His Appearance Is Quite Disturbing

Forgive the bragging, but I think today's post - at least, the part that I didn't write - is essential reading for amateur and professional musicians alike. Bear with me.

Jonathan Coulton is one of those strange types who gives his music away for free. He's met with no little success, not the least of which is escaping his former job as a computer programmer. I've been intending to write about him for ages but I was too lazy busy. To give him a criminally short summing-up, he writes folk-rock music with a geeky bent and specialises in two outmoded elements of song-writing: catchy melodies and witty lyrics. His website describes his music as: "Well crafted geek folk-pop. Hilarious but heartbreaking songs about mad scientists, robot armies and self-loathing giant squids." Just like Prince.

Before I go on to explain why I'm finally writing about him, here's a taste of the “JoCo” love juice. This track is charming, jolly and entirely good-natured – it's also extremely NOT SAFE FOR WORK:

Jonathan Coulton – First of May

Heh. I hope you didn't snort coffee over the screen.

A relative of mine heard this next song and asked, in all seriousness, whether Mr Coulton was quite all right. It freaked her out, whereas I think it's a scream. But then, I'm not all right.

Jonathan Coulton – Skullcrusher Mountain

Right, on to business - literally. Many music fans, be they consumers or musicians, are very sceptical of this whole “free music” idea. How on earth does that work, they cry? Someone, somewhere, must be getting their wallets pinched, surely? Like it or not, nefarious usage of technology has undermined the traditional entertainment paradigm; as I write, there's a copy of the new Wolverine film floating around the net a full month before its cinematic release. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle. If some ne'er-do-well is going to get hold of your music without paying for it, no matter what you do to prevent it, why not adapt to the situation? Why not give your music away for nothing, build up a following and make money that way? 10% of something is better than 100% of nothing. Also, with respect, there are quite a few budding musicians who will never get a sniff of a three-album deal, but if they give away their music then they've got a good chance of getting heard, a slim chance of getting paid and they're fairly certain to have some fun. Creative Commons and netlabel music could increase the number of musicians who can make a living from their passion. It's worth a thought.

Coulton has given his music away in order to attract fans and garner publicity. It's worked. People download his music because it's free, find they like it and then either donate in gratitude or pay for some of his commercial music. Apart from giving away a lot of his tracks for free, he also sells CDs through CDBaby, Amazon and at his gigs. You can buy mp3s from his own online store, iTunes, Songslide and elsewhere. There are also t-shirts, mouse pads, mugs, the inevitable thongs and plenty more stuff to buy. However, his ringtones are free because, as he says, “It's never seemed right to me that you should have to pay someone three dollars for a tiny snippet of a song you probably already own. So screw it.” There's also a wiki and lively forums. He's put a lot of work into giving his fans a lot of stuff to wade through enjoy.

He's also responsible for Still Alive, the end title song to Portal, Valve's hit computer game. That last sentence made me sound as though I'm smoking a pipe and leaning on a mantelpiece. Perhaps I am.

So, does all this ingenuity add up to more than a hill of beans? I'll leave the answer to JoCo, who has done yet another outmoded thing by writing honestly about how his different revenue streams have enabled him to make poop jokes a living as a musician. On 16th March he released a song, Blue Sunny Day, about a suicidal vampire (prime Coulton territory) and said, "As always, you have a choice: stream it, download it for free, or buy it." A week later, 1544 people had viewed the free download link, the song had been bought 179 times and it had earned him $196. His reaction:

Worst case scenario (every unique view = one free download), the ratio of paying customers to freeloaders comes to about 13.4% if you count dollars instead of purchases. That’s actually pretty good in my opinion. And maybe I just have my rosy glasses on this morning, but I’d guess that some of the people who bought Blue Sunny Day were tipped over into buying other stuff.

So how does this work? I put out a new song and make $200? Obviously it’s a lot more complicated than that, because I’m making a pretty good living considering my recent output is about 2 songs per year. Even not considering that - I’m not getting rich exactly, but I make more money now than I did when I wrote software.

He concludes that it is the accumulation of all the previously mentioned revenue streams, spread across his catalogue, that enables him to keep his head above water. In other words, his online and gigging activities have now gathered enough momentum that the cents have turned into quite a few dollars. Another important point - he's his own boss and can record what he likes, when he likes: there's no longing for a record contract, no owing record companies huge amounts of money for studio time, promotion and cocaine, and no reluctant cancellation of, say, a heartfelt bagpipe operetta because a studio executive says it won't sell.

