FISTFULAYEN

I like Bob Lefsetz and while I don’t always agree with him I think the music industry is lucky to have such a prolific and unfiltered voice of dissent. I originally discovered Bob via the Rhino podcast many years ago. The podcast included “The Lefsetz Letter”, a portion of the show where an animated character (Bob) would tell you a story about some music he loved and how that music impacted him and his life. I remember one story in particular, a story of his driving to the mountains to ski with his dentist and listening closely to the group Yes for the first time. I hadn’t listened to Yes since I was 12, didn’t know this guy or care about his dentist, but because he was clearly a music fan I loved listening to his story. I distinctly remember thinking, “I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying this.” I didn’t care that Bob’s stories seemed to be reviews of things from Rhino’s catalog, I trusted his genuine music fandom enough to find it entertaining and even when he sang the praises of Loggins and Messina I assumed he was selecting the titles from the Rhino catalog he enjoyed enough to share some sincere stories about.

I met Bob many years later (but many years ago) when I worked at Yahoo!. As a result of my being passionate and outspoken about issues in the music business I’ve received praise in Bob’s written “Letter” more than once (for which I’ve received a few offerings of condolences but I’ve always taken pride in nonetheless). The biggest compliment Bob ever tossed my way was (paraphrasing) “Ian is first and foremost a music fan”. My life has been listening to and loving music and this was close to the highest praise I could have been given. As my friends/family will tell you, music is everything to me and has been since I’ve been old enough to have a personality (my mom could share that picture of me in footie pajamas playing the yardstick as a guitar). I don’t watch movies or TV (apart from the occasional music documentary), I just prefer music. Apparently I’ve passed the bug on to my kids, my older daughter (19) is the general manager of MIT’s radio station WMBR and my younger daughter (3) has already lived and loved her first Bonnaroo.

So you can imagine my disappointment when Bob called me out last week, saying I was all hype and insincere when I talk about music, specifically on Twitter. Here’s his original salvo:

…And those who think Twitter is purely for hype. Hell, I’ve now learned that Ian Rogers is not a discerning listener. Makes me wonder about Topspin. He’s constantly tweeting that the music of every act the company works with is good. That’s utter hogwash. Especially when the tunes are outside his normal flavor field.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), Bob’s statement wasn’t factual, he was assuming more of what I was tweeting about was Topspin-related than actually was. I appreciate the vote of confidence, but unfortunately we don’t (yet) work with all the artists I love.

I asked Bob which tweets he was referring to and he sent a sampling. Neko Case and David Rawlings showed up as “outside my flavor field”, but not only do they have nothing at all do do with Topspin (I wish they did), I love both those artists and have gone out of my way to see them both live. He seemed surprised I’d want to watch the new Paul McCartney DVD (which was released via Topspin), but watch it I did (both discs), and was surprised myself how much I liked it. He mentioned Sloan which is much closer to the line he was saying I crossed — I probably wouldn’t have known about that release if a manager who is enthusiastic about Topspin hadn’t tweet’d the link to me. I listened to it, liked it, and tweet’d that I was listening to it for free, assuming my followers like free music and might want to check it out, too. Bob mentioned a Harmonia and Eno reissue but (unfortunately) Topspin has nothing to do with that, either. Of course there were two mentions of the band I’m managing, Get Busy Committee, and one which was letting people know there’s a list of Topspin bands people can follow en masse. As I said to Bob and laid out in detail in an earlier post, I started managing Get Busy Committee because I loved the record, and Topspin is more than a job, it’s a company I have most of my personal net worth and time wrapped up in. I love it and am insanely proud of what we’re doing. It’s a lot to ask me not to talk about it. I know not Marx’s alienated labor. I admit the line between personal and professional is very blurry for me, but that’s not a marketing ploy, it’s genuinely blurry in my life at the moment. Not sure a CEO of a startup can/should live any other way.

