Has it really been a year?

The KIPP program was one of the reasons I came to Plan II in the first place. I remember as a senior in high school, sitting in on a world lit class and having Shiv Rawal come in to talk about the program. I thought it sounded like the coolest thing ever, and was exactly the sort of thing I wanted to do in college. I came into the KIPP program wide-eyed and excited, ready to transform a child’s life and figure out America’s schooling system.

            I think more than anything, I was just nervous out of my mind at the beginning of the year. I remembered as a kid thinking that college students were the coolest people ever, and just being fascinated by them. I wasn’t all together sure if I was capable of being that much of a hero for a kid. Heck, I wasn’t sure if I could maintain a decent conversation with someone that age. I’m shy, bad with words, and went in hoping for the best.

            Derrica was lovely—confident, positive, slightly sassy and mischeivious, but always with the best of intentions and maturity that always amazed me. Did I transform her world? I don’t think it was nearly as dramatic as I had imagined. She wasn’t suddenly acing all her classes, we weren’t calling each other in the middle of the night or anything and for the longest time I wasn’t sure if she was happy to see me when I showed up at her classroom door.

            Second semester though, I realized that my visits really did make a difference to her. She told me that I was one of the few things that she liked about KIPP, made surprise booklets for me, and broke my heart when she told another mentor that she wished I had a car so that I’d never miss a week for lack of a ride. Recently we’d taken to doing arts and crafts, but we never keep our own creation, we always exchange them. I don’t know why but it warms my heart. I want to keep being there for her (and hopefully bring my damn car to campus) and not let her lose whatever we have. Maybe our relationship wasn’t as flashy as I imagined, but gee it’s been rewarding all the same.

           As far as the class goes, it was pretty eye-opening to see the world from an educator’s view. Whether we looked at things from the eyes of a teacher, an administrator, a policy maker—each position had its own complications, its own intentions, and its own part. It’s pretty crazy that everyone has the same goal of improving education, yet it becomes such a messy process to achieve it. The class I think could be depressing at times, not going to lie. But there was definitely that ray of hope, and I think more than anything, a push to make us think about education. I felt the class showed me the value of education and made us willing to fight for it—and fight for it we will.

Frogs and Shakespeare

As our first presenters went in class today, memories of my education came flooding back. There were tons of casually awesome things that we did which incorporated both the STEM and outdoors that we talked about during the presentations while contributing directly to the curriculum. They were probably the most memorable parts of my education.

            I remember in 4^th grade, we spent one unit on the animal kingdom and another unit on light and energy. We ended up doing this thing where we got tadpoles from my teacher’s pond, and we raised them on our desks in these little cups until they grew legs etc and then released the frogs back into the pond. We were ubelievably fond of our growing frogs. The day of the release, we also cooked our lunch in these “solar ovens” that we built, which showed us how solar energy works, and gave us hands on experience that the STEM group emphasized.

            Even in other subjects, there were these kinds of outlets. I remember in 5^th grade we performed a Shakespeare play for the school, Midsummer Nights Dream and Macbeth, which we had to memorize our lines for, make costumes, props and a set and then perform. It obviously strengthened our literary understanding, worked our memories, creativity, construction, organization and long-term commitments, and was at the end of the day something we were really proud of.

            I feel like KIPP doesn’t have a lot of these long term, multi-disciplinary projects. Maybe this is because it is less directly linked to testing and scores, but I know it was certainly an integral part of my education.

Definitely Forgot We Got a Joke Blog… darn

As our first presenters went in class today, memories of my education came flooding back. There were tons of casually awesome things that we did which incorporated both the STEM and outdoors that we talked about during the presentations while contributing directly to the curriculum. They were probably the most memorable parts of my education.

            I remember in 4^th grade, we spent one unit on the animal kingdom and another unit on light and energy. We ended up doing this thing where we got tadpoles from my teacher’s pond, and we raised them on our desks in these little cups until they grew legs etc and then released the frogs back into the pond. We were ubelievably fond of our growing frogs. The day of the release, we also cooked our lunch in these “solar ovens” that we built, which showed us how solar energy works, and gave us hands on experience that the STEM group emphasized.

