I first heard Jonathan Coulton on the Merlin Show. (At the time, Merlin was my Internet Hero *whink*). The story in a sentence: Jonathan Coulton quit his job to write and record music, then self-publish it on his website. He offers some songs for free, and songs for sale: a dollar each. Or buy an “album” (a fancy word for a collection of songs) and get cost/song savings. I bought an album, and the purchase/download process was impressively smooth. [Hats off to you, E-Junkie.]
This guy is role model.
He came back to my attention with the buzz surrounding the game Portal. I haven’t even played it (there’s talk of a Wii version in the works), but I fell in love with the song he wrote as the closing credits. You can hear the original version appended to a YouTube video.
I listened to that song. A few times. In a row. It touches me. And aside from the squash when the band kicks in - it touches me in a good way. (To be fair, I haven’t heard the FLAC version.)
My mind returned to Coulton’s model upon reading an article by Steve Pavlina (who has also chaired Internet Hero). Pavlina says that the best way to begin monetizing a hobby/passion is to give it away for free. Sharing artwork that provides value to an audience will attract first an audience, then success.
I dig the music. I dig the business model. And by encouraging fans to use his music, he has a wealth of fan-made videos. This is community a la Ze Frank (another Internet Hero, say you?) Thanks Bryden, for showing me the WoW video of Re: Your Brains.
For a while now, I’ve been meaning to fix up JoelCorriveau.com. I haven’t decided what I want represented there. This indecision has put the project on hold for months. As if I’m not busy enough: I want this project to move forward.
If you haven’t yet had enough Coulton, here’s a live acoustic version of Still Alive.
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Thanks for pointing me to Coulton’s website.
I have played through Portal a couple of times now, and the song is cute at the end but didn’t jump out enough to make me want to go find more. Which is not a knock against the song or Coulton but a comment on the simple, pure joy that is Portal. I think you’ll have a blast when you get your hands on it. It’s short, but it’s sweet. It is a well constructed little puzzle game and left me dreaming about what Valve might have up their sleeves with all of the toys they’ve built recently…HL2 gravity gun and physics engine, portal gun…oh the possibilities.
…now back to digging through Coulton’s catalogue.
It occurs to me now to share his old podcast feed. It’s not active, but it would be a pretty quick and easy way to download and sample from his catalogue. He even says on his website that he has made it intentionally easier to buy than download the free music. Made me smile, here’s the backdoor RSS:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/thingaweek
And the other thing about Jonathan Coulton’s business model is that his fans (I’m one) get motivated to support his music and his website and his concerts in order to ensure that the music will keep on coming. We believe that it’s part of our responsibility to spread the word, not just to consume the music like candy.
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