For the feds, it’s not enough to simply seize domain names without warning or due process—they want to make sure everyone knows the website operators were breaking the law, even if that has yet to be proven in court. That’s why every domain that gets seized ends up redirecting to one of these dramatic warning pages, replete with the eagle-emblazoned badges of the federal agencies involved. You know the one I mean:

I thought eagles were solitary birds—but apparently they'll flock anywhere the RIAA points. At least that seemed to be the case with the hip-hop blog Dajaz1, which was treated to a year of Promethean pecking while the court waited patiently for the RIAA to fail to produce any evidence.

And that's just one of over 700 websites seized without due process. The first round of seizures, commencing the so-called Operation In Our Sites (which I suggest renaming to Operation Motherfucking Eagles), was announced from Disney headquarters, possibly by a tyrannical Mickey Mouse, but more likely by ICE Director John Morton sporting a dumb grin over the presence of whatever movie stars Disney managed to rustle up for the event. It's Chinatown Hollywood. The only place where eagles and mice get along.

To commemorate the fruits of this alliance, I created the Seized Tee for Techdirt's new Insider Shop. Government regulations prevent us from directly replicating agency badges, but that proved to be a plus, since I think I have drastically improved them in terms of both clarity of purpose and, more importantly, overall eagle-ness, which was clearly a prominent factor in their original design:

Buying the Seized Tee also gets you access to the Techdirt Crystal Ball for one year, two First Word/Last Word credits, and an Insider Badge on your profile and comments. Wear it with pride, and when people ask you about it, be sure to tell them that this kind of government censorship is a real thing that is happening as we speak, and it's a problem that's only going to get worse if it goes unchecked. Eagles do not beget doves.

The truth is that you can compete with free content if you provide value. One of the really exciting things about the Internet is that we’re seeing innovators coming up with all kinds of different ways where they can add value and entice the customer too.

Castle proceeds to tear Geist's statements apart based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of value:

We have heard this trope before. If only the artist provided something of value—besides the music. Because the music is of no value because it is "free"—that is, it has no value because it is widely stolen and has become devalued, so the artist now has to “add value” to the music.

If Castle has heard this before, then he should know that there is a bit more nuance to what free-culture proponents mean when we talk about adding value. Perhaps this is our fault for failing to handhold him through all the basic economic concepts that lead up to this position, and for using "added value" as a convenient shorthand for "additional scarce value". But really, if Castle wasn't so bent on condemning Geist, he could have figured it out for himself: nobody is saying music has no value. That would be a ludicrous claim: people love music, and it has exceptional value, but it is also non-scarce and non-rivalrous, meaning its price inevitably falls to zero. But smart artists can use music to build a brand, and an audience who will pay for other, scarce things—and that doesn't just mean t-shirts. It doesn't even have to mean something tangible and concrete: access, convenience and authenticity are all abstract scarcities that people value a great deal, and all can serve as excellent reasons to buy.

Castle also decries the fact that, supposedly, nobody cares about songwriters when discussing new models for artists. Of course, songwriters have an extremely valuable scarcity at their disposal: their ability to write new songs. That ability has plenty of value to musicians, producers and labels, which is why songwriters can pull impressive rates up-front. Why do they and their children deserve to receive ongoing payments for work that is 20, 50 or even 100 years old? Good songwriters are in high-demand, and they can parlay the success of their last song to get bigger, better commissions and charge higher rates. You don't see architects asking for royalties every time someone walks through the doors of a building they designed—they, like professionals in virtually every other field, know they have to keep working if they want to keep making money.

Next, Castle brings it all back to the supposed "tech oligarchy" and their "monstrous behavior," using some blatant weasel-wording and factual inaccuracies:

Make sure you add something of value, because the music and the songs are valueless, so why should Isohunt or Limewire or Megavideo pay the artist for them. All that subscription and advertising revenue that Megavideo and Google made off of piracy? That compensates these innovators for providing the promotional opportunity because obscurity is the artist’s biggest enemy, right?

