The Future of Music

Radiohead knows where the real revenue comes from

Great to see a band of this stature make a bold move like this.  Radiohead has released their latest album "In Rainbows" online and for free, if you want it.  They will also accept whatever amount you wish to pay for the songs.  Brilliant!

Bertis Downs, manager of R.E.M., says "This is the sort of model that people have been talking about doing, but this is the first time an act of this stature has stepped up and done it. . . . They were a band that could go off the grid, and they did it."

Just watch what happens when they launch their tour!  Tickets, t-shirts, hats, box sets, other goods - watch the cash register ring.  KA-CHING

LA Times reported the story on Sunday.

CD Sales Take Another Dive

CDs are now sliding precipitously, especially in the United States, and that has intensified media diversification efforts at major retailers.  At the halfway point, year-over-year disc sales in the United States dropped 15.1 percent, according to Nielsen Soundscan.  That gap has since broadened to 18.4 percent.

For retailers like Trans World, Hastings, and Virgin Megastores, diversification has now become an accelerated survival tactic.  During the recent quarter, music-specific sales at Trans World dropped 19 percent on a comparable store basis.  That is more severe than dips of 16 percent recorded during the same quarter last year, and represents a worsening trend.  "Trans World has 950 stores and we would expect them to continue to deemphasize music over the next 12-24 months," said Richard Greenfield of Pali Research during a recent investor note.  Greenfield noted that Trans World has already lowered its music-specific selection to 43 percent of total inventory, down from 47 percent last year.

The decreased selection means less consumer matches, and lowered sales volumes.  "As floor space continues to contract at physical retail, we are increasingly concerned that the rate of decline in CD sales will materially accelerate in 2008," Greenfield asserted.

From Digital Music News

Gerd Leonhard’s Open Letter to the Independent Music Industry

Music2.0 and the Future of Music is yours – if you can resist the temptation of becoming just another music cartel.

On June 29, 2007, while at London Calling, I was invited to speak to a small group of indie record label leaders at the annual AIM / WIN gathering in London. I took this opportunity to take a good look at what needs to happen in order for the independent music companies to actually take advantage of the new music economy that is unfolding right now.   So... some of my thoughts are shared below.

 Today I want to present my views on what I like to call “Music2.0” – the next generation of the music industry that is being created as we speak. This new model is dramatically different: many old ways of doing things, many old relationships, and many outmoded traditions cannot and will not survive.

I want to seduce you, the leaders of the independent music industry, to go down this new road with me, to take a leap, to leave some of your assumptions and your ‘religions’ aside, and to make bold moves – because this is required to turn this ship around.

Scott Fitzgerald, the famous novelist, said: “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”.  This will clearly be the music industry’s challenge going forward!

Technical and economic innovations have, for the past 10 years, stripped away many traditions, social and economic hierarchies and monopolies in the music industry, and if there is one thing we can say for sure I guess that would be that it’s now show-time: the music industry is finally reaching a major inflection point; 10 years after the first .com ventures shook the ground. It took a lot longer than we all thought but it’s hitting much harder now: CD sales are down between 20 – 40% YTD, and digital sales are not making up the difference, any time soon – and the one-horse race with iTunes clearly is a dead-end.

We are very quickly nearing a point to where we are forced to dive into what I like to call “Music2.0” – a new ecosystem that is not based on music as a product, but music as a service: first selling access, and only then selling copies.  An ecosystem based on ubiquity of music, not scarcity.  An ecosystem based on mutual trust, not fear.

As Don Tapscott says, in his great book “Wikinomics” , we can think of Web1.0 – the ‘old’ web - as some sort of digital newspaper, while Web2.0 is a canvas that allows information to be put up, shared, changed, and remixed. It’s about the interaction, the send-and-receive options that make it useful and ‘special’.  And in music, it’s always been about interaction, about sharing, about engaging – not Sell-Sell-Sell right from the start.

