New Music Strategies Manifesto

Repost from Andrew Dubber

01. The music industry has not changed. It is changing.One of the biggest mistakes music businesses make when trying to adapt to the online environment is to acknowledge the changes that have happened online and then set about adapting to accommodate those changes. In fact, those changes are still underway, and it is a process of navigation, not a process of conversion from an old model to a new one. By the time you have adapted you will be obsolete again. Develop a strategy for keeping up.

02. There is no music industry. There are music industries.The music business is an overlapping collection of distinct forms that range from music production to promotion, manufacture to PA hire, publishing to management, retail to education. When you read of a technology 'killing' the music industry, your bullshit detectors should go off and alarms should sound.

03. The word 'unsigned' should be banned.'Unsigned' has long been used by the record business as a derogatory term to describe artists that are not good enough to be offered a record contract. It suggests that there are successes (those who are 'signed') and failures (those who are not). These days, we realise there are significant benefits to be had in independence — and that it is possible to be a successful independent artist. It is still usually necessary to engage professional services, but it is not necessary to be indentured to a major label in order to enjoy a sustainable career in music. Understanding of new technologies is typically a key factor in this independence.

04. It is better to ask forgiveness than permission.Innovation often requires risk — and yet we live in the most risk-averse of times. Major corporate organisations lock down culture by having an automatic default refusal of any request to appropriate works and reinterpret, recast or reinvent them in new ways — and yet this is the single most natural way for human beings to create. Despite what these large institutions would prefer to have you believe, most often it is better to keep a sense of scale about these things and press ahead. While you may get hit with a multimillion dollar lawsuit, you might also get hit by a falling satellite whilst holding a couple of winning lottery tickets. If someone rightly asks you to stop infringing on their works, then do so politely. But it is more important that you create culture, than it is that they restrict it.

05. Convergence is a myth.'Convergence' is an example of a way of discussing new online technologies by reducing them to a single idea without understanding them in any depth at all. In fact, convergence is the least common effect of digital technologies. A moment's reflection will come up with examples of new technologies that are neither interoperable nor the equal meeting of several older technologies. Video broadcasts on mobile devices are not similar experiences to watching television, and nor are they in any way connected with what we understand as the social practice of telephone use. Take a step back and consider new technologies for what they really are — and then you'll be able to have useful and applicable insights.

06. Innovation requires open systems.The open source software community has it right: innovation comes from encouraging people to take things apart and put them back together in new ways. America's Digital Millennium Copyright Act is profoundly anti-creative, as is any national intellectual property legislation that specifically prohibits reverse engineering. So is DRM for that matter. Leave aside for a moment the fact that these laws make criminals of half of the otherwise law-abiding population, closed systems only benefit the short term financial security of multinational corporations — and not the short or long term interests of human beings and their societies.

07. Copyright is important — and broken.Music industries are, in large part, organised around the exploitation of creative works that are the private assets of the creators of those works — and rightly so. However, the laws that govern how those assets are administered were originally created for the sole purpose of incentivising and rewarding creativity for the benefit and advancement of society. They are not a natural right — they are a property right. As the media environment shifts, the laws need to be amended to reflect the practices and requirements of a healthy and creative society. This has not happened in the Internet age, and the existing copyright laws need to be entirely scrapped and redrafted in the light of those first principles.

08. The internet is like electricity.The World Wide Web is not the internet. It is merely one appliance that plugs into the internet — like email clients, instant messaging platforms and Voice-over-IP software. Not all of the appliances we could plug into the internet have yet been invented, and this is a fertile area for innovation that will benefit the music industries. At present many music businesses are attempting to dry their hair with a toaster, which kind of works — but it's not ideal. What they really should be doing is collaborating with technologists to invent the hairdryer.

09. What's good for consumers is good for business.This is just true of business, fullstop. You want capitalism? Then play by its rules. Nobody ever made money by stopping people from doing what they want to do. You make money by helping people do what they want to do — and by adding value to that process.

10. Technologies are opportunities, not causes.Technological determinism is the idea that we are at the mercy of our technologies. We shape them, and they, in turn, shape us (to borrow from McLuhan). But technologies are not things that happen to us. Media are environments — and we can adapt to those environments in deliberate ways. When the mother bird kicks you out of the nest, there's no point in trying to walk more furiously, cursing the ground for its rapid approach. You have wings — it's time to start flapping them.