Digital Music Becomes (more) Rhizomatic: Evolutionary Traits of The Music Industry

As digital audio files continue to flow freely on the Internet, music itself mimics certain inherent characteristics of the web best understood through Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s (D&G) rhizome metaphor. In A Thousand Plateaus, D&G introduce the concept of a “rhizome” to describe a representative model that extends in all directions and has multiple entryways; since then it has most commonly been used as a metaphor to represent the Internet. Understanding digital music as rhizomatic is important because it interprets the transformations of the digital music culture as a natural progression towards rhizomatic qualities – and provides us with an insight into what might be the future of “the music industry”. A few of the defining characteristics of the rhizome are connectivity, heterogeneity, multiplicity and cartography. Music can be understood as rhizomatic when its characteristics mimic those of the rhizome; thus music becomes more rhizomatic when those characteristics are amplified. According to D&G, any point of a rhizome “can and must be connected to anything other”. So we might think of anything that blocks connectivity as a contributing factor in making something less rhizomatic. Firewalls and 404-errors are just two examples of obstacles that fulfill this role. Digital music is also subject to a large set of infringing obstacles, some of which include DRM, other restrictions due to copyright laws, and pay-only access for downloads. As we see these barriers disappear, we also see digital music becoming more rhizomatic. While highlighting the defining characteristics of the rhizome…

I’ve suggested 5 examples illustrating how music has become more rhizomatic:

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Remember the mullet? File sharers are next.

Updated on April 1, 2009 by Bruce Warila

Can you say stuck in the past? According to the news, the new U2 album has been downloaded illegally over 400,000 times since it was released. While this isn’t a number to sneeze at, it reminds me of the mulletheads that put hood scoops and air blowers over their carbureted engines in the early 1980s. When the rest of the world switched over to fuel injection, the mullet-powered Camaro became a thing of the past.

Someone click over to Torrent Freak and tell darkshare, labeldeath and redfilephantom to garage the Camaro and trim the mullet; fuel injection has arrived. Sorry angry dudes, the cost of acquiring a music collection is approaching zero

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practicing with limitations - material and how to deal with it, part I

as I explained in the post practicing with limitations I beleive practicing is most exciting when you set limitations to what you do and when you do it. (the ‘when’ includes time management principles to get a daily practicing routine happening and I’ll cover that soon)

so, now you’ve narrowed down your field of study to what excites you most, you’re enthusiastic about learning something new and you are ready to start. but what happens next, when you actually practice? how can you practice the selected material and make your daily routine a daily success?

here are a couple of principles to make it happen.

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download music business legal documents for creating your own 360 deal

If you are setting up a legal entity (a corporation for your band / music-related business) with the objective of providing economic and upside incentives to everyone that is or will be involved in your business (your bandmates, your management team, your potential investors, and possibly even your sponsors/promoters), here’s a free set of legal documents that you can use as a basis for creating what the music industry calls a 360 deal (as in 360 degrees).

What is a 360 deal?
A 360 deal (in my mind) is a catchall term that describes a structure whereby everyone involved pledges all related (related to the core of the business) rights, services and assets into a corporation that is owned by all of the participants. A 360 deal may or may not include investment capital.

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What artists should know about Last.fm

On the surface, Last.fm and Pandora seem redundant. Both recommend new music based on your current favorites, and allow you to influence their suggestions by approving or disapproving of each song as it plays. But while Pandora suggests songs based on their underlying musical characteristics, Last.fm relies on guilt by association. The formula is right out of the Amazon playbook: “Fans of band x also listen to band y. You like band x, so you will probably like band y.” To illustrate the difference between the two approaches, Ben Gibbard is the lead singer for both the indie rock Death Cab for Cutie and the electronic The Postal Service. While Pandora would likely never recommend one to fans of the other, Last.fm deems them the closest match.

Last.fm has over 21 million active users in more than 200 countries, which makes their recommendation engine quite powerful. Download the software to connect your media player to their database (i.e. enable “scrobbling”). Most desktop media players are supported, along with the iPhone and Google’s Android OS. Obviously, your plays on the site are also tracked.

