Can you imagine organizing your daily schedule with a few touches on your bathroom mirror? Chatting with far-away relatives through interactive video on your kitchen counter? Reading a classic novel on a whisper-thin piece of flexible glass?

The video depicts a world in which interactive glass surfaces help you stay connected through seamless delivery of real-time information – whether you’re working, shopping, eating, or relaxing.

Does the world showcased in “A Day Made of Glass” seem like something out of a fantasy movie?  Just a decade ago, pay phones, VCRs, and film cameras were also commonplace. Today, we’re accustomed to movies streaming on demand to a 60-inch television hanging on the wall and to video calls on notebook computers, essentially for free.

What might this mean for music? Well, today we have Spotify and Rdio and Mog all providing on demand music for free or nearly for free. Listen to this vision for the future and see how far we have come in the past 5 or 6 years from our book on the Future of Music.

Check out the Future of Music book here.

“Live Music” is what Austin is all about.  Austin actually has an official Division of the City of Austin dedicated to developing the music industry in town, effectively led by “music officers” Don Pitts and David Murry.  They are devoting significant resources to seeing that the city’s future along with the future of all the musicians who live and work there are aligned with successful practices in the overall music business.

Here is my picture of their official music office “squad car”.  All they need now is a flashing light like Steve McGarrett.  I’m gonna bring them one the next time I visit. “Pull over Ma’am, is that Emo we hear…?”

How cool is that?  Does your city have an official Music Division?

My friends at the Future of Music Coalition are conducting an online survey from Sept 6 – Oct 28th to determine the variety, depth and complexity of the ways that musicians are making money these days.  Not theoretically, but actually.  We are looking for performers, songwriters, composers, band members, session players, producers, MCs and anyone else making music to join in and take the survey.

A while ago, I posted this from my friend and Berkleemusic student David Sherbow showing a pretty comprehensive list of the different ways that musicians can make money.  This might give you food for thought on taking the survey and planning your career…

The artist music business model has been in flux for years. The record deal dream that most artists sought is no longer the viable alternative that it once was.  The leveling of the music distribution playing field by the Internet is virtually complete.  Terrestrial radio is on a path towards destruction that even the major labels can’t compete with.  People now access and download music from multiple sources, usually for free.  D.I. Y solutions are everywhere, but for many artists hard to integrate into their daily lives.

Where does this leave the average independent artist? At the beginning. Every artist wants to know how they can make music, make money and survive to write and play another day. Here, in no particular order, is a list of possible income streams.

• Publishing
• Mechanical royalties
• Performance Royalties from ASCAP and BMI
• Digital Performance Royalties from Sound Exchange
• Synch rights TV, Commercials, Movies, Video Games
• Digital sales – Individual or by combination
• Music (studio & live) Album – Physical & Digital, Single – Digital, • Ringtone, Ringback, Podcasts
• Instant Post Gig Live Recording via download, mobile streaming or flash drives
• Video – Live, concept, personal,  – Physical & Digital
• Video and Internet Games featuring or about the artist
• Photographs
• Graphics and art work, screen savers, wall paper
• Lyrics
• Sheet music
• Compilations
• Merchandise – Clothes, USB packs, Posters, other things
• Live Performances
• Live Show – Gig
• Live Show – After Party
• Meet and Greet
• Personal Appearance
• Studio Session Work
• Sponsorships, and endorsements
• Advertising
• Artist newsletter emails
• Artist marketing and promotion materials
• Blog/Website
• Videos
• Music Player
• Fan Clubs
• YouTube Subscription channel for more popular artists
• Artist programmed internet radio station or specialty playlist.
• Financial Contributions of Support – Tip Jar or direct donations, Sellaband or Kickstarter
• Patronage Model – Artist Fan Exclusives – e.g. paying to sing on a song in studio or have artist write a song for you
• Mobile Apps
• Artist Specific Revenue Stream -  unique streams customized to the specific artist, e.g Amanda Palmer
• Music Teaching – Lessons and Workshops
• Music Employment – orchestras, etc, choir directors, ministers of music, etc.
• Music Production – Studio and Live
• Any job available to survive and keep making music
• Getting Help From Other Artists and Helping Them -  Whatever goes around come around. – e.g. gig swapping, songwriting, marketing and promotion

For slightly more than $2/mo everybody will soon have access to all the music they can find, steal, share, rip, produce, morph or buy using iTunes Match. Is this amnesty for all the music pirates? I hope so.

