10am - Keynote Conversation with Fat Mike
Maybe I'm just not punk rock enough to get it, but if you say f*ck money, f*ck the internet, and f*ck your fans, why not go one step further and say f*ck it to labels, too? Fat Mike would like you to believe that his label, Fat Wreck Chords, serves as a filter for quality and provides a value add that unsigned bands crave and major labels can't replicate. However, from the perspective of an unknown musician, it's not clear to me why any label (major or indie) adds anything of value that can't be replicated by giving music away for free online. After all, what's the point in making $10 on little round plastic disks if the label is just going to take $9.99 anyway?
11am - The Next Big Thing
The panel asks why, if major labels are such dinosaurs, do they still seem so essential in breaking an artist?
According to Aaron Axelsen (Music Director, Live 105) encouraging listeners to discover new music is like getting a four year old to eat broccoli. "It's good for you," he says, "but you need to sandwich it between two pieces of cheddar cheese." While this perspective serves as an apt justification for his job description, it fails to acknowledge the consumption patterns of most online listening. CD sales are faltering precisely because music discovery is alive and well (and free) in the online sphere.
For now, it is advantageous to most music merchants to maintain the status quo. But what happens when the RIAA starts charging a performance license fee for terestrial radio plays? Perhaps then Live 105 will become the advocate for unknowns. The next big thing for the majors may turn out to be Chapter 11.
1pm - Industry Noise: Hot Topics in the Music Industry
Cory Brown of Absolutely Kosher Records says, "If nobody's paying for anything, it doesn't matter how many people are listening to your music." It should not be surprising that his business model relies upon the sales of those pesky round plastic disks. It's amazing how people talk about music as though it has always been a tangible product, until along came that evil internet that threatened everything. I'd like to remind them that throughout the entire course of human history up to the invention of the phonograph, all music was live music. It was only in the twentieth century that music became a product. We should not lament, therefore, that it has now become a commodity.
The price structure of old media is often defended on the grounds that the artist must get paid. This sounds nice, but when has the artist ever gotten paid? Short of going multi-platinum, it is the labels that have reaped most of the benefits of traditional music sales. Perhaps, it's not an either/or decision. Nancy Miller (Music Editor, Wired) proposes the idea of a "musical middle class," suggesting that internet distribution may lead to a path toward profitability for a number of musicians. If there is a path, it's thorny and largely uncharted. But I applaud the realism.
2pm - If Techies Ruled the World / If Artists Ruled the World
The subject of this panel was a hypothetical exercise exploring what would happen if reasonable people controlled the pipeline for the music industry. The answer? Musicians still wouldn't make much money, but it would be a lot more straightforward, and there would be a lot fewer middle men.
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