next2friendsblog.com

Ahh, Italy, land of fine wine, beautiful rolling countrysides, and adorable little towns nestled into cliffs on the Mediterranean Sea. But clearly NOT the land of anyone named “Friday”. A Roman court has denied a couple the right to name their baby “Friday” citing that it is the name of a “savage” in the book “Robinson Crusoe”. The judge over the preceding went on to say that a child named “Friday” could create “a sense of inferiority” and could fail to “guarantee the boy the necessary decorum.” The couple has decided to appeal the decision to Italy’s highest court.

Apparently in Italy, city officials are required to report any unusual names, which helps me understand how this landed in court in the first place. It is against the law to name children any name that can be deemed “ridiculous and shameful.” The judge in the case went on to say that being named “Friday” would keep the boy from “serene interpersonal relationships,” turning him into the “laughing stock of his group.” But to top it all off, the judge upheld a June decision by a lower court to name the baby “Gregorio” after the saint associated with the day the baby was born.

Ridiculous, I know, but some parents in the United States could actually use this judge! I’ve taught in the U.S. public school system for 7 years and I have to say that some names I’ve encountered are actually much worse.

Example 1:

I worked with a child whose actual government name was “Killer”. No joke. It was a daily struggle to call the child by his name: “Killer, quit touching her” or “Killer, you didn’t finish your project yet, why are you drawing?” You couldn’t say his name without feeling absolutely ridiculous. Not to mention the lingering feeling that no matter what he did, he was still somehow “bad”. Praise was almost out of the question, “you did a great job Killer!”

Example 2:

Definitely not the worst but this one still made me uncomfortable. I worked with a girl named “Precious”. To add insult to injury, Precious was hardly precious. She was a bit nasty and mean, talked back and was generally bad. Perhaps she was angry at always having to be “Precious”.

Example 3:

This one takes the cake. I didn’t work with these girls directly but knew of them. There were three sisters born to this particular family. Now I believe the oldest sister’s name was Ragina. The middle sister was named Lagina. And now, if you didn’t see it coming, the youngest sister was named…Vagina! At least this little girl had the advantage that her name was pronounced different from the name of the female anatomy. BUT, I shudder to think what that poor girl had to go through once she hit Junior High School and kids began to actually know how to spell.

So while it seems pretty crazy that Italy has a law against “ridiculous and shameful” names, I’ve seen at least a few examples of how the freedom we have in the United States to name our children whatever we choose has gone horribly wrong. Got any good ones?

Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com

Verizon has announced the launch of it’s new service called V-Cast Mobile TV which will deliver 8 initial channels to compatible mobile phones. Users will need to purchase new handsets capable of receiving the seperate broadcast signal, operated by Qualcomm, as well as regular cellular signals. The first and only phone capable of Dual-Mode reception is by Samsung costing around $200 or $150 with a Verizon service agreement. The service will cost $15 a month as a standalone product or $25 a month bundled with Verizon’s other mobile web services.

Who didn’t fantasize about watching TV anytime, from anywhere when they were a kid? I went so far as to put a boombox with a built in 10 inch TV on my Christmas list for several years in a row (Santa never brought me one). So, there is no denying that delivering more products/services for mobile technology will be the wave of the future. Look at what the company I work for has done for mobile video by enabling users to broadcast live, from any capable mobile device:

And the list goes on and on and is growing with each passing day. We are just steps away from speaking to one another on our Jetson-style video-phone-watches! So, does life imitate art or vice versa? With the new wave of mobile technology offerings I think we can chalk quite a few points up for life imitating art (or cartoons in this case). These are very exciting times indeed!Real Life,

Real Time,

Real People,

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com

In this previous post I talked about the different kinds of metapors and how metaphors work principally. In todays post I’m going to go a bit further. I’m going to illustrate how to create metaphors using the “Connecting Idea” method. Once you’ve identified your connecting idea the metaphors should just tumble out. To get started you only two questions:

