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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.
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.
"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?)
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?
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
Eben Moglen, a professor of law at Columbia University and the general counsel of the Free Software Foundation, DID mention the Free Music Movements, and was scoffed at. It was a strange scene.
LAST year, Eben Moglen was the hit of the conference, talking revolution and how copyright is dead, and we should make it all free, and the music lovers will pay for what they love because they want to, not because they're forced to.
THIS year, the mood was different. People talking "revolution" and "entirely new way of doing things" were laughed at. Eben said the same things as last year, but this year was dismissed.
It's pessimistic. The people with new ideas were sued into oblivion (Napster).
The musicians don't believe anything can save them except slow, incremental, legal fighting against the arch-enemy: the RIAA.