Artists and musicians spend a lot of time communicating with their fan community, whether it be social networks, email, or just the music itself. With some much thought and energy going into fan communication, it funny how little time is actually spend considering the fan’s perspective. In this episodes, we hear from Nancy Baym, an Associate Professor in Communication Studies at the University of Kansas. She is an award-winning teacher on topics including the use of new communication technologies in creating identities, relationships and communities, interpersonal communication, and qualitative research methods. She has spent years studying online fandom to understand what communities like music fans a re really looking for. It might not be exactly what you think.

Sorry I’ve been back to being a slow blogger. Don’t expect any upticks soon as I’m desperately trying to finish a book draft before leaving for summer travels and I’ll be spending the summer bouncing from Europe where I’ll be doing some talks and a PhD course in Denmark to Australia where I’ll be mentoring at the Oxford Internet Institute’s Summer Doctoral Program in Brisbane followed by driving up the eastern coast in a campervan with my two excellent sons. Blogging’s not likely to be on my mind much.

So now the verdict is in, at least in phase one, and they’ve been found guilty with jail time and massive fines to pay if the verdict is upheld.

As someone who’s spent much of the last few years paying way too much attention to the independent music scene in Sweden, and who chanced to meet @brokep when I was going to meet some independent label guys for lunch in Malmö last fall, my feelings are very mixed. He had a sweet smile and was instantly likable. More importantly though, he was hanging out in an office with people running two of my favorite Swedish music labels: Songs I Wish I Had Written and Hybris. Both labels are associated with The Swedish Model, a collective seeking to foster a new future-oriented dialogue about the music industry.

When I interviewed independent Swedish label heads and musicians, every single one of them spoke of downloading as a good thing. They viewed it as an opportunity to reach broader and more international audiences, to increase the number of people into their kind of music, as a chance to build a whole new culture around music. Martin Thörnkvist, head of Songs I Wish, most vocal spokesperson for The Swedish Model (and guy who introduced me to Peter from Pirate Bay), told me he uploads their whole catalogue to Pirate Bay so he can have control over the quality of the recordings people download of their songs. Each spring Labrador Records uploads a sampler full of their singles to Pirate Bay.

It isn’t that these people don’t want to make any money from the music, it’s that they recognize that file sharing is not a choice, but a given. The question is how to use it, not how to stop it.

On the Digital Renaissance blog, Thörnkvist wrote:

Today’s ruling has only one positive aspect. I look forward to the music business investment in new services that were promised when the “copyright issue” is resolved. Up to evidence, out with you on the dance floor and show what you can do. Release control of your catalouges and let the service developers that are the best test their wings, instead of the one that currently can give you the biggest advance.

Of course this is not the end of the juridical process. The appeal will come as fast as it takes to download a torrent. But in my dream world the record, film and computer games companies withdrew their claims and instead spend all their money and creative energy to develop what they are actually best in the world at. Until then, Peter, Fredrik and Gottfrid have my full support in their dreams of a free internet.

Thank you, The Pirate Bay for putting a blowtorch in the ass of those who own 80% of all music ever released. Your work will ultimately lead to the re-recognize value of its core business and the will to sanction better services to restore music as the best provider of emotions.

It hurts when old business models to burst, but in this case the grass is really greener on the other side – not least for musicians and music lovers.

Or as Mike Masnick put it:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t think that most file sharing is legal or right (and I don’t participate in any of it). But, millions of people who know that it’s illegal have absolutely no problem taking part in it, and no “education” campaign or shutting down of a particular site or service is going to stop that. Continuing to pretend it will doesn’t help the industry at all. What helps the industry is to stop denying that this is something that can be stopped legally, and finally moving on to experimenting with business models that work

I don’t think all music should be uploaded and downloaded freely. I am all for investment in music and return on investment in music, and I realize that money is inevitably part of that equation. I also think, though, that the pursuit of money, and sometimes very large amounts of it, has colored the music business in some weird ways so that money is too often taken to be the only kind of investment or reward that can motivate good music. Ultimately, I want the music business to survive, but, like Martin, Mike, and the people I’ve interviewed, that’s only going to happen when everyone accepts that whether they like it or not, whether it’s morally and legally right or not, file sharing is not going to stop.

I love the idea of embracing it. Of seeding the music yourself. I have heard the arguments, but I am not at all convinced that in the end it means fewer copies will sell.

I want more ways for us to pay artists in addition to buying the CD or the downloads. I want scarce goods like fabulous packaging and great bags, shirts, posters, and so on. I want a way to pay every artist what we think their music is worth directly (let them work out the payback for songwriters, producers, financers and other behind-the-scenes people).

Some past posts about Swedish labels and file sharing:

Indie Labels on Sharing, Streaming, and Giving It Away

The Trap of the File Sharing Debate

Music Is All About Money

WornFree is  a t-shirt company with at least one employee who loves this blog. She’s gonna put her t-shirts where her mouth is, or something like that, and give the shirt of your choice to two of you.

WornFree finds late 1960s and 1970s pictures of cool people in rock and roll wearing cool t-shirts, searches down and licenses the rights to those images, and reproduces the shirts.

Normally I wouldn’t do something like this. I like to keep this blog an advertisement/Press Release free zone. But they sent me one even after I told them I wouldn’t write about them just because they sent me a free shirt and I like it enough that I decided it wasn’t for me to turn down a couple of freebies on your behalf. Call me a sellout. Murketing in action.

