blog.maestro.fm

Is it just me? Has anyone else noticed it? In the past 10 years, people have become less and less attached to their music, further disconnected from something that they used to identify with so closely. Back in the 80’s and 90’s, you could tell a great deal about a person by the music they listened to, and vise versa. They were so closely connected emotionally with the music they listened to that it often defined them as an individual. Walk down any street and you would see AC/DC t-shirts, entire punk-rock outfits, boom boxes shoulder-high blaring Run DMC.

People, and their music, were connected. They were intrinsically bound together through an innate personal link between them. This connection drove the passion that led to loyal fanhood, people who followed artists across the country for entire decades, knew every song they wrote by heart. It wasn’t just a rare occurance…it was commonplace. Think about it for a moment…do you feel the same way about the music you listen to now, as you did a decade ago with the music you listened to then? Odds are, you are shaking your head no, with the majority of the populace.

Nowadays, you don’t see this passion between people and the music they enjoy. The connection is more distant, the loyalty less extreme. What happened between the music industry and the hundreds of millions of fans worldwide who would anxiously count down the days ‘til a new CD was released, or a band/artist came to their hometown?

Look at what has made the news lately: labels suing average Joe Music-listener, illegally downloaded content running amuck, retail storefronts closing down, thousands of sporadic online music sites popping up. Artists come and go every month, having smash hits and then never being heard from again. Instead of one seamless music environment, we are now greeted by thousands of scattered music attempts void of a cohesive experience that music lovers can really bond with. It is changing…a little…but attention needs to be brought to what’s really going on here. Otherwise the pendulum of the music experience will swing towards a passive, almost apathetic, point of view.

The situation at hand saddens me to no end, and as a music-lover, I hope that affected parties will work together to find a solution. In fact, I believe this is likely the only way to solve the growing disconnect. You see, the answer to the question I have posed can only be found when you search for the root of the problem itself. The problem is the environment we have surrounded music enthusiasts with. The music environment is now hostile, unsure, and displaced…broken. With such an environment comes the loss of the bond between the average person, and the music they enjoy. The REAL question then, is how do we reconnect these two parties…how do we bring people, and their music, back together again?

Just after noontime today, the Maestro team enjoyed a short and pleasant break from slaving away at site upgrades and Maestro Connector maintenance to spend some time being interviewed by Dan Greenfield, who posts and operates the blog Bernaise Source. The blog looks at the impact of social media on PR and marketing, with the goal of promoting the tech community both locally in the Southeast and nationally.

Education, it seems, is both one of the most necessary and difficult requirements for such a goal. Considering the infancy of the social media industry, as well as the turmoil and disconnects between many of the parties involved with the forefront of it’s evolution, we were all excited about a positive opportunity to share some thoughts with a like-minded compatriot. Dan was a sharp individual, and clearly had a shared desire to bring this disconnected world together however possible, particularly here in the Atlanta region.

There have been a numerous times that we have had to explain the power of social media and how it will affect the music industry. The success of the recording industry, as well as the business model of social media, is hinged on symbiotic relationships between ALL of the different sides. There is no reason that Atlanta and Athens, surging with an incredible music scene, cannot be on the forefront of this movement. But it will take far more effort, and less risk averse minds, to work together to stimulate this growth. Cutting edge technology and new business models require cutting edge minds and stomachs able to handle hard work, creative thinking, and varying degrees of risk. There needs to be a collaboration between artists, labels, technology companies and investors all willing to take risks and all cognizant of the rewards for those who figure out the next phase of the music industry.

Like I said…new models, new minds, right? Numerous other groups have run away screaming in fear such a “risky” new approach as ours. As Dan said himself, “when risk becomes necessity, it is no longer a choice. You must act. The fear associated with risk is diminished. In its place is a clear line of attack.” Well said. We here at Maestro firmly believe we have found a solution to the troubles of the disconnected media industry, and our line of attack is clear as day.

Dan is an example of what this region, and these industries, need more of. Individuals looking not for the fast dollar, or to take advantage of others, but instead to bring a community together for the greater good…to be part of the beginning of something that will positively change the media world around us forever. It was a pleasure speaking with him, and our conversation ended up going far longer then expected. You can read his blog entry regarding the Maestro interview here.

Keep up the hard work Dan, I know we all look forward to seeing progress made in the days and months to come. For others out there who feel the same, continue to support us in our vision of how things in the social media industry should be, and take a moment in your day to think about what you can do to further the cause. In the end, we will all reap the benefits.

For those of you concerned at home, we have been fighting the good fight, and continue to hold our ground against the torrid squirrel attacks that besiege our fine corporate headquarters. They’ve got the numbers, but we’ve got the height…and a used paintball gun. Troy may have fallen, but Maestro will not (although ironically, a tooth-baring attempt was made on Greg’s achilles by a vicious squirrel warrior during a recent skirmish)! Their tactics are ruthless, and we have called for aid from our internet providers.

