Dear Portfolio Committee,

As an adult continuing education I was both excited and slightly apprehensive about the idea of taking an English class, especially one that was purely online without a class room component as part of the curriculum. Though I am an avid reader of a wide variety of topics and genre, I would not call myself a writer. Secretly though, I hope to write at least two books in my lifetime.  One is a work of fiction that would be set in a fantasy version of New England that combines the past, the present, and a time that never was, while the other is about what I believe it is to be a man, father, citizen, and spiritual being in the 21^st Century; somewhat of a how-to for young men.

This semester has been extremely challenging for me personally. I am a father to an awesome three year old boy, full time student, and part time creator of fine woodwork. Overall I am torn between manufacturing and art. These disciplines may coexist and truly rely on one another, but often do not overlap in the same people. I’m equally split between the two in my mind and soul.  When it came time to choose a theme I decided art would be my muse, as it really is at the core of ‘Making’ things. Every object man makes starts out as a thought, then becomes tangible in the form of a sketch or drawing, then is proto-typed, until finally it is refined into a finished, hopefully useful and beautiful, product.

During this semester I can honestly say that I grew as a writer in a way I never had in the past, in a way that I wasn’t sure was even possible. My peer review interactions and advice from Professor Pappas were immeasurably useful and inspiring, and really offered a different point of view. I worked hard to incorporate new ideas and perspectives, and not take criticism personally. I’m very grateful for the experience I’ve gained in English 101.

The first assignment this semester was to write a memoir. The purpose of the piece was to write about our own lived experience, our memories and observations. I focused on my experience having a custom electric guitar hand made for me and how it ultimately lead me into woodworking, which evolved into online selling, which has been both exciting and daunting. While writing this piece I had to take inventory of a twelve year span of time, consider the sequence of events and the effect they had on me, and attempt to distill it all down to a thousand or so words. I really enjoyed the chance to put this stretch of my life into a written form.

The second piece came very naturally to me. I’m still not exactly sure why, but it did. I have to admit I was quite intimidated by the concept of this assignment and at first really struggled in finding a topic until it struck me like a lightning bolt. Once finding my inspiration I decided to profile the non-profit artist community arts center known as AS220, or Artist Space 220, located in Providence, Rhode Island. I chose this for my ethnography because I currently am a member of this community and greatly appreciate the important function it serves in driving art and creativity in the region.  I’ve met some interesting people and made some valued friends in my time there. It was a space rich with detail and character that for me spans a considerable period of my lifetime. I started going to an early version of AS220 as a curious teenager and I am now well into adulthood.

The next assignment was called Text Wrestling, which by the end of the piece I can say actually lived up to its name. In a way I actually enjoyed this piece the most. My initial draft was slightly scattered and definitely on the wordy side but after a laundry list of work to do I think I “wrestled” the piece into a better flowing, easier to follow, more concise body. Though I probably could still subject it to another revision, I really enjoyed the editing process. In the end I think considerable improvement had been made and I learned to take a step back and think about how a piece should flow. This assignment provided experience in the editing process that I feel I can carry forward into future work. English 101 provided a great foundation to approach writing and helped me to gain new skills in critical understanding of written material.

In conclusion, I came in to the class unsure of what to expect; both from the class and myself. Though I love to read, I’ve been out of school for a long stretch of time. Even though we use English language every day, it’s easy to neglect its rules and methods. I feel that this class helped me to refresh a vein of thought that is important in a professional life and grow a space that is less than tangible – the imagination. I’m currently looking forward to English 102.

Thanks for reading,

Jon

Fourteen years ago, and roughly eleven hundred miles from here, I had a custom electric guitar made by a man I found on eBay in Fort Wayne, Indiana. I love guitars. I think about guitars and music all day, every day. I found it fascinating to be able to have a choice in the construction details of my soon to be new guitar. I got to choose the pickups, the tuning keys, neck, control configuration, and finish. All choices I made to create in interesting piece in my budget of choice, which really wasn’t much. The guitar was based on a Gibson Melody Maker. It was a “double cut” guitar with a multi-piece curly maple top and mahogany back, both in a light hand-rubbed oil finish. The neck was also mahogany and had a rosewood fretboard. It featured Seymour Duncan P90 pickups and a real cool vintage sound and vibe.

