Ich Bin Ein Berliner

I've been waiting to use that quote for years! The week of September 6th I'll be in Berlin for the all2gethernow 2010 Conference. I'll be in great company with the likes of Dr. Nancy Baym, Mike Masnick, Jill Sobule and a host of others.

The programs I'm participating in are:

How Do Technologies And Social Media Influence Music Culture?

Tuesday, September 7, 2010, at 4.30pm 

Smart Artist Management

Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 1.30pm

Lots of other great stuff to see. If you're there please come say hello.

Seth Godin Says It All.

So much of what Seth says in this blog has been on my mind. As I've struggled to articulate it he hits the nail on the head:

"The blizzard of noise (and the good news)

As the amount of inputs go up, as the number of people and ideas that clamor for attention continue to increase, we do what people always do: we rely on the familiar, the trusted and the personal.

The experience I have with you as a customer or a friend is far more important than a few random bits flying by on the screen. The incredible surplus of digital data means that human actions, generosity and sacrifice are more important than they ever were before."

That's technology. You just have to roll with it.

SxSW 2010 is over and I'm on my way back to NYC. I arrived in Austin after a scant 12 hours at home after the last show of of a 14 day tour with Joe Henry and Co. (I used to mix FOH for a living and once a year or so return to to venues across the land to have some fun.)

I didn't have a great deal of time to pre-plan for Austin yet it was a great trip: my favorite SxSW so far; no long list of bands that I wanted to see, and only had 2 artists that I manage in town, consecutively rather than concurrently. That being the case I was able to spend solid and focused blocks of time with John Doe and Jim White, and none of my meetings (Professor Nancy Baym, Jordy from IODA, Karina Paje from ROCKU who is a force to be reckoned with, Adam from Fleming Artists, the Ashley Capps crew, etc.) were rushed. 

Mike King and Dave Kusik from Berklee interviewed me on camera for an upcoming segment that they're producing for BerkleeMusic.com. At this point in my life I very much enjoy discussing all facets of music and society / culture at large. It's challenging for me to be called upon to answer great questions so between the Berklee taping, robust discussions with Nancy, Jordy, Jake Guralnick, John Doe, Ana Egge, etc. plus the panel I was on, it was a great couple of days to challenge my ideas, notions and beliefs.

A bit about the panel, which was titled "The Cultural Significance of Direct-to-Fan Marketing". It was moderated by Ian Rogers from Topspin who was captivated by something Rodney Crowell said to him recently, which was more or less "In the old music business I wrote songs for radio. In the new music business I write for the fans."

Ian's idea (a good one) was to forego the usual and possibly tired discussion of business matters and focus on how *music* is changed by DTF, as well as the lives of musicians and those that are charged to help musicians reach their goals. Hence the strong weighing towards managers on the panel. 

David Whitehead, my mentor from Maine Road Management, made some great points about older artists being a bit reluctant to make less constructed records (ie shorter time lines and tighter budgets) and engage with their fans in such an unfiltered and potentially chaotic way. They come from another era and for some it's not an easy transition for some.

John Doe said that feels like he's rolling with it (to paraphrase Gail Marowitz's great quote about new technologies, see note at bottom) and adjusting to the realities on the ground just like he always has. He's seen it all and understands that you have to grow and adapt to survive and prosper.

Brian Kline manages Joe Purdy amongst others and had some great and inspiring real-world stories about the liberating effects of DTF. Apparently Purdy records EP's while on tour and releases them often, usually digital only, sometimes only a couple of days after mastering. They have abandoned the construct of the 18 month release cycle, the 5 month setup cycle and 12 song package.  This is something I'm encouraging all my artists to consider and experiment with. First for me will be a series of themed EP's by Jill Sobule released digitally only using Topspin / Tunecore.

Back to the panel though. I took my cue since the others had done a great job of covering so much territory to try to point out that what we were discussing was part of a much much larger, culturally significant shift that included participatory culture, fan engagement, convergence culture, social capitol, and for some, the inclusion of audiences as valuable contributors to the process. It's been said so many time but it really IS a time of profound change in music. 

I tired to point out that it was not only in music where "content owners now need to understand what motivates their behavior and decide if and how they will recognize audiences as both consumers and collaborators." (Ana Domb Krauskopf if her paper "Tacky and Proud: Exploring Tecnobrega's Value Network"). All segments of the lives of those that are plugged into the 'net are being changed and often disrupted by new technology. With such fundamental changes comes opportunity, confusion, anxiety and a thousand other things best left to explore elsewhere. 

It's a great time to be alive and working in music.

Thanks for reading.

"That's technology. You just have to roll with it." 

Gail Marowitz in her New York Times interview regarding Art Direction for CD packaging.

A picture is worth.....

Divergence Of Opinion (or how to not tow the company line)

It seems that some dissenting opinions are beginning to crop up (or at least I'm becoming aware of them) in regards to the dialogue about core fans / true fans / direct to fan. As I mentioned in a previous post the singularity of opinion was making me nervous. I found myself saying things more or less verbatim that I'd heard from others with very little empirical evidence on my part to support those ideas.

It sure *sounded* reassuring to say "Direct To Fan is the future!" "Custom bundling is the future!" "Analytics will save us!" It is still about great music, community, contextualization of shared experiences and FUN. Oh... that and one more little thing: finding your audience.

The links below will take you to a couple of long-ish posts, but both are very rich as are the comment sections.

Brands Plus Music Blog (click to read the post)

Fingertips Music Blog (click to read the post)

The Long Tail Of Fandom

The New Way

Everyone that's paying attention knows that the old mode of selling music is gone. Long gone. This is old news. It's about word of mouth, recommendations from trusted sources and authentic relationships between artists and fans.

What concerns me is that many very thoughtful people who are genuinely concerned with the state of the music industry (as opposed to the record industry) all seem to be headed in the same direction.

We study and listen and talk. We read Seth Godin and what his disruptive notion of permission marketing has inspired. We study the latest trends in D2F (direct to fan) platforms and the financial advantages produced by product bundling (Nine Inch Nails, Metric, etc..) There are some very smart people leading conversations and some innovative platforms in the market or coming to the market place shortly.

But if the smartest and brightest amongst us are all traversing the same path (more or less) will we all arrive at the same place at the same time only to realize there's a finite amount of everything sans bandwidth? Does it matter to be an early adopter when the time line in The Everett Rogers Diffusion of innovations theory / rate of diffusion is now so compressed.

The thought that keeps rising to the top of my mind is this: if most everyone is focused on genuine relationships, direct to fan sales, permission marketing, web metrics and the like how will anyone differentiate themselves from anyone else? The music lover only has so many hours in each day, only so much disposable income although some would argue that getting the fans attention is far more important than getting their money, or that the former leads to the latter.

Perhaps I'm missing the point, and the tools that I mention above will serve the smartest few with additional tools to achieve what we currently see as the real way forward: genuine contact, life long fans, true fans. Fans for life. 1,000 (or 10,000) true fans.

Everyone has access to twitter and facebook but only a few use those tools effectively.