Weeks into the standoff, and we have just received word that our internet provider has been hard at work amassing a legion of cable layers, and other necessary workers for finalization of the big fix. Spirits are high upon receipt of the news, several early 90’s sports arena pump-up songs have been blasted from office speakers, and we expect to break our merciless adversaries soon.

Addition: It’s official! Viiccctoryyy!! New cables have been laid, and our internet is running better then ever. Tonight we celebrate, and toast our fallen comrades lost to the Great Squirrel War of 2008. A warning for those of you out there, who don’t believe this fate could happen to you….well, it could! Be wary.

Final Score: Maestro 1, Squirrels 0.

Well it has taken longer than expected, but Maestro now has a Mac OS X version for our Maestro Connector. Thanks go to Marcus Zarra for helping us when we needed it most.

For those new to Maestro, the Connector lets you scan your music collection stored on your home Mac or PC, sync your iTunes playlists online and access everything remotely through Maestro.fm.

Once you scan your music collection with the Connector, you can manage playlists from anywhere, send them to friends or add them to your MySpace or Facebook profiles.

Check it out here if you’re a Mac user. Hope you like. Have fun.

Here’s an issue that should have some pretty divided answers: caffeine – evil or life-saving? Personally, I’m not a big fan, it seems to get along rather poorly with my stomach. There are, however, a few others in the Maestro office that would beg to differ. Leading their cause is Blair, a man who never saw a caffeinated beverage he didn’t like, or quickly chug down before someone else could get their quivering hands away from the next fix.

Now, I suppose my stance here is half-hearted. Since I tend to stay away from the stuff, I don’t feel all that strongly about it one way or the other. To each their own, I say! But Blair….how can I put this….Blair may be bordering on obsession. Is there a place you can bring someone for caffeine-rehab? Because, well, just take a look at his desk in the office, and I think you’ll understand:

Never say we don’t work late hours here at Maestro HQ!

Thanks to some kindhearted and influential friends at Opera, a popular nightclub in Atlanta, I was able to throw a decked-out birthday party in one of the Opera Boxes upstairs on their balcony. The vodka flowed freely, and with the music blaring a mix of house and hip-hop, the place was soon packed with blurry-eyed dancing machines.

The most random part of the night was the inclusion of Kanye West into the festivities. Just a few seconds after our group arrived, we were informed that we had to move over to the next Box, as we happened to be in Kanye West’s favorite one, and he had just called in to say he was stopping in later. Normally someone might have made a fuss about moving, but we hadn’t even gotten settled yet, and c’mon, it’s Kanye West!

Let’s be honest, I’m alright with getting bumped over 1 Box for Kanye. He’s one of my favorite artists, does a lot with community outreach programs, and is a great voice and advocate for hip-hop music. Plus…it also meant that when he arrived, we would be right next to him and his entourage. The concierge gave us a quick warning about getting star struck or bothering him, to which a smart-mouthed buddy of mine responded “Hey, we won’t bother him, but you tell him and his riff raff to keep out of our area too!” After good laugh and a round of shots, the staff was relaxed in knowing that we would be just fine with the arrangements.

At around 1:30am, Kanye West and his crew arrived to the scene. The entire place went nuts, I mean, absolutely insane…

It was particularly impressive that Kanye took the time to grab a microphone and sung about 4 of his songs right on the balcony next to us after arriving, sending the already vivacious crowd into a frenzy. This put our group about 2 feet away from him as he performed several of his top hits, including “Stronger” and “Flashing Lights”. He really did a great job performing for the crowd, and major props go out to him for putting on a show like that without any planning. If you want to hear some of his music, including those songs, check out my own Maestro Kanye Playlist:

If any of you get a chance to see Kanye live, in concert or wherever, I highly recommend it. Thanks again go out to the whole staff at Opera, particularly Ellen and XY, who were amazing, as well as everyone who made their way out that night. Definitely this was one to remember.

Oh and Kanye, we weren’t kidding about getting you involved in Maestro. Give us a call.

So, what have you accomplished today? Oh, not much, since apparently a pack of ravenous squirrels has chewed away at our nearby cable internet lines, and knocked us back into the days before internet. How did people do this!? How did they accomplish anything? Surely, there were things more important to do today than type up a blog entry, offline mind you, to be placed on the web at a later date, for a bit of reader enjoyment at our expense?  But alas, here we stand.

You know, they say startup life can be difficult, but they never mention the potential damage control required to combat nearby wildlife. Our CTO, who happens to be a major proponent of Murphy’s Law existing here at Maestro HQ, is visibly shaken, and one has to wonder if a band of wild chipmunks could take down our operation entirely.

And if that wasn’t enough, we’ve got underground springs pouring water into the center of our office. Trust us, we couldn’t make this up if we tried. This freshwater miracle managed to pop up literally underneath a giant power strip that has about 20 cords coming out of it. Dangerous? Um, perhaps…perhaps. At least the squirrels will have something to drink when they’re done.

If YOU happen to have the internet, hope you’re enjoying it. Seriously, it must be nice, so go ahead and enjoy. Hope you’re using Maestro while you’re surfing away on there, good thing our servers are hosted elsewhere. We’re off to buy some oversized mouse traps…wish us luck.