When I finally received the guitar I was so happy. I loved it. I’ll never forget the moment I unwrapped it from its large cell bubble wrap. I immediately could smell the natural wood. I pressed it right to my nose and inhaled it, taking the smell into me like I was welcoming a child. Scent is a powerful sense to me and to this day I can smell the incense and smoky notes on another guitar I own from a rehearsal space that I haven’t set foot in for seventeen years. Either my sense of smell is profound or a lot of, ahem, incense was burned in that space. I also associate guitars I own with time periods in my life. Some I miss, some I don’t. This new one was a clean slate, with a new smell. I was really energized by it.

This recent addition to my guitar family was exactly what I thought it would be. It was well made and comfortable, nice to look at, and sounded great. I loved the fact that another person’s hands did the work. I wondered what thoughts went through his mind as he cut the wood from its raw “blank” state. What kind of music did he listen to while he spent the many hours gluing the wood together, routing the cavities that would hold the neck and pickups, and sanding away the tiny scratches and flaws that all wood inevitably has. But being a very mechanically apt guy, from a very mechanically apt family, I couldn’t help but say to myself “I can do this,” and know it to be true. My family is the type that doesn’t hire anyone to work on our house. We’re kind of like country survivalist types, trapped in the city. We do it all, except natural gas work, ourselves. Work is a serious word where I’m from. My grandfather, a Polish immigrant and WWII survivor, never took a sick day in his entire life and immigrated to this country with a single dollar to his name. Through hard work he did alright. He cast a long shadow and has always been an inspiration to me in perseverance and work ethic.

So after some time, about 6 years, I had acquired some tools we didn’t already have, read some books, and watched a TON of YouTube. I was finally feeling like guitar building was something I could actually do. I dreamed of doing it for a living. Where would it take me? Would I move to another city to be near a pool of talented musicians? Nashville? New York? L.A.? Would I cross paths with my idols or the famous? I could only dream. I have played guitar since I was 14, at this point, quite a while. I won’t say exactly how many years. I’ve drooled over a lot of guitars in my lifetime so I began to really study every guitar I laid eyes on with an intense eye on the tiniest of details. After building several prototypes of guitar bodies I began to accumulate a lot of scrap wood that was essentially unusable in what I was doing. The problem is wood costs money, and I really hate to waste things – food, wood, time, whatever. So my girlfriend, a talented ceramic and graphic artist, suggested we make wood jewelry with all the pieces of beautiful exotic wood. We mostly made earrings and neck pendants. Naturally it made sense to try to sell it so we opened a store on Etsy, a web site for all things handmade.

In the first year we made eight sales. We didn’t really care as it was somewhat of a novelty, but it felt good to know there were people actually willing to pay me for my work. Overtime we started to talk about what else could be made with the scraps of wood that were piling up in my workspace. So I began making candle holders, cutting boards, and clocks. Sales took off! Suddenly I had something that sold. Sales increased roughly 3000% in year two. Cutting boards were the hot item so we dropped jewelry altogether and just focused on the household products. Sales continued to rise for the next 5 years. I’ve become friends with other sellers, some small, some large.

Over the years I saw Etsy try new ideas, change their search engine, offer new products, and eventually, as far as I’m concerned, sell out. They opened the site up to product manufactured by third parties – meaning I could design something and have a factory in China make me a thousand of them and have them drop ship them directly to the buyer. Not exactly handmade anymore. To a lot of people that were part of the site early on this felt like a serious betrayal, no matter how they justified it. Suddenly the rules changed and it no longer felt like a truly fair marketplace. This essentially introduced massive quantities of lower priced product into the equation and put a lot of price pressure on many sellers to the point of putting many stores out of business. Then they decided that sellers would need to pay to “Promote” your items in search results, after they altered the search algorithm to make your items more difficult to be seen. Talk about adding insult to injury. It’s as is if someone stole your puppy and then said you can pet him, if you pay them, and no – they will not be giving him back.

So naturally the cherry on top of this horrible Sundae was that they then decided to go Public, which means join Wall Street. Now look, I’m all for success and capitalism – I am a capitalist by any measure. But the reality is that being publicly traded is usually bad for a company who claims to be based on a social value. Capital value doesn’t generally occupy the same space as social value. Social values would generally by categorized as “waste and inefficiency” by the bean counters, ya know?
After losing a job and going full time on Etsy a few years ago I’m beginning to feel like yet another American rug has been pulled out from under me. Oh and did I mention I have a 2 year old son and a mortgage at this point? My sales volume declined so sharply so quickly and is completely unmoved by all attempts to reverse the trend that it is now beginning to feel like a rigged game. It also is beginning to feel more like a burden than a creative outlet. It’s a tough pill to swallow as I tend not to quit anything I’ve set my mind to.

