Important point here: kind and nice are not synonymous. It's easy to conflate kindness with niceness, and the OP (from what I can infer) is advocating the latter, not the former. Kind is not the same as nice.
There are several ways to do necessary, un-nice things in a very kind manner. It is a skill, and for some people requires coaching on how to express themselves professionally and kindly most of the time.
(Qualifying this, because there are occasions that warrant a good moderate yell or two. E.g., the 3rd (rejected) and random PR submitted by a Jr. developer that changes all of the spaces to tabs in the repository, or all of the modules/functions to classes/methods.)
By the way, a lot of the "yells" can be replaced by pre-commit hooks, auto-configure scripts and other things putting pressure on the system instead of a person.
"lack of experience is generally pretty opaque to the people who lack it"
Agree! this is a succinct description of a eng management problem. However, it can be mitigated by hiring coachable, trainable (and mature) people. Interestingly, we've had great luck hiring from programming bootcamps; programmers who lack programming experience but have other work experience & who are eager and able to learn quickly, & usually come with some level of intellectual curiosity (as opposed to entitlement).
Totally. I've also had good luck with people coming out of programming boot camps. In my current line of dev work, I'll take someone who's really eager to learn new things and jump on tasks over someone who can confidently invert a binary tree on a whiteboard.
I hear this much more often from the less-experienced programmers than I do from the seasoned, experienced ones. Once in a while, and usually in a very large shop, I hear it from an experienced veteran. However, usually (not always, but usually) from one who's had 1 year of experience 20 times rather than 20 years of experience.
Or, much harder to beat writer's block when there's a large audience waiting for more work. If the grip of "10,000 people are expecting X from me..." freezes you, you're blocked.
It depends on the artist, IMO. Some people are charged up by a large consumer base waiting for more work, some don't care, and some are frozen by it.
Best if you don't care -- per HR's discussion of Miles Davis. Sometimes Miles left his audience behind, but that was OK because he was being true to himself and his vision for his work.
We have 30 days of time for NaNoWriMo. That's a lot of time! Can get a lot done in that amount of time, or get nothing done, depending on how the time is occupied.
"...disregard for protocol" is not illegal activity. Any indictments, for example? Anything to back up the claim of illegal activity that could lead to a conviction? Again, outside of wikileaks hacked emails.
Sure there is. Join the communities that support the genre(s) of music you enjoy. Listen to the various internet radio programs that feature the music you enjoy -- those curators will introduce you to new music, and new-to-you music.
As many flaws as the major labels previously had, they did discover and nurture artists. Internet radio is not going to discover a random lounge cover singer in the middle of flyover US. You are not going to have an internet radio station that features random unknown artists that has widespread reach. The bar to discovery is much higher and arguably requires less on the music end and more on the promo end than it has in the past. This leads to more of the chaff rising to the top.
That's been true but there are some artist examples that are showing new artists can embrace the new dynamic and reach fans. CHVRCHES got their start on SoundCloud. Chance the Rapper still is in the "mixtape" game. Pretty much any "viral" hit that isn't actively on a Major Label at the time of the release can be considered, I think, to be a case study in how the dynamics are changing. Edit: Forgot Run The Jewels as well.
These days, the barrier to entry for discovery is lower than it's ever been. If you get your music on all of the various internet music services and some of the internet-radio programming, you are much more heavily distributed worldwide than any garage-band in the 70s or 80s could ever have been at the time.
The 'bar for discovery' has two parts: The bar for potential discovery is now very, very low. But for actual discovery it is high because the "signal-to-noise" ratio is very low: by that I mean there is so much crap (noise) to wade through before you find a great band (signal) that the work of curating has shifted from the radio stations and record labels to the consumer. The nice thing is that you can find excellent music the major labels will simply ignore. The not so nice thing: it requires work on your part to seek out and engage with the curators of content.
This is why finding the internet radio programs that feature the genre you enjoy, and following the music-programmers who curate with taste that you share, is vital to a good discovery experience.
I disagree. The ones I listen to do just that: not only flyover country, but Canada, Australia, UK, Italy and all over the rest of Europe. And the facebook groups for the genres I follow frequently post music from excellent, up and coming or obscure bands.
Widespread reach? It's the internet! How widespread do you need to be? ;)
Also, labels != radio. It's not radio's job to nuture and develop bands. But they can expose bands to greater audiences, which allows people like us to "discover" new-to-us bands.
Maybe we can say that they love musicians, but love business even more? Sort of like the way many CEOs in S.V./S.F. love software developers but love business even more.
I've said that if the RIAA could get people to buy an actual piece of cow dung in the shape of a circle that cost them $2 to make, including owning the cow, and they could sell for $18, they'd get out of music and into the manure business.
I think it's an apt analogy. The RIAA wants to make money. Music is the vessel. That's, well, kinda it.
"Free" is the price the majority of users on Spotify (and elsewhere) think is right. In general, consumers have learned that "music should be free!". The fee that Spotify asks for isn't for music; it's for an ad-free, more pleasurable, and more valuable experience. The music is still offered for free!
Spotify's Free to Premium conversion rates are, in my opinion, not terrible. Would be interesting to see the YouTube and SoundCloud numbers eventually, sure.
Think about it though - terrestrial radio already offered music for free. Dozens of stations! All sorts of genres!
The only difference is the RIAA/major players had - practically speaking - an iron grip on controlling what was being played on those stations. Thus the free music was an enticement to purchase more objects related to that act. Live shows, t-shirts, etc.
Believe me, there's a lot more money in branding than there is in selling music. Jessica Simpson has made insane truck-loads of money on her fashion line - enough to make her music sales probably look like a rounding error. Free music isn't new to the internet, I guess is what I'm getting at.
I agree, though as an aside I think this takes the conversation in a new direction. Ad-supported FM radio probably did more to encourage, or at least aculturate, people to treat the internet like just another radio station than anything else.
The big difference was that music on FM radio enticed people also to go buy the vinyl LP (at $12 (or so) a pop in 1977 money. Ouch.).
So (taking us in yet another direction), the problem is one of technology: once downloads replaced vinyl and CDs, the only thing left is merch and other branded items, which sell far fewer units relative to the LP or CD of yesteryear.
The labels blew it on technology (they went from shellacs to 45s to LPs to CDs and stopped there).
If only it could be offered in my small country too!
I hate how these services and the record labels think only about the US/their country.
For example one of my favourite bands is Italian and apparently most of their older music is blocked on youtube in my country. There really is NO WAY for me to get the music legally. Even the torrents have very few seeders and I'm scared in a few years I won't be able to listen to this music anymore. I just hope i won't lose my backups.
They do think about your country, and all of the non-US/CA/UK territories.
But licensing is complicated, difficult to manage, and is frankly a mess. So it's often not worth it to launch in many territories at first; and in some territories, not ever.
Every entertainment book I've ever read by a successful and intelligent musician or writer has emphasized, time and again, to get a really, really, really, really good lawyer. Or, in the case of Willie Nelson, two of them. Thomas Lennon (Reno 911, The Odd Couple) wrote a screenplay guide and said, paraphrased, "Oh our lawyer is a really nice guy and we like him - he's just not afraid to rip your heart out and eat it in front of you."
There are several ways to do necessary, un-nice things in a very kind manner. It is a skill, and for some people requires coaching on how to express themselves professionally and kindly most of the time.
(Qualifying this, because there are occasions that warrant a good moderate yell or two. E.g., the 3rd (rejected) and random PR submitted by a Jr. developer that changes all of the spaces to tabs in the repository, or all of the modules/functions to classes/methods.)