IT\'S NOT ME, IT\'S YOU A participant observation case - QUT ePrints

IT’S NOT ME, IT’S YOU A participant observation case study of the self-publishing musician in the 21st century. by Hugh Brown BA (Journalism)

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queensland University of Technology 2010

Approved by _______________________________________________________ Chairman of Supervisory Committee _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ _____________________________________________________ Programme Authorised to Offer Degree _____________________________________________________

Date ______________________________________________________________

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STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP

This thesis is submitted to Queensland University of Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The thesis represents my own work and contains no material which has been previously submitted for a degree or diploma at this university or any other institution, except where due acknowledgment is made.

Signature .............................................. Hugh D Brown

Date ..............................................

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank my family and Ms Lyn Davies for their support, patience and forbearance. Without my beloved family and extraordinary support from mum and dad this project would not have begun and I would not have maintained the will to continue it. Without Lyn’s counsel, patience and advice it would never have neared completion. Professor Phil Graham and Dr Steve Dillon deserve my undying thanks and praise for their inspired guidance and understanding. Though they have both shared most of my experiences in reaching this point, their greatest gift to me has been in the gaps between their approaches to study in general and to this project in particular. I greatly appreciate their candour, support, friendship and seemingly limitless patience. Special thanks to Professor Greg Hearn and the others at QUT’s Creative Industries Faculty for giving a crazy idea a run. I’m glad they understood what I set out to do even though I didn’t have a clue at the time, and backed me to get across the line. Thanks also to all the Genre Benders for having the complete lack of foresight to join me in my journey. You made the whole thing fun and made me sound a lot better than I deserve. I am humbled. Dr Virginia Little, thanks for having the patience to edit my manuscript. It needed your voice of clarity. Thanks also to Ms Diane Wallyn for her eternal encouragement and positivity. Finally, thanks to everyone who participated in this study for coming along for the ride. You are more than just data sources; you are valued members of a special community.

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NOTES ON THE STRUCTURE AND FORMAT OF THE THESIS FOR READERS

This thesis is by publication. Chapters 2-6 are either published, in press, or under review. The other materials presented here (Abstract, Introduction, Chapters 1 and 7) link and summarise the research to provide the reader with a coherent research narrative. Reference lists are provided for each separate section and publication rather than at the end of the thesis. Appendices for particular publications are presented as part of the publications rather than at the end of the thesis. List of publications in order of presentation: Brown, Hugh, P Graham, and J Knowles (forthcoming) “Music 3.0: A travellers’ guide to the future of online commercial music” [MS submitted to Popular Music and Society on 25/4/2011] Brown, Hugh (2009) “Awash in a sea of possiblities: anchoring a 21st century music business.” In Mackinlay, Elizabeth and Brydie-Leigh Bartleet (eds) Musical Islands Brisbane:Cambridge Scholars Press pp 264-288 __________. (in press) “Valuing Independence: Esteem value and its role in the Independent music scene” Popular Music and Society 36(1) __________. and P Graham (forthcoming) “From Garage to Greatness? Reflections on home-studio production experience” [MS submitted to the Journal of the Art of Record Production on 25/3/2011] __________. (2010) “Musowiki.net: notes on the creation of an online community music facility” The International Journal of Community Music 3(2) pp 279-292

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface: about the author ...........................................................................................................ix Introduction ..................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Literature review......................................................................................................26 Chapter 2: Music 3.0: A travellers’ guide to the future of online commercial music .......83 Chapter 3: Awash in a sea of possiblities: anchoring a 21st century music business .... 120 Chapter 4: Valuing Independence: esteem value and its role in the independent music scene .................................................................................................................... 150 Chapter 5: From Garage to Greatness? Reflections on home-studio production experience ...................................................................................................................... 187 Chapter 6: Musowiki.net: notes on the creation of an online community music facility.............................................................................................................................. 217 Chapter 7: Discussion ............................................................................................................. 244 Appendix 1 – I am leaving! I am leaving! by The Genre Benders .................................. 286 Appendix 2 – List of websites referred to in this study..................................................... 287 Appendix 3 – Survey Questionnaire..................................................................................... 288 Appendix 4 – Presentation to the Musicological Society of Queensland conference at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in November 2007......................... 298 Appendix 5 – Presentation to the Art of Record Production conference at QUT in December 2007......................................................................................................... 305 Appendix 6 – Extract from interview with Janis Ian ......................................................... 310 Appendix 7 – Extract from interview with David Hooper............................................... 314 Appendix 8 – Extract from interview with Noel Ramos .................................................. 318

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Appendix 9 – Extract from interview with Tah Phrum Duh Bush ................................. 322 Appendix 10 – Extract from interview with Brad Sucks................................................... 326 Appendix 11 – Extract from interview with Tracey Saxby ............................................... 330 Appendix 12 – Extract from interview with Kevin Arnold .............................................. 334 Appendix 13 – Extract from interview with Shannon Martin.......................................... 338 Appendix 14 – Quantitative Data ......................................................................................... 342

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ABSTRACT

This thesis explores the business environment for self-publishing musicians at the end of the 20th century and the start of the 21st century from theoretical and empirical standpoints. The exploration begins by asking three research questions: what are the factors affecting the sustainability of an Independent music business; how many of those factors can be directly influenced by an Independent musician in the day-to-day operations of their musical enterprise; and how can those factors be best manipulated to maximise the benefit generated from digital music assets? It answers these questions by considering the nature of value in the music business in light of theories of political economy, then quantitative and qualitative examinations of the nature of participation in the music business, and then auto-ethnographic approaches to the application of two technologically enabled tools available to Independent musicians. By analyzing the results of five different examinations of the topic it answers each research question with reference to four sets of recurring issues that affect the operations of a 21st century music business: the musicians’ personal characteristics, their ability to address their business’s informational needs; their ability to manage the relationships upon which their business depends; and their ability to resolve the remaining technological problems that confront them. It discusses ways in which Independent self-publishing musicians can and cannot deal with these four issues on a day-to-day basis and highlights aspects for which technological solutions do not exist as well as ways in which technology is not as effective as has been claimed. It then presents a self-critique and proposes some directions for further study before concluding by suggesting some common features of 21st century Independent music businesses. This thesis makes three contributions to knowledge. First, it provides a new understanding of the sources of musical value, shows how this explains changes in the vii

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music industries over the past 30 years, and provides a framework for predicting future developments in those industries. Second, it shows how the technological discontinuity that has occurred around the start of the 21st century has and has not affected the production and distribution of digital cultural artefacts and thus the attitudes, approaches, and business prospects of Independent musicians. Third, it argues for new understandings of two methods by which self-publishing musicians can grow a business using production methods that are only beginning to be more broadly understood: home studio recording and fan-sourced production. Developed from the perspective of working musicians themselves, this thesis identifies four sets of issues that determine the probable success of musicians’ efforts to adopt new technologies to capture the value of the musicians’ creativity and thereby foster growth that will sustain an Independent music business in the 21st century.

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PREFACE: ABOUT THE AUTHOR

This thesis adopts a participant observation approach and uses auto-ethnographic methods. As such, it is important to account for the researcher’s personal characteristics, idiosyncrasies, and biases. What follows in this preface is a brief account of the way I arrived at the decision to pursue this research. I have been a frustrated musician since I was chosen to be a singing Christmas tree in kindergarten. I have always been a musical hunter-gatherer; seeking out those methods, tunes, and musical forms that appealed to me at the time and eschewing a structured approach to technique. I began piano lessons at age 6, guitar at 10 and trumpet at 12 before falling out with all those teachers and quitting formal lessons within a few years. I nonetheless retained my enthusiasm for music; singing, writing songs and staging ‘concerts’ with my brother. I even hand-made my own (dysfunctional) guitar and drums. In senior high school I studied maths and physical sciences because my parents emphasised the importance of a reliable career in which, in their view, music could not be a part. After high school I studied electrical engineering, telling myself I would learn about music technology and thereby maintain my musical interest. Unfortunately, illness intervened and I was forced to withdraw from my engineering course with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome at 19. At the end of 1990 I returned to Brisbane and, free from the constraints of study, began to develop a network of music-industry contacts that led to some studio sessions and pickup gigs in Brisbane bands, playing everything from metal to jazz and disco. However, this musical work was not enough to sustain me and for my 21st birthday I accepted a secure government job on the Sunshine Coast. After about 18 months I transferred my job back to Brisbane, only to find that most of my musical contacts had moved on and I had to start over. I began experimenting with ix

