Posts from SoundCloud

Fun Feature Friday: Voice Fan Mail

I learned about this cool Twilio SoundCloud hack and thought it would make a fun feature friday post.

The band Young Guns encourages fans to call them, leave a voicemail (powered by our portfolio company Twilio).

The voicemail gets transcribed and uploaded to our portfolio company SoundCloud, embedded to their site in custom SC player and band calls the person with the best voicemail.

http://voicemail.weareyoungguns.com/

I just called and called and left them a message. I hope I get the call back.

#Web/Tech

Fun Friday: Your Mobile Home Screen

We've been talking a lot about mobile here lately and in one of those discussions, someone suggested we share our home screens with each other. I figured that would make for a fun friday.

Here's my home screen:

My home screen

In case you can't make them out, from top left to bottom right; Kik, Tumblr, SoundCloud, Instagram, Google Maps, Foursquare, Gmail, Twitter, Camera, Google Calendar, Android Browser, Settings, Phone, Google Contacts, SMS, and all my apps.

Oh, and that's the start of The Highline at Gansevoort and Washington in the background.

This is a T-Mobile Samsung Galaxy. I am actually in the process of switching to a Galaxy Nexus running Jelly Bean and will switch to a Chrome Browser and the home screen might move around a bit. But this is what I've got right now.

To play this fun friday game, take a photo of your home screen and attach it to your comment in the thread below. And add any color commentary you'd like to add. This should be fun.

#mobile

Blogworld Talk Between JLM, William, Arnold & Me

A few weeks ago AVC regulars JLM, Arnold, William and I did a talk at Blogword.

BlogWorld Panelists June 2012

We talked about blogs, social media, and of course, commenting communities. William kicked it off with some data that came out of the survey he did. About nine minutes in, the conversation starts.

We recorded it on SoundCloud and you can listen below.

#Weblogs

Feature Friday: Listen To This Blog

A few days ago, I stared getting emails asking about avc.fm. Was this done with my approval? Did I know who was behind it? The answer was no and no so I tweeted this out and gave my approval.

 

 

As I suspected they would, the team behind avc.fm reached out soon after that tweet and we've been trading emails since. That team is called Voice Bunny and their business is "voice talent via an API". If you want to see a reasonably technical and critical discussion of Voice Bunny, here's a Hacker News thread on the service.

The main knock on Voice Bunny in that HN thread is the cost. So I asked the Voice Bunny team about that. They said:

Our prices are coming down fast: Most professional talents are used to doing a few recordings per day and waste a lot of time auditioning. We are teaching them that VoiceBunny allows them to be more productive and, thus, charge less per recording. In just three weeks the median prices have dropped 40%. We expect the prices to continue to come down as more projects flow through VoiceBunny.

Royalties: We are extending our API so that our clients can build apps like avc.fm by sharing royalties with our talents. That way our clients won't have to pay anything up front. Most professional talents are used to be paid with royalties and they are welcoming the idea.
In any case, I like they way they used a stunt to get my attention. So much more effective than sending me an email saying "I'd like to come talk to you about a new project we are working on". So I'm going to start auto-embedding the avc.fm voice overs at the end of the posts on AVC (via the SoundCloud embed of course). I need to get Nathan to help me with that so I'm not sure when today's will appear. Going forward it should only take an hour or so each day. 

If you'd like to subscribe to AVC on your SoundCloud mobile app or via iTunes or via RSS, here are the appropriate links to do that:
RSS podcast: http://avc.fm/podcast
#Web/Tech

Dispersion and Entropy In Social Media

On Monday, I trained it up to New Haven to meet a Yale professor named Dina Mayzlin and talk to her class. I thoroughly enjoyed talking to Dina's class as it allowed me to work on some new material in a comfortable setting. But the talk Dina and I had over breakfast before class was even more thought provoking.

Dina got her PhD at MIT's Sloan School a decade ago, before she started teach at Yale. Her thesis looked at TV shows being talked about in the social media of that time, newsgroups, IRC, Usenet, etc, etc.

What she and her colleagues found out was that volume (number of mentions) was not a good predictor of popularity. Volume was more of a trailing indicator than a leading indicator.

But Disperson, or what Dina calls Entropy, turned out to be a very reliable leading indicator of popularlity of a TV show. The wider and broader the discussion of the TV show went within online social media, the more likely the show was to become popular.

By coincidence, the material I am working on in my public talks right now is about the fragmentation of social media. And so as I talked about fragmentation with Dina's Yale class, I started to weave her work, which was still rattling around in my brain, into my fragmentation thesis.

I am totally convinced that the world of social media is not consolidating around one "winner takes all" social platform. Instead, the world of social media is fragmenting into dozens of social platforms that are best of breed for a certain kind of social engagement. If you are building a social media strategy today, you absolutely need to address Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Tumblr. And you should also consider Foursquare, Instagram, Pinterest and Path. If you are in the music business, you need to consider SoundCloud. If you are in the book business, you need to consider Wattpad. If you are in the TV business, you need to conside GetGlue. And so on and so forth. Many of the companies I just mentioned, but not all of them sadly, are USV portfolio companies.

