It’s been five years now since the original publication of the book that was born out of this blog – The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online (above left).

A lot has changed in the last five years.

To reflect that, my new book Music in the Digital Age (above centre) contains a section that addresses and updates the 20 Things point by point.

The book is a work in progress, being written over the course of the year – but it’s being published as I write it, and you choose what to pay for it – from $0 to $100 (I recommend $1.99 but it’s entirely up to you).

The section I’ve just completed and published finally brings The 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online up to date – which means that I can now focus on other things. The next section I’m writing focuses on Music as Culture in the Digital Age, and will feature some fascinating case studies from around the world.

I’m also simultaneously publishing translations of the book. The German, Portuguese, Estonian and Greek versions are already online – and I have just published the Spanish version (above right) – coincidentally while I’m in Venezuela, a Spanish-speaking country, which is a nice bonus.

An Unconvention panel we recorded, in which Steve, Dubber & Andrea and special guest Jez Collins from the Birmingham Music Archive talk about ways in which cities are, can be, and should be digital.

We’ve talked about this in the podcast, but I thought it might be good to mention it again anyway: I’m writing a book called Music in the Digital Age, which you can download and read as I write it.

Apart from the subject material, which will be of interest to readers of this blog, it’s worth bringing it up here because the section I’m writing at the moment is the long overdue update to my ‘20 Things You Must Know About Music Online‘ e-book, which was released here nearly 5 years ago.

There’s a lot more to the e-book – and plenty of content to be added as the year progresses – but you can get your copy now as a PDF or in Kindle and iBooks format for whatever you want to pay for it, and you’ll get the updates automatically. Hope you enjoy it.

In which Dubber and Steve talk about their newfound wealth, experiments with pricing and the economics and sociology of music (and other things) online.

Mentioned in this podcast:
Steve’s New Album: Believe in Peace
Dubber’s new book: Music in the Digital Age

Dubber’s blog post:
Why my book is free – and why it costs money

Steve’s blog post:
A little “Buy Music With Bandcamp” primer

The sizzle reel for Slingers.

Reprieve: Reprieve uses the law to enforce the human rights of prisoners, from death row to Guantánamo Bay.

Leanpub
Bandcamp

Enjoy.

Steve and I were on a train to London and thought it was a nice opportunity to have a podcast-style chat. After tossing a few topic ideas around, we decided to chat about reviews – which was topical for both of us for one reason or another. Hope you find it of interest.

In the podcast, we mention:

The music of Emily Baker;
The music of Calamateur;
The music of Steve Lawson
and how to submit your Bandcamp album for review.

Get the NMS Podcast in iTunes

Steve and I got together this evening for our usual glass of wine, to play each other our favourite new music discoveries and to chat about stuff concerning the internet. As you do.

This time, we decided to record some of it and put it out as a podcast. We’ll probably do it again. This time, it was about Spotify, because that’s what we’d been thinking about. Hope you find it interesting. Be interested to hear what you think.

Get the NMS Podcast in iTunes.

Since Spotify finally launched in the US, the discussion has reignited about what the benefits of it are for musicians.

One recent conversation has involved people quoting diametrically opposite statistics about the influence of Spotify on file-sharing in Sweden. Some people quoting a stat that says file-sharing has dropped as Spotify has rolled out, and others saying that there’s more file sharing with Spotify…

The problem with both statistics is that there’s no binary relationship between Spotify and file-sharing, and none of the articles I’ve seen writing about it have made any attempt to differentiate between different media being torrented, or indeed whether what’s been measured is number of unique users, number of files or quantity of traffic. All of which can be interpreted in myriad ways.

I have also yet to see a breakdown of just whose music is being played on Spotify vs those artists whose torrent traffic has shifted, or the impact that either has had on music sales – digital or physical – which would also need to be put alongside all the other influences on those statistics too.

As an example, my own Spotify statements via CDBaby have thus far reported 4583 plays and paid me a grand total of $11.38, including precisely zero downloads via their own store – so in terms of raw financial return, 2 people torrenting my stuff and deciding to buy a CD or download, and/or go to a show would beat Spotify hands down.

But Spotify, we’re told, is all about discovery – people find you there and may then go and buy your stuff elsewhere. Be heard. That’s the mantra. But if it doesn’t pay, and the artist has no control over the biography that’s on their artist page there, or where the (one) sales link goes to (I’d happily swap all my royalties from Spotify for ever for the chance to have the ‘buy’ link go to Bandcamp instead of their ridiculous credit-based store), then wouldn’t it actually be BETTER for the artist to seed your material onto BitTorrent, to package it with a PDF that speaks directly to the people who’ve torrented it, to invite them to your own site to find out more?

