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It's funny. Laugh. Music The Almighty Buck Youtube

Geek Writes a Song a Day for 13 Years, Celebrates Song #5,000 With Big NFT Auction 55

Posted by EditorDavid from the do-it-for-fun-do-it-for-passion dept.
Since January 1, 2009, Jonathan Mann has written an original song every day and shared it online. Starting as an unemployed 26-year-old, Mann remembers in an online video that "I made my living entering video contests — I'd submit to 12 of them in 12 days, win one or two, and that was my income for the month."

But Mann released that video after song #4,000, reflecting that "A bunch of videos went viral. I released eight albums. In 2016 I got the Guinness World Record for most consecutive days writing a song. And I've carved out this living delivering keynotes at conferences all over the world — as well as watching all the other talks then getting up at the end to sing a song that recaps everything."

And now 13 years, 8 months, and 9 days after he first began, "I have officially written 5000 songs in 5000 days," Mann announced Friday on Twitter — sharing a special 5,000th song including singing appearances from 112 of his listeners. Mann still shares his videos free online — but for four years, Mann has also been auctioning the songs as NFTs living on the Ethereum blockchain. (By Friday night someone had bid 5 ETH -- about $1,700 -- for song #5,000. And the NFTs also confer membership status for the decentralized autonomous organization, SongADAO).

Mann also writes songs on commission on a "pay-what-you-feel" basis, and has even written songs for companies like SquareSpace and OKCupid. ("Most businesses pay between $2000 and $5000 for a song and a video.") Once Steve Jobs even opened Apple's press conference about its iPhone antennas dropping phone calls by playing one of Mann's satirical songs.

"I saw that on YouTube this morning, and couldn't help but want to share it," Steve Jobs said, according to this 2017 summation of Mann's other wacky career highlights: On day #202, he won a $500 American Express gift card in a jingle contest held by Microsoft for the launch of their Bing search engine. When TechCrunch quipped that Bing had succeeded "in finding the worst jingle ever," Mann responded with a second song — setting TechCrunch's article to music (along with a speculative interior monologue which Mann acknowledges is "completely made up.")

Mann later admitted that his jingle was the worst song he'd recorded that July. ("I wrote it in 10 minutes ...") And his worst song that October was a related song that he'd written when "I received an email from Microsoft of a video showing middle-school kids in Pennsylvania singing and dancing to my Bing song."

"I was horrified. Don't get me wrong, the kids were adorable, but Bing? What had I created!?"

But he was honored when the kids told him they'd enjoyed dancing to his song, and when they asked for one about their own school, Mann obliged.

When Steve Wozniak turned 60, Mann was ready with a musical tribute — Song #588, "That's Just Woz...."

And in January of 2011, as the world learned Jobs had taken an indefinite medical leave of absence, Mann released song #753: Get Better, Steve Jobs...

Mann's duet with Siri earned over 1,609,675 views....

On Day #810 Mann convinced his girlfriend Ivory to sing the other half of a duet called "Vegan Myths Debunked." They'd apparently been dating for a year before he started his song-a-day project. But after four more years, on Day #1,435, Mann and his girlfriend Ivory decided to break up — and released a music video about it....

And in 2014, on day 1,951, Mann's wife gave birth to his son Jupiter....

Day #2000, in June of 2014, Mann answered questions from Reddit users, answering every question with a song....

At a speaking engagement, he offered his own perspective on time: "100 days went by, a year went by, a thousand days went by. At a certain point, it just becomes a part of my life. And so that's how I stand before you now having written 2,082 songs in as many days."

As the audience applauds, he segues into his larger message, "I'm happiest when I'm making."
The article closes by quoting the song Mann wrote on Day #2001 — for a video which included part of every one of the 1,999 previous videos, in a spectacular montage called "2000 Songs in 2000 Days...."

"And I will sing until I'm all out of breath. And the color of the sun is a dark, dark red. And the governments will fall. And we'll sing until it hurts. And we'll ring forever through the universe."

The video ends with a personal message from Mann himself.

"Make something every day," it urges in big letters.