That's the thesis I spent thirty minutes on in front of the Yale class. But near the end of the talk to Dina's class, it occured to me that disperson/entropy can be gained by engaging on multiple social platforms. The number of likes on Facebook or tweets on Twitter is volume and is likely to be a trailing indicator of popularity. But if you track the essential social gestures across the fragmenting landscape of social platforms, likes, tweets, tumbls, checkins, pins, etc, then you get a measure of dispersion that may well be a leading indicator of popularity or the slope of the popularity curve.

That's the theory anyway. I'll leave the research to Dina and others. I hope someone will run the numbers to see if it works.

#Web/Tech

Some Thoughts On The Louis CK "Experiment"

Since the early days of this blog, it has been filled with musings on how creativity will be rewarded in the internet age. It is a theme I've come back to again and again. These thoughts have worked their way into our investment thesis and our portfolio. Investments like Etsy, Kickstarter, SoundCloud, and many others have come from this line of thinking.

So when I saw what Lous CK did last week, I was so excited. For those who don't know, Louis CK is a comedian, a really funny comedian, who made a one hour comedy special and put it on the Internet for anyone to buy/stream for $5. You can "buy the thing" here.

This week, Louis shared the finacial details of his experiment with everyone. Here are some of the salient details:

First of all, this was a premium video production, shot with six cameras over two performances at the Beacon Theater, which is a high-priced elite Manhattan venue. I directed this video myself and the production of the video cost around $170,000. (This was largely paid for by the tickets bought by the audiences at both shows). The material in the video was developed over months on the road and has never been seen on my show (LOUIE) or on any other special. The risks were thus: every new generation of material I create is my income, it's like a farmer's annual crop. The time and effort on my part was far more than if I'd done it with a big company. If I'd done it with a big company, I would have a guarantee of a sizable fee, as opposed to this way, where I'm actually investing my own money.

The development of the website, which needed to be a very robust, reliable and carefully constructed website, was around $32,000. We worked for a number of weeks poring over the site to make sure every detail would give buyers a simple, optimal and humane experience for buying the video. I edited the video around the clock for the weeks between the show and the launch.

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

So Louis' experiment was a financial success. But more than that, it is a business model success. He has recouped his investment, is well into the black, and he owns the rights to his creativity without any limits on what he can do with it. He is able to sell it everywhere in the world at the same time without any DRM on it. And he will continue to make money from this content for many months (years?) to come.

Some will say that Louis can do this because he is a star. That is true. And I sure hope other stars will follow his lead and go direct to their fans. They can also go direct to their fans and raise the upfront production costs on Kickstarter. They can use any number of internet services to process the payments (paypal), host the video (vimeo), and get distribution (twitter). This is not that hard.

But this can also work for emerging artists. They won't make as much money as Louis CK, but they also don't need to make as large of an investment either. And over time, if their work is good, their audience will grow and the investments they can make and the profits they can make will increase.

The business model of going direct to the fans is powerful, it has none of the negative issues of the existing business model (like fucking with the architecture of the net in a naive attempt to quell piracy) and is going to work bigtime. Thanks Louis CK for shining on a huge bright light on that fact for the past couple weeks. And thanks for the laughs you gave me and the Gotham Gal on thursday night.

#Web/Tech

Cheap Will Be Smart. Expensive Will Be Dumb.

I wrote about this a while back but I've been refining and sharpening my thinking on the question of which devices will be smart and which devices will be dumb. It's an important question because it gets to what platforms developers should build on.

I believe that cheap devices will be smart and expensive devices will be dumb. Here's why:

Technology is moving very fast these days. Look at the latest iPhone 4s. It has Siri in it. Look at the latest Android Galaxy S II. It has NFC and Bluetooth 3.0 in it. And these phones will be leapfrogged in 12-18 months with something even more amazing. Furthermore, these devices have open marketplaces for apps and APIs and SDKs that allow those app developers to bring new experiences to these devices every day.

Contrast that with cars, boats, refridgerators, air conditioners, TVs, and other devices which we are led to believe will become "smart" in the coming years. These devices are usually owned for somewhere between 3 years and 10 years by most consumers. The upgrade cycle for these devices is too long to allow most consumers to experience the kind of smarts on these devices that they are experiencing on their cheapest devices with shorter upgrade cycles.

And that's why technologies like airplay, DLNA, and similar approaches are so important. When smart and cheap devices can take control of expensive and dumb devices, we will see the dumb devices become smart.

When I got the SoundCloud app on my iPad and I airplayed into my sonos, it was one of those "I get it" moments. Every time I get into my car these days, I want to airplay into my car audio system. The idea of connecting via an aux jack seems so nuts.

I don't expect the makers of expensive devices to accept this idea quickly. It goes against the grain. How can my expensive device be dumb when one of those cheap devices is so smart? But I'm certain that this is the way the market will play out over time.