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home-studio recording of my own songs and played in a range of covers and originals bands over the next five years before realising that it was becoming more difficult for drummers to get work. I renewed my attention to playing guitar and singing, learning enough covers to get work in cafés and bars as a soloist. Several times I quit playing any sort of music only to find myself unable to resist the allure of the groove. After about a year of not playing music, during which time I quit my government job and enrolled in a journalism course at my former university, my fiancé encouraged me to answer an ad for a singer/guitarist in a traditional Celtic folk band. Bun’ Ber E played together for 10 years and released two CDs of traditional Celtic music played in nontraditional ways because we were Australian and did not wish to claim any kind of Celtic authenticity. Journalism agreed with me in a way that engineering never could. I secured a job as editor of www.onlineopinion.com.au in 2000 and began to experiment with publishing and marketing Bun’ Ber E’s music online in my spare time. Since Bun’ Ber E was a semi-professional outfit that was never going to tour widely or produce original music, I began to wonder what could be done online to help selfpublishing musicians playing original music. This re-kindled my song writing and prompted me to revisit some of the material I had written and/or recorded with others at home over the years. I devised The Genre Benders to capture the latent talents of other musicians and songwriters who, like myself, had been unable to realise their musical ambitions in the 20th century. I quit my full-time editing job and took up a brief stint teaching online journalism at my former university, which put me back in touch with the academic world. In 2005 my project became an application to enroll in a PhD. At the end of 2009, this thesis is the outcome of that study.

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INTRODUCTION

Over the past 40 years or more, Independent musicians have been encouraged to adopt a do-it-yourself approach and to compete directly with established record companies and producers (Bockstedt et al., 2005). However, enthusiasm for new opportunities is not universally shared (Bernstein, 2004) and some of the early proponents of these opportunities fear for their future (Lessig, 2005). Much of this has been the result of technological advances in music production and communication (see AP, 2005: 19; Anderson, 2004; Garrity and Teitelman, 2005). The best musicians who lack the support of a large company have always found a way to make their mark (Clarke, 1995) but digital technologies have provided unprecedented reductions in production and distribution costs. However, until the very end of this project no Independent1 music release had appeared atop the global sales charts. In the UK, unsigned band Koopa’s single “Blag, Steal & Borrow” entered the top 30 singles chart for one week after the rules changed on January 1, 2008 to include sales of digital-only releases (Youngs, 2007); and the song “Crazy”, by virtual artist Gnarls Barkley was rated number 1 with more than 31,000 downloads the week before hard copies went on sale (Anonymous, 2006). During the final drafting of this dissertation, John Butler Trio’s April Uprising debuted at No1 on the Australian album chart following two high-profile singles. This was John Butler Trio’s third release to do so and came after a career of 14 years and 5 albums released on Butler’s own label, Jarrah (Wikipedia, 2010). However, this success has not been

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“Independent” is a highly problematic term (Cool, 2006) and in this context refers simply to self-publishing musicians and musical acts that have few third-party business partnerships, such as with a major record label. Hence, in this context “Independent” and “Indie” will take the capital in this dissertation. The definition of Independent is further discussed in Chapter 4.

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duplicated in the major markets of the US and Europe or Japan and its release is less than a month old at the time of writing. Several artists who have topped the charts are claimed (with many sceptics) to have used Internet services such as MySpace (Miller, 2006; Eyre, 2006) and webcasting performances (Kelbie, 2006) to grow their fan base, leading to Independent business success and/or interest from record labels. Conversely, internationally successful acts such as Radiohead have chosen to eschew record label support and use online distribution to drive their business through direct interaction with their fans (Hunt, 2007). As well, the peak body for the global recording industry, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (2006, 2005), has trumpeted the success of the major labels’ digital initiatives – even claiming that “the emergence of a successful digital business has been the single most important development in the music industry in 2004” (IFPI, 2005: 4). There seems little doubt that the Internet and other New Media technologies have made involvement in the music industry easier and more affordable for many people. However, the lack of chart-topping Independent music indicates that the reality of life as an Independent musician does not bear much resemblance to the utopia described in the popular press, in which “anyone with a demo and a spare evening can potentially become a mini record-company mogul” (Gibson, 2007). At this point it is useful to distinguish between Independent labels and Independent musicians. These two views of Independence represent opposite ends of a spectrum: from large organisations that are Independent only inasmuch as they are not owned by major labels like Sony or Warner to completely autonomous self-publishing musicians. While the former, for example Sub Pop Records (Poneman, 2009) and Island Records (Island Records, 2010), have a long history of arising and succeeding critically and commercially, often to the point that 2

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they are assimilated by larger labels (Clarke, 1995), the latter have traditionally struggled in the music marketplace until they attract the interest of a label – major or Independent – that offers to support their efforts. As they have done regularly throughout the history of recorded music (Clarke, 1995), Independent labels in the 21st century have continued to find new and interesting music and bring it to the top of the charts. However, despite some self-publishing musicians rising to prominence in the press (e.g. Anderson, 2007; Thompson, 2007), chart success has – even during the period of this study – eluded musicians without the support of a label. The research described in this dissertation is concerned with working out why some Independent musicians have built a successful career – sometimes, like John Butler, by creating their own label – while others have not, and what, exactly, the new technologies offer to Independent musicians. In this context, the use of the words “Independent” or “Indie” below refers to self-publishing musicians rather than independent labels.

Description of the research problem My conceptualisation for this research began with a hypothetical group of talented teenage musicians writing songs and rehearsing in their garage. With the benefit of having experienced this in the 1980s and 1990s, I asked myself what advice I could give such teenagers that could help them use new technologies to develop their raw talent and enthusiasm into a business that would sustain them for as long as they wished to pursue it. What should I tell them about how to organise their business and prioritise their efforts? If I were to recruit suitable members for such a band, what attributes would I look for? The research problem thus concerns the barriers to musicians’ participation in the 21st century music industry: what are they and how do they affect musicians and their livelihoods? Specifically, I am interested in the plight of ‘Independent’ self-publishing 3

Introduction

musicians – loosely defined as those who do not benefit from a business partnership with major music companies. This research seeks to understand which business functions new technologies have made easier and how these have helped Independent musicians. Further, it seeks to understand the foundations of music as a business; which business functions technology has not helped; what might technology help that has not yet been addressed; and what barriers exist that technology cannot help. The research questions that underpin this study are: 1. What are the factors affecting the sustainability of an Independent music business?2 2. How many of those factors can be directly influenced by an Independent musician in the day-to-day operations of their musical enterprise? 3. How can those factors be best manipulated to maximise the benefit generated from digital music assets?

Overall objectives of the research Addressing these questions requires reconsideration of the value of music itself. The sustainability of a music business must be affected by the nature of the value it produces and the ways in which consumers relate to its products. However, music that is consumed by larger audiences increases in value, defying the logic of commodity economics, in which consumption decreases value. It is also necessary to understand how the advent of file-swapping technologies, which have enabled unprecedented exchange and consumption of music recordings (IFPI, 2009), has coincided with three other, apparently contradictory, changes: 2

Defining the term “sustainability” is highly problematic and in this thesis it refers simply to the musicians’ ability to persist in their business for as long as they choose.

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1. a dramatic decrease in the dollar value of recorded music sales (IFPI, 2009); but 2. an increase in the value of live performance ticket sales (Page and Carey, 2009); and 3. instability among musical instrument and recording equipment sales (NAMM, 2008)? Given the technological discontinuity that has changed the economics of creating, performing, organising, and consuming music at the start of the 21st century, the very nature of musical value and its cultural and industrial significance must be reconsidered. This requires a theoretical framework that locates Independent musicians within their technological, cultural, and industrial environments. In Chapter 2 this theory is driven by political economy, by which I mean ‘the production, distribution, and exchange of values, broadly conceived’ (Graham and Luke, in press). Next, a consideration of the attitudes and behaviours of Independent musicians and the barriers they believe prevent them from achieving their goals is required. Some people consider themselves ‘Independent’ musicians while others are simply amateurs or professionals and it is not clear what special qualities Independent status bestows upon those who choose it or are anointed with it. Despite the long history of exploitation and rejection among musical aspirants, young musicians continue to try to make a living by making music. Recent examples (Anderson, 2007) show that some approaches and abilities are conducive to succeeding in the new environment but it is not clear what music and music-making mean to Independent musicians that might be different from the view of their predecessors, fans, business partners, or peers. In Chapters 3 and 4 these some cultural and social aspects of the pursuits of the ‘Independent musician’ that relate (or not) to the new technological environment are identified using a survey and a series of in-depth interviews.