1. What characteristics does this idea have?

2. What else has those characteristics?

Let’s see this in action. I’m going to pick something to illustrate how the metaphors come tumbling out with just these two questions. I’ve picked the police as my subject. Now I ask myself, “what qualities do the cops have?” and just start listing the fragments.

protect

corrupt

peace keepers

abuse

power

control

We’ll start there. Now I ask myself, “what else has those characteristics?” Just take one of the words to start. I’ll take protect. Guns protect. So do houses, buildings, and bomb shelters. Clothing protects, raincoats, Sorrels, gloves. Let’s see what we have:

The police are the guns of society

The police are the bomb shelters of the city

A raincoat of police

I kind of like that last one. Let’s keep going. Corrupt. The Mob is corrupt. Dictatorships are corrupt. A computer virus corrupts a computer file.

The police are the mob of the city

The police are the dictators of society

A virus of police

Alright, one more. Let’s take power. Hurricanes have power. So do horses. Ferrari’s have power. The United States has power. Cannons, tanks, and explosions have power.

A hurricane of police

An explosion of police

The police are society’s cannons

See how many metaphors we’ve generated? And that was just from three of our words. There’s no limit to the number of ideas you can generate. I hope this illustration helps you on your way to building more meaningful and creative metaphor! Good luck!

Real life,
Real time,
Real people

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com

I’ve sung for the past ten years, both commercially and artistically. I’m not sure what made me decide to take voice lessons again, I certainly felt pretty up on my technique, but something told me that I was at a plateau, that there was possibly somewhere else I could go with my voice. I started to research different vocal methods and I stumbled across a technique that seemed to have been used by many singers I admired. The technique was called Speech Level Singing. It was founded by Seth Riggs who, I later have learned, is a very well regarded vocal instructor.

Now, I’m not a certified instructor, I’ve only been taking lessons for about 2 months, but let me try to explain it as far I as I understand it. If you place your hand over the front of your neck and count to ten out loud you should notice that your larynx remains motionless. This is what is called “Speech Level”. The phrase seems to have a sort of double meaning. On the one hand it kind of refers to the actual physical position of your larynx when speaking, and on the other hand it seems to refer to the volume at which you normally would talk. Both are key to this technique. SLS singers are attempting to keep their larynx in a completely neutral position, like when they’re speaking, and also attempting to not push their voices any louder than when they speak.

I began lessons with a level 2 instructor here in New York City named Kara Napolitano. Immediately she brought to my attention how high my larynx was when I sang. In fact, I had built my entire technique and style around a high larynx. The problem of singing with a high larynx is that at some point in order to accomplish higher pitches and a louder sound you need to activate more and more of the muscles surrounding the larynx. This can induce strain after a while. And indeed, I had experienced a good deal of strain in my time performing.

So the first task for me was to deactivate my larynx when I sing. This was accomplished by opening my throat and making kind of “dumb” sounds. Many “duh, duh, duh’s” later and I finally started to feel my throat opening and relaxing. I continue to struggle to not activate my larynx as I sing but with the help of some of the SLS excersises it has certainly gotten easier.

The next task before me was to try to keep my vocal chords connected through what are called my “bridges”. Everyone has several “regions” of their voice. Some people differentiate them as their “chest voice” and their “head voice” or “falsetto”. With Speech Level Singing the goal is to connect the various “voices” we possess. The way this is accomplished is through “bridges”. The best way I can describe a bridge is by saying it’s a sort of hybrid between a full chest voice and a full falsetto. It can sound a little squeaky, like a creaking door at times but that, in essence, is the idea. Instead of letting your vocal chords blow fully apart, like happens what you sing in a full falsetto, you attempt to keep them connected, even if that means making some less than desirable sounds. And a funny thing happens, when you really nail it, the sound actually IS desirable.

