elarson’s posterous

I read this article by Lily Allen on music piracy. While I'd like to think that music should be free, after looking at a few offers we've received from labels it is difficult to deny that music piracy has been considered part of the equation.

The big issue is not that record labels are struggling. This is a good thing. Labels have been loan sharks for entirely too long so good riddance. But, as crappy as big labels can be, there are a wealth of smaller labels that do aim to release great music to people because they appreciate what artists are doing. These range from friends that have friends in bands they want to help out, all the way up to labels who have established themselves as viable businesses. For bands, often times a label is the sole party that really can break a band.

There are are plenty of other ways a band can break, but the most common is through a label. The label puts out a record, pays for press, helps improve the bands stature and spreads the word with the result being the band finds a fanbase. The most important thing in this whole scenario for a band is finding the fans. While the critics can be nice to sway and Carling massive attention on blogs has its perks, the real deal is to get your music to fans. As a band, the closer you get to your fans and the more direct relation you build, the better the payout.

In the past bands could make money selling records. It was a big lottery, but it was still possible. Bands also were given the responsibility to do with their money as they chose. A band gets a big advance from the label and uses the funds to build their business (or buy drugs). Now, labels don't make nearly as much money selling music, so they are looking for other revenue streams. This means "partnering" up with an artist. The negative term has become the 360 deal where a label effectively can act as a manager, taking a percentage of the gross income. The more common occurrence from what I've seen is that labels aim to find targeted income areas to cover costs through the artist.

This in and of itself isn't too bad. It can be a huge help keeping the band funds liquid. If a band lands a huge tour or gets massive success, every t-shirt size they don't have is money lost. If a label can make sure you have enough shirts, hoodies and vinyl, that is a definite benefit. Labels can also help find placements and synchs for songs, which can be very lucrative. Again, very nice.

The problem is that while these benefits can be helpful, they can also preclude you from building your own business. If your label is your merchandising outlet, you probably can't make t-shirts yourself. If you have a three record deal, that is probably 3-5 years lost building part of your business. You won't be able to build up your own relationships with another manufacturer or put together your own fulfillment facilities. Likewise, if your label owns some of your publishing, that can end up being a lot of money. Say you have one song that gets 5 placements a year. If you average $2k per placement that is $10k. Over 20 years, that is $200K, which seems pretty good. Take 25% and give it to the label, pay another 20% in taxes and split it up between band members and it quickly becomes rather depressing. Couple that with the fact some labels are asking for actual percentages of tour revenue as well. Also realize that the band is most likely having to pay a lawyer, manager and booking agent (and in some cases a tour manager). Many of these support staffs used to take flat rates, but now all focus on percentages.

Before, if a band got 12% of a record sale they were doing pretty well. They could go on the road and make good money. Now, you don't get any money from record sales even though your percentage might be 50%. In addition to that, you are effectively taxed by your "team" on everything else you do. 5% for your lawyer, 10-15% for your manager, 10-15% for your booking agent, 10-20% for a tour manager, and 10-15% from your label. So, between 45% and 70% of the money you make disappears before you see it. Even if you do "break" and get a decent following, getting $5k a show doesn't mean much over the course of a year. In the famous words of Bill Cosby, "You have eaten yet!" Even if you take home half of the $5k for 30 dates ($2500 * 30 = $75k) you've yet to pay for gas, food, lodging, equipment and taxes. When you consider this money has to cover all the band members living expenses both on the road and off, things start to get rather tight. This doesn't even consider off road maintenance such as wardrobes and props (fog machines and can lighting is not cheap).

I honestly have to agree with Lily that music piracy doesn't really help the artists. It does help destroy the old system, which I do think is a good thing. But, unless there are some provable models for being an artist that don't involve taxes by everyone that helps you break, it doesn't seem like it is any better for artists. In a sense it is potentially worse because at least before, labels sold a product. The initial investment or R&D were directly tied to selling music. Now, everyone wants to get shares in the artists career.

