2: No, we are still not the media.

Welcome to Grumpy Old Geeks, a weekly podcast where two old internet vets talk about technology, the internet, where it's going to shit and what we do to fix it. I'm Jason. And I'm Brian.

You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com slash Grumpy Old Geeks, on Twitter at GOG Podcast, or on the web at grumpyoldgeeks.com. Or you can email us at podcast at grumpyoldgeeks.com, and now you can also subscribe to us on iTunes. Just search for Grumpy Old Geeks.

And we're back. Episode two. Episode two. Very exciting. Who'd have thought we'd have made it this far? I didn't think we'd make it past one. So a little follow-up from last time, because I kind of screwed up on the price of the Memto. I said it was probably under $200. It was actually $275. My bad. Okay. You still don't want me to get one. Doesn't factor into the cost of your life having to go through all the photos. I found a cheap alternative, too, and this one actually...

Is there a kid in India to go through all the pictures for you? No, no. Not for going through another Memto-like camera. Oh, okay. This one was, like, really cheap, and it had LEDs, so it would do night vision. So... You still think this is a good idea? No. Nothing I said? Not night vision. I don't think night vision's a good idea. Oh, no.

Isn't there a filter for that on Instagram? Can't we get the Paris Hilton porn filter? No. Just turns everybody green? Unfortunately. No. Okay. It's like the Hulk fucking. Oh, thanks. Thanks for putting that one in my head. No problem. So, uh, thanks for the feedback to everybody who listened and wrote us. We really appreciate it, and, uh, we're, we're taking your feedback into consideration. We'll keep it short this time. Keep it tight. Keep it pro.

Right. I think we can handle that. I don't know. We tend to ramble. We do tend to ramble, but I'll, uh, have to put my editing cap on better. Or we can just rein it in. I'll, I'll, I'll rope you in and pull you back. Good luck. And we are now on iTunes, fortunately. So you can follow us on your little podcast app, which I have to say has gotten better. I got the new version of the podcast app. Okay. The Apple. Yes. Which I've been using anyways. Yeah. I like it. The, uh, the reel to reel's gone. You can do lists

and it actually works. Now, let me ask you a question since this is on topic and it actually relates directly to us. What is best for us for people to listen to? Should they subscribe on iTunes? Is that what we want them to do? Yes. Cause that's the only way we get the ratings. If they, if they're using, uh, a different podcast player, like going to our website and listening there, we'd rather you subscribe and give us a really nice rating because we're really nice people. Yeah. And, and you like us. Yeah. You really do. You want us to make a buck

or two so we can keep buying the beer instead of going out of pocket on it. And what are we drinking this week, Brian? We're drinking moose drool. So if you'd love to sponsor us moose drool, uh, it's quite enjoyable so far and, uh, you know, but we're open to anybody basically except Budweiser, but I could even suck it up for that if they paid me. But light on a hot day is not bad. Well, the best part about not actually doing a video podcast is they wouldn't know. Yeah, that's true. So I have a question for you. Yes. I want you to

explain something to me. Okay. Why are people making all of their, uh, uh, profile icons on Facebook and Twitter pink that look like a couple of sticks of bubble gum? They actually went red. I believe I think the, it's actually red that we're going for here. Well, there's two colors. One looks like red. One looks like pink. Okay. Fair enough. Okay. So it's a pink red combination. And are you really asking me? I'm asking you why people have done this? Uh, as I'm sure anybody that is listening to this podcast knows, this is a support for,

uh, doma or actually support against doma, which is going up to the Supreme court defensive marriage act, which everybody is hoping will be overturned. So a chick can marry a chick, which is hot and a dude can marry a dude, uh, less hot, but who cares? Less competition, less competition.

Um, that's what it's all about. And, uh, again, this is, you know, we've seen this before online and with social networks and support of various social things, but this is definitely by far, uh, the biggest that, that I've ever seen with the most participants and definitely the most press about it and, and the most attention about it. Um, as far as I can tell, it started with, uh, George Takei as all things on Facebook do these days. So see, I don't think

this is, I, this is the latest. I don't know if it's the biggest because I believe the green revolution in Iran sparked everybody on Twitter to make their icon green. And half of the people that I flipped through on the global timeline still have it. Really? Yeah. Uh, again, as, as you know, I'm not a big Twitter fan, so I only check in for client reasons or whatnot. Um, definitely, uh, the only thing that I saw in comparison to this, at least on Facebook so far

was when everybody did green screens in support of, uh, the whole Hollywood thing around the Oscar time. Uh, but that's, uh, which I'll get into in a little bit when we talk about this a bit more, that's a self-selection. I happen to know a lot of people in the industry. So therefore a lot of my friends icons went green because they all work within the industry. Uh, this time around it's, it's a lot of people. Um, I'd probably easily say about 50% of my friends on Facebook have switched

their icons. Okay. So let me rephrase the question. Why, why do people do this? It's for me, it's a shallow gesture, meaning nothing with no substance, with no substance. It is. I agree with that a hundred percent. And did you change your icon? No, I did not change my icon, but I didn't change my icon because I was lazy. And then, uh, I had the psychological factor of kind of wanting to

sort of maybe change my icon because I was getting into it a little bit, but it was too late. And then I didn't want to be seen as a latecomer and, uh, you know, I wouldn't want to do that. Um, no, I agree with you. This is, this is, you know, the Lance Armstrong live strong wristbands, which you would never catch me in, in a million years. And that was even before we found out he was a liar and a fucking bastard. Um, but those actually raise money cause you had to buy them. Those do raise money. This is, this is, uh, I don't see these, I think I see those as apples and oranges. That's

giving money to a cause and supporting the cause through, you know, a purchase. It's money. Right. Goes to the charity. There's absolutely no money involved in this. And, um, I agree that it's completely useless and it's also a self-selecting sample. Um, I haven't changed my icon because I think everybody that is my friend knows that I don't give a fuck who marries who. It's not that I'm particularly in support of gay marriage, but I'm definitely not against it. I really don't

care. You do whatever the fuck you want to do. And I'm totally fine with that. And I think everybody knows that about me. And if you think, if you thought otherwise, please defriend me. If you're listening to this, if you're so rabidly against gay marriage and you think it's going to destroy real marriage, then real was in air quotes. Don't get all pissed off at me. My gay friends, um, then unfriend me because obviously I support this, but I didn't change my icon because I figure everybody knows that. And I think most people on Facebook,

I mean, granted, we've kind of expanded the boundaries of what friends are and we have our work friends and we have, you know, the crazy uncle that shows up to Thanksgiving drunk and tells you that not that many Jews died in the Holocaust. Oh, that's just my family. That's just my crazy uncle. But we all have that version of the crazy uncle who shows up and you're probably maybe friends with on Facebook because he found a way to get on. Um, you know, it's a self-selecting

sample. Otherwise, most people on Facebook, your friends are your friends. They have the same beliefs. So I'm seeing a bunch of people kind of reiterating the same thing I believe in when they change their icons. So it's a bit useless in that sense. You're not converting anybody.

