If you subscribe to the RSS feed of this blog you may have noticed that today a lot of content was published. For the “RSS Spam,” I apologize. The Home of Zargon now hosts almost all the content that I previously wrote for Bit Rebels and you may need to change link URLs if any of you previously linked to them from Bit Rebels.

But this is, more than anything, a day to celebrate. This is the 100th post I am publishing on The Home of Zargon and I promise that it will not take that long to post the 200th. In the draft folder there are already a few rants that just need their finishing touches including one about Facebook. Also upcoming is an interview with Diego Stocco, and another long interview with Shorty Awards’ Winner José Afonso Furtado.

Here it is to the present and to the future! Glad to have you all here.

Picture Credits: lakewentworth under a CC License

You see, when I bought this incredible machine, I was told that I was entitled to get a free upgrade to Windows 7: all I had to do was to go to HP’s website which I did. By clicking on the right link I was taken to what I can only describe as the beginning of a sad adventure that took me to another webpage (from a third party website). I was requested to fill in all my details (including my Credit Card details). When I finished I got  a confirmation e-mail telling me that Windows 7 would be shipped to me as soon as it was available. It was with much excitement that I saw Windows 7 being released all over the world, with great fanfare, and I kept reading reviews about how good it was… and I kept waiting. A few weeks later the official release date , I received an e-mail telling me that due to the specific DVD drive that was installed on my equipment I would have to wait some more time. I did. Finally, some 4 weeks later, I got another e-mail informing me that the company was really sorry that I had cancelled my order. This would be all fine but for a small detail: I never cancelled my order.

I tried to contact HP via e-mail, I tried to contact HP via phone, I tried to contact HP via the vendor that sold me the machine. The result was a lot of nothing. Nada. Zilch. Niente. Around December I looked for HP support accounts on Twitter and tried to reach out. After some effort I finally got an answer. I was told to send all the pertaining info via e-mail and the issue would be dealt swiftly and immediately…  after the Holiday’s season. That came and it was gone (with almost everyone around the world with a few extra pounds) and I waited. After two weeks I tried to contact HP again, via Twitter. I was told that a rep was on it and they would get in contact with me the next day. That was 2 months ago. Windows 7 was released in October, 2009, 5 monhts ago, and I’m still waiting.

I’m tired of waiting. I’m fed up with HP’s handling of this, tired of this support that is nothing but, tired of the promises of swift resolution to a problem that was created by someone else but me (and don’t they dare blaming the computers). It would only take some time for someone at HP to sort this out, probably less time than I’ve  already spent calling and e-mailing HP support (by the way get your act straight in Portugal please, since no one answers the phone) and that I’ve spent writing this post. Yes, I did need some time to write it because if I would write what really is on my mind this post would have to be X-Rated. So, I ask you HP: Please wake up!

I think that this post, based on my personal experience with a brand, somehow will mirror the frustration that many users feel when they are not heard when they should. There is no point in having a Social Media team on Twitter and Facebook if you really don’t understand Social Media: Every single time I see a tweet coming from the @hp_pc account telling the world how much fun they are having at such or such event, I feel angry. Every time I get an e-mail from HP offering me a discount for a product I don’t have I feel angry and probably many users do when they see pure old fashioned marketing taking over communication and swift feedback.

If you have any examples (negative or positive) please let me know in the comments. I have a “Brands that Don’t get it” and “Brands that get it” list that surely can use more users.

Picture Credits: tantrum dan under a CC License

Update: After a few hours of this post being posted I was contacted by an HP representative. After 2 weeks I had my Windows 7 CD.

“Star Wars in Concert” is the latest, George Lucas branded, “Star Wars” spin-off and is nothing short of spectacular. The concept behind it? Take John Williams’s score for the six episodes and make it the center piece of a show by putting the Royal Philarmonica Concert Orchestra (RPCO) to play it, directed by Dirk Brossé. If you don’t know what the RPCO is I’m sure that names like Andrea Bocelli, Luciano Pavarotti or Dionne Warwick are familiar: The RPCO has played with all of them and is currently preparing a show with Julie Andrews, yes, the lady from “The Sound of Music”.

To go with the “Star Wars” score, George Lucas has personally edited scenes from all the six episodes, divided by themes, in what could be described as the best way to understand Star Wars. The editing is absolutely perfect and it mixes scenes from the older episodes with the new ones making it all blend and make sense.

