This is the audio recording of the panel session I chaired at Un-Convention in Manchester last month. It was about music that falls outside the indie rock band tradition you’d normally expect represented at these sorts of events. I wanted to know if there were any lessons that could be drawn from outside the margins.

Some really amazing and insightful stuff from Stef Lewandowski, Steve Lawson, Amran Ellahi, Abigail Seabrook, and Caroline Churchill.

I actually posted this on my personal blog first, which is kind of telling. I think of these people as my friends, so that’s where it seemed to make sense. But then, of course, I realised (duh…) that it might be of interest to the sort of people who read New Music Strategies.

Hope you find it helpful and interesting.

You can listen to all of the panel sessions at the Un-Convention Soundcloud page… and you can follow the panellists (other than Abi, who I can’t find) on Twitter:

Stef Lewandowski: @stef
Steve Lawson: @solobasssteve
Amran Ellahi: @aashiqalrasul
Caroline Churchill:@carosnatch

and of course, I’m @dubber.

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Outside the Box at Un-Convention

Martin Atkins, drummer from Public Image, Killing Joke and Nine Inch Nails wrote a book called Tour Smart. He does a good bit of public speaking, and we’re on the same wavelength about a lot of stuff. In fact, people have described him to me as “New Music Strategies with swearing.”

He was on a panel at Un-Convention and I grabbed him for a quick moment for a chat. I put him on the spot a bit, but got him to do a top 5 Tour Smart tips.

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Tour Smart Top 5

Un-Convention Salford was, of course, a great experience. All the more so because it brought together some of my favourite people from all over.

In fact – there were so many cool people at Un-Convention, it was hard to get around them all and spend as much time as I’d like to with each of them.

One of the people I was lucky enough to get to spend a reasonable amount of time with was Steve Lawson (otherwise known as SoloBassSteve). He’d been on my ‘Outside the Box‘ panel – which was amazing, entirely because of the brilliant insight of the amazing people on the panel (I was merely moderating – they provided all the awesome).

After lunch today, he grabbed my Flip camera and turned it on me for my impromptu roundup of the weekend.

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Un-Convention roundup

I’m in Manchester at a music industry conference called Un-Convention. It’s one of those events where you know quite a few of the people involved, and the ones you don’t, you get to know quite quickly.

After the last band played last night, a bunch of us went across to the pizzeria / chip shop across the road for a bite to eat. My Belfast cousin Tracy, and Brad from Bolton band Merchandise were talking about Brad’s album and how that was coming along.

‘Nearly done – just have some mastering to do. Finished a video for the first single, but we’re not going to do any more. Don’t have the budget for it.’

‘Let’s make one right now,’ I said.

So, armed with my digital camera (a still camera, actually, but with a video setting) and with the song on Brad’s ipod, we just did a one-take shot. No rehearsal. Not even any discussion about what the two of them would do.

The only real shame was that it’s hard to see what Tracy wrote on the base of the pizza box at the end of the video. It reads ‘You suck.’

An hour later, I went to bed while this was uploading to Vimeo.

Music video budget? We don’t need no music video budget…

Find Merchandise on iTunes.

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Lies Like These

Unconsultancy in Manchester went well, I think. I certainly had a good time meeting some amazing people. Thanks to Andy from Indielab for organising it, taking me out for dinner, and letting me sleep in his house. Brilliant job all round.

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Unconsultancy wrap-up

We’re currently looking for interns at SoundCloud (for both our Berlin and London offices). Being an exciting new startup at the sweet spot between the music and web industry we’ve had plenty of interest. As an employer, sifting through a lot of applications and CV’s can be quite an arduous process. What really struck me was the wild variance in the standard of applications. Some stick out instantly whilst others don’t even make it past a 30 second skim read.

So I wanted to share some thoughts on what companies like SoundCloud are ‘really’ looking for nowadays and hopefully provide some useful tips on how you can improve your chances if you’re one of the thousands of people looking to make their first steps into the digital music industry.

1) Understand what you’re applying for

It’s going to really help if you have fully researched the company, signed up for an account (if it’s a web service) or checked out their music (if it’s a label). Make sure you write a good cover note explaining where you saw the position advertised, why you’re excited about the company and explain succintly why you think you have the skills to do the job advertised.

It’s important to describe very clearly what value you can bring to that company. Do you have an extensive network of potential users or fans? Are you incredibly passionate about what the company does? Do you spend a lot of time online?

Make sure you do this directly in the body of your initial email, don’t just send a short message with a cover letter and CV attached. At the best it’s going to take me 30 seconds to click on the document and load each document before I get my first impression of you. At worst I’m not going to open your documents because I’m in a hurry and have moved on to the next application.

Oh and don’t be afraid to use a little flattery. When I’m trawling through a batch of applications it’s always nice to hear some positive feedback.

2) Personalise your application

It’s extremely important that you personalise the application. If your initial email looks like it is a template that you’ve sent to five other companies then you’re unlikely to be an outstanding candidate. And you might be surprised by the number of people who forget to fill in the personalised bits. If your cover letter still contains an [insert company name here] then I’m reaching for the delete button immediately (yes it has happened!).

It’s not just the cover letter that you should tailor however. Make sure you emphasise the most relevant skills and experience in your CV depending on the nature of the role that you are applying for. The skills that a live promoter is looking for will probably be completely different to those required by a digital music service like SoundCloud for example.

And I shouldn’t even need to mention it but check and double check your spelling. Most employers can’t stand bad spelling. It won’t necessarily lose you the gig but it’s lazy and shows a lack of attention to detail.

3) Get on LinkedIn

If your CV is not online in some form then you’re limiting your opportunities. A .doc file with some bold headers and bullet points is just not going to cut it any more. At SoundCloud we barely even use Word documents in our organisation, so don’t expect to get a job off the back of one. (Note: if you are attaching documents then at least make sure to call them something better than cv(1).doc)

There are many different ways to present your resume online, but by far the best way currently is to use LinkedIn. Make sure you’ve added as much information as possible, include a photo and have at least two recommendations. If you haven’t worked before then ask a tutor or someone else who can vouch for your reliability or eagerness to learn.

