Marketing Stratagies - 4

Today I wanted to talk about one of the most underrated artists still alive today. A singer/songwriter who's music in my opinion is not only ahead of his time but timeless as well. However his music is very spcific to a certain degree, I would like to raise my opinion to a fact when saying that as good as his music is it is not for everyone. Most people today when they listen to music listen to what I call dancing music or having a good time music. The fetured artist I'm writing about is a complete 180 on "extroverted music." His music is very much introverted or sometime atmospheric, like a soundtrack to your life. He even has the catagory of "headphone" on his remix website, which is a marketing stratagey I'll get to later. This person has pushed the boundries on electronic orientaed music, open ended lyrics, and last but certainly not least he has pushed the boundries on marketing strategies.

The man I'm talking about is Michael Trent Reznor the creator of Nine Inch Nails (NIN) and the NULL COPERATION record label.

After coming and going with a hand full of small time band's Mr. Reznor found a job(s) at Right Track Studio in the city of Cleveland Ohio as an assistant sound engineer (which he went to college for) and Janitor. Another reason Trent is a favorite of mine is what the owner of Right Track said about Michael. Bart Koster owner of Right Track Studio commented "He was so focused in everything he did.When that guy waxed the floor, it looked great." Ah yes, super focused on one projected at a time regardless of what it was. Sounds a lot like an Introvert to me, I should know I'm the same way. INTJ/INFJ...

I could go on and on about this man's incredible life experiences, his up's, his down's his super up's and super down's, but your here for the marketing strategies that Trent and his team came up with so lets start from the past and end up in the present. Well first off his first maketing strategy move was to record under a different name, not exactly a new move and not really effective in terms of its use. The reason I bring up the name change is for his motivation which he used for his marketing tools. His biggest motivation was record labels at the time, they sucked and not just sucked but they litterally ssucked the artist dry of everything: Money, fame, dignity. "All used up..." as Trents lyrics would say.

So with this in mind what Trent did was use early forms of my favorite martketing stratagy Guerilla marketing. He used what he had to his advantage or in this first case what he didnt have. When trent started, he was like most artists who start in the music business, unnoticed. So what he did was go around a varitey of studios and record a song or two under a different name. The studios treated each recording as a one time use option (If you wanted to create an entire album you had to sign a contract, fuck that shit.) So once he gathered all of the songs he wanted one studio at a time, all he then needed was a distributor. BOOM cut right past the album contract and work straight with the distributor. A result of this was an album under his the final name of his choosing: NIN - BROKEN.

After BROKEN being a hit and PRETTY HATE MACHINE being a hit. Trent brought NIN on its us/world tour. However unlike many artists Trent was like the James Cameron of music, creating a really good album every 5-7 years. In between albums Trent loved to colaberate and cover other bands music, which I also beleive is a Introverted personality trait of being a perfectionist. He would gather experience, come up with an idea, gather more experience, revise the idea and do this until he felt he had the best album he could possibly create. This process brought us: The Downward Spiral 1994, The Fragile 1999 (My favorite), With Teeth 2005 (First NIN album I heard that got me into NIN).

Then only two years went by before Releasing Year Zero 2007. This album marked the real start of NINs marketing skills. The idea of Year Zero as Trent mentions was to be about music people would listen to in the future. So what I beleive happend was his marketing team ran with this idea. I can hear the conversation now. "Trent made the album so that the listener will feel like he's in the future, well if Trent wants the listener to be in the future lets make that a more interactive experience." that's exactly what they did. Year Zero Game, Year Zero protest movement, Year Zero fake websites and forums, usb thumb drives found in various places at various concerts, teaser trailers on Youtube.

"The USB drive was simply a mechanism of leaking the music and data we wanted out there. The medium of the CD is outdated and irrelevant. It's really painfully obvious what people want – DRM-free music they can do what they want with. If the greedy record industry would embrace that concept I truly think people would pay for music and consume more of it." -Trent Reznor

 Rolling Stone described the fan involvement in this promotion as the "marketing team's dream". Reznor, however, argued that "marketing" was an inaccurate description of the game, and that it was "not some kind of gimmick to get you to buy a record – it IS the art form"

Wikipedia give a great summery on what Year Zero was/is all about
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(album)

Needless to say this gave trent a few ideas of his own. Less than a year after the release of Year Zero trent began to create his own destiny. He created THE NULL COPERATION. Under the Null coperation (from My understanding) a version of the album is free to download.

