brettcooperNov-06-2008 12:59pm
Under Our Roof: A Profile of Jonathon Coulton
The Art Of Tearing Down Your Walled Garden
Jonathon Coulton is an Internet musician, personality, and entrepreneur who has found great success over the past three years with his personal web musical experiment, www.jonathancoulton.com, a website he founded after quitting his day job as a VB programmer (Thanks to MitchO for the correction -BC). He has managed to make his music sustain him full time in today’s turbulent music industry, based on a fan base almost exclusively composed of the same technologically savvy “geek” set of which he is a part and that he wrote for in his previous job. His music is aimed straight at people who are just like him, with its subject matter covering everything from the impending zombie apocalypse to the Mandelbrot set.
Coulton’s success demonstrates the benefits of tearing down your walled garden using two very basic strategies. The first is licensing your music with Creative Commons. The second is building a simple, functional website.
Lesson 1: The Benefits Of Using Creative Commons:
In 2005 Coulton embarked on a project that he creatively titled “Thing A Week.” The initial objective was to put him in the mindset of having a “forced march” approach to writing and recording, as well as testing his ability to work to deadlines. It eventually turned into a fascinating case study of the viability of using a Creative Commons license to support an artist financially. At the project’s culmination all of the music was collected onto four “seasonal” CDs which could be bought as a set or mixed and match as the buyer wanted. This generated enough income to consider the project a minor financial success, but the most important lesson learned was that giving music away under a CC license is an excellent marketing and promotion decision.
“I give away music because I want to make music, and I can’t make music unless I make money, and I won’t make any money unless I get heard, and I won’t get heard unless I give away music.”
This makes total sense in light of the positive side effects of giving music away under a Creative Commons license:
- increased traffic to your site
- having your music used/manipulated for other media applications and reaching new audiences
- tons of good buzz from your fans who like getting stuff for free
All of this contributes to the Jonathan Coulton name being built up to a much greater extent than it would be otherwise. Thanks to the strong connection he has with his tech-savvy fan base, the music is disseminated across the internet, which has brought him numerous new opportunities, from interviews with Leo Laporte on TWiT, live gigs at PAX, and even writing and recording a song for Valve’s critically acclaimed PORTAL videogame.
Lesson 2: The Art of a Simple, Functional Website
Coulton’s website is a few things:
- clean
- conversational
- straightforward
It isn’t some things as well:
- ham handed
- voiceless
- pushy
The beauty of what Jonathan has created over at JonathanCoulton.com is how unassuming it is. The self-deprecating, relatable voice which he employs in his compositions has been carried over to the website explicitly, and that is very important for giving new visitors a sense of who he is before they even listen to his music. Remember, the website may well be the first thing a new fan sees, so it should convey what an artist represents in the same manner that their music does. One of the particular features every musician should borrow from Coulton’s web presence is the excellent “primer” section, in which he gives out suggestions for songs to check out first, a brief rundown of who he is and what he does, answers some frequently asked questions, and gives out his contact information. It is also important to note that at no point is the user bludgeoned with advertising from third parties and at no point does Coulton require people to sign up for something in exchange for getting what they are looking for. Everything is left up to the user.
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If there is one over-arching lesson fledgling artists can take away from Coulton’ success, it’s that putting yourself on a pedestal above your audience will cut you off from a lot of positive reaction that can lead to new opportunities. He has embraced his fan base directly and used the Internet as a way to give them more of what they like about what he does more easily, and he is open and honest about how he does it. He has torn down the walls around his garden, and if you hope to succeed you should do the same.
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Links To Interviews + Additional Information On This Artist:
