Shock (and remix) the Monkey
Peter Gabriel has been pretty experimental throughout his career. So, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that he'd zig when the majors in the music industry zag in terms of copyright and promoting his record label.
Kudos to Gabriel for staying relevant and backing such a cool idea. And kudos to BusinessWeek for yet another good article:
The resulting Shock the Monkey remix contest, viewable on www.realworldremixed.com, is one rock musician's solution to the problem faced by nearly everyone in the media business these days: how to stay relevant when consumers are generating so much of their own content on sites such as News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace and Google's (GOOG) latest acquisition, YouTube.
To kick off the contest, Gabriel did something close to revolutionary for an established musician. Back in March, he posted a so-called sample pack of Shock the Monkey consisting of vocals and other pieces of the original multitrack recording. For most people in the music business, that is the commercial equivalent of hiring kidnappers to babysit.
One thing I really liked about the competition was the way the voting was structured: The public was allowed to vote for the finalists, and the jury (including Gabriel, of course) picked the winners. That's a nice balance of control, and I'm thinking of doing something similar with this years Hike&Ride.
What's missing? They could use an easy way to distribute and embed the contest's content all over the web. I'd love to have Multman's excellent "Simian Surprise" Remix playing here whilst you are reading this post. In lieu of that, I highly recommend that you give it a listen. The other top 10 finishers are here. Some of them are pretty interesting.
Technorati Tags: music, copyright, voting
Saturday, October 21, 2006
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