4) Establish your own online presence

The only thing that trumps LinkedIn is to have a personal URL eg. http://insertyournamehere.com which provides links to your LinkedIn and any other relevant online presences or life streams that will be relevant to prospective employees. If the .com has already been taken then think about getting the .me (or similar). Sites like Godaddy and Easyspace make it very easy to search and buy your site. But if you don’t have the inclination then there are sites that you can use to achieve the same results, eg. Chi.mp or Google Profiles.

Don’t be shy, and remember, you can’t hide. I will be googling your name in any case so it’s better to direct me to the information that you want me to know about than let me stumble across some drunken photos on somebody else’s Myspace.

5) Start a blog

This is subtly different to the tip above. I don’t just want to find out who you are. I want to find out what you’re passionate about. It’s more important than ever to establish your own personal brand online. If you’re applying for a job with a live promoter then they’re probably going to want to see you blogging about your favourite bands, what gigs you’ve been to, your thoughts on last year’s festivals or your take on the price of tickets. If you’re applying for a job at SoundCloud, I want to see that you’re passionate about music, are using a SoundCloud dropbox, have embedded some music using our player and maybe you’re blogging about the future of the music industry or the latest mashups that you like. Of course, it could be anything, but you get the idea. It might take a couple hours out of each week, but this is an investment in your future, so go do it!

Again it is extremely easy nowadays to setup a blog (I would recommend using Wordpress), but if you’re looking for a slightly more lightweight alternative then why not start a tumblelog (eg. Tumblr, Posterous, Soup.io) where you can quickly and simply post interesting news, videos or music you’ve discovered.

6) Tell me what music you like

Okay, so this is pretty obvious right? Well you’d be surprised at how many candidates don’t mention what music they’re into. Of course you shouldn’t over-do it. If you’re only into death-metal, it’s quite likely that your employer isn’t. Or if you rave on about how much you DJ and go clubbing then I’m going to wonder how much work you’re likely to do on a Monday morning. However, if you are a DJ or in a band, then that’s awesome and you should tell me more about it, what your SoundCloud username is and where I can see all your flyers. I even had one candidate who sent in a video showreel they’d made of themselves. I was suitably impressed.

7) Location, Location, Location!

In the UK, a lot of music industry jobs are going to be based in London. Be prepared to travel if you’re not close. If it’s just an internship or a temporary position then this shouldn’t be too much of a hardship and the company should be willing to cover expenses. If nothing else, you’ll get good experience of city life and have an opportunity to see if you’re cut out for commuting or not.

But remember if you’re not able to travel then it might be worth applying in any case. You might not get the position but more and more companies (ourselves included) are open to having staff that telecommute or work remotely. Maybe you can offer to carry out some specific tasks online such as replying to forum topics or researching potential new customers. It might not be as rewarding as being in the office but at least you will learn a little bit about how the company operates and get some experience to put on your CV for the next job that you apply for.

Remember that your location might actually be an advantage. I have had two jobs previously myself where the rest of the company has been based in another country. I was able to grow their business in the UK and take meetings with important contacts and clients in London. If you’re able to speak a foreign language then you might be able to generate new business in local markets and translate documents or even whole websites.

Now go make it happen!

Hopefully these seven tips will be of some help to you when you’re applying for your next job. But please, whatever you do, don’t just sit around waiting for the next job to come along. Perhaps the biggest piece of advice I can give is just to get out there, start hustling and make your own opportunities. Network, find your tribe and get in touch directly with companies that you’re passionate about. And if you can prove yourself before a position even becomes available then you might not even have to make that application in the first place!

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Applying for your first job in the music industry – 7 tips

My music industry conference calendar highlight of the year is rapidly approaching. It’s a small, affordable, independent and DIY music conference and mini-festival held in Salford. Follow the link below for a 15% discount.

Un-Convention 2009 is a not for profit grassroots led music conference for DIY and Independent music makers and companies. Born in Manchester in 2008 as an alternative to the more mainstream In The City event, it has already inspired Un-Conventions in Belfast and Swansea and future events in Glasgow, London, Barcelona and Reykjavík. This year’s UK national event in Salford will have a range of key musicians, bands and industry personnel in attendance.

This year’s panelists include Marin Elbourne (Glastonbury), Crispin Parry (British Underground), Andrew Dubber (New Music Strategies – that would be me then), Al Farquhar (Modern Art Management), Peter Hook (New Order), Liam Frost, Ashley Beedle (X-Press2), Jo Good (XFM/MTV), Simon Aldridge (BMI) and John Robb – plus many, many more.

In addition to panels and workshops Un-Convention presents the best new live talent, across genres, from all over the country. Un-Convention is not an industry showcase – more a celebration of talent below the mass media radar. Artists will perform during daytime acoustic sessions and over three nights of gigs.

Un-Convention 2009 bands include: I Am Kloot, Everything Everything, Kyte, The Loose Salute, Magic Arm, Kasms, Arthur Delaney, Gallops, Sisters of Transistors, The Tombots, Arch Nazards, Fangs, Jamie Finlay, Withered Hand, Louis Barabbas and the Bedlam 6, John Smith, Jake Flowers, Jesca Hoop + Lil’Fee (The Whip) DJ Set.

There will also be BBQs in the graveyard on Friday and Saturday served by Wild At Heart. I also hear there may be cake.

Tickets start at just £7.50. To book, visit the Eventbrite page and enter this code: UNCON019283 (valid until Friday 29th May, 2009).

Look forward to seeing you there.

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See you at Un-Convention

The Auckland War Memorial Museum is one of my favourite places in the world. It’s an amazing building full of everything you’d like a museum to be. Interesting and engaging, but at the same time hushed, marbled and reverent.

