This is a great and interesting article by David Browne at Rolling Stone talking about the change in the music industry where bands and artists are turning to independent means (such as their own pockets or Kickstarter) for producing their music and then selling directly to their fan base.

I found it especially interesting that the very thing which is empowering artists to sell directly to their fans, is also the very distraction which is making it harder for them to focus on their music:

The rise of Twitter and Facebook has helped bands connect with their followers like never before, but it also means another distraction from the creative process. “Fans expect things to come directly from the artist,” says Tennis manager Rob Stevenson. “You have to get yourself to the next gig and do a good gig and do your social media stuff. And there are still only 24 hours in a day.”

Via Elliot Jay Stocks, who is planning to release an album next year and will be experimenting with a business model in which fans of his music can subscribe and get digital songs released several times during a 12-month timeframe and which will culminate in a finished vinyl album.

Also, I love that Elliot connected the dots between the shift in the music industry and the shift in the publishing industry related to some of the concepts laid out in Craig Mod’s most excellent article, Subcompact Publishing.

Patrick Rhone reviews his “aging” first-gen iPad.

A very welcome update, though the iPad design looks a lot like just a bigger version of the iPhone’s.

Update: Federico Viticci has a great review of Rdio 2.0 and all its new features. As I’ve been using the iPad and iPhone apps this afternoon and evening, I agree even more with his sentiment regarding the design of the iPad version:

Second, I’d like the iPad version of the app to always show the sidebar. Right now, several areas of the iPad client look like a blown-up iPhone app, whereas others show that the Rdio team took advantage of the larger screen with grid views and modal windows. However, in albums or playlists the interface is made by a vertical list that looks awfully similar to the Android tablet apps Tim Cook made fun of. There’s too much wasted space that could otherwise be used for the sidebar or, perhaps even better, the social ticker that is still exclusive to the Mac app and web player.

Another fantastic interview:

… let me say that I’ve built my entire career on pushing myself to do things that I didn’t believe I could do.

Matt Alexander posted an excellent interview with Brent Simmons. In it they talk about “tools for the modern writer, pursuing passions, the value of the written word, and the state of the publishing industry.”

Words and stories are my passion, and I’m lucky to live in this era when words and stories are ridiculously abundant and where worldwide distribution is nearly free. People who love to read and write have never had it this good.

As usual, Brent has some very intelligent and insightful things to share. If you enjoyed Craig Mod’s article from yesterday, this interview with Brent complements it nicely.

Colugo is the easiest way to share photos privately with your friends and family.

Colugo is a simple solution to a simple organization and communication problem. Colugo doesn’t use gimmicks like other apps do. No “magic” albums or location based sharing or other features that may sound cool in theory, but when you actually use them you find they are not very useful (at best), and a privacy nightmare (at worst). Colugo is private photo sharing done right.

Want to share some of your photos publicly and others privately — in a single app?

With Colugo you can! Make one album for the world to see, and “publish” it. Keep your other albums private, viewable by only those you invite.

Tired of returning from a party and having to contact all your friends for pics?

With Colugo you won’t have to. Partygoers can take pictures directly into a party album you create and you all share.

Colugo. Simple.

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My thanks to Colugo for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. Sponsorship by The Syndicate.

Craig Mod reviews The Magazine — and, briefly, the digital publishing industry at large — as only he can:

Newsstand is perhaps the most underutilized, under-imagined distribution tool in the short history of tablet publishing. If you squint your eyes and tilt your head at just the right angle, you’ll notice something magical about Newsstand: given the proper container, it’s a background downloading, offline-friendly, cached RSS machine people can subscribe to. For money.

When you look at it this way, it becomes clear just how important iCloud is to the Apple ecosystem. It’s slow and subtle integration with iOS and OS X has become paramount. The cohesiveness of iOS and OS X is achieved though iCloud by syncing documents, media, settings, etc. Take that away and a lot of the “magic” of iOS and OS X would turn into pain points.

Twenty-six of the finest gift suggestions around from Kindles and gadgets to books and movies to coffee and more.

Rodney Mullen — “the godfather of street skating” — gave a brilliant and fun TEDx talk about what skateboarding and innovation have in common. If I had to sum it up, I’d say his talk is more about how a new context can lead to a new spin on content.

(Via Michael Mulvey.)

Ronald Deibert:

Side projects spark our creativity by taking us away from The Grind.

The Grind is the problem that you beat yourself up over solving every single day. It’s the job you’re in, or the business you’re building. The Grind gets our best hours, our fullest attention, and the whole of our willpower.

A side project is just another type of creative outlet. (Via Chris Bowler.)

Dylan C. Lathrop:

[I]ncreasingly I’ve realized that for people like me, one creative outlet isn’t enough. The most interesting, creative people I know express themselves in a variety of ways. I call this practice informing practice […]

How many creative expressions do you regularly do? Off the top of my head I can count 5: writing, web design, front-end web development, podcasting, and now photography.

I like Dylan’s phrase, practice informing practice. What that says to me is all our expressions of creativity feed one another. My daily podcast affects my writing, and vice versa. The mindsets and foundational principles I’ve learned about writing are now teaching me about photography. There’s no argument that the most “important” creative outlet for me is my writing (it’s the one that pays the bills), but if I were to forsake all other creative outlets to focus only on writing, my writing would be the less for it. The muse needs a chance to rest while other creative muscles are exercised.

The top of this image has a lot of buttons, the middle has a lot of colors, and the bottom has a lot of shiny screens.

Also, it’s incredible to think that some of these phones would also appear on a chart showing the design evolution of the personal computer. Just goes to show that though the basic size of and function of a mobile phone (a cellularly connected device that fits in your pocket) has gone relatively unchanged in the past 25 years, what makes a phone useful and appealing has drastically changed. It used to be primarily about the hardware; now it’s mostly all about the software and the 3rd-party app ecosystem.

(Via Jim Dalrymple.)