The music business has been compared to the tech industry and venture capital, but I don't think that comparison is quite right. Music doesn't scale the same way technology does. Craigslist is a great example where a really small group of people have been able scale a small business from one city to a whole country. A band simply can't all of a sudden put out an album a day while touring non-stop. They need others to help keep the message out there and no one works for free. The result is that in order to break and make enough money to be reasonably stable, the actual revenue needs to be pretty huge.

With all this said, the fact still remains that I love playing music. It is an honor that people want to invest money in the music that I help create. While we plan on trying to be as shrewd as possible in terms of music as a business, the performers and artists inside just want to get our music out to as many people as possible. It is really all about fans and making that connection, so if that means giving up some ownership in order to help get our name out there, I'm kind of OK with that. The only requirement is that if you want a share of our music, you need to really earn it and be a fan.

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Today I had the desire to write something down, but really didn't have a concise idea of what to write about. So this post is just going to be a small summary of some thoughts and experiences.

Free Software and Open Source

I recently read the RMS opinion on Codeplex and Miguel's response. After a quick glance over at planet gnome I noticed a few people taking sides and it occurred to me that the whole argument is rather silly. When I was in college the concept of free software made a ton of sense. Looking back it was because I didn't have any money, so generally anything free made a ton of sense. Now that I'm a full fledged tax paying adult, the glamour of free software has lost its glitz. It is not that free software has become unimportant or useless. What has happened, in my mind at least, is the arguments associated with free software have become rather stale. By stale, I simply mean it isn't anything exciting for me personally. I think free software is critical, but I have better things to do than care about it in its own right. I'm probably just getting old, but it was an interesting realization for me nonetheless.

Test Driven Development

At work I've been trying to improve my tests. By "improve" I really mean write them in earnest. It is a really difficult thing to write code using TDD. It is a similar approach to modeling in that it forces you to consider an abstract idea of what some code should do and look like. TDD is sort of like UML in the age of Ruby on Rails, which is kind of funny as the recent web frameworks and NoSQL all suggest rapid prototyping over planning before coding. While both UML and TDD are doing pretty much the same in terms of hashing out code, the obvious benefit of TDD is that you get something that can be used in the future. At the same time, a well tested code base is not that important if the tests are bad and are hard to run. Testing in web browsers is the most obvious case in point. The larger point then is obviously that planning, whether through tests, visio or some hodge podge of tools, is helpful for writing better code. It might also be argued that it is faster since the design is fleshed out to some extent, but I would ask if the time spent planning is included in that calculation and if it is a real calculation at all. Programmers have a nasty habit of estimating because of the constant requirement to create hypotheses in debugging. My bet is that many of the virtues of TDD (like UML as well) are overblown and the only real benefit is forcing a developer to focus on what the problem is. One of my issues is that it creates a whole new class of code that deals with testing. This is totally fine, but where are tests for the tests! It seems like a story that we'll probably never see the end of.

Text Browsing

I'm going to suggest that if you're a programmer, it would treat you well to try out a good text web browser. My recommendation is w3m due to its Emacs integration, but anything that can keep you in your work environment works. My guess is vimmers would get similar usage from links/lynx assuming the terminal is their environment. The reason being is that if you are constantly editing text and reading it in your dev environment, browsing the web textually can be a helpful tool to keep focus. For me, I get the same keybindings, easy copy and pasting, and simpler window/frame/buffer management. Beyond this though, it feels faster when it comes to reading documentation and finding helpful code. Your milage may vary, but it sure couldn't hurt to try.

Administering Systems

At work we recently rolled out a new system. It isn't actually new, but is in fact the latest step in an improvement to a current system. What always strikes me about the smart folks I work with is how gracefully they walk the line between system administrator and programmer. The two fields are completely intertwined, but the best programmers are those that have the better understanding of both sides. This is probably partly why I'm not that great of a programmer! For whatever reason, my mind doesn't ever seem to really indulge in the system administration side of things. It is always a challenge for me to make pre-existing software work the way I think it should. That doesn't mean I'm not trying of course! But it does mean that I have a ton to learn and will for the foreseeable future.