            Even in other subjects, there were these kinds of outlets. I remember in 5^th grade we performed a Shakespeare play for the school, Midsummer Nights Dream and Macbeth, which we had to memorize our lines for, make costumes, props and a set and then perform. It obviously strengthened our literary understanding, worked our memories, creativity, construction, organization and long-term commitments, and was at the end of the day something we were really proud of.

            I feel like KIPP doesn’t have a lot of these long term, multi-disciplinary projects. Maybe this is because it is less directly linked to testing and scores, but I know it was certainly an integral part of my education.

A Tale of Two Friends

It’s always interesting when I go to KIPP and Danae joins Derrica and I.  The two are best friends, but of the two Derrica is a little more laid back and unlikely to voice strong opinions on things.  Danae on the other hand just goes for it, and sometimes I wonder if Derrica actually shares her opinions or just goes along with it.

5^th grade is rough—socially and academically.  I was sitting with these two and Danae was saying how Derrica always has crushes on guys “way out of her league.”  I wasn’t exactly sure what to say, other than try and say that no guy is out of her league, not that it would make much of a difference to a 5^th grader. I know at that age, no matter what adults said, my self-worth was decided by my peers.  There were a lot of inconsistencies that came up. I remember Derrica once saying that her favorite subject was math.  I mentioned it, and Danae reacted, “Ew, Derrica you hate math. The teacher is so mean!”. I was confused, to say the least.

The two, if they had the choice, would probably spend all their time together.  They are pushed even closer together because they run into racial prejudices regularly. The worst seems to be that people mix up their names all the time, and it clearly bothers them a lot. They see it as a reflection of their race, which perhaps is part of it, though I suspect much of it is just them spending so much time together and having similar names.  I worry sometimes about them though.  They kind of have a defensive attitude at times that shuts others out.  I know when we were doing crafts in the gym, another girl walked by and Danae told her that she couldn’t be friends with them anymore because she was hanging out with some other girl that they didn’t like.  The girl swore to never hang out with whoever this disliked girl was, if she could still remain friends with the two.  I was a little horrified, not going to lie and am struggling to know what to do. I think they’re both really sweet girls, and I don’t want them to have to isolate themselves in this way. Perhaps 5^th grade drama fizzles out with time, but still, it’s rather concerning.

Presentation Planning: Long Tail

I think an important part of my paper that there presentation is missing is the whole long tail theory.

I could demonstrate shelf space, and how people are only going to stock the stuff they’re sure will sell.  That is what limits diversity in physical stores.  I could have different things for people to buy, and the one bought the least would be what the store doesn’t carry.  This would contrast with the digital store, where it doesn’t matter how much space there is or how much it sells, because there is no reason for companies to not want to keep those songs.  Thus, the people who chose to go with the indie labels can still have an equal chance of availability with the digital store, which they wouldn’t have with the physical store.  Maybe for money, I can use can, just to incorporate something of value that people may spend their money on or not.  Then here I can also briefly mention the issue of illegal downloading, which isn’t really a topic that I can just ignore.

Presentation: Examples of Successes

Besides the pseudo-simulation, I think some real world examples would be sweet to use.  Arcade Fire is under an indie label, and so is Adele (which still kinda blows my mind).

Adele: Indie Success Story

Actually what would be fun would be to play snippets of songs, and see whether A) People recognize them, B) Guess whether independent or major, C) Do they own the song?  I would of course have a list of whether they are actually indie or majors, and also keep tally of peoples responses.  Hopefully, there will be the majority knowing all the major label songs, and a minority knowing the indies, but still those songs being heard of.  I guess the idea is that even though indies don’t have the same visibility resources as majors, they still have fans.  Also interesting to compare would be the proportion of people who know and own a song in major labels, and in indie labels.

Presentation Planning: Breaking Even?

In the end, this is a paper about business and sustainability, not just how its cool to have indie labels rising against the big bad majors.  The simulation needs to take into account the financial aspect of the industry.  We’re going to mainly do this through different budgets for advertising.  Songs can be played on the radio for a certain amount of $.  Music videos as-well will be expensive.  However, this will increase visibility, and may result in larger album sales to compensate.  This is what the major labels have to consider.  Then there are the more indie options, through blog posts, through youtube simple videos, through illegal downloading.  This is cheaper, and has a lower break even point.  I’m not sure if I can actually run a simulation of this though, just because its a short period of time and there is only a small number of people.  But the point is, are these advertisements and spending useful?  Does it pay back?  This is the reason that there are so many of the same poppy songs on the radio.  Perhaps there is a way to sample different people’s itunes… just by asking?  Although, there is some issue of the class being so small, that it could just be really skewed.  Perhaps it could be more like a show of hands kind of thing?  What percentage of the music you own do you hear on the radio?  Unfortunately, asking whether those were bought legally or not is difficult.  Oh statistics, you and your biases.  Makes projects hard :P.

