Music Conferences provide numerous possibilities to make business, network and discuss with your colleagues, share knowledge with your peers and discover new talents and industry trends – so they say. But do Music Conferences really provide added value and do they fulfill what they promise? What are the reasons for the increasing amount of conferences all over Europe?
Is this provocative to ask? Well, yes. No. Depends on. Nobody has the skills to be creative in every field. Or is there a sculptor in your band who is perfect in weaving tapestries, writing scripts for plays at the Old Vic, and at the same time artfully handling his stock shares himself and piling up his riches at the Caimans?
I intended to start out with suggestions in DIY marketing for artists today. Then Amanda Palmer posted her response to the feedback her posting on donations generated. Read her response. It is essential and the basics to everything I can tell you. Some of it she already mentioned at Berlin's all2gethernow. For all those who don't have the time I'm going to highlight some parts.
The New York Times’ online archive holds the oldest message in regards to the topic of piracy in music industry. It originates from 13 June 1897, the founding time of music industry. „Canadian Pirates“ mailed counterfeit records across the border and sold them for a tenth of its real price. The industry bewailed a 50% loss in turnover demanding the postal sevice to filter items out.
Reznor's point is straight forward and easy to understand. Bottom line is, master music & online tools, work hard, deliver something good - and sell something unique other than music. Because you can't rely on selling (recorded) music in itself. Music is ubiquitous. And it's free. Cash is about extras.
Michael Masnick revisits the shutting down of SpiralFrog: However a new idea in online music business gets hailed, there still is at least one predominant reason for failure. To succeed, you have to offer more than what you can get for free using bit torrents. You need real added value. It’s what Masnick calls the "reason to buy".
Don't miss the chance to witness an updated version of his Trent Reznor case study. Yes, Trent did it again. Michael intends to refer to the latest online activities by Nine Inch Nails which started just two days ago at Twitter. Luckily enough, I just started running twhirl when Trent came up.
Today's informitv newsletter is concluded by a comment by Dr William Cooper, CEO informitv, addressing current issues. It's a brilliant one. Unfortunately, I can't find it anywhere on their site ("resource not found"). So here it is, straight from the newsletter...
Jamendo is the world's first B2C music download service offering all tunes under the Creative Commons license. At least that is Jamendo's claim. Also, I do not know about any other one either. If there are small ones or large ones out there handling their business that way – please contact me. I really would be interested in your experience.
At this year's Midem, Mike Masnick from Techdirt gave a presentation focused on how Trent Reznor/NIN is doing music business. It is worthwhile watching the video. Masnick's accompanying article can be found here. You will find additional comments there. Unsurprisingly, there are some issues mentioned which might be familiar if you read my previous articles on here.