The author had a bad case of writers block. if you want to know more please send a message his way. Thanks you.





 

Techinduced Lucid Dreaming - 3

Gathering much data from scientists, to researching experiments and essays, to watching videos and reading books on the subject of Dreaming or Meditating. I have come to create some opinions of my own on the field of "Consciousness Discovery."

"Dreams are a person's collective personally perspective information that is stored into the unconsciousness effected by what is entered by the consciousness." Now granted there are many, many, many, variables as to why everybody can look at the visualize the same thing and describe something different as anyone else. Which include: Diet, genetics, environmental and/or human created exposures etc.

What I have also learned is that meditating and sleeping dreaming have a larger connection then most think. The 4 years I was active duty I was very much introverted, more so than I am today, and I meditated or what called relaxed by sitting on the ground. What I experienced was a sense of what I would call falling asleep. It was very close to an outer body experience. I would relax to the point where I was fully conscious yet there were times I could find my breath slowing to the point where I wasn’t breathing at all. Now some might conclude that no oxygen to the brain is the cause of sleepiness and hallucinations, however I would only rebuttal that theory by researching breathing behaviors of REM sleep cycles on sleeping people as well.

My perspective is usually that of reverse engineering. I look at the results and then ask how and why. Both sleeping and meditation have very similar if not identical outcomes based on my own experiences and reading about others experiences.

Well with all that said and me leaving out quite a few details (this is a blog not a book) I recently discovered a new product. A fairly simple yet, highly priced product.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bitbangerlabs/remee-the-rem-enhancing-lucid-dreaming-mask

http://sleepwithremee.com/

Now it wasn’t the claim that the creators came up with that states "Remee is a specialized sleep mask designed to help increase the frequency of your Lucid Dreams." No what stood out was the video. I now look back at the video and see it more of a selling presentation more so than a hard evidence information piece. Also when I look back at the Remee description the creators sort of mention a more physiological health aspect of Lucid dreaming, which I believe is the more powerful and pressing goal of Lucid Dreaming. The description states "Flying through the galaxy riding a giant kitten might not be your thing, but what about having a roundtable discussion with your ego and id?" Yeah I can defiantly see how the mainstream (or MoneyStream as its called in the biz) would not be interested in a high-priced psychological piece of equipment... BORING!!! However Going through the galaxy on a giant kitten, well hotdamn sign me up! Whoweeee! lol Damn I'm an ass...

Regardless of my personality defects (self described bullshit filter) the Remee's function does offer a major aspect of Lucid Dreaming. Here is a description of that function: During your sleep cycles, Remee flashes a series of customizable, recognizable light patterns via six rear facing LEDs. The lights aren't bright enough to wake you up, but, if you are dreaming, they can appear as visual anomalies in your dreams, helping the dreamer recognize the fact that they are dreaming, and become lucid.

In the book ONEIRONAUTICS A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming, chapter 8 is called reality check. In this chapter the book describes many ways to perform a reality for two main reasons. The first is for beginners and if you can perform a simple yet impossible feat such as making one hand pass through the other then you know you are in a dream. The other is for veteran dreamers, which states to perform a reality check such as one hand going through another for to know if you are in reality or a dream. Which may sound scary at first (Thank you Inception) but to veteran dreamers this is just a habit developed over time.

Well speaking of Inception this brings me to a few of my other disagreements about "having fun" in dreams. Now I am all about having fun so much so that I find it very hard to Lucid Dream for the simple fact that my thought process will not allow me to control what I consider natural. I don't know what it is but I hate "interfering with the way things roll out." I'm getting a little off subject...

Thank god Inception was made. The film brings two very important issues to mind. Before I list them the only way for every reference I have listed thus far you have to believe that dreams themselves are the fragments of our unconsciousness, where only the very powerful events stay and are intertwined with each other making them seem even more of a random collective.

One: Reality Checks, LED lights and Totems are your inanimate artifacts and/or tests that shield your unconscious from your conscience. Jung states that people with hysteria are people whose unconscious collective has taken the place of their unconsciousness. In my interpretation they're people that are living the fragments of their unconscious and if dreams are our unconscious, then just like a "crazy" homeless guy both dreams and them are pretty damn random.