You probably don't. Changing your icon isn't going to convert the one friend that you have that hates gay people. And he might change his icon anyway, just to fit in. One of my friends actually changed. And I actually don't really know where he stands. I'm pretty sure he's okay with gay people, but he's a smart ass. He changed his icon to a blue cross, which is quite hilarious. I mean, I fell on the floor laughing when I saw that because, but you know, that's a bit of being an ironic asshole like a lot of us are, which is when we

see a trend, we want to buck against it. Right. And he actually did it, which props to him for that, because that was quite funny. No, it, you know, I was, I was snarky and, and, you know, flippant about it when I first started to see it happening. As it started to take over more and more, I even have to admit that it made my little Grinch heart grow two sizes that day.

See, I just see it as herd behavior. I liked it. Okay. It shows a solidarity. It shows a certain, I don't even know how to explain it. It did, as I saw my feed fill up with red icons, it was kind of cool. I liked it. When I started to have a problem with it is when everybody got fucking creative with it.

Like using the two slices of bacon. Like using the two slices of bacon or throwing in, you know, sparkles and, and all that sort of, you know, if you're going to do it, do it and use the original and just fucking do it and have everything be uniform. Cause that's, there's a certain power in, in that kind of solidarity, which I still like. And, you know, even onion wrote an article and it was very funny where they had the Supreme court justice going, I don't know which way we should vote

yet are enough icons on Facebook red. Very funny. Um, I know it's useless and I know it's stupid and I know that, you know, I've railed against similar things in the past, but there was a point the other day when I was like, wow, this is kind of fucking cool.

You're, you're entitled to your opinion. I still totally disagree. I don't think it doesn't emotions left in this broken robot body of mine. And that's what triggers it. People changing their profile picture in solidarity for cause that basically, if you're a friend of mine on Facebook, you already know that that's how I feel. I don't give a shit either.

And the people that I'm friends with don't give a shit either. Yeah. And yeah, I do have self-selecting samples. That's what Facebook is. I do have a lot of gay friends on my, my feet or my, my friend list from San Francisco and a few down here. And you know, I want them to be able to go be as miserable as everybody else because I personally just don't believe in marriage. Well, that's the old story too. It's like, why would we deny anybody the misery that we all have? Yeah. Um, you married people have, well, yes, I am married. There's a certain

amount of misery that comes with it. And if you guys want it fine, you shouldn't be all just be having fun, drinking beer down at rage. It's not fair. You know, I want things to even out for us. It's actually more for the married man. We want you guys to get married. Please. God, I can't wait until you get married. I can't wait until you have to deal with divorce. I can't wait until you deal with fights. Oh, it's going to be awesome. Well, the gay people know how to fight pretty well already. Do they? I've never really, oh, I guess I have. That's kind of funny.

Yeah. They're, they're really good at it. They're very funny about it. And they do it much better than straight people because they get it out of their system and make up much faster. It's great. I wish, I wish we could argue as well as gay people could. And I don't want to turn this into a gay versus straight thing. I was, I really wanted to talk about the, I wanted to talk about the icons and the meaningless gestures. And, and I see your point now. That's there, there's a social pressure that's

involved too, which I find really kind of interesting. It's like, it's a getting on the bandwagon thing to almost an extreme. And I saw this because I had some friends that, that didn't want to change their icon for whatever reason. For me again, like I said, it's just pure laziness. But they actually felt the need to make a statement about why they didn't change their icon. I saw quite a few posts

that were along the lines of my icon is a picture of my doggie. I love my doggie in no way, shape or form. And my against gay marriage, they felt the need to come out and say why they hadn't even changed their icon, which is this bizarre form of like social network pressure that exists now.

Yeah. Which is insane to me. Like I'm not changing my icon. I have many transgendered friends and I have gay friends and I have lesbian friends that just because I haven't changed my icon to two red strips of bacon on a pink field does not mean I don't support you. I love my dog. Well, I saw, I've seen that and I got to say the best one is from my good friend, Dr. Jonas Luster, who, very smart guy, but he's like, he's about the same way, but his wasn't about he loves his dog.

He's like, he loves his friends. So he's more protective about his friends. He doesn't feel the need to change his icon because he knows how he feels. He knows who he is. And if you fuck with his friends, he will take you out back and beat the shit out of you. Well, there you go. Yeah. And he may, I'm going to put that in the show notes because it's one of the most beautiful rants. He, this guy can rant. He's, he's German. He can rant like a, oh, he can rant.

We'll have to get him in here and we can have a rant off. This is the two Germans. Yes. Rant off. Most of mine I actually have to leave out of the podcast, unfortunately, but I, I'm known to rant. Okay. I think that about covers the, uh, the icon controversy. Yeah, I think it does too. And again, it's going to happen again and again.

It's going to happen again and again, and that's going to get frustrating. This one is pretty near and dear to my heart. Uh, I really do believe that for us being the USA, um, it's ridiculous that we don't have this kind of equality. Uh, one of my favorite, uh, I have a bunch of Canadian friends cause I have spent a lot of time in Toronto and other cities as well. A lot of Canadian friends, they haven't joined in on changing their icons red, but they

do have a, uh, kind of red image that they're posting with a moose in the center because it's Canada. It just says marriage equality. We just call that marriage. Yeah. So, you know, other countries are quite progressive compared to us and it's about time that we stepped into at least the 20th century, if not the 21st. So.

