News > Miscellaneous
Jack White Rips A Page From The Book Of… Tom DeLonge?
By Ryan Magner
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Modlife is everything music fans dream a band could do using the internet. Blogs, photos, videos, podcasts, and live webcam chats. Everything controlled by the band themselves and not the record companies. It’s almost as if a musician was behind it all. Oh, hey, a musician is behind it. Modlife is owned by none other than the poop joke guy from Blink-182.
Modlife was launched back in November 2007 by Tom DeLonge, with Angels & Airwaves. The launch coincided with the release of the band’s second album, I-Empire. It was unlike anything any band had done before: For $6.95 a month you had access to exclusive blogs, videos, “Modcasts” (podcasts), live chats and live webcam broadcasts by the band members themselves. Along with those benefits was exclusive meet-&-greets with the band, available to members only. There was a noticeable spike in membership when this was announced publicly.
The period from November 2007 through the summer of 2008, the Angels & Airwaves members were pretty active. They kept up on blogging and chatting live. They each released one of their own Modcasts periodically that were available for download. And if you were lucky enough to be online at the same time, they would surprise you on the live Modcam. They usually had something new to say about the band and what was going on. Or it was Tom DeLonge dancing in his hotel room… in his underwear. Either way, it was entertaining and worth the $6.95 a month.
By far the coolest thing Angels & Airwaves achieved on Modlife was live streamed performances. They first set up the cameras in their practice room and performed a few songs, not without some technical difficulties, but it was as new to them as it was to anyone watching. A few months later they streamed one of their live shows without a hitch. It was my first experience with a live streamed show, and surprisingly I got a rush out of it like I was actually there. I’m not saying I’d replace the true live experience with it, but it was pretty damn cool.
Everyone a part of the Angels & Airwaves Modlife watched it develop new features over time. Tom DeLonge mentioned that other bands would soon be joining Modlife. He said that these won’t just be small new bands, but bands you’ve known for a long time. The first major band to join, and the biggest surprise, was Korn.
Many artists have joined Modlife since January 2009:
Angels And Airwaves
Attack Attack
Blink-182
Closure In Moscow
Envy On The Coast
Finch
Forever The Sickest Kids
From First To Last
From Jupiter
Hit The Lights
Honor Bright
Jessica Chobot
Keep A Breast
Korn
Louis XIV
Mayday Parade
Moon Rising
Run Doris Run
Runner Runner
Scary Kids Scaring Kids
The Color Fred
The Silent Comedy
Timmy Curran
Transfer
And now this leads me to an e-mail I received from Jack White’s Third Man Records, with their Declaration of Principles, which led to a full explanation of what exactly “The Vault” is:
I wondered what this new site could possibly look like; full of live video streams, videos and photos, live chats, and podcasts. So color me fucking flabbergasted when I click the link from Third Man Records’ announcement, and it leads me to a Third Man Records Modlife page! Complete with a new blog from Jack White himself, which I think MUST be a first. I can’t remember ever reading a blog by the man himself before.
It only makes perfect sense! Jack White has taken the original concept of Modlife, originally presented by Tom DeLonge, and given it five shots of adrenaline.
What is amazing to me is the setup of the Third Man Records Modlife page. On the original Modlife network there was a drop-down on the top that says “Select a Site,” which dropped down a list of all the Modlife bands. If you are on The Vault’s Modlife page, on the “Select a Site” drop-down is The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, The White Stripes, and Third Man Records. If you are on any other Modlife site the drop-down lists every band, but not The Vault or any of Jack White’s bands. It seems Jack White pulled some strings and has made Third Man Records completely independent of the rest of the Modlife network.
When you sign up for The Vault you get not only the content of this Modlife page, but there is some merchandise in the package as well. As explained on The Vault announcement (a recommended read):
I immediately signed up for a Platinum membership, because if there’s anyone’s word you can trust in the music world right now, it’s Jack White’s (not this guy’s). When Tom DeLonge first launched Modlife it was full of bugs and issues. It took nearly a full year until it exploded with new features and new bands. But in the end the venture was totally worth it all.
I predict it will be a slow start for The Vault. These guys have been playing music all their lives, not tinkering with computers. But if we stick around long enough we will see it develop into something greater than what it already is.