"Just start. I believe in you."
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Geek Writes a Song a Day for 13 Years, Celebrates Song #5,000 With Big NFT Auction More

Geek Writes a Song a Day for 13 Years, Celebrates Song #5,000 With Big NFT Auction

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  • NFT? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by narcc ( 412956 ) on Saturday September 10, 2022 @06:44PM (#62871025) Journal

    Celebrating 5000 songs of dubious quality with ... a scam?

    Why is this absurdity here?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      because /. is owned by a crypto tax evasion scam company and NFTS ARE NEWS FOR NERDS BRO

    • Celebrating 5000 songs of dubious quality with ... a scam?

      Why is this absurdity here?

      I'd only heard of him from the iPhone antenna song. Look at it this way, at least he's semi-famous for doing something that's wholesome, if not a little obsessive. People do some seriously weird shit to try to make it famous on YouTube, like that avocado guy who is literally attempting suicide by morbid obesity for the views.

      • Look, kudos to him for just doing his "thing," but lets not pretend this is not the musical equivalent of spraypainting dick pics all over town and bragging about how much garbage he's added to society.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Well... it looks like he might need a new stream of income. If you look at his YouTube channel, most of his recent songs are getting less than 500 hits. You can't feed your kids on the ad revenue from that!

    • Celebrating 5000 songs of dubious quality with ... a scam?

      You say this as if "priceless" shitty art doesn't sell for tax-evading millions. Scam summed up in a word, is called Supreme.

      Why is this absurdity here?

      For the same reason you asked this question. Greed is a human trait that is as timeless as ignorance. PT Barnum would be laughing hard.

  • "...even written songs for companies like SquareSpace and OKCupid..."

    Oh no... this is the man who gave us whitegirl ukulele!

  • and somehow its news for ... losers?

    • Re:Loser cries for attention (Score:4, Interesting)

      by quonset ( 4839537 ) on Saturday September 10, 2022 @07:24PM (#62871087)

      and somehow its news for ... losers?

      Other than using up oxygen, what have you done for 5,000 straight days?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yes, there is a loser crying for attention.

      I just had a quick look through your post history, you truthfully sound like you're going through a difficult time in your life. You come across as an angry teenager, but with your UID I'd guess you're a middle-aged man.

      You seem very unhappy about the way your life has progressed so far. Nobody in their 40s is that angry unless they have a massive chip on their shoulder about something.

      I hope things get better for you, smoke some weed or have a wank or something.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Joviex ( 976416 )

        I hope things get better for you, smoke some weed or have a wank or something.

        Sure thing there anonymous loser!

    • Slashdot is now Yahoo Lite, not tech news. That required shitting up a technology site with general interest stories which means appealing to the average moron while discarding the intelligent techies who could not care less about popular pabulum for plebs.

      The editors did this, perhaps as an experiment to see what they could get away with, and it worked for them.

    • To which you replied meaning you think you are a loser?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Joviex ( 976416 )

        To which you replied meaning you think you are a loser?

        Stick to your low comprehension day job.

  • This is the same guy who made the iPhone antenna song [youtube.com] way back in the day when "you're holding it wrong" became a thing.

    I'm guessing since he's trying to hock NFTs the whole YouTube celebrity thing isn't proving to be as lucrative as he'd hoped. Perhaps he should start putting ads for Clash of Clans in the middle of his songs.

  • I know people have said the songs suck.

    Without asking me to expose my delicate ears to the actual clips, can somebody just tell me... are they bad songs, or "songs?"

    • They're not club bangers, that's for sure.

      • Uh... what does that mean? "Club banger" sounds like a "song," not a song. But I suspect it is dialect jargon, so it could mean anything.

        So are you trying to say they're real songs? Or not?

    • Re:Spoiler please (Score:4, Informative)

      by CoolDiscoRex ( 5227177 ) on Saturday September 10, 2022 @08:21PM (#62871205) Homepage

      I know people have said the songs suck.

      It's the Internet, claiming things suck is what it's for.

      Without asking me to expose my delicate ears to the actual clips, can somebody just tell me... are they bad songs, or "songs?"

      There's 5,000 of them, I think the answer to any question you might ask is "yes".

      I listened to one, and it's okay, I mean, he's not tone deaf and he plays the acoustic guitar well enough. It seems more like kids music, but it's not painful or anything. That said, I do know more about his girlfriend's eating habits that I honestly ever wanted to.

