Can Musicians & The Music Industry Ever Trust Each Other?

There’s been quite the proliferation of confabs and meetups around music, technology and the arts over the last few months in Belfast.  There was Bar Camp back in May, then Creative Camp but a few weeks ago and this Saturday sees Soul Ambition’s “Kick Up The Arts” series tackle musicians and music companies.  Here’s what it’s about:

“Whatever your beliefs, this music clinic is all about taking control and creating change in your music career and in the music industry in NI and further afield. Life, business and arts coach Tracy Dempsey will help you identify the obstacles stopping you getting from where you want to be, boot them out of the way and charge ahead with the big dream.

You’ll also get to network with other musicians and industry professionals; to talk about whether we should be building a Northern Irish music ‘brand’ to help everyone get noticed; to get advice from local people in the industry and share contacts from further afield.

Whatever your beliefs about the industry, take control where you can and be part of the solution where you need to.

And to get the conversation started early, join the Facebook group athttp://www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25091089164 and add the event to your calendar athttp://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=26848127012.”

I firmly believe that collaboration between music makers, music producers, music marketers and technologists will open many doors to unsigned and up-and-coming acts as well as the nascent music industry here and in other local music economies world-wide.  Networking events like this can prove invaluable for connecting folks, and I hope that these meetups become a regular occurance.

There is a caveat:  A friend mentioned that although things like Barcamp work really well for Technologists, the same formula won’t work within the music industry – the two groups are too different i.e. Tech-nerds love to share and help each other and musicians and music-industry types are simply trying to fuck each other over.  Penny Distribution was founded on the principle of regaining the trust of artists and building careers in partnership, so I know I don’t agree.  What do you think?

In a small market, up-and-coming music scene, can musicians and music industries truly collaborate in a spirit of trust for mutual benefit?

still can’t decide whether to go to SF or LA. Dang!

SF Music Tech Summit

Just a quick post to point you toward the website for the SF Music Tech Summit.  Even if you didn’t make it to the second one on May 8, 2008 you should DEFINITELY check out the videos of the panels they have here.

What makes SF Music Tech Summit different from other similar conferences?  First off, the organizers are some of the best in the business at pulling together the people that really know their stuff and can offer practical advice for labels, artists and music-based tech companies unlike any other conference I know. 

And the focus is squarely on the quality of the conversation.  Unlike other conferences, they don’t just have headline-grabbing BigWigs repeat a Press Release to delegates.  Panel members include musicians, DJs, entrepreneurs – people with real life experience at pushing boundaries in music tech and the music industry. 

The videos are must-watch material for anyone even mildly interested in the new music industry…

The next SF Music Tech Summit is October 20th 2008.

Great to see Hooray for Humans last night – even if their show was cancelled. http://ping.fm/3tbfX

Vertigo Smyth^is recording his second EP in a super-secret yet v. important recording facility. http://ping.fm/BEKjm

Road trip! Hard working class heroes here we come!

my test of ping.fm – status updates look simple enough, but what about full blog posts? We shall see…

How much should music cost?

This has long been a discussion among my peers and the industry in general.  $0.99?  $0.00?  $9.99/album?  $1.99/album?  All of these prices are being tried now in various guises (OK Computer was $1.99 this week at Amazon.com’s MP3 store).

There are very smart people conjecturing on the various benefits of each price point.  Terry McBride in a recent must-read paper for UK Media studies group MusicTank posited that $0.25 was a “sweet spot” – a position he described as a price that would draw just enough of current P2P users to legal, paid-for services to increase the volume of paid-for downloads enough to significantly increase incoming revenue for artists and labels.

Then came this piece in the LA Times – it comes on the back of Universal pulling the album of their artist Estelle off of iTunes in an attempt to create scarcity.  Estelle is one of those artists who’s single is more important than the album – and just like the old days – Universal wants customers to buy the whole album, not just the single.  As an alternative to pulling the album, The Times piece suggests that labels should raise the price of the single to $1.99.

So which is it?

What I have to agree with is that the inflexibility that iTunes holds on price (i.e. ONLY $0.99/track) is damaging to all parties here – customers, artists and labels.  The closest thing to real price elasticity is AmazonMP3 allowing this kind of radical price experimentation (see the Radiohead classic album for $1.99 above), and so might be the closest thing to a real test of Terry McBride’s pricing suggestions.

Personally, I have to lean toward Terry’s idea of the $0.25 track – unless you’re a major label act like Estelle, you’ve no need to try and play the artificial scarcity game, even with the particular challenges that offering cheap, or even free, music presents.

So what do you think?  What’s a reasonable per-track price in your world?