If you’ve never seen it, that’s Roy and Moss from The IT Crowd with what should actually be your first step in any computing problem: the unexpected reboot, AKA ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’. The Roy Ploy.

I’ve been struggling with a computer issue all week. I use an Airport Express to stream music wirelessly to my home stereo from my computer. iTunes does it natively, but since I started using Spotify, I’ve also got myself a copy of Airfoil which can send the audio from any application to the Airport Express.

Except when it doesn’t.

I scoured the internet looking for possible solutions. I upgraded the firmware on the Airport Express. I hypothesised a networking conflict between iTunes and Airfoil. I returned to factory settings – and I even tried assigning a static IP address.

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Irish artist and writer Tommie Kelly sent me a link to his wonderful web comic Road Crew, and I thought you might be interested. Clearly Tommie has spent time in the company of musicians, studio engineers, and roadies – because the observation is completely spot on.

It’s been going for about a year (I always get things late) and – apart from anything else, it’s really interesting watching his style develop over that time. Musicians can do that too.

I also like the fact that him letting me read his webcomic online leads me to want to buy the collectible and scarce physical product. Musicians can do that too.

Likewise the ‘donate and receive digital merchandise’ thing he’s doing. You could do that as well.

Smart and talented. Good mix. Enjoy.

I love the music business. I think musicians are great. I believe they do amazing things that are richly deserving of great rewards, the lot of them. I think it’s appropriate that everyone gets whatever they deserve. It’s a hard world, a hard way to make a living and times are tricky.

As I’ve often said, most musicians spend more time training for their career than most brain surgeons – and most of them end up earning less than most supermarket checkout operators. And that’s both significant and important.

But the establishment and announcement of the Featured Artists Coalition over this past week or so has made me a bit cross.

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Here’s a repost of something I put up on my private posterous account and also twittered about. I had such a fantastic reaction to it (both online and off) that I thought it was worth posting up here ‘for real’ on New Music Strategies.

As well as my seminars, teaching and writing, I do a fair bit of consultancy for independent musicians and music businesses. That involves general music marketing advice, social media strategy, website advice, brainstorming, online PR and so on.

I have a day rate, a half day rate and an hourly rate. Travel and accommodation’s on top of that. But the number of independent musicians, bands, record labels, music retailers, promoters, distributors and producers that can afford proper ‘consultancy’ is small to start with – and dwindling in the current economic climate.

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