It's fascinating to see yourself and your work through other people's eyes.

I had a great discussion last week with Ben Arthur, the main teacher at the songwriting summer program where I've been working. He was asking me some pointed but friendly questions about the nature of song a day as it relates to my overall goals as a songwriter. 

Ben is a songwriter and performer and all around creative dude. He's about 10 years older than me. He has a similar career to me in that he hustles and brings together a bunch of disparate but related avenues to make his living. 

He spoke about Song A Day as performance art - akin to David Blaine holding his breathe for an ungodly amount of time, or locking himself in a cube above London for a week. It's not that I've never thought about Song A Day this way, but to hear him lay it out so clearly was interesting. It was crazy to hear how clearly he saw what I do as being in that light - this kind of superhero marathon type thing.

One of his questions was: Where does it go? I never really know how to answer this. As I've talked about so much in the past - I follow my nose more than anything else. Concrete plans? I have few.

Ben has a great quote that he keeps telling our students: “I’ll do something I love for free, something I hate for money, but I don't do something I hate for free.” In our conversation, he talked about keeping his "art" separate from his “business”. The songs he writes for money - the work that brings in the dough - is totally separate from the albums he makes for himself. He seemed interested - maybe even a little concerned or confused - by what he perceived as Song A Day being this amalgam of what I do for money and what I do for myself. Like it’s too mixed. Which is largely true. It's definitely got layers of both going on.

I asked Ben - when he puts out a record and it doesn't do super well (in terms of copies sold - as has happened to both of us), does he ever doubt the quality of the record? The quality of the work? In other words - if HE likes what he's made, does other people's lack of interest negatively affect his perception of what he's made? And his answer was no, absolutely not. He had this great idea about "scratching an itch". The idea being that any creative endeavor begins with an itch - a weird sense inside yourself that you've got an idea, a feeling for a thing you've got to make. If what he's made successfully scratches that itch, then nothing else matters - he knows he was successful. 

I really like this idea!! I suppose to a great degree Song A Day started as a way to consistently scratch an itch that's just kind of ongoing for me.

When I put out an album, when I go back and really focus on a set of songs, mixing, mastering, releasing on iTunes and Spotify and all that - that's DEFINITELY me scratching an itch. But I guess for me, I have a hard time with the itch scratching being the end all and be all of the purpose. If not as many people hear or respond to the thing that scratched my itch, there's this big part of me that doubts whether or not it's "good" - EVEN if I still like it and think it's good work. EVEN if the itch was thoroughly scratched. 

I think, once again, it’s a confidence thing. Always back to those damn insecurities. I want to learn to trust myself more, and the instincts that lead me to scratch the itches in the first place.

Once the GamerGate crowd got ahold of my "You Are Not A Content Creator" video, there was a lot of asinine, hateful comments to wade through, but there was one totally fair critique that popped up a few times:  That I didn't really offer up an alternative. I pointed to Patreon and Kickstarter as tech companies that seemed to respect artists, but ultimately didn't offer give a true vision of what I'd like to see in place of our "content-driven" online culture.

To quickly recap, I see the word content as meaning, to again paraphrase Tim Bray,

"Shit we don't actually care about but will drive traffic and get people to click on ads." 

We are at once the worker bees for giant tech companies and the product that they sell (by invading our privacy and selling ad space against us based on what they find.) Their first and last priority will always be their bottom line, and as artists we are little more than the dupes that create the fuel that drives that engine.

ANYWAY.

I keep thinking about this article in the Atlantic about the very first pop-up ad, which appeared in the mid-90s. The article is written by the man who wrote the actual code for the very first pop-up. He worked for Tripod.com, a sort of ur-tumblr, early social network. Read the article, it's fantastic. And it very clearly lays out what I think would be a much better path for the internet: Paying for stuff. People seem to think that our current model, with all of it's lack of privacy and the abundance of advertising, was inevitable. But it wasn't inevitable (as that article points out). It arose from a a very specific set of conditions. And it doesn't have to be this way. 

If Patreon had been around in 2009 when I started Song A Day, I very likely would have started the project on this platform rather than YouTube. On YouTube, you have to watch ads, and I get paid less than a penny for you watching that ad. It's dumb for both of us. Here on Patreon, you support me directly and not only is your support nourishing for me psychically, it also literally helps me pay the bills.

