jayshaffer.com

The hard cold fact that I made more money in the game Second Life, than in real life this week is kinda sobering. It’s not like I haven’t been working, I just haven’t been working for real money.
Last week, I wrote and edited a four page proposal for a producer job with a cable sports network and did a  Keynote presentation for the same proposal ( the first time I worked with Keynote.)
I did both stereo mix and (my first real) surround mix for “The Fence.” “The Fence” is a three minute trailer for an indie film project. I offered to work on the project pro-bono with the understanding that I will get paid to do the real film. I was originally “hired ” on as sound editor. But I became more deeply involved in the post production process and now I’m credited as Post-Production Supervisor. This is because I  designed the DVD art work and put together the DVD project, also last week. Oh, and I shuffled the project back and forth to the colorist (the guy that color-corrects the video.) You can see “The Fence” trailer at: http://riseandflyproductions.com/

I also recorded and published a new podcast about the Zoom H4 recorder on the MacAudioGuy.com site,  and updated the CSS on this site. Worked on my Linkedin Profile and Twittered a couple hours away. And, perhaps most importantly, I’m putting together a design portfolio page for an important job interview on Wednesday.
In Second Life, I did a custom Photoshop “skin” for my formula race car model for a client and was paid 10,000 Lindens (about $30), I did a three hour stint as announcer for the audio and video recoding of the Formula SL race on Saturday and then DJed for two and a half hours on Sunday for 1800 Lindens (about $7).
So, you can see why I’m a great workaholic but a lousy entrepreneur. Let’s just hope I have a great interview on Wednesday.

I’m somewhat hesitant to write this post, for fear of the RIAA goon squad. But sometimes you’ve got to say “fuck it” and just go for what you think is right, even in the face of legal intimidation. I’m hypothetically testing the waters at being an internet broadcaster.
I am renting a streaming server for my Second Life DJ and MC gigs and so whenever I’m not broadcasting an event into SL, I thought I’d go ahead and look into streaming the music I love for anyone to listen to. And that got me toying with the idea of really running an internet radio station. It is not a good time to have these thoughts because the RIAA and their puppet enforcement arm, SoundExchange are out to kill small webcasters.
SoundExchange sets the prices on performance royalty payments for cable, satellite, and internet music broadcasters. Currently they are charging internet broadcasters 500% what traditional radio is paying and 200% of what cable and Satellite are paying. Currently that rate is a $500 dollar a year fee plus $.18 per 100 listeners per song. And at 15 songs per hour that comes to about $23,652.00 a year per 100 listeners. And remember this is not covering the publishing rights which are enforced by ASCAP/BMI. Thats another whole fee and payment structure. ASCAP and BMI rates start at $288 flat annual fee plus $.0006 per listener hour. So if I had 100 listeners on average 24/7 that would be another $525.60. So basically to be legal for a mere 100 listener web stream I’d have to pay over $30,000 just for musical rights licenses. Thats not including server rentals, or the computer hardware to broad cast or the actual purchasing of music to broadcast.

Think about this for asecond and you’ll see that it would cost me over $300 per listener per year. Who’s gioing to pay $300 a year to listen to net radio. Adverisers aren’t because they are only reaching 100 listeners, and Listeners aren’t going to contribute that much. the average donation to public radio is only about $60 per person that donates and only about 10% of public radio listeners donate
So you can see why I’m not going to mention the address of my hypothetical radio station.

It’s May Day in Golden Colorado. Big fluffy flakes of snow today, and to think it was 80 degrees yesterday. click here to see some video