Playfic, my little interactive-fiction platform, turned one year old on Friday. I rounded up some recent news about it just last month, so I’m not going to retread that territory.
But I was starting to feel guilty about ignoring it, so I added some new tools for exploring the archive of 650+ games, sketches, and silly experiments.
This surfaced a whole bunch of interesting games I hadn’t seen, so I freshened up the featured section with some new picks.
Playfic was always intended to be an experiment, yet another tool of creative expression and a quick way for people to experiment with Inform 7. I really wasn’t expecting much out of it, but I’ve been happy to see people slowly discover the community and find new uses for it.
Update: Releasing any platform for creative expression often comes with unintended consequences. For Playfic, one of the biggest surprises was seeing it used by educators, something I never intended.
Most recently, I just discovered this high school teacher using Playfic to teach interactive fiction in the classroom. I was a little stunned to see a room full of high school students playing interactive fiction for the first time on iPads, starting with Cooper’s first game:
Games being created by high-school students and played by high-school students. How awesome is that?
The undiscovered young talent gets their big break and a record deal, and soon realizes they were swindled by corrupt management and a major label.
It’s an old story, and a common theme that pops up in rock songs, often from well-established bands. (Though it seems especially common the ’70s.)
After writing about Macklemore’s “Jimmy Iovine” for my Indiepocalypse post yesterday, I stumbled on several more great angry songs about record labels. They didn’t fit into the post, but I still wanted to share them.
Graham Parker and the Rumour – Mercury Poisoning (1979)
I got a dinosaur for a representative, It’s got a small brain and refuses to learn Their promotion’s so lame,
They could never ever take me to the real ball game Listen, I ain’t a pet, I ain’t a token hipster in your Monopoly set. I’ve got Mercury poisoning. It’s fatal and it don’t get better!
The Clash – Complete Control (1977)
They said we’d be artistically free when we signed that bit of paper They meant let’s make a lotsa money and worry about it later I’ll never understand Complete control, lemme see your other hand I don’t trust you, so why should you trust me?
Nick Lowe – I Love My Label (1977)
Deeply sarcastic, Lowe tossed off this track to get out of his major label deal with United Artists.
Oh I’m so proud of them up here, we’re one big happy family I guess you could say I’m the poor relation of the parent company They always ask for lots of songs, but no more than 2:50 long so I write ’em some They never talk behind my back, and they’re always playing my new tracks when I come along
Lynyrd Skynyrd – Workin’ For MCA (1974)
MCA signed the young band for a seven year deal for $9,000.
Oh, nine thousand dollars just to sow to the wind. Come to smile at the yankee slicker with a big old southern grin. They’re gonna take me out to California, gonna make me a superstar. Just pay me all my money, maybe you won’t get a scar. Want you to sign the contract, want you to sign the date. Gonna give you lots of money Workin’ for MCA.
Sex Pistols – E.M.I. (1977)
In October 1978, EMI signed the Sex Pistols to a two-year contract, but dropped them only three months later. They were quickly picked up by A&M, and dropped less than a week later. Virgin finally released their debut in May 1977, their third label in six months.
Don’t judge a book just by the cover Unless you cover just another And blind acceptance is a sign Of stupid fools who stand in line Like E.M.I.
The Smiths – Paint A Vulgar Picture (1987)
World tour, media whore, please the press in Belgium. This was your life. And when it fails to recoup? Well, maybe you just haven’t earned it yet, baby.
In one sense, this is the ultimate first-world problem — successful musicians complaining about bad business deals. Then again, for decades, signing with a major label was the only game in town if you wanted to find success in the music industry, and the labels exploited that monopoly.
But overall, I tend to agree with Trent Reznor, who said, “I don’t set out to write songs about record labels. Nothing could be more boring—with the possible exception of writing about tour buses.”
For the first time in two decades, an indie artist is topping the Billboard charts. For the last three weeks, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s “Thrift Shop” has remained at the #1 position on the Billboard Hot 100, beating the likes of Taylor Swift and Bruno Mars.
The only other unsigned artist to ever hit #1 was Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)” in 1994, when her friend Ethan Hawke gave the track to Ben Stiller to include on the Reality Bites soundtrack. She quickly signed to a major label, releasing her debut album the following year with Geffen Records.
Lisa Loeb switched to a label as soon as she could because, in 1994, it was the only way to finance a full album, nationwide tour, market an album, get radio/TV airplay, and get distribution to record stores.
That prized record deal didn’t work out the way she’d hoped. Four years before Lisa Loeb joined Geffen, the label was acquired by MCA, later renamed to Universal Music Group. She ended up on Interscope/A&M, one of Universal’s many subsidiaries, where she received less-than-stellar treatment.
“They became a really big label and I felt they weren’t focusing a lot on music,” Loeb said in 2003. “They had executives telling you one thing one day and then telling you something different the next. They couldn’t deliver on their promises.” A planned music video was rejected by the label because they disagreed with the concept.
In the end, she had to negotiate to buy the rights to her own master recordings from Interscope.
Lisa Loeb wanted her work to be heard and she wanted to make a living doing what she loved, so she sacrificed her creative and financial control to get there.
For hundreds of years, publishers across every industry — book publishers, record labels, film studios, videogame publishers — solved problems for artists in four major ways:
Funding. The cost of creating a new work, paying the artist’s expenses during the creation process, often with an advance.
Production. Design, manufacturing, and printing of the finished product.
