Of course you can. You might even make a very good living at it. The chances are increasingly slim, of course. I mentioned earlier that this was a shift in the way the world of music works of the same magnitude as the shift that happened when we went from sheet music to recorded music.
And yet, of course, people still make money by making and selling printed sheet music. In fact, some people do very well out of it. It’s just not the main way that things are done anymore, despite the wringing of hands and the repeated insistence that everyone behave as they always did that accompanied that particular ‘death of the music industry’.
You can even just decide to pick and choose the bits that you’re comfortable with. You are perfectly within your rights to have no website, and yet use email and Facebook for your online communication. These things are not mandatory – and nor is it an all-or-nothing scenario.
However, it’s fair to say that I think your best chances are to endeavour to understand the technology and run with it. Use the ones that make sense to you, avoid the ones that don’t. But whatever you do, don’t make the mistake of thinking that some technologies are good and others are bad.
There were people who were determined not to use the telephone to take gig bookings long after its creation. Others who refuse to use a calculator to work out royalty statements.
The most laughable thing here, of course, is the underlying idea that technologies are responsible for some sort of malaise in the music industries. That the internet causes the decline of CD sales or that MySpace created a world where there was suddenly too much to compete with as an independent artist.
Technologies are not causes. Technologies are tools. They are solutions that people have come up with to address problems that they perceive. The result of those technologies stem from the way in which people use them. Of course, different technologies allow for different types of results – but they don’t make them happen. People do.
So – as someone trying to achieve a task — let’s say the task of cutting a steak — and you are offered a fork, a knife, a spoon and a serviette… would you refuse the knife on the grounds of all the stabbings you heard about up North?
Use the tools or don’t use the tools. It’s entirely up to you. But don’t be surprised if the people who figure out which tools to use in which combination and in which way are the ones who start to streak ahead of the pack.
Personally, I’d try and give myself every advantage.
Download Andrew Dubber's new book Music in the Digital Age - or, if you already have and you've been enjoying it or finding it useful, please consider paying for it here.
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5 Comments
Hi Andrew,
I am really looking forward to all the Q & A that will result in your new “book”.
This particular question today makes me think of the advice you have given in the past about assembling a good team.
As you have probably noticed I still do not have a website up yet. This is because I do not know how to do it. I have partnered with an old friend and fellow musician who just happens to be quite web savvy…and although it is taking much longer than I would like it to, this partnership will result in a web pressence for our music.
I want to know how to implement the website myself and over time I am sure I will learn. Right now I am to busy with many other things and it just does not leave room for Web Design 101 class…So I am assembling a team. (Because I do not believe that I can avoid the Internet and be as productive and profitable as I could utilizing it.)
Studio musicians for hire may be the only music folks who can!
Keep up the great work!
Milton
PS – Have you read on Music Think Tank what Bruce W. has to say about Aime Street? I did yesterday and I believe I just might sign up for this “validation” service. (If only for a little ego boost to keep me working!)
Cheers,
Milton
Nice start on the new book, Andrew.
Two comments here: One, I wouldn’t be quick to compare vastly different changes in how industries work. Recorded music on the net is no different in the way it’s consumed from recorded music on CD or even vynil. You still listen to it and the recording is the same. Sheet music required you (or a friend) to play an instrument. That’s something else. Listening to music live in concert is again different to playing it yourself or listening to a record. Not every metaphor is adequate – even the theatre/TV one isn’t really appropriate. It only works when you are considering the scope of things other than music itself – the creation of celebrities for example. If the listener is looking for an idol, the Internet can create a different experience than traditional media (TV vs. theatre). If the listener is only looking for songs to play on his iPod, it makes no
difference to him whether he rips them from a friend’s CD or downloads them from BitTorrent. Even the iPod is irrelevant here – it could be any format, digital or analogue. Remember the tape-swapping days?
Two, technologies can be – and often are – causes. The hole in the ozone layer was a direct effect of the implementation of a certain technology. The Greenhouse Effect is the result of using a certain technology. The deluge of content now available is the direct result of the proliferation of certain technology. For a strong advocate of the “New Digital Age”, you are strangely inconsistent here, Andrew.
Yes, technologies only become cause when people decide to use them, but that’s the same as saying that you shouldn’t give a monkey the keys to a banana plantation. The logical conclusion is that if a certain technology produces undesirable results when used in excess, steps should be taken to restrict its use, just as in the first two examples given above. I’ll leave that as something to think about it.
Wait – you think I’m a strong advocate of the new digital age? Boy, am I not communicating well.
I’m broadly opposed to most things new and technical. I think they’re things to be coped with, rather than goods in themselves. I am not a digitally-minded person, and prefer the analogue things in life. I don’t write code and nor do I collect gadgets. There are some toys I’m fond of (the Macbook is lovely), but I write longhand in notebooks, buy vinyl and have face to face meetings where possible. My preferred medium is the seminar. I am at my happiest on a long train journey.
But there’s a difference between being nostalgic and being a luddite. We are in a new digital age whether we like it or not. Pretending it doesn’t exist, or refusing to play by its rules only hurts you. I can take or leave most of it. Some of it is, of course, exciting, revolutionary and full of great social and economic potential. Most of it is nonsense.
I am not one of the techno-evangelists.
But I think not liking something and refusing to adapt and cope with it all are two entirely different things. In fact, I’d argue that the more you dislike the changing nature of the music business, the more you HAVE to get your head in the game in order to survive.
Understanding the online environment is the way to make sure it does you the least harm. You may even find a way to leverage it to your own ends and make a new living in a new way. That’s the whole point of this exercise.
You can think of this website as a way of inoculating you against the ravages of the internet. This is not utopia and nor is it democratising anything. This is unfair. You cannot relax. Things just got scary, and the only way to deal with it is curl up into a ball — or to scream ‘Whoa! This is exciting!’ and lean forward into the rollercoaster ride, forcing a manic grin.
I recommend the latter approach.
Okay – and three quick points:
1) It’s worth saying that I disagree about whether it makes a difference whether you rip music from a friend’s collection or download it from a peer network with its own hierarchies and systems of reputation building. Music is far more than what it sounds like – it is about the meaning that people make from it. The context in which you acquire music, and the events and people in your life that accompany the ways in which you listen to it UTTERLY TRANSFORMS music.
2) Technology doesn’t CAUSE a deluge of content. It enables people to act on an impulse to collect, share, gather, store and organise information, arts and communication — and it enhances their ability to do that in more ways, faster and to exponentially greater effect. Copper wires don’t cause telephone calls (and nor, for that matter, do telephones), and radio receivers don’t cause broadcasting any more than the electromagnetic spectrum does.
3) Finally, let me say that my assertions, my ideas, and particularly my metaphors and analogies ARE NOT TRUE. I do not profess that anything I have to say on this blog is accurate, correct or consistent. They don’t have to be true. They only have to be useful.
When I say that technologies are not causes, this is a shorthand way of saying that the idea that technologies are not causes is a useful belief to take on board, because then it gets you kicking against the edges of technology, having faith in people to make the best of the tools they are given, and refusing to accept that we are at the mercy of forces outside our control. These don’t need to be true ideas – we just have to act as if they are true for them to be useful.
Always feel free to prove me wrong, by all means. I have no problem whatsover about finding out new stuff that changes my mind about all this. But consider this: is it more empowering to believe that we can shape our destinies, or to believe that we are in the hands of fate?
Either could be true – but I think the results are more interesting and ultimately satisfying when you choose one over the other.
And so I say these things not because it’s important to me to be right – but because it’s important to me to be both helpful and interesting.
“Personally, I’d try and give myself every advantage.”
Ditto.