As we predicted in The Future of Music, the future is about access to music rather than ownership. With Apple iCloud and iTunes Match, Apple has once again set the bar for all music distributors, while again lining up all the major record labels for yet another lunch. The twist to all of this is – does iCloud grant you immunity from prosecution for copyright infringement for sharing or downloading music however you wish to? We shall see.

Fantasize with me as we did in 2005…

It’s the year 2015 and you wake to a familiar tune playing softly. It gets you out of bed and makes you feel good. As you walk into the bathroom, your Personal Media Minder activates the video display in the mirror, and you watch a bit of personalized news while you get ready for the day. You step into the shower and your personalized music program is ready for you, cued up with a new live version of a track that you downloaded the other day. It is even better than the original recording, so while you dress, you tell your “TasteMate” program to include the new track in your playlist rotation.

You put on your new eyeglasses, which contain a networked audio headset, letting tiny earbuds slip into your ears. You switch on the power, and the mix that your friend made for you starts to play. Music pours into your consciousness. It becomes yours.

During the day, your headset and other wireless devices help you communicate across the network, with your friends, associates, network buddies, and “digital peers.” The headset also keeps you connected to that hard rock collection that you really love to listen to. Meanwhile, a variety of new songs, new versions, and remixes of tracks you truly dig, along with your old favorites, continues to come your way. Using TasteMate, you access and trade playlists, and recommend a couple of songs to your friend in Seattle, and they get added to his rotation. Music propels you throughout the day.

This is the future of music– a future in which music will be like water: ubiquitous and free flowing. In this future, music will be ubiquitous, mobile, shareable, and as pervasive and diverse as the human cultures that create it. Many of the already ill-fitting definitions of copyright and intellectual property and patent laws will be adapted to fit the “music like water” model that we propose–in a way that ensures the enjoyment and benefit of society as a whole, and that allows all involved parties to prosper.

David Bowie encapsulated the current state of affairs in a June 2002 New York Times article:
“The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within ten years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in ten years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing. Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. [ . . . ] So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen . . .”

Let’s run the numbers. As I outlined in Forbes, with hundreds of millions of people connected to digital networks, the potential annual revenue stream for this is enormous. At $25 per person, if 200 million people opted in for iTunes Match, the service would gross $5 billion a year just for the ability to provide access to any song on any device, and let you pirate all the music you want to at will. Add to that the money from new songs you purchase, premium access, increased storage, exclusive concerts and the recording industry may see a bottom to its revenue decline, and could begin to rebuild from there. Seem counter intuitive? The record business will never be the same again, but maybe (just maybe) it will not go extinct.

And it remains to be seen if iTunes Match will grant you complete immunity from prosecution for copyright infringement. Kind of like AppleCare for pirates.  There are lots of moving parts to this story.

Welcome to the future.

This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post.

Here is an excerpt from a great piece from Wyndham Wallace of The Quietus on how the music industry is killing music and blaming the fans. This rather dark opinion is spot on in so many ways and raises some very difficult questions about the future of the music business that most people do not want to talk about.

“All the time the industry talks of money: money it’s lost, money it’s owed. It rarely talks about the effects upon artists, and even less about how music itself might suffer. But no one cares about the suits and their bank accounts except shareholders and bankers. People care about their own money, and the industry not only wanted too much of it but also failed to take care of those who had earned it for them: the musicians. And it’s the latter that people care about. Because People Still Want Good Music.”