The web has always held the promise of making these kinds of direct connections. But because of the forces laid out in that article (specifically, the difficulty of selling a user-supported website to venture capital funds and the ease of selling them a site based on advertising), the web went down the wrong path. We're only recently seeing the great one-to-one connections that have long been the promise of the internet. 

I'm pretty hopeful though that with new payment technologies and more and more people clamoring for it, we're approaching a time when the word "content" just means the body of the work and artists of all kinds are celebrated and respected and compensated for the work they make that people love.

Even though it feels like it’s a ways off, I’ve been thinking a lot about Jupiter going to school. Yeah - it’s a ways off, but I also know that the time is going to come REALLY FAST. Because time. It’s weird.

Anyway, I don’t want Jupiter to go to school. I’m fervently anti-school. I don’t know if this is a controversial position to take, but there is a bit to unpack here.

First, I don’t want to seem like I’m judging anyone for sending their kids to school. We all make the choices we think are best for our kids, and no one has any right to say anything about it. So please don't feel like I'm judging. 

Furthermore, the vast majority of us went to school, be it public or otherwise, and we all turned out great. It’s impossible to look at our own experiences and say definitively how our lives would have changed had we had a different schooling experience. Because time. It only goes in one direction.

My school memories and experiences aren’t so much wholly negative as they are tainted by this sense that much of it was a waste of time and potential. I think back to 3rd-8th grade and it just kind of makes me cringe. The thought of having to sit quietly and still and follow arbitrary rules while trying to memorize things that I had absolutely no interest in - it makes me want to curl up into a little ball. 

It’s well known that our public schools were originally set up to churn out factory workers. The system was put in place over a hundred years ago, when the world was a much different place, and it simply has not been overhauled, much less updated or even really changed. Standardized tests have only made things worse and worse. 

There’s a now-famous TED from Ken Robinson on the ways that school kills creativity.

“My contention is: All kids have tremendous talents and we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.”

“The whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not. Because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued or was actually stigmatized.”

That’s two quotes. The whole damn thing is quotable, go watch it, or re-watch it, it’s extraordinary. It resonates with me so deeply. I became a musician despite the ways in which my public school didn't value what I had to offer. I wonder what could have been had this impulse been nurtured. 

I want to do everything I can to nurture whatever creativity & talent Jupiter has in him. The idea of sending him to school feels like it would be the opposite of that.

I'd love to hear what you all think about this subject.

http://chaoslife.findchaos.com/secret-spice

This was one of those strips that didn’t need any editing from its real life source, unfortunately for my mouth. Life is a beautiful, gross thing.

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As for our Wedding Bash GoFundMe --http://www.gofundme.com/QueerestWedding -- it’s been going spectacularly and we’re just overwhelmed by the whole thing! Thank you so, so much to everyone who has contributed already! We’re already so close to 33% of our base budget! I’m also happy to say we’re pretty sure we’ve found a venue that’s affordable, flexible, and very easy for out-of-towners to get to, so fingers-crossed all goes well! Now for the next step: RSVPing and Vendors. Oh nooooo…..

http://www.findchaos.com/chapter-12-among-you-cover

“But a prophet who presumes to speak in my name anything I have not commanded, or a prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, is to be put to death.”

Oh! I’m on a podcast this week called Mac Power Users. When they have guests, they talk about workflows. So I go into some excruciating detail about how I make a song a day. A lot of gear and software talk. Some nitty gritty stuff. Give a listen, I think it’ll be interesting!

It got me thinking about how cool it would be if I was able to continue my “How I Write A Song A Day” tutorial series. Which, weirdly, was watched by almost no one when I first made it, but has had a serious “long tail”.

If I do this, what would be the aspects of Song A Day that you would like me to talk about in detail?

I was thinking I could  take you through using Logic, the recording program I use, and Premiere, which I use to make videos. I could detail and walkthrough each of the different “styles” of song a day: 

1. The acoustic song with iPhone, 

2. The acoustic song with 2 microphones and a nice camera, 

3. The produced song with nice camera, 

4. The produced song with a produced video.

I have a lot of other ideas for updates to my older videos like: 

How to beat writer's block, 

Where to find ideas for songs,

All the branding mistakes I've made over the years (and how to avoid them)

I was thinking that I could make this series of videos and then offer it up for a small fee. You all, as my Patreon supporters, would of course have instant access! Let me know if this is interesting! I wonder if people would pay for such a thing.