But thankfully I don’t actually talk about every Topspin artist and my tweets aren’t all hype. I took a look through my tweets for the week previous to Bob’s comment and did a little tally. I counted a total of 63 tweets from the previous Friday to that Thursday. In those tweets only 18 were Topspin-related (including the 5 Get Busy Committee ones). I covered 37 distinct topics and only 9 were of those referenced Topspin or artists we work with. Most importantly, the number of tweets which were about something I didn’t personally like, care about and think someone else might be interested in was equal to ZERO. So yeah, I like music and talk about our artists, but I don’t *only* talk about our artists, I certainly don’t promote all our artists regardless of my opinion and I don’t talk about things that are “outside of my normal flavor field” just because they’re on Topspin. If you’re curious, the tally is here, check it out for yourself and please let me know if/where you find something off-base with my personal tastes.

But as Bob said (in an email to my wife, one of Bob’s readers who came to my defense without my asking her to), “Perception is everything in this business. Truth is two steps behind.” Just because Bob’s statement isn’t factual doesn’t mean that isn’t the way my activities are perceived. I really don’t think he was calling me a hypester to be mean, this was truly how he perceived my relentless enthusiasm — he assumed most of the bands I was excited about were somehow Topspin-related even though this wasn’t the case — and he wasn’t alone. Bob forwarded me a note from another reader who feels the same way and someone else on my Twitter feed @replied and said they often feel marketed to by my tweets. As someone who is genuinely passionate about what I do the last thing I want to be perceived as is a phony; I started thinking about the issue here and how to improve it.

So, starting now if I’m tweeting about something related to my company, Topspin, it will be clearly marked with the hash tag #topspin. Bob’s point was a good one, I wasn’t delineating when my tweets were or were not related to my company. I naively thought it was fairly obvious, if I was linking to Amazon, iTunes, Lala, Rhapsody, or some other non-Topspin experience then it was unaffiliated, but obviously that’s not very well thought through — most people don’t click nor do they have the same ability to immediately ascertain if something is or isn’t Topspin-related. Very poor assumption on my part. So from now on I’m going to make it clear: if my tweets don’t contain the hash tag #topspin you can rest assured I don’t have a personal interest in what I’m tweeting.

Additionally, I’ll tell you right now I won’t tweet about something I don’t care about or think you’d be interested in even if it does have to do with Topspin, but I appreciate that’s difficult to believe and it seems it’s just good practice to disclose things which could be construed as pure hype or promotional in nature.

There’s a semantic web-esque side effect of creating a stream of easily segmented #topspin tweets, too, and while that’s fun that’s definitely not my motivation here.

You might think this is a bit pointless and/or pedantic but I actually think it merits at least a little thought and discussion. For whatever reason more than five thousand people follow me on Twitter, vaguely caring what I have to say. I appreciate their sharing a bit of their scarce attention with me and want to respect that connection. If this simple step makes my voice more legitimate I’m all for it, and I thank Bob for the nudge.
 I’m sure many will think I’m overreacting to Bob’s criticism but I’m not one to take my credibility lightly, sorry.

I’m not sure I can solve what seemed to be Bob’s biggest complaint in the end, though: I’m too positive. Bob told me the fact I don’t say enough critical things makes my positive comments lack context and also hurts my credibility. He’s not wrong that I avoid the negative. I stop myself from critical comments from time to time. The example I shared with Bob was this aborted tweet: “RT @nprmusic The Decade’s 50 Most Overrated Recordings http://su.pr/1sCMZD”. I held back because I knew what was meant as humor and sarcasm with a bit of criticism would have been taken as mean-spirited, which I am not. Don’t get me wrong, I am a music snob and an equal opportunity hater and the likelihood I like your favorite band is small. But I also understand the doom metal supergroup I’m listening to in headphones while I type this is not likely up your alley, either. More than ten years ago Phil Wilhelm taught me the important lesson of the concept known as “for others”, and I instantly became less of a dick. Lots of music, art, food, styles of life, belief systems, and entire forms of entertainment are “for others”. Not for me, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have their place. I’m not writing endless holier-than-thou diatribes about the evils of TV just because I hate it. Do your thing. As Jenny Aurthur famously (in our house) once said, “Don’t yuck yuck my yum yum,” or my favorite Ricky Powell quote, “Why dis when you can be nice?” Sometimes I can’t resist a critical statement, I’m not saying I never dis, but it’s true I don’t make a habit of it.