And, and I think I've just solved the problem of having, having an icon that goes with a theme where you can still actually make a donation and be contributing to the cause. Okay. You know, you go buy a wristband. Yeah. How about we do this? We do supporticons.com Supporticons. So you go to the site, you pledge money to the cause and now with QR codes, you can make them pretty. You can put all sorts of colors and stuff on it. You get your support

icon, right? Use it as your profile picture. Then anybody can QR code, your support icon, go back to the site and see how much you donated to the cause and which cause you, you donated to. That's actually such a genius idea that if you don't immediately start to code it right after this podcast, we're going to have to delete this bit. Because we got to keep this.

Okay. That's good. All right.

All right. And we're back from our little break. Where we all check our Facebooks and Twitters and emails and we made sure everything was okay. And had a little lively discussion about intellectual property rights, given the last idea we just had. Which leads me into what I want to be our main topic this week, which is funding and money on the internet for intellectual properties.

And you're specifically talking about crowdfunding. I am specifically talking about crowdfunding. So for those few of you who don't know what crowdfunding is, and well, actually, I think a lot of people still don't quite understand it. There are platforms out there now where you can put up an idea for something that you want to make, build, just some kind of creation.

Let's throw out the big name that everybody knows, because I'd be surprised if people have not heard the term Kickstarter. Yes. Kickstarter is the 800-pound gorilla, or 900, or however many pounds they need to be. And they're doing all the high-profile fundings right now. There are a couple other ones out there. Indiegogo for about the same type of stuff. It's very similar. There's another one called Crowdrise, which is only for nonprofits.

I love that concept. Yeah. And there are a bunch of other ones that are popping up to cash in. That's always going to happen. The basic idea behind these things being, you have an idea. You don't have the money to build this idea to fruition. Theoretically, you don't have the money.

Theoretically. You could go to a bank, like we all used to do, and get a small loan. You could write up a business proposal and do the angel funding route, like we all used to do. Or you can make a snazzy graphic and a little video, sign up with Kickstarter slash Indiegogo, and write up a concept for your idea, and ask people to pay you money in advance so you can go do your idea. That's the basics.

Right? Also, don't forget bootstrapping it yourself, the way we used to do. Bootstrapping it yourself like I've done, like you've done. You work at night. You work your ass off. You save a few pennies here. You save a few pennies there. You don't get paid for your grand idea, but then it turns into something. Then you quit your job, and then you do that thing, if it's successful.

Yes. You don't get the money up front. You don't get the money up front. Without proving the fact that it's going to be something to begin with. But this is turning that paradigm on its head. Right. You think something's going to be successful from the photos and the videos, and you say, oh, that looks good. I want that.

Yeah. And without ever holding the product, without ever seeing the product in person. Oh, also, you're an investor, but you have no control over the product. And no equity. And no equity. Right. If the product becomes incredibly successful, you do not make any money off of it.

No, you get one. Yeah, you get one and a t-shirt. You pre-purchase. If you pay to the higher level. So I've got the two things I've gotten off of there are I got a Glyph, which is a little iPhone, basically tripod mount that you screw in.

Right. And from the same people who made that, they made this before. It's called the Cosmonaut, which is a fat, crayon-like iPad stylus. Right. Both of which, if I'd have tried them in the store, I never would have bought. Right. But I paid for them on Kickstarter.

Right. And are you happy with both? No, I'm not happy with either. Okay. Yeah. Now, I feel like I have to do a disclosure here because my business partner in Slender Fungus, my company, Wendy Marvel, is also a partner in a business that has done very well on Kickstarter. Okay. I've paid next to no attention, so I don't really feel like I have any information whatsoever about that.

But just in case for the lawyers out there, I am involved with somebody who has done a Kickstarter project, and she's quite happy with it. And as far as I can tell, except for your random one or two trolls that you always get who just spam you incessantly and find you everywhere and write nasty comments, so is everybody that bought their product.

Flip book it. There's the plug. Go check it out. And this is a physical product. It's a physical product. That they have to manufacture. They have to manufacture in sand, which has caused them all sorts of problems because when you get into – this is what Indiegogo and Kickstarter kind of allow to have happen, which the old models didn't, which is in the old models, you actually had to show you knew how to do shit before you sold it.

No offense to my dear friends who have done flip book it and done amazingly well, but they've had a lot of problems because they didn't have to overcome those hurdles first. They came up with the idea, and then they threw it up on Kickstarter, and then all of a sudden they got a shit ton of orders because it's a great idea.

Then they had to scramble to figure out how the hell do we mass produce this. And we've seen this a lot with like – what was it? The Pebble Watch and other like production type things where there's no organic growth, so they don't figure out what the hurdles are in the production process, the distribution process, all of the little things that you go through when you build organically.

Well, there's – and there's absolutely no business plan whatsoever. And generally there's not – there's no CFO. There's none of those things involved. It's the democratization of media or even products now, which is anybody can do it or at least throw it out there to have you pay for it.

But that doesn't exactly mean you can do it and you've done your homework. Because when I think of the democratization of media, I think more about blogs and podcasts and things like that, not so much from a funding. And how news has become the Huffington Post instead of the old standard NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw.

That you can trust. That's part of it. I mean Huffington Post itself will be a main topic for us at some point because I have a good 45 minutes worth of venom towards what they've become. But that's the democratization of media. It's seeing how news organizations have been devalued, how magazines have been devalued.

And we can start to talk about music. We can talk about movies. And both of those tie in directly with Kickstarter, which is not helping. Yeah, because I mean we were just talking about products. So I think the – what we need to focus on there is that you can do movies, music through Kickstarter and not just news.

I mean news doesn't really play into it. So it's – because from when I think media, I think news and reporting. Right. I mean I've got a tattoo on my arm that says free the media because I ran a blog network for eight years, which is very similar to the Huffington Post, except she was successful.

We were successful but not as successful. Well, you couldn't get Alec Baldwin to write articles for you. We had – Plus you didn't put pictures of the Kardashians' tits. No, no. Put it as news. No, but – Thanks, Huffington Post. There was a big difference between our model too is they let everybody write.

We had a small pool of people in every town. And what's his name? We had Wil Wheaton. Wil Wheaton was one of our writers out of the gate. He was a great guy. We loved Wil Wheaton. He was our token celebrity going out. Oh, no. We had Shani Jardin from Boing Boing. She was a writer. Chris Perillo, a media personality, like from our flagship.

But we kept it to a pool. We didn't go – But you realize that – We're getting off topic here. We're getting off topic. We are getting off topic. So let's pull it back. Yeah. We'll do it. So I think – As far as Kickstarter goes, I mean, I do not have a problem with what they're doing at all.