Two: Dreams are our unconscious and very powerful, so powerful that the unconscious is practically a mind of its own. You have to realize that who you are and what makes you different from everyone else is your own experiences. You remember most powerful events in your life and forget details; sometimes you remember details and not necessarily the powerful event. You’re unconscious usually if not all the time collects the information that your conscience cannot remember or refuses to remember because the event was powerful enough to cause an actual physical change or even a physical aliment. The human body hates change how ever keep doing the change and your body will adapt and how well you adapt is based on genetics and experience or a mixture of the two.

Now dreams/unconscious as I stated are very powerful. When you Lucid Dream or meditate you are essential mixing your unconscious with your conscience or to reference it to another great film you’re in and out of the matrix. Now just like with any powerful entity brings your unconscious to the surface is very dangerous and psychologist Carl Jung has learned and he learned the hard way. In Inception the main character and his wife lived in a dream for decades without aging and living what they considered heaven. Of course when they came back to reality her mind was still lost and she couldn't distinguish between reality and the dream world, which ultimately ended with her own demise.

The main problem with Neo waking up and realizing the world he knew was a fake just as Mal from Inception couldn't figure out what was real. Neo became physically ill where as Mal became physically dead. Eventually Neo from the matrix becomes a master of his consciousness and unconsciousness and is able to fly catch bullets and all the wonderful things you can do in dreams. My point is that when you Lucid dream consider it a long exciting journey and not so much as a day at the theme park. Dreams are our unconscious and our key to true happiness lies within our unconsciousness.

When you realize your problems are from within and not from without you will realize who and what you are in this world.

www.bitbangerlabs.com

Dreams of Jung - 2

There is a time in your life when you make a decision on what you want be when you grow up. Ultimately you become something completely different of course...

When I was 15 I wanted to be part of National Security, mainly because I was a Schwarzenegger fan and I thought (and still think) True Lies is an awesome movie. When I tested for a career in middle school the results pointed toward a doctor. "What the hell, I wanna take people out of the game not put them back in, Action baby, Action!"

Well after serving 4 years active duty in Logistics (Another long story), I went Air National Guard and went to school as well. Now I'm in my 20's and I know what real action heroes go through, screw that crap!

I was real interested in Psychology (Still am) but after taking college courses and what I considered "bending to the instructors will" I knew 6-7 years plus for a PhD wasn’t for me. So I went into film instead. A good film is based on how realistic a director can make a story seem. Which was right up my alley of Psychology, so to speak.

Well I get out of the guard just in time to get a job that pays really well, despite it's time away from home, and I'm now both really interested in Film and Psychology. Film as a profession and Psychology as a minor/personal hobby.

If there is one skill I consider myself to have, it is researching for answers. Now I have many, many, many, many, many interest that span quite a few fields and my newest and probably going to be one of the most interesting (not necessarily my favorite) is Lucid Dreaming.

Another skill of mine which is unique to someone with the mind of RainMan is connecting points from one field and/or topic to another. For example: My latest connection was A book on Lucid Dreaming "ONEIRONAUTICS" authors DYLAN TUCCILLO JARED ZEIZEL and THOMAS PEISAL. These guys lead me to there blog (which I can't remember) which lead me to this guy > http://youtu.be/p1i6A7t6L2g < when I say this it reminded me f two things, which I posted on this video. The first was an image he was talking about was actually visualized in an anime called Nauto Shippuddenn*. The second was from an episode of Disney's Gargoyles from the late 90's which I say aired on TV, when TV as free. All of these images years apart painted the same picture. Funny thing is those two animated shows are tied for my number one animated show.

Long story short I found a very famous Psychologist by the name of Carl g Jung, you may of heard of him. Well I was looking on Amazon for his books and I found quite a few good ones, The red book is insane. Well another is The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology & Modern Life, which looks amazing, however I’m not a huge fan of reading massive amounts of material. I'm more of a get-to-the-point type of guy. So I wanted the highlights and where better to find the highlights then in the comment section. Here's what one man, who is an author, had to say:

This review is from: The Earth Has a Soul: C.G. Jung on Nature, Technology & Modern Life (Paperback)

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) was born in Kesswil, Switzerland, a wee lakeside hamlet that had changed little since the Middle Ages. His rustic upbringing gave him the gift of intimate contact with the natural world, a profound source of meaning for him: "Every stone, every plant, every single thing seemed alive and indescribably marvelous." Like his mother, Jung had the ability to access his archaic mind. He had an old soul that was intimately connected with all living creatures, and to the world of dreams. This gave him the unusual ability to observe people and events with extreme clarity, as they truly were.