Wrong.

No, not wrong. Is Castle really denying that obscurity is the first and most important hurdle for an artist to overcome? It wouldn't matter if people were buying CDs for $100 each—if they haven't heard of you, you aren't going to make any money. Of course, he also glosses over the fact that Megaupload did pay artists—the ones who embraced the service as a way to sell directly to their fans. Meanwhile, those who feared it handed a potential revenue stream to the pirates. Even more amusing is his lumping together of Megavideo and Google, as if they were essentially the same thing despite being so different that there's barely any comparison.

Castle's post is full of statements like "once again" and "we've heard this trope before." Maybe next time he hears it, he should actually make the effort to understand it, instead of wasting his time railing against ridiculous straw-men.

1. Amanda Palmer discussing her recent experiences with Kickstarter in funding a new project in conjunction with her husband, Neil Gaiman.
2. Or, check out Andy Richards of the indie band Uniform Motion (who we've written about a few times, discussing how his transparency about their revenue may have given fans additional reasons to buy, complete with detailed stats about how his transparency resulted in traffic and sales.
3. Or you can jump over to Zoe Keating's discussion over the question of whether or not doing art for purely strategic reasons is evil... while she also shares a bit of the secret of her success.

• Done an interesting/different/unique promotion? Tell us about it and share the results in as much detail as possible
• Tried an email marketing campaign? What worked and what didn't? Any key metrics?
• Attempted crowdfunding? How did you set the rewards? What did people like/not like?
• Used new or different platforms or technologies? What kind of results did you see? What could be improved?
• Attempted something different -- like a house concert tour? ebook-only release? letting fans take part? releasing unfinished works? What worked, what didn't, what did you learn?
• Experimented with "name your own price?" How did it work? What prices worked well? What efforts did you make to trigger certain price points?
• Set up a tiered pricing model? How did you choose the tiers? What worked? What did you learn?
• How are you connecting with fans? Facebook, Twitter, Podcasts? Google Plus? What works, what doesn't? What really seems to energize fans? What doesn't? Any empirical data that shows how your fans reacted?
• Surprise us!

• Step 1: Do something
• Step 2: ??????
• Step 3: Profit!

• Ask the community how to better succeed -- whether it's to better connect with fans or to come up with unique and compelling business model ideas.
• Discuss challenges or choices you're facing and get feedback. What platforms make sense? Should you focus on touring or build a local fan base? Should you self-publish or try to get a publishing deal? Can you really crowdfund this movie? etc.
• Share your experiences as a case study. To get feedback and to help others learn from and be inspired by your experiences. In a little while we'll be posting about a contest we're launching in conjunction with the Step2 launch, where we're offering up a total of $10,000 to people for sharing their case studies. For a few great examples of case studies, check out:
  1. Amanda Palmer discussing her recent experiences with Kickstarter in funding a new project in conjunction with her husband, Neil Gaiman.
  2. Or, check out Andy Richards of the indie band Uniform Motion (whom we've written about a few times), discussing how his transparency about their revenue may have given fans additional reasons to buy, complete with detailed stats about how his transparency resulted in traffic and sales.
  3. Or you can jump over to Zoe Keating's discussion over the question of whether or not doing art for purely strategic reasons is evil... while she also shares a bit of the secret of her success.

• Share your own case studies as a fan. Show artists how it feels to have an artist treat you well, and highlight cool examples of artists that have connected with you. Inspire more artists.
• Want to help out your favorite artist? Start a discussion about cool things they're already doing and encourage more people to check them out.
• See someone you like who you think could do better? Make some suggestions about ways they could do even better.
• See someone you like doing something you don't like? Maybe present some alternative ideas

• This is a community project. Even if you don't know some of those participating, you'll be amazed at how gratifying it is to try to help people succeed with their work. While I haven't had time to help as many content creators as I would have liked, every time I'm able to spend some time helping artists, it's always been a very rewarding experience.
• Help people recognize that there's a world of opportunity out there, and there are all sorts of great ways to embrace it and to succeed. Talking to folks who succeed today, you almost inevitably hear a variation on the theme that they saw someone else succeeding and were inspired to know that they could do that too.