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Finally, the means by which Independent musicians can use New Media and digital technologies to improve their music businesses require examination. A corollary to this is a better understanding of the aspects of a music business that cannot (yet) be helped using new technologies. Musical production that formerly required massive investment in recording technology can now be approximated in a musician’s home with a laptop, an analogue/digital interface, and some almost-free software – yet no such production has been able to compete with those of the major production houses. Similarly, global distribution and co-creation of many kinds have been facilitated by the Internet but little is yet understood about how this actually benefits most musicians. This thesis seeks to better understand the limitations of these technologies and how they might benefit musicians who seek to build a business based on their creations. Chapters 5 and 6 present autoethnographic case studies of the application of two such technologies. The general objectives of the research are: a) to better understand the value proposition that underpins the music industry and the ways in which new technologies have affected it; b) to better understand the nature of Independent musicians and the forces that shape their lives and businesses; and c) to better understand the way in which new technologies have affected the lives and businesses of Independent musicians. Meeting these objectives in a relatively new area of study necessarily requires a broad and multi-disciplinary approach. This thesis is limited in its depth and can only be exploratory. In particular, the two case studies presented here cover the impact of new technologies on only two components of a music business. Because of time and other constraints, distribution of Independent musicians’ products is only theoretically considered. More questions are raised than are answered. However, while this thesis is 6

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concerned mainly with music and musicians, it is quite likely that the contributions to knowledge contained herein may have application to other Creative Industries.

Specific aims of the research This thesis specifically aims to:
critically examine the value proposition of Independent music in a way that accounts for the seemingly contradictory phenomena observed in the music industry at the start of the 21st century;
develop a unifying theory that enables musicians to predict the sources of value of their creativity and thus to build a business;
identify ways in which the 21st century technological discontinuity has changed the production and distribution of music;
identify demographic characteristics of Independent musicians as a group;
identify defining characteristics of self-publishing music businesses;
empirically examine the application of home-studio recording technologies in a self-publishing music business; and
empirically examine the application of ‘Wikinomic’ co-creation facilities in an Independent music business.

Method This research proceeds using a participant observation case study methodology that aims to “uncover the winners and losers” (Kinchloe and McLaren, 2000:281) among participants in the current music industry environment. Jorgensen suggests that 7

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participant observation is most appropriate when the research problem involves human interaction and is observable within an everyday setting (1989). I knew from the earliest days of the project’s conception that I would not be satisfied with merely acquiring and analysing other people’s data, especially since so much of that would be commercially and personally sensitive and hence hard to come by. Being directly involved as a “deep insider” in generating data from projects involving others “provided me with priviliged access, a clear perspective of who to ask and where to look and an established understanding of the site and people in it” (Edwards, 1999 as in Dillon, 2007: 32). The combination of these qualitative strategies for gathering and anlysing provides multiple lenses on the phenomenon. While this potentially provides a very deep and rich understanding of the phenomenon the same closeness can obsscure meaning and the familiarity with both the people and the industry can mean that I might see what I want to see and hear what I want to hear. There is a need to crosscheck data collection and anlaysis to ensure trustworthiness and authenticity of the qualitative data (Lincoln and Guba,1985). My original intention was to undertake two action research cycles (Kemmis and McTaggart, 2000) as follows: 1. Review best-practice literature. 2. Make CD and related merchandise. 3. Promote and distribute music and related merchandise. 4. Seek input from others attempting similar using survey and interviews. 5. Critically reflect upon the experience and data. 6. Report back to participants, seeking further input and guidance. 7. Repeat.

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The survey, interviews, CD, and wiki discussed in chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 respectively are instruments by which multiple perspectives on the phenomenon under investigation – the rapidly changing and evolving Independent music business – can be examined. The creation processes and the results of the promotion and distribution of the CD and wiki provide primary data against which the literature can be compared. Undertaking to create them myself and critically reflecting on the experience of doing so provides access to data that could never be obtained by a post hoc case study examination of someone else’s creations and creative processes. The survey and interviews provide primary data from a third perspective, which allows for “triangulation” of the literature and auto-ethnographic data. This three-fold approach enhances the reliability of the findings and reduces the possibility researcher bias. The instruments are included in the Appendices to this dissertation. Two cycles of such a research plan would have allowed for participant feedback on the findings of the first cycle and possibly for empirical examination of them during the second cycle. However, delivering two cycles proved well beyond my means so this project is best described as a participant observation case study, in which “a multiplicity of views, commentaries and critiques, leading to multiple possible actions and interpretations” (O’Brien, 2001) are gathered and “co-generation” of knowledge by the study’s participants “guarantees for its usefulness, applicability, accountability, and relevance” (Johnsen, 2005: 546). In addition, this design was built on the “knowledge the researcher brings concerning history and cultures, and an awareness of body language, semiotics and slogan systems operating within the cultural norms of the organisation” (Edwards, 2002: 72). These “strongly-grounded hermeneutics” help to detect misinformation and conflicting agendas, manage the process and people and better understand the data (Edwards, 2002:73).

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O’Brien (2001) notes that “action researchers also reject the notion of researcher neutrality, understanding that the most active researcher is often one who has most at stake in resolving a problematic situation”. This clearly applies to this project, which faced a range of issues, mostly stemming from what Edwards calls the “Ethics of Intrusion” (2002:79), which may have conspired to confound the data and confuse my analysis. Assessing qualitative data is by nature a process open to personal bias and external influence. Fortunately, Lincoln & Guba (1985) have compiled a list of measures designed to reduce the risks. These include prolonged engagement and persistent observation to “identify those characteristics and elements in the setting that are most relevant to the question being pursued and focus on them in detail” (Lincoln and Guba, 1985:305). This occurred naturally because of my history of involvement in the music industry and because I created the settings for activities and was involved in nearly every activity over a period of four years. Qualitative data were subjected to member checks and peer debriefing, which are natural additions to a participant observation approach and in this project the data have been triangulated through reference to multiple perspectives: mine, the participants’, and the literature’s. I addressed potential problems with interpreting interview data by adopting Csikszentmihalyi’s strategy: “Instead of suspecting these stories of being self serving fabrications, I accept them at face valueproviding they are not contradicted by other facts about the person or by internal evidence” (Csikzentmihalyi, 1996:16). In addition to these multiple qualitative measures the inclusion of quantitative measures: web site statistics, sales figures, performance income, offline promotional data, and download data (see Appendix 14), helped to “crystallise” related qualitative data. I was also concerned, as Morse et al. (2002) note is important, to include these measures as much as possible during the research, rather than as post hoc assessments. Each chapter that follows contains its own method

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section detailing the steps taken to collect and validate its data and the account of research progress below provides a unifying overview of each activity. This research is necessarily limited to an examination of the music industry in Western liberal democracies. It focuses on the parts of that music industry that are analogous with the Australian legal and business environment. Further, it is primarily focused on the English-speaking segments of that music market. There is probably no reason why at least some of its findings could not apply to other cultures and contexts but I hesitate to make that claim without further investigation.

An account of research progress linking the presented papers The research presented here progressed along three separate but parallel empirical tracks, culminating with the theoretical contribution (Chapter 2) which critically reflects upon the findings of those empirical efforts as well as input from other sources. Figure 1 shows a timeline for the development of each component. Figure 1: Timeline for the development of this thesis. Qtr 1 06 Qtr 2 06 Qtr 3 06 Qtr 4 06 Qtr 1 07 Qtr 2 07 Qtr 3 07 Qtr 4 07 Qtr 1 08 Qtr 2 08 Qtr 3 08 Qtr 4 08 Qtr 1 09 Qtr 2 09 Qtr 3 09 Qtr 4 09 Stage Survey Creation + data collection Analysis & write-up Interviews Creation, scheduling, completion Analysis & write-up CD Production Marketing/Quant data collection Analysis & write-up Musowiki Analysis & write-up Creation, data collection Theory Write-up

Creating a home-produced CD of original music (see Appendix 1, discussed in Chapter 5) began immediately; mainly because I already possessed the means to do so and figured that understanding this process was central to any examination of the Independent music business. The global decline in CD sales and its impact on the music business (Connolly and Krueger, 2005) and the hype surrounding new technologies that allow musicians to make, distribute, and promote music recordings at very low cost are two of the main phenomena under examination in this research. Most musicians aspire 11