And while it’s appropriately austere, it’s also forward-looking. They’ve recently had a major refurbishment, introduced some really clever digital and interactive features, but without turning it into some sort of crass, multimedia theme park.

As far as I’m concerned, they’ve pretty much struck the balance about right – and the last time I was back in NZ, I was delighted to be able to go to whole new sections of the museum in their new extension.

But the reason I’m talking about this here on New Music Strategies is that they’ve done something really clever that I’d love to see replicated in other ways elsewhere. Perhaps you agree.

My museum

Image courtesy Auckland War Memorial Museum

Now, of course – I have a special affinity for this place. To a large extent, it’s my own culture and heritage in that building. Before we moved to the UK, I lived just a couple of minutes walk away, and I used to cycle past this site every day as I rode with my son Jake to his primary school.

But even if you don’t have the same connection, there’s a lesson here.

Auckland Museum have collaborated with some New Zealand musicians to create a series of soundtracks for the different sections of the museum, and called it Sonic Museum.

Music for spaces
Popular dub artist Tiki Taane has brilliantly mixed contemporary and ancient themes for the Maori Court; electronic jazzer Nathan Haines evokes the undersea experience for the Oceans Gallery; songwriter Don McGlashan’s soundscape for the Origins Gallery is beautiful; Rachel Shearer’s Journey from the Centre of the Earth is an amazing and brain-altering piece of sonic art; and Phil Dadson is, as ever, a marvel.

And so on.

It’s clever stuff – a beautiful record. But it’s designed to be listened to on headphones as a part of the experience of the museum itself.

Now, of course, this is not the only museum in the world. Nor are museums the only sort of public spaces that would work well with this kind of treatment. You may be able to think of ways to connect with something meaningful in your own town.

But go have a look, and if you’re inclined – download and have a listen. It’s really brilliant stuff.

Maybe it’ll inspire you to think of other uses and other avenues for the music that you make.

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Sonic Museum

A quick round of applause, please, for the Herculean live-blogging efforts of Mr Steve Lawson.

Steve came along as an invited guest to today’s Fresh on the Net seminar for London Songwriters Week and captured the whole thing – Tom Robinson and I presenting, the thoughts of the crowd and the mood of the day.

He tweeted, blogged, videoed and even AudioBoo‘d.

Like this:

Go read / watch / listen to Steve’s whole account of what was an exceptionally good afternoon.

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A round of applause

I haven’t asked you to review a site for a while, so I thought I’d get your take on this one. Put It On claims to be a home to the World’s Undiscovered Artists, which, depending on your point of view makes it either sound like a treasure trove, or a creative ghetto.

What do you think? Vibrant community? Showcase opportunity? Admission of defeat?

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Put It On

This is a follow-up post after yesterday’s piece about who you should send promos to. While we’re thinking along those lines, I thought I’d also get you thinking about your other possible points of influence.

It’s a great idea to send free promos to your friends and acquaintances and get a bit of buzz happening that way – but there are other things you can do to start that conversation going in ways that can spread your music and your brand to new audences.

If you’re in a band, and you play the kind of music that’s most likely to be enjoyed by university students, then I’m clearly not your target audience. I’m a 41 year-old guy with a wife and a teenage son. But, if you think about it long enough, you’ll realise that I do happen to come into contact with several hundred of your target audience members on a fairly regular basis…

Not your target audience
This is not about me. And to be honest, I’ve got plenty of t-shirts and lots of music. But there are plenty of people like me who don’t get this kind of stuff.

It’s something that not enough musicians and independent music businesses give any thought to. When you’re sending out promo material, you’re trying to influence people other than the people you’re sending stuff to.

You don’t want journalists to buy your album as much as you want all of their readers to buy your album. You don’t want radio presenters to love your song as much as you want their listeners to love it. The people you send stuff to are not your target audience.

So the logical extension of that is that you want to promote (realistically) in as many places as possible that intersect with your audience. And the less clutter there is in those spaces, the better. That is to say – sending a CD to someone who receives 50 CDs in the mail every day will only get you so far.

Sending a CD to someone who only gets 5 CDs a year – and only then when they make the trip to the last remaining retail outlets or treat themselves to an Amazon splurge – is going to get you noticed and talked about by that person.

What do people do all day?
Because you have to remember: people who like jazz music don’t only go to jazz clubs, listen to jazz radio stations and read jazz magazines (snigger). They go to the dentist (do they have your CD?), stay in hotels, drink wine, belong to clubs, drive cars, work in diverse places and read magazines about everything from gardening to astrophysics.

Students are easy, because they come into contact with so many different people and go to so many different places: bars and cafes, where they not only have soundsystems to play your music, but staff who might wear your merchandise; bookstores, markets and other retailers; and sometimes, students even go to lectures… and not all of their lecturers are Giles from Buffy.

Pick your targets
Once again, choose people who might not ordinarily receive promo copies of things. There’s a level of appropriateness you’ll want to find – sending people things that are irrelevant to their lives is just going to cause them to throw that stuff away.

Just because there are a lot of young Catholics in your town, that doesn’t mean you should be sending your heavy metal promos to nuns.

But how often does a delicatessan worker get a free baseball cap, a highschool guidance counsellor get posters and badges, or a barber shop get free CDs?

I’m not necessarily saying that these are the targets to go for. I’m saying you need to think a little more creatively than simply sending things to the ‘usual places’ (whatever those are).

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I’d wear your t-shirt

As a result of the Humphreys and Keen thing over the past week, I’ve been thinking a fair bit about promos – free copies of albums sent to people in an attempt to find and build an audience – with the end goal of selling some records.

When I ran an independent jazz label back in the late 1990s, conventional wisdom was pretty simple: press 1000 CDs, and send out 100-200 of those copies as promos to influential people with radio shows, television programmes, newspaper columns and so on.

It was a bit of a lottery, and usually your record would either get a cursory mention in passing, or – most often – no mention at all.