All that being said,

Online selling is awesome.

It allows you to create, to dream, to build something of your own, and make people happy. I have awed so many people in something many cities and countries. I’ve made things that appeared on TV, in magazines, and countless websites. But the reality is it can change in an instant. The key words are ‘search algorithm.’ The algorithm can be your greatest friend or your executioner. Google, Etsy, Facebook, whoever – They all can shut you down with a keystroke.

Before becoming an online seller or entrepreneur think twice. Have a back-up plan and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. All of the talk in recent years about how the Internet is liberating people to communicate and create in ways they never could before doesn’t exactly tell the whole truth. Yes it is true that it does those things, but it doesn’t seem to bring an ounce of security with it. It can change in a second. Whether it’s the Egyptian government shutting down the entire network in Egypt during the Arab Spring, or Etsy tweaking its business model. Either way the effects can be devastating in an era where people have come to rely on these services. Imagine if the entire ATM system became unavailable.

Where would we be then?

Location:

AS220, which stands for Artist Space 220, is a non-profit organization located in Providence, Rhode Island. Its mission is to provide a non-juried space for artists of all types to make and show art. AS220 has grown into a performance space for music and performance art, a gallery, a restaurant, artist live/work space, and a series of makerspaces known as AS220 Industries. The maker spaces range from screen printing and textile related arts, photography and webcasting, to electronics and technology like 3D printing, laser cutting, and CNC milling. AS220 drives the local creative culture by teaching classes in all of the many disciplines housed within its growing domain. Founded in 1986 by Umberto Crenca, AS220 has become a respected institution Providence, and a model for non-profit artist spaces worldwide.

I have been going to AS220 since 1990. When I first went it AS220 it was operating out of a small single room space upstairs from a place called ‘Club Babyhead.’ Babyhead was a great place to see shows if you were into any kind of underground music. Both of these spaces were in a, still to this day, seedy area of downtown Providence. I’ll never forget the first time I went. AS220 was on the second floor, up a long wooden stairway that was completely covered in band stickers, flyers for shows, flyers for art happenings, ads for new age bookstores and used record shops, and invitations to Buddhist and Krishna meditation groups. In the early 90’s counterculture was still very much underground and had not broken through to mainstream culture yet. Kurt Cobain and all the Seattle bands were still unknown. Art and creativity were still largely misunderstood and undervalued by a lot of America. After climbing the stairs to what felt like a punk rock shrine to the counter culture and free thought I entered the dimly lit room. There was a tiny kitchen, little more than a household stove and sink, which would sometimes make Indian inspired dishes and other vegetarian food. There was a small station by the door where a guy or girl would collect the cover charge. They never checked ID as they didn’t sell alcohol, they were after all ‘All Ages, All The Time.’ A mantra they still live by to this day.

The first event I went to was a bizarre spectacle to witness. It was a performance art piece, which I only found out recently, by AS220 founder Umberto Crenca and some of his friends. The piece was basically three naked men playing ‘Jacks’ on the floor. I think the intention was to make a statement about childhood. I never really read into the meaning, but was fascinated by the boldness of it all. Honestly, I’m surprised they weren’t arrested. We were, after all, just kids. But what society might have deemed dangerous or damaging I always felt was mind altering and thought provoking. It really lead me to believe in art and all the impossible. This was right around the time I really started to get into music and it was a natural fit. I went to a lot of shows at AS220 and Club Babyhead over the next couple years. I saw a lot bands like Mudhoney, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Soul Coughing, and Republica in those two rooms. I banged on the cymbals of the drum set while the horns of the Bosstones wailed and I was fed cheese, there was a backstage cheese platter for the band, by Mark Arm of Mudhoney. The music was edgy and loud, the rooms were dark and smoky, and there were lots of cool girls. We always had a blast. Club Babyhead ceased to exist long ago, but AS220 has grown into a small empire occupying multiple buildings of prime downtown real estate, which are spread out over several city blocks.

