blackrimglasses.com

Fifteen years ago, a 17 year old me sat down at a computer, pulled up a site and registered a domain name.

Reckoning.com was taken
Murmur.com was taken
Fables.com was taken

Murmurs.com was not.

I registered the domain name and used Microsoft Frontpage to put up a site.

By November of 1996 it looked like this.

Fifteen years is a long time to be committed to anything, much less a fan site. The person I was at 17 is not the person I am now. However, at least in terms of hobbies, being an R.E.M. fan has stayed the same. I still run Murmurs, maybe not with the same level of commitment I did 10 years ago, but its still something I pay for, maintain, post on occasionally and keep going.

But looking back on fifteen years is interesting in the frame of the site.

Fifteen years ago:

• I had just met Michael for the first time after a Patti Smith show (I sat behind him). That is what prompted me to do the site.
• R.E.M. did not have an official website. Warner Bros. Records did, at http://wbr.com/rem but the band did not have remhq.com launched until 1999′s tour
• All music was bought on CD’s. There were no MP3 players, there were no Mp3′s period.
• All my news for Murmurs.com I got through buying magazines, surfing sites, reading newspapers and tips from fans

Thinking back on this, running the site all those years ago was like running a news organization. I played more of a journalist. Now it’s easier for me to scrape the Google News feed for mentions of Michael or the band, syndicate tweets and be down with it. Some of the fun is gone, but sometimes progress negates fun.

Half my life has been tied to this site, and at times I sacrificed things in the sake of keeping it going. Was it worth it? Yes. I have made great friends and I hope it has contributed to peoples lives. It lead to me becoming friends with the band, and every day I’ve admire their generosity, integrity and graciousness.

Sometimes it is easy to look back and imagine a life without Murmurs. To some degree, not having it as a burden in parts of my life would be great. But with so much of myself tied up into its existence I don’t know if in the end it would have been worth it. I’m proud of what it is, and I’m hopeful I can continue to make it something special. I’ll always work to make it something worth being tied to the band R.E.M., and always fall woefully short, but that is OK.

In the end, the act of being a fan is a difficult thing to reconcile with the act of being an individual. When you transcend the notion of idle fanaticism toward something as engaged as running a fan site, it becomes even more difficult to reconcile your role as an individual with your role as the voice of the collective Fan.

With Murmurs now at 15, R.E.M at 31 and me now at 32, I think I’ve figured that out. Not entirely, but enough to get by.

Peter Buck once described R.E.M. as “Part lies, part heart, part truth and part garbage.”

I’ve always thought that is an accurate description of Murmurs, in the best way possible.

It was April of 1996, during my Junior year of high school when I decided to create a web site. Since a local newspaper employed me at the time as their webmaster, I figured it judicious to engage in my occupational activity after hours in order to solidify my area of expertise in a context other than work. As well, the Internet just seemed “cool,” having only risen to any form of prominence within the last year and a half.

At that point, having a website was novel enough, having your own domain name was just extreme. Now, with the predicate situation of desire for a website, I had to choose a subject. Being that I was only passionate about two things in life – computers and the band R.E.M. – I chose the later, and named the site Murmurs.com, a pluralized form of their first record Murmur (1983). Reckoning.com and Fables.com were taken. As was Murmur.com.

On April 25, 1996, Murmurs.com launched. It featured a running chronological news page, and little else. Over time, it grew to include lyrics, a feedback page, some stories from me. Murmurs took on a life of its own: death, marriage, love, betrayal, fights and resolutions. It became a true home for R.E.M. fans.

Parallel to this, in 1999 the band R.E.M, realizing that Murmurs.com was not going away, extended the hand of friendship. I accepted. Instead of being the fan waiting by the exit for an autograph, I was now the fan in the green-room. Still that guy, but with a fancy after-show pass on his shirt. As the site grew, that relationship likewise shifted. In 2001, I lost my job, and the site and I went up to Santa Barbara to attempt to contextualize what really was just a discussion board at its core into an art context in a art/technology masters program.

The week before I graduated, I got a job at Warner Bros. Records. June 20, 2005 I joined the company.

And Friday, January 28, 2011, I will leave the company.

I applied to WBR on a whim. I was browsing Craigslist between classes at UCSB and saw the advertisement. At this point I was debating whether to get a PhD or enter the workforce again. I sent in my application, with a cover letter that read pretty much like the paragraphs above. I received a phone call within 15 minutes. I drove down the next day to interview.

The moment I walked into the building known as the Ski Lodge, I knew that what I wanted more than anything was to work there. The building had the collective weight of everything that informed it. Fleetwood Mac, Metallica, R.E.M., an angry Frank Zappa. Everyone that passed through those glass doors left an imprint. It felt like a building full of passion for music, something I created a site to find, and now had found in the real world.

