Music as Gewgaw

I admit I live in the bubble of the embattled independent music world. Given that, it was an interesting experience to spend two days in the Corporate Music World when I attended Digital Music Forum East on February 24 and 25 in NYC. Some thoughts on my foray into that strange land:

- Music-as-most-definitely-a-business: I was looking forward to hearing David Pakman, formerly CEO of emusic, now with venture capital firm Venrock, because I'm a subscriber and emusic's obviously been looking to grow their audience and their bottom line lately. The noteworthy point for me of his interview was that, contrary to the many emusic subscribers who cried foul when they started offering some Sony titles last year, Pakman describes emusic's niche of independent music as a business decision. They took the path of least resistance - with the independent labels who were more willing to license to them at decent rates - and built a business model around them. Which says to me, that while the indieness-as-godliness image of emusic might still be "authentic", it's an image built to support a business model, not the reverse.

If that's the case, there's nothing wrong with that since it enabled the rise of one of the most successful digital music retailers ever...but I'd bet it's an affront to all those people who hold emusic as a standard-bearer for the indie aesthetic (whatever the hell that means these days). If you think I paint too strong a picture, try googling "emusic sellout" - it's not all about this topic, but it's a prominent theme.

- A guy from MTV Music was asked why they don't play more music videos. That's probably the most asked question to all MTV employees ever. He talked about how the channel is about more than music videos. And since the schedule has all seven hours of music videos programmed, from 3 AM - 10 AM, I agree. But why not own up to it? Just say that "My Life as Liz" garners more viewers than music videos ever did. No, they're not saying that in so many words but they did quietly drop the words "Music Television" from the logo recently.

- Branding, image, markets, profits, brand penetration, so much about music as a thing to sell other stuff. For example, a question asked from the stage: "do you need music to brand a product or just an engaged audience?" Now I recognize that many indie bands would happily license their song to Sears to fund their next tour. Making money to further your career isn't selling out - these days, it's surviving, which translates to winning the game.

My beef with this whole line of discussion is that it's not about music, rather it's about how to make McDonald's/Proctor & Gamble/Jeep more successful - with the incidental help of X artist/song. Throughout my two days there was very little discussion about paying artists, many complaints about licensing costs, and I'd almost swear I saw the audience smile kindly and condescendingly at the one guy who spoke from the stage of signing artists to his label for their music rather than their marketability! As they all acknowledged, it's a rough business to be in - now and ever. If you're not in it for the music, then why bother? Go sell tires instead already.

It's like that call I got once from some guy wanting to know how easy it was to make good money making music. He seemed to expect me to have a roadmap handy. *Smile* *Sigh*

Kickin' It Live

On the live music front lately:

I caught Run for Cover, a DC tradition where local bands remake themselves into crack cover bands for a one-night-only benefit show. These musicians knew, too, what make cover bands work as entertainment: complete knowledge of the material and total commitment to it. After all, making fun of the music is only funny if you're playing it properly. Otherwise, you're just being lame. Confession: I saw Bon Jovi in high school when Extreme opened for them at Great Woods outside of Boston. I might have thought the music was cheesy, but they were excellent performers because they knew how to put on a show...and it was the same thing with my friends David Brown and David Durst of Poor but Sexy who were part of the covering band. The Runaways and the Top Gun reenactment were also great; sad I missed Casper Bangs leading the Bee Gees finale though.

Tinted Windows (a "supergroup" - a term I hate more and more), in contrast, excelled at playing OK filler songs. Maybe if they'd stuck to covering songs by each of their bands - Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins, Hanson, and Fountains of Wayne? The only upshot to the evening: US Royalty, the openers, who were worth seeing again.

I don't have plans to see any other live music at that moment, but I am trying to produce my first show for FMC's conference in a few months. I know booking shows and audio and marketing and budgets to varying degress, but putting it all together is new and a little scary since I'm trying not to lose money and put on a show from scratch, i.e. not in an existing venue. But then what's to worry about? It's not like the concert business is losing so much money that they're giving away tickets for free? Hah.

The Value of Music

Last week, FMC released a document detailing some principles for artist compensation in the digital age.

Reading through the echo chamber that resulted made me think.

We have copyright and patent law:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

"Promot[ing]...the Arts" means to me that our Constitution encourages and rewards creativity that has value. All artistic creations aren't meant to be equal; instead, the Constitution sets up a meritocracy. In short, a creator has an exclusive right for a limited period of time to benefit from their creation IF others put value on it.