Stop the sharing and you kill the music business – it’s that simple. When the fan / user / listener stops engaging with the music it’s all over. Today, you urgently need a canvas for music not a one-way product (such as the CD).

Let’s face it: most ‘leaders’ of the major record companies as well as some independents are, by and large, still in denial about the fact that their unit-sales-based model is utterly broken and crashing quicker than they can fathom, and many still hope for some magical technology solution to solve a business problem.

Billions of $$ have already been lost due to misguided strategies, outdated policies, and lack of true leadership. Forgive me, but it's time to get your act together and do whatever it takes, not just what fits comfortably into your current landscape – this is a make-it or break-it moment.

How come many societies and PROs / MROs are still at a total loss when it’s about ‘licensing the un-licensable’ (as my dear friend and colleague Jim Griffin puts it)?  1000s of companies with innovative business models are left unlicensed, by default (or shall I say by design?), and most of them have given up on even trying. Major money is left on the table due to tardiness and internal squabbling.  Many of the traditional music licensing organizations have utterly failed in their mission of making music available – in fact, they have, by non-action, succeeded to make it unavailable. What you need now is action not continued excuses.

Today, we have the paradox situation that any startup that wants to use music will not even try to go legal right from the beginning, since there is no reasonable way of doing so. Look at the biggest exits in this turf, during the past 2 years: myspace, youtube, last.fm – either they did not bother with proper music licenses, or it was unclear if and where and when they would even need one. Non-compliance succeeded and was handsomely rewarded.

The music industry must admit that it has failed to act. Their leaders’ clueless-ness, incomprehension and general lack of willingness to embrace true change allowed the paying for music to become voluntary. Congrats.

Don Tapscott points at the year 2006: the losers built digital music stores, and the winners built vibrant communities based on music. The losers built walled gardens while the winners built public squares. The losers were busy guarding their intellectual property while the winners were busy getting everyone’s attention.  Warner Music Group’s stock nose-dived from $30 to $14 in less than one year; Google rose from $323 to $526, Apple went from $50 to $127.

For the independent music industry, the question is: which side do you want to be on? Do you want to become another ‘major player’, and stay stuck in music1.0, or do you want to lead the way into music2.0?

In this context please allow me give you a glimpse of the future, so that you can make some decisions based on what is coming.

1.    Within 18 months, in many key music territories around the globe, wireless broadband networks and device-to-device ad-hoc networks will connect every conceivable device with each other, as well as with gigantic online content depositories – or shall I say switch-boards - that will contain every imaginable song, film, or TV show.

If you think ‘sharing’ is a big deal now, wait another 2 years – it will be 100x as fast and enabled on every single device (not just computers). 3 Billion+ cell phones and 1 Billion+ music players will connect seamlessly to each other.

Wireless broadband access and devices will become so cheap, super-fast and ubiquitous that sharing content will become the default setting, at very high speeds and with anyone that is close by. Search – Find – Select – Exchange. Click and get.

How can you monetize this? By licensing participation – and the networks and the devices that enable it.  You must license the use of any and all music on these networks, and make irresistible, irrefutable and compelling blanket offers to those that run it. These license deals must be conversations not monologs. Not a stick to the ISPs but a huge, shining and attractive carrot.

2.    10s of 1000s of new TV, online video, and gaming channels will be born in the next 2-3 years – and all of them will need music to go with the visuals. Millions of songs will be synched to video – this market will positively explode. It may well be that those B2B licensing revenues end up being more than 50% of your future income.

However, exploiting these opportunities will only be possible if an efficient and frictionless system for transactions is available – this is, imho, where the huge opportunity for the Merlin initiative (where AIM is a member) lies. Think ebay+ chemdex +ricall + pumpaudio+.  Every $ invested in better B2B processes will make 10s of 1000s for music rights holders… while they sleep, or better yet, make more music.