I joined the company as Director of Technology for Warner Bros. Records. I’m leaving the company as the SVP of Emerging Technology for Warner Music Group.

The years in between were filled with some of the most amazing times I have ever had. I worked on the campaign for Madonna, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Muse, White Stripes, Green Day, Linkin Park and more. I was at the table with the R.E.M. family when the band was inducted into the Hall of Fame. I worked with legends, met legends, tried to make legendary things.

When I joined, websites were made using Flash and a janky CMS that plugged content into it. My team and I introduced Drupal, dynamic publishing, community based websites and “experience sites” like Mission Metallica. We rode the technology waves from Zune to ringtones, Motorolla to Nokia, iPhone to iPad, MySpace to Facebook.

And now its time to move on.

This was not a decision that I made lightly, nor one that I don’t constantly second guess. I’m leaving dear friends, projects, technologies and a company that has been part of my life since right before my first anniversary to now, with a 19 month old baby. Warner Bros. Records and Warner Music Group was more than a place of work, it was home. The people there were family. The artists entrusted us with the representations of their lives work, and everyone treated it with the respect it deserved.

The management has changed, as things do. People left and people joined. As they do. But it never ceased to be family, and never will cease to be one. I now join the very wide group of WBR/WMG alumni and look forward to watching from the side as they continue to do amazing things.

This business is changing, and one of the things that has always remained constant for five years is the entropy inherent to half century old company having its very foundations seismically shift. Not a day went by when we at WBR weren’t cognizant of that change. We worked to predict where things were going, call BS on things that were wrong, and orient the company toward things that were right. We succeeded a lot, we missed a lot.

Leaving, I’m proud of the work that I did as a part of this team. Times like these are not easy for record companies, nor anyone who has an economic model tied to things that are non-corporeal where they once were. The next years won’t be easy either, but I think the trajectory is sound if executed well. The team I’m leaving will do so, I’m confident of that.

As for me, I’m leaving but not far. The music business is where I grew up, I feel. I’ve worked with REM since I was a teenager and will continue doing so, and when I figure out the next step, it will seem logical and cool. I hope.

In the meantime, I’m going to spend some time doing nothing, working on the R.E.M. project, finishing the furnishing of my new home and in general enjoying the first time since I was 16 that I have not been tied to servers. And maybe take the time to learn some new technology.

My email now reverts to the same one it was since I was 16: ethankap [at] murmurs.com

And I’ll see everyone in Austin.

I realize it has been way too quiet here. Things are busy at work and at home and my blogging time has been limited. However, I will do a year in review post, but first I’m going to do some resolutions for next year, inspired by Kevin Rose’s post of the same.

Like Kevin, I’ll do 10.

1. Get back into tennis. I haven’t played since high school and I’m in a lot better shape now than I was then.
2. Maintain my work/computer/life balance properly, especially time with Eli and Amy
3. Be a nicer person
4. Now that we know Eli can travel, we should do so!
5. See more concerts
6. Run another marathon
7. Make an iPhone app and a web app
8. Organize life and keep it organized
9. Learn something new NOT involving computers, programming languages, etc
10. Organize photos (both digital and analog), scan the analog in, make books

For the last month I’ve been in the middle of moving from our townhouse to a new house. The move went off pretty well, only slightly above budget. For the move, we didn’t do much in the way of renovation, just floors and paint, but these have a way of cascading into more work. As I stated earlier, I’m also using the move as a way to retool my home automation strategy. I’ll post more on that soon, but here are my top ten tips on moving from my perspective.

Rule One: You Get What You Pay For

With this move, I took the stance that I was going to pay for quality. We were operating on a very tight timeline for renovations and the move, not to mention a one year old, that I wasn’t willing to go for the lowest cost options for anything, including moving trucks, hardwood, tile and painting. The cost hurt, but the fact that everyone finished on time, and to quality did not. All told I had to hire a handyman, painter, tile installer, flooring company, packers and movers and a home theater installer. The fact that they had three weeks to do their job and no overlap or buffer, and completed it on time makes me a firm believer in “you get what you pay for.”

Rule Two: Use Backpack

Moving and renovating have a lot of moving pieces, not to mention the actual   process of buying the house. To simplify our lives, I used Backpack from 37Signals to manage all aspects of the move. We had a master calendar in there with key dates, and pages for each of the subject areas: renovation, computer systems, home automation, furniture ideas. I also had a page that room by room had pictures I had taken, which greatly helped during renovation and as a visual reminder of things to get.