In some of the best parts of Larry Lessig's latest book Remix, he discusses what copyright used be for (sheet music and player piano rolls), who it used to affect (not you, me and your grandma), and how a bunch of small, unnoticed changes got us to where we are now. The problem now, of course, is in trying to derive money from a creation that's no longer tangible but freely available.

But doesn't anything that you want have an intrinsic value to you? The problem is only in not having found a way yet to collect money on that intrinsic value.

Skill, talent, creativity and experience have value. I wouldn't go into a restaurant and eat a meal and expect to skip out on the tab. I wouldn't hire a carpenter to frame my house and expect to stiff him. The intangible thing - the song - that a musician creates is no different.

And if copyright is abolished and musicians in the future only get paid on live shows and merchandise and whatever their fans will donate to help them record?

Well, musicians will continue writing and performing music, but it would be harder for some to make a living since they'd have to tour to be paid resulting in more musicians with day jobs; songwriters would suffer since they don't tour; recordings would probably sound worse since more of them would be done on Garageband rather than in studios; the recording/producer/studio industry would shrink since fewer bands would be able to afford a studio recording; recordings might become akin to a vanity press; the way we promote music might change since we'd no longer necessarily be promoting an album...and I could keep going.

Maybe that will be the next incarnation of the music industry. But, for better or for worse, I don't think so. There are too many people with too much at stake for that to realistically happen. The ISP levy experiment on the Isle of Man is an interesting step towards the future.

It doesn't matter how, by whom, or whether the system of payment to musicians resembles the train wreck that it is now. The important part is ensuring that the inherent value of creativity gets recognized.

My guess is that everyone will finally strike a balance that makes no one entirely happy - which is the mark of a good deal anyway - and we'll all attribute today's kvetching to growing pains.

Micro & Macro

Busy, busy. I haven't captured the elusive balance that I started the year resolving to, but I've kept up with the things I have to do and the things I want to do and maybe that's balance enough.

I cut out of work a little early one day this week to go a National Air and Space Museum lecture by Dr. Sandra Faber titled (with webcast available) "The Milky Way: Why We Need Her and How She Was Formed". The Milky Way's a girl? It wouldn't have been hard to get lost in the talk about dark matter or string theory, yet she did a great job at explaining concepts like Big Bang theory, why life may have had an easier time forming on Earth, the life cycle of stars, recent discoveries and interspersed it all with lots of animated simulations. The evening left me feeling very small - which I think any good discussion on the cosmos should. I want to check out Google Sky, Worldwide Telescope (Windows or Bootcamp on Mac only) and sky-map now, too.

Also caught my friend David's band Poor But Sexy at DC9 the other night. They were kind of indie rock, but with chops, soul stylings/vocals and some coloring by Steely Dan. I haven't heard that particular stylistic marriage before, but it worked and I'm looking forward to seeing them again.

Ticketmaster and Live Nation: To me, the fact the brand name "Ticketmaster" is so toxic that they have to change it to "Live Nation Entertainment" gives you all the reasons you need to know this merger is an awful idea for anyone that sees live music. Do tell, why isn't inventory control a perfect science? Ver-ti-cal In-te-gra-tion. A good overview on how we got here, some of the issues in play, and live blogging from Thursday's House hearings.

Touch and Go shut down its distribution arm; the music industry mourns and explains why indie distribution was good.

Chair Dancing

Long time no blog. Alas, my handy open ISP network - named HannahBanana - seems to have disappeared, so I pretty much have to be at work to get online.

Lots going on with work as usual. We're putting on a one-day festival of wonkyness for musicians. Putting on events is always a marketing game, but I find the challenge of integrating more multimedia to be the stuff I look most forward to working on - some questions via video to break up the panelist talk, a live webcast perhaps, our own personal roving newswoman maybe in addition to the usual archiving. Anyone been around when Google Moderator was in use? Anything interesting you've seen or heard about in use in conference-land?

In music news, maybe you've heard that iTunes is dropping DRM and going to tiered pricing? EFF suggests that the labels held DRM over Apple's head as leverage for tiered pricing which makes sense given Steve Jobs' previous statements on DRM. I only wonder why anyone should care? It's too little too late regardless of why. Though The Lefsetz Letter manages to get excited enough to use exclamation marks like they were going out of style, he covers all my exasperated points, too.

