TheCapitalClinic

On “Disaggregating” the Music Ecosystem I and Empowering Cottage Industries [2,0] [An Op-Ed] WHY CHANGE THINGS? The traditional business model for creating and distributing music is on the verge of structural and moral bankruptcy. Part I frames the problem; Part II provides some broad numbers; and Part III outlines a way forward. PART I. THE ECONOMIC, SOCIAL/CULTURAL, AND TECHNOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK. The threshold question is: Does the current ecosystem reflect the best business model to...

I just saw/heard/experienced your new music video on Fuzz and wanted to be the first reviewer of record. I can't decide quite what it is, but it has a compelling "truth-value". You are pushing out the envelope of creativity in the music "space", making it truly multi-dimensional for the first time. You will change the power discourse in the music world forevermore; just as Warhol stood the visual art world on its head. You're playing with our minds and we love...

Panda is the classic case study of DIY Revisited. With a great sound and perfect demographic profile, you have the edge and energy to work the web to make it all happen. There are very few free lunches on the road to success. You have just been given one. At mid-day March 23, you have 117 profile views. Do-It-Yourself and make your own garden grow. Even as a grown-up, you have my serious respect. Let's watch this space. NB: a note to readers of my reviews: the text of my reviews at this...

You are the ultimate professionals. Let's get some more DIY II song uploads for the Fuzz Heads to experience. Explosive from the git-go. USSA, indeed. What is THAT all about?

I take the liberty to share the tail-end of a PM thread with Bill B. that he won't mind since it's mine [ask him about the other parts]: "Bill, Nothing wrong with being 60+. The more I think about and experience this web-based value creating phenomenon that I have encapsulated as DIY II, the more convinced that I am that Fuzz is really onto something pretty exciting that could stand the music business on its head and more. I have decided to be a "living experiment"...

Sarah, being an old soldier like Harpdude, another reviewer of "The Soldier's Song," after a senseless and never resolved lose/lose tour in the heart of darkness in the Mekong decades back, I deeply feel the message of your song and its relevance to our current troubled times globally and at home among right and left, Christian- Muslim, Sunni-Shiite, white-black, haves and have not. I think that it's time for Mothers and Soldiers to embrace your song and let your message be...

Reposted by TCC from Harpdude blog: "Hey Sarah, Thanks for "The Soldier's Song". I can relate in a couple of ways. First, I remember reading my fathers journal as an 18 year old in WWII. Second, I was a Marine and wrote many lonely letters home. You captured the solitude of the moment when pen is being put to paper extremely well!"

On DIY II or "Cottage Industries Revisited" and a case study of the music industry. There is a clear and troubling socio-economic split between (i) those who benefit from the existing dominant model of capital formation which is the modern corporation and (ii) the multitude who have no access to the corporate form of wealth creation or the growing number of "post-modernists" who are rejecting the basic premise of the corporation as the best vehicle to improve the economic...

This review has been reposted from Anne's blog by TCC. "Wow - I just listened to The Soldier's Song by Sarah Bettens. And then I listened to it again and again. Quite simply it's beautiful. With her haunting voice and searing lyrics, it's just the kind of music we need today. Listening to songs from the sixties and seventies, the generation that lived with Vietnam, I am always struck by the passion and conviction of that era's artists. On the radio today, I...

This is a prediction written in the early days of promulgation of the Fuzz Manifesto on why its statement of beliefs will be a resonating force for change. The Manifesto obviously has broader implications than the immediate context that it purports to address. Music is now, and has always been, a compelling proxy for everything that touches the human spirit. Read the Fuzz Manifesto once again and ponder. Its full message will dawn upon and empower all participants who are drawn to its call for...

On Empowering Cottage Industries. TCC would like to re-examine the proposition that "cottage industries" can be a powerful business model that minimizes hierarchies. In light of enabling technologies and costs of communications approaching nil, ubiquitous cottage industries, still the dominant economic unit throughout the world but representing an underclass in capital allocations, will challenge if not supplant current corporate [i.e., hierarchical] forms of capital formation that...

To: Artists/Fans, i.e., all who have entered this [virtual] space. Now that you are here, TheCapitalClinic ["TCC"] would like to give you a starter bag of seeds to begin cultivating your own garden of value. Fuzz has just provided to you all of the [virtual] real estate that you will ever need to create your own "truth-values". You also have the tools "to make a small pile of [virtual] money, into a larger pile of [real] money." A new era of micro-economics...

The Fuzz Manifesto includes a stated mission to build a fair, open, powerful, and participatory platform based upon, among other strongly affirmed beliefs, honest and transparent business practices. I endorse this objective and thus provide a statement of my background and a disclosure of where I'm coming from. I. Background. thecapitalclinic or, sometimes, TheCapitalClinic is just a vehicle and repository of ideas of Tom Yasuda ("TYY") about "capital formation" and...

The new music ecosystem ["Ecosystem II"] is the ultimate cottage industry with near universal application. Everyone is a poet/composer by nature, most can sing, and many are virtuosos. A reconfigured music Ecosystem II may well be the archetype of the possible in microeconomics, without social or geographic constraint. The Music Uprising could be a great leveler where all can participate in creating personal values with the least amount of leakage to a hierarchy of increasingly...

Another important frame or building block in the new music ecosystem is to understand the energizing power of creativity and the DIY [Do-It-Yourself] ethos. The intimate sharing of knowledge based on what's in our mind, heart, and guts and doing our own thing creates "truth-values" at the most basic level of our humanity. Frame 2 of the "Music Uprising" [the DIY ethos] can be seen in the following excerpt from the profile of Fuzz' Mike Urbano, a great drummer who...

The TCC sets out as Frame 1 in an ongoing series on "Music Uprising" a compelling vision of Brazilian Minister of Culture and renowned singer-songwriter Gilberto Gil on the revolution to come: "I no longer see music as a field to be exploited. I see it now as an alternative area of action, part of a broad repertory of possibilities that I have. Music is something visceral in me, something that exudes from me, and even when I'm not thinking about it, I will still be making...

Aww, Sarah. Now I can't stop listening to the soulful sound and haunting lyrics of "The Soldier's Song." Been there, done that. [But] I never found my truth out there; never knew why we were there; lost my youth but no-one seemed to care. This will become the defining song of our conflicted times. Everyone should listen and hear its message. What a Fuzz exclusive; what a song. Mother, I'm fine; everything's OK; doesn't help to worry anyway. NB: a note to...

Sarah, When Fuzz listed you as a Featured Artist in the Proof of Concept Alpha site last summer, you and a few others were on my playlist, emoting online all the time. Your music helped sooth my nerves while my hedge fund position got out of whack, as these things do occasionally. It helped me to "Stay", when things looked grim. Would you believe! I'll wager that you never got this kind of fan review before. Great to see you at Fuzz and look forward to some uploads, both...

On "Disaggregating" the Music Industry [To be expanded as a full length Op-Ed I in due course*] Why Change Things? The traditional business model for creating and distributing music is on the verge of structural and moral bankruptcy. Part I frames the problem, Part II provides some broad numbers, and Part III outlines a way forward. Part I. The Economic, Social/Cultural, and Technological Framework. Does the current ecosystem reflect the best business model to create...