2-step theory
Whenever you did get a mention, however, it was cause for celebration. Because we knew that despite the fact that the people who browsed the record review section of the Howick and Pakuranga Times were a reasonably select group, and that probably hardly any of them acted on what they read in any economic sense, there was a principle working in our favour.

The 2-step theory of influence suggests that people would read the review, and even if they did nothing about it, maybe they’d mention it to a few of their friends. And when those friends saw the record in the CD store, they’d recognise the title, think to themselves ‘Oh yeah – I think I’ve heard that’s good’ – and give it a try.

That was the theory we were working with, and we were sticking to it. All the same, you were always far more likely to fall at the first hurdle. I dread to think how many copies we sent out that never even made it to the top of the listening pile.

And that’s the problem when you’re dealing with the traditional tastemakers and gatekeepers – there’s a huge amount of competition for attention, and the whole thing’s a complete lottery.

Planting seeds
But when you’re dealing with 500 copies of vinyl, and an ostensibly limitless supply of digital downloads, it’s time to work with a new theory. You can still play the lottery, of course, but you can also use another metaphor: gardening.

With the Humphreys and Keen record, instead of simply taking a punt on people with massive audiences, we’ve taken the decision to plant a lot of seeds. Conversation, when used well, is a much more effective tool than broadcasting.

I’ve sent promo copies of the album – in its entirety as 320k mp3s, or as full lossless CD-quality files if they prefer – to people that fulfill the following rigorous criteria:

1) I already know and like them personally; and
2) I think might enjoy the record.

Most of these people do not have radio programmes, newspaper columns, or TV shows. Most of them have fewer than 100 friends on Facebook, and many do not have MySpace accounts. Several are on Twitter, but by no means all of them.

These are actual friends and acquaintances. I’ve at least met and chatted with every single one of them. Most of them I’ve had a drink with at some point, and the vast majority of them do not work in media. All of them, I would happily invite into my house.

They’re just good people who like good music.

And you know what’s most different about them? Hardly any of them EVER receive album promos. It’s noteworthy. Remarkable. Something to talk about with their friends.

And it’s that sort of conversation (and the fact that the H&K record is a really marvellous album) that starts buzz.

I’ve asked everyone else directly involved with the record to come up with a list of as many people they know and like who would appreciate the album, so we can send them a download code too.

We have to know them personally, and be able to send them a unique, personalised message that pretty much just says:

“Good to catch up with you on Friday. By the way, I’m working with this record. It’s really great – I think you’ll like it. It’d be really cool if you had a copy. Hope you enjoy it.”

Or (appropriate) words to that effect. And that’s it. Not “please tell everyone” or “here are a few tracks, and if you like it, please buy it”. Just “I really like this, and I think you will too. Here y’go…”

It’s just a theory
Conventional lottery-thinking would see this as madness. If you don’t get the five star Mojo review, the write-up in The Observer or the review slot on a cable TV show, the last people you want to be giving freebies to are your friends. They might end up being the only people in the world who’ll buy the damn thing.

But my theory is that there is virtually no end to the potential market for a really good record. It needs to find people and connect with them, and it has to be out there in the wilderness, outside of your control, in order to do that.

Fortunately, there’s also no end to the number of promo copies you have in stock. In fact, when you do it this way, they’re not ‘promos’ – they’re gifts for friends.

Worst case scenario, people you like will also have an album you love. Brilliant.

Best case scenario, they’ll mention it – or even play it to their friends. It’ll show up in their Last.fm profile. They might do a Facebook status update or send out a tweet. They could put it on in their car while they drive someone somewhere.

I tell you what they’re not going to do: leave it under a pile of other un-listened-to albums that turned up this week and are all competing for their precious attention.

Gardening is harder than the lottery
I should probably mention: it’s hard giving albums away like this. It’s not just a case of simply printing out mailing labels from a database of press contacts, and stuffing CDs in envelopes.

It’s about going through your personal contacts (real, proper, personal friends – not ‘MySpace friends’), thinking about the people involved, and whether they would actually appreciate the record.

Then it’s about contacting them in their preferred manner – mine were mostly emails and Facebook messages – with the digital equivalent of a hand-written note that says ‘I thought of you for this – and here’s why’.

But I suspect, like gardening, the results are worth the effort. That’s not to say you shouldn’t still do the lottery thing – but I think that’s a game with diminishing returns.

Organic, naturally-occurring word-of-mouth recommendation is an incredibly powerful thing – especially when amplified exponentially online.

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Who to send promos to

You could reasonably argue that there have been better times to get into music retail. All the same, I’ve taken a very small step towards that this week on behalf of some New Zealand friends of mine who have recorded my favourite album of the past five years: The Overflow by Humphreys and Keen.

I was looking for a way to sell vinyl from my site. My friend (and fellow H&K fan) Owen had arranged a gorgeous limited edition vinyl pressing, cut at Abbey Rd studios in London, and I enthusiastically offered to do the online retail.

The sale of digital downloads was no problem whatsoever, because of Bandcamp. And yes, I’m an evangelist for Bandcamp – but with very good reason. It’s brilliant (and I’m on their board of advisors, if you need the disclaimer).

But having set up a physical online retail store in a completely different realm, I know that it’s not something to be taken lightly. It can be a mammoth task. But I have just one album to sell – and I wanted to do it from my personal website. I’m not building HMV or Tower Records here.

Plugging in the shop
The solution I went for, coincidentally, is another product of my homeland. Instinct software have created WP-ecommerce, which is a free plugin for Wordpress. I knew people who’d had difficulties with it in the past, and I’m aware of the criticism that it gets as a buggy, bloated and slow bit of code – but I thought it was worth a shot.

After all – free.

So I installed it, and I admit there was a bit of setup and tweaking required, but perhaps precisely because I’m only selling the one physical item, I’m not using any fancy features and there’s nothing complicated to be done – it seems to work fine.