I've been sort of keeping up on the latest movies, too, which is unusual for me. Caught Gran Torino last weekend. Clint Eastwood plays the non-PC curmudgeon that you like despite his crankiness. I'm still not sure what I thought. I was part of an audience that found the entire movie hilarious - every swear, every epithet, every slur. And they weren't laughing in that way people laugh at Chris Rock because he manages to make the truth funny. Yes, the outrageous factor WAS funny, but after a while, I wondered if it wasn't a cop-out to so easily defang this guy's anger and disappointment with life and make them into an episode of All in the Family. Then I wonder how much of my opinion is colored by the people in the theater with me? Can anyone say over-thinking?!?

Enjoying the new School of Seven Bells album Alpinisms which is a dreamy electronic pop that reminds of Peter Gabriel a bit. However, I write this while listening to Justice's live Fader 50 mix. It's over a year old, but it's 34 minutes 38 seconds that I can't make it through without at least a little chair dancing.

Absurd

The absurdism watch is on: I'm reading Joseph Heller's Catch-22. Everytime I pick it up, I spend the first 10 pages wondering what the point is, and then I shift into the appropriate state of mind and get into it again. It reminds me of M*A*S*H for obvious reasons.

Also reading Larry Lessig's Remix as the latest selection of the FMC intern book club. I'm early enough in the book that Lessig is still painting a portrait of how the business models of the music industry came to be and how they're not adequate anymore. This is hardly news since even the RIAA has finally realized that suing its consumers isn't a good idea. They're now planning to shift the policing for piracy onto your friendly and inept internet providers which will no doubt anger ever more people if it works at all. So, the people who can't show up to turn on your cable will now be charged with letting you know that you've broken copyright law? Right-o.

Speaking of absurdity, I was talking to a former co-worker who mentioned that she's created a folder in her email software called "really?!?" expressly for those ridiculous exchanges that one has in a 21st century office environment. Brilliant.

Carousel

A few months ago, one of our summer legal interns, Jenny, and I were talking about interesting, fun, law-student-worthy projects she could do. At the time, a friend had sent me a link to yet another fabulous mix that was distributed illegally. That got me thinking and I posed the following problem to Jenny: how do I legally post a streaming mix "tape" to this blog that includes any song I want?

Jenny very diligently started researching and took all our ideas of websites that exist in some quasi-legal realm and started piecing the whole thing together. She quickly ran into all sorts of legal bogs and the post is still in mothballs.

Anyway, I thought of it the other day when I saw that muxtape was planning a revival as a completely different service from the online mixtape service it started as. Muxtape's founder Justin Ouellette writes eloquently about his experiences with the four major label groups and the RIAA when he was trying to negotiate a licensing agreement that might have kept Muxtape alive in its former form.

Muxtape is only the latest instance of the mainstream music industry biting the hand that feeds it by refusing to embrace and enable the new and then laying blame when those services are popular. They seem to enjoy crying poor. And now that venture capital is getting harder to come by, there will be fewer services for major labels to try to squeeze for cash. Digital Music News takes a good look at the possible venture capital lessons learned from muxtape as well.

So, inevitable new, cool illegal services + industry reluctant to work with emerging tech = more music available to music fans but less money getting back to the artist and the record company. After a while, artists realize the majors aren't helping their careers and they find more visionary people to help them build music careers. If history is any guide, the major four will hold progressively tighter to their declining revenues and be less likely to work with emerging tech...

Around the merry-go-round they go...you'd think they'd recognize the view after seeing it a few times?

Pop Culture Gaps

As some of you already know, I have some rather noticeable gaps in my knowledge of pop culture, especially with movies. So I've been catching up on my movie watching lately. Send me your top ten lists if you feel inspired and I'll add them to my Netflix queue.

Most recently seen:

Lost in Translation: nice to know that hype is sometimes warranted.

Eastern Promises: does Viggo Mortensen do anything badly? I even got my geek on and watched the featurette on Russian mafia tattoos.

Once: great music in a sweet little film though knowing that the 37 year old guy was dating the 19 year old girl in real life was a little weird. I wish I'd caught the two of them when they came through town last year.

Match Point: I didn't really buy the ending and it seemed to drag. That said, it certainly added to the mini-Scarlett Johansson fest.

I even tried to go see There Will Be Blood last weekend, but the film broke (broke? really?) and so no movie. Since then I've moved on to television featuring women who kick ass while living in the midst of extensive mythologies. No, not Buffy this time around, but Alias.

I think I'd have a lot more books if I had an apartment like this. But No Depression won't be on bookshelves anymore.

Digital Audio Insider considers the new music equation.

I didn't know that Wilco has webcasts of live shows on their website.

If Friday's weather holds, I'm off to Syracuse. If not, I may try to see Jason Isbell (ex-Drive-By Truckers) at the 930 Club.