who amazon owns

Here's a great use of mixing subway map and corporation ownership for visual presentation. It is also an interesting look into how Amazon.com has grown.

All Points West

Yesterday I went to see Gogol Bordello at this festival I knew something vaguely about. The Jersey summer torrential downpours this year left the ground muddy, but there was no rain on the one day we were there. The festival was All Points West and all I knew was the name kinda confused me since it is an East coast thing. I dug through their site though and found this:

During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the now abandoned Central Railroad Station at Liberty State Park served as the gateway for immigrants on their journey into the United States as they embarked across the country to ALL POINTS WEST.

What a great metaphor for a festival which takes artits who have followings but launch them into the spotlight and take them to all points of other fan basses (especially on Saturday which was to my eyes an eclectic lineup). Maybe it is a complex metaphor, but in its second year I do not understand why the marketing for an arts fest doesn't make use of such a rich one. Ellis Island is down a little bridge to your left, Gogol Bordello is playing on the main stage, and the only reference I see in the marketing is Lady Libery's torch.

I actually like a lot of the art, imagery, and general marketing for the festival and think it is top notch, don't get me wrong. I just see this as missed potential. And it's not totally missing, they use trains in some of the art, but it just seemed incidental to me since there's a train station and the Statue of Liberty at Liberty State Park.

The other missed potential I'm wondering about this morning is iTunes. Now that we're at a time when you can buy albums track by track, why not have a festival album pre-show release that has one or two hits from every band in the lineup to generate interest. Sure it would only be more hard core fans, but I know I would have been tempted to buy it. Then my choice of choosing a stage (which by-the-way the stages are named after the old train lines that ran through the park land years ago), would have been educated by the pre-show collection. And of course anyone going probably owns a couple tracks that are in the collection, so iTunes should give the option to not download or be charged for those tracks. And of course once the festival is over offer a after show collection of the set list. There would certainly be gaps because of medleys or new songs that aren't available in iTunes (and some bands may not want their music in iTunes, etc), but you could just put a PDF in the blanks with the APW logo and the explanation that track X is not available and why (with promo info as well).

This idea came to me by a realization by some people of my slightly older generation who were surprised that there was not a single CD for sale at the festival. The younger generation was debating why you would buy a CD. True story, I overheard this debate by some teenagers as we walked home: Why buy a CD when you're just going to rip it into MP3s. If you're going to buy something, buy an analog recording. If you want digital, download it. This of course started the is pirating a bad thing debate, which apparently is an ageless debate.