When my daughter Zoe was in second grade she loved Spice Girls and even had a “Spice Girls Club” at her school. Spice Girls was terrible drivel, non-music, to me and you. To her it was inspiring, (literally) moving and when she and her friends performed dance routines on the playground at recess it had nothing to do with the way you and I heard Spice Girls, it was kids having fun and a-ok by me. It might sound silly but that Spice Girls experience buried the music snob in me at least a few levels deeper. It taught me that taste is not absolute, and there’s little to be gained from me telling you your favorite band sucks. I just don’t have it in me. [As an aside, Kathleen Hanna took something similar from Zoe’s Spice Girls experience, sang “Wannabe” karaoke with Zoe at a wedding, and mentioned it in a Punk Planet interview which you can read as part of the collection, "We Owe You Nothing".]

I’m sorry, while you will occasionally read critical tweets from me you’re not going to hear me say I don’t get the Kid Cudi record and want to fall asleep every time I listen to Fleet Foxes (both of which are true), I’m not going to waste a lot of energy yuck yucking your yum yum. It’s just not my style. If that makes me less credible I guess I’ll have to live with it. Personally I don’t buy the theory, I am much more interested in what my friends Isac Walter, Sam Velde, and Jay Babcock are listening to than what they are not. They have turned me on to tons of great music to *like* over the years, not music to hate.

If you follow me on Twitter, here’s what you’re going to get: lots of tweets about stuff I like, including:

• Music
• Music industry and technology news and commentary
• Poor, pathetic attempts at humor
• Proud papa bullshit you probably don’t care about but I don’t care — hopefully you will give me a pass on loving my kids

Here’s what you’re not going to get:

• Hate
• Talk about TV shows, sports, or movies (all of which I dislike but I really, truly don’t care if you dig ‘em)

If you’re interested, cool. Follow me, subscribe to my blog via RSS or email. If none of that sounds interesting to you or my lack of negativity somehow makes the things I *am* sincerely excited by less interesting, don’t. That’s the best part about the future of media. No one has a megaphone. Consumers of information have infinite choice and power.

Bob, I am truly honored to be one of the 40 people you follow. I hope I stay there. And I hope clearly delineating Topspin-related tweets helps. Maybe TweetDeck can filter those out for you?

While I don’t actually spend time or energy asking people to find/follow me on Twitter, I do appreciate that anyone would care what I have to say. I can’t make people care, but I care enough to not want to be misunderstood. I hope clearly delineating when something has to do with Topspin will help. If not, I’ll try to define my field of flavor here for further clarity: my top three favorite albums are Sly and The Family Stone’s Fresh, The Stooges Fun House, and Willie’s Spirit. Also in the field: Neko Case, The Beatles, Brendan Benson, Robert Wyatt, and Morrissey as well as EYEHATEGOD, Genghis Tron, Slayer, Burzum, and Iron Maiden plus NWA, Lord Finesse, and Jay-Z not to mention Joe Higgs, Bunny Wailer, and Burning Spear not to forget Lefty Frizell, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Townes Van Zandt and Funkadelic, The Dirtbombs, Jamie Lidell and Arts Blakey and Pepper, Chris Potter, Horaces Silver and Andy… can I stop now?

Thanks for following,
ian

ps – Interestingly, these barbs from Bob sandwiched an unrelated post referencing Seth Godin and permission marketing. But the post didn’t mention that Twitter is as much a form of permission marketing as opting in to an email list is. The 2.7M people who subscribe to Oprah and the 18K people who subscribe to Pepsi on Twitter are committing an act of permission marketing, giving Oprah and Pepsi permission to market to them amongst the tweets from their friends. And trust needs to be similarly respected, or subsequently lost. That, I suppose, is really what this post is about, why I care, why it’s worth talking about, and why the delineation is a good idea.