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to make an album as a measure of their self-identity as musicians and as a means to make money from their efforts. A home-produced CD seemed the only instrument that could effectively examine these possibilities. I had been dabbling in home-studio production for some years before beginning this study and already had a body of songs, a group of collaborators and a brand name, The Genre Benders, that could be used for this purpose. Putting aside spare-time experiments before the study formally began, CD production began in February 2006 and the CD was released to the market in July 2007. It was recorded and mixed at my home and a nearby school, and mastered at Matthew Grey Mastering, a commercial mastering business independent of this research. The artwork was produced on my laptop from images compiled during my musical past and/or the recording process. Three hundred saleable copies were home-manufactured, with the music being burned onto CD-ROMs on my three home PCs and the artwork being printed using an Epson R310 printer with disc-printing capability. Production materials: blank CDs, jewel cases, printer ink, and paper were bought from EBay. I am Leaving! I am Leaving! was made available via CDBaby and through CDBaby via iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody and 29 other online stores. Copies were given away to radio stations and sold at my live performances in the USA during August and September 2007 and in Brisbane between June and December 2007. A pre-mastering set of “bootleg” versions was uploaded and given away on my blog along with all of the songs’ lyrics and, in some cases, acoustic ‘demo’ versions of the songs. The mastered versions were uploaded to www.genrebenders.com, MySpace, ReverbNation and other ‘Music 2.0’ sites. All of these were made available for free download, where possible. A podcast of each of the bootlegs and all of the other demo versions was made available at http://www.huge.id.au/Songs/Longing_4_the_day.xml.

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The original intention was to use quantitative data gathered from website traffic, live performances, podcast hits and CD sales to measure the progress of The Genre Benders as a music business. Further publications based on those quantitative data were planned (see in Appendix 14) but it quickly became apparent during a peer debriefing session with Chapter 5’s co-author and my thesis co-supervisor, Professor Phil Graham, that the qualitative data revealed more about the research questions above than the quantitative data would (see the negative case analysis below). Although our production backgrounds differed greatly, our responses to the experience were very similar. Chapter 5 compares music production technologies and processes towards the end of the 20th century with those available in the 21st century. The point was to critically examine the utopian view that acquiring home-studio technologies and employing New Media distribution technologies removed barriers to music-market entry for Independent musicians, which had previously been either prohibitively expensive or economically unviable. This led to the insight that the advent of home-studio technologies, the new processes and choices upon which adopting them depends, and the institutional instability that they had engendered amounted to a new genre of musical production. For Independent musicians this new genre was not a substitute for older processes and institutional forms but a complement to them; a career stepping-stone that enabled business and artistic growth – subject to some hidden constraints on the musicians’ time and other resources. It is important at this point to examine the negative case for these quantitative data. This research began with the naïve assumption that there was a kernel of truth to the massmediated utopia: that was feasible for a solo, self-publishing artist to compose, produce, market, and distribute a CD of original music and generate vital, quantifiable business outcomes within the period of the study. In retrospect, this assumption lay toward the extreme end of even the most utopian claims and, as the data in Appendix 14 show, this 13

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proved to be the case. The fact that the primary purpose of the CD’s creator was not to make and profit from the CD but rather to study the process and effects of doing so – and simultaneously manage other diversionary activities that fit the research plan rather than the CD’s business goals – underscores the futility of the design. Nonetheless, a chapter was written based on these data and intended for publication in First Monday. However the inadequacy of the data was confirmed by the paper’s rejection on the grounds that it “confirms the obvious – if you have a reasonably low quality recording (i.e., without professional production) and don't market it all that much then relatively few people will find/listen to it” (Valauskas, 2009). This is not to say that the topic was pointless or that the instrument of research was inadequate – confirming the obvious is a valid research outcome – but rather to say that this particular component of the project was under-resourced. Home-studio CD production, marketing and distribution is a subject worthy of its own long-term quantitative study. This effort generated very valuable autoethnographic data and some of the quantitative data from the making, distribution and sales of I am Leaving! I am Leaving! helped frame Chapter 5 and also informed the theory in Chapter 2. As noted in the Directions for Further Research, a better-designed quantitative effort to asess the benefits and pitfalls of home-studio production is needed. At almost the same time as I began producing the CD, I devised a survey of selfidentified Independent musicians (see Appendix 3, discussed in Chapter 3) and this was followed by in-depth interviews with a structured sample of Indies (see Appendices 6 to 13, discussed in Chapter 4) so as to gain the perspectives of other musicians who had attempted or were attempting the same things that this project undertook. Chapter 3 establishes a theoretical model for understanding the 20th century cultural industries and shows the ways in which that environment prevented musicians from accessing the music market without the validation of the media hegemony. Further, this model shows 14

Introduction

how New Media technologies allow musicians in 21st century Western societies to bypass the media hegemony and enter relationships directly with consumers of their productions, creating their own niche in which a viable business might grow. The survey aimed to explore respondents’ motivations and ambitions, and to find out the extent to which Independent musicians had deployed the new technologies and business models to achieve their goals. It was posted to the web in November 2006 using the services of The National Forum Ltd, a company independent of this project, and promoted to the music community via email lists like [MusicThoughts] and a number of music communities like Just Plain Folks, and music business email lists such as www.musesmuse.com. All promotions were online and no incentive was offered to particpate other then access to the survey’s findings. It received 83 responses that came from all musical genres and most Western countries, with a heavy bias toward Australian and US popular musicians. It identified what became a recurring theme of this thesis: Independent musicians tend not to be motivated by financial goals but rather by social or creative goals. Further, it found that they tend to be older, male, prefer to make their own music rather than cover soneone else’s, and that they adopt a piecemeal approach to using new technologies in their businesses. Other data point to these musicians forming a nascent “musical middle class” (Hypebot, 2007) of musicians who are able to generate a living based on their music without reaching the heights of 20th century “superstardom”. Musicians who seek to enter this group comprise the majority of the beneficiaries of this research and of recent changes to the business environment. However, I was intrigued by the idea that while some Independent artists grew a successful career from nothing, self-publishing bands such as Radiohead were regarded as Independent even though they had experienced lengthy and lucrative careers within the structures and processes of major record labels. I decided to seek a deeper 15

Introduction

understanding of what ‘Independent’ meant by interviewing a variety of ‘Indies’ from within a sample of the ‘Independent’ musical middle class. Interview questions were based on the survey results and sought to definitive characteristics of “Independence”. The sample of interviewees was structured to represent self-publishing musicians and music industry professionals who assumed and asserted an Independent identity. Like the survey respondents, they covered a range of musical genres, and also covered the four pillars of the independent music business: marketing, distribution, networking, and management. Production expertise was not sought because the topic was covered by Chapter 5. Analysis of the interviews was heavily influenced by the work of two others who investigated related questions: Cool’s (2006) independent film, What is Indie?, and Rogers’ (2008) paper, which was published just after the interviews were conducted. Those two works, in particular, pointed to the importance to members of this musical middle class of an Indie ethos, which centred on an anti-establishment attitude and an us-vs-them mentality that afforded Indies a willingness to collaborate and co-operate in the name of collective survival. The eight interviews were conducted between August and October 2007; six in the interviewees’ home towns on a trip to the USA and Canada and two in Brisbane when the interviewees attended the annual Big Sound conference. The interviewees’ views were then compared to the literature to identify common characteristics, behaviours and experiences that might define what it means to be ‘Independent’. Qualitative data from the interviews were subject to peer debreifing and memberchecks as well as compared to the literature. One of the most important things the interviewees revealed was that they based their careers on the fact that other people valued their works – creative, administrative, promotional, etc – in ways other than commercial and built mutual-support networks based on this esteem. The nature of this “esteem economy” was explained in another book I discovered quite serendipitously at that time (Brennan and Pettit, 2004). The 16

