My first Christmas that ever ment anything.

So a few months ago I found out that my little brother had died from a herion overdose. I found this out because I googled his name in one of my many attempts to track him and my step mother down. Well, this time I got his band's MySpace page. To make a long drpressing story short, I found out my little bother died when I Googled his name on my laptop while on the way to work. After I recovered from the shock my first thouht was trying to get in touch with my step mom to make sure she was ok and if I could do anything to help her out.

I noticed that the website for my little borthers band was available. So whoever was in charge of that let it expire. There was no way I was going to let some low life scammer take over my little brothers website! So I reserved it right away. I then put a notice on the site that I wanted to get in touch with any of my little brothers old friends, his mother, and any of his old band mates to make this a memorial site to him and his music. A friend of his named Matt called me and gave me my step moms phone number. I now owe Matt big time!

I had not talked to her in years, so I had no idea how she would react to me wanting to get in touch with her. It was one of the scariest calls I have ever made, but I made it this weekend. I got voice mail and left a message. This morning she called me and we now are in total contact. I can't thank you enough Matt. Because of you, James's mother and me are making plans to get the music of Blew Fluid out to the public bigger then ever. I will be calling on you to orginize the contributions of his friends. If all of us work together on this we can make a memorial website better then anyone has ever seen!

Christmas has never ment much to me...until now!

This is why the music industry is dying!

So here is another reason why the music industry is dying. Just a few minutes ago I was talking to a music industry contact of mine. I told him that his company should have an RSS feed for their press releases. His response? He had no idea what an RSS feed was. Never even heard of such a thing. Now for the part that will sadly not shock anyone. He is not even close to the only one I have run into that have never heard of an RSS feed. Imagine you are a press agent. You want to get news about your artists faster than the competition. How about an automated system that blogs and websites across the internet can use to automatically post your news? I could be sleeping soundly, the press agent posts a press release to their site (as many do). This goes through the RSS feed and presto, we have that news on my site. I didn’t even have to wake up and my site was just updated with very current info straight from the source. This is one of the many tools that could save the music industry, but they are so damn slow adopting new technologies that it is literally killing them! I feel like I am banging my head against the wall with these people sometimes just trying to get them to use tools that would help them more then it would even help me! Again, if you are one of my contacts and think you inspired this rant, you are…along with every single one of my other contacts. Not one of you have an RSS feed and that is just retarded.

About six months ago one of my favorite labels to deal with had this major priority release. It was a band I totally loved and was excited about. Because it was a priority release, the label was worried about people leaking the promo to the internet. Now that is totally understandable. The way they went about keeping it off the internet was not. They used XCP! You do remember XCP don’t you? Ask the people at Sony about it. It ended up costing them a ton of money because they ended up with a massive lawsuit over it. It destroyed systems left and right. So fast forward a few years and this otherwise really cool independent label uses it for the priority release of a really great band. It was pure hell trying to explain to them why I would never put this cd into my system. Their response? “Can you give it to one of your other writers and have them cover it?” Yeah, my writers love it when I tell them to destroy their systems.

Now there are a few labels that are getting smart. One of them used the infamous Bit Torrent and Pirate Bay recently to flood the internet with promo versions of an entire cd. The band and label worked their ass off to get as many people as possible to download this full length samples of the new cd. Every song. All over the internet. Then everyday they would change the seed so that it said something different. This way it was pure hell to separate the “retail” version from the “promo” version. The promo version was no different except it had these annoying voiceovers halfway through every song telling people what cd it was, when it was going to be released, and what label it was on. So with the entire internet flooded with these promo versions two things were done. First off it kept people from being able to download the retail version. Second it got the word out in mass about the new cd. What was the result? It broke sales records for the label that had stood for decades. This was a death metal release and it out sold a few pop metal albums with ten times the promotion budget.

So some people in the music industry are getting smart. Others are dying quick! Which one are you?

SEO blogs, Marketing Blogs, and unfair witch hunts oh my!