“In March this year, for instance, the RIAA – the Recording Industry Association of America – and a group of thirteen record labels went to court in New York in pursuit of a case filed against Limewire in 2006 for copyright infringement. The money owed to them – the labels involved included Sony, Warner Brothers and BMG Music – could be, they argued, as much as $75 trillion. With the world’s GDP in 2011 expected to be around $65 trillion – $10 trillion less – this absurd figure was, quite rightly, laughed out of court by the judge. The RIAA finally announced in mid May that an out of court settlement for the considerably lower sum of $105 million had been agreed with Limewire’s founder.”

What is questionable about all of this is exactly how much of the settlement of $105 million will flow to the musicians, songwriters and producers whose work was the subject of the infringement to begin with. In previous settlements including Napster ($270 million), Bolt ($30 million), Kazaa ($130 million) and MP3.com ($100 million) it is unclear how much, if any, of the money received by the labels ever reached the pockets of the artists. I have yet to see an accounting of this and many managers I have spoken with have simply laughed when I asked the question if they ever received any payment from these settlements. I suppose that proceeds from litigation may be considered recoupable costs.

“But if the industry wants to talk money, let’s talk money, albeit the ways that developing musicians are encouraged to make up the loss of sales income in order to ply their trade. Someone’s got to bring this up, because it’s not a pretty picture. Consider, first, direct-to-fan marketing and social networking, said to involve fans so that they’re more inclined to attend shows, invest in ‘product’, and help market it. In practise this is a time-consuming affair that reaps rewards for only the few. Even the simple act of posting updates on Facebook, tweeting and whatever else is hip this week requires time, effort and imagination, and while any sales margins subsequently provoked might initially seem higher, the ratio of exertion to remuneration remains low for most. It’s also an illusion that such sales cut out the middlemen, thereby increasing income, except at the very lowest rung of the ladder: the moment that sales start to pick up, middlemen start to encroach upon the artist’s territory, if in new disguises. People are needed to provide the structure through which such activities can function, and few will work for free – and nor should they – even though musicians are now expected to.”

“Still, if an act can find time to do these things, or has the necessary capital to allow others to take care of them on their behalf, then they can hit the road. Touring’s where the money is, the mantra goes, and that’s the best way to sell merchandise too. But this is a similarly hollow promise. For starters, the sheer volume of artists now touring has saturated the market. Ticket prices have gone through the roof for established acts, while those starting out are competing for shows, splitting audiences spoilt for choice, driving down fees paid by promoters nervous about attendance figures. There’s also a finite amount of money that can be spent by most music fans, so if they’re coughing up huge wads of cash for stadium acts then that’s less money available to spend on developing artists. And for every extra show that a reputable artist takes on in order to make up his losses, that’s one show less that a new name might have won.”

“Touring is also expensive. That’s why record labels offered new artists financial backing, albeit in the form of a glorified loan known as ‘tour support’. Transport needs to be paid for, as do fuel, accommodation, food, equipment, tour managers and sound engineers. These costs can mount up very fast, and if each night you’re being paid a small guarantee, or in fact only a cut of the door, then losses incurred can be vast, rarely compensated for by merchandising sales. Again, financial backing of some sort is vital, but these days labels are struggling to provide it. In the past, income from record sales could be offset against these debts, but with that increasingly impossible, new artists will soon find it very hard to tour. Everyone’s a loser, baby.”

From Beck’s ‘Loser’

Forces of evil in a bozo nightmare
Banned all the music with a phony gas chamber
‘Cause one’s got a weasel and the other’s got a flag
One’s got on the pole shove the other in a bag
With the rerun shows and the cocaine nose job
The daytime crap of a folksinger slob
He hung himself with a guitar string

Soy un perdidor
I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?
(Know what I’m sayin?)

