02 Aug 2003 | Don Schenck said...

Sam Phillips was a stud, as was Elvis and is Johnny Cash.

Excellent, *excellent* point, Scott. In fact, perhaps we could improve our sphere of influence by looking outside of it at a higher level, as you have done in this post.

Now I know why you are a successful entrepreneur and I'm just a CIO. Again, kudos for your insightful thoughts.

02 Aug 2003 | hurley#1 said...

Agreed, though while I know you're not trying to say that Sam Philips created self-publishing, it's worth noting that the practice of self-publishing goes way back. Jonathan Swift comes to mind, for example. Self-publishing in the print media (broadsides, pamphlets, magazines, books) has a long, long history. I also wouldn't be surprised if self-publishing was occurring in the music industry long before Sam Philips.

02 Aug 2003 | ek said...

Terry Gross rebroadcast her excellent interview with Sam Phillips this week on Fresh Air. You can hear the first part here.

It's great to hear him loosen up as the interview goes on. By the end of this first part you can really hear his passion coming through.

There's a second part to the interview, but it doesn't seem to be online yet.

02 Aug 2003 | Randy said...

I think Heif's point about self-publishing is that Sam gave Elvis the opportunity to self publish. It's not about printing your own books or recording your own music in your house, really, it's about building a platform for others to affordably self publish. That's the real beauty.

04 Aug 2003 | Paperhead said...

When you think about it, almost all bands start out with some form of self-publishing don't they? S'called a demo.

At one time before Sam and Elvis you could walk into record shops and make a wax voice recording relatively easily.

Strikes me that with the new technology, hooking up some karaoke equipment to a CD burner, you could put booths all over the place to enable people to do this again, provided the demand is there. Oddly, in our pop idol age, I guess it would be. But with the way things are with the recording industry, I'm guessing that clearing the rights for the backing tracks would be much more problematic that actually pulling the technology together.

04 Aug 2003 | hurley #1 said...

Actually, Apple's iTunes music store can be used now for self-publishing music. You can record whatever you want at home or in a recording studio, use iTunes or QuickTime to encode the music file to AAC format, and go through CD Baby to sell your tracks and albums in the iTunes Music Store (which will be open to Windows users later this year). Once this idea catches on, it could be revolutionary, making available the music of lots of bands and individual performers who might not be able to afford to put out a CD or whose music is too out there to attract a label.

08 Aug 2003 | Will said...

The Fresh Air interview is one of my all-time favorites. You can hear Phillip's passion, not just for music, but for his own personal mission. He will be greatly missed.

17 Jan 2004 | Holland said...

At WWDC, I listened to Apple representatives make some excellent points about taking the time to build a 100%-compliant Aqua application, and I think all developers need to look beyond the code and listen to what the folks at Apple have to say

28 Nov 2004 | click said...

6083 Very well said chappy.