3.    Streaming music, on demand, will be everywhere. On every website, every widget, every mobile, every device – supported by ads, sponsorships and commissions on transactions. Performance-based income will surge beyond your wildest imaginations, But again, only if you finally chose to play ball, to participate, to make irresistible license and rate offerings, create reliable standards and go flat-out for liquidity not try to maintain artificial scarcity.  BMI’s revenues have grown from $630 Million in 2003 to $779 Million in 2006 – not bad considering the overall demise of the recorded music market, at the same time!  So read my mouse: It’s not the copy of the recording that makes all the $$$, it’s the use. In fact, the use of your music is the next big format you have been looking for.

4.    Rich media (i.e. ads with music, video, animations, audio etc) will become the default advertising format for online advertising, representing yet another huge growth opportunity for music. Soon, 10%+ of all ad-spending will be on the Internet; and 16% of all Internet ads in 2009 will be rich media. With an estimated $ 700 Billion of global ad spending by 2009, that means $70 Billion for online ads, and over $10 Billion spend for rich media ads. 100s of millions of $$$ for music licenses!

5.    Digital radio will deliver 100% time- and place shifted music experiences, stopping only a tiny bit short of becoming another iTunes. The reality is that net radio is just another Tivo for music. Radio will indeed become the feels-like-free, on-demand music box, once again: the only remaining ‘Radio1.0’ factor will be that it will continue to be curated and expert-produced, as well as taking in social recommendation and smart technology agents. The best radio stations will become very strong brands (Radio 1, KCRW etc), out-doing what used to be record labels. How will you license Radio2.0 if you insist on staying with a per-copy model?

6.    All music companies will become video companies, too – music will be multimedia, by default (music + video + audio + text + games). If you aren’t already diversifying into video and TV you really should.

7.    China, India, South America and Africa will explode with new models of usage rights – bundles and flat rates based on access. And guess what: they will indeed have those $100 computers that Negroponte is trying to bring to them!

But again, you will not have truly liquid (i.e. efficient, low-friction, vastly scalable) markets until you allow, support, and enable them.  You must swing this ship around, because right now, the music industry is failing miserably: failing on technical and on licensing standards, on flexible pricing offerings, on competitiveness, on compatibility, on being trusted, on transparency.

The music industry’s past was based on:
•    Control
•    Exclusivity
•    Monopoly
•    Closed-ness
•    Guarding / Protection
•    Secrecy / Non-Transparency
•    Territoriality

Your future – if you chose to go there – is based on:
•    Openness
•    Total transparency
•    Peering
•    Sharing
•    A truly global outlook
•    Liquidity

I predict that as much as 60% of this new music business -  and with that I mean a $100 Billion music business - will be independent within 3-5 years –  but only  if their leaders don’t follow the major labels into LIKING CONTROL MORE THAN INCOME.   Update: watch this movie clip for more details ;)

Here are a few of my favorite bottom lines:

1)    The media ecosystem of the future is frictionless. That means music anytime, anyhow and anywhere, ranging from free and ‘feels like free’ to bundled, up-sold and premium’ed. Your job as a music company is to do away with the friction, not to add to it, or even to re-insert it: on the Internet, every hurdle is treated as damage, and the traffic is simply routed around it.  Create friction and be side-stepped.

2)    It’s all about participation not prevention. Because of the utter impossibility of maintaining any real hurdles, it is absolutely crucial that you find ways to participate in any and all forms of commerce that use music. Charge smartly for access but make music available the same way that cell phone operators make cell phones available: a very low-cost, irresistible way of engaging people… and sell-up from there. Whether it’s streaming on demand, remixes and mashups, play-listing and social network music applications, to add-music-to-video, to digital radio – being part of it is what it’s all about.

3)    Let’s face it: the web is like a giant Tivo, a huge recorder or DVR - all performances are or can be recorded, all broadcasts really are deliveries. You need to stop distinguishing between music ‘to keep / own’ and music ‘to listen to’ – our users have done this a long time ago! License the USE. Share revenues. THEN upsell to ownership.

