TheWayoftheWeb

There’s a great article by Umair Haque on ‘Why the war against file-sharing is unwinnable‘, which was collected in a post on Music Industry Manifesto.

And one quote particularly stood out for me as being an essential element of business:

‘No business has a right to profit, sell, or even to produce. All are privileges that society grants businesses.’

That’s why I feel discussions about newspapers, music, advertising etc sometimes miss the point. It doesn’t matter how strongly a publisher might feel newspapers are entitled to survive, or whether a prominent musician feels file sharing and digital music is hurting his future income.

It’s down to whether society, in a viable number, feel a business model has the right to profit.

In closing, Umair notes:

’21st century economics are radically decentralized. Wars against networks are unwinnable — when orthodox organizations are the ones fighting them. Only networks (or markets and communities, if you’re a long-time reader) can fight other networks.

Want a better music/media/etc. “business model”? The understanding that hierarchies are dominated by networks is the key — and the failure to understand it is exactly why the media industry is so deeply in decay.’

I dashed out in my car at lunchtime to run some errands, and while I was rushing around, this famous song was being played on the radio (it’s not the official video due to all the Youtube, PRS, music industry and other licensing restrictions.

But the lyrics forming in my head, and the video being pictured in my mind as I drove along was actually:

There’s probably a lot you could imply about original creations, payment mechanisms, and music industry copyrights etc…

I’ll just sit here chuckling and thinking about the quote on a T-shirt I bought from the National Gallery (is it just me that thinks their website is shocking?) recently – ‘Bad artists copy, Good artists steal’ – Picaso.

Having been active online for over a decade, I’m happy to say that I’m still pleasantly amazed by some of the things I’m able to find online.

For instance, due to the seemingly endless repeats of Scrubs on the E4 TV channel, and the fact it’s the only bearable TV show at 7pm as my son is finally going to bed, I’ve had a song from one episode stuck in my head.

I’m old enough to remember a time when that snapshot of a song would have played in  my head for days, weeks or years – unless one of my real life friends happened to know what it was, or a magazine tc happened to mention it.

Image by graciepoo on Flickr (CC Licence)

Instead, a google search for ‘Scrubs, Brendan Fraser, Song’ led to to the exact tune: ‘Hold on Hope’ by Guided by Voices.

Then, thanks to Last.fm’s ’similar artists’, I was able to listen to solo work by members of the band, and within a couple of degrees of seperation, end up at the interesting (and brilliantly-named) Psycho and the Birds side project.

Then a bit of background reading on Guided by Voices on Wikipedia (slightly more detail than Last.fm entries tend to have).

I love the internet for the things it allows me to do, not what it is.

And in a funny coincidence, my random library on Last.fm just threw up an old Lemonheads track -

After an interview in a magazine, I discovered The Lemonheads were on Taang Records, and would buy anything I found on that label without ever hearing it – leading to good stuff like The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and some absolutely terrible purchases.

Having always preferred the writing/singing of Ben Deily, who left before The Lemonheads hit mainstream success, I was idly googling his name and trying to find out about what happened after he left.

I ended up finding Ben Deily’s website, discovering his new band, Varsity Drag, realising they were on tour in Europe, asking if if was possible to interview Ben for the online magazine I was doing at the time (see a PDF of the gig review/interview here), buying a copy of the album on CD, and a CD of a previous project I’d missed, and a T-shirt from the gig.

And it’s safe to say I’m guaranteed to be at any future European gigs/buying future CDs – particularly as my other half confessed to being rather smitten with Ben after her first pop-punk gig. And all from an imported CD from 1988 (now signed), that I bought on the strength of hearing songs by an entirely different band lineup.

To close the rambling love letter to music with some sort of point:

Somewhere in there, there’s a business model for musicians/the music industry. The internet allowed me to find a musician who wouldn’t be stocked in local music stores, read his website and blog, find out tour dates, arrange an interview, publicise his music to more people, buy physical copies as much as mementoes as to play, buy a T-shirt, and sign myself up to buy future releases, T-shirts, and see gigs whenever I can.

I’ve been reading a bit about the discussions happening at the MIDEM event taking place in Cannes at the moment, which is a big business 2 business event for the music industry.

Highlights include the fact that the bags for the event have been sponsored by Napster (as captured by Mr Herdmeister, Mark Earls).

The other highlight I’ve enjoyed is the presentation by Gerd Leonard, who is moderating the panel at which the Herdmeister is speaking.

And in the meantime, I’ve also been having my stab at the future of music, thanks to the People’s Music Store (Found via Springwise).

I’ve always been a closet librarian when it comes to collecting music in physical form, and always had a soft spot for the idea of owning my own record shop (Even before I read High Fidelity!)

It’s not completely revolutionary – basically you can set up your store, share recommendations and reviews, and anything sold through your store earns you 10% as reward points to spend on new music via the store.

Interestingly, I’ve just spotted Amazon has released an MP3 widget for affiliates, which helps you to earn a 10% fee for anyone buying someone from the store.

But the next step is also to include user-generated audio for sale.

It will be interesting to see if the People’s Music Store can emulate the feel of ‘your favourite local independent record store’ enough to differentiate itself and offer more than an affiliate mechanism.  In the meantime, I spent five minutes on the site and came up with the start of my own music store.

And there are plenty of other interesting music services out there for buying or even investing in music:

• Amie Street
• Sellaband
• SliceThePie

I’m not sure I can conclude with more than starting to wonder about the filter and recommendation mechanisms, and how mainstream media might better fit the future. But the evolution of media and entertainment seems to becoming more like Moore’s Law every week, and not just in terms of technology.