Anyway, It’s 6am and I’m sitting at the table next to Jupiter trying to get him to eat his breakfast. He’s been up since 5. Juliana and I take turns on who watches him in the morning. It always sucks when he decides to wake up extra early on my morning. Why, Jupiter, why?! I’m so tired. It was one of those mornings too where it’s like, wow, I’m really extra tired, I hope Jupiter doesn’t wake up early. And boom! Like clockwork.

Right before he woke me up, I was having a series of nightmares that bad things were happening to him. In one he was just standing in the middle of the road. It was the road I grew up on. I was terrified a car was going to hit him. In another, my mom had spent the day with him and was showing me pictures she had taken. There was a picture of him standing on some ice that seemed really thin. (You’re on thin ice, mister!). In another, and this was the really freaky one, she played me a video of the two of them white river rafting. My 15 month old son and my 60 something (sorry mom) year old mother white river rafting! In the video, she fell out of the raft (as you do) and there was Jupi just left alone in this raft. My mom can’t even swim that well. I woke up really panicked for a second.

Sorry! I’m talking about my dreams - that’s like the most boring thing ever. And I’ve got new Patreon subscribers this week! Oi, I am sorry. Usually I’m a lot more interesting than this, I promise. I’m just really tired and it’s just way too early.

There's two amazing pieces on Medium by a dude named Sharky Laguana about how to fix streaming music. You know the problem: Artists are paid fractions of pennies per stream through services like Spotify and Apple Music, but at the same time, these platforms are an amazing way to discover new music and be discovered by new fans. I HIGHLY recommend reading Sharky's pieces, but first, read what I wrote as a script for an upcoming vlog on the subject! Please!

Sharky does a great job of simplifying a complex subject, and I tried to go even further so that the message can reach as far and wide as possible. Tell me what you think!

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DISCLAIMER!

This video is about the royalties generated by online streaming services. It’s a really complicated topic. Sharky Laguana, a musician and writer, wrote a series of posts on Medium which I’m using as the basis for everything that I’m about to say. His piece simplifies and illuminates this complex subject and I’m going to be simplifying it even further. There’s lots of data to back all of it up, though, so click the links in the description and look out for more posts by Sharky.

The question at the heart of all of this is: Is there a way to make streaming services be more fair to musicians? Let’s get into it.

Spotify makes the vast majority of it’s money from the over 10 million people that send them $10 a month to listen ad free. When you pay that $10 a month, almost none of it goes to the actual artists you listen to. Lately on Spotify I’ve been listening to a ton of Eef Barzelay, who strangely enough I discovered from a yogurt commercial. Anyway, I’d love it if a huge chunk of my recent subscription fees went straight to him. I’m a big fan. Unfortunately though, that’s just not how it works.

What Spotify does is they put all my subscription money, and yours and everybody else’s into a big pool, they take a 30 percent cut, and then earmark the rest for royalties. How is the rest divvied up? This bag of royalties is divided by the total number of streams across the entire service in the given period and this gets us a number called the “per-stream royalty rate”. Multiply my # of streams in a month by this per-stream royalty rate, and you have the amount I’m paying out to artists.

This big pool system has a bunch of problems, but I’m going to focus on my perspective as both a fan and a musician. Not only does this method of royalty distribution mean that I have absolutely no control over who gets a piece of my hard earned $10 a month, it also means that if you’re a “typical listener” like me, who streams around 300 tracks a month, I actually end up subsidizing a “heavy listener” who’s streaming 1000 or more tracks a month. I end up paying for someone else’s musical taste. Let’s look at how this works.

Out of my $10 subscription fee, $3 goes to Spotify and that leaves $7 to go to royalties. Let’s say I listen to 200 tracks this month. Based on the per-stream royalty rate we established above that means I’ve generated a cool $1.40 to be paid out to artists. But wait - $7 out of my original $10 was earmarked for royalties, I generated $1.40 with my 200 streamed tracks, so that leaves $5.60 hanging in the balance. Where does that money go?

