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.