ACL Wrap Up

This past weekend was ACL in Austin and it was a blast. We saw Them Crooked Vultures, The Walkmen, School of Seven Bells, Broken Social Scene and some guys from Phoenix DJ. We also played a show with The Riverboat Gamblers and The Soldier Thread. It was a ton of fun. On the road we don't really get to hang out that much. There is usually somewhere to drive, something to load or unload or something to sell that usually keeps us busy. It was great to come home, rest and then have a great weekend of music and friends. We didn't go to ACL proper and I'm glad. There were plenty of bands I would have liked to catch but the weather was horrid and my guess is I would have been pretty miserable in the mud. Hopefully next year there will be some nicer weather. Who knows, maybe we'll even get to play!

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I just read this blog from Tim Bray. Let me start by saying Tim is a smart guy that deserves to be listened to. With that in mind, I think TIm's view of the music industry is a little stuck in the mainstream, which I believe has an impact on his perspective. The thing that I've been seeing from the standpoint of a band that is trying to make things happen, is the focus on licensing. People have essentially given up on selling music for profit and instead have turned to those select few who need music for advertising. The money is much better and the amount of work required is an order of magnitude smaller in comparison to what is needed to be successful selling a CD.

When you think of most larger bands, they have a label, management, booking agent and quite possibly press person. This is important because this reflects the amount of work it takes for a record to be anywhere close to profitable. Breaking a band is such a great concept because it suggest that they are selling their music to the masses. The reality is that they are selling their music at an extreme discount in hopes that they will be noticed and in turn considered for other opportunities that pay exceptionally well. When Apple says they want to use a band for their commercials, the respective band realizes that they have just hit the jackpot. The band represents something "cool" and Apple is responsible for paying for that credential. Apple will have to pay something serious not only because the precieved publishing value is high, but b/c Apple does a good job marketing and will garner a large audience.

The way these sorts of licensing deals usually work is that there is an amount of money up front for publishing. That is usually is money givent to the song writer and the artist performing the track. If you google a bit, you'll see the 200% concept where 100 goes to the writer and the other 100 going to the artist that performed the track. With this publishing side of thing wrapped up, the next thing to consider is the mechanical royalties. This measures the audience and pays according the number of people who heard the track. That is why a band that has a song in a super bowl commercial would get paid incredibly well. The audience is huge.

The whole point being is that the real money is in licensing. Sure, bands make money on the road, but that is negligible compared to a great placement with the new hot HBO series or commercial. A band can get 40k right out of the gate for something like the title track of a show. This easily dwarfs the profits and cost of selling a record. This means that the focus for fans may be noble and respectable, but doesn't translate into making a living. To make a real living in writing and performing rock music, you have consider how your music could be used to advertise a product or represent something.

This is not to say that bands should simply become jingle writers. Honestly, there is a huge amount of content, so making an effort to rack up on licensing doesn't make financial sense when there are legitimate (albeit less profitable) means of selling music.The problem is that people working with artists are realizing that there is less money using traditional means and they hope licensing can make up the difference. This leads to labels and bands alike considering how they can write music that no only reflects themselves artistically, but also might be a good track for a movie.

Personally, I hope some concept of selling music returns in one way or another. Pop music has become truly commercial in the jingle sense and indie music is not far behind. There are some great bands making great music of course and many of them are commercially viable. My concern is the bands that wouldn't sound good selling something getting overlooked where in the past they had an excellent chance of being successful. There is also many cases of artists that have tapped into the web in a way that maximizes thier profit and cuts out the middleman. Currently, that feels like a niche group, but hopefully the patterns they use can become more standardized and people more knowledgible. For the moment, the style of those artists making money from audiences on the internet is not clashing or at ends with each other. For many artists, it just isn't the case where heavy direct communication and song writing contests work within their artistic vision.

