Future Of Music

It is one thing to talk about the impact of technology on the music business, and it is another thing to actually do something positive with it. The video clip below describes some of the work that we have been doing here at Berklee to address the opportunities brought about by technology on the business of music education.

Check out the online music school Berkleemusic.com

See other similar video clips at ArtistHouseMusic.

Over the past four years, Berkleemusic the online extension school of Berklee College of
Music has helped over
11,000 students from around the world study music and music business online and will teach another 6,000 this year alone,
making it the world’s largest online music school. In addition,
Berkleemusic has over 100,000 registered members involved in its online
community of active music makers.

Berkleemusic’s online curriculum boasts over 85
award-winning accredited online courses and certificate programs taught
by 120 of the college’s world-renowned faculty in music recording, remixing and production,
guitar, music theory, ear training and harmony, music business, composition and songwriting.

Among the many online students studying with Berkleemusic this year are Scott Underwood, from the Grammy award winning band Train, Barry
Kerch from Shinedown, Danny Weinkauf from They
Might Be Giants, and Kristen Henderson from Antigone Rising. “The
Berkleemusic online courses went above and beyond my expectations,”
says Ms. Henderson.

Berkleemusic will also be offering online
scholarships named after Phil Ramone, Paul Simon, Juan Luis Guerra,
Herbie Hancock, Bill Cosby, Gloria Estefan, Gary Burton, Michel Camilo,
Steve Vai, Alf Clausen, Tom Snow, Patty Larkin, BT, and Mark
Mothersbough.

Berkleemusic is focused on providing real-world education to people actively involved in the music business and is a tremendous resource for those seeking to reinvent the music industry.

Berkleemusic, the online extension school at Berklee College of Music, launches its first online professional music business
certificate program this week. The certificate program is currently
enrolling for the January 9th semester and offers practical, marketable
skills for those who aspire to work in, or start their own
music-related companies. The program of study utilizes the immediacy of
the online medium by addressing developments in the music industry as they happen. Students will focus on core areas of the music business such as setting up a music publishing company and record label , creating a business plan, administration of copyrights , marketing, music promotion
, distribution, product merchandising, touring, recording and
publishing legal agreements, as well as peer-to-peer, MP3 and digital
rights management issues.

"We have to really think about what kind of new products and services can be created in the 21st century for music , musicians, and fans in the age of digital music, Napster, iTunes, P2P and file sharing
," says instructor, Vice President of Berklee Media, and synthesizer
and electronic music pioneer, David Kusek. "What will be the new things
that will lead to a further expansion to the music and other media
industries? We believe that the way to discover these opportunities is
not to worry about protecting the past, but to think creatively and
uncover the future of music for yourself."

Whether it is beginning their own business, or a career at an independent record label , management, publishing, music distribution
or music production company, the certificate offers students and music
professionals a flexible option to study from anywhere in the world
with Berklee’s renowned faculty. There are six courses in the program:
Music Business 101, Legal Aspects of the Music Industry, Inside the
Record Industry, Music Publishing 101, The Future of Music and the
Music Business, and Music Industry Entrepreneurship.

Berklee
has been teaching music online for over three years to nearly 4000
students in 90 different countries around the world. Berkleemusic.com
offers over 60 individual online courses
in music production, songwriting, music business, arranging, music
theory, harmony and guitar and continues to add courses and programs
that help musicians and industry professionals reach their goals.

"There are too many people out there that make amazing music but
unfortunately in today’s world there’s so much going on that it’s hard
to know where to start," says online instructor George Howard, who has
years of experience as an A&R
man and as president of the record label Rykodisc. "This program guides
students as they come up with plans to cut through the clutter and get
their music heard.”

