http://perpetua.tumblr.com/post/14873014757/u-s-sales-figures-for-pitchforks-top-50-albums-of

That said, this year’s #4 was Alex Day, an unsigned twentysomething YouTube vlogger, member of an all-vlogger Doctor Who-themed rock band, who seems to have found a way of transmuting upbeat charisma into advertising revenue. All the money from sales of this track went to charity.

Did you see this piece on Japanese consumer culture after 10–20 years of economic stagnation? Essentially, the argument is that, in a time of crisis, most people cut back on their spending on media, culture and fashion. Those who continue buying are the rabid fans, for whom consumption and collecting constitutes part of their identity. And with those sales informing the future constitution of pop culture, things quickly get very weird indeed.

And we’re next.

By contrast, any corporate publisher/distributor, even a bad one, is pretty good at delivering that “ambience”—getting new content out into broader media, booking the Terry Gross interview, getting the song played on Grey’s Anatomy, etc.

So yes: I think this is exactly the challenge! I mean, should a good Kickstarter project set aside part of its budget for… professional PR? That seems dissonant, somehow. But is there an effective alternative?

Louie CK is an interesting example, because he obviously has a fan base built from TV & other big media, but that first big wave of downloads was overwhelmingly driven by the Internet. And then he goes on TV to promote it: Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon, etc., without just the special & the idea behind it but this story of how well it’s doing. And he basically doubles it. (There’s a lot of momentum there.)

If you think about New Liberal Arts, that has an audience & awareness about it that WAY outstrips the number of copies we sold. (And yeah, we gave away PDFs for free. But still!)

I think about this whole idea of objects of attention, which I’ve written about but can’t link to here because I’m tapping on my phone. The Clay Shirky idea that “nobody has ever appeared on Terry Gross who has not just written a book.” (Louis CK was also on Terry Gross.) And that awareness creates a feedback loop that sells more copies, but maybe even more importantly, makes more opportunities possible, for you to try your next thing, & the thing after that.

How do we amplify these projects? How do we keep them echoing like Adele, even in the ears of people who never consciously stopped to listen?