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I just read this article on a new streaming music service for Austrailia. It isn't going to work. The problem with streaming is that it doesn't consider the audience. Folks who have jobs and more than likely work on a computer all day love the idea of opening some streaming service app and listening to great music all day. A select few might be interested in DJing their dinner party or get together with friends using the catalog of a great streaming service. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, but if you ask the kids, my bet is they'll just use YouTube.

This lack of acknowledgement for the audience of these services doesn't provide much hope for the music industry. Kids are different from young adults and folks halfway through life are radically different from both. This can't be surprising. People have phones, text messaging, instant messaging, email, twitter, facebook, posterous, tumblr, etc. that all basically do the same thing. We're talking communication and the possibilities are endless. It makes no sense that the music industry think streaming is the next album. Technology has blown the doors open, so why sit there and try and squeeze the populace into one medium. Everyone has different contexts when listening to music, so the future is providing those contexts online and offline.

I think the music industry needs to consider its place within youth culture. When I was a kid, the radio seemed to have integrity and cool. I could listen to edgy bands even though my sister was pushing Tiffany. While I wasn't on the cusp of underground music, I ended up looking and finding bands like Fugazi. The music defined who I was. Now, kids are still defined by music, but the difference is the concept of an underground is gone. It is too easy to be found, which means that kids don't necessarily care about obscurity. They just want to find music that helps give them definition. Here is where streaming services fall short. The focus is providing music instead of expressing youth culture. The sttreaming service can't define a genre or present a style. The streaming service isn't the local record store staff picks. While it opens up possibilities in terms of access, it doesn't help youth find bands that signify who they are. That is why things like blogs, youtube, facebook, twitter and the wealth of tools aiding communication are where the future is. These tools let people find the artists that help to define their persona.

Personally, I'm not really a fan of streaming services. Yet, I do understand the appeal. I used to run a server from my house so I could stream songs on demand at work. It was kind of slow, but I really enjoyed having the access. That said, discovering new bands was still all about google and blogs. My guess is that there will never be another "album" or medium that corners the music market. It is a waste of time at this point. The album artwork is effectively worthless compared to a website with a blog and forum. When you throw flickr and youtube in the mix, the idea of selling a CD with 10 songs on it makes no sense at all. Nostalga is definitely worth something, but in the end, self expression is where music has always been and should stay. In other words, no one defines themselves by a pipe of on demand music.

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I recently read this blog by Joel Tenebaum who is getting sued by the RIAA. From what I gather from music blog headlines, this is a pretty important case in so far as it seems to take up a good portion of attention on a few music related blogs.

Without following what has been going on, it is clear from Joel's blog that this case is ridiculous. The fact the RIAA can sue people for such extravagant amounts is more a testament to how the legal system is flawed then simply they are a terrible organization. That said, the RIAA are a terrible organization! I find it very difficult to see how file sharing is really costing the industry so much money. If I owned a video cassette factory, do I get to sue DVD manufacturers for killing my business? The US auto market seems get help from the government even though they made terrible cars. It might have been a better tactic for GM to sue Toyota for profits lost due to unfair competitive practices, aka making decent cars.

On a side note, if Toyota or Honda wants to make a 15 passenger van (a la doge sprinter), sign me up. Our 96 Toyota Corrolla has over 185k miles and is going strong. Our 02 Dodge Ram van has been is heading back to the shop after getting a new engine at 67k miles. The only Dodge I'll ever consider is their Sprinter van and here is a hint why, Mercedez Benz diesal engine.

Car frustrations aside, the real problem with the RIAA and the lawsuits they promote has to do with responsibility. Back in the 90s, the music industry was making massive amounts of money. Relatively small bands were going platinum with CDs that cost $17. I'm not saying this was a problem, but it obviously tainted the music industry's view of what they are owed. It seems that now when profits are dropping, the answer is not something like, "how do we make a better product?" or "is there a way we can provide more value to our customers?". Instead they form a legal team to go find people who are sharing music and use the legal system as means of taking justice into their own hands. The lawyers effectively act as the music industry's mercenaries and aim to extract their due vigilante style. Honestly, it is pretty screwed up.