Berkleemusic.com is Berklee’s online music school
, delivering online access to world-renowned music faculty, educational
concepts and time-tested curriculum previously available only to
on-campus students. Berkleemusic.com is the first online music school
seamlessly combining education and career development to give
musicians, music educators and music industry professionals a one-stop
destination for all their learning, career and networking needs. For
more information visit http://www.berkleemusic.com/

New Formats

In a recent interview with Doug Dixon, David Kusek argues that the industry needs to develop new formats for music
distributed in physical formats. "Dual Disc is certainly a pointer in the
right direction," he says. "You need to create something that has
great value in order to continue to compete."

For example, in the movie A Clockwork Orange, says Kusek, "even
before CDs were out, they played music on a disk that was a little bigger than a
silver dollar. It reminds me of the idea that perhaps there are other formats
that could be developed, nontraditional formats, from what we have seen so far.
If you had a recordable format that was more convenient than CD, and held more
data, and was faster to record, then perhaps you could have a system where the
recording could be inside the stream of commerce."

The other critical trend, he says, is that "the price of these physical
products needs to come down. I’m encouraged that Dual Disc seems to be priced
around $18 to $20, and discouraged that CDs continue to hover in the $15 to $18
range. I don’t know how much control the manufacturers have over this, but to
the extent they can encourage their customers to be more realistic about pricing
CDs, the longer they will be able to stay in business. I really do believe the
price point for an audio CD is south of $10 at retail."

Music Commerce

But isn’t piracy destroying the industry? "There are two forms that are
currently labeled piracy," says Kusek. "You have the wholesale
replication of CDs and DVDs. To me, that’s counterfeit products and is obviously
not to be tolerated. It is certainly evil and criminal, and bad for
business."

"But the other kind of behavior that is labeled as piracy — downloading
files and trading files with your friends — I’m not sure that I would put that
in the same camp. Often there is no profit margin, there’s no distribution
network, other than yourself and a handful of people that you know. Generally,
you are not selling files to your friends."

"You can measure wholesale piracy and replication in many billions of
dollars, whereas for downloading and file sharing, it’s hard to quantify whether
it has had any negative impact at all in terms of real sales. I actually think
that is good for music, as painful as it may be for to the record
companies."

"I don’t think that file sharing and downloading of music is going to
stop," says Kusek, "until there is something easier, and better, and
cheaper, and more appealing. So as I argue in the book, why not embrace that
behavior, license and tax it, and somehow derive money from it? Make it easier
to find music, improve the quality of the files, and make it easier to record,
instead of trying to fight it. It seems a completely losing battle; People are
never going to stop doing it as long as the price of CDs is too high. So why not
go with the flow and embrace it?"

Investing in the Future

Says Kusek, "by and large the record companies are not in touch
with their customers at any significant level. They thought that their customer
was Wal-Mart. They are out of touch with their ultimate customer, and their
customer shifted away from them. They are still selling a ton of CDs, but the
whole file sharing thing was off their radar screen until someone told them
about it. So then they decided, let’s just go sue all these bastards."

"That bothers me as well," he says. "I ran the numbers, and
somewhere between 30 and 40 million dollars is being collected in the
settlements from the RIAA. But none of that money is going to the artists or
songwriters. It is going to the attorneys and the courts to process the papers,
and whatever is left is going to fund more lawsuits. It’s incredibly wasteful.
The numbers I see show file sharing growing on a monthly basis, ever since they
started the lawsuits, so it is not working. Imagine if they took $40 million and
invested it in a new way of delivering music that is attuned to the way people
want to buy."

To help people in the industry examine these options, Kusek runs an online
course on "The Future of Music and the Music Business" through the
Berkleemusic.com online extension school. "The course is for people at any
level of the music business," he says, "from artists, songwriters,
managers, record company, publisher, promoter, venue. We have had a lot of
people sign up from those areas trying to figure out what am I going to do in
the future: I own a record label, and how I get into this digital thing, or I am
a manager, and I can see that the labels are not really servicing my clients
anymore, so how can I grow my business in an appropriate way. A lot of the work
we do in the class is class projects or personal projects where you apply what
we are talking about to your situation and try to figure out what the next step
might be."