Whether Jack White took a page out of Tom DeLonge’s book, or they were on the same page already, we can rest assured that there are major talents fighting on our side.
(To address your issue, sir, this is not just structured daily studio updates. If you do the math: for nearly the same price a week you get SO much more in this deal then some guy flexing his ego at you for 12 weeks. Besides, he said “any band”, and Third Man Recrords is not “any band.”)
He did have a blog for a few years on whitestripes.com, and it was totally amazing. I think it lasted until 2006, when he got into an internet fight with Billy Childish, then cancelled the whole thing.
I dunno when it started, but I remember it was philosophical, poetic, and all sorts of awesome.
I really want this subscription thing, but I want to be sure of what exactly I’ll be getting, what I’ll be able to save for posterity, and if their live streams are going to be shitty or not.
i signed up. i haven’t explored it thoroughly, but there is an exclusive video of the dead weather rehearsing that’s pretty cool. and an interview i hadn’t seen anywhere else. there’s a couple trailers for something odd and maybe awesome, a video or short film based on treat me like your mother, directed by jonathan glazer.
one thing that i’m skeptical about is they seem to insist that the live streams are not to be saved or archived, like the from the basement performance. i suppose to make them more special or valuable. i know people who pay generally want to keep, so it seems like a risky move. i know part of what makes live experiences so magical is that if you weren’t there… you missed it. i don’t know if fans are willing to accept that rule when it’s a digital experience, that they know for a fact can be easily replicated.
but what sold me was the physical releases- third man records hq is a vinyl pressing plant and record store. they’re accepting new platinum members only through july 21st. then they’re going to press exactly one record, by hand, for each of these members, and mail them out. that’s pretty fucking cool.
Fuck, the TMLYM short film is there already?
Well, getting the premium deal (20 bucks per month) would cost me 120 bucks, because I live in Brazil and our currency is crap. I’m not sure if a couple of vinyls and a shirt are really worth 120 bucks, no matter how limited. “but if you put this on eBay”…who says that people on eBay will actually want it?
Also, this whole “if you’re not there, you miss it” aspect of the streams is bullshit, because if you don’t have a super-fast connection, sometimes you’ll miss it even if you are there at the right time. That happened with my From The Basement stream.
just two trailers for tmlym.
Ryan, you can’t possibly believe that the position you take in this essay is commensurable with the one taken by Skwerl in the post on Corgan’s proposal. This is what Skwerl wrote:
“Pay $40, and for twelve weeks, Billy will give you updates from the studio. And you might even get to participate in some fashion that may or may not affect the new album. Or something.
“It’s not a bad idea, it’s just a few years too late. Pumpkins fans will fork over the cash of course, and Billy deserves to be compensated for the effort he’ll surely put into these updates. But while it’s still unclear what the future of the music business is going to look like, I’m pretty sure this isn’t it. It feels a lot more like the past; a time when you had to pay for an artist to give you the time of day. A time when personal communication with an artist you love was, with luck, a once in a lifetime event. Call us spoiled, but we can now take it for granted.”
It’s perfectly fine if the two of you have a disagreement. Perfectly fine, too, if Skwerl has changed his mind. But Skwerl’s piece did not hinge on the personal credibility of Billy Corgan or the price point involved. Its title was “A Worse Way Forward”, and as you can see in the quotation provided, the only price point Skwerl saw as acceptable for “personal communication with an artist” — ANY artist — was $0.
weeeeell… you’re mostly absolutely right jason, and i’ll be the first to admit that there are plenty of disagreements between the writers here. and i’ll also admit that to say that i still stand behind my corgan piece and agree with ryan that “the vault” is cool and valuable seems like an hypocrisy. but a big difference that i personally see between corgan’s proposal and white’s is the tone- corgan’s was light on promises and physical product, and seemed to offer little more than access. jack on the other hand, seems far more humble, offering a lot more, which includes some hand-pressed vinyl made specifically for each member. furthermore, modlife appears to be a very robust system that seems to be able to deliver a lot more technically.
perhaps i’m undermining myself a little bit with this stance, and maybe for me personally it just comes down to the fact that i’m a bigger fan of third man than i am of billy corgan. but with that said, i’m no more confident that “the vault” will be a success as i am that corgan’s model will be. honestly, i wish both men the best. if it gets good artists paid, and satisfies the fans, more power to everyone.
i think it sucks. sorry for the language, but that’s what i think. unless you pay you will not see any goodies anymore. that’s mean and greedy. i’m a huge stripes fan and mr. white was kinda role model, but now it changes. he is another salesman. i’m a teen and i could never afford it from my pocket money even if i would want to. i’m sorry mr. white, i guess i’m out!