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Small is the new big, and why house concerts could save touring artists.

This post by Fran Snyder originally appeared on the ConcertsInYourHome.com blog.  Fran is a touring singer-songwriter, and founder of ConcertsInYourHome.com

House Concerts - Mozart was onto something.
Mozart was well known for performing “parlor concerts,” in the homes of rich patrons who would delight in the opportunity to show off their acquaintance with him. Things have changed, however, and you no longer need to be rich to have access to some of the finest talent available. Furthermore, many of these artists are genuinely interested in their fans, and enjoy an opportunity to connect in a way that rarely happens in traditional venues.

Breaking New Markets = Breaking the Bank
Most acts, regardless of talent, are lucky to draw 30-40 people when they play in a new area. The resources needed to get beyond those numbers are getting more expensive and less effective all the time. Publicity and radio promotion can cost many hundreds if not thousands of dollars per week, and these methods employ people to beg, bribe, or cajole overwhelmed media personnel (writers, DJs, music programmers) who can rarely make the returns worthwhile. Ask any act how many “butts in seats” result from a nice article in the paper. Few, if any. Likewise, airplay doesn’t yield much unless it is sustained. Posters and flyers? Don’t get me started.

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Musician’s SXSW South by Southwest Survival Guide

Making the Most of Music Conferences
The Musician’s Guide to Navigating SXSW and All Other Music Conferences

Six Steps to Maximize Your Conference Experience, Make More Music-Business Contacts, and Advance Your Music Career

Over my 13 years of attending SXSW I’ve seen plenty of bands who did get a coveted showcase and not only did they not get signed, but also they did not meet any key players in the business or benefit their careers in any way by showcasing.

Reasons for this included: They received awful showcase venues and times; they were busy loading and unloading gear, babysitting band members, or getting tanked at parties to make the journey worthwhile; or they opted for their measly $100 stipend instead of for the gold: the festival pass.

Here’s my musician’s South by Southwest survival guide to get your through one of the most massive and overwhelming conferences of the year. This guide is not just for SXSW; it’s also for any music conference out there!

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Give 'em something they can feel!

On February 25, I was contacted by a woman, via instant messenger, who is a fan of my band’s music. I’m often contacted by fans. Yet there are times when I am able to “shoot the shit” with them, and there are times when I’m a bit occupied. Nonetheless I always try to give a few moments of my time to anyone who takes the time to absorb our music.

Although I’ve enjoyed speaking to each and every one of our supporters, speaking with her was one of the most inspiring and eye opening moments of my life.

She’s been unemployed since Jan, and her living conditions aren’t the best. Although she has a college degree, and appeared very articulate, she has been unable to find any work. Needless to say she wasn’t in the best of spirits.

All she really wanted to do was talk about today’s music. (In her opinion) It wasn’t very rousing, and she longed for the days when music (particularly hip hop) moved her spiritually. She proceed to tell me how our music was different and how much she connected with it.

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My song sucks? You must be an idiot! What’s the right way to review music?

Someone once told me that to negatively critique a song is like telling a mother her newborn baby is ugly. Every mother thinks her baby is cute and every artist thinks his or her latest song has (massive) unrealized potential.

Over the last year, my favorite posts on Music Think Tank were my shortest. I learned a lot, and your answers helped shape the products I worked on. The comments on the following posts were great.
Do most fans really want anything from you other than your music?
Do great songs really ever go unheard?

Now, I’m going back to the well. Music Xray is about a launch a social-network-like music submission and review utility. The application does four things:

1. It enables music industry professionals to earn a bit of revenue through the music submission and review process.
2. It enables song owners to get legitimate feedback quickly and inexpensively via an environment where they can review the reviewers.
3. It exposes songs (in some cases) to the people that can connect songs to exposure opportunities.
4. It gives Music Xray the best way to get a ton of songs professionally tagged, which will help to make all the songs in our system easier to find.

