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The Future of Music Conference
wiredog writes: "The Washington Post reports on the Future of Music conference. A gathering of musicians,labels, music publishers, unions, lawyers and others. There's also an overview of the pay sites, none of which seem worth the effort of looking at." A good recap on the conference that we mentioned earlier.
They just get on and do what they do best
make music
if feel its nothing but a drinking session for fat music execs rather than furthering and innovating their actual core product
Most people out there wouldn't mind paying for quality music. But when you combine the watered down crap put out by the majors with the clearly adversarial attitude of the RIAA towards us music buying folks I can't help but think that they are getting what they deserve.
Long live the free market. The genie is clearly out of the bottle.
-- Remember Johnny,
That's right! Technology will end the recording industry and destory music! I read this article about some new gadget that lets people record and copy music! They can buy music from a store and make an exact copy for someone else. With this existing, those struggling musicians have no hope left.
It was called the "tape recorder."
Plus, used in conjunction with a pirate stream of music, called a "radio," you can record even more.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
Snuck in, right at the end of the article "Unfortunately, the overlords of retail and radio didn't attend the Future of Music conference, an inexplicable omission"
Combine this with not having any musician representation and it sounds like a big piss-in-each-others-pocket kind of show. Not to mention pointless.
And what about that old business axiom
"The customer is always right " . The first one of these big companies with the foresight to involve all the industry players in a concerted effort to listen to consumers and give them what they want will be in for some success.
Now with the RIAA defending the cd protection format that stops the cd from being played on cdroms to prevent piracy, couldnt they try the same argument with dvds? I mean they play on computers, they can be ripped. How long is it before we see dvds that can't be played on dvd roms? I dont think they'd get away with that somehow, but it's something to think about.
...They didn't explicitely mention Free Music mouvements, such as GNUArt.
Doing it for the pleasure instead of doing it for a living doesn't mean it's bad.
BTW, we have professional who gave us some of their songs (not all) which helped their fame propagate.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
If N'sync is mentioned ANYWHERE in the "future of music" I will shoot myself.
My little sad piece of the internet: www.mtndewd
There's alot disheartening about the current music world, from a musical point of view, if you observe the bikini clad n'sync britney fest that our musical culture has become, but in the end, history has been written, and will forget all of those people except for in novelty clubs of the distant future. Alot of really excellent things have come about in the music world, only in the last few years. this is only going to be more radical when virtual presence is a reality through higher bandwidth internet connections and lower cost audio/video equipment. Location will cease to be a barrier to musical collaboration.
First off, the level of international collaboration between quality musical acts has been astounding. Anybody who's heard the chieftains, the gypsy kings, strunz & farah, or any of the "underground" world music that is in virtually every upscale boutique here in downtown riverside these days, can attest to a new pallette of global styles to work for that is now available to composers across the globe. The legitimizing of ethnic folk musics as a respected art form, elevated to almost classical stature, will hugely broaden the music that will be popular once the anti mtv-marketing backlash begins with generation y. Alot of it is starting now, as 16 year olds look back and are embarrassed as ex-clown posse/limp bizkit fans. These kids are getting into euro-trance, local punk, and a whole range of other more interesting and less polished venues. as they hit college and begin maturing as people and music connesieurs, the music industry will be picking up smaller artists and expecting less mega stars, and the diversity will expand and begin to become polished as well. I think this is phenomenal.
Secondly, the post napster world means that people won't buy albums anymore, and will eliminate the pressure for artists to put out albums full of worthless studio time and one or two hits. every song will be given the quality time it needs, and maybe even "albums" will begin to disappear as artists release singles and then eventually collections, giving every song it's fair shake.
Also exciting is the recording technology available today. small time artists are able to record stuff at a quality that was never able to exist outside of million dollar studios before. this new robin hood style music industry is going to mean alot of bands will make it on merit, at least the merit of popularity, and not investment hype. mp3.com is littered with well recorded/poorly funded material that has a very high fidelity.
And then the obvious revolution, free music on the web. this is not going away. the implications are huge, predictions about how this will effect future generations of musicians and listeners alike will all be off as the landscape radically transforms in it's wake.