I’ve even sold a record. Sent off the free download code from Bandcamp too, so my shopper could listen to the album in full lossless quality while he waits for the vinyl to turn up. All good.

There are alternatives to WP ecommerce, of course. Of the ones I’ve encountered – Shopp looks pretty great. Costs a little, but probably well worth it if you’re going to be selling physical products, merchandise and so on.

Don’t take my advice
There’s some really great discussion going on over at Music Think Tank about how to sell music from your own website and engage fans outside the walls of MySpace.

Eric Herbert makes a convincing case for owning your data, controlling your own sales and tracking your stats.

I break several of Eric’s rules (though like him, I’m a complete fan of Wordpress). I’m not that excited about my stats, and although I have Google Analytics installed, I haven’t looked at it for a year or more. But then I’m doing something quite different here, and the core of his advice is really solid.

Go read it.

Retail riches await
I’m not going to make a fortune selling the wonderful Humphreys and Keen record. I guess that’s mostly because I’m not taking a cut. Instead, I’m passing the full £15 on vinyl sales on back to the guys.

My shop-keeping friends would tell me I’m doing it wrong.

But this is an important and meaningful record for me, and the guys aren’t really in a position to be doing it themselves (one of them’s at sea for a good six months of the year, for a kickoff…). And I quite like the idea of fans stepping in and doing stuff like this to be helpful. We’re not talking millions here, after all.

But then getting into music retail’s probably not the greatest get-rich quick scheme going these days anyway…

Shameless plug
I’d love you to at least hear The Overflow. It’s one of those records that I happen to think improves people’s lives just a little bit. Perhaps that’s just me and the associations I have with the sound of my homeland.

You can listen to the whole album streaming from my personal site where I’m selling the vinyl, on their Bandcamp page – and, of course, at the top of this post.

And feel free to have a play with the look and feel of the shopping cart thing. I’m pretty impressed with it for a free plugin.

Love to hear your thoughts… and go get your stuff on Bandcamp already, would you?

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Getting into retail

I have a new page here on New Music Strategies, which outlines some of the ways I can help musicians, and independent music businesses. Naturally, I’ve called it my Help page.

I was trying to think of a suitable picture to put at the top of that page, and I had a song stuck in my head. So I went to YouTube, found the video clip and embedded that straight in there.

But then I started to worry. Here I was using a song that was still under copyright on a page that is, for all intents and purposes, entirely commercial. In a way, I’m using the song a bit like a jingle. That can’t be right, can it?

Easier to ask forgiveness than permission
I gave this a good deal of thought, and I asked some very naive questions of a bunch of real experts.

Obviously, an embedded YouTube video has been uploaded by someone who has agreed to the terms and conditions of the site. They have undertaken that they have permission to do so.

The subsequent use of that clip – whether on a personal blog or a page specifically generated to drum up a bit of business (as mine clearly is), is apparently irrelevant to the story.

All the same, I’ve endeavoured to ask permission. And it’s not easy. The song in question is not ‘Help’ by the Beatles, as above. That’s just there to make a point (and I wonder how that got past EMI’s Digital Prevention Department).

The song I’m using is ‘I Can Help‘ by Billy Swan.

And it’s not even the original released recording, but a shorter, live acoustic version from a cable TV show in the late 1990s. Seemingly the video has been uploaded by that show’s production team.

So through the show’s website, I tracked down an email address, and sent a message asking if there was a way to get in touch with the composer and performers to secure their permission to use the song.

I’ve not heard anything back yet – and I am assured by people whose opinions I have no reason to doubt that it’s more than fine simply to go ahead – but of course, if the producers have or know of any reason not to use the song in that way, I’d be delighted to remove the link and offer my apologies.

There’s a serious point
However, this only serves to demonstrate the lack of clarity and the failure of contemporary rules to reflect, enable or inform contemporary practice.

Making the video available for embedding on YouTube theoretically gives me permission to go ahead and put that video wherever I like. And the onus is not, in this instance, on me to check to see whether it’s okay to do that.

And yet we live in a world where sites can be shut down, fined millions and its owners thrown in jail merely for providing links to places where other people have made content available. Apart from the fact that this seems entirely wrong and nonsensical – it’s just generally confusing.

And as a result, people are either reluctant to do anything at all with music – or they are radicalised into an active anti-copyright position and make a point of breaking even the rules they do understand.

And that’s a shame – because it means that none of this will ever really work properly for anyone (other than some Scandinavian lawyers). Especially if the rules on all of this stuff remain baffling, anti-consumer and geared towards prevention and lockdown rather than openness and usability.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Copyright is important – but it’s broken. It won’t be fixed until we throw away the old rules and start again from first principles. What, exactly, are we trying to achieve here and for whom?

There’s a less serious point
If you feel you’re a bit stuck in your music career, need a bit of advice with your music business, or need some help – and you think I may be able to assist – then take a look and see if my help page is of any use to you.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Anyone here actually know Billy Swan? It’d be great to get his take on this – and his clear opinion as to whether he’s cool with me using the song in this way – regardless of what the rules say one way or another.

That’s what matters more to me, to be honest.

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Help

I give a lot of speeches, presentations and talks at music industry events and in educational institutions. I’ll generally talk about whatever I’m asked to talk about, or whatever I happen to think is specific and relevant to the group of people I’m talking to.

Quite often, I’ll rewrite my speech on the day, as I get a clearer idea of who my audience is and what their specific concerns are. But every now and then, I get passionate enough about something to prepare a presentation in search of an audience.

I’ve pitched this to Popkomm, and I’ll pretty much say this to whoever’s listening. This is important, and it’s urgent.

Music As Culture

It’s no surprise to anyone that the music industries are struggling in the digital age. Faced with a filesharing populace, an incredible array of media choices, a tough economic climate, and plenty of other things for people to spend money on, it can be pretty tight for a lot of people in the industries.