Now, I'm not saying it is totally fine to pirate music. As a musician, I'll be extremely frank, it is expensive, time consuming and difficult to make music that is effectively seen as worthless. That said, that is where we are. I'm ok with it. I don't make music to make a million dollars. What is frustrating is that in order to make music anywhere close to the quality I'd like my music to be at, we are talking a hefty chunk of change, that I cannot afford. While many people say take it on the road and sell t-shirts, I'd bring up the above points about a van being in the shop with a new engine. Van issues aside, it is and order of magnitude cheaper to get 1000 CDs pressed than 1000 t-shirts. We have to buy around 75 at a time because that is all we can afford. And on that note, I'll stop whining because this past year of playing music has been more fun and exciting than I can describe, I'll keep paying down my credit card debt and shut up.

At this point, I don't think it is OK to pirate music in so far as if you really like an artist and want to support them, getting their music without paying seems like a poor way to do it. I also don't think you should have to fork out $17 to get a CD that is so-so at best. It is also ridiculous that our friend Joel is having to deal with a million dollar lawsuit. Since the RIAA is suing, it seems someone else should do the same. Why not fight fire with fire. If there are any smart lawyers out there that want to make a bunch of money on a class action law suit and put a nail in the major label coffin, why not strike up a pricing fixing class action lawsuit. Does it seem at all odd that CDs seem to always be roughly the same price no matter the label? If the RIAA gets to sue for lost revenue because people used an existing technology, then why not sue for raising the price of the CDs to a ridiculous level?

Ok, I know what you're thinking. The $17 CD was a function of supply and demand. People were willing to pay such a high amount, therefore, it was simply the happy intersection where supply and demand met, had coffee and talked about old times. And based on my economics courses, this is entirely correct. But guess what, with the introductions of mp3s, guess what happened to scarcity. Ah yes, another economic term that defines the amount of available resources, aka supply. Does it seem fair then that because the supply of music became saturated the RIAA gets to swoop down and sue the pirates for all the lost revenue? I'm saying no.

The one positive thing the RIAA have done is pose enough of a threat to make people prefer purchasing music over pirating it. Honestly, paying $50 for 4 or 5 records is a much better deal than pirating them and being asked to pay $3k. If I were the music industry, I'd consider it a win and get back to business. I'd probably keep the RIAA around to keep making an effort to get folks to settle. It is still pretty slimy, but honestly, it is stealing and simply because the government can't (and really shouldn't) spend the time and money to monitor file sharing, I'm OK with the RIAA making its effort, just as long as the goal is simply to make it clear that it is cheaper to buy music than pirate it most of the time. Unfortunately, this is not the goal of the RIAA. They are trying to get lost revenue and that screams the "I don't like my customers and I'm lazy" mentality of the major labels.

I think in the end the best way to combat the RIAA is simply to avoid pirating music. If you want some free music there is traditionally a wealth of ways to try it legally. More and more bands are giving away their music in hopes of getting fans. Honestly, if someone reaches out saying they have enjoyed what they've heard, it is pretty easy for me to say thanks and give them a download code. If you really want to get music for free, then start a relationship with an artist. Let them know you're listening to them and telling your friends. Talk about their shows, videos, blog posts, reviews, and twitter about the band. If you champion a band, they will pay you back. We give away stuff all the time to people who support us. It really is the least we can do.

Of course, if you want to drop off a van at my door step, I'm cool with that too.