4)    Copyright is the principle, usage right is where you monetize. Usage is where you need to focus your energies, not the ‘protection of Intellectual Property’. This is a tough spot but again… do you want total control, or do you want revenues?

5)    Very few things end completely when new inventions are taking hold – usually, the market just grows larger. And it will be no different here. Yes, the fax machine and the Internet killed the Telex and telegraph, but we still have books even though we have Xerox machines. CDs will decline, and may fade out  completely, eventually, but nothing you do in digital music will completely wipe out physical media. This is just another format, and it’s called ACCESS. And even better: after you provide access, you can sell ownership again, too (think HD!)

6)    Remember that the only real limit to growth, in music and in media, is TIME. Media consumption will rise and rise and rise, as the offerings become cheaper and more ubiquitous, and as more of the “Digital Natives” consume multiple media at the same time. You are now engaged in a battle for the wallet and the clock – but the clock comes first.  Mind share means time-spend means money spend!  Again, this is where attention translates into money, and this is why the first objective is to get attention, and only then to get money. The biggest problem for most artists (and their labels) is obscurity not piracy!

7)    Engage not enrage: stop anything that enrages the users. And do it now.

8)    Guess what: you can compete with free because what you can offer is not free. Yes, a copy of a file is free. A CD burned from another CD is free, a USB stick’s content copied to my computer is free. But the real-life connection to the artist, the experience that is happening around the music, the added values such as videos, films, games, chats, books, concerts and merchandising, the context (!!!) - all of that must not be free. You must stop the obsession with trying to make money merely from selling copies, and instead provide access, because only the legitimate and authorized source (i.e. agent-label-manager) can provide the whole bundle of values that the users, fans, the people formerly known as consumers, will buy.

Music2.0 is an unprecedented opportunity, very much like when music when from acoustic to electric. Everyone wants music. More music is used on more platforms, all the time. An unprecedented hunger for music that you need to fulfill!

Finally, here are some challenges that I believe a music industry led by Independents must embrace.

1)    Once released, a recording becomes, in reality, available by default and must be made ‘usable’ under a default license – all else equals tacitly conceding that it’s free to use without permission. As a result of such a new ‘default license’, some rights principles that we have gotten used to probably won’t translate in this environment – such as the moral right of deciding where you music is being performed or maybe even otherwise used. However, I don’t think this will apply to commercial use in films or ads - unlike the private or semi-private use in UGC and web-generated content, and of course, to public performance.

2)    The traditional definition of ‘copyright’ and ‘intellectual property’ can, for the time being, not be the sole key to monetizing your creations. Because it is no longer about copies, it’s no longer about the right to copy, it’s no longer about reproduction – it’s about how music is being used and how to participate in those much larger revenues.

Call it ephemeral copies, tethered downloads, rented media, streaming, buffering, caching, storing, time-shifting, downloading, ripping or whatever – the fact is that digital technology has done away with the distinction of a so-called performance being different than a so-called DPD (digital phonographic delivery). All computers - and that means all cell phones, too ! – are by definition copying machines. As overwhelming as this may sound, you must therefore discard the idea of charging more to ‘keep’ music, as opposed to just ‘listening’ to it as in radio. Instead, you must focus on charging for added values (such as a better way to keep the music ;), and on collecting revenue at every point of access, and then go from there. I don’t want to get into my good old ‘music like water’ rant again, but charge for music like utility companies charge for basic water & electricity service, and then charge more for all the other options. The bottled water business is a $100 Billion industry!

3)    Your revenues from selling ‘copies of songs’ will soon dwindle down to maybe 30% of your total income – the rest will be revenues from licensing, sync, performance, bundling, flat rates… revenue sharing and the many other streams that are yet in their embryonic stages. Get busy creating and supporting those new revenue streams!

4)    You can’t afford exclusive rights representation at high rates any longer, unless these institutions give you 100% coverage and a flawless solution.