I don't have a problem with the little guys. I don't have a problem like with Wendy's flipbook thing. I think that's genius. I don't have a problem with all these little filmmakers. There's standing and sitting around in bumfuck Missouri who are shooting some cool stuff and put up big clips and go like, I want to do a movie.

And they're friends and random people find them and go, this looks cool. I'm into that. What I have a problem with is the fact that non-amateurs – this is – I see this as the Olympics. All right? Explain it. Kickstarter is the Olympics. It's supposed to be amateurs.

And then we kind of destroyed that even in the Olympics when we sent the dream team over. You know, a bunch of professional basketball players from the U.S. that just destroyed every other team. Wiped the mat with them. No fucking chance. Nobody even gives a crap about basketball and the Olympics anymore because it's going to be us that wins.

Kickstarter has opened up the doors to that. We have professional, professional musicians and filmmakers going on to Kickstarter and making millions. And what about the little guy? The little guy is gone. All the – there's only so much money to go around.

There's only so much air before it becomes a vacuum. And Kickstarter has allowed professionals who have other avenues to get funding for things to come in and get funding. And I find that ludicrous. But if the funding is coming from people that want to see, hear, touch, feel the product.

Right. Why do you have a problem with it? I need to understand why you – I know they're professionals. Okay. You know, but – Let me – let's talk Amanda Palmer. Okay. Let's go music field first because this is kind of what I know best. And it's almost hypocritical for me to say I have a problem with this because it's – this is exactly what I've been telling a lot of my bands for years that they should do.

But I do have a problem with it because the whole idea behind Kickstarter is, okay, you're some kid in your basement that's written some songs. And, you know, or you're a 25-year-old surf bum. You're the original Jack Johnson or whatever the hell that guy's name is that just writes the surf songs and everybody loves that has been writing songs for years.

And nobody signed you and you don't have another outlet. So you're just going to reach out. You're just going to reach out and make it happen. Great. That's amazing. That's exactly what these kind of services should be for. Then there's Amanda Palmer. Amanda Palmer had a very successful career beforehand.

She had a band. She was signed to a subsidiary of a major label. She was signed to Roadrunner Records for a long time, which is a sub of Warner Brothers Records. She supported Nine Inch Nails on tour in this band. So she's an established musician who has been kicking around for years and has a fan base that she got through Warner Brothers Records investing in her.

Warner Brothers put up probably a couple million dollars for her to get her career off the ground, to promote her, to put her on tour with Nine Inch Nails, to sell her first few albums, promote, promote, promote, promote, promote. Fan base, fan base, fan base, fan base. Now, eventually, the music industry obviously changed.

She got dropped. She got dropped or she left? I'm not entirely sure if she got dropped or left. From her video on Kickstarter, to me, it looked like she left. I mean, it was ambiguous. It's a little bit ambiguous. What she did was she threw around a bunch of numbers that are old school recording budgets, which actually don't get offered anymore.

So I have issues with the facts of what she threw around in her Kickstarter video as well because I know nobody gets those kind of budgets for recording anymore that she was throwing up. I work with bands that are much bigger than she ever was that don't get those kind of budgets.

So I kind of – there's some factual things there that could really be called out if I wanted to. But my point being, she is not a poor musician working in her basement. She had a professional label. She had professional lawyers. She had professional accountants. She had professional management. She had professional contacts.

She has a professional network that was built up over years because Warner Brothers threw millions of dollars behind her. So when she comes up onto Kickstarter and claims this is the new music, this is the new media, we did it. No.

No. We did not fucking do it. Warner Brothers' couple million dollars over ten years of your career built you a platform on which you could stand and make $2 million to record your next album. I think that was actually $1.192. $1.192 million to record your next album.

Just a quick question. Does she get residuals on all of her previous albums? Yes. Is she still making money on those? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Of course she is. I mean assuming that she paid off her recording budgets for the first – whatever the advance was from the label. Yes. If she's in the clear, of course.

In perpetuity or at least until 50 years when you lose your intellectual copyrights on songs or whatever, she will make money off those albums. So she is still getting money from the investment that Warner Brothers made in her. So she is not a starving artist. She is not a starving artist.

Even if she were not making any money whatsoever, she is married to Neil Gaiman who is not a starving writer. He's not a starving writer. And I don't want to call into marriage into the fact because that doesn't – it kind of doesn't count. That's kind of do-shake. But there's somewhat of a privilege in terms of the people that she has met.

She runs in circles of incredibly successful artists. Right. So there's no lack of money. And there's no lack of promotion and all that sort of thing. How much was she going for out of the gate to do her album? $100,000 or something like that.

I believe it was – let's pull it up really quick because I was looking at – No, it was $100,000. She only pledged $100,000, which is a reasonable budget in this day and age to record a professional-sounding album. Okay. Does that get you distribution as well or do you have to do separate distribution? I don't know how this stuff works. There's no point in spending money on distribution anymore.

There's no money to be spent. There's no point in doing CDs, especially for an artist like Amanda Palmer. Nobody is going to pick her up at Walmart. Right. It's not going to happen. And that's the physical market that's left in the U.S. So she's electronic distribution only. So it's purely electronic distribution anyways, which is they take their percentage. There's nothing up front.

So basically that $100,000 is to record and maybe go on the road. She did something interesting when she went on the road too, didn't she? Well, this is where the story really went sour for me. I was a little bit against this whole thing.

This is the future of music. We are the media. When the stories were breaking, I was just like, whatever. But I was willing to look past it because I don't think it's – like I said, for my bands, this would be great. Why have a label anymore? They've invested in you. If your contracts are up, get out of them and do it yourself.

If you have the fan base already, you can do exactly this and get your recording budget. Then she took crowdsourcing a little bit too far. Before we jump into that though, I want to ask you, what's the difference from you telling your bands to do it from her doing it? Where's the difference there?

Because your bands have – they've had millions. There wouldn't have been one. Okay. There wouldn't have been one, but – So are you just pissed because they didn't do it and she got the money? No. There's kind of a weird, slippery slope there that I'm not sure where it falls on. And I wouldn't have necessarily told my bands to do Kickstarter.

I always thought that there could be private investments. There are – say – I'm not going to name names, but let's go with a band that's done incredibly well. Any band. All right. Band A. That management company that they've been signed to for years has made millions of dollars off this band.