Recent research demonstrates a link from openness and inclusion to massive untapped potential for all kinds of businesses. Consumers have a bigger say in the fate of the industries than ever before – and while they recognise the commercial aspects of music business, they do not accept that old systems of control are relevant to them anymore.

By empowering consumers, opening access to archives and for scholarship, enriching the public domain, according popular music the same cultural status as classical and folk musics, and treating audiences as part of the music process (rather than as merely passive
consumers), the society we live in is a much richer and vibrant one.

It’s good for culture, it’s good for the economy, it invigorates local scenes, it’s a lifeline for artists – and it’s great for business.

In fact, it might just be what saves the music industries.

We’re also going to be discussing this very issue at a public debate hosted by Un-Convention in Salford on Friday, June 5th. Be great to see you there.

Get in touch

Is this something you want expressed at your upcoming event or conference? Do you teach a class that could stand to hear something along these lines? Want me to come and speak at your organisation or festival?

Give me a shout – I’d love to hear from you.

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My latest speech. Soon.

Andy from Indielab tells me that the Manchester Un-Consultancy is all systems go.

An un-consultancy is a bit like a normal consultancy, but more grass-rootsy. A while back, I wrote a blog post that explains the origins of un-consultancies and the idea behind them.

Essentially, you get lots of good and targeted advice that’ll help you get to the next stage of your music business career – but as consultancy can sometimes be on the expensive side for independent artists and small businesses, this is a way to share that cost, but still get that one-on-one, face-to-face help.

If you’re going to be anywhere near the city on May 30th, it’d be really great to see you.

Unconsultancy explained
In essence, how it works is I make everything I do completely targeted to the needs of the people there. I start out by talking about the issues facing the group as a whole, and try to pick out some common threads.

We’ll talk through these issues – in marketing, branding, online and social media, business strategy, PR, revenue streams, etc – and discuss the key issues in independent music in a more general sense. Then I’ll take you through a kind of DIY consultancy system so everyone there can help each other out with that – while I work individually with each person for half an hour or so.

It’s £30 for the day, there are a limited number of places, and lunch, tea and coffee are all being laid on by the nice Indielab people.

And, of course, I hope you’ll consider sticking around town, because just a few days later, the wonderful Un-Convention is taking place.

Organise your own unconsultancy
Since Manchester is just a couple of hours up the road for me, this isn’t the full ’sleepover’ unconsultancy. Those can be arranged.

If you want me to come to your town, and you live a little further away (or even a whole lot further away), get in touch and we can talk about how we can make that happen.

I’m looking at the possibility of putting a small North American tour together. The expensive bit is getting from the UK to the US, but if I split that cost over several unconsultancies, and I can sleep on couches as I move from town to town, I’m sure we can make the whole thing really affordable for everyone involved.

If you’d like to be part of that, or want to get a bunch of people together in your area – give me a shout.

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Un-Consultancy in Manchester

I met up with Soundcloud’s UK manager, Dave Haynes earlier today. He was celebrating a venture capital investment of 2.5 million euros, announced today.

I talked to him about how independent music can make the most of the service.

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Soundcloud celebrate

I’ve been having conversations today about a ‘non-DRM solution’ to filesharing. This conversation comes up pretty regularly, actually. I’ve now been approached by no less than three companies that would like me to examine, and perhaps endorse their own system.

Each time, it involves watermarking files. The idea is that it is completely invisible (and inaudible) to the listener, but tracks where the mp3 (or some new proprietary audio file) comes from, and in most cases, information about the person who originally bought it.

I’m sorry, but no. That’s not a DRM-free system of anything. That’s Digital Rights Management by definition – only this time it uses surveillance, rather than the more clumsy and obvious ‘reach in and break your computer’ tactic of older TPM (technical protection measure) systems.

It’s just as bad. Probably much worse.

The ‘file sharing is bad’ myth
But before I explain, I should say there’s a questionable presupposition behind the technology: that file sharing is a problem that has to be solved.

I’m not suggesting that there’s been no financial loss to legitimate businesses and even some artists in part, through the use of the technology. To claim otherwise would be naive or ingenuous.

It’s just not the terror that it’s been painted as, by any stretch of the imagination (we’ve had this conversation – and at some length), but it is a factor that needs to be considered when planning your commercial strategy.

However, I’d bet money on the idea that far more artists and record labels have been advantaged by file sharing than have been disadvantaged.

So – rather than ‘how do we solve (ie: either eradicate or earn money from) file-sharing?’ – far more sensible would be to ask: ‘Given file-sharing as part of the reality in which I plan to operate, what should my strategy be?’

The key issues
When you propose watermarking music files as a way of ensuring that rightsholders get paid appropriately for their works, you raise a number of important issues.

* Who gets the information?
* Who pays for the re-encoding?
* What happens to the billions of un-watermarked files circulating?
* What bureaucracy needs to be formed to administer this?
* Will the same checks and balances still be in place 20 years from now?

And so on.

I’m all for artists and labels making money. But ultimately, replacing incompatibility with surveillance is just another way of trying to extend and reinforce a status quo that needs to be radically transformed – not policed and protected.

So – please stop asking me if I’ll lend support to your ‘dream of a DRM-free system that ensures that rightsholders get rewarded while honest people can do what they want to with their music’.

I applaud what I assume are your good intentions – but what you’re proposing is at best wrong-headed and entirely impractical – and, at worst, outright sinister.

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Like DRM, only sinister-er?

Of course, one of the conflicting things about conferences like Is This It is the fact that while cognitively you may be at odds with a lot of the information and opinions being spread around by some of the more conservative and old-school thinkers that seem to dominate the proceedings during the day – you do get to meet some amazing and very cool people.

One of the reasons that Is This It was so great for me was exactly that intersection between people, around half of whom were not too familiar with Helsinki – and so the whole thing had an air of discovery and adventure about it as well.