It goes to subsidize a heavy listener, who’s streaming, say, 1800 tracks that month. They pay the same $10 subscription fee as everyone else but they’ve generate $12.60 in royalties, which leaves them $5.60 short. Oh look, I have $5.60 left over. Boom - I just paid for someone else to listen to Nickelback.

I wanted my money to go to an semi-obscure indie artist I’m currently obsessed with, who I’ve listened to almost exclusively this month, and instead my money went to Nickelback, and god knows who else. Probably, based on nothing else than sheer number of streams, a bunch of artists in the top 40. The system is broken.

Often these heavy listeners aren’t even individuals, but offices and yoga studios and restaurants who just have music as background 24/7. They pay the sam 10 dollar sub fee, but because they’re such heavy listeners they dictate, in a very real way, how the money gets divvied up. I don’t want to be paying for the artists these companies put on their playlists.

There is a better way. In his multiple Medium posts, Sharky calls it the Subscriber Share Model. It’s pretty simple: Spotify should just divide up my $7 based on who I specifically listen to that month. So if I listen to Eef 100% of the time in a given month, he’ll get my entire $7. If I listen to The Spinto Band 25% of the time, they’ll get $1.75. Compare that to the big pool: If I listen to 200 tracks in a month, and 50 of those streams are The Spinto Band (25% of 200 is 50), based on the per stream royalty rate, they stand to make only $.35.

The Subscriber Share Model is a fantastic idea. As Sharky says in his Medium post: It honors the intent of the listener, and incentivizes getting more fans, bringing the goals of everyone (services, labels, artists and fans) into alignment.

Spotify isn’t likely to do this anytime soon. But Sharky has an answer for that, too. He’s come up with the idea for a protest called Silent September. Normally, it’s impossibly for a typical listener to keep up with the heavies - the business that keep the music pumping all day. So the idea for the protest is this: For the month of September, turn your volume down really low, and keep your streaming service of choice going 24/7 with a playlist of indie artists you love on repeat. Streaming services can’t tell when your volume is down, and if you have a big playlist of artists on repeat, it won’t trigger any alarm bells. There’s nothing they can do to stop you. If you’re a typical listener and you do this for even just a day, it will double your monthly listening. Doing it for a week will result in more streams than a typical listener does in a year! If enough of us do this and we we focus on the indie artists we love, the major labels will start to worry about their piece of the big pool pie decreasing. That’s when they’d really take notice at just how unfair the current system for distributing royalties is.

I’ve made a playlist in both Spotify and Apple Music of the artists I’m going to be streaming for the month of Sept. Let’s make this happen!!

In a departure from the norms of dungeon development (where foul goblinoids and monsters invade the subterranean works of other races), Lord Scart of the Hemron Coalition took over a series of crudely-cut but extensive goblin warrens and spent twelve years with a large team of engineers and sappers to establish Scart’s Hall.

A combination of masonry and finished raw stone gives Scart’s Hall a finish similar to most surface castles, except (as most guards would point out) that it is even darker, colder and damper.

And far more confusing.

Being derived from a goblin warren, the structure twists and loops around itself and is split into multiple elevations, with a further winding stair leading down to a lower level of warrens and chambers.

Thanks to the awesome support of the patrons of my Patreon campaign, this map is available for you for free for non-commercial use - you can download 300dpi versions of the map with and without grid from the blog post at: https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/08/25/tuesday-map-scarts-hall/

Temples, churches and religious structures tend to both be large (because they are built with the help of a whole community instead of a single person or family) and central to a lot of games (because in a world where gods have direct power over the world, it seems to make sense that their churches would wield significant power also).

Thus they make great game fodder.

This map is of a church and two nearby structures (although the northern structure didn’t quite fit on the page – you can assume the remainder is more dormitories and libraries).

The main structure is the temple proper, with some publicly accessible shelves of religious scrolls and similar on the right, a small chapel on the left, and various other chambers for priests, visitors and worshipers.

To the east of the temple are the office of the head of the temple and associates, and a dormitory for brothers in training, men at arms, and those loyal to the temple but too poor to offer more than their toil and bodies to the religion (and in some churches, a few paladins and low level clerics).

You can get the map at 300dpi from the blog post at https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2015/09/04/friday-map-the-temple-of-marid-scurn/