Mr. White was always a great salesman! That’s why releases so many goddamn 7″ vinyls. He wouldn’t release so much stuff if people wouldn’t buy every single copy of it.
About the Billy Corgan thing, there’s one easy way to diferentiate Jack White’s Vault from Billy Corgan’s subscription: Jack makes great music, while Billy Corgan stopped making good music many years ago.
@minniwhite even i gotta say, calling an artist ‘mean and greedy’ because he wants to be paid for giving you stuff… especially hand-made albums… is, well, part of the problem with the music industry. refusing to overpay for mass-produced disposable cds is one thing, but really?
What Jack White is offering is something very cool. He laid out what you are getting exactly unlike Billy Corgan. This is the next evolution of the fan-club.
@miniwhite: Is Jack White your slave who should give you stuff for free because you are a “fan”? Get real.
I paid the $60 bucks and for a t-shirt, a 12″, and a 7″ that really isn’t that bad. I don’t expect the t-shirt to be much but Dead Weather shirts cost $20 bucks so I’m paying about $40 for two pieces of vinyl I won’t be able to get otherwise. Plus access to all their music videos (which I know I could find for free on YouTube, but it’s nice for them to all be there), rare interviews, rehearsals, etc.
I’ll at least try it out for a quarter and if I don’t like it, I can drop out.
I’m sceptical about the stuff being worth much on eBay though. The Stripes Sub Pop single Jack referred to is much rarer and does go for $200 or so, but why would anyone pay more than $60 for any of these releases when they could just sign up? Maybe if the band takes off these will become more valuable…but that’s doubtful (and I’m buying the stuff to hopefully get some rare tracks on record, not to sell).
But bands have tried this before. Queens fans may know Jubilee (Mikey and a few others) tried a subscription service with the guarantee of a 12″ and I think a 7″ for $20 a year and nothing ever came out of it.
All in all, $60 to experiment with a band who’s music I support is not that much if you ask me.
Oh and one more thing…you can still watch the Dead Weather FTB stream
http://www.fromthebasement.tv/live
I was gonna add something, but I pretty much agree with what was already said by Skwerl and… trucks. Keep your eyes open for a follow up in 3 months is all I can say if you have any doubts. We’ll let you know how it all panned out up to that point. So far the Modlife page is already worth a lot of it. That is the most genius platform for any band to use, and I’m still blown away by it since it’s start in 2007.
—————————————-
On a side note, That paragraph that starts “The period from November 2007 to Summer 2008″ was supposed to be followed by a paragraph that I edited out. But basically, after that point the Angels & Airwaves members started to slack on the updates, and in November of 2008 I canceled my subscription. The only thing they were keeping up on was a few live broadcasts and I am not one of the people who sits on that site all day waiting for them. The few scheduled live broadcasts were not enough to keep me on either. And now that Blink-182 is back together, Tom’s still way to busy to update that thing.
I’m curious about the PayPerView that is on The Third Man portion of the Vault. I’m curious as to if you’ll have to pay a few more bucks to watch a show or if it is included. PPV is only on Third Man part from what I noticed.
And I can see Jack doing cool stuff like randomly posting something like first person to post a pic of this or that will win a limited edition release and stuff like that to keep the place interesting.
I know they were already throwing I Cut Like A Buffalo tri-color 7″s in people’s orders that cannot be purchased. A good friend of mine got one with his while I wasn’t as lucky.
Sold.
The just announced what you get for $60
-Exclusive Third Man Records T-Shirt available nowhere else
-45 of 2 covers: Pentagram’s Forever My Queen and The Downliner Sect’s Outside
-Double LP on 180 gram vinyl of a special MONO mix of Icky Thump with custom artwork
Considering the regular Icky Thump goes for about $40 now, I’d say this is well worth our money
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