Rasmus Rasmussen dot com

Jack of all Trades
King of None

That’s pretty much me, right there. At least if I’m to say so myself. If you ask me what I can do, I will say that I am a decent writer, a decent musician and a decent photographer. I can draw a little, too. But if you ask me what I’m a master of, I’ll look at you and shake my head.

In retrospect, maybe I should have stayed with just one thing. If I had specialized in, say, music, I could have been an awesome songwriter. I’m sure of it. But most of my energy went elsewhere. If I had concentrated on photography only, I would have been amazing. But my interests have been spread out.

One could argue that I am better at what I do, because of my dabbling in many similar or at least somewhat related things, and I would tend to agree. But still, part of me wonders what if.

However, I would like it to be known, that I have no regrets. I am proud to be a multi-artist. Yes, I realize that there will be others who are better than me at everything, but if I can create something that other people will take pleasure in, whether that be a song, a book or a photograph, then my mission is done. I did not set out to be the best in the world at what I do, but I did set out to make some kind of impact. That’s all.

Later, I’ll talk about managing all of these creative impulses.

In the current (September) issue of Wired Magazine, the cover story is about the re-invention of the music industry. How some artists and other industry pioneers are experimenting with giving the public more control, more freedom and supposedly more fun, focusing less and less on selling albums and more on generating interest and thereby support for the artst. I think it sounds great, and it gave me an idea.

Suppose you got a song through a download service, such as iTunes. Suppose you didn’t pay anything up front either, but that you later had, or were simply encouraged, to rate the same song from 1-10 and then pay $0.10 per point given. That way, you would end up paying ten cents if you didn’t like the song (let’s call it to cover the bandwidth used for downloading it) and all the way up to one dollar, if you absolutely loved the song.

Now, I realize that this way of selling music would rely heavily on the customer’s honesty, and I’m sure some would take advantage of it and never rate the music at all. But I believe that most people are good people, who wouldn’t mind paying an average of maybe $0.50 per song, who’d be honest in their ratings and enjoy this way of buying new music.

And what if we take this one step further? Imagine that users, along with the rating, can give feedback to the artist, such as why the song is only rated a 3 or will always remain a 10. This would greatly benefit everyone involved. You could even post the ratings/comments on the song’s download page (with optional moderation from the band perhaps), so other people might get an idea of what the song is like.

Now, with yet another step, it would be fairly easy to develop a feature that allowed for recommendations, based on ratings you’ve given, matched to what others have rated. You could even turn it into a community thing and deal out free songs to the most active reviewers and whatnot. And why not build in a feature that made it impossible to download more than, say, five songs at a time, before you had to go back and rate some. And you could even adjust that number for customers who have rated many songs, so that someone who has bought a thousand songs can download 50 songs before having to rate, instead of the default five. There are plenty of possibilities.

If someone out there would like to turn this idea into an actual project, website or service, please feel free to do so. Just don’t forget to tell me about it, ’cause I would love to sell my own music that way, and maybe even help out in creating this!