Narrated by Anthony Daniels, the only actor that participated, in the role of C-3pO, in all the movies, the show is fast paced, touching, funny and intense, just like “Star Wars” is, and the one hour and a half that the show takes, with a 20 minutes intermission, goes by in a breeze.

Technically and logistically the show is nothing but amazing: One of the biggest video screens ever built is surrounded by four LED screens that are used to show moving images relating to what is showing on the screen as well as live images from the orchestra. Lasers and intelligent light design setup the the tone during the whole show and everything seems to fit without being too much. Fifteen trucks are taking the tour, at the moment, throughout Europe and, I was told, it takes (only) 12h to setup the whole thing on any given venue.

Is this a must see? It is! Whether you are a Star Wars fan or just curious, you should go and see it if you can. Also, if you are someone that appreciates listening to a philharmonic orchestra interpreting some of the most beautiful pieces of music ever composed for a soundtrack by an irrepressible orchestra, this is a show for you.

My personal highlights are, without a doubt, the amazing sound design produced by Frederick Vogler for the show and the part of the show when the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra plays the “Mad About Me” a.k.a. “The Cantina Band” song. On the down side of the whole show the supporting exhibition of “Star Wars” memorabilia: It features the whole, never seen, George Lucas’s private collection but, compared to the official “Star Wars” exhibition it just fails short even if you can take a picture with Imperial soldiers and Darth Vader (but kids will love it).

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“Star Wars in Concert” is currently touring in Europe and will then head to the United States. Make sure you don’t miss it.Check out the tour dates here.

Thanks to João Brilhante from Mandrake for giving me a Media Pass so I could take pictures of the show.

Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic, Copyright 1983

Published in Stereo

I’ve been meaning to write this post for some time now. It has been boiling on my head and, against all common sense, the more time I took to write (to try and let it go away or cool down) the more and more ingredients and spices were carefully added exactly at the right moment.

Today there was one of those moments. Consider it the cherry on the top, the parsley on the chicken, the lemon juice drop on the gin tonic.

As you know I’m making a weekly series for Bit Rebels called “Rebel Music”. This series is all about sharing Creative Commons/Netlabel music to a wider audience (Bit Rebels’ readers).

What is a Creative Commons License? It is license that allows everyone to copy, share and/or re-distribute any song, by any means, as long as proper credit is given to the artist and that the song is not being used for commercial purposes.

When I started that series I tried to contact the netlabels just out of courtesy. I didn’t have to since that is exactly why the tracks are released under a CC License, you already have the permission, à priori (this is latin).

Today I posted “Rebel Music Volume 5“, this time curated by Rute Correia, the director of the Lisbon Netaudio Festival. A few hours later I got a comment on Bit Rebels, on the previous post (Rebel Music Volume 4) and I had to read like 5 times before I was really certain that it was not a joke: Someone, that I couldn’t identify on the playlist, was complaining that neither me or Roland (the curator for that specific compilation) had contacted him “out of courtesy”.

WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!!? Really!!! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!? Two persons (me and Roland) take  our time to include someone’s track to make it reach a wider audience and what we get is someone complaining about it that we didn’t contact him?!? Are artists, or netlabels (I couldn’t figure out which one this person represents) now starting to work like major labels where everything has to be cleared before hand? Did he want to charge  us? HOW STUPID IS THIS???!!!!

And how are they monitoring things that they only find out ONE WEEK LATER that we had used one of his(?) tracks?!?!?!? Don’t they have a trackback system on their website???!!!! Aren’t they interested in who is talking and LINKING BACK to their website? If not interested at least curious?!?!?!

I can’t understand it.

I can’t understand this kind of attitude. I can’t understand people that speak about things that they know nothing about but are not afraid to voice their judgment while saying “I don’t know him/her but…”. I can’t understand those that consider themselves so cool and such experts on everything that any project that doesn’t include them will be a failure. I can’t understand those that take no step to get to know others and stay with their asses on their royal throne expecting everyone to pay homage to them. I can’t understand people that are so keen to defend freedom of speech but get angry when other exercise theirs. I can’t understand people that define themselves as role models but have no trouble in putting private details of someone else’s life on twitter. I could go on, believe me! In the last weeks I have seen too many examples directed to people that are close to me that I could go on forever.

These people are those that live in their own world and everything that is outside of it is, to them, bad, corrupt, strange, fearful.

I can’t understand these kind of people. Just can’t!!!! And to them I have just this to say: Fucking learn how to use Google before you judge or send a comment to anyone and, while you are learning,  SHUT THE FUCK UP!

This message is directed to anyone that feels I’m directly attacking them. I am. And I’m doing you all big favor in not revealing your names. Just grow up and spend a bit more time looking at yourselves and the way you deal with the world and leave others alone.

Picture Credits: Audrey Low via Flickr. (Under a Creative Commons License)

Recently I was given the advice to write, to go ahead and write away like there was no tomorrow. The truth is that that tomorrow turned into the next today and the next tomorrow turned into the next today like a mathematical sequence that never fails you.

Tomorrow is today is tomorrow is today.  2010 is today is tomorrow.

Every time that the calendar tells us that a new year is ending and a new year is beginning, as sure as the sun always shines even if we don’t see it, there is this feeling in the air that next year is going to be THE year, the year that everything will change… and usually it doesn’t.  I’m one of those pragmatic people that think we need to work our future on a daily basis, without committing to long term plans that usually get in our way.

But this year I’m going to give it a try. Yes, I’m going to try and be one of those people that will make some resolutions, make a check list, a detailed plan and personal implementation’s costs and make it stick:

Let’s start!

I will stop using WordPress that allows me to publish this post to the world while being somewhere else, totally disconnected from the wired world. This sounds like one of those resolutions that make sense. New Year’s resolutions are all about being disruptive and this is one is disruptive enough. I will start using some unknown system, that will make me look really cool among a niche group of 4 people,  and will spend most of the time programming how to upload a post instead of focusing on writing any content at all. But I will not stop here, oh no, this feels great all of this disruptive stuff. I will start using those great tools that allow me to get 424242 followers every second and will start concentrating on getting the largest amount of followers, mentions on lists and whatever they come up with next (I will even pay for followers, oh yes I will). By December 2010 I will have 8 million followers, will talk to none of them and this je ne sais quoi will make me look oh-so-cool that some Hollywood producer will want to make a 3D movie just about me, a blue planet and some precious metal.  If this doesn’t work I will tell my doctor to kill me so I can become a trending topic on Twitter for 6 days in a row. Woot! Woot!

Oh man, I’m getting on cruise speed now, this will be a great year and I’m just getting started. What’s next? I will stop making music: Enough of that experimental stuff that no one listens to. I will cut down all of those creative urges that make me  spend 12h straight trying to find that specific sound texture, that curve that makes a kick drum sound like its coming from the stomach of an ogre. Geez this is liberating!!! No more music! Yeah! More, more, more, I need more. This New Year’s resolution stuff is like a drug, I can’t get enough of it. (Might be a good idea to stop doing drugs as well but maybe that can wait till 2012).  I will insist that everyone calls me a guru, an expert or, better still, a gurexpert™. I will trademark and copyright everything I’ll produce. I will stop supporting creative commons music… better still: I will stop supporting any form of free culture. I will stop denouncing those that plagiarize content, will only review movies that I’ve never seen, books that I’ve never read, applications that I’ve never used. I will stop having strong opinions about fracturing issues, I will start being diplomatic and will stop helping those that need help.  I will forget (h)activism all together and become a corporate mogul. The whole universe will be my oyster that I will eat for breakfast, lunch and supper. I will enjoy it! Yes, I will ENJOY it!

I will start my own self-help program that will help people become a little more like me for only €2500 a month. I will use Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to sell it. This only will get me a Nobel Peace prize.  While in Sweden I will take the opportunity to buy the whole country and put an end to that Pirate Party that only gives a bad name to the real politik.

I will only buy and use products that involve some kind of third world exploitation to be produced, will deem any human rights and freedom of speech issues as “their problem” and will call any kind of art form a waste of time (unless its mine and/or has a high market value).

I will support any government that decides that education and health are not a common problem but only the problem of those that can’t afford it (And that really makes it “their problem” doesn’t it?)