But there are also plenty of opportunities. There are ways of making money from non-paying traffic and that's what Private is going to do. I can't reveal anything more about our strategy, but we're going to be more and more free, which will help us recruit paid subscribers.

"We will be extremely happy the more people are pirating our content and the more they look at it."

In short, Private wants to go from making money with porn to monetize actual sexual experiences. It recently teamed up with a San Francisco-based swingers club to shoot a movie, and it wants to turn some of the lessons learned into a business, connecting people involved in alternative sexual lifestyles through exclusive websites. This will first be tested in Europe, where Private is already in negotiations with a swingers community site as well as a hotel property, but Private could eventually import it into the U.S. as well.

Milton also expressed optimism that advertisers will eventually start to embrace adult traffic, and said Private would offer adult toys and other additional products for sale. Private will make 95 to 99 percent of its revenue in these areas in five years, he predicted, adding that DVDs will be dead by then.

"We want a platform where we can [allow] lots and lots of experimentation. We don't know what will work for an individual artist. Some will benefit from scarcity. Some will benefit from it being widely available, even free. They might make their money by giving away all their music for free ... In the best of world, Spotify will become the platform where you manage your music and because you do that, we will figure out what kinds of offerings you're interested in. For certain types of artists, you might be interested in something unique. You might do a meet-and-greet. It might be that you want it on vinyl because it feels better. Or just go and see the show. Or have the merchandise."

• a 16-page book with very pretty pictures
• a DVD with the teaser trailer and two documentaries
• a signed certificate of support
• official dogtags
• undying gratitude

• We brought in approximately $37,000 total due to this experiment, mostly in the course of that first month.
• Nearly $12,000 came from direct sales to individuals of the tiers between $5 and $150.
• As was revealed in an article at Wired, another $5,000 came from an individual, Didier Mary, who was working on a business plan and bought the Techdirt Reviews Your Business Plan package. The package included an Insight Community conversation, which recently concluded, about his business model idea. Didier has told us that "it was a great experience" and very useful to him in moving forward with his plans.
• Another $20,000 came from larger companies, which purchased Insight Community packages after learning about them through this effort.
• The effort also resulted in potential future deals, as it led many more companies to contact us to learn more about the Insight Community.
• Other companies, with whom we were already talking about the Insight Community, contacted us after we launched this, with one noting that if what his company had been discussing with us was on the list, he probably would have just "clicked buy" right away (though, with that company, we're still discussing a deal and have not yet completed it).
• Ignoring the higher end Insight Community deals, the average amount paid by users was over $70. This was significantly higher than expected.
• Sales came from 15 different countries around the globe. North America and Europe were obviously the biggest, but we also got sales from Asia, South America and Australia (no Africa). The international sales might have been bigger if we had launched international sales the same day we launched the overall effort. Unfortunately, we didn't have all the details on that sorted out until a week later, and I think we probably lost some international sales that way. The US Postal Service does make international sales much easier these days -- especially with its "one rate" boxes, but shipping is still really expensive, and many countries then add annoying tariffs on top of everything. This was annoying, but (unfortunately) unavoidable.
• Our highest selling item was not the cheapest, second cheapest or third cheapest offering (contrary to the claims that people just want the cheapest item). Instead, the biggest seller -- by a pretty wide margin -- was the Approaching Infinity package, that included both a copy of my book and a t-shirt.
• For quite a while, the hoodies (which we almost didn't offer) outsold the t-shirts... but in the end the t-shirts barely passed the hoodies.
• The Techdirt Book Club outsold the Techdirt Music Club by a factor of three.
• No one bought the Day with Techdirt package, though we actually got a lot of inquiries about that, with multiple people who don't live in California saying that if they were closer, they would have bought it. This is still available, though.
• And, fear not, no one bought the $100 Million Silence Techdirt offer (still available as well!), though we did get a few people who were worried that someone would actually take us up on this -- and one satirical offer from someone claiming to be from the RIAA, which made me laugh, saying the RIAA would pay up, but wanted to guarantee "exclusive rights" to the RIAA, such that it would be able to "pursue appropriate legal action against any and all 3rd parties that make use of this silence purposely or inadvertently" including, of course "the right to pursue similar action against any individuals who are also not reading Techdirt and therefore infringing on our own licensed agreement to be the sole recipient of a Techdirt-free world." Brilliant.
• However, the $100 Million Silence Techdirt offer did get the most traffic of any of the tiers, by a factor of three -- though, it also drove many people to check out the other tiers.

