The gift of music, children and digital technology to mankind

My wife and I had a baby girl (Devin) the first week of November and it has reminded me of so many things in life that are great, and so many things in life that are less important. We could debate and go on about this forever, but I think music is much less appreciated than it should be, and following is why music is great for me, and almost my religion.

For those of you that have had newborns, you may remember that all they do is sleep, cry, poop, and eat, in some ratio of one to another. What you do in between is what makes dealing with the constant changes in a newborns like easier. For me, music is where I turn to when I need to escape, calm down, ground myself, or just put everything into perspective.

Last night, Devin would not sleep between 3:30 and 5 AM and since it was my turn to rock and comfort, I went into the nursery and turned on the iPod that I connected with my old computer stereo speakers. The mix of songs that came out of the very old iPod Mini was great. James Taylor, Phish, The Grateful Dead, Norah Jones, Tom Waits, Tracy Chapman, Allison Krauss and so many more brought back memories of me as a kid, child, teenager, and adult. All the while I am holding my 2 week old in my hands, staring at her, singing the lyrics to the songs – while she stares back at me, not understanding much, but at least listening to the music…this is the best thing ever.

The music had calmed the savage beast (or crying baby).

My 2.5 year old son Jared has a thirst for music. (besides a thirst for overall consumption and destruction). He craves good music, with both electric, vocal, and acoustic components. If you ask him who his favorite musician is he will tell you: Dave Matthews. He also listens to Phish, Bluegrass, Classical, and just about anything but super heavy metal. At night, or if you are crying, he will sing you twinkle twinkle little star until you are asleep.

I have committed myself to listening to the Phish Festival 8 set lists from beginning to end. Over and over again, I am reminded of the benefits of music as they take me through varying journeys to my overall state of relaxation and emotional rescue. The highs, lows, notes and chords that are achieved by some musicians provide me with what I call “tingles” which very few other things in life provide outside of physical contact. Some say [formalized] religion – but I would argue that religion provides other crutches besides true spiritual emotions. We could digress into religion for an eternity, but I will not.

Emotional Rescue – what sleep deprived parents of newborns need in order to feel less like a feeding diaper changing swaddling rocking machine. It’s what music delivers…at least for me.

What has digital technology allowed us to obtain? Music anywhere, anytime, and any decibel level, and a collection of over 85,000 tracks to sooth my mind, emotions and make my daughter fall asleep in my arms. I can’t wait to share my music collection with my children as they get older and more sophisticated in their appreciation.

Music – more people should subscribe to it as their almost religion.

Email newsletters from companies – GET IT RIGHT!

Email newsletters…communication…from companies.
UPDATE:

I received another email from the Huffington Post today, I’ll keep this updated as long as I can. Baby 2 due in 3 days. Unsubscribed one more time…we will see what happens!

Update over

This blog will address the following issue that I have with companies, their communication, and the concept of spam.

Here is a picture of my newsletter inbox today. Do you notice anything interesting? Do you want this?

That’s right. The Huffington Post has sent me 7 emails in 2 days. Funny thing, I unsubscribed myself twice to all emails from them 4 days ago. Funny thing, their Facebook unsubscribe does not work period. It’s like a 404 error.

There are people that complain about spam and by all means, spam sucks. I could show you my g-mail account as that catches about 120 spam emails a day, but then again, I have a good address. But what bothers me more than spam which is filterable? It’s when “respectable” organizations like the

Huffington Post cannot get their unsubscribe list to work. Ever heard of the Can-Spam Act? That’s right…Canadians put it together…even small companies like mine which has a relative decent size list actually has a functioning email unsubscribe and subscribe feature. But the Huffington Post can’t get it right? And when I unsubscribe, they send me more? It started with 2, then 3, then 4…I think if I unsubscribe again, I’ll be at 5 a day. How many emails a day until their costs get too high? Emails are not free…at least at the corporate side and if they are being properly tracked, work very well as a marketing tool and traffic driver. I am not here to talk about the benefits of email marketing.

Companies who I have unsubscribed to and they keep sending me emails:
Huffington Post (Have I mentioned that?)
Buyer Zone
Joe Benjamin
Zazzle
The Penn Club
CES Events

And about 15 others that I can’t think of right now and I can’t find their email because I delete them immediately.

This is not rocket science folks. Get it right and people will respect it. Get it wrong and lose your base. I am done with the Huffington Post until they can get it right and earn me back. I don’t have time to deal with this many emails a day from an organization that is lucky if they get my eyeballs 3 times a week.

Why we do not support ComScore

I run a company called AccuScore that has deals with lots of the top sports companies and sites on the web. My company, albeit smaller, is ranked about 7800 according to Quantcast. Is Quantcast reliable? Is Google Analytics reliable? The real question here is are basic web logs the best way to understand traffic?

The relationships at the larger companies I have deals with do not like nor wish to continue supporting ComScore. ESPN, Yahoo!, CBS, Fox, SI, you name it, nobody like the way they report traffic and really, nobody believes their metrics are accurate. These large media companies are buying traffic plays through acquisitions, just to aggregate traffic and have a better number to one up the competition. They think they can generate more ad $, but the products on these sites are generally crap, or there is no product, just scantily clad women attracting some sports fans. So the real question is why is everyone paying for it? Advertisers pay. Media publishers pay. And the traffic is reported at least 30% less than actuals. I would challenge any media executive to tell me that is not the case.

So who is getting screwed? PUBLISHERS AND DIGITAL MEDIA. ComScore is lowering the actual reported traffic to sites and therefore allowing advertisers to pay a lower rate than they should be paying for digital integrations, page views, and time on site. This is decreasing the overall ad spend that companies would pay across the Internet and therefore keeping the overall size of the market lower than it should be, with accurate reporting.

Who else is getting screwed? Sites that won’t pay for it that have decent, targeted traffic. The concept of ComScore is like a Country Club, pay to join, pay less to play a round of golf, and play with the same people over and over again to avoid anyone else getting into the game, unless you integrate a network roll up strategy. And who wants to do that right now? (EVERYONE)

What about TV? Nielsen is just as bad but I will save that for when we are officially in over 50% of the american hh and selling national TV spots for my TV show.