Square Card Reader
Did you know you could lend Kindle books?
Miss one day in the news cycle and you’re out of it. Don’t follow people on Twitter and you miss the heartbeat of the street.
Friday night, Ian Rogers of Topspin retweeted Jill Sobule’s tweet:
"Need a Square credit card reader to sell merch at our sold out show in NYC – free ticket if you can bring me one!"
This intrigued me on many levels.
First, the fact that a fan could help a band and get a reward. That’s how you bond to your audience today. The idea that stardom is climbing to a higher plane and looking down upon the unwashed masses might work in banking, but not in music. If you’re not in the pit with your fans, you’re toast.
Second, I like Jill, I’m always interested in what she’s doing. She had one hit but soldiers on. She’s talented, and she doesn’t complain.
Third, what in hell is a "Square credit card reader"?
Google is your friend.
Then again, that judge didn’t think so last week, in the book decision…
But it didn’t take much searching on the algorithm-based compendium to come up with the link above. I recognized the picture, I’ve seen it at the Apple Store!
When the Apple Store made its debut, Macs could not process transactions. Now you’re in the store and the roving employees check you out at the table. How do they do this?
With that little white tab attached to their iPhones.
But I thought this was only for Apple.
Turns out anyone can do it.
And sure, you pay, not for the reader, but the transaction, but this is almost as good as the flying cars the future promised us that never arrived.
Amanda Hocking is an idiot
You don’t get in bed with the big bad corporation. That’s like believing the aforementioned banks are your friend. They know little you don’t, they’re devious and they take all your money. This is good how?
Smart people do it for themselves. Knowing that ubiquity is history and the arts are all cottage industry, it’s about a dollar here and a dollar there on your way to survival.
First and foremost you’ve got to have something to sell.
Vinyl, CDs, if you sign ’em people will buy ’em at your gig.
Have a whole line of merch and put on your smile and sell it after the show. And keep 95% plus.
Are you getting this? You’re your own business now. You’ve only got yourself to blame for your failure. Do not listen to the mainstream prognosticators decrying how little money Rebecca Black has made. Hell, she’s thirteen and she’s famous and she’s made SOMETHING! Better to sign to a label, be hidden for years, have your polished to a turd record come out and then sink like a stone?
Marketing is b.s. Your marketing is your product, yourself. Rebecca Black just made a video, her FANS sold it.
Well, maybe in this case, haters. But that’s how you do it. You empower sneezers to spread the word (thanks Seth Godin!)
Like that Ben Sisario article forwarded to me by everybody about online royalties
IT DOESN’T APPLY TO YOU! It’s for fat cat has-beens. Good for them. But it’s like that guy winning that lawsuit about intermittent windshield wipers, good for him, but it doesn’t have much to do with drivers
And notice that Square also works with Android but not BlackBerry. BlackBerry is about corporations, locked down devices that the IT department can control. iOS and Android are about changing the world!
You’re all about changing the world, right?
That’s how you truly make it in this business. You have vision, that you won’t give up, that’s different from what came before. And people are drawn to it.
That’s what’s wrong with mainstream music today. It’s all me-too. And too many doing it themselves can’t sing and believe you should love their piece of crap song. But when we find something new and different that’s good we tell everybody about it! That’s what you want to tap into!
As for lending Kindle books, I was catching up on two days worth of the WSJ that I missed while traveling weeks ago and found this article:
Check out:
