A statement on the church’s website (which is now back up) gives a more complete list of the things to be burned:

Did you see it in the list??? SOUTHERN GOSPEL!!! And if you follow the internal Southern Gospel link on the website, it takes you to this additional information:

The website also singles out Joel Hemphill, The Anchormen, and The Crab Family as examples of what it calls “Ungodly Southern Gospel.”

The few Southern Gospel artists with whom I’ve spoken were all aware of this “news item” and none agreed with the effort. All expressed concern that our industry could be seen as connected to this kind of thinking. One artist, who happens to live within “smoke smelling” distance of the event, commented in LOL format, “Hmmm. I see they’re having chicken and barbecue–I wonder if they need a bluegrass band.”

In another response, a reader of a local newspaper, The Asheville Citizen-Times, wrote:

“I was happy to read that the Halloween book and music burning at Canton’s Amazing Grace Baptist Church will be accompanied by barbequed chicken and all the sides. After all, there is nothing like the smell of well-cooked satanic influences to whet one’s appetite.

However, the item did not say whether or not the chicken will be barbequed in the book fire itself; and, if so, whether the celebrants would unknowingly be ingesting the evil spirits of modern bibles and country music.

That might be counter-productive.”

Cliff Yudell, Asheville

Hey, I’m just giving out the information, fair and balanced. “You decide.” Does this news affect Southern Gospel?

The underlying problem with this discussion is that it implies that we are having fewer greatly loved songs and/or great songs that are “heard” fewer times by fewer people. Does a lack “radio dominance” equate to a lack of how many times a song is listened to by fans?  Does a number 1 song on the chart get more “earplays” than a number ten song?

If we talk about “earplay” rather than “airplay” (charts), I would suggest that we have more songs getting more earplay today than when radio charts were a more reliable measure–which they probably no longer are.  People have many more ways and opportunities to listen to a song than they did even ten years ago.  Technology has brought us choice. We now listen to what we want, when we want, whether it is via CD’s in the car or iPods anywhere.  Nobody sits and listens to a radio station waiting to hear their favorite new song played.  And even if a station is playing a certain song 3-5 times a day, what percentage of their listening audience actually hears it.  We are just not getting a lot of earplays out of radio these days.

This does not mean that there are not current songs that are as valued, as loved, or as often heard as in 2000.  It just means that the listeners’ tools for listening have expanded, allowing them to hear their favorites more often — even though we don’t have a way to accumulate the numbers.  But every hunch/instinct I have tells me that the Talley Trio’s “Broken Ones” has and still does receive way more earplays than “Searchin’” did in 2000 and after, even though it did better on the charts.

And, I would argue, that there is another result to this expanded listening availability of the music. People are never far from their music. When life circumstances create a need, we can quickly grab and listen to the inspiration we want or need. This deepens our experience with the music in ways that radio airplay never provided.

So we may no longer have songs that dominate radio charts, but we do have songs that can dominate and minister to our experience in more ways.  It is just inconvenient that we can’t measure the value and give out a plaque for it.

1.  Resnikoff’s Parting Shot: Smashing the CD… to Bits

“What would happen if the majors stopped pressing CDs right now, closed down their plants, and wrote off their physical retail networks?  The answer is that they’d lose billions, right off the bat!  The lights would start flickering immediately!

But, they’d also quickly shrink unnecessary overhead, ditch ineffective legacy commitments, assume nimbler stances, and refocus all of their energies towards digital formats and concepts.  And, start building companies designed to survive in the 2010s.”

By Paul Resnikoff (full story here)

2.  Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

“Today’s students – K through college – represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age. Today‟s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV). Computer games, email, the Internet, cell phones and instant messaging are integral parts of their lives.

It is now clear that as a result of this ubiquitous environment and the sheer volume of their interaction with it, today‟s students think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors. These differences go far further and deeper than most educators suspect or realize. “Different kinds of experiences lead to different brain structures, “ says Dr. Bruce D. Perry of Baylor College of Medicine. As we shall see in the next installment, it is very likely that our students’ brains have physically changed – and are different from ours – as a result of how they grew up. But whether or not this is literally true, we can say with certainty that their thinking patterns have changed. I will get to how they have changed in a minute.