From the sweet pinnacle of a tranquil, wholesome childhood, the rest of his life was a stunning downhill plunge, as the civilized world fell into ever-growing chaos and catastrophe -- rapid industrialization, urbanization, population explosion, two world wars, mustard gas, atomic bombs, holocaust, the rise and fall of Hitler and Stalin. It was an excellent time to become a famous psychiatrist, because this new reality was a steaming cauldron of intense insanity.

Jung provided the world with a new model for understanding the mind. For almost the entire human journey, we had obeyed the laws of nature, like all other animals did. But with the emergence of domestication and civilization, we began violating the laws of life, snatching away some of nature's power -- power that did not belong to us. This cosmic offense created a break that shifted us onto a path of suffering. The gods are now punishing us for our immature and disrespectful impulses.

Jung left behind a huge body of writings, most of which are of little interest to general readers. Meredith Sabini heroically combed through the mountain of words, extracted passages about our relationship with nature, and published them as The Earth Has a Soul. It stitched together snippets from many sources, from different phases of his life, so it's not as flowing and focused as a discourse written from scratch, but it's an important collection of provocative ideas.

In recent decades, thinkers have tried to explain why the roots of the Earth Crisis emerged several thousand years ago. Most have diagnosed the root of today's problems as rapid, out-of-control cultural evolution -- our skills at learning, communication, and tool making evolved far more quickly than our genes did, and this pushed us dangerously out of balance.

Jung would agree with this theory, but his perception of the problem was far more complex. For almost our entire journey, humankind was guided by instinct, a form of intelligence that was magnificently refined by millions of years of continuous improvement. Like other animals, we lacked self-awareness, or consciousness. Like other animals, we could think and strategize, but we remained unconscious, and perfectly functional.

Jung thought that consciousness became apparent in civilized cultures maybe 4,000 years ago, and it has been increasing ever since. The expansion of consciousness went into warp drive when the era of modern scientific thinking arrived, and we plunged into an industrial way of life.

In remote, isolated locations, there are still a few "primitive" cultures which remain largely unconscious, guided by their normal instinctive intelligence. They do not engage in abstract thinking. They do not destroy their ecosystem. They continue to obey nature's laws. But they are being driven into extinction by you-know-who.

Our conscious mind was new, infantile, incomplete, unstable, and easily injured. Jung saw it as a tiny boat floating in a vast ocean of unconscious knowledge. Like a fish out of water, we were separated from our ancient oceanic home, an unpleasant traumatic shock. In the good old days, we lived in an enchanted world where everything was sacred. But science and technology have dragged us away into a miserable manmade world where nothing is holy, and everyone is restless, anxious, and neurotic.

Consciousness was an extremely powerful two-edged sword, equal parts blessing and curse: "Unfortunately, there is in this world no good thing that does not have to be paid for by an evil at least equally great. People still do not know that the greatest step forward is balanced by an equally great step back."

On the shore of Lake Zurich, Jung built a summer retreat out of rugged cut stones, a sacred refuge for solitude and contemplation. He cooked on a wood fire, raised food in his garden, and drew water from a well. There was no phone or electricity, because the technology of modernity was certain to frighten away the souls of his ancestors.

Primitive people were "hellishly afraid of anything new" because they feared "unknown powers and indefinite dangers." This was just as true for modern folks, even if we pretended otherwise. "Nevertheless, we have plunged down a cataract of progress which sweeps us on into the future with even wilder violence the farther it takes us from our roots." In 1912 he wrote that America "does not understand that it is facing its most tragic moment: a moment in which it must make a choice to master its machines or to be devoured by them."

Jung had an intense dislike for modernity. A city dweller was reduced to a tiny, insignificant ant. Humankind was moving toward insectification. Overpopulation was destroying everything. Growing crowds multiplied the stupidity level, whilst sharply decreasing our intelligence and morality. Crowds were incubators for psychic epidemics, which were far more destructive than natural disasters. Excited mobs often created explosions of madness that nothing could stop. "The most dangerous things in the world are immense accumulations of human beings who are manipulated by only a few heads."