The band has millions of dollars in the bank. Pay for it yourself. Right. Do you believe in your own stuff? Put up your own $100,000 to record the next album. Don't ask your fans to do it. Put it up yourself and make all the profits because you know what? Here's the problem with Kickstarter.

Every single person that pledged money towards Amanda Palmer is not making residuals. They're not getting royalty checks. Right. They got a T-shirt. You got the album and a T-shirt. And if you paid the higher level, you got an album and a T-shirt and maybe a deluxe edition or maybe some vinyl.

I think they did a book too. Oh, they got a book. Okay. So you get a book. So you get product. But you've got the money. Do it yourself. Don't ask your fans to pay for your recording. That's what I've been telling my bands to do. You've got the money. Put it up yourself. Distribute it yourself.

Be done with it. I like Kickstarter for people that don't have the money. If you do, it seems a little bit wrong to me. Yeah. It seems a little greedy. Yeah. Because especially if you've hit – what the hell do you call that?

Breakaway orbit speed. I'm not sure where you're going yet. You know, the rocket – Warp speed? No. The rocket leaves the atmosphere. Oh, yeah. You get orbital velocity. Something like that. Something like that. Oh, my God. We'll have to look up the math. My science friends are going to hate me for this.

But once you have that and you have the money, you don't need a label anymore in this day and age. So why not pay for it yourself instead of panhandling? You're panhandling from your fans who have supported you through thick and thin the whole time anyways. Yeah. This is no different for me than, like, bumping up your ticket prices, than, you know, selling your album at double the cost.

This is gouging that the label used to do, except now the artist is doing it themselves. Right. Okay. Let's get to the point about her tour. Okay. This is when I really got sour on Amanda Palmer. She crowdsourced her album. Okay, fine. Great. Then she tried to crowdsource her tour.

In what way? She sent out messages to every city that she was playing at. Because she's done very well with social media and with email target marketing. She's been very smart about that. I could make a point about the fact that it generally involves her tweeting pictures of her tits and her pussy, which she has done on repeated occasions, which I find a little weird.

So there's been a lot of that, which is odd. But regardless of the fact that she's used her body numerous times on social media. You got it for one. Hey, well, yeah. Anyways, she did that, and then she decided to crowdsource her tour for musicians.

She sent out messages to every city that she was about to play in. Hey, learn the songs. Come play with us. We'll give you beer and let you hang out backstage. Now, there are unions for musicians. There are laws for these sorts of things, and there are hired guns.

This is an industry. There are a lot of musicians that you out there as music fans have probably seen thousands of times on stage with different bands without even knowing who they are. They're called side guys. They're incredibly talented people. They used to make a lot of money doing recording.

The recording industry has dried up. There aren't the budgets that Amanda Palmer was quoting in her little cute video on Kickstarter. Those budgets don't exist, so those guys don't get hired for recording anymore. People use sample discs, and people have the editing capable that you don't need a really good player in anymore.

You just have somebody that's kind of decent, and you sit there with Pro Tools and chop it up. So the only money that these incredibly talented musicians make that weren't able to, for whatever reason, aren't in a band that made it, or they are not a singer-songwriter. They're just a really great guitarist.

They go tour with other bands. They're the fill-in musicians to fill out the sound so everything sounds really good on the road. They get paid a lot of money. They get paid a weekly salary when they're on the road. They get paid stipends. They get per diems.

They get all kinds of stuff. Now, Amanda Palmer, after making $1.192 million, decides, well, I just don't really want to pay musicians to go out on the road with me. A couple went with her that got paid, but she just decided, let's fill out the sound and just have our fans come and do it for a beer and a laugh.

Now, there's two sides to that, which we've got to wrap this up real quick. One, the professional musician side that she's taking work away from is bullshit. Yes. An opportunity for a fan to play with the band, if you look at it from that perspective, is a different type of thing.

So if she's hiring non-professional musicians to learn. Billy Joe from Green Day does that every show for one song. What do you mean? Billy Joe from Green Day will stop the show in the middle of the song, ask out of the audience, who knows how to play this song? Grab some kid up and have him play.

That's new. I haven't seen that. That's the way you do it. That's cool. You don't send an email out in advance saying, learn the entire set. Yeah. And you can come play with us. Well, yeah, that's true. Learn the whole set. It's like, oh, okay, a couple people here and there as fans can come up and play along. Yeah. And that's cool. I didn't know Green Day did that because they weren't doing that when I used to see them.

I started working with him in American Idiot and he started then and from what I've seen, he's continued to do that. Okay, that's cool. Which is a really cool way to do it. That's how you do it. Yeah. Or you hold a contest or whatever. This is a little – what she did was a little different. There was a huge backlash online.

As there should be. That's bullshit. That's taking work out of people's – Exactly. It's money out of people's pockets. It's taking people's careers away. And the crowdsourcing, at least in the music industry – and I'll just try to run through this really quickly – has gotten a lot worse. I mean I don't know if it's a function of the fact that there are these social media experts out there now or diminishing money within the music industry or whatever.

The crowdsourcing has gone to album artwork. I've seen tons of bands try to crowdsource their album artwork. You don't get paid. Let's have 50,000 of our fans make album art and we'll pick the one that we actually like and give them a T-shirt. It's spec work and designers should never work on spec.

It's spec work. It's total spec work but it's – you're marketing to emotional fans that love you, that are willing to do stuff for free. Bands do merchandise the same way, crowdsource. Bands do all kinds of crowdsourcing and I just find it repugnant and wrong.

It hurts them as artists because it's no longer their vision. It also hurts professional designers who do this for a living. Yeah. And I also think it hurts fans who want to get a decent graphic on their T-shirt and not the best that the fans can do. Yes.

It's like – and I wonder how many shirts – how many less shirts they sell by having a fan-designed shirt versus a professionally-designed shirt. Yeah. They don't take that into account. It's like, oh, here's our shirt. You're going to buy it anyway. Let's just put whatever we can on it, have a contest and get it for free.

And even paying for a design for a T-shirt or a sticker or any of that stuff, that cost is trivial compared to the money that they make when they sell them. I only know from my own perspective that certainly the concept of you get what you pay for has gone out of the window in the music industry. They'd rather not spend $500 and rather make just $300 instead of spending $1,000 and making $20,000.

Yeah. The world is upside down. The world is a bit upside down. We've got one last thing we want to talk about for the Kickstarter side. And this is something that I know you're against. I'm in the middle of the road on it.