I have struggled quite a bit with this concept since I’ve developed quite a solid falsetto over the years. It was finally illustrated to me this past weekend at an SLS workshop I attended with vocal instructor powerhouse Wendy Parr. In a matter of minutes she had me squawking through my bridges.

Now that I at least understand how singing through your bridges feels I’m left trying to understand how I’m going to integrate this new sound into my singing. Here is a recent attempt by me to use the technique:

I’m determined to not fall into the American Idol type style that so many singers of this technique seems to have. But then again, that can’t be blamed on the technique but rather on the practitioners.All in all I think Speech Level Singing is a great tool. I look forward to sharing with you all where it takes me!

Real life,
Real time,
Real people

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com

It’s with a great deal of excitement that I get to announce that Next2Friends has completed development of our new Communications and Mobile-Driven Social Networking Platform! It has been years in development and will be up for testing and industry review this December 24th, 2007. Then, beginning January 2nd, 2008, all Next2Friends pre-registered accounts will become active! Get ready to experience a totally new take on communicating, social networking and unlocking the potential of any mobile device in ways that have never been seen!

So what exactly is Next2Friends?

Next2Friends is a new Communications Platform and Mobile based Social Networking experience that interacts with any Mobile Device (like a cell phone), allowing you to do the following:

Intelligent Proximity Matching Services:

Next2Friends Intelligent Proximity Matching assists you in the otherwise tedious task of network building by bridging the “virtual world” with the “real world”. You can use it to meet new people like you, make new business contacts or even to date. Here’s how it works:

You set up a Next2Friends profile detailing all your likes, dislikes, quirks and everything that makes you who you are. Then, as you move about in the real world, if you have the Next2Friends software loaded onto your Bluetooth and or P2P WIFI enabled mobile device, Next2Friends will automatically collect and match your data to other Next2Friends users you came into close proximity with. When you next sign into your account you’ll receive notification of all the people you passed throughout the day who share your likes, dislikes, and yes, even your quirks. The rest is up to you! After a while you might find yourself wondering, “are you Next2Friends?”

Worried that this could become a way for people to track you throughout your day? Fear not! Next2Friends’ patent pending technology insures both anonymity and privacy via a highly secure implementation methodology and exclusive encryption algorithms so you will only be seen if and when you want to be seen!

Live Streaming Video:

How many times have you missed an important family event, or wanted to share a special moment with close friends who couldn’t be with you at the time? With Next2friends Live Video Streaming, you can broadcast live events from any capable mobile device or webcam to your family and friends wherever they are in the world! They can watch the event in real-time with you, as it happens!

And if multiple people are at the same event and broadcast on the same channel, any number of end users will be able to choose between the different camera angles being streamed to edit, download or even burn a DVD of the event. Next2Friends Live Video Streaming means no one ever has to miss that first home run again, or that all of us can be eye witnesses to life changing events anytime, from anywhere!

Ask-A-Friend:

Have you ever been out and about and just wanted the advice of a good friend? How about the advice of all your friends at once? Next2Friends has a dynamic new way to get instant feedback from all your friends. The service is called Ask-A-Friend. It works like this:

Say you’re out shopping for shoes and you find 3 really great pairs of shoes but you’re not sure which ones go best with your jeans. With Ask-A-Friend you can snap photos of yourself wearing all three pairs and then create an instant opinion poll to send to all your friends for a vote. The results are then sent directly back to you.

Ask-A-Friend gives you real time results when you need them the most; in the real world!

Online Video Editing:

Next2Friends Online Video editing is one of the only online Video Editing Suites available today! Edit videos in real time as they’ re streamed into the site or go back and make edits to and combine videos that have already been shot. Next2Friends gives you the first ever comprehensive set of online video editing tools to turn any event into a full blown video production!

Video Messaging:

Video Messaging is a way to put a personal touch to something we all do dozens of times a week: “leave a message at the beep”. With Next2Friends Video Messaging you can record a message and mail it to anyone to be viewed either on a computer or a cell phone! Be creative, have fun, just imagine what this will do to the game of phone tag!