5)    Forget territories except for when serving local repertoire (which is on the rise, too). Most talent is global, and your audience is global, or at least virtually local. Internationalize right from the start and build systems that will support that. Build a worldwide licensing and B2B-transactions system that makes all repertoire available for all types of use, and build it quickly.

6)    Resist the temptation to do as the major labels have done (e.g. extract huge one-off payments, extort equity shares, license at unreasonable rates, refuse access for no reason but for market control concerns, sue their own customers etc) – that is a certain death wish. In fact,  now you can force them to follow you!

7)    Resist all attempts at locked / protected formats, and go for open systems.

)    Bundle and package music in new ways: with other services, with other products. And prepare for the Flat Rate because this is certainly coming.

9)    Remove any and all hurdles to complete market liquidity: pricing inflexibility, lack of standards (technology), lack of licensing transparency, territorial differences, monopolies.

10)    Embrace outsiders to jumpstart the music business. Niklas Zennstrom disrupted the telecom business, Hotmail changed email, Stanford dropouts started Google – the innovation often comes from the outside.

Call me a Utopian, call me a Dreamer, call me a ruthless Optimist, but I think this is the Future of Music.

Gerd Leonhard, Basel, Switzerland, July 1, 2007

See lots more from Gerd at his Blog.

Good Copy Bad Copy - Stealing Culture

Watch a fascinating social commentary on the state of affairs in copyright and the internet.

See the whole hour long movie here.

Good reporting from the NYT, as usual.

Some of my favorite morsels are below, plus my comments.
Link: Music Labels - EMI - New York Times.

NYT: "Despite costly efforts to build buzz around new talent and thwart piracy, CD sales have plunged more than 20 percent this year, far outweighing any gains made by digital sales at iTunes and similar services. Aram Sinnreich, a media industry consultant at Radar Research in Los Angeles, said the CD format, introduced in the United States 24 years ago, is in its death throes. “Everyone in the industry thinks of this Christmas as the last big holiday season for CD sales,” Mr. Sinnreich said, “and then everything goes kaput...”

Gerd says: guess there IS hope: once the pain is big enough, changing seems like a real option, all of a sudden - that is what we are seeing now. Maybe this ship really has to be steered into the cliffs first, after all?  Call me an optimist but I used to think there were other options ;). My 2 cents: if you have the guts CHANGE NOW, you can still own a good chunk of the market, and prosper.  But: band-aids are over - it's time for real, hard-core changes. Drop copy-protection (at least for now - until something can be used that is of super-value to the USER!), tell the users, fans & artists that you screwed up, go for flexible pricing and bundles, package music into other media, offer agency-type deals to artists, become completely transparent and drop the 'secret sauce' antics, and start using syndication as the prime vehicle of promotion, marketing and distribution. It's not the COPY - it's the ACCESS. It's not Prevention - it's Participation.

NYT: "For the companies that choose to plow ahead, the question is how to weather the worsening storm. One answer: diversify into businesses that do not rely directly on CD sales or downloads. The biggest one is music publishing, which represents songwriters (who may or may not also be performers) and earns money when their songs are used in TV commercials, video games or other media..."

Gerd says: ok, now, I have talked about this until the cows came home, but here is again: switch to music as a service. Again: never mind the copies - the next big thing is offering ACCESS. Brands. Experiences. Added Values. Stuff that only you can provide - together with the artists. Values and experiences can't just be downloaded.

NYT: "But very few albums have gained traction. And that is compounded by the industry’s core structural problem: Its main product is widely available free. More than half of all music acquired by fans last year came from unpaid sources including Internet file sharing and CD burning, according to the market research company NPD Group. The “social” ripping and burning of CDs among friends — which takes place offline and almost entirely out of reach of industry policing efforts — accounted for 37 percent of all music consumption, more than file-sharing, NPD said...."