If you're interested, JoCo goes into more detail about his incomings in a blog post entitled Payday. Endearingly, he's rather relaxed about how his business model works; all he knows is that it allows him to be a full-time musician, and that's the important thing.

Anyone can attach a Creative Commons licence to their music and release it online. Jonathan Coulton did just that and is now earning more money than he was as a computer programmer. There's also the small point that he's now a, y'know, gigging rock star who tours America and Britain, gets to scream, “How ya doin', generic Mid-West town?!?” and no doubt gets the odd request to sign pert, abundant breasts. The man is patently an idiot.

However, we wish him and his beard well. His appearance is quite disturbing, but I assure you he's harmless enough. ;)

Jonathan Coulton Primer Page (for JoCo newbies)

Jonathan Coulton songs (Some are $1 each, some are free - look for the smileys.)

Jonathan Coulton main website/blog (A live concert DVD is imminent.)

Comments

[Michael Gregoire]

Thanks for the heads-up… I hadn't come across him before.

Peace
Mike

[Dave]

This is a great read, and its nice to see that there are artists being transparent about how the "new models" are working for them, especially when they can make a living from it.

For me, that is the main goal... i've known people in signed bands and they made almost nothing and still had to bow to the whims of idiots with money, its fantastic to see the tables beginning to turn.

[humeka]

very interesting reading, it will sure give me ideas for my own business model.

[Bobby]

Hey man, i was just checking out your blog; Great stuff keep, it up.

[CTW]

Bobby, thanks for the kind words. I happened to need the encouragement. :)

I'm so glad that visitors to CTW are finding something to enjoy. But be warned: enjoy it while it lasts. It won't take me long to return to my usual dreck. :-P

[Kymberlie R. McGuire]

I'd heard Code Monkey before, but didn't become a fan of his until the group of NASA engineers I play Rock Band with downloaded Skullcrusher Mountain. Needless to say, it and "Still Alive" make it into our sets quite regularly.

His greatest hits CD is my car's CD player currently and listen to it a lot since my iPod - how I normally listen to music in there - was stolen. The whole CD is fabulous.

I saw Jonathan when he played the House of Blues in Houston with Paul and Storm and it was, hands down, one of the best shows I've ever been to. As a bonus, all the songs I Twittered him as requests got played.

It was well worth the $20 for the ticket (and the $20 for valet parking and $50 for my bar tab, but I digress). If you ever get a chance to see him, jump at it.

[Catching The Waves]

Great post, Kymbers. Thanks for taking the time. So...web geek, code monkey, plays Rock Band with NASA engineers, frequenter of superb blogs and bereft of iPod - I'm surprised JoCo hasn't written a song about you already. :) In fact, I might ask him to do one. We live on the same internet, you know. Practically neighbours. *joke*

Speaking of JoCo's concerts, I'm saving up for the next best thing, his new concert DVD, but in the meantime find myself hankering after "Still Alive". Could someone recommend where to buy it that doesn't involve visiting *shudder* iTunes? Yes, I'm surprisingly ignorant.

I hesitate to recommend electronic equipment to anybody, let alone someone who understands hateful things like html and, er, cars but have you thought about an 8Gb Sansa Clip as a stopgap for your iPod? It's cheaper, sturdy, operates like an iPod and won't be too great a loss if you lose it - which you might because it's the size of a matchbox. Mine is the Watson to my Holmes. You'll find it here:

http://tinyurl.com/pzvdve

This unasked-for superb advice is also given for the benefit of all my other millions of fans. I'm so altruistic.:)

[Kymberlie R. McGuire]

Ha. I wish Jonathan Coulton would write a song about me! I mention him enough in my Blip.fm jukebox. As you can tell, I'm slightly obsessed with I Crush Everything. And by "slightly" I mean "very."

I bought his new concert DVD but due to a problem with my DVD player not reading discs any more, I haven't watched it. Luckily, an old DVD player of my brother's was found, so I may try watching the DVD tonight.

This post made me go search Amazon and it turns out you can get the .mp3 of Jonathan Coulton actually singing "Still Alive" and also the version used on the video game here.
You can buy the individual tracks or the whole CD for only $7.99 which I, naturally, have done.

I actually found a cheap 160 GB iPod on eBay, so I've got another iPod now. I like to have all my music on me constantly, so I need a player with a big hard drive. I keep one of these mini-speakers in my purse, so having all my music lets me share random songs with friends. The last time I used it was to play Toni Basil's version "Mickey" that she recorded in Spanish. Lots of fun, especially if you've been drinking.

Bet you never thought you'd get a reply back this long, did you? :-D