We look forward to serving you and hope you enjoy all the ways that you will soon be able to truly be “Next2Friends”!!!

Real life,

Real time,

Real people,

Right Now!!

Next2Friends

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com

Universal Music has struck a deal with online music and video provider imeem making it the fourth and final major label to allow their music and videos to be streamed to users for free. From the Associated Press today:

By ALEX VEIGA |AP Business Writer

12:35 AM EST, December 10, 2007

“LOS ANGELES - Social networking Web site operator imeem Inc. has signed a licensing deal with Universal Music Group to offer free streaming of music and videos by the record company’s artists in exchange for a share of online advertising revenues, the companies said Sunday.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The pact is the latest example of record labels betting on online advertising as a source of revenue amid sinking CD sales.

The Web operator already has similar licensing deals with the other three major record labels. Collectively, the four biggest recording companies account for more than 85 percent of music sales so far this year.

Under the agreement, imeem can carry full-length music and videos by Universal Music’s acts, which include Snow Patrol, Kanye West and Amy Winehouse.

San Francisco-based imeem launched in 2004, offering instant messaging and file-sharing software. It has since morphed into a social networking Web site that also streams free audio and video next to advertisements.

Like Google Inc.’s YouTube and similar sites, imeem allows computer users to post their own videos. The imeem site claims to have more than 19 million active users.

Imeem said it counts Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., Nike Inc., and AT&T Inc. among the companies advertising on its Web site.

Getting access to music from the four major record labels should help imeem drive more traffic, even taking some from established online music sites such as Apple’s iTunes Store, said James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research.”

It would be interesting to know the financial particulars of this deal. How much does imeem make on advertising? Is it song specific? What percentage of that is Universal, or any of the major labels making? And the grand-daddy of all questions is:

Is this enough to keep the major labels afloat?

Time will tell. As a musician I’m happy that people are figuring out ways to make money on music. I can’t decide if keeping the major labels alive is a good thing. One of the maxims of organizational theory states: it is the imperative of any organization to ensure it’s own survival, first and foremost, so I guess I’m not surprised that the struggling majors are still in there fighting to stay alive. Let’s just say this: major or indie or completely independent, it’s a good thing that someone, anyone, is making money on music. I’ll take this as good news for music makers and leave it at that.

Real life,
Real time,
Real people

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com

Apparently in my now home town, Zoo York City, having bad breath is a professional liability. Check this out:

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

11:51 AM EST, December 7, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) — A Manhattan doorman has been suspended for having bad breath.

Jonah Seeman, who has been ushering tenants into a four-building complex on East 89th Street for 40 years, was told not to come to work Friday because of halitosis.

Seeman said he has stopped eating garlic, uses mouthwash and takes breath mints on the job.

The Brooklyn resident, who supports his 81-year-old mother, has been suspended twice before for bad breath — one day in May and then again in July.

Apartment dwellers at the Gracie Gardens complex expressed surprise over Seeman’s suspension and came to his defense.

“His job, which he does well, is opening the door — not to be opening his mouth,” said Adam Reingold.

Officials with Cooper Square Realty, the management company that oversees the property, did not return calls seeking comment. But the company sent the doorman a letter dated Nov. 21, stating: “We can no longer tolerate the fact that you have severe breath odor while on duty.”

The union that represents Seeman, Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union, has filed a grievance in the case.

I think the only appropriate response is:

Only in New York City! ‘Nuff said.