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One of the biggest problems I've personally noted with the music industry is the desire for exclusivity. The music industry typically tries to manipulate the economic equation by making music more scarce, so they can in turn charge more for it. Labels want to own the masters. Pubslishing companies singularly own the publishing rights (song writing). They all want to be the single source for providing a particular artists song. Likewise, managers provide a single interface for working with a band. Often times they want a contract setting the length of time they represent the band. This is obviously to protect their initial time investment where they can begin to make a lot of money if things with the band work out. This meant getting a huge payoff when a major gives the band advances as well as getting money from tours and licensing. The problem is often times a manager will have outlasted the bands needs and the payments are for things the manager has no relation with. 

The root of this idea always goes back to a contract. The one system in the music industry that I appreciate is a lawyer's agreement. They effectively send you a description of what they'll do for you and that is that. If they don't do it, you find another lawyer. Pretty simple. There is no contract either! It is a simple agreement. I have no idea why everything doesn't work this way. Everyone is selling something in one way or another, so why not simply pay a commission? If a manager finds you a huge gig that pays well, the manager gets the money. If the booking agent doesn't book the show, nothing for them. If a label pays for your t-shirts to be made, then they get their share, otherwise, it is yours. If a publishing company finds you a placement, they get paid, if not, tough luck. 

The current situation is that everyone wants a contract. When you are starting out, these contracts seem fishy and gross. You can tell that they are written in such a way that someone will do a minimum of work now and even less later. The opportunity usually has little chance of pushing forward your career, and in exchange, you provide the entity with money once your hard paid off! This is where the exclusivity is such a terrible problem. Someone wants to be the exclusive resource for some artist, even when it is better to move to a better resource. This is typically not entirely present in other industries. If I own a shop and another distributor approaches me to sell my goods, I can switch. If a sales person at a store doesn't make any sales, they don't get paid very much and can be fired. Contrast this to the music industry which effectively is saying a sales person will try to make a sale for three months and in turn gets 15% of the profits for three years off everything in the store. 

My biggest frustration is that people have little incentive to work hard. You often have a very limited time frame to make things happen. If things don't work out, the contract protects the person who didn't make it happen from profiting from the artist, who might eventually find a way to become profitable through hard work and persistence. In our situation, we have worked very hard and put a lot of money into the music. We need to be repaid before others have because we've done all the work. Are we open to finding a manager or label or anyone that can help us? Of course we are! Do we want to give them a 3 year contract giving them 15% of everything we make? No way! If you want to profit from my band, you're more than welcome to do so under the simple terms that you get paid for what you do. If that is not enough money to make it worthwhile, then don't do it. 

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With the eve of SXSW being upon the entire city of Austin and much of the music industry, I've noticed that in paying attention to modern music there is a obvious lack of genre. This is not a bad thing of course, but it does present questions what musical integrity really means. When I was younger, the style and genre of a band acted as a barometer for their values and integrity regarding music as art. I'm probably biased since most of the music I listened to was of the general "punk" variety and was meant to question mainstream music as a whole.

Childish thinking aside, it still seems as though "indie" music is not what it used to be. The bands are pretty darn close to being mainstream both in terms of fan base and sonically. If you look at the more talked about "indie" bands they don't reflect as much rebellion as past artists. Take someone like Neko Case, M. Ward or St. Vincent and you can see what I mean. At one point this kind of music might be considered "alternative" to reflect its parallels to mainstream music in terms of popularity, while still keeping its edge. Really though, it is tough to argue that the above artists have much of an edge.

I want to make it clear that I'm not criticizing anyone here, just making an observation. I really like Neko Case. What is interesting is how the availability created by Internet seems to have destroyed some of the needs or requirements for a genre. Personally, I think it is kind of cool. I remember hearing punk bands on skating videos and being extremely excited to know the music existed. It is fascinating to think that there is the beginnings of a generation that may never need to search aimlessly to find music that speaks directly to them. Likewise, from the bands perspective, it is exciting to know that they have fewer and fewer reasons to sacrifice their sounds in order to find fans. Even while the music industry is a mess, it is nice to still see silver linings every now and then.