Those of you who like to download mp3s (that means every single
The funny thing to me is that the RIAA even bothers trying out watermarking and cd mod copyright schemes. They are playing music for a party that nobody wants to be caught dead at.
RhY
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/194/communizt_v
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
labels still fret that consumers will pirate great gobs of downloadable music and put them out of business.
In that case I'm going to purposely pirate Backstreet Boys to make them go bankrupt.
The future of music is *NSYNC.
Buy some earplugs now, because it's only going to get worse, kids!
Kind of seems arogant to call it "The future of Music Conference". Music will always have a bright futur regardless of the *Music Industry's" futur. It's like saying that if it's not published by the music cartel, it's not music.
The future of music is in the New Zealand.
But, then again, maybe not.
Any field which has a future dictated by lawyers, other than the legal field itself (and, maybe, politics), is in trouble. If the industry was interested in giving artists a fair shake, they'd leave their sharks and sheisters at home and deal with the artists as creative partners, not product to be bought, sold, manipulated, robbed, pruned, and dismissed. And that's such a fantasy I can scarcely believe I thought of it.
The artists can't budge (what are they going to give up? They don't have rights to their music, their name, sometimes not even their own style of music. Most of them don't get paid. Many don't get much despite their success) and the studios beat strawmen to death (like Tower-fucking-Records is somehow to blame), never address serious issues, and have their cadre of bloodsuckers sitting at the table the whole time, just to say, "The future of music is the present of music." Nothing's going to change. I'd say it was a game of control, but, well, games have some competition, some odds for the other guys to win out. That's a fat chance, here.
If a corporation is a personhood, is owning stock slavery?
The analogy with the music "industry" is clear. The rich musical heritage of humynity is a common good, like education, public health, or the environment. In this "cyber" age, music is controlled more than ever by corporations seeking to hold this public good in thrall for private gain. A point illustrated by this statement from the article: (n)ow everyone is paralyzed, horrified by the idea that this online world will rearrange the portions and leave some people with less than they had before. Weapons are drawn. Lawyers have been retained. Nobody is budging.
A conference about the future of music,music --everything from the simple act of whistling a happy tune, singing "Happy Birthday", teaching the ABC's song to a child, or contemplating the sublime accomplishments of Ockgehem or Poulenc-- is today nothing more than a massive multi-party lawsuit waiting to happen.
The representatives of the recording and radio industries stand like villagers ready to bust each others' heads open to give their sheep the best oppportunity to graze the commons to the dirt. They care only about profits, and are willing to ever more intrusive, cumbersome, and expensive technologies to protect their precious bottom line. Compared with these soulless greed merchants, those strong, free souls who use peer-to-peer software to share .ogg and .mp3 files can be seen as latter-day Robin Hoods, living by their wits, using their tech savy to ensure that the public good of music is not depleted by the wealthy few.
Man I read shit like this and right away can only think how stupid the recording industry is - and just a few months behind the wall street investors.
The bubble has burst, you're not gonna get 9.95 for X songs for Y month subscription.
What's gonna happen when nobody signs up is they're going to be forced to give it away for free. After about a year or so, when they got alot of people hooked, they'll start charging again for some bonus software/functionality. Then the flock flees again. It's totally cyclical. They really just don't have a clue.
So you found a supervisor who likes to dress like a bum?
Management should always wear a suit. Anything else is just impolite and unprofessional.
Probably OT- I really believe that music swapping increases CD sales (at least until Philips is done with 'em). Ancedotal- myself and several others just don't buy music anymore (could it be because current music sucks?!), unless we sample a few songs first. So we are now at the point were you download a few songs and (generally) buy the CD/DVD, or you just say fuck it.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Start recording music in surround then then geez
make the quality so high that copying on mp3 wouldnt do it justice.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
"For a realm that was supposed to thrive at stunning speeds, the world of online music sure seems stuck in a kiddie crawl."
How much of an empty statement is this?
Yes, certainly the major players are virtually standing still on the matter but that is by their own doing - there is a saying "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink" which is pretty apt here as these major players are too afraid of the technology to even consider using it.
