The third videoof the DIY conference can be seen and it’s a presentation from Slava Rubin. He is the CEO and co-founder of IndieGoGo, a funding platform, which provides anyone with passion the opportunity to fulfill their dreams and fund creative, entrepreneurial, or cause campaigns. Their services has been used for over 35,000 campaigns and distributed millions of dollars in 200 countries, even millions of dollars every month! 2011 was a great year for IndieGoGo because they were named one of the partner companies for Startup America, President Obama’s initiative to stimulate entrepreneurship in America.

Slava Rubin discussed topics like ‘Crowdfunding as Market Validation’, ‘The tips and tricks of raising money on the internet’ and ‘how to fund your business, project, or cause’ in his presentation. An interesting presentation filled with tips, tricks and full of DIY stimulance!

Slava Rubin also gave a masterclass at the BKKC, Tilburg. You can watch it here.

At the Incubate DIY Conference, we’re very honored to have Michael Azerrad talk about his highly influential and great book Our Band Could Be Your Life. The book describes the scene of (mainly ‘80s) American underground bands like Black Flag, Minutemen and Sonic Youth who, while finding relatively little mainstream success, did have an establishing role in American alternative and indie rock.

The book was published ten years ago, and was named one of the 50 best music books even written by The Guardian. At the DIY Conference, Michael will share the insights he gained while interviewing the bands and writing the book.

In the video below, Azerrad is interviewed about the background of the book. We especially like the introduction where Michael tells about why he wrote the book:

“I was watching a rock documentary one evening, and it was the history of punk. They got up to Talking Heads and then suddenly the action skipped to Nirvana. I thought perhaps I had blacked out for ten minutes and missed the part about Black Flag and The Minutemen and The Replacements, Sonic Youth, all those bands between Talking Heads and Nirvana. But no, I had not in fact blacked out. They just had skipped over an entire decade of punk rock, very influential music that led up to Nirvana. I had done a book about Nirvana and I just felt like someone needed to tell that backstory. It was completely ignored. This whole generation of music that was so great and a community and a scene so thriving and so inspiring had just been crossed over by the history books. And I decided someone should do something about that. So, in typical DIY-spirit I said: I will do something about it. I started on that book and wrote Our Band Could Be Your Life.”

Watch the complete interview below and make sure to catch Michael Azerrad’s talk at the DIY Conference. Pay What You Want tickets are available here. Check this page for the complete program.

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After the videos of Charles Leadbeater at Incubate Festival 2010 and Matt Mason’s keynote at the Incubate Pirate Conference, here is the video for the panel discussion following Matt Mason’s keynote speech at the Incubate Pirate Conference.

The Pirate Conference offered reflection on the comprehensive piracy-program of Incubate Festival and on the value of creation in society. What do artists think about the current state of issues? How can they best react to the current operation of copyright? What strategies, tactics and interventions can be used? How do we shape creativity and innovation as a society, and what could businesses learn from these tactics?

2nd part of the panel discussion after this break –> Read the rest of this entry »

After the success of his book The Pirate’s Dilemma, Matt Mason is of course talking all over the world about innovation in the cultural scene, youth cultures and how to compete with pirates. Here are some interesting videos on some of his talks, in preparation to his keynote speech at the Incubate Pirate Conference on September 17. First off, here’s a great promotional clip for his book, which is a great introduction in the subject of his book, if you haven’t read it yet:

Remember, you can still get a digital copy of the book via the Pirate’s Dilemma website, and you’re able to name your own price for it. Next is a video of a speech Matt gave at the Deutscher Trendtag last year. In this presentation, he discusses the topics of his book. Entitled The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism, he talks about how underground cultures have brought on the most innovative ideas, which later often have been adopted by many businesses. He also explains how to compete with piracy, stating that it not only has negative effects but that pirates sometimes also create solutions that literally change people’s lives. Again, his conclusion is very clear and clever: if you want to beat pirates, copy them:

Here is a very interesting talk by Hank Shocklee which serves as great introduction material for the Incubate Pirate Conference. At the Red Bull Music Academy, Hank Shocklee talks about how The Bomb Squad founded their sample-collage production methods in the 1980s, and about making Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Here, you can hear Hank talk about more technical stuff; how they would go around the studio, putting all sorts of different found sounds together, without even being able to digitally edit their works. He goes on talking a little bit about maintaining full creative control while signed to a major, the role of Chuck D within these sample-heavy productions, the difference between digital and analog sound, and what Hank looks for in sounds that he re-uses in his own productions.