From his classes and consulting work, Kusek also sees differences in the
music business across the global economy. "One of my online students runs a
CD and DVD manufacturing company in India," he says. "They’re finding
that sales are actually quite healthy because the computer thing has not taken
off in the way it has in other parts of the world. I think there are many areas
in the global economy where there are lots of legs left to the existing physical
media, and those folks have more time to figure out alternatives."

Read the complete interview here at Manifest Technology.

"Like modern  plumbing, the music industry could operate almost as a  utility—with copyright holders able to meter usage down to  how many people listened to particular songs at particular  times. In such a world, the industry could live off of micropayments flowing seamlessly back to the owners of  content rather than rely solely on the disjointed and  inefficient distribution of CDs to retailers. Artists, meanwhile, would have unprecedented access to new listeners  as their songs spread virally into vast musical networks  that fans can access literally anywhere. As the most  accessible artists find their audiences, those artists would  enjoy increased concert attendance, new forms of merchandise  and countless other opportunities to connect with fans like  never before."

Read part one of the two part interview

Part two is here

An editor at Performing Songwriter takes the Future of Music course.

"By far the biggest benefit of the online course was the wealth of information.  The class took us from music industry basics, including topics like ‘What is Music,’ all the way to intricate copyright laws, RIAA legal battles (past and present), and the effects (good and bad) of downloading and P2P file sharing on the industry.  The course concluded with historical perspectives, business plans and suggested strategies for a future career in music, encouraging students to explore possibilities and take advantage of new opportunities offered in the digital age.  It was inspiring, and also reassuring, to hear how musicians could use downloading and file sharing to promote their music and actually boost album sales.

Another obvious benefit of the course was the flexibility of time and location.  The students hailed from cities across Europe and North America, with jobs ranging from lawyers and other professionals to students and folks working while trying to make a go of it with bands or solo careers."

Get the PDF Article Here

CEO takes Future of Music Online Course at Berkleemusic.com and creates a multi-million dollar business as a result.

It’s not easy being in the music industry nowadays. Whether you’re an artist, label executive or record store owner, online technology has made it tougher for everyone in the business to turn a profit unless they keep up with the times. There are rewards, however, for those who do.

Just ask Mike Dreese and Dave Kusek.

Read the Mass High Tech Article Here

Read the Mix Magazine Article Here

Future of Music Online Course

Take an in-depth 12-week online course at Berkleemusic with the authors.

Berkleemusic, the online extension school of Berklee College of Music offers an intensive online course in the Future of Music and the Music Business.  If you are really interested in exploring scenarios for music and what it may mean for you, check out this online class.  Interact and network with other like-minded individuals as we explore the future of music together.

This 12-week course is about discovering successful strategies for future success in the music industry. Through discussions, interactive exercises, and interviews with music industry insiders, The Future of Music online course challenges conventional thinking about the business of music, and will explore new ways of creating, promoting, and distributing it. Each week, we examine an aspect of the music industry, reflect on changes that are affecting it, and evaluate how these changes, technologies, innovation and powerful trends might directly affect your own plans. This course is essential for all artists, songwriters and music business people seeking success in the future.

The Future of Music course examines scenarios for the future from the perspective of what is working today and what will work tomorrow. The course looks into the landscape of artists, writers, managers and publishers sitting in the center of an entirely new digital enterprise.  Evaluate traditional promotion and distribution methods and the development of new ones. And, the Future of Music course takes an in depth look into what music fans really want, and how they want to receive it.

You will learn

The Top 10 Truths that will guide the music business in the future
How money is really made in the music industry
The major forces at play in the music market today and tomorrow
The way technology continuously transforms the music business
New approaches to promotion that challenge conventional thinking
New business models for the future that exploit digital distribution
Options for writers and artists seeking success in music