When I first enter the small alley way that brings you to the rear entrance of AS220 Industries I walk by the back patio of a couple of the neighboring businesses – one is a gay bar and the other a Mexican restaurant. The alley is clad in brick and defined by a beautiful black wrought iron rail and fence to your right. Past the iron rail there is a fairly large parking lot before the next building which proudly wears an enormous wall mural created by AS220 artists. The mural changes from time to time and is generally of a person, or a type of person, that the artists want to raise awareness of in society. Most recently it was a black and white of a youngish mother nursing a baby, her expression was troubled and unsure. You could feel her inner tension as her lips looked as if they were caught in the middle of a quiver, as in the moment just before her tears were about to well in her eyes before crying.

The entrance is fairly low key and decorated with various creations that were made inside. Silk screened artwork and flyers, printed circuit boards, laser cut three dimensional animals made of corrugated cardboard, and a slew of 3D printed objects all line the windows and sills. This place is a temple devoted to creativity and thought. All of these objects were the product of someone’s heart and mind. They adorn the walls and windows like stained glass Bible scenes in Church; all telling the history of the place and the people, each a story of its own. Many of the spaces at AS220 directly connect to each other through doorways that only close late in the evening. Some rooms are pretty large and house multiple functions at once like the electronics, 3D printing, vinyl cutting, and work table space. Often there are people working together, or separately, on various tasks, in what is basically a common area. Many of the artists know each other as we all tend to cross paths a lot. This makes the ability to bounce ideas or get advice from others really easy. It’s really great to be surrounded by people who you know will likely have a valid opinion and credible idea that is rooted in passion and experience, even if different than your own.

Once I enter the building, the first person I usually see is an older man named Ronnie. He’s usually straight through the door and to the right in this “alcove” type space. It’s an open room that has no door that connects directly to the back alley entrance. Ronnie uses many of the tools available there but spends most of his time on the CNC routing equipment. The CNC is large cutting table that takes up a four foot by 8 foot space. It allows its user to carve intricate detail into things or shape things like wood, plastic, and soft metals by cutting the material with a variety of rotating cutters. You can create an intricately carved wood door, a sign for a business, or build a electric guitar with this tool. If I had to guess I’d say Ronnie is somewhere around 70 years old. He’s around five foot six, smaller framed, and somehow always reminds of a railroad engineer based on his clothing. Ronnie seems to always be at Industries no matter what time I arrive. I often joke with him about the “cot in the back” he must have. Ronnie’s creativity and knowledge are awesome. He really is like a guru to a lot of people there. He seems to know something about everything and has created an amazing variety of art and objects. He knows more creative software than most people I know and is a fluent C language programmer. Most of the time he is using the CNC router for various projects people contract him to do or is using the laser cutter. He has a small business creating geo-domes for gardeners outside of AS220. If ever I have a problem with the equipment I may be using, need some creative advice for a project of my own, or just want to talk about anything like art, politics, or the weather than I go to Ronnie.

When I’ve finished my conversation with Ronnie I round the corner from the CNC router to get to the stairs that take me up to the area where the laser cutter is located. The walls of the stairway are lined with polaroid photos of past and present members of the Printshop, the Media Labs, the Photography Studio, and Industries, all with their names handwritten in black sharpie by the member. Some people are happily smiling, some are making a joking face, and some are somber and reserved. The variety of people is like a cross section of society – all races and ethnicities, men and women, all strongly represented within the building. Having your photo up there is a badge of honor that says you are a respected member of the creative community. Some of these photos are really old and are of founding members of the particular craft’s “lab” while others are clearly brand new. I personally do not have a photo up yet. After doing my time as a “monitor” member, which is there to help other new members with equipment and the general goings on of AS220, I became a “key member.” This basically means I have a key to the building and can enter 24 hours a day without supervision. This has been really helpful to my craft as I can come in and do work in the middle of the night at times that are usually a bit quitter and therefore distraction free.

The next person I encounter is Dave. Dave is a printshop wizard. I believe he has a graphic design degree from Rhode Island School of Design and spends a lot of time at AS220. Sometimes when I’m waiting for the laser to run a lengthy job I’ll wander over to the printshop to hang out with Dave. He’s mid to late thirties, slightly tall, dark haired and has piercing blue eyes. He’s a genuinely nice guy and easy to talk to. I remember being struck by how friendly and down to earth he is when I first met him. Women, and some men, seem to trip over themselves for Dave. He’s a good looking guy and really approachable. The printshop is only a few feet away from the laser cutting area but it feels miles away. When you enter you’re struck by the smell of ink and solvents used in the printing process. There are flyers and artwork all over the walls and your eyes are assaulted by a barrage of color and fonts. Everything from art images to edgy commercial stuff to cool band flyers. I have never screen printed before, but the people and creative energy over there are alluring. At some point I’ll take the class and jump on board.

