If you’ve talked to me late­ly, you prob­a­bly know I’m train­ing for the Philadel­phia Marathon on Novem­ber 23. When I start­ed train­ing six weeks ago, I had no idea how good I’d feel now. I ran 10 miles today. Next week I’m run­ning 11. I’m break­ing per­son­al records each week! It’s been a great expe­ri­ence and I’m doc­u­ment­ing it (for the most part) over on my Pos­ter­ous blog, Marathon Man.

This is a far cry from my days in the Philebri­ty Fit Club com­pe­ti­tion. I’m not sweat­ing weight each week. I’m con­cen­trat­ing on run­ning dis­tance com­fort­ably and con­di­tion­ing myself over the next 17 weeks. The weight will come off as the mileage increas­es to as much as 50 miles a week! It sounds like a lot now, but so did 10 before I ran it today.

As an aside, if any­one fitness/lifestyle com­pa­ny can pro­duce a pedometer/watch bet­ter than Nike Sport­band, please do. Today’s run along the Wis­sahick­on had mile­mark­ers and when I fin­ished, my Nike Sport­band was near­ly a full mile off over the course of ten miles. Did I men­tion that con­den­sa­tion is col­lect­ing in the face of the watch? It’s time for Nike to admit that they rushed this prod­uct to mar­ket and issue a recall. I’m already envi­sion­ing the unbe­liev­able class action suit that will be brought by a ton of pissed off run­ners who thought they’d found the answer to their prayers.

This has to be some of the most excit­ing news for Xbox 360 film geeks like me. As I men­tioned when it was first announced, Net­flix will make its “Watch Instant­ly” con­tent avail­able via Xbox Live, a move that beats Sony in the so-called bat­tle for the liv­ing room yet again. As the video demon­strates, it’ll be sim­ple and quick to select and watch movies, which trans­lates into less down time between rentals and it means that more women like my wife Helen will con­sid­er the Xbox game plat­form more than some­thing that’s just for the boys.
Watch the video to see how it works.

I can’t express how excit­ed I am about the news that Net­flix’s “Watch Now” con­tent will be avail­able via Xbox Live. This is a tremen­dous step toward treat­ing Xbox 360 as a mul­ti­me­dia plat­form, a play Sony made with the PS3 and failed. Microsoft made a deci­sive move to broad­en the appeal of the Xbox 360 beyond gamers and Net­flix found a way to wean them­selves off of the DVDs by mail ser­vice that rev­o­lu­tion­ized the video rental indus­try. It’s an amaz­ing win for both companies.

As I look over my decid­ed­ly nerdy queue (I have La Guerre Est Finie), I see that most of the titles that inter­est me will be avail­able when the Net­flix con­tent goes live on Xbox Live. If any­thing, I may actu­al­ly save mon­ey by par­ing back my Net­flix sub­scrip­tion and rely more on their unlim­it­ed video on-demand library. Net­flix will undoubt­ed­ly work with Microsoft to influ­ence the avail­abil­i­ty of new titles as the release win­dows shrink between the­atri­cal and DVD release date. In short, it’s going to be a great fall and winter.

Hype­bot post­ed “5 Lies Indie Musi­cians Tell Them­selves” today. Each of these would’ve been great to dis­cuss on Sat­ur­day’s “Music 2.0” pan­el. They’re great con­ver­sa­tion starters about how the Inter­net has­n’t real­ly changed much for inde­pen­dent artists despite rumors to the contrary.

I absolute­ly agree that the Music 2.0 pan­el sand­wiched diverse top­ics togeth­er that did­n’t real­ly jibe. I felt like Kristin Thom­son from the Future of Music Coali­tion did a great job of mod­er­at­ing, but in a brief con­ver­sa­tion after the pan­el, admit­ted that she want­ed to focus on how new mod­els can help artists get their due. That more or less guar­an­teed that we as a pan­el would be view­ing the indus­try through rose-col­ored glass­es, some­thing I’d des­per­ate­ly hoped to avoid, sole­ly because it seems disin­gen­u­ous to do otherwise.

First I’d like to thank Becky Claw­son for invit­ing me to speak on the Music 2.0 pan­el this past Sat­ur­day. I hope it was as eye-open­ing an expe­ri­ence for my fel­low pan­elists as it was for me. See, I find many “Web 2.0” appli­ca­tions an inte­gral part of my dai­ly life, but I under­stand that this isn’t the case for most peo­ple. For me, the biggest prob­lem with how we talk about the Inter­net is how it’s treat­ed as some­thing every­one feels com­fort­able using. I think yes­ter­day’s pan­el showed us how it isn’t, and served as a refresh­ing reminder for why peo­ple in and around the music indus­try need to keep think­ing crit­i­cal­ly about how the Inter­net might best serve artists and indus­try pro­fes­sion­als alike.

I’d hoped to offer a healthy dose of skep­ti­cism yes­ter­day. I want­ed to talk about how for many web­sites, music is more of a lia­bil­i­ty than an asset. I want­ed to spar with fel­low pan­elist and friend Mark Schon­eveld. I want­ed to talk about pira­cy. I want­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk about Face­book and why it’s inter­est­ing to me that it makes no direct music play, or how count­less “Music 2.0” start-ups are exploit­ing music con­tent with­out any inter­est — much less abil­i­ty — to con­vert that excite­ment into rev­enue streams for the artists whose work sup­ports them. Unfor­tu­nate­ly this oppor­tu­ni­ty did­n’t present itself, and instead we pan­elists found our­selves try­ing to offer advice to an audi­ence eager to use the Inter­net to pro­mote them­selves and their work.

I feel that I was­n’t able to suf­fi­cient­ly express my qualms with “Music 2.0,” some­thing that was brought to my atten­tion by tweet­ed com­ments from anoth­er pan­elist, Maria Scia­r­ri­no. Ear­ly in the pan­el I stressed that artists should­n’t con­cen­trate on a web strat­e­gy at the expense of doing the things they’ve always done to pro­mote them­selves; that the Inter­net isn’t so much of a rad­i­cal break with his­to­ry as pun­dits and entre­pre­neurs might like you to believe; that peo­ple still learn about music in much the same way as they always have and the Inter­net is just an exten­sion of that. Do indie artists need to take the Inter­net seri­ous­ly? Sure, but it should’t replace tra­di­tion­al modes of promotion.

With that in mind, I’ve been read­ing Idol­a­tor’s Web 2.no posts very close­ly and tak­ing them to heart. Those posts high­light some of the more ill-con­ceived pro­mo­tion­al ideas in the music indus­try. They make you won­der. In the ten years since Nap­ster rev­o­lu­tion­ized the way we think about music as a prod­uct, we have yet to see a strat­e­gy that can con­vince peo­ple that record­ed music is some­thing worth buy­ing. Where’s that mon­ey going? It’s going to the peo­ple who cre­ate sites like Hype Machine, Last.fm, Stereogum.com, and oth­ers like them. The volatil­i­ty sur­round­ing the music indus­try must be very attrac­tive to entre­pre­neurs, the sort of thinkers who see risk and antic­i­pate reward. But where is it?

My real advice for any­one inter­est­ed in being a com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful musi­cian to the extent that’s pos­si­ble in 2008? Don’t wor­ry about sign­ing a deal and spend that mon­ey on a great pub­li­cist who is savvy about the web. Then make them promise to nev­er ever stream your album for free; it’s like wav­ing a red cape in front of folks who’re bored and look­ing for some­thing that leaked. (I’m look­ing direct­ly at Pitch­fork pari­ahs the Black Kids.)