After months of effort, research, head-scratching, and stress, I finished my book.  The first copies of the The Analysis of Hype are now in the hands of those who purchased the eBook.  Printed editions are printing and will be shipping later this week.  But, holy crap, I wrote a book! As...

Pretty much everyone knows the story of Kubla Khan.  It starts out, “In Xanadu did Kublai Khan A stately Pleasure-Dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.” Some know it from the intro to Citizen Kane, others were...

Here in Boston we’ve got our knickers in a potential twist.  Yet again, there’s talk of raising fares on the “T” to offset some staggering deficits.  It amazes me that so many companies (and politicians…) think they can continually cut spending in order to raise...

I’m the first person to tell you not to believe everything you read on the Internet. For every useful piece of information, there’s a Nigerian price lurking right around the corner. But when you’ve found something so unbelievable, so fantastical, that it must be obviously a...

I’m gonna say it:  I hate Kickstarter.  I hate the fact that they make it easy for anyone to ask you for money.  That’s not to say I’m a total Scrooge, but I keep getting hit up to back people’s projects.  Somehow, it seems fundamentally wrong for me to...

Over the last few days, I’ve received 73 Facebook event invitations.  It’s not because of my incredible popularity, subtle wit, or boyish charm that people want me at their event.  Shocking, I know.  Instead, they overutilize the tool so much that it becomes noise — and...

Within the last month, I’ve had two interns quit.  As the lowest rung on the professional ladder, it’s not common for interns to be less than enthralled with the work they’re doing.  But as companies continue to squeeze free labor out of the unpaid masses, I had to stop and...

Working with musicians, you hear a lot of “oh no, my fans would HATE that …”  Venues do it too.  And managers often assume an understanding of what their artists like or dislike.  On nearly every count, they’re wrong.  This is never more apparent than the world of...

Working in the music industry is kind of like living through a Homerian epic. There are heroes and enemies and epithets a-plenty. You also get introduced to the mighty beast known as hubris.  You know the type:  brash CEO who boasts on and on and on about how their service will...

There are times when it’s fun to be a dick.  Maybe you’ve hard a really hard day;  the man is just beating you down.  You gotta vent on someone, and that barista seems perfect to inflict rage upon.  It happens.  But unlike the lowly barista, I run my own business.  I...

I spend a LOT of time at music industry events. And I spent a lot of time in college as a music business major. And I grew up in Boston. So when I see a band that's doing everything the industry's leading voices are recommending, I (at least...) pay attention. The bizarre twist is that NOBODY else is paying attention -- except the fans!

Maybe it’s a character flaw, I’m not sure.  But I want to be as nice to every client as I possibly can.  Sometimes that results in over-promising, and most times it results in under-charging.  As an example, I recently had a client that needed a very basic website done.  I...

So the whole industry is all abuzz about Google Music debuting. And for those that're using Google Music, they're not all that thrilled. It's slow, clunky, and not exactly the Music 2.0/Next Phase/New Wave solution everybody was trumpeting from the rooftops. And so it goes. Once the music industry gives up on one problem, they just move onto another while forgetting to continue solving the previous one. That's why I'm saying "fuck the cloud."

Here's the deal folks: websites are instruments for your career. Like a fine Steinway or a vintage B3, simply posessing them doesn't equate to being a virtuoso player...

Today, on 4/20, we should all learn The Terrible...

It seems that no matter where you go, there's always some asshole that wants to pee on your cornflakes.

In the process of starting D.I.-Why, I realized that bringing on investors might not be a bad idea.  If you take a look at the companies shaping “the new music industry,” investors are heavily financing their trek toward profitability.  Why should my baby be any different? To get...

I resisted writing this post for a while, because I’m either gonna piss off a few people or (at best?) come off sounding all snooty and elitist.  Finally though, that moment has passed. Foursquare is a cool way to share information about where you’re at, offer cool tips, and play...

It's really not something that needs to be discussed, or at least that's what I thought. When you're working with a client/artist/musician/band/whatever, the asumption is that everyone involved will conduct themselves in a professional manner. Unfortunately, at 3 AM, this isn't what happened...

Business school grads make millions preying upon a ready group of suckers who sang lead in their high school musicals, but a decade later they're just bartenders working for tips wondering why fame and fortune hasn't smiled on them.

Looking back, I don't think I said much of anything for the first 6 months I was working in radio. But I absorbed everything. Over time I learned how to be persuasive without being a bully. I learned when the end result often meant sacrificing what you thought (at the time) was totally essential. The hardest lesson was learning to let others do their job so you can do yours.

Dear Neil: I spent most of yesterday celebrating “Music’s Biggest Night” with a few thousand of my closest friends. As a member of the Recording Academy, it’s a singular thrill to be able to personally witness the hype machine ramp things up into frenzy of klieg lights and chaos. But this year, moreso than the others, was it really music’s biggest night?

Latest Amoeba Music shopping spree: You should all go buy these NOW! And while I love Newbury Comics, Amoeba Music is the greatest music store on the planet. Perhaps the galaxy, and likely the universe...

Back when I lived in Hollywood, I spent most of my time working from home. The boss-man didn't want to incur unnecessary overhead, so in exchange for picking up the cost of my phone and internet, I never had to commute more than 10 steps from "home" to "work." For the most part, it was pretty sweet. But...

50 years ago today, JFK became our 35th president. Watch the speech that started it all...