Maestro Visits UGA Student Run Record Label Showcase

One of the great things, and there’s countless others of course, about living in Atlanta is that it’s just a quick jump down the road to Athens, GA, one of the best towns around for hearing new bands and being surrounded by budding music enthusiasts. This year, the UGA Music Business Program put on the Third Annual Student Record Label Showcase, and in the hope of sharing a beverage and some tunes with kindred spirits, Greg and I made our way down to his old college stomping grounds, and what turned out to be a fantastic event. A special thanks to Bruce Burch, Steve Dancz and Keith Perissi for putting on a great event and showing us around.

While Greg spent several years in Athens during his grad school days, I was a new entrant to the town, and was surprised at how lively the music spirit truly is over there. The event itself included a dozen independent bands comprised of local musicians, a panel of music industry notables (including Dallas Austin), and hundreds of thirsty music-loving onlookers. The atmosphere was what really brought the event together, and it was inspiring to see people representing all different sides of the music industry spectrum spending an evening together in the name of bettering not just the local music scene, but the industry as a whole.

The event itself took place in one of those classic college bar institutions that, while always different in name, most would instantly recognize as a local watering hole and temporary home for thousands upon thousands of similar coeds over the years. Packed nearly to capacity and thudding with the beat of the first band to present, we made our way into the bar and were transported into an arena of music enthusiasts and spectators. Good music, good people, and good draft beer, what else could you want?

Attending this type of event, and seeing such a positive response to it, gives me hope for an industry that truly needs to come together. We are all aware of some of the recent industry struggles for both labels and artists, and I truly believe that putting more time into the coordination of efforts and ideas from different areas of people will bring about a far more positive connection between people and their music. Additionally, regional biases are prominent in many areas, and connecting local music and local music fans is key to growing a new artist or band’s fan base for the future.

Athens was a great location for this event, and anyone in the area should make sure to spend as much time as possible soaking in the music scene there. We all hope to hear about, attend, and even participate in the creation of more events such as this one, and feel free to share any such events or concepts with the community here at Maestro. In the end, we’re all just music fans right?

Hopefully we will start using this blog to tell about all the great stuff you can do with Maestro.fm!

• Professional movers… $0 (c’mon, we’re on a startup budget)
• Insurance… $0 (insurance is overrated…you break it, you bought it)
• Duct Tape… $92 (everyone loves duct tape)
• Uhaul… $34
• Getting Out of Corporate Office Complex Hell… PRICELESS

Perhaps a quick bit of background is needed here, as to just why Maestro has chosen to change our office location. There’s two reasons, and you can choose for yourself just which was the more driving force:

1. Having a group of “individualists,” or entrepreneurs as we call them in the business world, run around working at all hours of the day in night, in all manners of clothing, smack dab in the middle of a very haughty suburban corporate office complex was not exactly leading to friendly neighborhood banter on Floor 3 of Building A, and
2. Our lease termination snuck up us and they already leased the office to someone else. (don’t think they wanted us for another year anyway)

In retrospect, the incidental humor of having 5 startup guys, with little to no moving experience, put in charge of moving our entire Maestro HQ office across the city in only 1 day should probably have been expected. But at the time, our only thought was “oh crap, our lease ends tomorrow, it’s time to go…NOW.” It’s not as much that the day snuck up on us…more so that we just kept putting off dealing with it until day of – I mean we’re running a startup here you know? We are busy writing code and stuff.

Back to the move. Since we didn’t have any movers, any necessary moving equipment, we chose to use our office chairs as moving dolleys, and upside-down tables as makeshift box organizers. Thank goodness for duct tape, or who knows what would have happened to all those programming books our CTO collects.

Additionally, we found out that morning that you are supposed to apply for a permit to move out of the office. It was a bit too late for that, so clandestine move it had to be. As our scouts took walks past the management office waiting for them to leave at the end of the day, the rest of the team staged the escape and mapped out routes to the service elevators. Last thing to do was convince the night cleaning staff and security that a bunch of t-shirt wearing guys (some in flip-flops) were supposed to be doing this. It took every made up story and dead on sprint we had in us to avoid being stopped mid-move, and by the time the truck was packed up, there was no stopping us. We just said it was Halloween and things aren’t supposed to make sense on that day.

11:35pm, and we’ve done it. We have “packed” our entire office, and everything we hold dear, into 1 tiny little Uhaul truck, with not a single broken item (editors 2nd note: half our furniture is already banged up or broken, so honestly, that’s not saying a whole lot). With Greg at the wheel, Blair in charge of navigation, and the rest of us making up a rag-tag convoy behind the truck, Maestro Inc. makes its way down Highway 400 to our new office…15 minutes away on a good day, but light years away by Atlanta standards. I mean where does this traffic come from at midnight on a Wednesday?

The team went out to a local bar for drinks after to celebrate our emancipation from the complex and it’s constant string of sideways glances in our direction, but no one can seem to remember what happened after we got there…

Our new office!
(yes, that is a garage door)