Rule Three: Call, Call, Call

Because we were operating on a super tight deadline between renovation and moving, as well as prepping our old place for renters, I was extremely diligent about making sure people started work when they said they would. To ensure this, I had four calls for each vendor in my calendar. Two weeks prior, one week prior, three days prior and night before. The two weeks prior was good as for one vendor, they forgot about the commitment. The one week served to make sure I had everything prepped for them (material, access, etc). Because of these calls, 100% of my vendors started and stopped right on time.

Rule Four: Plan early

We had the luxury (or not) of 60 days between escrow close and renovation start, and about 80 days between escrow close and move in. This gave me ample time to plan everything down to the minute. I started the day escrow closed, assembling up lists of things to do, starting with address changes and all the way down to specific coordination of the move itself. Because I booked everything super early, I also got very good rates on things and gave more flexibility to Amy and I. In my view, as soon as you know you have to move, start planning and working on it.

Rule Five: Pay movers

I’ve moved about six times in my life, since I turned 18. Every time save for one, I moved myself, including driving trucks, loading and unloading. The only time I didn’t was when I had the move paid for when I relocated to Los Angeles. As tempting as it was to do it all myself, since we had so much time, I made the decision to only do enough packing of things we weren’t using, but otherwise pay a mover. I used Northstar moving, and while not cheap, I got three guys for about 6 hours to pack up most of our townhouse, move it and unload it at our new house. With a one-year old baby it was essential. Nothing was damaged, and all told, even with the cost, I think it was well worth it.

Rule Six: Make it comfortable

One of the things I wanted to do was make this move as comfortable for my family as possible. The biggest issue with moving is disruption, and that applies in triplicate if you have a baby. To do so, I made sure that before we even set foot in the new house on moving day, that it was partially stocked with food, Internet was setup and most importantly, it was clean. The day before we moved in I had a cleaning crew in for five hours giving it a deep cleaning. We had taken out a lot of terra cotta tile (actually something like 1600 sq feet of it), so we had Martian red dust everywhere. The crew made sure that when we moved in, the bathrooms were cleaned, insides of cabinets, etc.

Having the Internet, DirectTV, etc turned on also made it easier for Amy and I to manage things. Also, because I had the home theater guys do their install earlier, our TV and speakers were hooked up which made the moving day a bit easier. The telling point is that Eli slept through his first night in our new home. As did Amy and I.

Rule Seven: Plan for the 10%

Everything will take 10% longer, cost 10% more and be 10% more of a headache than you anticipate. For every 100 sq feet of floor to install, count on having 10 sq feet of issues. With us, we had bad foundation, an accidental carpet removal in a closet, etc. I accommodated in my budget and my timing for this 10%, so I was not having constant anxiety attacks. The question wasn’t if we’d have problems, just what they would be.

Rule Eight: It’ll never be perfect

I read Dwell Magazine and Apartment Therapy and watch HGTV like everyone else, and through these you see homes that are perfect down to right angles at every wall. You’ll never achieve this. Give up on trying. The baseboards will have issues, paint won’t be in ruler straight lines. There will be dings in bull-nosing. The electric plates might be offset a bit. Walls wont’ be straight, etc. There is no perfect. Let it go.

Rule Nine: One thing at a time

Back to Dwell, when you move into a new house that is your “dream” house, you want it to immediately be ready for a Dwell photographer. Everything has to happen NOW, furniture, renovation, etc. It can’t. Just focus on the immediate, and start planning for the future. The consequence of not taking one thing at a time is getting overwhelmed and putting yourself into an inertia problem. There are infinite options for chairs, sofa’s, accessories. Give yourself one task, ie: I will automate my light switches this weekend, not 15. Buying a home doesn’t mean putting an expiration date on your ability to do things in it. Does it really matter if a room isn’t perfectly staged right away? No. Would you rather have patio furniture or a picture on a wall. I voted for patio furniture.

Rule Ten: Don’t forget the people (and things) moving with you

This should be self evident. I’m a planner and architect of software by trade, so my tendency is to break a big job into tasks that I can treat in a near algorithmic fashion. That’s what I do, devise systems to make the insurmountable easy to manage. I do so without emotion, which is an issue with those for whom a move is something more than just physical. Moving is a huge deal, and takes a huge toll on everyone. It’s important to not forget the people and animals moving with you. For me that included my dogs, cat and my wife and son. We had issues with the cat adjusting, the dog did fine, but both Amy and I are taking time to get used to the new surroundings.

Often its best to leave some stuff unpacked and just deal with the reality of physical displacement.

So, any other tips that would apply to moving?

I’ve been bad. Super bad. Some new posts coming up soon, including a post on moving, a post on profiles, maybe some things related to my new job.