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I've started checking out more music blogs as of late (thanks Dave) and it is pretty interesting to see the conversations going on. Some blogs are primarily news. Personally, this gets rather old quickly since most writers (if these are actually people at all) are simply posting press releases or small paraphrases. Stereogum is a good example of someone doing the news in a relatively interesting way. Many others feel like bots. Other blogs make an effort to decipher the music industry and how musicians can actually make a career out of music. In theory, these are of interest to me, but the reality is they are usually a little too career focused. There is nothing wrong with this of course, but I'm not interested in playing in a cover band on week nights to pay the bills or writing songs for others to record. Again, it is totally cool if folks want to do this, but it is not for me. The rest of the music blogs are essentially just typical blogs. Kanye West's blog, for example, is essentially a stream of consciousness that seems to be aiming at defining what's cool. These obviously have a professional bent to them in that they are more consistent than one would imagine. Picking on Kanye again, I can't imagine he finds the 10 or so different pictures and videos that seem to show up on his blog daily. I could be wrong here and Kanye might have an unquenchable desire to find interesting and stylish furniture, but my bet is that he has an organization that helps him out.

Another theme I've noticed is the obvious frustration of major labels. As a programmer and generally geeky guy, I'm interested in most technical subjects. The web as a platform is more than the next generation of Windows.Forms for the world. It is a platform for content. The music industry was not prepared for the influx of shelf space the web provides. Before, with the inherit limitations of traditional distribution, the music industry could effectively act as a filter for popular music and the audience were more or less OK with it all. But now, things are different. There is a massive amount of music alongside an enormous marketplace. Major labels don't have the bandwidth to filter the music and programmers are doing everything in their power to make the future a place where labels will never have the influence they once had. I say "programmers" specifically because these are the people who have consistently started web sites dedicated to publishing free music over and over again. What's more programmers are the ones to pioneer podcasting, filesharing and blogging. All these advances have moved beyond programmers command lines to joe user, who now can easily rip and share every CD he has ever owned. In the end, it has made running a label near impossible.

As a musician, the tone of the industry is frustrating as well. There was a time where a great band could actually get paid! Often times it didn't work out, but there were still plenty of "rock stars" out there where making it seemed attainable. Now, we see indie artists blowing up and there is still a doubt they make any money at all, much less enough to have a decent lifestyle when no one cares about their music anymore. There are people still making money, but it is clear from the music industry bloggers, labels are really hurting, which in the long run also hurts artists.

The silver lining to all this is that as a musician it's very humbling. Ironically, the world of drugs, sex and rock'n'roll, humility is becoming the pathway to success on the web. The trend of social networking sites has become a hot topic because it is clear there is a mountain of possibility that is not being tapped. Social networking gives artists a way to directly, yet less intimately, interact with fans. The problem is that the lead singer telling the crowd to f*** off may seem cool on stage, but saying the same thing on twitter just seems rude. It is starting to look like the rock stars of the future will be the musicians who remember the kids name who saw them play six months ago.

Finally, the last theme that seems to be hidden beneath all the conversations is how do people connect with music. The current answer is through relationships, which is consistent with how the music industry obviously works. It's who you know. Yet, there is an acknowledgment within the industry that, above all, you have to write good music. At this point folks don't necessarily seem to believe there are too many tragedies out there where great bands don't make a name for themselves. I think I disagree, but that is probably more a function of my own hopes that we'll make it some day. What is pretty terrible is the cream of the crop (those that are doing pretty well) is so large that many people may never connect with bands they may love. Regardless of whether or not some band is getting listened to, audiences don't have a way to filter effectively. As I said before, labels used to do this, but no longer. There are attempts such as Pandora, but at the end of the day, they seem to fall short. The technical questions might not be how to find music for people, but rather how to organize people in a way that filters effectively. It might be more online radio, podcasts and blogs, or facebook groups. But, my bet is that there is a subtle context that we've been silently missing. Twitter, for example, championed communicating short ideas, much like a cocktail party. We need a twitter for discovering music.

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