Gerd says: sounds like an obvious problem - it's all out there for free so they stopped buying. But the thing is that this is not the real problem. 'Free distribution' is a blessing not a curse, and P2P / Super-Dustribution will emerge as the main mechanism for digital distribution in the next 3 years (and not just for music). Rather, it is - still seriously counter-assumptive, and beyond grasp of most of the incumbents of 'music1.0' - the unfailing desire to, at any cost (including self-destruction), want to control the ecosystem that the large music companies must keep in check - and then we can understand and monetize what people actually do with technology. They are doing this because they like the music and the artists, not because they want to  do as much damage as they can - YOU simply have not given them good enough options to act differently.

If the model of ueber-control over music distribution isn't working any longer, wouldn't it make sense to try to come up with a new model? Lesser control does not mean zero revenues. There is life after selling expensive copies of plastic, or indeed of 0s and 1s. Trust me.

MTV News: Cell Phone As iPod, Virtual Concerts And A Great Jukebox In The Sky

You're sitting at Starbucks and a friend who just swiped his credit card into the store's music kiosk to download a brand-new mixtape onto his MP3 player tells you about a rare My Chemical Romance track he heard last night, which you proceed to download with a few clicks on your cell phone.

Or maybe you discover a hot new underground MC and pay $20 to join his fan club, which allows you to rhyme alongside his "Second Life" avatar whenever you want, suggest songs for him to play at an upcoming show in your town, or maybe even contribute some ideas to the lyrics he can add to a song he's writing with a group of fellow fan-club members.

Fan Clubs With A Personal Touch

If you're going to give away free downloads, make sure you get something equally valuable in return. That's the message from Dave Kusek, author of "The Future of Music Book: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution." "You don't want to give your music away," he said. "You want to trade it for an e-mail address or a referral to a friend: something that has value to you but low perceived value to the customer."

In Kusek's near future, artists will trade songs for e-mails, entering fans into contests for backstage passes and creating an e-mail database that could rival any potential fanbase built by constant touring. He also foresees a not-distant time in which artists — most likely emerging ones or less established acts — charge fans $5-$20 a month to gain access to an exclusive area where they can ask the artist questions or suggest songs for them to play at their upcoming concerts.

In this private world, you will be able to "attend" exclusive living room shows, participate in songwriting contests or gain access to a monthlong suite of music created just for the club that tells a coherent musical story, perhaps with input from club members. "It can be personalized and individualized to the fan level, so that the music can have a much longer lifespan than an hour or one song," said Kusek.

Read the whole article by Gil Kaufman here from MTV NEWS.

Digital Music Direct to the Customer

Mark Cuban is a smart guy.   He dashed off a couple of ideas here that make a lot of sense.  I completely agree with him that the big copyright holders (labels and publishers) can act as "networks" and bring their music to market.  It is interesting that none of them are thinking this way at the moment, and the old way of thinking is guiding the day.  Namely, why do they need aggregators like Apple's iTunes to replace the failing Tower Records of the past?  Why can't the labels go direct to the customer with their product.

I have often said that when Napster 1.0 first emerged, the labels realized that they actually had customers.  And those weren't Wall Mart and Target, but people like you and me.  And instead of embracing these consumers, communicating with them, drawing 'em into the fold, marketing to them - they decided to sue the people.  The legal people overran the marketing folks, and the chance for creating a direct to consumer business slipped through their lawyers hands.

It has taken a while to grasp the totality of all this, but perhaps someday soon, a large music content company will decide to get into the business of marketing to consumers, and creating an infrastructure to support and make it happen in the digital age.  Can't wait to see that happen.

Digital Music Rules of the Road for Artists

Here is an useful list for success in the immediate future:

-    Utilize MySpace and other websites to its full potential and don’t be afraid to “give your music away for free”. If one million people listen to your songs online, don’t see it as you just lost 1 million dollars in potential sales. See it as you just got radioplay in 100 markets.

-    You have to learn new ways of viral marketing, including widgets and blog search engines and don’t be afraid to experiment with putting your music in new places and contexts.

-    Look at what the most progressive record labels are doing with their artists, like Canadian Nettwerk and Barenaked Ladies and try to copy it.