“I remember mixing a bunch of records and we were just bringing people that were out in the lobby to help us, like make our mutes, you know? I mean, one time, Fab 5 Freddy was happening to hang out in the studio: “Yo, Freddy, come on,” run in the studio and we would all grab like three faders or something each. And we needed to do like a mute way, you want a mute at all the instrumentation and just have the vocal in there and then come back on. You have to wait for that part of the song going by and then everybody goes: “OK, one, two…” and everybody had the beat on, the same beat the same time because the minute you got somebody coming a little late or a little early, that whole take has got to get done over. So everything has got to get started over again. So the process of making records back then was very much a team method. This is why we had the Bomb Squad, because everybody at the time had to have a specific function and a specific duty. And especially from the things we were doing with records, combing through records, finding the right sound or the right part or the right drumbreak or the right turnaround or the right horn hit or the right tambourine loop or the right spoken word piece, the right bass piece. That’s hours amongst hours on top of hours of combing through the records.”

In relation to this talk, you can download the full sample set that The Bomb Squad used for the production of It Takes a Nation of Millions… via this page. Make sure to catch Hank Shocklee at the Incubate Pirate Conference if you want to hear more about his productions and his views on copyright and piracy. Tickets are still available for Pay What You Want right here.

So, what exactly is Creative Commons? And how and why use it for your creative works? Check out the nice instruction video below. Creative Commons NL will also take part in the paneldiscussion at the Pirate Conference on September 17.

Via EHPO & Marco Raaphorst.

Last year, when Matt Mason’s book The Pirate’s Dilemma got published in The Netherlands (titled: Piraterij; hoe hackers, punkkapitalisten en graffitimiljonairs onze cultuur remixen en de wereld veranderen), he was interviewed by Frank Meeuwsen for DutchCowboys.

The interview contains four short clips in which Matt mason describes and explains the Pirate’s Dilemma. He goes on to talk a little bit about youth cultures, his favourite pirates, and putting up a digital version of the book for Pay What You Want on his site: “10% of the people who downloaded the book, paid up to 5 dollars for it. And what was really interesting about that, was that it didn’t affect physical book sales negatively at all. When we first did it, we got so much press about doing the download, that actually physical book sales went up because more people were interested in the book.”

Watch the full interview here:

Last week, we confirmed Hank Shocklee to be interviewed during the Incubate Pirate Conference on September 17. Hank will tell his story of the heavy-sampling production method he created mid ’80s together with the other members of The Bomb Squad. Their technique of engineering, sampling, scratching, constructing, deconstructing, reconstructing was groundbreaking at the time and still is a technique that has hardly ever been duplicated. Hank will also shed light on his views on copyright, sampling for the future and will offer artists an insight in how to deal with these developments.

Music platform Pitchfork shared some footage of Public Enemy performing the album live in 2008, together with some really interesting backstage interviews with the producers of this album: It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. As a political statement, as a sonic experience, as a hip-hop album, and as music, period, it just doesn’t get much better than this 1988 LP. Commemorating the 20th anniversary of its release this year, Public Enemy performed the record in its entirety, including on Friday night at this year’s Pitchfork Music Festival, presented with All Tomorrow’s Parties. Chuck D, Hank and Keith Shocklee of the production team the Bomb Squad, and long-time associate and “media assassin” Harry Allen also appeared on a panel here in Chicago to discuss the record. Incorporating footage from these events and additional interviews, Pitchfork.tv presents the story of this album as told by the people who made it happen. Check out the videos below:

If you can’t get enough, also make sure to read this interview by Stay Free! with Hank Shocklee and Chuck D.