Also, they must be cool because they included Lester Bangs and in the pricey indie hipster shop in downtown Lawrence, they’ve got three whole shelves of them on display.

So here’s the deal. During the next two weeks, in the comments (or via email if you’re shy), tell us your favorite story involving fans and the internet. I don’t care what kind of fans, I don’t care what kind of internet. tell stories that make us laugh, say “wow,” feel inspired, learn something, demonstrate how NEVER to do things, or otherwise move us.

I’ll pick my two favorites (if there’s only two entries, that’ll be easy!) and get them and WornFree together.

In an open letter to her label, she explains why:

i had to EXPLAIN to the so-called “head of digital media” of roadrunner australia WHAT TWITTER WAS. and his brush-off that “it hasn’t caught on here yet” was ABSURD because the next day i twittered that i was doing an impromptu gathering in a public park and 12 hours later, 150 underage fans - who couldn’t attend the show - showed up to get their records signed.

no manager knew! i didn’t even warn or tell her! no agents! no security! no venue! we were in a fucking public park! life is becoming awesome.

also interesting: i brought a troupe of back-up actors/dancers on the tour (we were only playing 300-1000 seaters) and had no money to pay them, so we passed the hat into the crowd every night. each performer walked from each show with about $200 in cash. the fans TOOK CARE OF THEM. they brought us dinner every night, gave us places to sleep. (i couldn’t afford to put up that many people in hotels).

all sans label, all using email and twitter. the fans followed the adventure. they LOVED HELPING.

There are two points here.

First, she no longer needs the label to reach her fans. In fact, she can reach her fans more effectively than they can.

Second, she’s doing what I talked about in my talk at MIDEM — creating a social-exchange relationship with her fans in which they choose to give her (and her performers) not just their attention, but also their money, because they want to. They know intuitively that it is the right thing to do.

It’s not about them feeling guilty if they don’t. It’s about them understanding that she has given of herself to them, and that if they want to keep that relationship in balance, they should give back to her. That’s how loving relationships work. Attention and money are two ways they can repay her for the music, the attention, and the loving that she gives them.

This is what a morality-based relationship between artist and fan looks like.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Note to those of you who do interviews — this is what being prepared and asking thoughtful questions looks like.

Many bands dream of this kind of reception. But over the four or five years that blogs have been the dominant tastemakers of independent music, artists have gradually become more wary of the hype-and-slam cycle of the Web. Brandon Welchez and Charles Rowell of Crocodiles have been so distrustful of the Internet’s fickle power that at first they tried to keep as low an online presence as possible, going so far as to ask fans to remove YouTube videos of their shows.

“The Internet is taking all the romance out of music and art and replacing it with this revolving door that just revolves so fast,” Mr. Welchez, 27, the duo’s singer, said before a 20-minute showcase on Wednesday afternoon. Eventually, though, the Internet found them, and their MySpace plays quickly shot into the tens of thousands.

Artists, labels, journalists and everyone else at South by Southwest now depend on the Internet for almost every aspect of their jobs, from discovery to communication, distribution to promotion. But on the patios and hotel rooftops of Austin the conversation often turns to debates about what the Internet’s role should be.

<rant>

Gimme a great big break, people.

What planet did these people live on before? It sure bears no resemblance to the one I lived on as a music fan in the days before the internet.

The internet is fickle?

Does anyone remember a little British rag called New Music Express? Was it not (is it not still) NOTORIOUS for how quickly it turned on those it adored just weeks before? They changed their mind at the drop of the coin WITHOUT ELECTRONIC MEDIATION! Impossible, but TRUE!

There were no one-hit wonders before the internet? That’s why you’ve heard of every band who had a single that charted in the 80s?

Indie bands who had a song that did well and got lots of buzz used to easily maintain that buzz before there was an internet? Tell that to all my friends who almost made it.

The internet is taking all the romance out of bands?

Well, maybe if you had none to begin with, or if you thought that getting mentioned on a blog was romantic and then not getting mentioned on a blog was a romance killer. I have fallen in love with so many bands I would never have found without the internet. If the bands don’t find that romantic, maybe it’s their fault for having weird illusions about what’s supposed to happen.

And what’s with people online still liking the Beatles and the Kinks? What’s with all those old videos that keep surfacing on YouTube? Don’t people know the internet is a revolving door and you’re not allowed to like anything old anymore? And that old is like, uh, yesterday? Nine Inch Nails have been together FOREVER. How can people STILL be talking about Trent Reznor on the internet?

Guess what? If you make great music year in and year out, “the internet” will stand by your side. And if you are a mediocre band who’s got one good song, be grateful the blogs gave it any attention. It’s not the internet’s fault if you can’t sustain your momentum.

You don’t want to find fans online? Fine, it’s your choice. But never forget that “the internet” is nothing but the people who communicate through it. And yeah, we may have a lot more choices now, but that ought to just make you make your music that much better. Great bands hold attention in ways the internet cannot erase. The fact is that most indie bands, like most bands, aren’t really all that special, and if it weren’t for the internet, they would never have gotten any buzz to lose.

</rant>

I’ve got a comments section below. Name me the brilliant bands who got great blog buzz for a moment and then lost it even though they kept releasing fantastic new music. Bonus points if you can show the internet’s causal role in the decline of their audience.

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