Introduction

definition of Independent, therefore, arises from the ways Indies generate esteem from fans, peers, and colleagues, and harness it to grow their business. This is very different from the way esteem is bestowed upon musicians by a record label in the hope that it will subsequently also be propagated among fans. Chapter 4 develops three dimensions of independence for music businesses and shows how different approaches to common music business problems lead to more and less Independent ways to generate and harness a musician’s sources of esteem. This reveals some aspects of Independent music businesses that are not technology-dependent but instead reflect a musician’s personal preferences and characteristics, thereby exposing barriers to music-industry participation that cannot be overcome by using technology. The concept for the project’s community-driven co-creation facility (Musowiki.net; discussed in Chapter 6) arose half-way through this project and its development began in earnest as the CD production entered its final stages. The co-creation approach was inspired by my own knowledge-seeking process during the making of the Genre Benders’ CD and some of the discussion surrounding the survey, as well as the book Wikinomics (Tapscott and Williams, 2007), which argues for the benefits of distributing labour costs across a project’s beneficiaries, and literature concerning musicians “fansourcing” some of their business needs and even their creative output. Although it is easy for a band with the following of The Beastie Boys or Barenaked Ladies to harness their fans’ esteem and enthusiasm, I began to wonder about the feasibility of a hypothetical Independent band starting out in a garage and using fan labour to build a global business network from nothing. Since the quantitative data from the Genre Benders project were inadequate and I had neither the time nor resources to build a sufficient following for The Genre Benders during this project, I thought similar principles might apply to building a community to help Independent musicians with whatever goals their career required. Analysing posts to various email discussion lists 17

Introduction

such as [MusicThoughts], I noticed a need among the music community for a free-andeasy filter of music-industry services and resolved to test the community-building ideas by creating an institution to meet that need. A wiki-based directory of music industry services – commercial, government and third sector – was the best instrument to examine these ideas, with the auto-ethnographic data cross-checked against the literature and interview data concerning community-building efforts. The website went live on 15 June 2007, powered by the (free) Mediawiki software, and immediately experienced a lengthy process of revision and redevelopment of its structure and categorisation with feedback from a range of academic and music industry sources. I promoted it by e-mailing each business as I entered it into the wiki, and many of these responded enthusiasticaly with offers to help and to tell their clients or subscribers about it. I also wrote a press release and sent it to several peak bodies around the globe, asking them to let their members know. Since time was short I set four benchmarks indicating the probably success of the project and, to my surprise, achieved all of them quicker than I predicted. Out of this process emerged four principles that Independent musicians should be able to adopt these principles to engage with their own fans and peers to enhance their business productivity using New Media. It should be noted that a similar result affected the Musowiki project following the completion of the Chapter 6 to that which befell the Genre Benders’ CD. When my attention turned to other aspects of this thesis, the project slowly faded to a shadow of its intended glory. At the time of writing, traffic has fallen to about half of its peak and the rate of new entries is almost zero. More volunteers have joined, but their combined output is now lower than it was when I drove the community’s development. In one sense, this is another fault in the research design but it also confirms the primacy of the 18

Introduction

creator of a community initiative as its main “thought leader”. While this outcome is disappointing from a community point of view, it amounts to an important validation of the project’s findings. Although Chapter 2: “Music 3.0: A travellers’ guide to the future of online commercial music” is presented first here, it was the last paper written because it provides a theoretical framework for the others that explains recent changes in the industry and also the observed contradictions in the political economy of music. This chapter grew from many deep and lengthy discussions with my co-authors, who are both more experienced than I am with the traditional music industry. It articulates the idea that, even from the earliest days of music recorded as dots on a page, it has not been the music that has been sold. Music has always been used to sell other things: ideology, power, technology and other commodity forms. The technologies sold began with instruments and pieces of paper, progressed to player pianos and then vinyl discs, radios with amplifiers and now, in the era of abundant and almost free MP3 distribution, music is being used to sell bandwidth. Music has also been used to compile audiences to be sold the ideology of the church or state, the power of the industrial elite and, since the invention of broadcast media, advertising. This marketing power has been captured because the almost endless production of infinitely substitutable music has reduced the cost of music production, as opposed to technological production, almost to zero. Whoever contained the costs of technological production through economies of scale had a stranglehold on the Industry, as demonstrated in Chapter 3. New technologies have not fundamentally changed this value proposition, they have simply exposed the 20th century business models as being based on sales of plastic discs and advertising, not music. As audiences became more fickle and accessed a wider variety of cheaper music that is not tied to plastic discs and comes from outside the mass media industries, so the businesses built on those technologies have declined. Further, the new 19

Introduction

technological environment is one in which the major beneficiaries of the distribution of music – purveyors of bandwidth – do not control the process nor content of distribution. This argument is followed with an examination of the ways in which new companies have built businesses around the distribution of music which they also do not control. Finally, we settled on four principles that can be employed to guide the development of an Independent music business in the current environment: propinquity, synchrony, personality and novelty. These principles, adopted in concert in New Media environments, provide a foundation for the construction of an Indpendent music business in the 21st century. This theory is presented first so as to contextualise the other papers. The discussion highlights three contributions to knowledge in this thesis and then answers the three research questions by identifying and discussing four sets of factors affecting an Independent music business: the musicians’ personal characteristics, their ability to address their business’s informational needs, their ability to manage the relationships upon which their business depends, and their ability to resolve the remaining technological problems that confront them. Each of these is elaborated upon in terms of its effect on Independent music businesses as highlighted in the research. These factors are all inter-related and the combinations of them almost infinitely complex. None of these on its own is critical to an Independent music business, and the possible resolutions to problems that arise because of them are as many-splendid as the music businesses that exist. Accordingly, this thesis stops short of recommending any “one size fits all” approach to building a music business in the 21st century other than to suggest that Indies should consider the identified factors in light of their particular circumstances and use their strengths and find ways to compensate for their weaknesses in building a business according to the four principles outlined in Chapter 2. This discussion is followed by some directions for further research along emergent themes 20

Introduction

and then a self-critique. The conclusion summarises the changes to the technological environment during the course of my research, identifies the likely features of a 21st century Independent music business and then returns to my original premise and offers some advice to a hypothetical group of talented teenage wanna-be Indies.

21

Introduction

References ABS. 1997. Cultural Trends in Australia: A Statistical Overview. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. ABS. 2009. Cultural Trends in Australia: A Statistical Overview. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Anderson, C. 2004. “The Long Tail.” Wired http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html (accessed 30/03/2005). Anderson, M. 2007 “Pop Geek Jonathon Coulton Succeeds by Giving Music Away.” Wired. http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/news/2007/10/coulton (accessed 12/10/2007) Anonymous. 2006. “Crazy song makes musical history.” http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ent ertainment/4870150.stm (accessed 03/04/2006). AP. 2005. “Indie artists worry about file-sharing case.” MSNBC.com http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7287785/ (accessed 24/03/2005). Bennett, D. 2005. Classical instrumental musicians: educating for sustainable professional practice. PhD, School of Music, University of Western Australia, Perth. http://theses.library.uwa.edu.au/adt-WU2006.0002/ Bernstein, D. 2004. “Songwriters Say Piracy Eats Into Their Pay.” New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/05/business/media/05song.html?ex=1388 638800&en=f49d09a4a8d4a1a3&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND (accessed 05/01/2004). Bockstedt, J., R. J.Kauffman and F. J.Riggins. 2005. “The Move to Artist-Led Online Music Distribution: Explaining Structural Changes in the Digital Music Market.” Paper read at 38th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, at Hilton Waikoloa Village, Hawaii. Brennan, G. and P. Pettit. 2004. The Economy of Esteem. New York: Oxford University Press. Clarke, D 1995. The Rise and Fall of Popular Music. London: Penguin Connolly, M. and A. B. Krueger. 2005. Rockonomics: the economics of popular music: National Bureau of Economic Research. http://ssrn.com/abstract=711924 Cool, D. 2006. What is Indie? MPEG-4 download USA: FIBII Independent Media Production. Creative Commons. 2007. “Creative Commons Licenses.” http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses (accessed 01/02/2007). Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Collins. 22

