Twitter Music app. Well, apparently I only follow eight bands (wrong) but I guess they mean 8 bands that are in tune with whatever licensing service they’re using. My hot new suggested music looks like 1994: the Lemonheads (sure, follow, love em), Belle and Sebastian (ditto, they’re pretty good w their email newsletters though), the Posies (hahahahaha), Appleseed Cast (really??), Dinosaur Jr. (not that I didn’t go see them play last week). Managed to find 3 bands my friends are tweeting about (thank you Slumberland, marketing idiot I must unfollow stuck Rod Stewart in there, random from another music friend who likes dance music more than I do).

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Amanda Palmer. So she wrote a poem about the Boston bomber on her blog and people are mad. I’m fine with her self-expression. Is her poetry as dumb an idea as me crying every time I spend five minutes on the subject? I don’t understand people who are all excited that everyone should express themselves no matter what their level of skill or talent is (ie the best part of punk rock in my opinion) and then get all upset when someone doesn’t express themselves in a way they see as appropriate. You have to suffer through the stuff you don’t like as much as what you do if you want everyone to have equal access to expression. I’m starting to really like her, because she has somehow worked through the fear I have every time I sit down to write. Who hasn’t written bad poetry? Sure editors and teachers and publishers and writing group friends are all there to stop you from sharing it with the world, but that’s now how it works on the internet. You have to let it exist if you want the surprise and amazement of unexpected connections to other people to be found. For instance, should I spend days working out my opinion on this subject and let it sit in my documents, or should I post it today and maybe find someone else shares my opinion (or disagrees) and we can build ideas from there? I’m really trying to just post and worry about defending or changing my opinion later, rather than never posting and worrying about my opinion anyway.

So still no word on when YouTube is going to roll out this new merch feature to their partners, or when they’re officially killing the “store” that was “weirdly Googleable but not noticed anywhere but here”. I was hoping they’d make an announcement of some sort to make my findings legit (as if finding confirmation in Google in YouTube search results isn’t?)

So here is the rest of what was hiding in those posts (thanks to some Google kung fu to get this to show up, this is what I use my MSIS for nowadays)

“The YouTube Merch Store feature will be permanently closed in November and replaced by a new feature now available that will allow you to promote your related merchandise directly in your videos called Merch Annotations.”

A friend noticed Danielle Ate the Sandwich got her “Merch Annotations”. So why the hush hush beta blah blah? Why is iTunes even allowed when Google has the Play store?

I have an Android so I’m not seriously asking that question.

See Danielle Ate the Sandwich’s iTunes link here at 0:50 (sorry folks, she gets a neat new feature and times it to a scream)

WTF okay, maybe I’m just having trouble with the new YouTube layout…but it seems I can only embed her playlist and not the specific video so I just made that a link and took down the embed..that can’t be right and I better be able to fix that today.

Right from FB Help:

“When you create or subscribe to a list, you’ll see the best posts from that list in your main news feed.”

Did you read that ***best posts*** part? That means you still have to check the interest list to see all the posts.

1. If you visit and interact with a page it will show up more
2. If other people interact with a post it will show up more
3. Yes, this means questions and photos will probably make your posts show up more because people hit “like” and leave comments more.
4. Or you can pay Facebook to show people your posts. As of this morning, I did have one person/company I know pay for a post that was not labeled “sponsored” so right now, no one knows if you do this. I support transparency in labeling ALL of these posts as sponsored, even from small companies.
5. Anything that comes into your feed that asks you to repost it is probably bullshit, even “helpful” stuff like “add me to your interest lists so my band/brand shows up in your news feed” isn’t 100% true today.
6. All this could be wrong tomorrow.

So last year at CMJ YouTube and Topspin made a big deal that they were integrating a Store tab into YouTube Partner channels. Well, I noticed they had stopped supporting custom images in the store so bands that were using it just had generic grey images, so I suspected something was up.

A few Google queries later I found this result, but without being able to find the text on any of those store pages. I know what they’re replacing it with, any guesses?

Sometimes I do my best work at night…which has recently included scheduling all my tweets and posts to go out during the workday when it seems most of my friends are checking up on such things. Was this the origin of “Hoot Suite”…a social service to help night owls? I’m ready to start paying for the full kit and caboodle. I’ve been trying to figure out how to run separate blogs for years now, and every smart phone I purchased (noticed, I still don’t have an iPhone, I am hoping to get a 4S off someone who has to upgrade)

Or am I just the last of the personal blogs because I don’t show focus? My ability to switch focus is such fun. I can be sewing and gardening one minute, undertaking a great pop culture task such as a “Tom and Jerry Marathon” (my cousin misheard this as “training for a marathon” and got very excited, not the same thing), defense of what is good about the small town life, thinking about a lot of the damaging life events I’ve undergone in the past few years (and discussing them with my doctor, I’m not going at this alone) , wedding planning, sewing, being an advocate and a critic of libraries (the ease with which I have downloaded pirated books has convinced me libraries are looking at the wrong set of patrons to cater to)….all this jumble

and then, some of the things i want to do, please let me know if you want these things done:

design hanging sets for rock bands, banners and the like

props for rock videos. let me make some crazy stuff to play with. all i need is cardboard and spray paint and a small budget for the local hardware store.

still wishing i was on tour. I’ve been traveling a lot recently, but I’m really working on all the integrated social media marketing stuff for bands to add value to my enthusiasm for being on the bus to sell t-shirts. I’d like to learn more about live sound, and I have been kicking around some ideas on how to learn that, but I think a merch girl/tour manager/media maven is pretty good, you still might need a guitar tech/ sound guy, or maybe i could handle those as well. Basically, being flexible, being available, putting myself out there as wanting to do it and seeing what comes back for me.

been working a little every day on a project that will allow me to buy and sell vintage clothing and housewares. Right now I’m researching the social media channels and learning about brick and mortar/ antique mall places. It’s another career that depends on multiple income streams. Not sure if it goes with “traveling a lot” but maybe I can have “gasp” an employee handle the shipping while I’m following bands around in my car and stopping at all the strange thrift stores a long the way. Oh dreamy dream for that to last forever, following bands that give me money to work for them, spending it on cool things, and then making more money on that? Oh sweetie, that’s not a lot of money now is it…well, that’s where the computer stuff comes in, I don’t want to get sucked into the antique world anymore than the craft community, I always want to have the other things I do really well available, in practice.

And who knows, I am completely and totally open to a library project that would give me some of these experiences. Traveling and training librarians on new media, working on re organizing a library’s service model, starting an archive in Levittown PA of housewares as well as books and research materials….so many dreams…

starting with learning to schedule my brilliant thoughts to be posted during the day when people read them, and written at night when I can’t fall asleep thinking about them.

10 songs for your enjoyment culled from May 2012′s viewing. One month, ten videos worth listening to. Maybe watching, but mostly to listen to. Indiepop, electronic pop, video game geek pop, country, classic alt rock, punk rock storytelling, New Jersey soul and others. Enjoy.