Here’s the challenge: What’s the right way to review music?

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10 Predictions for Radio's Next 5 Years

Do you remember the scene in the 1951 classic A Christmas Carol, when the Ghost of Christmas Present tells Ebenezer Scrooge that, while he sees Tiny Tim’s chair empty in a corner, “these are visions of things which maybe, not things which will be.”

Here are ten predictions for Radio’s next few years - visions of things which maybe.

1. Radio will recognize that to be more attractive than other sound-alike alternatives - to retain more of its existing audience – it must count on more than habit, convenience, familiarity, ease of use, and the often-proclaimed almost-universal reach of the medium, since all those advantages are transitory. 

2. The advantage of “local” will diminish in direct proportion to the disappearance of local content on stations - and here I’m talking about the local content between the songs (the very stuff that makes the PPM meters tank). 

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What successful Internet marketers know and what musician marketers don't

Most Internet marketers make money online, most musician marketers don’t.

The Backstory – The Big Seminar
My journey into the world of Internet marketing, began when I attended an Internet marketing conference and saw one of the keynote speakers. Armand is a bubbly and enthusiastic man from South Carolina; he makes a fortune in the world of internet marketing, and he not only markets things that help him make money, he teaches people how to do it themselves.

Armand is also a musician and his alter ego is Micheal Lee Austin. When I saw him speak, he walked us through how he took took himself to the top of the Billboard charts using his own online marketing strategy. He sold thousands of CD’s using his own techniques. I was so intrigued I wanted to learn how he did it, so I signed up to study with him via a series of online courses and they came with a ticket to his “Big seminar” in Atlanta.

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Sell More Cds at Shows By Not Naming the Price

I recently posted about discovering a wonderful band called Arizona. I found them while attending PopAsheville in January and I wrote - “I was invited to give the keynote speech this year. I spent an hour reminding the musicians in attendance that they are no longer in the music business, they are in the T-shirt business and they all seemed to agree. They also agreed that the music industry is not hurting, it’s the cd business that is in decline.” The whole post is here.

I am not being facetious when I say that bands are in the T-shirt business as I believe very strongly that as music slips down to zero in dollar value then artists must move quickly to find different ways to make money from their art.

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practicing with limitations

practicing with limitations

I see many musicians (especially young ones) getting frustrated with practicing. there are two main reasons for this.

for one, musicians are overwhelmed by the many possibilities and the number of materials to study. they ask “what should I practice?”, they don’t see the wood for the trees.

others complain about not having enough time to really practice deeply because they have a huge load of responsibilities everyday and at night they’re too tired to focus.

“what” and “when” are the most commonly asked questions.

this post is about the “what” but it will also help to get the “when” under control. (I’ll post a seperate article about the “when” later)

practicing is actually very simple if you follow one simple principle.

keep it simple by applying limitations!

I spent 8 years studying music at conservatories in germany, the netherlands and the usa. I’ve gotten so much advise from teachers, musicians, friends and audiences, I still wouldn’t know where to start hadn’t I come up with a solution. it’s a simple solution, too.

limitation!

limitaion leads to simplicity.

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MIDEM Conference Video Interviews

Last month, (January 2009), I went to the MIDEM Conference in France. The largest music business conference in Europe.

I went two years ago and didn’t like it, because it was just a lot of suits talking to suits. Very old-boy network. But, like I did with PopKomm, I tried to be the eyes and ears of my musician clients, bringing my video camera around to every company that was exhibiting there, and asking them questions from a musician’s point of view.

So, here are the edited videos from 13 companies that seemed worth talking to - and the URL for each.

Whether they can help you directly or not is up to you, but I hope you find it interesting, either way.

If you are a self-promoting musician, I don’t recommend attending MIDEM. It’s better than it used to be, and is worth it for bigger companies to attend, but still not an ideal use of your money and time.

For a more objective overview of what went on at MIDEM 2009, read this write-up by my buddy Hal Bringman.

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