Another person I frequently spend some spare time with from the printshop is Samantha. Samantha is a mid to late 20’s millennial type. Her appearance is on the edgy side – one part Sid Vicious, one part Cyndi Lauper, one part modern Hipster. She’s got a few tattoos and rocks a white t-shirt with a skull and crossed bones on it. Her auburn hair is straight and doesn’t quite reach her shoulders. When she’s not printing at AS220 she works as an art teacher at another creative hub around time and at night waitresses at a farm to table restaurant. She’s such a devoted artist, full of creative energy, and overall a non-conformist type. She has a mouth like a drunk sailor in Singapore. I often wonder what she’s like at work. The restaurant is somewhat upscale and I would imagine she has to “tone it down” a bit while working. This duality of lives probably makes her feel like two people – Sam the free spirited artist and Sam the hardworking polite waitress.

Before I get to laser I pass by the electronics area. This area is for people to create small electronic items or to work with things like Arduino. The Arduino is small computer that people can program to do a wide variety of things like control your home sprinkler system, pilot a small drone aircraft, or whatever you can dream up. I walked by an ongoing class that worked with the Arduino. The class was being hosted by an Artist in Residence from California, for people to learn how to create a small device that would turn off and temporarily disable all the televisions around the user. This device was not very appreciated at the airport but the artist felt the need to make a political statement about the ever increasing bombardment we face by television screens in society. The artist was around 50 years old, soft spoken, slightly balding, and based on his appearance looked like a guy that probably had spent a lot of years in a big tech company.

The last person I see is Ivan. Ivan is just leaving the laser cutter as I’m entering. He’s around 40 and always dressed like a lumberjack, blue jeans and flannel shirt over some dirty work boots. He is really creative and always has a few pieces of work with him. He, like me, is a student and father. He reminds me of a young Ronnie – really smart and well rounded. Similar good looks as Dave, but far less approachable. He’ll talk to anyone but has a really dry sense of humor. You either get him or you don’t. He either likes you or he doesn’t. I can’t help but feel he’s looking at my work kind of critically, like he’s dissecting it into a million little pieces, wondering why I selected the wood in my work, or why I shaped it as I have. The guy’s eyes are like little green microscopes hard wired to microprocessors, built for inspection and mathematical analysis. When I can get a conversation going with him he usually has a perspective that I didn’t see coming and a different approach to what I’m doing. Overall he’s a bit of a mystery; clearly there’s a lot going on inside his head but he doesn’t seem to let a lot of people into his inner space.

After I’ve completed my work I gather my things and shut down the computer and laser system I came to use I can’t help but think about how interesting the experience at AS220 is. I’m grateful to know these people and have this resource at my disposal. I also think about how the community thrives on itself as the membership trade knowledge and perspectives. Through this exchange the skills of the artists are inspired and augmented to do more, to push the limits of their craft, and take chances that they may not have on their own. Artist communities are built around the simple need to express something deep within one’s soul and to see the abstract and formless become tangible.

Sometimes after I finish my work I’ll head down the street to the performance space to get a beer and something to eat, which for me might be a new craft beer or my favorite hard cider, and a vegan or vegetarian dish. I’m not a vegan but I love vegetarian food. Often when I’m there I’ll run into someone from Industries and we’ll hang out and chat about art, politics, or the band playing in the adjacent space. It’s really great to be part of a community of likeminded people who aren’t just consumers of products, but producers. In an age that really needs creative solutions to so many problems, AS220 shines as a source for creative thinking today, just as it did when I saw punk rock and naked jacks on the floor. I can honestly say if it wasn’t for this place and community, the ‘maker’ part of my mind might never have developed beyond a glimmer of thought into the over one thousand tangible items that I have crafted by hand.

The Shazam Effect

Derek Thompson

December 2014 issue of The Atlantic

In “The Shazam Effect,” Derek Thompson details the functionality and effect of the song identifying app known as ‘Shazam.’ Shazam is a song identifying app that can quickly identify songs via cellphone and is said to function even in the presence of background noise. The algorithm that makes up Shazam cleverly creates a unique acoustic fingerprint of the song, which means within just a few seconds, and even in a noisy location, a song can be identified. This was considered a breakthrough as cataloging songs note for note would be a tedious process from a legal standpoint. This allowed songs to be cataloged and identified without direct industry participation.

