line. People like what they like. A lot of people like “popular crap” for a variety of completely valid reasons that have nothing to do with injecting marketing into the social graph.

But, there are acres of pixels devoted to that contentious issue. I’ll never convince the True Believers that people don’t actually want more music choices. So no, I’m not going all Darth Vader on anyone – that’s Andrew Keen’s gig now. I really just wanted to write a blog post about demise of The Format.

Oh, but also the new band Fun (http://www.myspace.com/fun) featuring Nate from The Format – a guy whose talent and writing I really connect with. They just posted a demo on their Myspace page, one that really makes me happy. I’ll add them as a friend and keep an eye out for when they’ll release more. I’ll probably really love it, but I won’t expect technology –- despite the billions of dollars changing hands on social media startups — to make the band any real money.

Addendum – more of my favorite tracks:

“Time Bomb”

“I’m Ready, I Am”

“I’m Actual”

At the risk of being a complete corporate shill, I just got the press release from Activision about the setlist for the upcoming release of Guitar Hero World Tour, and I’m gonna post the tracks. And, I’m gonna highlight the ones I wanna play the most:

· 311 – “Beautiful Disaster”

· 30 Seconds To Mars – “The Kill”

· Airbourne – “Too Much Too Young”

· The Allman Brothers Band – “Ramblin’ Man”

· Anouk – “Good God”

· The Answer – “Never Too Late”

· At The Drive-In – “One Armed Scissor”

· Beastie Boys – “No Sleep Till Brooklyn ”

· Beatsteaks – “Hail to the Freaks”

· Billy Idol – “Rebel Yell”

· Black Label Society – “Stillborn”

· Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – “Weapon Of Choice”

· blink-182 – “Dammit”

· Blondie – “ One Way or Another”

· Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band – “Hollywood Nights”

· Bon Jovi – “Livin’ On A Prayer”

· Bullet For My Valentine – “Scream Aim Fire”

· Coldplay – “Shiver”

· Creedence Clearwater Revival – “Up Around The Bend ”

· The Cult – “Love Removal Machine”

· Dinosaur Jr. – “Feel The Pain”

· The Doors – “Love Me Two Times”

· Dream Theater – “Pull Me Under”

· The Eagles – “Hotel California”

· The Enemy – “Aggro”

· Filter – “Hey Man, Nice Shot”

· Fleetwood Mac – “Go Your Own Way”

· Foo Fighters – “Everlong”

· The Guess Who – “American Woman”

· Hush Puppies – “You’re Gonna Say Yeah!”

· Interpol – “Obstacle 1”

· Jane’s Addiction – “Mountain Song”

· Jimi Hendrix – “Purple Haze – Live”

· Jimi Hendrix – “The Wind Cries Mary”

· Jimmy Eat World – “The Middle”

· Joe Satriani – “Satch Boogie”

· Kent – “Vinternoll2”

· Korn – “Freak On A Leash”

· Lacuna Coil – “Our Truth”

· Lenny Kravitz – “Are You Gonna Go My Way”

· Linkin Park – “What I’ve Done”

· The Living End – “Prisoner Of Society”

· Los Lobos – “La Bamba”

· Lost Prophets – “Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast)”

· Lynyrd Skynyrd – “ Sweet Home Alabama (Live)”

· Mars Volta – “L’Via L’Viaquez”

· MC5’s Wayne Kramer – “Kick Out The Jams”

· Metallica – “Trapped Under Ice”

· Michael Jackson – “Beat It”

· Modest Mouse – “Float On”

· Motörhead – “Overkill”

· Muse – “Assassin”

· Negramaro – “Nuvole e Lenzuola”

· Nirvana – “About a Girl (Unplugged)”

· No Doubt – “Spiderwebs”

· NOFX – “Soul Doubt”

· Oasis – “Some Might Say”

· Ozzy Osbourne – “Crazy Train”

· Ozzy Osbourne – “Mr. Crowley”

· Paramore – “Misery Business”

· Pat Benatar – “Heartbreaker”

· R.E.M. – “The One I Love”

· Radio Futura – “Escuela De Calor”

· Rise Against – “Re-Education Through Labor”

· Sex Pistols – “Pretty Vacant”

· Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”

· Smashing Pumpkins – “Today”

· Steely Dan – “Do It Again”

· Steve Miller Band – “The Joker”

· Sting – “Demolition Man (Live)”

· The Stone Roses – “Love Spreads”

· Stuck In The Sound – “Toy Boy”

· Sublime – “Santeria”

· Survivor – “Eye Of The Tiger”

· System of a Down – “B.Y.O.B.”

· Ted Nugent – “Stranglehold”  <<<—— THIS!!!

· Ted Nugent’s Original Guitar Duel Recording

· Tokio Hotel – “Monsoon”

· Tool – “Parabola”

· Tool – “Schism”

· Tool – “Vicarious”

· Trust – “Antisocial”

· Van Halen – “Hot For Teacher”

· Willie Nelson – “On The Road Again”

· Wings – “Band on the Run”

· Zakk Wylde’s Original Guitar Duel Recording

Guitar Hero® World Tour comes out Oct 26.

Listen while you read: “I Don’t Wanna Hear It” – Minor Threat

You may or may not have seen the new Flickr Home page. You can read about it at the Flickr blog, or at Wired if you want an objective take. Like any update, there’s a handful of useful tweaks that will please some, and enrage a few. You should check it out. If’ you’re not seeing the new page, look at the bottom of the page for a link to turn it on.