What should we call these “new” students of today? Some refer to them as the N-[for Net]-gen or D-[for digital]-gen. But the most useful designation I have found for them is Digital Natives. Our students today are all “native speakers” of the digital language of computers, video games and the Internet.

So what does that make the rest of us? Those of us who were not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted or most aspects of the new technology are, and always will be compared to them, Digital Immigrants”.

Digital Natives Digital Immigrants ©2001 Marc Prensky  (full story here)

3.  Minds For The Future: Why Digital Immersion Matters

“Like many other crucial skills, digital literacy needs to be taught and learned through constant practice.  Naturally, this doesn’t explain why some Digital Natives will get more out of their sessions than others do.  But what about those who get much more practice?  Its estimated by Professor Urs Gasser that for kids who turn fifteen in 2016 or so, “they are likely to spend somewhere between 1,200 and 1,500 hours per year on digital technologies.”  Going onto say that, “Five years later, at age twenty, they will have accumulated at least 10,000 hours as active users of the Internet, if the current statistics still apply.”

This amount of time, in turn, is equivalent to what Malcolm Gladwell argued to be the magic number for true expertise in Outliers.  Whether you take into consideration world-class violinists, concert pianists, chess grandmasters, star athletes, Bill Gates, the Beatles, and what have you, 10,000 hours appears again and again.  “It seems,” neurologist Daniel Levitin writes, “that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”  Ten years, Gladwell says, is roughly how long it takes to put in 10,000 hours of hard practice.  For these Digital Natives it will only have taken them five years”.

By Kyle Bylin (full story here)

4.  Digital Natives In The Classroom

“Digital Natives, Generation-D (digital), Nintendo Kids, the MTV generation, whatever term you chose to describe them, today’s youth has grown up with an uprecedented access to and appetite for technology and new media. Since 1970, when Pong (the revolutionary video arcade game) was introduced, children have voraciously consumed a steady diet of digital games, music videos, and the world wide web. More recently, they have enthusiastically embraced technologies that are on the leading edge of the technology wave including live chats, instant messaging, smart mobs, blogs, wikis, modding, and more. While these terms might be common parlance in the vernacular of Digital Natives, they are cryptic and foreign to the “Digital Immigrants” who struggle to understand and master these new technologies.”
by Michael Culligan, SDSU Educational Technology (full story here)

5.  Advice For Musicians In 140 Characters Or Less

“I recently asked Hypebot’s Twitter followers to contribute their best advice to musicians in twitterspeak’s 140 characters or less. Below are a few of the best that that I gathered usingTwitoaster, a free online utility that threads and archives twitter conversations, bringing context and adding stats to your Twitter communications.”

By Bruce Houghton (full story here)

People become attached to certain artists as a result of a myriad of factors about the artist and all this gets “bundled” into how they “experience” that artist. Here are some of the factors involved in that experience:

• How the artist looks, dresses, and talks on stage
• What topics the artist chooses to talk and sing about
• What others around me think and feel about the artist
• What happens at concerts
• How often I get to see and hear, or hear from the artist
• How much the artist seems to feel and think like me
• How, whether, and how much the artist talks to me offstage
• Does the artist answer my calls, emails, etc.
• Does the artist have a web presence that is interesting to me or that I can participate in
• What do I know about the artist’s “private” life and what do I think about it
• Are there places, other than concerts where I encounter the artist: do they teach music, produce CD’s, write books, use social networking, etc.
• Does the artist ever engage me in person outside, or alongside, of concerts.

All these aspects (and more) of “experiencing” an artist fold together to create an image held in the mind(s) of those following an artist to determine how much the artist’s ministry is valued.  And here’s the really important part: the value of that entire experience represents how well the artist’s ministry succeeds. Bookings, CD sales, concert attendance, and sales of other products, are all really just “souvenirs” of that experience.

Most artists do not fully understand the quality and quantity of the kinds of experience they do or could offer. They simply look at their success as a function of how many CD’s they sell or whether they get “good bookings.”