The legality or otherwise of each activity is rather moot for independent artists who record their own songs (things get more complex when it’s a recording of someone else’s song), though the societal implications for activities that are against the law becoming normative are potentially far more problematic.

Spotify – like the Major labels who were granted a large share of the business in exchange for the rights to their catalogues (without – in the majority of cases – consulting their artists) – are horribly opaque with their accounting, and obfuscate any response to questioning about where the money their subscribers and advertisers pay is going. They talk in big numbers about how much is being paid out, but with no context. Thus leaving us without even the in-app statistics, let alone any way of mapping those to wider internet sales/traffic/download trends in a meaningful way.

This is the problem with statistics and the Internet - some things are very easy to map, particularly if the traffic is within a single domain, though it may still be impossible to extrapolate meaning from those raw numbers. But trying to track whether Spotify is causing people to buy – or torrent – music elsewhere is impossible to measure without doing extensive market research, which is hindered by the fact that most torrenting is against the law in most of the countries that have a vested interest in knowing this stuff. Again, to have any meaning, we’d also need to see data on the cost of the physical version, how it was packaged and what quality the torrented file was vs what was available to buy.

Which means? It’s disigenuous to pejoratively view someone torrenting a 24bit FLAC file as an alternative to buying something on iTunes without also addressing the lack of a legal file of the same quality elsewhere, as well as considering the influence that variable pricing and/or exclusively packaged beautifully design physical product may have had on their actions.

The other huge problem facing anyone trying to write authoritatively about this, as I implied earlier, is that the various lobbying agencies representing the major record labels, such as the BPI in the UK and the RIAA in the US, have thus far proved unwilling to provide any control group statistics about the broader financial situation in the traditional recording industry world. Particularly as it relates to what the majority of artists and musicians get paid. The artists themselves are often prevented from gaining access to the accounts relating to their own artistic work, so outside access is currently impossible.

What we end up with is vested interests at both ends of the spectrum using the bits of available statistics that best support their preconceived notions of good and bad, without any broader analysis of what those stats mean and why their incompleteness is significant.

So all statistical interpretation must be caveated with what’s missing and interpreted in the light of that. It’s not that incomplete stats aren’t useful. They’re just incomplete.

[photo use under Creative Commons, by Dan Dickinson on Flickr]

At New Music Strategies, we’ve been thinking about an idea that we believe would be really helpful for music marketing, would contribute toward ethical and sustainable practices for musicians and music businesses, and which we believe consumers would get behind.

We were talking this week about the fact that many people (on all sides of the digital copyright debate) speak about their relationship with music consumption as having an ethical and moral dimension.

People talk about how they like to ‘support the artist’ in certain instances – whether it’s that they are fans of a specific artist and want to see them create more works, or that they have a more general sense of obligation, gratitude or individual ethics when it comes to online music purchasing. Most people seem to be conflicted – not sure what impact their decision to download unauthorised content might have, or whether it makes any difference at all.

Some feel that there is an element of protest and ethical civil disobedience in their decision to download music released by multinational corporations, or music represented by organisations who support the disproportionate legal action against music fans. Some artists are known to be in an exploitative relationship with the record label and wouldn’t necessarily get paid anyway. And it’s even more complicated than that too, when you consider the treatment of contributing (but not featured) artists, sustainable use of materials in manufacture – and the durations and conditions within contracts that may be considered unfair.

So we came up with the notion of Fair Trade Music.

The idea

We thought it would be interesting to develop and implement an online benchmarking process that would set a series of criteria up as representing ethical, sustainable music industry practices that parallel the ethical trading standards set by Fair Trade grocery items. We thought it would be important to make it so that consumers had the opportunity to easily choose Fair Trade alternatives, just as there are Organic Food sections in supermarkets.

We would love to see a Fair Trade Music section in Amazon and on iTunes as well as elsewhere online and off. We believe that just as they do with Fairtrade groceries, consumers would be encouraged to consider the practices that support the music that they buy, and make decisions informed by those practices.

Fair trade music need not necessarily be more expensive – in fact, it may actually be cheaper than the alternatives, but they would represent not just a better deal for the featured artist, but a more sustainable and less exploitative music industry overall.

We do not pretend to know or have a grasp of all of the criteria that would ideally be included as part of the benchmarking process. We think that would need to be negotiated amongst all interested parties, and conducted as part of a proper research project.