Real life,
Real time,
Real people

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com

The purpose of a Performance Rights Organization is to figure out who’s music is getting played and then paying that artist, writer and publisher for those public performances of their work. It’s hard to put a price tag or a number on how important music is to the world, but long ago, when the record business was just getting started, artists and writers of music argued that what they were doing was of some value to the world. And radio stations and bars and clubs and concert halls and shopping malls all agreed, music definitely was good for business. So around this time the first Performance Rights Organization was created. It was called the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers or ASCAP. It’s job was to figure out all the ways and places in which music was being used publicly and how to turn that into dollars for the people creating the music. They came up with a scheme that was pretty simple to understand and quite effective. They did this by selling licenses to any place of business that used music. A license is a permit issued by an owner or an authority to own or use something. If you wanted to start a radio station you had to buy a license from ASCAP. If you owned a club where live music was going to be performed you had to buy a license from ASCAP. If you owned a store where you were going to play music to create a relaxing atmosphere for your shoppers, you had to buy a license from ASCAP. There are now three major organizations that collect performance money for artists, one being ASCAP, another being BMI and the last being SESAC. All do the exact same thing: Collect money for artists, writers and publishers for the public performance of their songs.

Performance Rights Organizations: The Differences

So let’s take a closer look at each Performance Rights Organization:

ASCAP:

The oldest of the Performance Rights Organizations. ASCAP is also the largest of the three. They pay their artists based on a complex formula that includes some factors like:

-Time of day that the song is played: The best times to get played are from 7am to 10am. Then the next best time to get played is during the drive home for most people, like 4pm-7pm. The money gets less and less for worse time slots.
-Where it is performed: An example would be a Top 40 radio station. A Top 40 radio station is worth more than a specialty station like an oldies station.
-How is it used: If it is being played while the credits roll for a T.V. show that would be worth less than if it were featured on a radio station.

There are a few other factors but I think you get the idea. All this is put together to issue the songwriters and publishers credits. Credits are worth a certain amount of money that changes based on how much money ASCAP collects each year. The last time I looked a credit was worth $6.

ASCAP collects information on who is getting played when and where in a couple of ways. They sometimes do a “deep” two week survey called a census in which they keep track of each and every individual track that is being played by a particular kind of medium (like all Top 40 radio stations) or they just do a “lighter” survey called a sample survey that does spot samples in many different areas but covers many different mediums (like radio, TV, movies etc.). It’s kind of like the difference between “spot checking” your math assignment, where you just check ten problems throughout your assignment and then assume that the rest follows that pattern, or where you check every single problem and know which are right or wrong. One way is less accurate but is faster, the other is more accurate but takes much more time. Such is the way with ASCAP.

ASCAP costs $10 to join and you are a member for life. You never have to pay again. Quite a deal!

BMI:

The second largest Performing Rights Organization. BMI is ASCAP’s main competition. They, too, have their own set of equations that are based on roughly the same factors as ASCAP.

The main difference might be in the way that they figure out who is getting played where and when. BMI has EVERY radio station submit their entire playlist for 3 days in the year. BMI looks at all the data and says that if you showed up on, say, 3 months of different radio station’s playlists then you must have been getting played on all the other radio stations that they didn’t check at that time. They assign you your credits based on that. This difference can sometimes lead to more or less money than ASCAP so many artists, writers and publishers affiliate with BMI.

BMI costs a bit more than ASCAP to join and there are yearly dues to remain a member.

SESAC:

Definitely the smallest of the Performance Rights Organizations. However, sometimes a lot can be said for being small. They have a reputation as being more responsive to the ‘little guy’. While ASCAP and BMI are busy collecting millions of dollars for most of the biggest name artists, writers and publishers, SESAC has carved a niche for themselves as being a bit more helpful to not-so-big-name people.

Unfortunately, they are a bit more secretive about how they figure out who is getting played where and when, but it must be similar somewhat to ASCAP and BMI, otherwise they couldn’t stay competitive.

And unfortunately, they don’t make it very clear what you must do to join. It appears you must contact one of their representatives and go through some sort of selection process. Again, this could be good in that it weeds out the riff raff, but then again, you may not make the cut!

I hope this explanation helps those looking into a Performance Rights Organization.