Marketing. Going on tour, making a video, promotion in various media outlets.
Distribution. Getting the product into people’s hands.
And how does this play out now?
Digital distribution subverted the monopolies held by physical distribution, bypassing distribution deals with record stores entirely, allowing artists to sell directly to fans. Social media and online music services changed the way people discover music, making the payola systems of MTV and radio airplay feel quaint. Production costs dropped dramatically as computers became more powerful and audio editing software got dirt cheap, along with new services for printing on demand. And, finally, Kickstarter and other crowdfunding platforms offset the financial risk to artists.
Most importantly, each new platform let artists find, communicate, and sell directly to their fans.
Music is hardly alone here. Videogames, film, comics, books, product design, hardware, software, board games, whatever. Hackers and makers across every form of art are finding their fan bases, interacting with them, and selling to them.
We’re at the beginning of an indiepocalypse — a global shift in how culture is made, from a traditional publisher model to independently produced and distributed works.
Artists that were royally screwed over in the past now have an alternative.
As high-profile artists keep popping up across every industry, other artists will inevitably follow. For every Louis CK or Amanda Palmer, there are 10,000 other artists ready to wake up and try something new. It will be the default state for new artists, and a rising trend among artists with existing fanbases.
Publishers will have to evolve just to stay alive. Labels, studios, and other publishers can provide huge value — they can take care of the bullshit that artists don’t want to do. And they can apply knowledge and existing relationships to help artists, rather than asking artists to learn everything from scratch.
Artists of all kinds want to focus on making art, but not if it means giving up a large financial stake in their work, exclusive rights to their work, or a loss of creative control.
It would take much more work, but Macklemore and Ryan Lewis could do it all themselves. Why sign with a label, if it meant giving up so much?
If you have any doubt over whether Macklemore and Ryan Lewis will sign to a major label any time soon, check out the lyrics to “Jimmy Iovine,” a track off their debut album, named after the head of Interscope, Lisa Loeb’s former label. In the song, he sneaks into Jimmy Iovine’s office to try to get a record deal.
Finally see an office with a mounted sign, heaven sent Big block silver letters, read it out loud: President (nice!) This was my chance to grab that contract and turn and jet Right then felt a cold hand grab on the back of my neck
He said, “We’ve been watching you, so glad you could make it Your music gets so impressive in this whole brand you created You’re one hell of a band, we here think you’re destined for greatness And with that right song we all know that you’re next to be famous Now I’m sorry, I’ve had a long day remind me, now what your name is?That’s right, Macklemore, of course, today has been crazy Anyway, you ready? We’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars After your album comes out we’ll need back that money that you borrowed.”
“So it’s really like a loan?”
“A loan? Come on, no, we’re a team, 360 degrees, we will reach your goals! We’ll get a third of the merch that you sell out on the road Along with a third of the money you make when you’re out doing your shows Manager gets 20%, booking agent gets 10% So shit, after taxes you and Ryan have 7% to split That’s not bad, I’ve seen a lot worse, No one will give you a better offer than us.”
I replied, “I appreciate the offer, thought that this is what I wanted Rather be a starving artist than succeed at getting fucked.”
It took two decades for a second unsigned artist to top the Billboard charts. I’m guessing it won’t be long before we see another.
Last Thursday, on my last night after working a few days in NYC, I pulled together a little meetup of a few friends at Spitzer’s, a great little restaurant in the Lower East Side. On a frigid Manhattan night, we all cozied up against the bar in the warm, crowded backroom for conversation and rounds of Spaceteam over craft beer.
Fred noticed him first, sitting in the middle of a long table nearby, five people deep on either side. The place was packed and it was hard to reach him, but I waved from across the room, trying to catch his eye. No luck. He was deep in conversation, smiling and chatting. I thought he looked happy. I was wrong.
It was the first time I’d seen him in years, but I decided not to bug him, figuring I could catch up with him some other time. I made a mental note to drop him a line next time I was in NYC.
The next day, he was gone.
Watching him grow up online, he felt like the Internet’s little brother. His young age betrayed a deep drive and talent, leading him to accomplish so much in so little time. It was intimidating to people twice his age.
By the time I met him at Foo Camp in 2005, I knew way too much about him. I knew about his work with RSS and Creative Commons, I’d followed his crushes and frustrations on his personal blog through his awkward college years, and I was an avid reader of his Google blog.
He was one of the first people to sign up for Upcoming.org, on the second day it was live, and occasionally sent me valuable feedback. After Upcoming was acquired, he was the first person to visit us, on our second day in the office, on November 2, 2005. The photos he took of us and the gaudy Yahoo campus were the first he ever posted to Flickr.
We sat down for dinner at the end of a long day in URL’s, the Yahoo cafeteria, and talked about supertasters and the web. He struck me as someone who was curious, brave, idealistic, and occasionally immature — the kind of person who gets shit done.
We’d talked online occasionally, but it’d been years since I’d seen him last as he went on to change the world — merging Infogami with Reddit, liberating the PACER and Library of Congress datasets, starting Open Library and Demand Progress, and helping to crush SOPA. And, yes, busting into an MIT closet to download millions of academic papers.
Yep, he got shit done.
I never got a chance to say goodbye, but my last glimpse is how I’ll remember him. The center of a modern-day Last Supper, holding court over grilled cheese sandwiches in a Lower East Side bar, surrounded by people who loved him.
