Marcus Estes

Current
  • Owner at Tables Turned
Past
  • Director of Digital Music Licensing at WFMU
  • Board Member at Portland Community Media
  • Director of Business Development and Sales at Box Populi
  • Owner at Local Orbit
  • Writer, Director of Internet Marketing at The Sociomomics Institute
  • Hewlett Packard Newsgram Project Manager at The Curiosity Group
  • Writer at Elliott Wave International
  • Music Editor at Urban Propaganda / The Rant / The Huntsville Extra
Connections
179 connections
Industry
Music
Websites

Marcus Estes’s Summary

Some are drawn to computation and IP-based transmission of data for its own sake, as others are art. This is not my nature. I have steeped myself in the technologies attendant to web software development as a proxy for my interest in culture.

The TCP/IP spec, Apache servers, and web framework stacks are boring, on their own. But they become deeply fascinating when you engage with them as part of the story of how human beings are using them together, and the way that they WILL be using it. Social Networking is a sociological term - I want to work with a team to game the concept through the use of web software.

Marcus Estes’s Specialties:

Culturally encoded telecommunications, web software development, counter-cultural theory, the commercialization of art, social software for social change.


Marcus Estes’s Experience

  • Owner

    Tables Turned

    (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Music industry)

    July 2005Present (3 years 1 month)

    Tables Turned helps the independent record industry license and distribute their music digitally to non-commercial radio for promotional use.

    We also service non-commercial radio organizations with an open source Linux device that automatically encodes their on-air programming into podcasts, and distributes them within social networking applications based on Drupal.

    This is not 100% legal yet, due to the Digital Millennium Copyright act. We're helping record labels and radio to work together in the creation of direct licensing deals that that won't saddle non-commercial broadcasters with unfair royalty payments.

  • Director of Digital Music Licensing

    WFMU

    (Non-Profit; 51-200 employees; Music industry)

    September 2007February 2008 (6 months)

    Last year I relocated to New York for six months to go to work for my favorite radio station, WFMU. I was hired to help develop software and to license music for use in a royalty-free web library used by non-commercial radio stations, music bloggers, and fans. The software component of the project is called the Free Music Archive and it will launch in 2008.

    While there I worked with artists, record labels, and publishers to help them see the benefits of digital licensing for promotional use. I still believe the industry can work together to heal the damage now being done to internet radio by newly increased royalty rates.

  • Board Member

    Portland Community Media

    (Non-Profit; 51-200 employees; Telecommunications industry)

    March 2007February 2008 (1 year)

    I serve on the Board of Directors at Portland Community Media, one of America's first public access television stations. I contribute to their development efforts and am working with them to build a new digital architecture that will allow them to broadcast their programming on the web.

  • Director of Business Development and Sales

    Box Populi

    (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

    June 2006December 2006 (7 months)

    Here I marketed a podcasting appliance to universities and I also opened up new markets by negotiating vendor licensing and reseller deals. This is where I first got down and dirty with the application of patent law and business practices involving incentive structuring and VAR business development.

    The project that I'm most proud of is the open sourcing of our software platform, under the GPL. This took a lot of analysis, research and old fashioned check-your-gut-courage and I'm happy to have been a part of it.

    We fought against DRM standards and worked to put more Linux boxes on university campuses all over the United States. This company remains a really powerful "Force of Good" in this world and I will always be thankful for what I learned working there.

  • Owner

    Local Orbit

    (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Marketing and Advertising industry)

    January 2005December 2005 (1 year)

    After using the brand for my freelance web design services for several years prior, in 2005 I helped transform Local Orbit into a software company dedicated to helping the SMB market build pay per click web advertising campaigns.

    Here was our wacky idea: We built a flat rate market for auctioned pay per click ads and absorbed the risk of price fluctuations in our margin.

    We were being too smart for our britches. But it was fun.

  • Writer, Director of Internet Marketing

    The Sociomomics Institute

    (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Internet industry)

    January 2003August 2004 (1 year 8 months)

    My first job at a think tank. I wrote articles about statistical correlations between the stock market and box office receipts from different genres of movies.

    (It's true, bull market produce successful Disney movies; Bear markets, horror movies.)

  • Hewlett Packard Newsgram Project Manager

    The Curiosity Group

    (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)

    2004January 2004 (less than a year)

    I didn't fit in at this advertising agency. I gave a voluntary powerpoint presentation about how much our "youth music marketing strategy" presentation to HP sucked and got canned for it.

    While being fired I was told I was a "Loose Cannon," I shit you not.

  • Writer

    Elliott Wave International

    (Privately Held; 51-200 employees; Financial Services industry)

    20002001 (1 year)

    After moving to Athens, GA, I was hired at Elliott Wave International as a writer and began a daily column on technical analysis of commodity futures, which I knew nothing about.

    Elliott Wave has a small but rabidly loyal following of financial traders who think the stock market is going to crash and send the United States into the second great depression. (It's been "imminent" since 1995. I still believe it, though.)

  • Music Editor

    Urban Propaganda / The Rant / The Huntsville Extra

    (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Entertainment industry)

    19952000 (5 years)

    After dropping out of high school at age 15 I went to work for the local alternative weekly. I wrote music reviews, managed the entertainment section, and helped with copy editing.

    The original owner left town in the middle of the night after stealing a car stereo from the BMW of a local television personality, leaving a swarm of pending lawsuits in his wake. He was one of my first heroes.


Additional Information

Marcus Estes’s Websites:

Marcus Estes’s Interests:

I am very experienced with standards-based XHTML and CSS layout. I'm also deeply into Ruby on Rails, microcontrollers, Linux, cultural studies, and almost every form of human cultural production. Everything I know I taught myself and was impelled to do so by by innate enthusiasms and curiosity.


Marcus Estes’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

  • consulting offers
  • expertise requests
  • business deals
  • reference requests
  • getting back in touch

Public profile powered by: LinkedIn

Create a public profile: Sign In or Join Now

View Marcus’s full profile:

  • See who you and Marcus Estes know in common
  • Get introduced to Marcus Estes
  • Contact Marcus Estes directly

View Full Profile