So being a user of a few social news sites like Digg.com, Mixx.com, HeavyAsHell.com, & the Stumble Upon toolbar, I have found a few types of people that seem to ruin things for everyone. They are strong in numbers and equally as hated. They are SEO bloggers, marketing bloggers, and those who dare to submit their own articles. Most of them are bottom feeding parasites who ruin it for everyone else. The honest ones get caught in the witch hunt the parasites created. Being one who submits from time to time, this ticks me off to no end. I have mentioned this in bulletin board posts, comments on story links on the sites mentioned above, and even a few times in instant message conversations. It all seems to be getting worse with no end in site. So I figured I would compile all my thoughts about this in one blog post. This way I can refer to this post whenever the subject comes up again. How’s that for SEO you unimaginative bastards?

Now let me make this clear, I have no problem with SEO journalists. I have learned much from those that have put tons of time into great articles full of information. Marketing bloggers are the same way. In fact my favorite Marketing blog is from the same person who is in charge of selling ads on my two biggest sites. Both www.HeavyAsHell.com & www.RockMyMonkey.com sell our most prime ad spots through a company called www.FixionMedia.com run by a guy named Rob Cotter. Rob has his marketing blog at www.CotterCity.com. So my ad rep is a marketing blogger. What puts him above the rest? He sell’s ads all day long. He has sold millions of dollars worth of ads in just a few years. Most of the marketing bloggers have never sold an ad a day in their pathetic life. If they know so much about marketing, why do they have google ads on their site? Google ads make webmasters less money then pretty much any ad network online! It is the bottom level place to go for ads. They accept pretty much anyone. I’ll stick with Cotter City thanks. I know he has real information and isn’t just talking out his ass!

So how do we separate the good guys from the worthless scum that make the rest of us look bad? With the marketing bloggers, see what kind of ads they use. If they just use Google ads they probably know nothing about marketing. Who do they work for and have you ever heard of the company? If they just use blogger (like I do), Word Press (like my wife), or some other service that hosts the entire site, be suspicious. Look to see what it says in the “About Me” page. Do a Google search on the companies they work for. See how those companies rank on Alexa.com. Now I am not saying that any one of these things means they are bottom feeders. Just a guide. Remember that a great majority of them are a waste of your time and can be trusted about as much as those who send spam and run phishing sites to make money.

With the SEO blogs it is just as easy. Do they do research? Are their posts longer then one paragraph? Do they compile a ton of info from a ton of different sources to make one article? Do you learn something new? Is the info they give timely? Is it ever news worthy? Did they just cut and paste from another site? Again, don’t dismiss a site if they fit just one of these things. This is just a guide. Most of them are worthless scum though. However, it was an SEO blogger that helped me find out that one of my sites was on the Digg autobury. So my goal is to call out the ones who make the good ones look bad.

Now for those who submit their own content to social news sites. I am proud to say that I am one of them! So again, do not go on some witch hunt. Look at what they submit. Do they only submit articles they are connected with? In fact is the majority of what they submit content they are connected with? Are they involved with the site in other ways? DO they vote for stories others submit or just their own? Do they comment on all different kinds of stories or do they just submit their spam and leave?

Now Digg went downhill quick because the Digg users started going on a witch hunt against anyone who even mentioned SEO or marketing. An army started rushing any story with “bury votes” that was submitted by it’s writer. With no thought put to how legitimate the article. I had some exclusive interviews with legendary musicians that were victums of the “Bury Brigade”. So let’s stop the witch hunts and work on ways to separate the good oens from the bad ones. If social news is going to work, we need to go beyond just witch hunts. Mixx seems to be getting over run by the SEO and Marketing blogs right now. Chances are that they have secret groups to ban together. So before Mixx gets the same witch hunt mentality going by it’s user base to save the site from going downhill, we need to look at Digg and ask if the cure is worse then the disease. Then we need to come up with some real solutions.

My idea is to use automation. Make it so you can’t submit links to one site more then two times in a row. Make it so that the system takes away points if you use the word SEO or Marketing on a majority of the articles you link to. Block someone from submissions if they don’t vote on more stories then they submit. Same with comments. Block submissions if they have not commented on more stories then they have submitted. If you have any ideas, I have comments open on this article. I will also watch what is posted when I submit my own article to Mixx. Yeah, I am using irony to drive home an idea that this is not meant to be just a slam against SEO bloggers. Just want judgment to be more fair then it was in the past. Thanks for reading the whole thing. I know it went long, but I have had this stuff building up for a very long time.