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Dillon, S (2007) Music, Meaning and Transformation. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Edwards, B. (1999). “Inside the Whale: Deep Insider research”. Paper presented at the AARE and NZARE joint conference 1999, Melbourne, Australia. Edwards, B. 2002. Deep Insider Research. Qualitative Research Journal 2 (1):71-84. Eyre, H. 2006. “Lily Allen: This year's girl...” The Independent http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/features/article2114939.ece (accessed 02/01/2007). Garrity, B. and B. Teitelman. 2005. “Modern rock acts promote music outside radio.” Billboard http://billboardradiomonitor.com/radiomonitor/news/format/rock/article_dis play.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000913113 (accessed 06/05/2005). Gibson, O. 2007. “Independents' Day.” The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/jan/12/popandrock2 (accessed 16/01/2007). Graham, P. and A. Luke. 2006. “Critical Discourse Analysis and Political Economy of Communication.” Cultural Politics. 6 Hunt, K. 2007. “Welcome to the Radiohead economy.” The Globe and Mail http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071129.rmbig1128 /BNStory/ (accessed 12/01/2008). Hypebot. 2007. “The Debate Over The Musical Middle Class.” Hypebot http://hypebot.typepad.com/hypebot/2007/10/the-rise-of-the.html (accessed 8/11/2007). IFPI 2005. Digital Music Report 2005. London: International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. IFPI 2006. Digital Music Report 2006. London: International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. http://www.ifpi.com/site-content/library/digitalmusic-report-2006.pdf IFPI 2009. The Digital Music Report 2009. London: International Federation of the Phongraphic Industry. http://www.ifpi.co.uk/content/library/DMR2009.pdf Island Records. “2010 History – Island Records.” http://www.islandrecords.co.uk/history.php (accessed 11/05/2010) Johnsen, H. C. G. 2005. Action research and knowledge co-generation: a not so dangerous liaison with conventional social research. AI & Society 19 (4):543. Jorgensen, D. L. 1989. Participant observation: A methodology for human studies, 2nd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Kelbie, P. 2006. “Was Sandi Thom's effortless rise just too good to be true?” The Independent http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/music/news/article621798.ece (accessed 30/05/2006). 23

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Kemmis, S. and R. McTaggart. 2000. “Participatory Action Research.” In The Handbook of Qualitiative Research, ed. N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, 567-605. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Kinchloe, J. L. and P. McLaren. 2000. “Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research.” In The Handbook of Qualitiative Research, ed. N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln, 279-313. Thousand oaks: Sage Publications. Lessig, L. 2005. “Creatives face a closed Net.” Financial Times http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d55dfe52-77d2-11da-96700000779e2340,s01=1.html (accessed 28/12/2005). Lincoln, Y. S. and E. G. Guba. 1985. Naturalistic inquiry. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage. Miller, N. 2006. “Tuneful anarchist liberates music.” Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-music/tuneful-anarchist-liberatesmusic/2006/06/12/1149964442210.html (accessed 13/06/2006). Morse, J. M., M. Barrett, M. Mayan, K. Olson and J. Spiers. 2002. “Verification Strategies for Establishing Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research.” International Journal of Qualitative Methods 1 (2):1-19. NAMM. 2008. NAMM Global Report: A statistical review of the music products industry. Carlsbad, CA: International Music Products Association. http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/namm/2008musicusa/ (accessed 19/09/2009) O’Brien, R. 2001. Um exame da abordagem metodológica da pesquisa ação [An Overview of the Methodological Approach of Action Research]. http://www.web.ca/~robrien/papers/arfinal.html (accessed 01/05/2006). Page, W. and C. Carey. 2009. Economic Insight. London: PRS for Music. http://www.prsformusic.com/creators/news/research/Documents/Will Page and Chris Carey (2009) Adding Up The Music Industry for 2008.pdf (accessed 05/12/2009). Poneman, J. 2009. “Sub Pop Records.” http://www.subpop.com/about (accessed 12/05/2009) Rogers, I. 2008. “‘You’ve got to go to gigs to get gigs’: Indie musicians, eclecticism and the Brisbane scene.” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22 (5):639– 649. Tapscott, D. and A. D. Williams. 2007. Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything. New York: Penguin. Thompson, C 2007 “Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog.” New York Times Magazine http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/magazine/13audiencet.html?pagewanted=all (accessed 13/05/2007) Valauskas, Edward (2009) “Review of your paper for First Monday” Private email. 15/03/2009. 24

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Wikipedia 2010 “John Butler Trio discography” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Butler_Trio_discography (accessed 01/05/2010). Youngs, I. 2007. “Unsigned band set to crash charts.” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6248535.stm (accessed 10/01/2007).

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Literature Review

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

26

Literature Review LITERATURE REVIEW

… the business had always been stupid and greedy - but new factors causing the illusion were ever- increasing amounts of money and runaway technology. - Donald Clarke The Rise and Fall of Popular Music

This thesis seeks an alternative to the traditional high-risk music industry approach, in which inexperienced young musicians are given large budgets to produce music recordings and must earn enough from sales to recoup the company’s expenses before they gain from their efforts (Brain, 2006). Given the unpleasant and unrewarding experience of many musicians under the dominant industry model (Dannen, 1991), and the persistent reputation of the industry for dishonest conduct (Wilhelms, 2006), this concerns issues of social justice and equal opportunity as well as the sustainability of individual music business careers. Accordingly, this research is underpinned by Critical Theory. That is, it: 1. is motivated by the researcher’s desire to change the social order of the study’s participants; 2. is based on the beliefs that: a. the participants’ realities are shaped by the social conditions in which they find themselves; and b. they have the potential to change their situation if presented with a better understanding of it; 3. assumes that some of those perceived realities are based on myths and misinformation – especially about the industry and media environment in which they choose to operate; and 4. uses praxis to test and revise its findings. (Neuman, 1997)

27

Literature Review

With this in mind and in light of the method described in the introduction, the following literature review covers not only the relevant academic literature but also other published material to which Independent musicians are likely to be exposed. This is published as books, newspapers and magazines, web pages, CDs and DVDs, podcasts, film, RSS feeds, and email newsletters. Some of it is freely available and some must be bought. Most of it is in no way peer reviewed but nonetheless can be very influential on Independent musicians. In taking this approach, this review examines the context of Independent musical practice: the discourses to which Indies are exposed, the resources they have available, and the advice they are likely to be given. In relation to this review of literature and context, the auto-ethnographic data and the third-party primary data derived from this research can be triangulated to produce the strongest possible answers to the research question for which this thesis seeks answers.

Music industry History

Donald Clarke (1995) argues that many of the earliest patterns that can be observed in the modern music industry emerged in the era of minstrelsy in the first half of the 19th century. At this time, troupes of performers toured across what is now the USA, performing songs and shows that reflected their lives and satirised contemporary events – especially concerning the status of negroes. Many of the best of these, such as “Oh! Susanna” (1848), “Gwine to run all night” (a.k.a. “Camptown Racetrack”, 1850) and “Jeannie with the light brown hair” (1854), were published as sheet music (Clarke, 1995:28), which sold many copies across the USA. Even at this time, however, the publishing and performing aspects were often separate and “mainstream music publishers failed to take advantage of songs that struck a common chord in millions of people, leaving them to new independent firms” (Clarke, 1995: 37).

28

Literature Review

Kusek and Leonhard (2005) argue that each introduction of new technology to music was resisted from the outset, with the player piano, gramophone/phonograph, and radio each in turn challenged by sheet music publishers. This process is described as a “loop” that goes “ignore it → discredit it → stomp it out → litigate against it → attempt to reverse engineer/copy it → buy a piece of it → own it → start all over again” (Kusek & Leonhard, 2005: 140). Magee (2003) describes the process by which the recording machine companies, having seen off challenges from prior music publishing companies, first ignored the advent of radio and then sought to lobby and then litigate against it. Anand and Peterson argue that in the 1940s and 1950s, the music industry nonetheless “reconstituted itself round recorded music” (2000: 272), largely as a result of the unique symbiosis of radio stations and record companies. In this arrangement, record companies sell their products off the back of radio promotions – after giving copies to radio stations – and the radio stations play the “hit” songs in order to create an audience, which is then sold to advertisers (Graham, 2006). From the outset the US government regulated this arrangement but in practice the participants hid behind a claim to objective assessments of song popularity from independent chart makers (Anand & Peterson, 2000) while “payola” – the practice of bribing radio programmers or disc jockeys – meant that, even from the earliest “Billboard 100” chart in 1958, the songs played on the radio were the ones the record companies wanted to be hits (Dannen, 1991). The practice of payola is specifically intended to encourage “tastemakers” (Anderson, 2006) in mass media to promote the payer’s music at the expense of other material, which acts as a barrier to promotion of Independent music. The practice continues despite recent Federal Communication Commission (FCC) actions (Freepress.net, 2006). There is nothing to prevent larger companies from