And that's the Veronica Mars upswing now. Yeah. And you have to be living under a rock to not have heard about this. Yeah. Veronica Mars, an old TV show, which I personally didn't very much enjoy. I've seen a couple of episodes. My wife loves it. Not my thing. Okay? Maybe that's it. I'm not a chick.

Although my friend Francis – sorry, Francis. He loves it. But it's been off the air for several years now. Right. And they're trying to bring it back by doing a Kickstarter. And yet it's a property of Warner Brothers. The creator of the show and the actors went to Warner Brothers and said, hey, can we go out, do a Kickstarter with your blessing?

Will you release the rights to us to do this? I mean not release the rights. They did not release the rights. This is when – Hang on, hang on. Not release the rights, but give them permission to use the intellectual property of Veronica Mars to create a new movie.

Yes. And Warner Brothers said – it was Warner Brothers, right? I'm pretty sure it was Warner Brothers. I believe so. We can look this up. If it's not Warner Brothers, we'll put it in the show notes. But they said, sure, go for it. And they wanted – it was like a million dollars. They asked for a million. And they got three plus.

They made a million within the first 24 hours. Yeah. They had three plus now. Yeah. And they had pretty good incentives. People could get walk-on roles. They could get talking roles, that kind of thing. And I'm going to let you go off on your little shit here for a second.

But let me just say, I am okay with this if it was a program that I really wanted back, like Firefly. I would personally put in $5,000. I don't care if 20th Century Fox gets all the money. I just want to see Firefly again.

And I think that might be the problem here is Veronica Mars fans are rabid fans who want to see their show again. And they don't care where the money goes after they get to see their movie. It establishes a dangerous precedent. Take it away. Let's hear it. Come on.

Okay, fine. That's great. You want your show back and you're willing to pay $10,000 to have a walk-on role. That's awesome. Except for the fact that the studio still owns the property. The studio will – basically the only thing this Kickstarter did was it threw $3 million in the face of – let's just run with Warner Brothers even though it may be wrong.

Or actually I'll just say the studio because I'm not entirely sure it's Warner Brothers. We threw $3 million in front of a massive conglomerate studio saying, wow, maybe we should make this movie. So now they're going to put more money behind it because there's no way it's only going to be a $3 million budget for the movie.

And they make every cent of the proceeds. If I'm throwing in on something that is this big, I want return on investment. I want ROI. Why am I not getting to dip my beak into the same thing that the Warner Brothers is? I basically just gave Warner Brothers my money to make a movie.

Plus I'm still going to have to buy the movie. No, I think – Well, you get a DVD or whatever, but it's going to come out in theaters and I'm going to pay another $12 there. And I'm going to get my – It's the most expensive crew jacket known to man. Yeah, it is. Except you're not getting paid. You're paying for the crew jacket.

Here's what it is though. They were never going to make this movie no matter what. So people are voting with their wallet saying, look, this is a – this is – I think this is more of a focus group that costs the fans way too much money. Why can't you just do a poll saying do you want to see a movie?

The peanut campaign that ran for Jericho. You didn't hear about that? I didn't watch the show. When Jericho for – I never watched it either. But this was a huge deal. When Jericho got canceled, people sent – there was an online campaign that started to send them peanuts because this is nuts that it got canceled.

And so many peanuts were sent to the studio, they renewed it for another season. And you know what? Popular swell does not always have to be backed by dollars when – oh, it's just wrong. It's setting a horrible precedent. Side note, the Jericho peanuts thing, that came out – they were copying what we did for Farscape when Farscape got canceled.

We sent them crates and crates of crackers because it was a thing in the show. Guess what? It worked for Jericho. Did not work for Farscape. Okay. You know why? Because it was money because the SyFy channel – Star Trek came back 20 years later without money, without fans having to throw money at the studio's doors.

The problem is it did not come back with the same cast. It did not come back with the same cast. And we want to see the shows that we were just watching with the same cast, the same production value, the same – I don't want to see like Firefly or Farscape come back in 20 years with a different cast. So for me, it's like, okay, I'll give a few bucks to the studio, let them make money.

But you know what? They're going to make money on it. Guess what they're going to do then? They're going to make more. Naomi. I just see this as a horrible precedent and a bad use of crowdsourcing. I think that there's a value to this for people that can't make their way through the normal media channels. I think you've already made your way through the normal media channels.

It's kind of cheating to go do this. It's cheating the fan. It's cheating everything. Having said that, I would gladly give $5,000 to a Kickstarter to redo the Battlestar Galactica last episode without fucking Ronald D. Moore being involved. See?

There you go. Get on it. It's all sci-fi. I understand your trepidation with the studios. It's a slippery slope. It's a slimy slope. We've already seen how it's fucking touring musicians. We've seen how it's fucking the music industry.

We're seeing it now in the movie industry. I find this somewhat wrong, and I can't be convinced that it's not. I understand your point. I think it's great to be able to bring these shows back. I just don't understand why we should have to pay for it when these are intellectual properties.

You don't have to pay for it. You do. No. This movie would never have been made unless they made $3 million that came out of your pocket, my pocket, everybody's pocket. Voluntarily. 100% voluntarily. People also voluntarily send money to Nigeria. Well, that's a different thing there.

No, but everything on Kickstarter is voluntary. People want it. They pay for it. People are very bad judges of their own. People should never be pirates of their own ship. But I do believe that what we're going to see shortly is every studio rolling out every dusty-ass property that they have that they can try and make money on to try and pull it back.

That's what I think is going to happen. Exactly. When they should be putting up their own dime for it instead, not asking you to do it. So do you think that these crowd – If I pay money for something, I want return on investment and I want a hand in the creation of the – I want a say.

I gave you – if I'm giving you $10,000 to make a movie, I want to read the goddamn script. You want script approval. I want script approval and final cut approval. Goddamn it. Because that doesn't – that works so well with the studio model with 10 executives. So you have 100 executives from the internet who are professional screenwriters.

Again, like I said, for a smaller movie, for somebody that's never gone through the system before, if you see something great on Kickstarter like some kid in Idaho that's making a movie about – what was it? Zombie kangaroos or something that we just saw a few minutes earlier? I'm going to go check it out. Fuck, I'll pay for that. Yeah. Why not?