 

Presentation Planning: Choosing a Label

I want to do some kind of simulation of the music market.  I want to show how the key players of the music industry have changed and how artists have an option of what they want to do with their music.  I suppose I can choose 5 volunteers or so, and then they can choose whether they want to go with an indie label, go major, or go independent. 

I would present them with the pros and cons of each scenario, and give them options.  I would explain what each of them can do, and if you can use certain advertising/distribution methods.  This would bring in the digitization aspect and the difference in resources that the different label types possess.  Then, based on what kind of label they choose to go with, I would run some sort of mock up of how the music would be distributed/sold/advertised.

Structured Pull vs. Star-System and Push models

A big part of analyzing businesses is break-even analysis– which is basically how much of a product do you need to sell before making a profit.  Here, we can see independent labels gaining an advantage.

Back in the day, the only real way to reach audiences was through the radio and through MTV.  Radio was THE medium, and freaking expensive.  It still is.  Record labels have to pay big bucks to get their artists played on the radio– which explains, whiny people, why popular radio stations always play the same mainstream songs.  The people making those mainstream songs have the money to promote these songs, unlike your little indie gig.  Its what you’d call an economy of scale, I suppose.  Glitzy music videos were also what made MJ and Madonna big way back then.  Even now, the major slabels spend fortunes doing these centralized media promotions, pushing a couple big stars (Star-system and Push models).  However, with these kinds of costs, they need to sell many more albums to compensate.

Take this versus the indie label.  They aren’t going to use very fancy promotional videos.  Recording songs has become way cheaper, making a music video to play on Youtube is way cheaper too.  Using blogs, social media, Youtube, and file sharing, promotions can be very cheap.  Yes, its hard to be spotted with so many new artists and competing labels, but it is not necessary to have big bucks to get anyone to listen to your stuff.  But more importantly, reaching that many people isn’t even necessary.  Since you save so much money on promotions, to make a profit, you don’t need to sell as many CDs.  Great!  Thus, even if a CD is not as wildly popular as a Major label’s, you can still capitalize on it, whereas for Majors– which do have a majority of flop CD’s– waste a lot more money and are hit hard with falling purchase rates.

Labels: Unique Snowflakes? hmmm….

I realized that I had jumped into this project with an extraordinarily vague idea of what record labels actually did.  Actually, this lack of knowledge about record labels is apparently something common to my generation, whereas they were very important for consumers a couple decades ago.  In an NPR round-the-table discussion, a bunch of leaders of various independent labels were discussing how back in their day, they would largely buy music based on label.  They would be loyal to a particular label, which had its own types of sounds, and buy artist music based on that.

Woah.

I had absolutely no idea what labels my favorite bands were under.  The NPR people were fairly critical of this.  Apparently, I don’t know my music very well.

But instead of just being like, man, I’m such a failure of a fan, I think I’m the product of the changing importance of the label.  Where had that kind of loyalty for the label disappeared to?

It made me actually think of any label I might be loyal to.  All I could think of was DFTBA records.

http://dftba.com/

I adored this label, because it was comprised of a very specific niche of nerdy youtube musicians.  They prized quirkyness, Dr. Who, Harry Potter, unusual music and merchandize to accompany it.  The name itself was Don’t Forget to be Awesome– stunningly positive. Much of the merchandize doesn’t even refer to a specific artist.  I myself have a poster that says “Keep Calm and DFTBA”.

It is purely online, and not a huge enterprise, but thriving.  Things sell out ridiculously fast, and there’s a genuine bond between artist and label.  Perhaps this is really the kind of direction labels need to go in– be a specific niche, have the loyalty of a group of people, and be unique.  I think “mainstream” blends together, and thus the majors can have their run with that.  But for an indie label, if they can capture a uniqueness that a major wouldn’t bother dabbling in, thats how they can stay successful.