In the midst of all this talk of intangible digital intellectual property and arcane licensing and Internet policy, there’s something comforting about thinking of music and art as something you make with your hands and give to someone. It was a discussion of that – even in the context of technology – that first led me to the discussion of “Handmade Music.” (Tip of the hat to my friend, Etsy’s Matt Stinchcomb, with whom this discussion has crossed the Atlantic from Brooklyn to Berlin.)

Via Cool Hunting, here’s an old-fashioned way of making a music object. The music is on vinyl; the book is carved into blocks and hand-printed. Any sense of nostalgia or twee hipness is instantly forgiven once you see the results: the book looks absolutely gorgeous. Kids will have to compete with their parents to get it.

Two stories in a single canvas-covered volume that reads from the outside covers inward, ending at the center. There, a two-song 70 gram 7″ vinyl inside a hand-cranked copper block printed sleeve.

Stories written, illustrated, carved, and printed by Micah Middaugh at Cavern Lantern Wonder Welding (Jordan River Valley, Mich.)

Songs by Breathe Owl Breathe

The story sounds wonderful, too. As CH’s James Thorne tells it:

“The Listeners” is a comic tale of the friendship between an ostrich and a mole who meet by chance one day in a hole. The mole with sightless eyes and the bird with flightless wings join to form a band called “The Listeners,” and perform together in an underground concert for their friends. “These Train Tracks” is a story of metamorphosis, in which a set of train tracks transforms into everything from a caterpillar to the night sky to a set of pajama buttons. Its mood is both whimsical and soothing, a perfect end to a child’s long day.

The Listeners / These Train Tracks: Music and animal hijinks come together in a handmade children’s book by Breathe Owl Breathe [Cool Hunting]

The music is available by Bandcamp, which you’ll see allows you to sell both a digital download and physical copies. Of course, you may want to do a trailer on YouTube to promote it, which means you’ll have to contend with giant lobbying groups and collection agencies trying to destroy the Interne– okay, that doesn’t make a very good bedtime story. Let’s get back to the ostrich and the mole. They’re more likable.

Have a listen to the music:

http://breatheowlbreathe.bandcamp.com/album/the-listeners-these-train-tracks

Selling merch on the road – whether your band has CDs and shirts or you run your own enterprising business in geeky goods as our contributor Liz McLean Knight does – is a big challenge. Buying a full-blown credit card terminal is expensive. That’s why I’m absolutely with Hypebot’s Virgil Dickerson: running credit card numbers on an iPhone is a game changer.

iPhone App Adds Mobile Credit Card Processing to DIY Toolkit

The application in question is called Innerfence, and Apple gets it, too, as they’ve added it to a new TV ad. The app is US$49.99, pricey for an iPhone app but a whole lot less money – and a whole lot more convenient – than a big, clunky conventional terminal. Right now, you also get a $50 gift certificate to iTunes, so you can catch up on LOST and buy the new Depeche Mode and feel like the whole thing is free. The back end is powered by Authorize.net, one of the major vendors of online credit card processing. Unlike Authorize.net’s tangled website, though, this is a beautiful, polished app that works the way you want. Ironically, it puts to shame the terminals Apple employees themselves use at the Apple Store. (In fact, it sounds as though Apple will indeed — unsurprisingly — replace those Windows Mobile-powered devices with iPhones, says AppleInsider.)

There’s no physical scanner, but for casual sales that’s probably okay.

You’ll need to pay US$25 in fees monthly, though, so this is probably something you’d choose if you’re also interested in running Authorize.net on your website for CC sales. The transaction fees aren’t that bad, and you get some hard-core fraud protection features, Apple Keychain support, and all the Authorize.net features – email receipts, QuickBooks accounting integration, and the like.

Cool, but this immediately makes me wonder why we aren’t seeing more of this sort of thing. I’m a fan of apps, so to me the app here looks a whole lot friendlier than a web page. But that said, theoretically if you don’t have an iPhone or use someone other than Authorize.net, surely there’s a way to access some of the Web virtual terminals via our mobile device’s increasingly-powerful web browsers, right? 

One key advantage to having an app may be that your fans would be a little less nervous watching you key in their Credit Card number, but maybe there’s a way.

PayPal and Google Checkout, I’d love to see some apps that run with this idea, too. (Google, it seems your own Android OS would be a primary target, eh? I’m hoping all those Google employees who now own G1s are starting to think about their stuff running on the phone.) The advantage of PayPal in particular – which a smart on-the-road merch seller could offer alongside a real terminal like this – is that hipster eBay addicts may already have some cash in those accounts ready to spend.

I also imagine we’ll soon see more netbooks with data plans, which will open up another way to do this. (Radio Shack has a deal with Acer and AT&T that makes the netbook cost almost nothing.) So, perhaps the follow up for this story ought to be a) how do you make some good merch and b) how do these credit card payment plans compare.

I know there are times where I wanted to buy a CD but didn’t have cash handy, so I might use this as a customer.

Found via:

http://twitter.com/artistshouse

… Artists House Music, a great blog/Twitter feed to follow for more on making business work for music.

http://blog.artistshousemusic.org/

Thanks:

http://twitter.com/TomDavenport