Since its creation it has caught on amongst average listeners just trying to find “that” song as well as industry executives and talent scouts. The industry as used it to better predict the “hit potential” of songs and artists by gauging how many people are attempting to identify a song in a specific geographical area. As searches for a song accumulate a virtual trail of breadcrumbs is left behind, allowing the industry to track where a song’s popularity first began to catch on and the day it peaked. With an interactive map that shows real time search data, Shazam shows users where a song is catching on anywhere in the world, allowing users to get information by specific locations like individual cities. It also shows a growth trend for artists that are virtual unknowns, revealing which are artists are most likely to have a broad appeal based on the comparison of data among songs and artists.

Shazam was created in 2002, which might as well have been the Stone Age by today’s technical standards. Originally the app sent the response to the query by text message which by today’s instant response type speeds may as well been by carrier pigeon, but it worked. Since its creation it has ditched the text message retrieval. The vast amount of data that Shazam has collected has allowed them to really zoom in on trends and patterns in breaking artists. “Sometimes we can see when a song is going to break out months before most people have even heard of it,” according to former Shazam chief technologist Jason Titus. The company can pinpoint the day when Lorde’s “Royal” peaked in nearly 3000 US cities.

The data collected by Shazam, and other new companies, provide a set of tools to the industry to help identify quickly rising artists and those with great potential. To some degree this has mechanized the process of finding new talent and reduced the need, and perhaps value, of the “gut instincts” of executives. This may also be functioning as a hedge against the risks of signing new and unknown talent. In the article ‘A Hunger for Certainty’ by David Rock on the web edition of Psychology Today an interesting piece of the human mind is detailed. “Some parts of accounting and consulting make their money by helping executives experience a perception of increasing certainty, through strategic planning and forecasting” (Rock) and while “the future is inherently uncertain, the one thing that’s certain is that people will pay lots of money to at least feel less uncertain.” Rock goes on to explain how prior to the 2008 financial meltdown many finance execs had spent a lot of money on data to help the feel safer, which for most ended up providing no safety at all. The main point was that uncertainty effects decision making and is directly linked to the fight or flight response within the brain. Hence, the brain prefers certainty, even when it comes to your taste in music.

People naturally gravitate to music that they already know. According to Norbert Schwarz, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California, “Things that are familiar are comforting, particularly when you are feeling anxious.” (Rock) Therefore if people like what they already know, or worse, like only what other people like – i.e. jumping on the bandwagon, then they aren’t likely to take an interest in a band or song until it has gained a high degree of popularity. In terms of data, this may create a clustering of musical styles that, for many people, doesn’t allow much room for the new and groundbreaking experimental tracks to be heard. Are most music listeners simply looking for music that conforms to their previously held taste in music and are ultimately listening to the same song over and over again? Are executives just simply trying to find a tool to simplify the inherent risks of signing and pushing unknown tracks and artists so that they can sleep better and maybe keep their jobs a bit longer? Probably yes to both.

More and music is found through the analysis of data, rather than the traditional way of an A&R person going out to a show and witnessing the raw live talent of an artist. Next Big Sound is a company that tracks Instagram mentions, Spotify listening trends, and other digital data to forecast songs and artists likely to breakout. By using an algorithm to filter through a half million artists a year they create list of 100 stars that are likely to break out within a year. “If you signed our top 100 artists, 20 of them would make the Billboard 200,” says Victor Hu, a data scientist with the company. This would be a great accomplishment for any label as the numbers for commercial success in music are in fact really quite dismal. Last year Next Big Sound unveiled a search tool called Find, which is available for a six figure subscription price helps execs mine artists out of the data within just a few seconds. There are still questions about the reliability of data points like Facebook likes as an indicator of the trajectory of an artist, whereas some data points seem to have excellent powers of prediction.

To me the use of data raises an important concerns about how popularity can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. In 2006 a Columbia University study showed that song rankings influence listener preference, in other words that popularity is a self-reinforcing prophecy. By inverting the rankings of previously results and displaying them to an audience that could then listen to all of the songs, they discovered that previously popular songs were ignored and that previously popular songs gained popularity.