Artists can “grow” their ministries by learning how to look at themselves broadly, and understanding the real breadth and depth of experience they offer.  Deeper and more meaningful experiences for followers means a more fulfilling experience for the artist.  And this will result in a more stable funding for the ministry as more followers find more value for more “souvenirs” of their experience.

1. Build, own, control, and maintain your own new platform and experiment until it works for you.
2. Rent one of the new cookie-cutter enterprise platforms that are set up to do this for you.
3. Partner with a company who understands the current landscape of tools and concepts that will act as your “web presence” staff.
4. Hope the traditional platforms approach will “turn around” and start working again.

We’ll discuss the first three.

Own And Build Your Own.  If you have the time, the inclination, the webskills or ability to learn them, and know or know how to keep up with new marketing strategies, this can be the best way to go. You have to be as creative about connecting with your fans and how to grow your base as you are with your music.  If you do not already have all these abilities and skills, this can be a very time-intensive process. If you do have the skills and understanding, it still takes a lot of time and you have do decide if the return on investment of your time is worth it. Your time is not free. You also have to keep up your creativity as an artist. Your “new” platform is not just a website to maintain, it is understanding and using multiple tools to make up a web presence that will keep you constantly engaged with your fans and responding to them as if you were in concert with all of them at once, every week of the year.

A good example I know of where an artist is learning to do this effectively and successfully is The Dills.

Enterprise Platforms.  There are a lot of new web companies now springing up that offer to “be your web platform.” They will set up a fan-oriented web presence for you and other artists who buy in to their system and operate some aspects of it for you. Most of them offer a menu of services with more complex ones costing more.

I should note here that FaceBook, MySpace, and other such social networking sites are the forerunners of these newer enterprise sites.  They all “congregate” many artists and their fans together under one umbrella—their own.  They all can offer some options but have to standardize to a certain extent. In other words, you can’t just make their platform do anything you may want it to do.  Also, most of them, while allowing you and your fans easy access to each other, maintain your mailing and other lists on their server which you may or may not have access to keep if you leave their service.

I probably should offer an example but, not being much of a “fan” of these services myself, I think I’ll just let the more enterprising among you find them yourself.

Partnering. (or maybe just hiring).  If the artist is really knowledgeable about new marketing concepts and tools but is busy at being an artist, he can just hire a web developer who will design a web presence and build the tools wanted to create a robust platform where the artist provides the content he wants in the just the ways he wants. This is a really good option if the artist can afford it and can sift through various developers to find the one who can create what the artist wants.

On the other hand, if the artist is not so knowledgable, he can look for a developer who is very up to date with both web design and who understands well new marketing concepts, and make a partnership agreement to share profits.  This can be a good option if the artist has little time, little money, and can find the suitable partner.  “Suitable” being the primary obstacle here.

____________________

Whatever option or direction you choose, do not expect permanency. Finding the new platform that will replace the old is not something that will remain static. What works today will change tomorrow.  The key is to maintain the effort to become and stay more connected to more of your fans.  Change and experimentation will be keys because we are in a time where consumer values and interests are in a state of what appears to be permanent change. Oxymoronic isn’t it?

____________________

If you have an interest in this and other new marketing ideas for artists, check out the Seminar link on the right sidebar. A new class begins this month.

1. A position, such as “celebrity”, “pastor”, or “President”; and/or
2. A tool, such as a blog, website, magazine, or TV show; and/or
3. An audience, such as the readers of a magazine or viewers of a TV show.

In marketing thought, the word usually encompasses all three of the above but with an emphasis on #3.  Who is reached? How many are reached? How easily are they influenced by the platform to buy or otherwise consume and/or act on the message?

Traditional Marketing.

In the view of traditional marketing, platforms are seen as more or less static and each has a certain known value in terms of sales.  A certain long-standing successful magazine, for instance, is seen as a platform whose audience has certain responsive characteristics that you, as an advertiser, can depend on for sales.  When you decide to use (rent) their platform you can expect certain results.