Bridge technologies will play an important role for a while. As will Apple's licensing strategy for airplay. Airplay could become a standard if it is broadly and cheaply licensed. Otherwise, we will see other technologies in this market. We may anyway because there are other issues that matter, like the ability to connect over a cellular data connection instead of a wifi connection, latency, and a number of other important features.

Regardless of timing and the technologies that get us there, I have no doubt that the way we will make our expensive devices smart will be via our cheap devices. That's how I am viewing the market opportunity these days. It's a very crisp and clear vision. And that's a good thing when you are trying to peer into the future.

Enhanced by Zemanta
#Web/Tech

Sound

I met Alex Ljung, founder/CEO of SoundCloud a number of times and each time he pitched me on his business. Each time I said no. Then in the summer of last year, we met at Soho House London and he showed me one slide. It had various media types (photos, videos, long form text, short form text) and underneath each was a large social platform that had been built on and for that media type. At the end was an empty space and it said "sound". That is Alex' vision. To build that large social platform to share sounds. That's what sold me. One slide. This 3min video expresses it well.

"Sound" from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

 

#VC & Technology#Web/Tech

In Situ Content

I've been working on a prezi for a talk I'm giving next monday at OMMA Global (here's the high level outline of the talk). It's a work in progress. I started it last weekend. I do a bit more each morning. I hope to have it done before I walk on stage monday at 9:10am.

I like to use visuals when I give a talk. I use them as eye candy for the audience. And they are the cues for me to move through the concepts I want to cover. It's like a visual outline. I don't use notes. I just hit next and I'm reminded about the flow I want to use.

For many years, I used Powerpoint to create the visuals for these talks. Then I'd post the slides to Slideshare and share the visuals on this blog and elsewhere to get feedback. It was a fine system.

But in my effort to move everything I do to the cloud, I've ditched Powerpoint for Prezi and started creating the visuals right on the web. So I can link out to a work in progress without any need to upload anything. And when I walk onto the stage, I pull up a browser, go to a URL, and I'm good to go.

I really like content systems where everything happens "in situ". The more I use systems like this, the more I think they are the future. I alluded to this in my "there will be no files in the cloud" post, but I think this goes beyond files vs no files.

So much of what I do, what I think about, what I am learning is informed by the daily act of writing this blog. I write in a browser. I bring all these web services I'm using right into the post via links, images, embeds, etc. And then I hit publish. You load up a browser, go to AVC.com, and start reading. Using Disqus, we talk about what I've written. I learn, you learn, and then it's tomorrow and a new post. This is all happening in one system (or two connected systems – typepad and disqus). It is all happening in a browser. And we are all connected to each other via the web.

So when I look at doing visual presentations, I want a similar system. Prezi is in situ. Powerpoint isn't.

When I look at creating and publishing audio, SoundCloud is in situ. iTunes insn't.

When I look at creating and publishing novels, Wattpad is in situ. Kindle isn't.

When I look at creating and publishing documents, Google Docs is in situ. Word is not.

When I look at remixing images, Canv.as is in situ. Photoshop is not.

I'll stop there. You get the point by now. There is so much to be gained when content is published and consumed in the same service where engagement is encouraged, measured, and leveraged to improve the experience for everyone. These are the content systems of the future.

In the spirit of full disclosure, Disqus, SoundCloud, Wattpad, and Canv.as are USV portfolio companies. What is the point of learning if you don't leverage what you learn?

#Web/Tech

Audio MBA Mondays

I've got some great news to share with all of you. MBA Mondays is now available in audio form. The coolest part is how it happened.

A few months ago, I met Tyrone Rubin in a room on turntable.fm. He was DJing and chatting. Because that's what you do on turntable. We got to talking and now we are friends. We haven't met but I'm sure we will at some point.

A few weeks ago, Tyrone emailed me and told me he wanted to do voice recordings of all the MBA Mondays. He has a friend Raph who is an actor and does voice work and they wanted to do it as a "labor of love." I listened to the first few and dug the South African accent. Tyrone and Raph are both South African and live in Cape Town.

So we created a SoundCloud account and they are recording and uploading. The've done 20 so far. They will get all 87 done in a month or two. And then they'll add a new one each week.

So if you are in a car or at the gym and want to listen to MBA Mondays, you can do that now. You'll miss a bit without the images and the links. But I've listened to many of these episodes and I have to say they are a pretty good substitute for reading the blog.

Here's the SoundCloud account. Here's the RSS feed. Here's the podcast on iTunes. You can also get the SoundCloud app for Android or iPhone and listen with that.

I was really impressed with how good of a podcasting platform SoundCloud is. It's a breeze to setup the account and start uploading. Getting an RSS feed and submitting to iTunes is also easy. And since SoundCloud is building out apps for all the popular mobile devices, you can listen pretty much anywhere on anything. Yet another USV portfolio company kicking ass. Well done SoundCloud. And most of all, well done Tyrone and Raph. Thanks for doing this.

#MBA Mondays