Forced to sit in groups of 10 and discuss things at length, you make some great connections with people you may not have considered approaching and talking to. And yet, precisely as a result of being a bit chatty and conspicuous, I’ve been asked to guest lecture at one or two Finnish universities, including the Sibelius Academy – and present at a couple of conferences. Just as a result of just a few conversations at Is This It.

Given that travelling and giving talks is my equivalent of going on tour and doing concerts, this is a brilliant result. And if there’s any lesson to be learned here – it’s about serendipity.

So I’m not going to dwell and go on and on about the stuff that infuriated me at Is This It. There really doesn’t seem much point. But since you ask…

My top five moments of idiocy

1) It was seriously suggested that a way to sell records and concert tickets might be to get an attractive woman to take an item of clothing off after every song (announced triumphantly as if the genius had invented striptease).

2) Careful consideration was given to the notion that bands should change themselves and what they do in order to adapt to the brands they get to represent (can just see it now: “dump your rainforest ethics and kick all that health nonsense – we just signed to a fast food chain and a cigarette brand!”).

3) It was declared that the answer to everyone’s problems might be a computer that told us who the most popular bands on MySpace were (seriously).

4) A woman complained bitterly that while the band she managed sold a great many records and were always able to sell out their stadium concerts, they were also the most illegally downloaded act in Finland, which “is a real problem” (one I’m sure you wish you have). Not only that – but when I suggested they could actually capitalise on that brilliant opportunity, she replied, “No – we tried and it didn’t work.”

5) And in response to my provocation that if music was treated a bit more like sport, schools might be able to provide students with decent equipment and a place to play – the next logical leap was “Yeah – and we could have cheerleaders at concerts…”

The list is long – but it’s not endless.

My litany of complaints
If you’re interested, most of it was documented in my twitter stream – and given the fact that I was actually moved to get up on stage and make a pointed comment about the recurring misogyny and homophobia, as well as the worrying desire to learn lessons in psychology from the gambling industry and seek to replace fandom and enjoyment with addiction and surveillance – you get the idea that there were some pretty outrageous stuff being pushed forward in the interests of perpetuating the industry.

The central message of some of the best keynote speeches were entirely misunderstood: Mika Sarimo’s (Bob Helsinki) brilliant ‘art supermarket’ project was presented as a fabulously creative response to a brief, but was interpreted as an instruction to ‘dumb it down where possible’.

But there were also fascinating discussions to be had and interesting points of view to be heard.

Because that’s not what you focus on
And even if nobody around me had heard the good messages, I learned an awful lot at Is This It – and I guess that’s the point of these things.

I discovered new music that I love (as well as some that didn’t do anything for me at all).

I met people I’m convinced (and delighted) will be friends and colleagues for years to come, and strengthened some existing friendships. I’m already working on a major project with some of the people I spoke to there, I’ll be brainstorming new ideas with some others – and I’ll be visiting distilleries in the Scottish Highlands with yet more…

Ruth, Mike, Olaf, Tak, Martin, Laura, Sami, John, Jutta, Samuel, Michael, Scott, Cecilia and everyone else whose company I thoroughly enjoyed – including Mika, the driver who brought me to the hotel from the airport, helped me with my few Finnish words, talked about travel and family, and subsequently surprised me by tracking me down and adding me as a friend on Facebook (so honoured – thanks!) – you made Is This It for me, and I really appreciate it.

But most of all, I just took as many opportunities as I could to do the interesting things, meet the interesting people and open myself up to unexpected possibilities. That’s what made this the best conference ever. And it would be my take-away point from all this.

Not – ‘Man, the record industry is stupid’, or ‘My God, we’re all screwed’ – but ‘What’s happening here that I can be a part of?’

When the local custom is to talk shop in the office sauna, there’s no place for English reserve. Get your kit off and whip yourself with a bunch of birch twigs in the scorching heat.

When offered reindeer or elk on a platter – give it a try (vegetarianism notwithstanding) – it’s delicious.

Get lost in a strange city. Visit the local markets. Drink vodka shots in the Leningrad Cowboys’ bar.

When presented with an opportunity – just say kiitos, jump in with both feet – and be bloody grateful.

If there’s one thing that was hammered home to me in what must be one of the most culturally ‘foreign’ places I’ve yet been to (which isn’t saying much, I’ll admit) – it’s that ‘what the hell’ is usually the right answer.

You may not be able to predict the future, but you can certainly give luck a helping hand by making sure you make yourself available to go after any and every opportunity that might come your way.

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Best conference ever. Really. (Part 2)

I spent the past four days at a conference in Helsinki called Is This It. 150-odd music industry people charged with coming up with 100 or more new ideas to invigorate and reinterpret the business. A conference that put music back into the music industry. A place for learning, creativity, networking and genuine reinvention.

I decided to live-blog it via Twitter – and as soon as I started doing so, a pattern began to emerge and I started to have one of the most important, meaningful and eye-opening experiences of my music industry analysis and consultancy career.

Before very long, (and without a shred of sarcasm or cynicism on my part meant here at all) Is This It turned into my best conference ever – and I’m so genuinely grateful to the organisers for holding it. Not just because it was inspirational (and in truth, going back over my notes, quite a lot of it was) – but also because so much of it was just so utterly and unbelievably horrifying.

There were, for me, three main positive messages from three of the key speakers. And these were interspersed with such unmitigated bollocks, the people following me on Twitter thought I must have been making it up for comic effect.

Interesting, thought-provoking and practical

The first person to make good sense was Saku Tuominen, a creativity consultant and television producer (yes, you can do both). Here are some of his choice quotes as reported on my Twitter stream:

“Whatever you think the future will be, it will always be something different.”- Buddha

10 years ago – Google beta. No Facebook, no YouTube, no Spotify, no MySpace. How on earth can we predict 10 years from now?

“The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas and throw the bad ones away.” – Linus Pauling

Off to a fantastic start. Coincidentally, I’ve been reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book The Black Swan for the second time on this journey, and some of these themes connected really well. Good advice and all very promising.