-  If you play a live gig, make sure people know about it. It may seem like a no-brainer, but it isn’t always. I don’t know how many good shows I have missed just because I didn’t know about it. Do all you can to get in Flavorpill and other online publications. Send emails to everyone you know and make sure everyone that shows up signs your email list.

-    Press vinyl copies. This might be the last thing you think about doing, but DJs love vinyl and so do music lovers. Press a few copies and distribute them to your favorite DJs, clubs and critics.

-  Don’t sign a record deal. This may seem like a weird suggestion, but stay indie as long as possible. You want to make sure the odds are in your favor when you finally sign with a big label or it can be a blessing in disguise.

More here from Digital Media Wire

It is amazing that Apple gets away with this.

It seems that P2P file-sharing networks, iTunes, and the iPod have grabbed the sweet-spot of digital music.  Indeed the iPod is the sweet spot.

An interesting fact is that most of the files (90%+) on any given iPod were not purchased from the iTunes store - but are the result of file sharing, cd ripping and other sources.  The fact that Apple can be perceived by the labels as a good partner is mind boggling in a way.  They are one of the main enablers of piracy.

And Apple is financially eating the labels lunch, transfering the value in the marketplace from the content to the player.

Maybe the answer is to simply monetize file-sharing networks, and join the parade.  "You can't litigate behavior anymore, you have to monetize it," said Ted Cohen, a managing partner at digital consultancy TAG Strategic during a discussion at Musexpo in West Hollywood.

Great commentary from Paul Resnikoff at Digital Music News 

Cracks in the Armor - the future is upon us

Little by little news emerges as different artists and companies try new approaches to music and the music business.  Not all succeed, but some do, and they point the way towards the future of music.  For example:

Samsons, a Jakarta based band have sold over 2 million ringback tones in Indonesia and Malaysia.

Ok Go made history with their homemade video for "Here it Goes Again" on YouTube with over 10 million views - with over 1 million in the first week.

It won't be long before artists can successfully leverage word of mouth, by uploading their music or videos to Web sites and by building their own bottom-up franchise and customer base, without the help of the old guard label infrastructure.

Here is an article on the subject and an interesting read.

Great Resource for Musicians - Artisthousemusic.org

ArtistsHouseMusic is a free, comprehensive, and interactive online community for musicians and music business enthusiasts.

ArtistsHouse provides expert advice from some of the most successful music entrepreneurs and educators in the country. Songwriting basics, how to book and promote gigs, the ins and outs of copyrighting and contracts, how to audition successfully, and how to become an effective music educator are just a few of the myriad subjects covered on the site. The site’s conception and funding for its development comes from The Herb Alpert Foundation.

Named after the 1960s SoHo performance space founded by legendary saxophonist and 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner Ornette Coleman, ArtistsHouseMusic.org builds on Coleman’s original vision of a communal and collaborative approach to creating music. The Artists House site captures the same spirit as its SoHo incarnation, in a version fit for the online world.

“When I was a young musician in 1950s Los Angeles, there were very few places to turn to for advice or knowledge on how to break into the music business,” said world-renowned trumpet player and music icon Herb Alpert. “ArtistsHouseMusic.org fills a giant void in the online music education community. For the first time, expert information on building a career in music is accessible to everyone through the ease of the internet. This information would have been invaluable to me early on in my career."

As the music business continues to evolve, artists are increasingly taking their careers into their own hands. ArtistsHouseMusic.org is unique for its cutting edge technology, appeal to musicians of all genres, and for addressing an extensive array of careers in music.

Said veteran producer, founder and Artists House president John Snyder, “Today, it’s more important than ever for artists and music business entrepreneurs to take control of their own careers by educating themselves on the emerging technologies, techniques, and music business trends that are driving the future of music. ArtistsHouseMusic.org is Music Education 2.0—a vast, interactive online resource center providing professionals and beginners with free, expert, and in-depth information to build a career in the music business.”

Check it out here.