In this sense, a transaction is taking place.  You are paying dollars to “rent” their platform (advertise) and expecting a return on your investment that will make the “rental” worthwhile.  Christian bookstores are a platform where record labels “rent” space by allowing the store to keep part of the proceeds from sales.  This is seen as a valuable transaction if the store has a “good” audience.  These are two different kinds of “platform rentals.” In the case of the magazine, it makes money regardless of the advertising success. In the case of the bookstore, it makes nothing if the recording does not sell.  This type of platform rental transaction is seen as a more “vulnerable” transaction and the store covers itself by retaining the right to return product to the label for credit. The label, in either case, has no cover.

Platform renting in this traditional sense is the business of entities in this model. If you want to “use” their platform again, you have to rent it again.

Another feature of traditional marketing is the “chaining” of platforms.  A music artist may transact with a record label to rent their perceived platform which includes the label’s ability to rent a radio platform, a product distribution platform, and various other promotional platforms.

This chaining of platforms in the music world has placed a whole series of platform rental transactions between the artist and the followers of the artist. The artist now depends on the whole chain to “grow” or achieve success. And all the connected platforms in this rental chain depend more or less on the success of the others.

And, as we all know, any chain is only as strong as the weakest link.  And, as we all know, most of the traditional platforms in the music world now are weak links.  Why these traditionally good platforms have now become weak links between the artist and fans are the subject of way too much discussion to get into here. The point is that some new way of understanding platforms is needed and there is a lot of experimenting and some success stories.

Enter “New” Marketing.

New marketing is a set of very fluid and sometimes contradictory ideas for getting around the fact that the platform rental model is breaking.  It attempts to understand and create ways to use new platforms that do not involve rentals and, usually, advocates primarily creating your own platform for interacting with constituents. New marketing usually denies that platforms are stable and reliable unless they are understood as platforms of conversation with a talking/listening mode — as opposed to the old model where platforms could just direct its constituents to act in a certain way.

In its most radical form, new marketing would advocate that the follower (fan, constituent, member, etc.) in fact IS the platform.  Such an approach attempts to create connections with the platform/follower that are so valuable that the follower will spread the message.  This is exactly the meaning of “viral” marketing and is what has made YouTube the success that it is.

Less radical forms go for the (non-monetized) sharing of platforms.  A blogger may interview a celebrity artist (who already has a platform) to expand his own platform (traffic) while the artist looks to build his own following (platform) by reaching the blogger’s readership who may not know that artist or who may see the artist in a more favorable light as a result of the interview.

In either case, the very meaning and basis of the idea of “platform” is changing from one that sees stable and reliable entities telling their audience what to do or buy (and charging advertisers for so doing), to one where the audience determines the rules of the game and the way to build that audience is to listen and converse with meaningful dialog.  Such conversation creates a valued experience that influences both parties.  In the music world, fans grow more attached to the artist and the artist learns what the fans want them to create.

This idea is, of course, not so new. Successful sellers of things created have always needed to understand their audience. New marketing simply focuses on that and brings new creative platforms to the task.  If there is one aspect that stands out in this process it would be attitude. Valuing the audience is an attitude—one that is mostly lacking in the platforms that no longer work. The folks in “our audience” these days have little time for being told what to like or buy.  They gravitate toward valued experiences and may, sometimes, purchase souvenirs of that experience.

____________________

If you have an interest in this and other new marketing ideas for artists, check out the Seminar link on the right sidebar. A new class begins this month.

For $10,000 per title, a major label can buy the opportunity to force consumers to buy album-only downloads on iTunes. (Indie labels, including SG, need not apply–this is only available to major releases on major labels.) Read more details here, here, and here.

See this for what it is. A brash attempt on the part of the major labels who are bankrupt of new marketing ideas to force consumers who are now used to “choice” to have to buy ten songs at once to get any of the songs on their favored new releases.

Methinks this attempt to return to the good old days will be rejected by consumers. Worse, it may drive those who have been actually purchasing song downloads back to their “free” P2P networks to, in effect, “steal” the songs they want.

The forcing of consumers to buy-songs-they-don’t-want cat is out of the bag. That cat will never be recaptured. This is a bad idea that can only hurt the companies and artists involved. On the other hand, it will probably hasten the resolve of all who are moving forward to create the strategies of the future.