Considering that the top 1% of artists earn 77 percent of all revenue from recorded music, it may be safe to ask how much of this is due to the crowning of artists as industry royalty and how much is from a legitimate judgement of quality and artistic validity on the part of the public? Trends can be made, self-reinforced, and shaped by those who hold the power of distribution and publication. More and more new artists are released with such a media blast that it no longer feels remotely organic to me, it’s starting to feel more like a coronation. It’s amazing how many artists today become mega popular before you’ve ever heard their name. How much of this is legit and how much was a large ad budget to push a good looking artist, or boy band, into mainstream acceptance simply through a mass media blitz? If I ask you if you want a strawberry soda or orange soda we aren’t even talking about your preference for a cola.  Stars are all too often minted or better yet churned out like sausage today. They taste great for a few minutes and probably have a short shelf life.

Thompson mentions 1991 as the year when Billboard started using point-of-sale data, rather reports made by radio stations and record stores, as the basis for calculating chart position. Prior to this change, radio stations and record stores were on the honor system as to what was selling and in demand. When you factor in their need to manage inventories may have skewed reports and the entire “pay to play” aspect of how songs used to find their way to radio, the old way quickly looks like a sham at best, and illegal at worst. The reason that I hone in on 1991 is because it was also an important year in music history. Prior to the release of Nirvana’s hit song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” rock music was dead, or at least dying. At that time the public had had a dwindling appetite for the glam hairbands or heavy metal that had been dominating rock in the eighties. Rock was steadily losing its edginess in favor of soft rock artists that had a broader appeal. Many people had gleefully touted “Rock Is Dead” and went on to explain how demographic shifts in America were in favor or urban dance music. Though music has certainly diversified with the changes in America, the trend in rock music sales and chart positions had more to do with poor quality music and tired formulae than macro sized changes in the public’s taste. You may love chocolate cake, but how much of the same old stale chocolate cake are you willing to eat before you’re ready to try something else? Nirvana really energized rock music, single handedly changing the formula for success, and creating countless copy cats. Labels were immediately in search of anything that would have a similar out of the box appeal and they really began to take chances on new obscure artists who otherwise wouldn’t have seen the light of day, let alone made to record store shelves or MTV. I wonder how Nirvana’s Shazam searches, even at their peak, would have compared to Whitney Houston’s. How would this story unfold today in an era were MTV is of no marketing value?

This all really hit home with me when I noticed an artist I love, Brandi Carlile, was on tour and that her tour was skipping Boston/Providence as of the release of the tour dates. Tour dates are often fluid and could change at any time so I tend not to read too into the initial dates, but I have to admit – I was a little miffed!  I wondered ‘How is this possible?” Her shows always seem to have good turnout by very welcoming enthusiastic crowds anywhere in New England. I’ve seen this firsthand as I’ve seen her a bunch of times in the last nine years. I have to admit I wondered if something like this could have been a factor. Brandi isn’t an artist that has truly broken through to super stardom. Though her fans are often the completely rabid type her name probably isn’t on the tip of your plumber’s tongue.

My concern was that some datapoint indicated that Boston wasn’t a strong Market for her music so management opted to skip it in favor of another city. I understand that this kneejerk reaction may make sense from a business standpoint: control cost, minimize time of tour, maximize profit, and increase publicity in her most receptive locales. The problem is a place that may have been slower to respond to her, or may in fact have a lower ceiling of penetration, may now simply go dark for her. The live show is an important component to music appreciation for many fans, and income for artists, and without it the relationship between fan and artist can atrophy.

We know that trends can be self-reinforcing and that the brain prefers the comfort of the familiar. When these concepts take over the music industry and the less well funded segment of the market is simple cut away from the equation, what are we left with? Does the functionality of this App, and countless others, just begin to condense and limit choice into the formulae that inevitably get old? I fully understand a business needs to profit, and one could argue that they are simply responding to what the public wants, but at some point data starts to function more like a wall than a liberator. Think “strawberry or orange soda,” when what you really want is a root beer. What the public “wants” is all too often a function of what they’ve been offered. Are the executives really just Shazam-ing themselves into a feeling of certainty of the outcome of their decisions?

If so, when does the Shazam Effect actually become the Bamboozle Effect?

Probably sooner then we think.

Works Cited

Rock, David. Psychology Today. 25 October 2009. web site. 20 April 2016.

Thompson, Derek. The Atlantic. December 2014. web site. 25 March 2016.