In his psychiatric work, Jung helped patients heal by encouraging them to seek guidance from their dreams. Our unconscious has all the answers we need, but we usually avoid looking there, because we are afraid of it. We overload our lives with distractions to discourage reflection, and to hide from our darkness. We live at a rapid pace, and never leave a moment for looking inward.

Tragically, Jung never came to know a real live hunter-gatherer. He never spent a year or three with the Pygmies or Bushmen, people who lived in the traditional human manner, and lived quite well. If he had, his thinking would certainly have taken quite a different path -- and very likely a far more powerful one.

He did take several brief expeditions to New Mexico, Africa, and India, to spend a little time with people who were neither Christian nor European. Contact with these miserable "primitive" people gave him feelings of superiority, because they seemed to be neurotic, "tormented by superstitions, fears, and compulsions." But they also scared him. He once left Africa because of a powerful dream. He worried that he was in danger of "going black under the skin." Did he come frighteningly close to breaking free from his civilized cage?

For Jung, returning to simple, primitive, sustainable living was not a possible solution. "The wheel of time cannot be turned back. Things can, however, be destroyed and renewed. This is extremely dangerous, but the signs of our time are dangerous too. If there was ever a truly apocalyptic era, it is ours." He believed that salvation could be found by training the conscious mind to receive guidance from the unconscious realm, the world of dreams.

His recommendations for healing included: getting closer to nature, living in small communities (not cities), working less, engaging in reflection in quiet solitude, reconnecting with our past, avoiding distractions (newspapers, television, radio, gramophones), paying serious attention to our dreams, and simplifying our lifestyles.

In 1961, the year he died, Jung wrote: "Civilization is a most expensive process and its acquisitions have been paid for by enormous losses, the extent of which we have largely forgotten or have never appreciated." In his final days in 1961, Jung had visions of massive catastrophes striking in 50 years.

Richard Adrian Reese
Author of What Is Sustainable

Not only do I agree with a lot of what the reviewer and Jung is saying, it’s also very close to what I was researching with my Lucid Dream pals about a year ago.

Everything Connects - 1

Firstly let me start off by typing up a, that I consider funny, dream I had last night. I would also like to note that only every fifth dream do I dream with me inside of it. Most of the time I literally dream as if I am watching a movie and I'm just a viewer and nothing else. Well this particular dream I experienced both.

Caution - The following story may be considered to mature for some...

It was me My mom and my two sisters. They were having trouble hooking up the cable so they can watch cable television. I'm already there and I hook it all up and a picture comes on the TV set. Well now the only problem is that there is nothing but pornographic material on, so I quickly change the channel, more porn, change the channel again, more porn and let me remind you that all the porn that's on the TV is nothing buy HJ's which I thought was peculiar. So we go through every single channel and there is nothing but HJ's. So I go behind the Amore* and move some cables around and WALLLA, cartoons! Not just any cartoons mind you, anime cartoons and Japanese television.

I would also like to point out that I lived in Japan for two years and know (or at least thought I knew) about how to interact with the Japanese culture. So, the first channel that sort of magically pops on is this weird Japanese reality show. The show is a guy who carries around a camera in malls and shopping centers and goes around sticking his tongue out at people. Now he wasn’t licking people but he wasn’t far away from people either. It look as if the point of the show was to stick his tongue out at people and get as close as he can without actually touching them with his tongue and of course one of the unwilling contestant is an attractive younger woman and the host of the show, along with is his side commenting pal attempts to get as close as possible to the young lady and his another one of his pals pushes him of course making him practically lick half of the young woman’s neck.

So I changed the channels as nobody wanted to watch that. Here is the one that actually mad me wake up laughing in the middle of the night. Well that and I had to go to the bathroom.

So we change the licking guy channel and the next channel is an anime. Now this particular anime was very Japanese however the announcer was speaking perfect English. We see three young animated women on the screen and the announcer says the following:

"These three innocent women haven’t done a single thing wrong in their lives but when there is crime to be fought they are... THE SAMU-RAIS FOM HELL!"

Now this may not seem funny to most but the huge contrast between the being innocent and being from hell was for whatever reason funny as hell to me.

The three girls would all bump fist and this scary looking sort of dead armor would be all around them right over there school girl outfit.
Right after this I woke up laughing and had to use the bathroom as well. I also knew how fragile dreams were so had to keep repeating to my SAMU-RAIS FROM HELL over and over so that I wouldn't forget.