But if this is a professional, massive thing that's already gone through the system – No. So I think what you're saying is that these crowdfunding platforms should not allow in corporate entities that already have an established business behind – You know what?

If Warner Brothers wants to do it, set it up on your own site. Kickstarter should be for amateurs. Again, like the Olympics. We shouldn't let in the U.S. Dream Team. This should be people that aren't paid to do what they're doing and they're trying to get paid to do what they're doing. Yeah. That actually makes sense to me and I could get behind that.

Just keep out the corporate entities. Yeah, keep out the corporates. And let them do it on their own, which is where they should be because they're a business. They should be doing it as a business. All right. All right. Yeah, I know I'm going to be. I'm going to be the man who goes along with you. If I get drunk, well, I know I'm going to be.

I'm going to be the man who gets strong next to you. And if I heave her, yeah, I know I'm going to be. I'm going to be the man who's heavering to you. But I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more.

Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles. Then fall down at your door. All right. We're back. Refills acquired. And now I know where Brian stands on Kickstarter for sure, I do believe.

So now I'm going to talk about something that I love. Now, I need a little setup here. Bring the love, Jason. I'm 41 years old. I'm a computer programmer, which means for most of my life I've sat on my big wide ass, which just gets wider. And for the past like several years, I've used a standing desk.

So I stand all day while I work. I'm really kind of jealous of that. I've been wanting one for ages. Yeah. And I can't recommend them enough. But right now, my last one kind of broke down and I'm saving up to get a treadmill desk. Because that's – it's the thing.

My friend Kevin at his last company bought everybody a treadmill desk. And he was just demolishing me every day on our Fitbits. And a Fitbit is this little thing that I keep on my hip. It just tracks how many steps I've taken every day.

I've had one for years. The original Fitbits were terrible because they would fall out, get in the wash. They just – they were horrible little creatures. And they came out with an update called the Ultra, which then would let you track going up and down stairs.

Right. So you get another – you get stairs. You got flatland walking. So geolocation is obviously built into them. No geolocation. Really? No geolocation. Don't hit the mic. I'm trying not to whack the mic. No geolocation. They're very simple. The old versions just had little dongles.

You'd have to clip them in and sync to your computer. And the syncing never worked. It was terrible. And it was because of the syncing never working that I actually went out and bought the new Fitbit, which is not called a Fitbit. It's just called The One. Like Neo?

Huh? Like Neo from The Matrix? Or Highlander. There could be only one. Yes. So I have – I just geeked out. The One. And I don't – you know, we could have a nerd fight someday over The Matrix and Highlander because I think I can – I can take either side of that argument.

But I'm pretty sure Conor McCloud is going to win. If you only accept the first movie in The Matrix, you're wrong. But if you bring in the other two into the canon, you might be right. Yeah. Well, that's – here's the thing. Same thing with Highlander. Yeah. I agree with that because I've seen Highlander 2. I've never gone beyond that.

But that was crap. Now, there's two versions of Highlander 2. Okay. Off topic. I know. I'm going to get back to it. Tangent. No. Sorry. But there's – one, they're aliens. You can't go with the Highlander where they're aliens. Okay. Back to the Fitbit. So my last Fitbit wouldn't sync anymore.

The syncing has always been a problem. And they came out with a new one that's just a little thing and it has Bluetooth finally. Oh, that's nice. So I can sync real time with my phone while I'm out walking. Right. And I can adjust my walks to find out where I'm at. And my goal every day is to have 10,000 steps because – going back to what I was saying because you'll walk 10,000 miles and I will walk 10,000 more.

I hate that song so much. Oh, God. I just found the music to go into this. Oh, no. I mean I loved it when it came out. But now I've gone back in my old age and listened to that song. It is terrible. You know it's in there now.

Sorry. So without having my standing desk, I find myself in a chair all day waiting to save up until I can get the new treadmill desk. And it kills me. So every hour I get up and go for a walk, take the dog out or whatnot. And at the end of the day, if I look down, I'm like, oh, I've only got 7,000 steps.

Well, I'm going to go around the block a few more times because I found that now that I'm getting old, I need 10,000 steps a day minimum to keep my back in shape after sitting in a chair all day. That's why I do laps around my local. But I thought you didn't get up at your local because you could play the jukebox from your chair.

In between. Okay. Okay. Well, at least you have a plan. No, I have no plan whatsoever. I've been wanting a standing desk for ages. A treadmill desk sounds even better. I've been reading about them constantly. They do sound amazing. I mean, especially for people.

We're all getting more sedentary. Most of us have day jobs that are just sitting at a desk. Yeah. It's a good thing. My first studio job when I got to Paramount, they had these hydraulic desks. And I was like, this is crazy.

You can stand and play marathon all day when you don't have any movies to build websites on. Oh, I miss marathon. We've got to get Riggs in for a marathon. Yeah. Our old friend, Dave Riegler, he and I used to play marathon all day. But we had a standing desk, so it was fun. And we had playing Prodigy on the angles. But anyway, so ever since then, I've always wanted one.

And I didn't get another one for years. And I could tell it just – and now that I'm definitely like too heavy, too old, too lazy, my back is shot. So we're seeing our metabolism slow down as we get older. And I tell you what, 10,000 steps a day is the bare minimum mark that everybody should hit.

And having a Fitbit is perfect for it because I lost mine for two months and I noticed my walking went down. Like they say, what gets measured gets managed. And it's true because without my Fitbit, I'm just like, I think I felt like 10,000 today.

And it was probably about one and a half. Right. And the Fitbit site is great because it's got badges and all this stuff. I've clocked over 3,000 miles on my Fitbit. So I've walked across the country wearing a Fitbit. Now, being unaware of this product whatsoever, is it basically just steps?

No, it's steps, distance – because you put in your height and your weight. And here's the cool thing. But it's not – you can't track other things like, say, weightlifting. No, no. Well, you can. You can put in any type of metric on the website, but it's not trackable. So it's not – So it's basically just for movement.

Right. Right. Okay. And they also make a scale. So you can – a Wi-Fi scale called the ARIA. So I've got the scale. I've got the Fitbit. Both of those go to my account on Fitbit.com. Right. So I can – and I have goals for weight loss and I have goals for steps and you can put in food and calorie and all that stuff, which is a pain in the ass.

