Vimeo Co-Founder Planning Online Music Venture

Vimeo co-founder and self-portrait artist Jakob Lodwick is planning some sort of online music venture called Normatism.

Almost no information is available from his cryptic introductory blog post, but we pieced together a few shards of meaning that hint at what he's up to:

The American record industry is in bad shape. It's not that bad, yet. But I don't want to wait around for it to crash. I don’t want to watch it get worse. Instead, I intend to capture the spirit of rebuilding.
I want to pretend that the major labels were each hit with a hydrogenbomb, and now all these musicians are standing around, asking, "What dowe do now?"

and

The reason for the above premise is the theme of our present phase in history: Technology gives us the power to do almost anything. Thismeans making a profitable album no longer requires hundreds of people.
It requires two or three. Big record labels, and large corporations ingeneral, are no longer needed to make money from art. This is not tosay that Normative will buy magazine ads and mail press releasesourselves. That’s too much work. It means we will promote our albums in new ways that are hundreds of times more efficient; ways that record labels don't understand, but are obvious to a seasoned web entrepreneur .

and

It also means that if you want to make money from music, you'regoing to have to pull your weight, or you will be left behind. In theold model, a small number of artists created a living for hundreds oflabel employees. When those artists realize they can split the moneywith a couple of partners instead, will they? I'm betting the answer is yes, and every musician I talk to seems to agree with me.

I'm going to keep quiet about what I’ve accomplished so far, except to say that I've already signed one artist.

His blog says he's "looking for developers who are good with the multimedia side ofFlash, like video and interactivity, who are interested in freelancejobs," so whatever he's planning, it will likely include those technologies.

(jakoblodwick; via music ally)