At one point in my life, I was a home theatre enthusiast.  While I am an audio engineer by training and consider myself an audiophile, I now live in a small apartment with an even smaller baby, so loud in the living room is not going to happen.

Even should these circumstances change, I don’t think I would bother dropping the money on building my own system, because the AMC Enhanced Theatre Experience is on par with going out to a rock concert… almost.

Last night I went to see Star Trek.  In my opinion, the may be the most near-perfect science fiction film of all time.  I have my critiques, but this is not a movie review blog.  I do talk about media and technology, and holy crap, this movie was an earth-shaking, eye-popping, ear bleeding supernova of an event.

Check out this pic I grabbed before the trailers started:

• The surround sound was dizzyingly spacial but not distracting (credit to the mix engineer)
• There was no distortion, ever.  Even at deafening volume.  This system clearly has boom to spare.
• Super smooth low end, even an inaudible infrasonic note that shakes you in your seat.  Credit the 57,000 Watts to push this kind of power.
• The highs were never piercing.  Credit the placement of 11 speakers for not having to throw sound over a distance.
• The picture was amazing.  The $115,000, 250lb Sony 4k projector sprayed a gigantic and crystal clear picture; the contrast and colour were phenomenal.  My friend commented that he could notice the low refresh rate compared to his new 240Hz display at home.

In a world of over-promise and under-deliver, the AMC Enhanced Theatre Experience kicked my ass, and I can’t wait to go to the theatre again.

With the addition of a call-to-action in the widget, you can now extend your brand and drive traffic back to the mothership. Did we mention we record all stats including views, geo and sources? Nice!

Click on the share button and install on your profile!

I do feel for the artist that simply must accept that people, probably their fans, are stealing their music. I would probably be pissed off too.

Some people within and without the music business argue that giving away your music for free is great publicity. I couldn’t agree more, but the fact is, artists have no choice. There is a big difference between giving and taking.

So I say “give it”. Give all the studio recordings away. It’s over. Let it go.

Stop trying to sell your marketing.

It used to be that the labels would spend a bundle on a recording, and then use music videos and tours to sell the song on disc.

Now, the reality is that the studio recording is the marketing of the band experience. “Listen to our music, share our music, visit our website, get addicted, then pay!”

• For high-quality versions of awesome video set to the band’s music. Serj Tankian is drip-feeding his fans super-cool videos for all his songs on his required-viewing-for-labels website. Who’s his label, anyway? Granted, he isn’t charging for it, but he could (read on)…
• Concert appearances. You have to be good, very good these days to be a successful musician. Good. It’s about time we went back to the pre-autotune days (sort of).
• Merch
• Fan club. Join for $30/year and get the album and tons of free content. With a shipping and handling fee, send them the CD and a t-shirt. A fan in a t-shirt is more marketing.
• Keep the content coming. Moblog from the road, shoot some back-stage video, twitter… Upload to the site daily. Let people send concert pics right to the fan site.
• Pollute the social networks with your music. It’s the new radio, and it listener-programmed. Free advocacy.
• Use Filemobile to do all this stuff (shameless)

Artists need to create long-lasting relationships with each and every fan. Who’s responsibility is this part of the business of artist development? I would think that the future role of the big labels would be as digital marketing agencies. If that’s the case, why don’t artists get a regular digital marketing agency to do this for them? I might think its because the labels are savvy of the public’s consumption of music and have the necessary technical acumen to provide a comprehensive digital strategy.

The last line of The Age article really sent my head shaking:

“[Missy Higgins' manager] believes that due to the lack of resources within labels, it is incumbent upon artists and managers to work on marketing and promotion independently and be more directly accountable for turning people on to new music” (Murfett, 2008)

Maybe next year.

Full hypocrisy disclosure: I have downloaded my share of music.

I have also just bought the Protest the Hero album from iTunes which included the special edition instrumental version. It was not special enough, however to include lyrics, etc and Canada does not get the HQ downloads yet. Good record, though. I also bought my Killswitch tickets for May 10th with Poison the Well and The End. I was notified that they were on pre-sale to fan club members.