29

Literature Review

pursuing a similar result in New Media by, for example, purchasing all of the available advertising space on the iTunes home page. But at least in services such as iTunes, unpromoted music is present and can be discovered by listeners by title or artist searching, genre classifications, micro-charts, new-release lists and other “filters” (Anderson, 2006: 110). There is no way for larger suppliers to obliterate every rival song in the iTunes catalogue as there is on radio where broadcast time is strictly limited, or on retail shelves where space and therefore catalogue are limited. The result of the major record companies’ dominance of the market has been that, despite the continual development of new acts and musical forms by new companies and the inevitable demise of some others (see Clarke, 1995), since the 1970s the concentration of ownership of the music publishing business has reached the point where four international companies: Sony BMG, Time Warner, Vivendi Universal, and EMI together control about 85% of the global music market (Magali Dubosson-Torbay et al., 2004). A pattern has emerged whereby the major players in the industry seek to maintain a low-cost approach to managing their repertoire, which results in stagnation and customer dissatisfaction, which provides opportunities for new players to enter the market until, after demonstrating some success, they are bought by the major players, entrenching the majors’ dominance (Clarke, 1995). This pattern is hardly unique to the music industry, and has persisted for a long time within it, becoming particularly prominent in the period following World War II (Hsieh, 2002). This mass-media oligopoly (Frith, 1992; McChesney, 1998) has been the subject of a number of governmental reviews and much public debate in the Western world towards the end of the 20th century and increasing over the past decade (for example, see DCITA, 2006; European Union, 2005; FCC, 2003). The global consensus seems to be

30

Literature Review

that too much concentration of media ownership is not good but no-one knows how much is “too much”. However, Graham (2006) argues that this “consumption-sided” focus on media ignores half of the issue, and that in addition to having an oligopoly, the major media companies are also in an oligopsony (Hannaford, 2003). This is a condition in which many producers try to sell to very few buyers, and its combination with the oligopoly with regard to music consumption gives a few media companies a stranglehold on music production, distribution and consumption. In effect, almost everything consumers have access to must have been validated by the dominant companies’ gatekeepers. The validation process excludes the great bulk of what is produced and “privileges the ability of the industries to construct meanings, while limiting the meaning-making opportunities of the audience” (Glass, 2006). Thus, the four dominant music companies mentioned above, through their affiliations with print and broadcast companies (many of which are owned by the same parent companies as the record labels), choose what music is most likely to feature in the mass media. Music produced by unaffiliated musicians must compete not only on the grounds of quality but also against the convenience of media companies promoting a product whose sales directly affect the promoter’s own bottom line. However, Negus cautions against viewing this situation as one in which cultural production is characterized in terms of a conflict between commerce (industry) and creativity (the artists). This is a distinction that also informs the claim that audiences (creative) can appropriate and hence transform the products that are disseminated by the industry (again, commerce). (1998: 361-2)

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Literature Review

Negus argues that the music industry is one in which record companies manage “continual production of familiarity and newness” using “recognizable codes, conventions and expectations” (1998: 362-3). Their decisions are based on “a series of gendered and radicalized class divisions (that) have decisively contributed to the formation and working practices of record company departments” (2002: 120). Hence, major label output tends to conform to a limited range of genres and sounds that are already known to have found a significant market. This entrenched risk-aversion and cultural homogeneity explains the patterns observed by Clarke (1995) in which innovative new acts and sounds have remained the province of music entrepreneurs until they become popular, are bought by a major label and then evolved within the confines of the established codes and conventions to the point of the cultural irrelevance. The burden has typically fallen upon innovative musicians and their initial supporters to demonstrate their marketability before a major label will offer them the resources to take their music to the masses. It is this highly controlled environment into which my hypothetical group of teenage musicians would have been seeking to build a career before the invention of New Media technologies. They would have been subjected to the whims and opinions of the dominant companies’ gatekeepers at every stage: when seeking funding to use the limited supply of broadcast-quality production facilities; when releasing and seeking to promote recordings for popular consumption; and when seeking to draw attention to their concerts, performances, and associated merchandise. If the gatekeepers did not consider them worthy of consideration, the public was very unlikely to hear of their existence.

32

Literature Review Current context

The effect of limited diversity in media content and outlets on musicians is the one noted by Bennett (2005): the creative output of the vast majority of musicians is considered unviable by those who dominated the industry and hence these musicians could not capture enough of its value to provide a sustainable living. This has had the effect of producing a very small musical “upper class” sustained by their relationships with record companies or larger orchestral companies to produce music that is sufficiently profitable to maintain investor confidence. Conversely, it has produced a very large “lower class” whose music is considered commercially worthless and who are thus denied a place in the music market. However, New Media technologies assist Independent musicians to transform the music business in their favour by allowing them to bypass the industry’s gatekeepers and to directly contact fans. This transformation has come about via a number of gradual shifts: reduced production costs due to cheaper digital recording devices (Businessweek, 2006b); cheaper replication resulting from digital storage and transmission (Anonymous, 2000); cheaper distribution resulting from the Internet’s almost instantaneous global reach and structure (Premkumar, 2003); and reduced marketing costs resulting from the creators’ ability to communicate directly with potential consumers via web and e-mail (Bockstedt et al., 2005; Businessweek, 2006a). New income streams have also emerged from merchandising and musical products such as ringtones, toys, digital jukeboxes and gaming (Bessman, 2004). The start of the 21st century has seen a decline in the total number of CDs sold, which the major recording industry players have blamed on (largely Internet-based) piracy (Channel, 2004), and a shift toward digitally-distributed music (Curran, 2006), which rose from about 6% of the recording industry’s global worldwide revenues in 2005 33

Literature Review

(IFPI, 2006b) to about 20% in 2008 (IFPI, 2009). However, there is significant debate as to whether the decline in CD sales was due to the effects of illegal file-swapping, made feasible by the advent of the MP3 standard (Hsieh, 2002) and software such as Napster (Boorstin, 2004; Hong, 2004); due to consumer dissatisfaction with heavily promoted but bland music and/or a reduction in the number of CD releases (Malik, 2005); or perhaps simply due to global economic forces reducing demand for entertainment in times of recession (Shayo & Guthrie, 2006). Lesk (2003) argues that the sales figures are not as authoritative as is often claimed, and shows that US perperson sales of recorded music peaked in 1978 and US recorded music sales as a fraction of GDP peaked in 1921. The rapid growth of digital sales revenue since the launch of the iTunes store has been welcomed by all but digital sales revenue has yet to compensate for the decline in CD sales revenue (Gerome, 2009; IFPI, 2009). In late 2008 Atlantic claimed to be the first label for which digital revenue exceeded revenues from hardcopy sales (Arango, 2008) but overall revenues were still lower year-on-year. However, figures from independent online CD retailer CDBaby.com (Sivers, 2007) show that for many of CDBaby’s musicians, CD sales are increasing year-on-year. That these musicians’ business prospects are improving while the sales of the largest-selling acts are declining has raised the idea that they represent a growing “musical middle class” (Hypebot, 2007) of musicians who eke out a living or, more probably, supplement their day jobs by making music at parties, in pubs and clubs, or perhaps in occasional studio sessions – and who are benefiting from entry to the digital marketplace. It is these musicians to whom the 21st century technologies’ alternative pathways offer most hope as they can use new technologies to generate sufficient income to survive in a market to which the major labels’ oligopoly had previously denied them access.

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But access alone is not enough. Much of the money the major labels advance to artists is spent on promotion of the recorded music and/or upcoming live performances rather than the production process (averaging about 20% of the contract according to Premkumar, 2003). Artificial scarcity is created by the major labels in two ways: by flooding the attention of potential customers with marketing material that Independents cannot afford to create, and by ensuring that the limited shelf space available in retail stores is filled with product that has either a track record of selling well or the prospect of selling well because of its marketing budget (Anderson, 2006). This limits the time and space available to other music producers in the physical market. But online digital music occupies no scarce physical space and is non-rivalrous (Quah, 2003), meaning its ownership by one person does not prevent another person from also owning it. Although the majors can buy the advertising space on the iTunes home page, they cannot prevent consumers’ access to the full catalogue, making that catalogue abundant. To underscore the importance of this, iTunes recently sold its 10 billionth track. It is the largest-selling record store in history (Apple, 2010). The abundance of digital music describes the market conditions necessary for a “Long Tail” economy (Anderson, 2006; Brynjolfsson et al., 2006; Caron, 2006; Huberman & Wu, 2006). This notion is based on the shape of a power-law distribution, as shown in Figure 1, whereby a few items achieve enormous popularity (and therefore sales) while an enormous majority of items remain virtually unknown. Anderson’s (2006) argument is that if a business’s income is proportional to the area beneath this curve, the vertical darker area – usually the preserve of the industry’s dominant players – is no greater than the horizontal paler area. If the inventory in the paler area can be serviced at a marginal cost equal to or lower than that of the darker, profit margins can be sustained and business will be viable.