I will start an online petition to have a Margaret Tatcher’s statue in every single round about in the UK, I will stop defending the Welsh culture and I will cut all connections with the country side: I will be the archetype of urban living and everyone will aim to be like me. I will be 2010’s role model, TIME’s man of the year, I will win every Mashable award there is to win (I’ve been told that next year there will be 4500 categories so that all info-advertisers can win at least one award), I will make a plastic surgery to look like a mix between Tony Blair and George Clooney with David Bowie’s eyes and the will then take to court Tony Blair, George Clooney and David Bowie for looking like me. X-Factor and Britain’s got talent will be my favourite TV shows (enough of those pseudo-intellectual TV series like Larry David’s “Curb your enthusiasm”). I will make sure to have a TV set in every single room I’m in with access to 4200 TV channels, including TV Shop Dubai, TV Shop North Korea and Rupert Murdoch’s hidden office camera.  I will never meet personally with anyone unless they have more than 40000 fans on Facebook AND above 2 million followers on Twitter. Wikipedia will be my only source of knowledge and I will make sure that the facts about anything important regarding human civilization are written on Wikipedia in the way I see it. After all, human kind needs guidance and that whole God thing had 2010 years to make it right, with the results we can see for ourselves. I will start my own religion! How could I forget it? Yes, I will start my own religion loosely based on all religions that exist: I will call it Patch and I will be the only one that can listen to what Patch says.

In July I will take some holidays:  I’m guessing after all this work I will be in need of some rest by then.

After those much deserved holidays I will start preparing what will become my favourite event of the year:  Halloween! I will embrace Halloween and I’m going to enjoy it. Actually I’m going to enjoy lots of things in 2010. 2010 is going to be a GREAT year according to my own resolutions.  Christmas will follow in this hectic schedule and I will make sure to offer those that are most dear to me some socks, ties and mugs (the mugs will come with a picture of me).

By December 31^st I will have accomplished all of this and Bill Gates will be giving me the keys to his house to have some face to face time with Steve Jobs. I will refuse.  I will be too busy writing my 2011’s New Year’s resolutions, planning it to the detail so that everything goes as I want (and as Patch wishes)… … … … … … … … Something about Google Wave… …. … … wind…. rain…. thunder…

I wake up. My head hurts from this nightmare. Outside the wind plays a melody that resembles, pretty much, something that I’ve been playing around in my mind to compose and the raindrops, big enough to drown any super-hero ant play a tribal rhythm of such complexity that I stay, for some minutes, listening to it and trying to capture the way it makes me feel so I can keep it in my memory forever.

Outside the wind plays for me. A two and a half months old German shepherd dreams of ping pong balls, red baby jackets and of that bigger version of it that comes to visit and play every day.

I step outside with my first morning coffee, I look at the dark sky, the speeding clouds above that bring the rain down on the soil that can’t absorb the water any longer much like a old shower sponge. I take a deep breath, the cold air filling up my lungs and a ray of sunshine threatens to pierce the clouds… but it doesn’t.

I take a yellow post-it note, a pen and I write:

“2010: I will just be myself.”

The worldwide jury has convened, inside my head, and after much discussion that involved some violence and name calling, we reached a conclusion.

Here are the winners of

The Zargon Awards 2009 Part I

The Good Ones

Best # to follow: #RandomThoughts and #DAWWARS

Best Good Morning Tweets: @dustmotes

Best Good Morning Geek Tweets: @rmilana

Best use of #: @fjfonseca, @shellykramer

Best Random Tweets: @kieronjames, @Pure_Tone, @CTK1, @ambienteer, @fjfonseca, @mrbiterness

Best Good Vibes on Twitter: @adamsconsulting, @joycecherrier, @dkkipp, @mariabarret, @caro65, @jlkoctober

Best Music Source on Twitter: @thomasraukamp, @peterkirn, @netlabellover

Best Artist on Twitter: All of those released by @publicspaceslab in 2009 (except @quarterbit)

Best electronic music live act: @QuarterBIT Live at NetAudio Festival Berlin

Best Information Source on Twitter: @buzzedition, @kim, @contrafactos, @remixtures, @jafurtado, @booksbelow, @purplehayz

Best RTs on Twitter: @danielbarta

Best Event on Twitter: #ArtWalk

“I’ve got the Power” Award: @shellykramer, @bkmacdaddy

“I wish they tweeted more” Award: @catmagellan, @fernandomateus

Best Rant Award: @fjfonseca:  “An Open Letter to Netlabels”

Best Twitter Based Idea: @missdestructo: “I Tweet Naked”

Best Celebrity on Twitter: @adognamedbo

Best Use of Twitter: @lostblacksheep

Twitter User of the Year: @fjfonseca

The Zargon Awards 2009 Part II

The Bad Ones

Best AUTO-DM Award: “Hello my friend. You are amazing. Let me help you to be happy“

Best Twitter related technology Award: Follow Unfollow Follow Unfollow till you suckers follow me