“Whether the industry likes it or not, music is now like water: it streams into homes, it pours forth in cafés, it trickles past in the street as it leaks from shops and restaurants. Unlike water, music isn’t a basic human right, but the public is now accustomed to its almost universal presence and accessibility. Yet the public is asked to pay for every track consumed, while the use of water tends to be charged at a fixed rate rather than drop by drop: exactly how much is consumed is less important than the fact that customers contribute to its provision. Telling people that profit margins are at stake doesn’t speak to the average music fan, but explaining how the quality of the music they enjoy is going to deteriorate, just as water would become muddy and undrinkable if no one invested in it, might encourage them to participate in the funding of its future. So since downloading music is now as easy as turning on a tap, charging for it in a similar fashion seems like a realistic, wide-reaching solution. And just as some people choose to invest in high-end water products, insisting on fancy packaging, better quality product and an enhanced experience, so some will continue to purchase a more enduring musical package. Others will settle for mp3s just as they settle for tap water. Calculating how rights holders should be accurately paid for such use of music is obviously complicated but far from impossible, and current accounting methods – which anyone who has been involved with record labels can tell you aren’t exactly failsafe – are clearly failing to bring in the cash.”

“The problem is, it’s not really the industry that is being cheated. It’s the artists and their fans. People get what they pay for, but – whatever the industry claims – most fans know that. They just don’t want to hear the businessmen fiddle while the musicians are being burnt. Revenues are unlikely ever again to reach the levels of the business’ formerly lucrative glory days, but in its stubborn refusal to recognise that both the playing field and the rules themselves have been irreversibly redefined without their permission, the industry is holding out for something that is no longer viable. Lower income is better than no income, and the industry has surely watched the money dwindling for long enough. Musicians, meanwhile, are being asked to make more and more compromises as they’re forced to put money ahead of their art on a previously unprecedented scale.”

Read the whole ugly story here at The Quietus.

The comments alone tell the sad story of the state of affairs in the music industry today.

Our dynamic industry continues to evolve at a rapid pace, and Rethink Music will give you access to critical thinkers looking to explore problems and find solutions for tomorrow’s music industry.

Presented by Berklee College of Music and MIDEM, in association with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Harvard Business School.

Rethink Music will examine the business and rights challenges facing the music industry in the digital era and will formulate solutions to promote the creation and distribution of new music and other creative works. The conference will bring music industry stakeholders together with legal, business and academic experts to discuss business models for the future. Rethink Music will also examine potential changes to existing government policy and legislation in order to help the creation and distribution of musical works.

“Berklee is focused on inspiring the creation of new musical and business ideas,” says Roger Brown, Berklee College of Music President. “Part of that equation needs to be innovative models of commerce and policy that work in the 21st century era of immediately available digital information. How we accomplish these goals will have much to do with the quality of innovation we inspire. Like Berklee, Rethink Music is designed to incubate ideas that lead to breakthroughs for supporting a music industry even more vibrant, astonishing and creative than last century’s.”

“We are particularly excited to help organize the conversation around legal and policy changes to promote the interests of music creators, fans, and other stakeholders” comments Terry Fisher, Faculty Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. “Technological disruption often creates room for new business models, new ways to capture value,” says Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Professor at Harvard Business School. “The conference is an important opportunity to think about ways to harness the new creativity and build novel business models that put it on a sound financial footing.”

As part of Rethink Music, the conference will solicit white papers from educators, students and the public, dealing with the economic systems and business models for music copyright and copyright policy. Berklee College of Music will award $50,000 to the best business model, with the runner-up receiving a $5,000 prize. Simultaneously, the Berkman Center will manage a call for papers seeking policy proposals that recommend changes to existing U.S. law to help those who create and distribute music cope with the challenges facing the industry.

Program
Fostering art in a world of technology
Amanda Palmer
Ben Folds
Damian Kulash, OK Go
New Big Sound
RootMusic
Licensing
Global Registry Database
Microfunding
Access and “in the cloud”
Future of Music case studies
Conversation with Joe Kennedy, Pandora
Conversation with Metric and Matt Drouin
Artists and managers
The next generation record label
The current state of copyright law
Alternative compensation schemes
Live and in your face
The future of copyright law
DIY and ancillary revenue streams
Creating a middle class of artists
U2 Manager – Paul McGuinness
Conversation with Lyor Cohen, Warner Music
Business model competition
Songwriting and Publishing
Technology, data, and music
Concerts and more

Find out more about Rethink Music :

http://www.rethink-music.com

http://www.twitter.com/rethink_music

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rethink-Music/171541336212505