Real life,
Real time,
Real people

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com

From Reuters:

“FRANKFURT/AMSTERDAM, Dec 4 (Reuters) - Nokia’s plan to offer customers unlimited music on cell phones challenges the dominant pay-per-track model and could upset carriers already worried that it is poaching their customers.

The world’s biggest cell phone maker said on Tuesday it agreed with top record label Universal Music Group to give buyers of particular Nokia devices unlimited access to millions of tracks for a year and let them to keep the music afterwards.” - Dec 4th, 2007

Nokia and Universal’s deal will allow users to download as much and as many songs as they want from Universal’s catalogue of millions. The thing that sets this offering apart is that users can keep the music after termination of the contract. This is a major break from the way that competitors have operated such as Vodafone’s Music Station, which offers users unlimited music while they hold a contract. Upon termination of the Vodafone contract, users loose the music they collected.

This appears to be the first time that a major label has conceded that recorded music is a free commodity to most users. Make no mistakes, Universal will be making money: they get a certain amount of money per phone sold. But notice that valuation is not attached to the music itself. It can’t be. No one pays for recorded music anymore.

So the major labels have finally accepted reality. These are very interesting times to be a musician. Better polish up that live show. It seems that in todays world that’s the only thing musicians have of value, the ability to perform music. It certainly isn’t the ability to record music anymore. Good thing performing music is as fun as it is!

Real life,
Real time,
Real people

www.Next2Friends.com

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com

For a non-writing artist, royalties are the main source of income from the sale of their album. Somewhere in a recording contract you can bet that there will be pages devoted to how artist will get paid (and how artists won’t get paid). A Royalty is a percentage of the profits generated from the sale of albums. When you hear people talk about “points” on an album they are really talking about percentage points. If you get a producer who won’t charge you up front but asks for 3 “points” on your album, they are asking for 3% of the sale price of the album. Percentage points for an artist can be from around 8 to 25% of the sale price of the album (a brand new artist will be on the low end of this and an established artist will be on the high end). That sounds pretty good…at first. Record companies have all sorts of ways of making that number shrink.

The first way is by only paying an artist for copies sold. On a major release, thousands of copies are given away as promotional copies. These are called free goods. After all, someone has to pay for all those copies going out to all those radio stations and newspapers and clubs. And guess who pays for it…the artist, not the record company.

Another way is for the record company to hold back 35% of the artists royalties to offset record stores returning the album. Since music is very time-sensitive (something may be hot right now, but not in a few weeks), record labels have traditionally given record stores the right to return unsold records for a full refund. This is called the return privilege. And who pays if an artist’s album doesn’t sell? The artist of course.

And lastly, back in the days when albums were actually made on vinyl discs a lot of them would break in shipment. This is called breakage. For some reason this tradition carried on, even though albums are no longer made out of vinyl. So traditionally record companies would only pay artists on 90% of the albums shipped, assuming that 10% would break. Even though today CD’s don’t break nearly as much, this tradition still continues in many cases.

So, now let’s figure out how much an artist might expect if they sold a million copies of their album. Let’s say the average price per CD is $15 and the artist’s royalty rate is 10%. Right off the bat, the record companies deduct 25% for packaging (even though packaging doesn’t actually cost 25% of the sale price) so really we’re figuring out the royalty rate for $11.25. Ok, at 10% that still gives us $1,125,000! Pretty good! Well we need to subtract 10% because these were given away as free goods. Now we’re down to $1,012,500. Still not bad. Now let’s subtract 10% for breakage which leaves us $911,250. Ok now withhold 35% for returns, this should leave us with $592,312. Ouch. And we haven’t even talked about what it cost to make and promote the album let alone what money the artist may have gotten as an advance. Remember, all the money the record company invested in the artist up front is paid back first out the artist’s royalties. Hmm, maybe it’s a good thing that this model is completely collapsing!

Hans Erik
Content Marketing Director
Hans@Next2Friends.com
www.Next2Friends.com