Our idea was to consult with a range of consumers, musicians and music industry workers to try and ascertain what those criteria would be for Fair Trade in the music sector – whether it be that record label deals offered artists a particular split of the proceeds, that contracts were only of a certain duration, that artists had a certain degree of creative control unfettered by commercial imperatives, that CD covers were made of renewable resources… stuff like that.

The plan

Stage one would be to figure out the parameters. What exactly would constitute ‘Fair Trade’ in music releases? In live music events? That’s the research phase.

Stage two would be to design and implement the database and registration process as well as a way in which the labelling could be implemented. This would be the prototype phase.

Stage three would be to promote and ensure its adoption. This is the implementation phase.

Partnering possibilities

There are a number of organisations that we think would perhaps be interested in exploring these ideas – from organisations that represent the interests of musicians to consumer information groups, universities and music schools, creative industry business groups and so on. We’d like to talk to the Fair Trade organisation itself too. Word has it that they’ve given thought to music, though I suspect in a slightly different way.

We believe that the system would act as a great marketing tool for genuinely ethical music producers and labels, an incentive for music companies that come close to the benchmark to go that extra mile, and an extra incentive for music purchasers (as well as some clarity and transparency about where their money will go).

Our idea is to develop the benchmarking system and online registration, pitch the idea to online (and offline) retailers, but create the register as an open database of music releases (and possibly even live music promoters and events) that fall under the Fair Trade music banner.

We do not wish to set up a new retail outlet to compete with existing offerings, but rather establish an open system for marking music that does get sold in existing retailers as offering an ethical music purchasing choice.

This would enable consumers to make informed choices about where their money goes, and would encourage record labels who wish for their releases to be considered fair trade as a marketing strategy to have transparent and sustainable agreements with the artists they release.

Just thinking out loud here. We’d love to hear your thoughts about this, and look forward to the conversation that follows.

Welcome to AmpNMS – the live, online music knowledge event by New Music Strategies, powered by Amplified.

To join in go straight to the AmpNMS page (shown above). Here’s the link:
http://newmusicstrategies.com/ampnms

Then enter your name to join the chat and press play on the live streaming video. The rest will be entirely self-explanatory. See you at 4pm UK time and again at 8pm UK time today (Tuesday) and tomorrow.

Here at New Music Strategies, we’re bored with the same old conversations about whether or not the internet is a good thing for musicians and for music. It’s a brilliant thing for music. Best thing that’s happened to music since microphones. So now what?

Well, for the next two days here at New Music Strategies we’re teaming up with the Amplified crew to bring you an online music industry knowledge event unlike any you’ve experienced before. We call it AmpNMS.

It’s about music entrepreneurship. It’s about your relationship with fans. It’s about underground music scenes. It’s about technology.

It’s live, it’s online, it’s totally free, and it’s completely interactive.

We’re not going to talk at you and expect you to sit there and just listen. We want to talk with you. We want to hear your ideas. And we’re not just going to retread the same old territory. It’ll be fresh, intelligent, interesting and challenging.

It’s New Music Strategies, Amplified.

The way it works
There’ll be four sessions over two days – one at 4pm UK time, the other at 8pm. Each starts with a short recorded video provocation (about 10 minutes – sometimes more, sometimes less), followed by a live online discussion with the AmpNMS team – and you. Each session will take about an hour in total, give or take. And at the end of each session, we’ll archive everything everyone said so it can be found later.

It’s happening on Tuesday and Wednesday this week. Or, depending on your timezone, today and tomorrow.

The hashtag for the event is #ampnms. Keep an eye out for it – and we’ll see you here.

Here’s the schedule:

Tuesday 21st June
UK 4pm (Pacific 8am | Mountain 9am | Central 10am | Eastern 11am)

Session 1: Music Enterprise
Nick Moreton from UK independent label Brave or Invincible Records talks about music entrepreneurship and sustainability.

Tuesday 21st June
UK 8pm (Pacific 12pm | Mountain 1pm | Central 2pm | Eastern 3pm)

Session 2: Making Friends With Fans
Academic and author Nancy Baym explains friendship, social media and the ways in which artists and fans build relationships online and off.

Wednesday 22nd June
UK 4pm (Pacific 8am | Mountain 9am | Central 10am | Eastern 11am)

Session 3: Underground Music Scenes
Music journalist Joe Muggs draws lessons for all makers of independent music from the underground dance and electronic music scenes.

Wednesday 22nd June
UK 8pm (Pacific 12pm | Mountain 1pm | Central 2pm | Eastern 3pm)

Session 4: Music and technology
Jesse von Doom from Cash Music talks open source technology and how code can help musicians.