Worrying, but forgivable…
Next up, veteran Australian promoter, Michael Chugg endeared himself to the crowd with a hilarious “Morning, wankers!” start to his speech, before dispensing the advice that the internet might be worth paying some attention to.

You see, once, whilst sitting on the toilet, he had encountered a magazine ad for a Sigur Ros tour that only had a URL on it – and not dates or venues.

His response at the time was, and I quote “Who fucked this up?!”

And despite the fact that he managed to shoehorn a disparaging remark about Invercargill in within 3 minutes of starting his speech, the moral of the story was internet = good, and we should seek to tame it, even if it frightens us a little bit.

A little wide of the mark – but he was certainly heading in the right direction there for a bit.

Surely not serious…
Chugg was followed by renowned music industry expert, Korda Marshall late of Warner Records and the man to blame for bringing James Blunt to the attention of the world. Not much I can add here, so I’m just going to lay out some of his gems for your edification:

“What would a record company look like if it was in Blade Runner? Or Logan’s Run?”

“Listen to everything. Make a decision. If you can’t, just toss a coin.”

“In the future, you won’t just be watching one TV, you’ll be watching 15 TVs at a time.”

To be honest, I’d have been appalled at the inane and pointless witterings that this clearly successful and otherwise (I’m assured) intelligent man had tried to pass off as wisdom – had his comments not been utterly eclipsed and rendered mere distracting frivolities by what was to follow.

Hand me a brick

It was the turn of Peter Ruppert from Entertainment Media Research. After inexplicably showing us a still from that scene in Blade where the unsuspecting underground clubbers dance under a shower of blood (I think it was meant to be illustrative of a different message than the more sinister one I took from it), he then went on to explain how music business is a matter of sophisticated Excel spreadsheets, colourful graphs, hit prediction, and metrics.

The graph above, for instance, represents Britney Spears’ music career mapped against some tabloid-worthy events in her life. From this, it seems we can forecast the success (and value) of her subsequent records based on forecasted emotional responses of audiences.

Apologies for the language here – but fuck off.

Words cannot express how much contempt I have for this man’s profession. It’s bad enough that these monsters have screwed radio playlists so completely and utterly. Now they’ve infiltrated A&R.

Attention record labels: this is NOT progress. Anyone who tells you this stuff and shows you these kinds of charts is a liar and charlatan, whether they’re aware of it or not.

Especially when they round it all off with a ham-fisted misquote from the bible.

This is not science. It’s outright bullshit and you should completely ignore it – or if you must listen, then at the very least do completely the opposite of whatever they suggest to you. Most importantly, you must never give them money. It only encourages them.

You’ll note, incidentally, that this particular presentation attempts to completely contradict all of the basic tenets of the first one. You know – creativity, the unpredictability of the real world, genuine surprise and the value of ingenuity.

It all reminds me of the story from The Black Swan, in which, for 1000 days, a turkey’s general well-being and all-round satisfaction with life is mapped on a graph – and on Christmas Eve, he looks at the chart, admires the upward curve and thinks about how wonderful the next day will surely be.

Coffee and a chat
From the keynote presentations, we went on to the round-table discussions. These were a highlight of the conference, and although they were just as rich a vein of blinkered nonsense, old-school protectionism and plain old ignorance of the workings of the new media environment, there were also some real gems, fascinating people and engaging conversations to be had.

The idea was that we’d talk for close to an hour around a theme, prompted by a few questions along the way, and then the group would be tasked with coming up with a bunch of ideas that could then be fed back to the room.

Our first theme was “finding talent”. Here’s a sample of some of the suggestions:

“As soon as you find that a subgenre brand is trending upwards, you should sign an artist in that subgenre…”

“Sign a band whose name is as insulting as possible in as many languages as possible”.

“Hire the kids of A&R people – they’re the best A&R people.”

“Consult a psychic for your next A&R tips.”

And yet – there was some sense amongst all of this. Mike McNally came up with this little gem:

“Hindsight is not research.”

And he’s right. There is actually good research you can do that would help you understand all sorts of things about what’s going on (well, I would say that – I’m a researcher) – but using the past as a measure for predicting the future is not going to work quite the way you might hope.

Falling into the trap
A break, and then a talk from Scott Cohen, Manager of both the Orchard (a digital distribution firm) and The Raveonettes (a band) – who is far more forward thinking than you might expect from the man whose business for the past 10 years has been mostly about selling music downloads as if they were intangible CDs.

Keen at spotting trends, and with all of the big behind-the-scenes insight you might expect from a man in his position, Cohen is a smart guy who can see what’s going on around him. Unfortunately, he falls into the common trap of describing the present, exaggerating an aspect of it, and presenting it as if he’s predicting the future.

His key message was that technology drives history (yes, he’s a determinist). The physical properties of 45rpm records made us like 3-minute pop songs; the storage capacity of a CD expanded albums to 70 minutes in duration, and so on.

But in the future, he predicts, the album will be dead, we’ll only consume individual songs, we won’t download them – they’ll all be in ‘the cloud’ and it’ll all happen on our smartphone.

I’m sorry – but refer previous:

“Whatever you think the future will be, it will always be something different.”- Buddha

10 years ago – Google beta. No Facebook, no YouTube, no Spotify, no MySpace. How on earth can we predict 10 years from now?

Sorry, Scott – love you, man – but you’re wrong. Absolutely, categorically and in every important respect.

I don’t know what ‘right’ is – but the simple fact that you’re calling it like it’s done makes you wrong. Innovation is not linear and we just can’t guess because the right answer isn’t one of the options available to us.

We don’t know what it is we don’t yet know.

The only thing we can absolutely count on is the unknowable, disruptive element and its unexpected consequence.

Part 2 soon. Yep – there’s more. It gets better – and much, much worse. Bur hopefully, you’ll also see why it was so valuable, and also why I enjoyed it so much.

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Best conference ever. Really. (Part 1)