    • I can't imagine him doing any worse that the swill that is modern RIAA pop music.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      By sheer accident there should be a few good songs.

      • That's assuming that a "good" song is a product of chance and not of dedicated labor.

        You gotta write a bunch of crummy songs to even start writing "not crummy" ones.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Tablizer ( 95088 )

          Many top composers get their ideas from random diddling around, or bits of other tunes. Swiping phrases from Bach is old trick that won't get you sued. Granted, it takes skill to sew all pieces together together well, but at least some should accidentally have good parts.

      • When I was in college there was a guy who would summarize a meeting in poetry at the end of the meeting. Just stand up, and read out verse he'd created as the meeting went along. They were generally accurate, lewd and funny and would rhyme and scan. Not something I could do and quite impressive.

        Having seen that, I could imagine someone being able to create a tolerable song every day, and equally, I know that I could not.

  • I don't particularly care, but (Score:3)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Saturday September 10, 2022 @08:04PM (#62871173)

    It's a mildly fun idea. He's not hurting anyone, and if he's been able to survive doing this some people must like his music. So more power to him (whoever he is).

    • So why drag in scammy dying crypto 'nfts'? He made himself foolish and I doubt this grift will pay him much more than the 12 cents per day his songs rake in. Can he afford the lawers for the suits when the 'nfts' mysteriously vanish like Seth Greens jpeg 'nfts' of yawning chimps in boat hats? I don't know what I like but I know art, and that there is some fine art.

  • I read it three times and I still am not sure what I read.

    Wait, let me watch one of the links ...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

    Wh ... wh ... wha.. oh look an ad pops up right afterward imploring me to get the facts about schizophrenia.

    Okay, now I get it.

    Stop looking at my post!

  • It's of an animation of a horse swimming in wine.

    Oh well, never look a GIF horse in vermouth.
  • and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound? Alternatively, if a geek writes a song a day for 13 years and no one listens to any of it, is it even news?

  • A bunch of college students managed to find one of the last remaining phone booths and crammed inside like sardines. They will be celebrating with Bitcoin.

  • And the Beatles just 200.

    He must shurely be the greatest composer ever !
  • Bigger is obviously better. Right? Example. The number of apps at the iStore. Also, Texas. QED

  • Cool way to "create" a career (Score:4, Insightful)

    by turp182 ( 1020263 ) on Sunday September 11, 2022 @09:36AM (#62871921) Journal

    I don't understand the negative comments. The guy created his own career space with considerable and interesting reach.

    It's fascinating actually.

    The beauty of this is, no one can catch up to him. This is his as long as he wants it and can sell it.

    A different way of living. Pretty cool if you ask me.

    I bet it feels like a job a LOT of the time (probably every single day...).

    Long winded:

    It's also interesting to have done something for a very long time.

    This isn't about mastery.

    Corollary to this, I have camping photos from a 25 year period (about 400 nights in a tent). Technique is refined over the years, but there's no particular destination.

    However, I end up with tens of thousands of photos that are mostly of no value to anyone but myself, whereas this guy has written songs that a lot of people have heard or interacted with.

    Again, very cool.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Basur ( 9339985 )
      To be honest, I didn't think that NFT would become such a popular topic. I had thoughts that it was only a temporary phenomenon. However, I'm thinking about starting to invest in NFT. By the way, I recently read about Beat The Bear Market With SAFT wNFTs [medium.com] and found it interesting. In general, I've heard a lot about the bear market, and it would be nice to learn how to benefit and profit even in economically difficult times.
  • How cool is this and how unrealistic it sounds! Write 5000 songs in 13 years! I'm really very interested in whether they are similar to each other and what is embedded in the words that are used in these songs. After all, in words you can simply trace literally everything that a person lived. Especially if he wrote one text every day!
  • Amazing! It is what I call a real geek. I am so interested in how he was finding inspiration for such a number of songs! I am upset a little, as it is a historic event and I can`t find it on my beloved https://artozo.com/marketplace/ [artozo.com] NFT platform(( Can someone suggest to me some new good and reliable marketplace where I can buy actual and popular NFTs?

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