1. This works! These sorts of models can absolutely work in connecting with fans and in making money.
2. All of you, in our community, are awesome. Not just for buying, obviously, but because the overall response we got was incredible. This included many really, really nice emails that made us feel great, along with happy emails and Twitter messages from people receiving their packages, and telling us stories about wearing the clothes, reading the books, etc.
3. It's fun making people happy. Really. It really gave all of us here at Floor64 a great feeling every time we heard back from happy community members.
4. Logistics and inventory management are more complicated than you expect. We sort of knew this ahead of time, but you realize it first-hand when somehow, somewhere copies of signed books go missing, and you suddenly need to ask for an author to send extras. Also, dealing with sourcing inventory from so many different people for the Book and Music club is doable, but takes a lot of time to manage. Though, I have to say, every one we worked with -- from authors and musicians to publishers, agents and record labels really were fantastic. We didn't have even the slightest trouble from any of our partners in this endeavor. Shipping out the products definitely was an effort, but we tried to make it fun, with a group of us working together to package up and ship stuff (and on this one, the team here, lead by Gretchen, did a fantastic job, going above and beyond to get everything organized and shipped).
5. Having lots of options was a good thing because we weren't very accurate in predicting what would sell. We came close to not offering the hoodies at all, but those were incredibly popular.
6. You can't keep everybody happy, but you should try! We had to set up a better process for "customer support" as we launched this (nice job, Dennis!) and then work with and respond to customers who had questions or (in a few cases) problems. A few times the problem was that we did not explain things clearly enough, and sometimes there were problems with shipments (or, in one case, a hoodie that was frayed). But we tried our best to make sure everyone was happy and hopefully succeeded (mostly).
7. What you're selling should match your audience. The Book Club sold really well. The Music Club, not as much -- despite being awesome (seriously, the combined Music Club items are really, really cool, and the music is great as well). But, in retrospect perhaps that made sense, as the books in the Book Club directly related to everything we talk about here. The Music Club, while supporting artists who did things that we talked about here, was a bit different, and required people to like the music as well, which is a lot more subjective. Bundling together four separate musicians with different styles was, perhaps, not a great idea. On top of that, we perhaps did not do enough to promote the music itself to get more people to enjoy the work of those musicians. Finally, while some of the offerings were "unique," others could be purchased elsewhere, which limited the "scarcity" of the overall package.
8. Some promotions worked really well. The first promotion we did was offering anyone who bought both the music and book clubs together a choice of either lunch with me or a free hoodie. This helped motivate a bunch of folks to step up and buy -- and resulted in a handful of lunches.
9. Having lunch with people was really, really cool. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous going into the lunches from the above promotion, but they were all really amazing, often in very different ways. Each individual was really interesting and the conversations were quite engaging and thought provoking and fun. I'm pretty sure every lunch ended up lasting well over the allotted hour. I ended up learning a lot and had a great time at every one. I'm hoping to set up more ways to do things like that, if not the same thing.
10. Even the tiers that didn't sell, still generated interest in other things we were doing. A bunch of people contacted us about the Day With Techdirt package, and while no one bought it, many of them bought other packages instead.
11. Not everyone who says they will buy will buy, but that's okay. It was interesting to note that some people who told us they would buy (or even announced it on their Twitter/Facebook feeds) never actually did buy for whatever reason. That's fine, of course. Everyone is free to do what they want, but it was interesting to note. Just because someone says they'll buy, it doesn't mean they will.
12. Communicating directly with everyone can be difficult. While others here handled customer service requests, I started getting a bunch of emails personally from people who participated, sometimes with long and detailed questions. I tried to reply to most of these, but it was difficult, and I'm sure I missed a few.