“Oh Gosh French people  have no clue who I am!!!!” Award: Robert Scoble

“My list is bigger than yours, fool!” Award: Pete Cashmore & Guy Kawasaki

Best use of the Twitter API: Spam Bots

“I had to die to be a trending topic” Award: Michael Jackson

“I had to quit Twitter to be a Trending Topic” Award: Miley Cirus and Chris Brown

“We are not on Twitter because we are too cool for it” Award: Nokia

“Stop Blaming the poor mammals” Award: @Twitter (Fail Whale)

“Coolest Technology gone wrong” Award : GoogleWave

“Lamest Tweet” Award: “Vote for me!” and “Help me get my 2029 followers back“

Best Social Media Technology Award: To the hacker that will make it possible to permanently delete a Facebook account (This award is given in the same spirit of the Nobel Peace Prize)

Most lame Twitter Fight: @aplusk vs. @CNN

Absent Twitter User of the Year: Pope Ratzinger

Surely it comes as no surprise that the jury decided to give the Twitter of the Year Award to Fernando Fonseca. After all it’s me and I do believe in the work I’m doing on Twitter. If you don’t agree you can always go to your own blog, make your own awards and give the prize to yourself: I’m sure you deserve it. (If you find a sponsor for your awards please let me know)

Franz Kafka described them as “an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul” and William Ewart Gladstone said “Books are delightful society. If you go into a room and find it full of books – even without taking them from the shelves they seem to speak to you, to bid you welcome“.

Books are always better than the movies that are made based upon them because, when you read a book, you build your own characters and you shape what you are reading to your own imagination.

Everyone has its classics when it comes to literature. Everyone has a book that turns to over and over again. Everyone has THAT book that always comes up when talking about books. Much like with music, those really into books can connect specific books to specific moments of their life. The following is a list of five books everyone should read in my opinion.

This post was inspired by a recent question that my fellow Rebel Clement made on Twitter. More than one list, it is a open door to my creative universe as well as an open invitation for you to share your own list, by leaving a comment.

1. “The Ultimate Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams: This is not a book, this is a master piece. Douglas Adams takes the science fiction genre to a whole new level by defying our own imagination. In this trilogy, that is made of four books , Douglas Adams takes us on a emotional roller coaster that makes us feel sympathy, hate and pure pity towards the numerous characters that he so carefully develops while laughing the all way through it. Characters include Marvin, the paranoid android and Arthur Dent a middle class British citizen that sees himself hitchhiking through the Universe . The beauty of this book is that when you think you can’t laugh any more, you turn the page and there you laugh even more. Warning: Can make you look like a mental case if read in public or with strangers around you. One more reason why you should read it.

Favorite quote: “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

2. “Einstein’s Dreams” by Alan Lightman: This is a fiction novel that opens the door to Albert Einstein’s dreams while he was working on his “Theory of Relativity” back in 1905. It consists of 30 short stories (dreams) and explore, with infinite grace and insight, different relations every one of us has with time. You know when you are waiting for someone that is late and time seems to pass so slowly? Or when you are having a great time and time goes by so fast? Alan Lightman, a physicist that works at the M.I.T., challenges its readers to explore the relations we have with time. Insightful and thought provoking.

Favourite Quote: “In this world, artists are joyous. Unpredictability is the life of their paintings, their music, their novels. They delight in events not forecasted, happenings without explanation, retrospective.”

3. “Neuromancer” by William Gibson: How to describe a book from someone that back in 1984 was already talking about cyberspace when cyberspace didn’t exist? William Gibson as always been ahead of his time and his novels are full of details of the future because that is where his mind lives. No matter in what decade you read them you will always be surprised by the fact that something that is referred to, in one of his many books, just happened 2 years ago. While some try to imagine the (near) future, William Gibson shapes it.

Favourite quote: “Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts… A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…”

4. The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa: I could write many things about this book and about Fernando Pessoa, to me one of the greatest writers of all times. I could but I could not really do him any justice. “The Book of Disquiet” was found after Pessoa’s death and is a mix of prose, small paragraphs and poems that contain all the creative brilliance of this man that was a copywriter (he was responsible for the Coca~Cola’s most famous slogan in Portugal) and a writer by devotion.

Favourite quote: “So it is with all life. A tedium that includes the expectation of nothing but more tedium; a regret, right now, for the regret I’ll have tomorrow for having felt regret today.”