The smaller players are moving at a pace that befits their limited amounts of available money, but they are moving e.g. bands releasing several high quality tracks through their websites which aren't on the CD they are preparing to launch.
This is probably one of the best ways to meet the technology half-way - let people have a unique preview (ahead of time) of what they are getting if they buy the CD - and for free. If they like what they get and think that the CD will contain more of the same then there is no reason they should not buy the CD.
However the only hole in this plan is that your bands must be;
+ of a decent musical quality to make people actually want to buy the thing
+ of a decent technical sound quality as otherwise its simpler to wait for it to hit the p2p systems and grab a quality copy from there
+ releasing material that will not be on the CD (as otherwise you risk wasting the best track, and once you do that why do I need to buy your CD?)
We've gone through this whole mess before folks. This is round 2 and with the Internet added, I don't think the record companies want to lose this fight, even if they have to completely screw up computers and the Internet in the process.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
We all remember the "Tragedy of the Commons" lesson back in basic economics class: the commons is an open green field (common property, hence the name) where all the residents of a village are allowed to graze their sheep free of charge, with no limitations. The tragedy of the title comes about when all the villagers, beholden to no one as to the use of the commons, blithely allow their sheep to overgraze the precious grass. Soon there is no grass for anyone, because everyone got too greedy.
The analogy with the music "industry" is clear.
Excellent point, but there's something that should be made clearer. The reason that the limited land that was the "commons" was overgrazed was because the nobles had already taken most of the land from the people. Now make the analogy and it becomes even better. Corporations (nobles) have taken culture and turned it into a commodity, thus cheapening and plasticizing (overgrazing) it. They keep wanting more and more that once belonged to the commons; a few of the artists gather fortune and fame, while others are ignored and work at other jobs. Before all this happened, artists worked on a small scale for a small audience, and yes, they probably did something else for a living, but they were respected members of the community. Now they are either ciphers or hyped up false gods in the eyes of mass media.
Mark my words, the real terrifying part of what the music industry fears is not song trading - it's artists connecting to the community without middlemen, without "the star-making machinery behind the popular song" (J. Mitchell). It's people deciding that what they download from Joe Blow's web site is as entertaining as what they could buy at Tower Records on an RIAA label. The industry is trying the same kind of freeze-out and trash talking tactics with today's real music and the way it's distributed that they tried in the 50's and 60's with that awful rock and roll and those uppity independent labels that were releasing a lot of it. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. Probably in the '10s they'll learn how to deal with the new world of music, but by that time, much of what they're used to will be irrelevant. I have news for the execs. The reason they can't make money on an artist before they sell 500,000 units is they spend too much money recording and promoting them, too much effort sterilizing and marketing them so they might, might be a big, big hit and make them zillions. Meanwhile, artists who record themselves and throw out their goods to whoever will listen to them often break even after a few thousand sales. They'll never be big, but they don't care.
Gosh, if they have digital rights management on every digital device in existence, I sure hope that doesn't prevent people like me from recording our own music and distributing it for nothing, if we want to. Wanna bet they'll try stopping us?
Yes, the thought that music should be free for the listener scares them. The thought that it should be free for the artist scares them even more.
Hey!
I thought I was the only one getting my kicks from drowning little puppies. All that whimpering and imagining their panic just makes me cum so hard...
TAKE DOWN THIS FILTH! You have 24 hours or ELSE!
The RIAA is a body set up to protect the rights of its members. It has power because it represents the millions of individual copyrighted songs belonging to its members.
If anyone wants to exert influence on the legislators, manufacturers of playback equipment and the RIAA itself, they have to have some sort of constituency with a financial interest in copyright. Otherwise, people will simply listen and humor them.
The majority of the worlds copyrighted musical works are NOT under the representation of the RIAA.
If we are in the middle of a revolution, then now is NOT the time to sit around and talk about anything. Its the time to write software and create alternative systems.
By that, I mean create an alternative system of copyright management and collection that suits the needs of people who are not in the RIAA system, and those who want to get out of the RIAA system.
