Massive changes in the music industry

I have been consulting a great deal with people and the artists I work with about the massive changes in the music industry lately. It is long overdue that I make an official blog post about it.
But how do you sum up what equates to declaring the death of gravity to a physicist in a short blog entry? It’s a challenge, however, now we know enough to confidently make some bold statements about where the music industry is going and I will very briefly summarize them here:

• The music industry is moving away from corporations and back to the artist/musician where it should be (this is a very good thing for you, the artist, but more rights and control means more work and responsibility)
• Giving music away for free and digital downloading doesn’t hurt music sales, it is in fact the only way music is purchased, and essentially has been for a long time. (The myth that downloading is hurting sales is propaganda that corporations have spread in attempt to retain control they are losing over the music industry – see first point)
• Music as an emotional commodity has become about building and selling relationships, NOT selling a product. Build a strong following and fans will support you in all your efforts. This will soon become a philosophy for all business in the near future in my opinion.
• The Internet now fully into it’s web 2.0 phase is the way that artists can independently build a strong business without corporations or other companies due to it’s many resources. (This is covered in detail in Andrew Dubbers’ free eBook which I blogged about here, and links to some of these can be found in my blogroll/links page
• Blogging and social networking is one of the most important ways to accomplish the above and embrace the new music industry and start building your audience.

So these are some pretty drastic changes, I mean, telling artists they need to give their music away in order to sell it when they have been told that is stealing and will cost them sales? Well, I have started to do it myself as mentioned here, and many professionals, industry experts and artists have proven these points to not only be true, but very successful, artists like Jonathan Coultan. He may not be famous enough for you to know him, but he’s an independent artist making a living from his music using these very techniques. There are articles about it all over the internet. Major artists like radiohead have been starting to make changes as well, selling their music by donation, and a lot of people not only think they’re crazy, fellow artists think they are ruining the music industry. But those people haven’t studied the proven facts about where music is going.

I have been researching this for some time now, particularly for a course I teach at a local college as part of the full time music program. I also offer artists consulting on effectively using these techniques. I don’t have all the answers because no one does yet, things are still changing and progressing. But I can see where things are going, and it is a good thing.

My massive page of amazing links

I just posted a new massive page of amazing links that I use in my music business 2.0 class and that I often recommend to clients I am working with. Most of these links I have tested and or use myself, and they are some of the best resources I have found. So take advantage of my hours of research and enjoy!

Jarome’s recommended links for Multimedia,Music Business, and Web 2.0 applications

All I want to do is share my favorite music…

It’s been annoying me for some time now that all the previews for music online are less than a minute long, and usually even only 30 seconds – not nearly enough to get a good idea of a song never mind like it enough to but it. And if you have diverse music tastes and want to share that music with other people, you would have to send them to all kinds of different websites, who has time for that?

I figured with all the wonderful and powerful web 2.o applications for music out there,
one of them would enable me to do this simple aim of sharing my current favorite songs with friends and people I’m working with. So I signed up with MOG.com, Last.FM, iLike.com, facebook, and the iTunes music store, and wasted a bunch of time checking out all they could do. I started with 5 songs from the last 20 years, some brand new top 40, some older, some obscure. All these sites either didn’t have *all* the songs I wanted to share, or if they did have them, some songs only allowed a 30 second preview. 30 seconds is like a slap in the face to the music lover. It’s just an insult.

A large part of the problem in being able to ‘legally’ achieve my simple aim to share music with friends is that record companies prevent this from happening because they don’t understand the new music 2.0 movement and the concept of ‘giving consumers what they want’.

The only application I found that showed some promise in my efforts to promote commercial artists is Simplify Media’s free beta iTunes Music sharing software. It let’s you share any music you want with any other iTunes user who is also running the simplify media software and has set up an account. I just tested it with my friend Elika all the way over in Beijing, and within seconds of connecting, she could play in real time any non protected MP3 I shared with her, even those encoded at 320k!

In some ways It’s not an ideal solution since your friends would have to download and configure the software to listen to your shared music. It would be better to just be able to go to a social networking site and select FULL length versions of any song and send a link to someone of your playlist. But since the music industry won’t yet allow that, Simplify Media is still very cool and may avoid me having to share my music ‘illegally’ which I was prepared to do if I had to. Try it out, and then let me know when you have it installed and I’ll invite you to my playlist.

I’ll face myself, erase myself to cross out what I’ve become…

There’s no alibi
‘Cause I’ve drawn regret
From the truth
Of a thousand lies

So let mercy come
And wash away…

What I’ve done
I’ll face myself
To cross out what I’ve become
Erase myself
And let go of what I’ve done

Put to rest
What you thought of me
While I clean this slate
With the hands
Of uncertainty

So let mercy come
And wash away…

What I’ve done
I’ll face myself
To cross out what I’ve become
Erase myself
And let go of what I’ve done

I’ll start again
And whatever pain may come
Today this ends
I’m forgiving what I’ve done

– Linkin Park , “What I’ve Done” from Minutes To Midnight

Yes…. Exactly.

My latest song ‘Starlight – Lucky Star’ is a free download

In 2004, I produced a CD called Past Becomes Future, released on Pro Soul. It’s a compilation of various artists that is basically a celebration of dance / electronica / R & B through modern versions of classic pop songs from the 70’s and 80’s.

The latest track I have produced, ‘Starlight’ is a combination of retro Madonna and the kind of Hip Hop you remember, back when it was great. It was conceived for a live show after the album was released, but the chorus vocals were never recorded. I started by recording and editing together various 12″ vinyl remix records, and then had Luvva J aka Jose S. Gutierrez Jr. put down an original rap on it. Then I punched it up with some additional beats and synth. I always liked the track and what Jose did with it , so recently, I decided to remix it and have Laura Harley record the missing vocals. She did an amazing job, and we decided to put it out there for you to listen to as a free download.

www.jarome.com/downloads.html

This song is special for a few reasons, 1: It is basically the first, but not last, free song I have put out there, 2: It is not attached to any particular project – Those that know me know I very rarely do songs like this that are just for fun because I am so busy producing other artists songs, and 3: It is very different than anything I am producing now, and it is different than the usual style of the artists featured on it.

I hope you enjoy it! Tell your friends, and let me know what you think.

Just launched: my new website with music and audio demos

I’ve been so busy over the last 5 years that I haven’t really been able to update my website for a long time. The last demo that was on there was literally 4 years old. But I have finally put up a completely new website at www.jarome.com thanks to the help of Vancouver musician and designer, Zenobia Salik, who I am assisting in mixing and mastering her very cool new electro funk album.

My new site has accurate descriptions of everything I do, and recent audio, music and video demos, some so recent, they are for CD’s that haven’t even been mixed yet never mind released!

So please check it out and let me know if anything doesn’t work well for you on your system.