Music Sales:

• CD Sales - 4.1%
• Digital Music Sales - 13.9%
• Subscription Site - 36.9%
• Live Shows - 18.1%
• Cover Gig Fees/Cover - 9.8%
• Original Gig Fees/Cover - 6.2%
• Tips (Including UStream) - 2.1%
• Works For Hire & Voiceovers - 8.2%
• Affiliate Sales (typically for my own albums/tracks) - 1.1%
• Licensing - 13.2%
• Independent Film - 6.6%
• Internet - 6.6%
• Web Design - 4.6% (I include this because I'm doing a website for a friend... it's something I choose to do, but it is part of my income this year.)

Suffice it to say that I'm renting a house in Wellesley, MA with a couple of room mates... I'm not starving, I can still eat sushi from time to time, and my car (neither a Pinto nor a Bentley) is paid off.

Little did I realize that new releases every two weeks would be better than any good album reviews or press coverage. Giving my fans something new to talk about every two weeks meant exactly that: they talk about me every two weeks. They're not buying an album, raving about it, and losing interest after a few months, they're constantly spreading my name to their Twitter followers, coworkers, pets, etc. Regular delivery of quality material is damn near my one-step panacea for the whole industry.

Good music is barely enough to get fans to hand out 99¢ anymore; they have to be emotionally invested in the artist if that artist wants their loyalty. Don't get me wrong, there can still be a "fourth wall" during a live concert or video, but real, meaningful connection with the fans is what keeps me in their heads after the show's over (heck, even your "character" can interact with fans in-character). I chat with my fans via Twitter, Facebook, matthewebel.com and matthewebel.net, and as many other channels as possible. The more I interact with them between performances, the more I stay fresh in their minds and the more inspiration I draw from them.

• A full normal package for the book, Complete Guide to the Nikon D700 (CD and To Go Guide), a US$49.99 value
• A full printed version of the main book in black and white, a US$29.99 value
• A full printed, signed, numbered version of the main book in color, a US$99.99 value
• All of the above shipped to you via Priority Mail
• All future updates of the book, if any, delivered free, a likely US$14.99 value or more
• Three hours of personal, one-on-one time with Thom, a US$750 value

• 1 Part ($25) = "Believer" Level Incentive: Exclusive, numbered CD in Digipak
• 4 Parts ($100) = "Hype" Level Incentive: "Believer" Level, plus the opportunity to buy 2nd CD at 50% off, & Name in booklet
• 10 Parts ($250) = "Rebel" Level Incentive: All of Above plus Exclusive Limited Edition Public Enemy T Shirt
• 20 Parts ($500) = "Posse" Level Incentive: All of Above plus Autographed Copy of CD signed by Chuck D
• 40 Parts ($1,000) = "Terrordome" Level Incentive: All of Above plus Unlimited backstage pass for 3 years [Limited to 50]
• 200 Parts ($5,000) = "Bring The Noise" Level Incentive: All of Above plus Executive Producer Credit on Album [Limited to 15]
• 400 Parts ($10,000) = "PE Number One" Level Incentive: All of Above plus Studio Visit during recording session [Limited to 5]