I want, as a person who makes music, to be able to log onto a website, and see where my music has being played, and how much money ive made this month. I also want to be able to vote on the terms under which my copyrights are used, and how the directors of the "DCCC" (Democratic Copyright Collection Collective for example) who wield power through the aggregated force of the millions of non RIAA copyrights, lobby and put pressure on my behalf.
You get the idea.
All of this can be expressed and executed in software, from the collection of royalties from radio tv and film synchronization to public performance royalties and mechanicals to how samples are administered. What needs to be done is to create another system.
With another lobbying group as powerful as the RIAA, which is democratic and diverse in its constituency, the outrageuous, pointless, counterproductive and destructive activities of the RIAA would at least be dampened down, and at best utterly defeated.
Talking about reform is energy better spent in building the solution. Whining about how MP3 is proprietary is pointless, hence Ogg Vorbis (with heroic effort and great difficulty) was created. Ogg Vorbis is a threat to Thompson, because it is a real alternative. The same needs to be done with the RIAA and the administration and representation of copyrights and copyright holders.
We have all the tools we need to do this. And even they cost nothing.
Variable bandwidth was supposed to give us a way of choosing a reasonable quality level. Instead, it only allows us to fit way more over-compressed, shitty sounding mp3's onto a disc. I'm sure the musicians love that (the ones that care about how their music sounds).
Why is Grand Theft Auto a much more serious crime than Reckless Driving?
My university's 733 MHz (!!!) Alphas are still faster in crunching numbers! This is a serious disappoint to me because I though the ix86 architecture has a long ago surpassed the other architectures in speed.
Has anyone investigated the release of music under the GPL? I mean, a copyright should still be on the music so people can't rerelease stuff you've made and take credit for it. But could the GPL be used in any way to do this?
I've been looking into the product placement aspect of new music. It turns out that the record compaines only want a limited number of albums per month. This year, there will be about 70 new top 40 albums if it was like last year. The length of time that an album will stay in the top 100 is much shorter than it was a decade ago. If you look at billboard's top albums, you will find that only two of the top 40 have been there for more than a year. A decade ago that number was 31 out of the top 40. I think that the music businesses methods to control their investments in unsellable stock, they have reduced the numbers of new products and the result is that there isn't anything decent making to the top of the charts.
I'm guessing that Australia has about 6000 bands that have current tracks on CD's. Recently a radio station ran a contest where they got songs from 3000 bands from Melbourne (population 3.4m).
I've started looking into this when I found out about a survey that was being propsed by a record company. They wanted to know if unknown bands thought they had any chance of making it big. I got the impression that the record comapines don't want the good unknown bands to give up because its hopeless and that they may need to spread around a bit more money to keep up a supply of new bands.
Its obvious that the record industry is messing up their industry. I haven't bought a new main stram album in years. The albums I buy where recored years ago with the exception of local bands.
We've hosted Roger McGuinn's Folk Den project for about 5 years. Now Roger has made a CD, Treasures from the Folk Den, which has just been nominated for a Grammy! Not bad for a rock star who told the labels to go jump in his Senate testimony.
We also host collections of tape traders, jamz and tunetree, of bands that want their fans to hear their music (and pay to come to their shows).
Eben Moglen is right (see NYTimes article on FoM); it's about love.
Certified Black Helicopter Pilot *** Unwitting Dupe of One World Gov'ment
Web users can't turn to Page E12 to find this related information, and there is no indication of how to get from the current section (C, for Style) to the "E" section (Business). It would be nice if the good folks at washingtonpost.com would make use of "the magic of technology" by linking see Page E12 to the promised content.
The online music services article appears here, in a section so different it's branded to look like a separate site through the magic of marketing.
Yep!
This slip of the tongue came from Miles Copeland of Ark 21 records
"It's not just music. If we don't have strong Intelectual Property Laws, nobody will invent new diseases so they can sell cures for them"
(sorry, no link. this comes from memory.)
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Just checked this site out again today:
http://www.artistsagainstpiracy.com/
Now it's advertising for some ISP!
