How to Save Time and Money

In this post I will talk about walkability. I believe it’s an interesting perspective on everyone’s day-to-day operations. Today Americans measure distance in time, not miles. When one looks up how far the location of a restaurant is they are not interested in the amount of miles. They want to know the number of minutes.

The closer a person lives to their day-to-day activities the less time they need to spend traveling to and from them. They save time on travel and they have more time to spend on leisure with their friends and family. Basically, if you can walk somewhere conveniently, then that place is considered to be “walkable.”  Also, the amount of money and carbon emissions one can save by not owning a car is astonishing after one does the math. If a location is accessible by public transportation then it’s degree of “walkablility” is higher than a location that is only accessible by car.

I am currently reading “Reshaping Metropolitan America” by Arthur Nelson. In his work Nelson examines demographic changes over the past century and touches on opportunities for the future.  It’s a great read, and here is the bottom line. Walkability is the future.

There are enough detached single-family homes on the market today to fill our need for them until 2030. During the twentieth century the baby boomer generation built tons of McMansions on huge lots with many bedrooms. Now their kids are old enough to move out, and they want to live in cities. People are willing to accept higher rent prices for smaller units in buildings with amenities like gyms, grocery stores, swimming pools, and places to entertain. This is because they can spend less time traveling, and more time doing the things they want to do.

Furthermore, the value of the average American’s home equity fell from $200,000 in 2006 to less than $78,000 in 2008. It is extremely unlikely that the equity values will ever return to those levels because the market simply demands a different type of housing.

On it’s most basic level I believe walkability needs to be taken into consideration by all young undergrads looking for their first job after graduation. It’s simple. To cut down on your throughput time you should simply move closer to work.

Source: http://islandpress.org/reshaping-metropolitan-america

Distributing Music Has Never Been Easier

In this post I will talk about Toneden and Splice, two music industry startups. They have streamlined very complicated processes to create services that are easy to use.

Distributing a new song is a process with many steps. Artists will often hire multiple managers and agents to assist them with distributing their latest work.

Today we have an unprecedented number of strong music streaming services (Spotify, Tunecore, BeatsMusic, etc) as well as social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc).

When a new song is created it can be shared to the entire world in a matter of minutes. However, minutes soon turn to hours when aspiring musician have to log in to dozens of different online accounts to create different posts.

As an artist myself I often get discouraged when I distribute my own work. When I finish a track I have to communicate with dozens of people through various mediums. Then I make posts on multiple different accounts. It is a real hassle at times. A few young entrepreneurs have thought about these problems. I believe that their solution is awesome. It’s called Toneden.

Imagine one website where you can manage all of your content. Since I began using Toneden my following increased while the time I spend on music distribution has decreased. All of my social network accounts are synced as well as my Soundcloud. Now when I upload a song I can share it instantly on multiple networks. This significantly cuts down on my promotion time. Furthermore I can consolidate all of my content into a single webpage that is hosted on Toneden.  Without the need for multiple websites I can focus on making better music.

Making music with another artist can be difficult if they do not use the same software as I do. When I make a song it usually has anywhere from ten to forty individual tracks. It can be a pain to send all of these to someone else. Conventional file sharing websites like Google Drive, Dropbox, and Mediafire are not simple or quick, and premium accounts are expensive. I recently started using Splice to work with other people. It is a web service that facilitates live collaboration in popular music programs. When anything is changed in a music project the changes are recorded for everyone connected to that project. This makes working together a lot more fun because more time is spent making music, and less time is spent transferring files.

With both ToneDen as well as Splice I spend more time making music, and less time fiddling with technology. Both companies essentially focus on the same concept. They have taken many separate activities and combined them into a single operation. Both companies are only startups with growing member bases. It will be interesting to see how they grow.

 

Sources

https://www.toneden.io

https://splice.com