5. “All families are psychotic” by Douglas Coupland: Few contemporary authors can describe U.S. society like Coupland. His style of writing, the attention to detail, the self criticism and a deep of knowledge of the big picture make Coupland a extremely effective narrator of the the story of the Drummond family on its travel from Vancouver to the Kennedy Space Center. What could be an uneventful trip to some, by the hand of Coupland its transformed into a novel that includes geriatric HIV, armed robbery, death in Walt Disney World, pharmaceutical drug lords, black market baby sales, suicide attempts and a letter stolen from Princess Diana’s casket from Prince William.

Favourite quote: “I keep thinking that if I look at my life long enough, there’ll be a sort of grand logic to it – a scheme. But I don’t think there is.”

What five books would you recommend? Let me know in the comments. Thank you!

Picture Credits: v.max1978 under a CC License

As you might know, I recently started to write for Bit Rebels and one of the things I have started to make is the “Rebel Music” series that comes out every Monday. It is a way of celebrating #MusicMonday on Twitter and also a way to bring music from several netlabels to a wider audience.

I thought this was going to be something that would take me, maximum, 3h a week to complete. I counted on Thomas Raukamp‘s tweets during the week to set my targets,  on Moritz Sauer‘s Netblabels.org to discover new things for myself and I also on a tweetgrid search to track #ccmusic, #music, #creativecommons and #netlabels tweets.

What I never thought was that, most of the netlabels, make it really difficult for those who want to promote their music. What I didn’t count on was that it is taking me 8h to complete every Bit Rebels’ compilation because of the total incompetence of people that I have no idea why they are running a netlabel.

In my attempt to make a 10 track compilation I have run into obstacles that usually led to frustration and that usually led to giving up including a artist on the compilation. So I have decided to voice the frustration that is inside of me and how revolted I am about what I have experienced in the last 3 weeks.

1. If you don’t know how to edit a wiki learn how to: Moritz gives all of us a space to promote our content at netlabels.org. The least you can do is to properly insert the information. Is not that difficult. Just copy the entry before yours and change the content but not the code.

2. Be professional about what you do even if you are not making any money out of it: To describe a release with two words (“Heavy shit”) tells me absolutely nothing and feels like you really don’t care about what you’re doing. How I am supposed to differentiate between your downtempo heavy shit and your techno heavy shit? See what the common word is? That is what it looks like to me: shit!

3. GET A PLAYER ON YOUR WEBSITE: If you are expecting me to go to your website, where you only have a small image of the release and a link to a zip file at the archive.org,  and expect that I go the artist’s last.fm or myspace page to listen to the songs for that release only to go back to your website (ufffff…. deep breathing) to download your 70MB zip file just to be able to use a track… FOR-GET-IT!!! Come on! Are you kidding me? Do you really think that I am going to download a zip file without listening to the material? And do you really think I am going to download a zip file of a whole release just for one track? If you do you do not understand how this works you shouldn’t have a netlabel.

4. Be consistent in the way you name your releases. Get a catalog reference (PublicSpaces Lab uses [PSXXX] for example) and stick with it. Again this is about being professional. If you name one release XX009 and another XX666 just because you think is “cool” you will have people looking for the missing 567.

5. Most of the netlabels are uploading their releases to the Internet Archive. So WHY do you keep releasing stuff at 192 Kbps? Don’t your artists deserve better? It’s not like you’re paying for the download traffic. Come on, get your act straight!

6. If you don’t know what MP3 ID tags  are,  close down your netlabel. Implement a naming convention for your files, tag all files properly. Yes it takes time! But if you don’t have the time to do this I also don’t have the time to do your work.

7. Answer your mails: I know this might sound totally ridiculous but its not. From my 3 weeks experience only 4 of the 28 mails I sent to netlabels were answered. Is this how you are helping your artists?

8. Get your head out of your ass! If you think you are really important and cool because you have a netlabel you are doing it ALL WRONG. Your focus must be on your artists, on promoting them, on giving them the best of you. This is about music and not about you upgrading your cool status with the girls. If you are on this for the girls get in a fucking boys band.

9. Engage with your artists, support them, get to know them, challenge them: This is the only way you can promote your artists.

10. Don’t be a music spitting machine: Focus on quality not on quantity. Take care of the way you present each release, understand what the artists want to express, take your time to communicate it effectively. Be professional!

| Image Credits: Bill Campbell via Flickr |