Here’s my favorite tiny detail:

Flickr has long understood that people need a way to follow the responses to their own comments. So they’ve had a prominent way to see “Comments you’ve made.” This lets you see if anyone said “thanks for the nice words”, or “screw you, I like it underexposed”, or answered your burning question on how they got that heart-shaped bokeh. It was a great feature that encouraged a lot of back-and-forth, the sort of sticky social interaction pageviews that sites love.

The problem came if you commented on a picture that was destined for popularity. If you commented, and then a hundred other people commented, you’d see all the follow-up comments in perpetuity — comments that had nothing to do with you.  In fact, if you’re a jealous sort, they’d eventually start getting on your nerves. “Nice capture?” That’s a dumb comment. Or, hey why am I not getting all these great comments? Ah, please shut it off! And the way to do that was delete your own comment — a really anti-social solution for sure.

But, with the update tweaks to the Flickr home, they’ve offered a mute button for individual items. So you can stop seeing followups long after it’s clear that the original photographer is never gonna thank you or say hello or whatever, and you don’t want to be confronted with how popular they are while you suffer in obscurity. Here’s where the glorious mute button is hidden, under a mouse-over in the time-it-was-posted element:

Flickr blog: There’s No Place Like Home

Wired: Flickr Home Page Update Exposes Hidden Social Features

Play this while you read: “Give It To Me Baby” – Rick James

Rumored iTunes Music Subscription: $130 Per Year | Listening Post from Wired.com.

On the off chance that Apple Corp. is deliberately floating this trial balloon of an iTunes subscription plan out to the blogosphere to gauge the reaction and see if people would pay, allow me to color the issue with my deeply considered thoughts:

Yes, please!

A real gem from Craigslist:

Major television production company seeks professional photographer with a passion for travel and cultures to host national television series. In addition to a great photographic eye, professional credentials and portfolio, must have a sense of adventure, fun and a real love of exploring other countries and cultures. Must be male, between the ages of 30 and 50.

TV Series Host Needed: Photography/travel show.

Jeeze, the best job ever ever in the world.

Interesting idea here:

Just forward any email to 24@hitmelater.com and we’ll resend it to you 24 hours later.

You can replace “24″ with any number or day. For example, forward it to 4@hitmelater.com and you’ll get it back four hours later. Send it to wednesday@hitmelater.com and we’ll send it back to you the first Wednesday morning after today.

hitmelater.com

Listen to this while reading: “This Is Not A Photograph” – Mission of Burma

Here’s a must-read piece in the NY Times. It has it all: It’s a blog by Errol Morris (Documentary filmmaker responsible for The Thin Blue Line and A Brief History of Time among others – IMDB link.) It touches on all the big topics: Mainstream media, Photoshop, Wittgenstein, Dada,  Godzilla, et. al. I respected and enjoyed Errol Morris  before reading this. I do so even more thoroughly now.

Photography as a Weapon – Errol Morris – Zoom – New York Times Blog.

It’s primarily a look at the situation surrounding the faked Iranian missile photo. But, it reaches well beyond that — as Morris is so good a doing.

People often trust low-res images because they look more real. But of course they are not more real, just easier to fake. We look at picture of Nessie (the Loch Ness Monster). It’s grainy, fuzzy. It’s hard to make anything out. You never see a 10-megapixel photograph of Big Foot or the Abominable Snowman or the Loch Ness Monster.

Now that’s a blog. It’s researched. It has interviews, It has footnotes!

Music to read this post by: “Who Did You Think I Was (Live At The Nokia Theatre)” – John Mayer Trio

There’s a lot of hand-wringing in Los Angeles these days around the aggressive tactics that photographers use to get very valuable images of famous people

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Officials from around Los Angeles, joined by celebrities such as singer John Mayer, met on Thursday to discuss how to fix what some see as a growing problem of paparazzi dangerously hounding Hollywood stars.

L.A. officials at odds over reining in paparazzi

And, Mayer posted his statement on one of his blogs:

I don’t sit before you today to ask that you ban the paparazzi. I’m asking you to regulate it.

John Mayer’s “Testimonial”.

It is true that Mayer is well-known to be a photography enthusiast. He’s a better photographer than I am, damn him.

But, I think it’s a little silly when folks call for increased laws against (or to regulate) paparazzi, their main arguments focus around how the paps break existing laws. Why not focus on enforcing existing laws? Eight cars running a red light? Guess what? You don’t need a new law to stop that. Licensing paps? They already have a driver’s license they’re not adhering to. Trespassing? It’s already a crime. If those existing laws are not enforced, then address your energy towards changing the culture of law enforcement that allows such selective enforcement of existing law, rather than make additional laws and bureaucracy that will be at once guaranteed to be poorly worded such that non-paparazzi photographers somehow will be additionally persecuted, and mostly ignored by the unscrupulous photogs that break laws now.

Also, here’s John Mayer leaving Samy’s Camera on Fairfax. No confrontation here. I just think it’s neat he was at one of the camera shops I go to.

What’s the old saw about insanity, doing the same thing and expecting a different result? Heck, I don’t remember

Breaking News!! Dell designs own music player… again

Really? Seriously? April Fools??

Ok, fine. It’s real. I just hope Mitch Ferrence comes back. Do the right thing, Dell!