I don't recommend it. They do sleep tracking so you can put it on your wrist and you, like, press a button when you're going to sleep. But the problem is I have insomnia regularly, so I'm just, like, waiting to fall asleep. But by the time I remember to press the button, I'm already asleep. You're already asleep, yeah. So it's useless. So it's all just, you know, tracking, stuff like that.

But just the basic minimum I think people should get is a Fitbit The One because the other ones are kind of janky. They've got little girly-looking ones for, like, kids that don't track height. Tracking steps is amazing because I get in contests with friends that have these things.

My friend, Dr. Teeter, went on a quest one day to hit 250 flights of stairs. That's quite a lot. He did 275 in one day. Impressive. Basically, he's in San Francisco, so he just walked up and down these two hills. Have you done the steps here in Santa Monica?

I haven't done these. I've done the painted steps. We'll have to add that to the show notes. Anybody that lives in this area should go do that sometime. It kicks your ass. I've done the painted steps in San Francisco that take you up to the top of one of the big hills. I used to do that all the time. Steps are tough, man.

It'll kill you, but it's good for your heart. It's very good for your heart. But just every day, if you can walk 10,000 steps, it's so much better for you. It alleviates the problem of not having a standing desk because at least your body is getting – you're getting an alignment, and you're working the smaller muscles with the micro movements and stuff like that.

And I recommend having both. Get a standing desk. Get a Fitbit. I definitely want a standing desk. I think I might have to get this Fitbit because I try to do that as well. It's one of the reasons that I keep clinging to for not quitting smoking because it gets me off my ass and gets me outside, and I walk around, and I go check my mail, or I'll walk down to the post office, or I'll walk down to the bank, or walk down to the bar.

Holy crap. I do a lot of really unhealthy things. Oh, well. So it's $99. You can get it at Best Buy. They come in a couple colors. I get the little burgundy one because I always had a black one. Fancy. It is. It's pretty. But just get it. Get it.

Use it. Sign up with your friends because a lot of people have them now, and you can – You can do the social thing. See how many steps you walk today. It just basically shows you seven-day average every week. It will send you a summary, best day, worst day. Or a post to your Facebook. If you want it to, but I don't want it to.

I especially don't want my scale to. But they definitely built that in, right? Oh, absolutely. Facebook, Twitter, all the social stuff. Yeah, all the social shit is in there like normal. Yeah. You can't take a shit without social anymore. Yeah, well, yeah. And soon we'll have the shit bit where it will weigh how much you took a dump this week.

All right. There's another idea for us to – oh, actually, I can build – there's definitely an app idea there. Okay. I'm done with healthy. In keeping with the social thing and – because my like of the week is – also has all that stuff built in, which I never use.

And I can't believe we're actually both doing two likes because – or loves because this is supposed to be love, lust. Yeah. I usually load things. But I'm going to talk about something I really like. Your load has gone out the window with Kickstarter. Yeah, I have enough for the product.

So, yeah, I have a love for an app this week as well. My love is for TripIt. It's the TripIt app. It's relatively popular. I mean there's quite a lot of people out there. There's a pay version. I've not paid. Sorry.

I just use the free version. But it's fantastic for anybody that travels a lot like I do. It's a great app. It's on your iPhone. It's on your iPad. They sync. The website syncs as well. It basically just tells you where you're going, when you're going, gives you convenient things like maps between the two places.

I guess the pay version does stuff like – gives you recommendations on what seats for your flights and all that sort of stuff. But for me, the bottom line on why it's fucking awesome is it decodes any single email you get from anyone.

Oh, this is the one. Okay, yeah. Any hotel. They've built their algorithm so it just reads them automatically. I've only had one email once from a bed and breakfast in like Santa Barbara. Not even Santa Barbara. It was some bed and breakfast in – oh, God.

What's that small tiny Dutch town here in California? There's a Dutch town in California? Oh, you have to go there at some point. Crap. It starts with an S. I can't remember right now. San Simeon? No, no. Well, we'll put it in the show notes. Let's not go crazy with this. Okay. But only one time have I forwarded an email to the site and had it got rejected.

Otherwise, any airline, any hotel, whatever confirmation email you get back, you just forward to plansattripit.com. And if it comes from the email address that you've signed up with them for, immediately goes right in their system, shows up on your app within 10 seconds.

It's beautiful. Okay. That's pretty cool. And the amazing part about it is you just have your iPhone when you're at the hotel or you're at the airport or whatever. You can just bring up your entire travel pants. Everything is in there. Travel pants? Travel pants. Travel pants. I have travel pants.

Okay. They're very comfy. Yeah. It's just everything is right in there. Confirmation numbers. Everything. It's beautiful. It's elegant. It's easy. And I'm sure there are a lot of great options in the pay version, and I encourage everybody to check that out.

Because anybody that develops an app should get paid for it. There are ads in the free version, so I know they're making money. It's fantastic. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I was going to be doing some traveling soon, but that fell through, so next time I'm going to do some travel. Definitely check it out.

It's a great app. Now, can you send it when you're doing your booking on the website for, like, I'm at Expedia. Yeah. And I can say, send my itinerary to, can I put in plans.tripit.com and it'll do it? Yeah, you can do that right away or just send it to yourself and just forward it.

Yeah, I didn't know if I had to go forward it. No, it doesn't matter. Either way, it'll work fantastically. Okay. And you can even, like, the alerts and stuff like that, you can set it to go to plans.tripit.com, and as long as it just works, it's fantastic. Okay. And you're not an app guy, so this is odd.

I'm not an app guy. That is one of the few apps that I really use for traveling. I would like to point out that the man who says he's not an app guy has reviewed an app two weeks in a row. I know. Well, it's grumpy old geeks. I figured, like, I couldn't talk about my Etch-a-Sketch or, you know, my intricate artwork that I've been doing, my etchings.

Your etchings. Okay. No, I tried to find apps that I actually really enjoyed, and there are two that I use a lot, and Tripit is definitely one of them. I can't – for anybody that travels, I can't recommend it enough, and if anybody out there has something better, please let me know because so far I think that's fantastic.

All right. So with that, I think we're going to wrap it up this week. Yes, we are. And we're going to see you next week with a whole new set of insanely contentious topics that – And a new beer. And a new beer. Yes, yes. This week was Moose Rule. Yes. With a side of Jameson and a little bit of Schmierhoff by the blue.

Very nice. Yeah, so that's us. This is Jason DeFilippo. Signing off. See you next week. See you next week.

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