This Midem 2011 series includes:

• Daren Tsui, CEO of cloud service mSpot
• Dave Kusek,  Vice President Berklee College of Music
• Naveen Salvadurai co-founder Foursquare
• Amke Block AudioMagnet
• Timo Kari and Rami Korhonen PlayMySong.
• Keith Lee, CEO and co-founder Booyah!,
• Gerd Leonhard media futurist
• Martin Rigby CEO Psonar
• Armine Saidi founder and CEO Viinyl
• Antonis Karydis CEO Mativision
• David McKinney founder Jammbox
• Anne De Kerckhove the Director at Reed Midem,
• Wilhalm Taht Marketing director Flowd
• Georg Hitzenberger Managing Director Play.fm.

Episode 71 – Midem 2011 Coverage Day 1 by digitalmusictrends

Your comments are welcome.

Reactable Systems is a spin-off company of the Pompeu Fabra University and is collaborating with its Music Technology Group, one of the worlds largest research labs in music technology.

More info: http://www.reactable.com/mobile

More videos here: http://www.youtube.com/reactable

The Internet changed all of that in a matter of 10 years or less.  This disruptive force broke down the concentration of power from the hands of a few, to the hands of many.  These days music distribution is a commodity that one can have access to quite simply via CDBaby, Tunecore or a variety of other options.  Terrestrial radio, the marketing channel that broke all major artists of the last 60 years is no longer effective, and has been replaced by literally thousands of touch points available online including tastemakers like Pitchfork, sites like MySpace and Yahoo, social networking outlets like Twitter and Facebook, the search monster Google and countless websites, blogs and online media.

Today it is more important What You Know, than Who You Know.  This is a Major shift in strategy from the past and is the name of the game for achieving success in the future.

Here are two examples of the kinds of things you need to know.  One from the point of view of a structured approach to developing the skills and knowledge to help you succeed, and the other a real-world example of innovation at work in the hands of a savvy artist.

–

From Celia Hirschman with On the Beat for station KCRW:

Today’s music business is not just about hustle, music knowledge and who you know.  Today, it’s also about digital prowess, online inventiveness and a fast Internet connection.

I worked my way up through the industry, learning as I went. I took numerous jobs in the business, each one teaching me more than I had known before.

My school of hard knocks earned me a lot of opportunity. But the lessons of today’s music business are not taught in the nightclubs, the record stores or the board rooms. Today’s music business actually requires hitting the books, academically. Many active music buyers are online. Reaching them requires sophisticated online marketing knowledge.

No better way to learn than from the professionals. The prestigious Berklee College of Music has built an online extension program. Their BerkleeMusic.com offers a number of interesting classes online to fill in experiential gaps.

A useful course is titled “Online Music Marketing with Topspin.” Topspin is the leading digital-music marketing and sales company. In this course, Berklee’s Michael King and Topspin’s CEO Ian Rogers have deconstructed the marketing matrix, providing a hands-on education in digital record marketing. Students learn how to build digital touch-points, optimize site visits, develop fan integration and build brands. It is a first class education in online music marketing.

It doesn’t hurt that the whole course studies the TopSpin platform, similar to how a course might focus on PhotoShop or Excel. Topspin has developed a robust program to maximize online visibility and sell through. Musicians and music companies around the world can participate and socialize in a private trusted community.

Listen to the KCRW radio show here.

Cudos to @atomzooey for developing a great course.

Read more on Direct to Fan Marketing at Mike King’s Blog.

–

The Duo of Jack Conte and Natalie Dawn are the band Pomplamoose and they are generating huge YouTube interest and views with their VideoSong format. They got tens of millions of views in a very short time with this number increasing while you read this. The VideoSong format these two produce is very inviting and addictive, providing a glimpse into the process of recording and creating music.  The have combined a unique video format, with creative versions of popular cover songs and online distribution to reach tens of millions of people without any label support or significant marketing budget.  They have found a way to make music their full time career without performing live, by leveraging social media.

Listen to an audio interview with Jack Conte from CDBaby

http://cdbabypodcast.com/?p=877