In the mean time here is a ridiculously cute toddler hugging a pug.

I’ve been teasing it out with Linked In, Facebook, my bio on Twitter, but it’s nice to officially be able to blog about my new job. As of February 1, I’m the Senior Vice President of Emerging Technology at WEA Corp., Warner Music Group’s US Sales and Retail Marketing company.

At Warner Bros. Records, the technology department started with the aim of not letting movements in other industries be predicates to movements in ours. The music industry, to a point always worked with technology. RCA and the phonograph, Phillips and the CD, and even dead formats (MiniDisc, DAT) were with music industry partnership. However all were predicated on a manner of control in the same vertical integration methodology that served us so well for so long. The music companies locked everything from talent recruitment to distribution, and formats included.

File formats don’t support this methodology, and while MP3 is far from a free and clear format, it was enough in the open to challenge the vertical integration strategies of the past. Let me be clear here: this is a good thing. Industries need a push from the outside, and that can usually be a positive if there are people to push back, work with it, and innovate. I was brought in to do that. Innovate, push back, work with technology in a very difficult time.

We did this from 2005 onwards and through our departments work we developed a Direct to Consumer platform based on open-source software, did some innovative marketing things with technology (Madonna’s Confess line, the R.E.M. campaign among many others) and in general, experimented, built a solid online business and had a lot of fun.

At a certain point, we started looking at all the data this fun was generating. It’s not enough to just put something out there unless you can recombine what you learn into more things you can push to market. It ended up that as the market turned, as things settled, data, and more importantly the experience it generated was emerging among all else as the strongest asset we could have. Experiences used as a means of enabling a tighter, more cohesive and unfettered relationship between the artist and their fan.

And building fan experiences through data is why I’m now at WEA.

In the last few years, WEA has transitioned from being about putting records on shelves to also helping the labels with merchandising, Direct to Consumer initiatives and now technology. The work we started at WBR is in a sense scaling upwards and outwards to help all the labels.

I lead up the Emerging Technology group within WEA, doing what I do best: finding new stuff, seeing if it works for us, vetting it out and slotting it into operations. I’m working with amazing people in our digital strategy and business development group and engineering and project teams, and in general doing what I did on a much broader scope.

We are at an interesting point where the externalization of human progress far exceeds our ability to process it. Really, a world of too much information, all at even disposal. Its as easy to get local as global. Big as small, small as big. One million for one, one for one million. The quantification of scale doesn’t exist, and indeed because of this fractal sensibility, the comprehension of a concrete artifact representing any one thing likewise doesn’t exist.

In this type of world, when the primacy of the artifact is diminished to such an extent, becoming nothing solid, but instead a Deleuzian rhizome leading further and further down the rabbit hole, it’s experience that drives the market over any intrinsic value of a concrete, reified “thing.”

With our business, the fan experience starts becoming that which contextualizes what was known prior as an artifact. It, in conjunction with the artifacts referent becomes the unit of measurement of product, property, tangible something to buy. And at the root of this is data. Data that helps contextualize the experience for the fan, data that helps us find the fan for an experience and conversely, helps find the experience for a fan.

Data and experiences as tools are powerful and demanding. Powerful because it can wield absolute power over human agency, and demanding for the same reason. It’s not enough to just wield data to make experiences, but to actually innovate with data, you must use the tools of innovation and participate in those tools’ ecosystem.

I posted in a post that data is our new asset base. I believe that holds true, but given the abstract nature of data, it is important for me to remember: I work in the music business. Our business is representing artists. The work that we represent for those artists is their life. It is our job to make sure we treat their life with the preciousness it deserves.

I’m happy, excited and inspired to be working in such an amazing business at such an amazing time. I worked in newspapers from 1995 – 2002, and saw some interesting things indeed. Most of what I saw was the collective myopia imposed by self administered horse blinders. It’s nice to work in a company, with people who not only are operating with perfect and clear vision, but burn the horse blinders at the door.

As I said:

“Data: our asset base. Artists: our core. That is the new music business. It’s an exciting time indeed.”

And that still holds, even more so now.

Last year, I posted a reference to a tragic event in our family.

Now I’m happy to report that we had a great event. My uncle and my aunt are proud parents to a little girl, born via surrogate on Wednesday. Leah James.

I have my first first cousin, and now with Leah and her cousin Eli being a year and a week apart, we continue the rather screwed up generational divides in my family (my uncle, my mom’s little brother is five years older than I, 18 years younger than my mom).

I said a little over a year ago: “In the end we’re only as strong as our will to keep living forward.”

Collective strength and love brought us to this day and it is a happy one indeed.