Here we go again- "The conference was organized by the fledgling Future of Music Coalition, a D.C.-based nonprofit group that lobbies and agitates for the heaps of musicians ignored by MTV, radio, the majors and any other entity that could market a band to fame and a large paycheck. The FMC is filling a big niche, since the number of struggling musicians far exceeds the number of Linkin Parks. Its heart is in the right place." (This neglects to point out that majors PAY MONEY to place tracks on MTV and the radio... they are not ignored- they are bedfellows!) Does anyone think it is a COINCIDENCE that there has NEVER been a grassroots groundswell that has propelled a truly indie (or self-released) artist into anything close to selling a half-million units (the threshold the major claim to require before THEY break even) ? If you really stop and think about it, labels distribute "image" as much as they distribute the actual music. Look at the landfill at mp3.com. Many of those artists have self-released CDs (actual CDs- not those mp3.com fake CDs) available at their band sites or they are on a niche indy label. Somehow it seems that a major label is still required if an artist wants a stamp of legitimacy (ie. Linkin Park sounds like a ton of other indie bands, and are no better or worse- but Linkin Park is what people buy- not the others). I personally am partial to UK d-n-b... especially the Bristol sound. Unfortunately, major labels have been unable to market the sound/image in the US. Like most electronic music, it is about the music- not the personalities involved... so we get stuck with bozos like "Fatboy Slim" who has been able to market his image on MTV. The bottom line- the point I'm trying to make: CONSUMERS themselves have created this situation by DEMANDING the N-syncs, the mass-marketed MTV top-ten, the manipulated Total Request Live acts... we can criticize the pre-fab cookie cutter bands, but we can't argue with their success. This "type" of music has been around since at least the 50s, so there is nothing new about it. Artists are to be blamed as well for seeking major labels and signing contracts. It blows my mind when artists claim to be raped by their labels when they "consented" to their contracts. Nobody forced them to sign their contracts. Finally, the "history of the intenet" seems to indicate people's reluctance to pay for digital content. Quality/compression issues aside, I listen to most of my music in my car... kinda difficult to stream.
Those that suggest you "dance like no one is watching" really want to see you make a complete fool of yourself.
Is that pronounced like "humidity"?
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
Let's be honest; mp3, oog and other compressed internet streaming music formats are not of the highest sound quality. High and low ranges are cut out, distortion from compression's perculiarities occur. Ask an audiophile fan of classical music, they'll tell you all about it as they speak of the superiority of vinyl.
I know that I sometimes buy the CD of work I find on the internet partially because I want a durable, portable, and high quality version. I really don't think of hard drives as durable since one hard drive crash can erase my entire music collection. Burnt CD are also do not have as long of a lifespan as pressed CD.
The thing is, compressed formats, although worse than CD's, aren't all that much worse. Also, other reasons to buy the CD aren't very strong for other people. My thought was that record companies should give people more reasons to buy the CD. Why not use DVD audio or better? Why not include the videos? (I'm sure Britney Spears fans would appreciate that :) I don't see any particular reason why a portable audio only DVD plsyer couldn't be produced.
This wouldn't be a long term style solution for record companies since eventually as bandwidth and compresion codecs improve the video and audio would become just as easy to transmit as they are now. It would however, be a win-not-lose situation for both companies and consumers for a number of years.
The only ones I know that don't are relentless self-promoters... they generally run their own small labels, often supporting other, similar musicians. Music isn't something you generally make money at. Granted, most small businessmen would tell you that business isn't something you make massive amounts of money at either...
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
As an attendee of the conference I have to say that it was an educational and eye opening experience. While there were some tense moments on a couple of panels, (Major Labels Panel and the Copyright Panel) The New Models panel was excellent, Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls and Daemon Records, David Fagen of th Rosenergs, And Ian MacKaye explained their business model, and how well it works for them and their artists. Partnership, no copyrights, and a lot of hard work.
Artists and Musicians left with the feeling that "We can do this" and that sure the major label model may be fine for some, but most don't need it. A musician or band doesn't need to sell millions of records to make a decent living.