But, since I’m always open to debate… suppose your two favorite SG artists had new releases and one of them was only available as a full album download while the other was available either way, individual songs or full album. What would be your first thought? Would your buying choice be affected?

Here’s an excerpt from his article:

“According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, a speaker at the Future of Music Coalition gave a breakdown of album numbers that will be particularly shocking to young independent bands who hoped they’d be able to make a living selling discs. More than 115,000 new albums were released in the U.S. last year. Of those, 110 sold more than 250,000 copies in the U.S. last year–that’s not such a surprise, as big stars have always been rare. But only 1,500 titles cracked the 10,000 mark, and fewer than 6,000 sold a paltry 1,000 copies.

To give you some idea what 1,000 copies means, that used to be the standard manufacturing run for self-produced CDs. Indie bands imagined that they would use a hundred or so discs for publicity–sending them to radio stations and reviewers, for instance–and then sell the rest to local fans and on tour. Selling 900 CDs at $12 a pop would gross almost $11,000, which would be enough to cover low-budget recording and manufacturing expenses and perhaps buy some new guitar pedals and drumheads. Nobody makes a living selling 1,000 CDs. (Snip.)

Of the new titles released last year, almost 99 percent of them didn’t sell enough copies to let their creators earn a living from CD sales, and almost 95 percent of them didn’t sell enough copies to cover the most basic expenses involved in their recording.”

Of course, this article is mostly talking about “road sales.” What about retail distribution? Numbers have been released by Nielsen Soundscan for 2008. They look a lot like the past several years–the trend is down:

I learned: that a lot of people really understood the need to have conversation on difficult topics and did think through to their own conclusions on the subject; that a minority of very loud and angry people wanted to scare me. They did.

I am still concerned about our ability to have civil discourse. Speaking to that concern I will no longer be an enabler for those who like to shout and condemn. I take the position that this site is like my home. I invite people in to talk substantively. I welcome a lively discussion where minds can possibly be changed. I do not welcome people into my home to attack me or others–and I will not welcome them here.

If you come in the door looking for a platform to condemn others, you will be asked to leave. Your comments will be deleted.

“The discussion is now open and public.  Everyone gets to have an opinion and hopefully, some of those will be backed by serious thought and serious spiritual self soul-searching.”

I wanted discussion with other Christians on a difficult subject. My opinions are a “work-in-progress.” My opinions are not an attack on the Bible. They’re not meant as a replacement of it. They are my own feeble attempt to understand it and ask others to clarify me.

Since then, I have been pretty viciously and personally attacked for even raising the subject and offering some thoughts to begin a discussion.  Even worse, many of these have been directed toward friends, artists, and co-workers who had nothing at all to do with the post.

Since this episode began last week, my life has been in turmoil. It is one thing to see these vicious attitudes expressed in other SG blogs and forums; it something else entirely to have them aimed directly at me, the people I work with, and artists I work for. Some of my friends have said “What were you thinking? You had to know this would happen. This is a subject you just can’t talk about. It’s not worth it. It affects all of us.”

So. To anyone who has been hurt or offended by my attempt, especially artists and co-workers, I sincerely apologize. That was not my intention. I have removed the post.

I believe the Bible to be the inspired Word of God. I believe those who wrote it had their thoughts, hands and pens guided by Him. Unfortunately, I am not inspired as they. I am a fallible human being, saved by Grace.  I often do not understand His Word because my thoughts and pen are not so inspired. And, like all of you, because I am not so inspired, I often have to grapple and struggle to understand what is in there.  I try to do that. I pray, read books, ask questions, and have discussions with other people. I study. Sometimes these efforts help me understand. Sometimes not.  Sometimes I make mistakes, seek forgiveness and go on.  We are all learning as we go. None of us “has it right” yet.

For those of you who seem to be way more certain than I, and who wish to shout judgments from the rooftops, I say, “Have at it.” You get to have your say.

For those who know me and know that I have sincerely dedicated many years of my life to bringing people to Christ through music, I would certainly welcome your forgiveness for putting you in a bad position because of your association with me.

I continue to be dedicated in my own fallible way, to pray for direction, and to listen to Him.