From Reusable Cover Art in Historical Novels: A Gallery. In this gallery you can find many other novels that share cover art.

Après prêt de 3 mois de procédure et de contacts avec des acteurs de l’industrie, de joies mais également des déceptions, c’est avec tristesse que je vous annonce que le Tribunal du Commerce a déclaré ce jour la mise en liquidation judiciaire de Spidinvest (Spidart.com).

Spidinvest SARL (Spidart) was founded by CEO Nicolas Claramond in October 2007. It was a fan-funding website much like the original SellaBand and AKA music. “Fan-producers” could “invest” in an artist with €10 or more. When €50,000 was reached the artist was able to record an album, of which the fan-producer would recieve a copy. The profits of the album during two years were to be divided: 35% for the artist, 35% for the fan-producers and 30% for Spidart.

Only 11 artists got funded on Spidart. If you compare that to SellaBand’s current 42 funded artists you can see part of the reason why Spidart failed: too little financed projects. Was there too much competition? Besides the international fan-funding sites like SellaBand there are also four French fan-funding websites that I know of: AKA music, My Major Company, BuzzMyBand and (Re)venons à la musique.

Three albums got released on Spidart. I don’t what will happen with the other eight albums. Was the money for the funded projects kept in an escrow account? And is it available for the artists to complete the recording, publishing, etc? Spidart did state that the money for the projects was kept seperately:

La société Spidinvest, éditrice du service Spidart, fonctionne en fonds propres et, en aucun cas, via les investissements de production des fan- producteurs.

Les comptes bancaires sont, depuis le premier jour, totalement séparés.

Les investissements des fan-producteurs servent exclusivement à financer la production des albums (studios, musiciens, productions artistiques, clips, supports promos, promos médias, marketing, showcases…). C’est le cas pour les 10 albums déjà réalisés ou en phase de production actuellement.

Le fonctionnement du site Spidart (développement, partenariats, promo…) est financé exclusivement en fonds propres grâce à des business angels (investisseurs privés) à ce jour et très prochainement avec le soutien et l’entrée au capital de fonds d’investissement. C’est également sur ces mêmes fonds propres que Spidart finance la promotion et le marketing des artistes.

Artists who reached the €50,000

• Naosol & the Waxx Blend [MySpace]
  joined 24-10-2007, funded ±18-04-2008, album “1968″ released 30-03-2009
• Xavier V. Combs [MySpace]
  joined 06-04-2008, funded ±01-10-2008, album “En Plein Cœur” released 28-09-2009
• Anesa [MySpace]
  joined 26-10-2007, funded ±28-01-2009
• Jalane [MySpace]
  joined 19-12-2008, funded ±31-01-2009, album “Jour J” is not released yet, it was supposed to be released 18-01-2010
• Jessica Marquez [MySpace]
  joined 31-01-2009, funded ±07-03-2009
• MattRach [MySpace]
  funded 17-03-2009
  MattRach decided to leave Spidart and on 16-05-2009 the money was refunded to the fan-producers.
• Jade [MySpace]
  joined 28-01-2009, funded 28-03-2009
• Tafta [MySpace]
  joined 01-12-2008, funded 21-04-2009
• The Starliners [MySpace]
  joined 15-04-2008, funded 09-05-2009 by 251 fan-producers
• Arno Santamaria [MySpace]
  joined 27-04-2009, funded 20-05-2009, album “Arno Santamaria” released 19-10-2009
• Abesse [MySpace]
  joined 20-03-2009, funded 03-07-2009
• Selen [MySpace]
  joined 03-09-2008, funded ±25-08-2009 by 474 fan-producers
  Selen is now raising money to record her album at My Major Company.

So What is a band from The Hague, Netherlands. Passe Partout is the second music video from their debut album Tiptoes.

More So What at Long Way To Rock.

The contents of any one panel are dependent on the contents of every panel including itself. The graph of panel dependencies is complete and bidirectional, and each node has a loop.

By xkcd.com/Randall Munroe

Alex Lundry, VP and Director of Research of TargetPoint, talks about the political power of data visualization.

Via information aesthetics.

In my search I came across the following websites:

Websites to catalog books and share book reviews:
LibraryThing
Shelfari (owned by Amazon.com)
Goodreads
BookJetty
BiblioPhil
Reader2

Website to catalog books:
Book Collector Connect

Websites to catalog not only books, but also music and movies:
All Consuming
lib.rario.us

Website to share book reviews:
Revish

Website to catalog books and trade books:
BookCrossing

I really like that on some sites you are also able to connect with other book lovers besides cataloging your library. Of those LibraryThing and Goodreads seem to work best for international books. I will give them both a longer test drive before I make my decision. BookCrossing also looks very interesting.

Adam Savage, co-host of the Discovery Channel television series MythBusters, gives a captivating talk on the nature of his particular obsessions at The last HOPE conference.

Links: Adam Savage’s personal website | Adam Savage’s twitter page | Wikipedia on Adam Savage