One of my favorite moments came when Mark Cuban (yes that Mark Cuban) gave Cary Sherman a lecture on embracing file-sharing as a way to make money rather than suing them into oblivian.
(this is not a troll)
have you seen www.launch.com? It's yahoo's new music site, and i think it's pretty good because:
-you make a "radio station" by rating groups/songs/albums that you like.
-there are preprogrammed stations if you want
-you don't need to store mp3s, because it streams
-the sound quality is very good
-the licensing is legit and taken car of already
-you can listen to your "station" from any computer
drawbacks:
-sometimes their audio server gets choked up
-you can't pick just one song very easily
-you can't copy the files
-it's probably linked somehow to evil marketing schemes
-their selection is pretty extensive, but if you listen to any station a lot, you do hear repeats
that said, it's better than pain-in-the-tucus, not to mention shady downloading sites like audiogalaxy or kazaa.
-------- -praktike
mp3.com has a near perfect model. Here you can download a staggering array of songs for free, in whatever genre you happen to like, and a lot of it is really good. As long as you can get past the "I want to listen to what's popular" mentality that is shoved down our throats by radio (which cannot survive in its current state) and music videos (crap), mp3.com is a perfectly viable solution for listeners - you can find almost anything, and any Joe-Schmoe artist can put their music there. mp3.com actually pays artists who get lots of plays, using money they (presumably) make from advertisers. As a musician/composer/producer, I can honestly say that I believe that this is the future of music. The middle men (major labels, publishers, lawyers, distributors, retailers) have met their match, and will fall because they were so worry so much about "piracy" that they miss the big picture - up until now there has been just too much money in recorded music. There is only a finite amount of money that the general populus will spend on music, and thanks to Napster and mp3.com (very different models), they have discovered its true value: next to nothing. Because I'm good (yeah whatever), I plan to make only a small amount of money from people who listen to my recorded music. I see produced music only as a vehicle to gain respect and recognition, while live performance is what makes the big bucks. By big bucks I don't mean what Madonna currently makes in royalties, but enough to comfortably sustain my life as long as I choose to continue with this profession. Why would I listen to the latest crappy single from Destiny's Child on popular radio when I can go directly into the genre of music I like on mp3.com, choose 20 artists in a genre I like, stream them directly to my desktop, and abort playback on the tunes that don't interest me? Then I can download the ones I like and burn 'em to a CD or copy them into my iPod. There is no better solution for the discerning music consumer.
http://www.keithandbarry.btinternet.co.uk/
Flamebait ? I must be dreaming...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Right up until Vivendi/Universal came in and screwed it up. They started charging $20 per month to musicians who wanted to participate in the Pay for Play, reduced the Pay for Play to 1/2 cent per play rather than the 1 1/2 cents it started out as. In addition the DAM CD the artist now pays for, at $3.95 each, something that MP3.Com used to pay for as their part of the investment for 50% of the sale. They still get 50% of the sale but the artist pays the expenses. They also grabbed any money in artist accounts for pay for play that hadn't reached the required minimum payout amount. (It's still availble to use for artist service purchases such as placement ads, but not for payout, unless the artist pays them $20 per month.) Only 35,000 artists have signed up for the Premium service ($20 per month) leaving 135,000 artists screwed out of their earnings. Even if they are only owed $10 each thats $1.35 million they stole from the artists. It's not the best business model, its just business as usuall for the labels. You do the work You pay the expenses, we make the money....
The EFF has an Open Audio License that is being used by a number of musicians that feel its best to have the fans hear your musis, rather, than lock it up.
Being a fan of music has caused me to be rather disillusioned. I've noticed how saturated rock became after the flood of boy bands. Though, I'm sure, being only sixteen, that I'm unaware of how truly saturated music actually is. I'm not knowledgeable enough to say something "interesting" nor am I clever enough to amuse anyone.
*Aqua Seafoam* "Whenever people agree with me I feel I must be wrong" -Oscar Wilde
I think the evidence is pretty clear that they DO visit music conferences. Come down to Austin in March and you'll see the musicians lining up at the city limits to get into SXSW.
Slashdot fucks ass.