Idolator and Another New Model

The second annual Idolator poll results are now up, if your tastes extend beyond jazz to other sounds.

Record labels aren't the only arts distribution systems looking for a new model to deal with the Digital Age. Yesterday's mail brought a review copy of a new book by Kabir Sehgal, a guy I met in the audience at the Columbia University jazz criticism conference last fall.

Sehgal's book explores the connections between jazz and democracy, which is interesting enough, but what caught my eye was the fact that the book is the first published by a company called Better World Books, which professes to be "making a positive social impact" by embedding a "social royalty" in each of its books. The company also promises authors better rights and royalty agreements, which are both long overdue.

I haven't cracked the book yet (too busy digging Joshua Ferris' novel Then We Came To The End), but this marketing concept is worth watching.