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Source: http://www.thelongtail.com/

It is up to each independent musician or act to establish a viable business by capturing as much of the paler “long tail” area as possible (by providing as many and diverse products as possible into the marketplace) and moving their sales as far to the left of the curve as they can (by ensuring the best quality possible and promoting their output and activities as widely as possible). A rising “middle class” of musicians will tend to flatten the curve, lowering the highest point of the darker and raising the height of the curve at the intersection of the two areas. Figures provided by IFPI (2006a) and Nielsen Soundscan (Nielsen, 2007) indicate that the former condition has been occurring for some time and sales data from CDBaby CEO Derek Sivers (2007) indicate that the latter is also occurring, at least as far as CDBaby’s catalogue is concerned. Fifty percent of CDBaby’s sales volume come from one percent of artists, while Billboard figures (Tripp, 2006) show that 70% of reported CD sales volumes came from 0.7% of releases. It should be noted that these datasets are not perfectly matched so the statistical validity of this observation is untested, but this nonetheless supports the theory that the Long Tail environment is facilitating the growth of a “musical middle class”. The Long Tail thesis is not without its critics. Elberse (2008) cites Robert Frank and Philip Cook’s 1995 book The Winner-Take-All Society, which argues that the effect of abundant choice and almost-costless distribution would be the opposite: that the most 36

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popular selections would become more popular and the lesser-known would become even more obscure. Elberse plots data from music consumption on Rhapsody and video consumption on Quickflix to show that this is, in fact, what has happened with regard to online digital sales. Also, Orlowski (2008) cites research by Page et al (Telco 2.0, 2008) showing that in fact the Long Tail follows a Log Normal curve, not a Power Law curve, meaning that the “hits” represent a smaller percentage of total available selections than expected and that 80 per cent of the catalogue sold nothing at all, which means that the Long Tail is of no help to Independent musicians. Anderson (2008a) responds to Page et al by pointing out that they do not publish the source of their data but that if it was from mobile music provider Mblox (who was partner to the research), then the analysis is not valid because mobile music purchases are not abundant: they lack the “filters” that create the Long Tail environment and therefore the comparison is not valid. Further, Anderson points out that the Long Tail may well follow the subtly different mathematics of a Log Normal, rather than a Power Law, curve but that this difference is trivial in terms of the opportunities for Independent musicians. Similarly, Anderson (2008b) argues that Elberse’s (2008) analysis deals with percentages of consumption rather than raw sales figures, and is thus based on a different definition of “Tail”. Thus, they may both be correct but Elberse’s research does not invalidate the Long Tail’s importance to Independent musicians. That the precise mathematical formulation of the Long Tail is poorly understood does not diminish the concept of a Long Tail business model. For Independent musicians this Long Tail business model would necessarily include not just sales of recordings but also of merchandise, artefacts, and show tickets. It would also include other income that can be derived from their creative output, such as endorsements, and licensing recordings to films, TV and so on – aiming to capitalise on as many sources of revenue

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as possible. It remains to be seen whether a viable, sustainable Long Tail business can be built by musicians using some of the New Media alternatives to traditional music distribution channels, such as The Orchard (Orchard, 2010) and CDBaby (CDBaby, 2010), and “Web 2.0” (O'Reilly, 2005) promotions devices such as MySpace (MySpace, 2010) and YouTube (YouTube, 2010). To begin to identify and optimise suitable business strategies is the purpose of this research.

Musicians and their practices

There is a dearth of literature concerning Independent musicians as a group. Existing literature concentrates on music and musicians of particular sub-cultures or musical styles (for example Hayes, 2006; Hesmondhalgh, 1998), geographic locations (for example Kong, 1996; Vila, 2002), or the social and cultural impact of individual acts or artists (for example Hochhauser, 1999; Kauppila, 2005). However, none of this literature focuses on Independent musicians per se and very little of it specifically addresses the industrial context of the music. Bennett (2005) argues that insufficient research has been conducted into the professional practice of classical instrumental musicians. The limited published literature is based mostly on economic studies of the creative industries (for example, see CIE, 2005; CIRAC, 2004; DCITA, 2002; Donovan et al., 2006; Flew et al., 2001). What is known, however, shows that “far from making a living by making music, the majority of musicians finance music making by making a living” (2005: 205). Bennett cites a UK study (Metier, 2001) which found that 90% of classical musicians held a secondary occupation – 94% in a Danish study (Transdaahl, 1996). For most of these musicians, the secondary occupation was teaching music. Bennett paints a complex picture of musicians’ self-assessments of ‘success’ in which a clear hierarchy emerges. Most would prefer to be full-time performers but teach “as a fall-back career” (2005: 206) in “a very 38

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unstable industry” (2005: 208). Bennett found a self-assessment among these musicians that “the musician is a person whose ‘product’ results in music” (2005: 209), with participants lamenting that their education had underplayed the “business, social and cultural” (2005: 210) aspects of a musical career. The flight from music as a full-time occupation to a part-time activity is clearly shown by Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures. A 1993 survey found that Australia had about 11,500 musicians or singers and about 1000 composers (Throsby and Thompson as in ABS, 1997: 65). In the 1996 Census 4910 Australians listed ‘instrumental musician’ or ‘singer’ as the main job they were doing in the week before census night and 217 nominated ‘composer’. By 2006 these figures were reduced to 29 musicians and 11 composers (ABS, 2009: 96). It should be noted that people involved in the industry as part of a second job are excluded from the census data, so this does not indicate the overall size of the industry. However, it clearly shows that the likelihood of full-time employment declined drastically over the 10 years 1996-2006. That this reflects a trend to part-time self employment is supported by data showing that in 1996 there were 541 businesses ‘comprising record companies, distributors, manufacturers of recorded music, music publishers and sound recording studios active in the field of music’ (ABS, 1997: 66) but by 2006 there were 855 sound recording studios and 678 recorded media manufacturing & publishing businesses (ABS, 2009). Further, in 2006 58% of these were non-employing, or solo owner-operated, businesses, which is almost certainly a result of the increased affordability of production and distribution technologies discussed above. This industrial context is not unique to musicians. Australia’s pessimistically titled Don’t Give Up Your Day Job report (Throsby & Hollister, 2003) found that of all Australian artists, musicians had the highest median earned income (pre-tax from all sources) at 39

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$35,800 in the 2000-01 year and that they comprised the highest, though a declining, proportion of the sector at 30%. This study found that artists’ incomes were “substantially less than managerial, administrative, professional and para-professional earnings” but “little different from those of all occupational groups, including nonprofessional and blue-collar occupations” (2003: 46). The low return from their artistic endeavours is best illustrated by the finding that although they spent 81% of their time on artistic work, they earned only 66% of their income from it. Finally, although the study found that “about half of Australia’s practising professional artists earned less than $10,000 from their creative work”, this figure comprised only earned income, which did not include royalties, unemployment benefits, and other sources of income. Madden (2004) notes that about “32 million Americans consider themselves artists” and there are “more than three times as many who pursue some sort of artistic endeavors in their lives”. Of these, about 10 million “earn at least some money from their performances, songs, paintings, videos, sculptures, photos or creative writing”. This study put the proportion of musicians who rely on a non-performing job to supplement their income at 92% (2004: 24). The major focus of Madden’s study, however, was the relationship between musicians and the Internet, with two-thirds of respondents saying it was “very important” in helping them to create and/or distribute their music; another quarter say it was “somewhat important” and just 11% saying it was “not too important” or “not important at all” (2004: 26). Given that the sample was largely recruited online, and that the survey was conducted using a web-based form, these figures are, as the author freely admits, not necessarily representative of the wider population. However, the myriad ways in which respondents have “integrated the Internet deeply into their musical lives” (2004: 26) – they report using it to help inspire

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them, promote their releases, stay in touch with colleagues, and even collaborate (see also Anderson & Ellis, 2005; Dillon, 2006; Ebare, 2003) – shows that it is significant. The above review makes it clear that the vast majority of musicians are unable to pursue the career of their choice. Although some musicians are almost certainly happy with part-time amateur or semi-professional musical activities, it seems that many of those who would like to make all of their living from their music are unable to do so and that opportunities for them to do so have diminished. Whether the supply of musicians exceeds the demand for musical products and services; or whether would-be professional musicians are excluded from the market for their products and services is not clear. However, the vibrancy of amateur and semi-professional musical endeavours indicates that the former is almost certainly not the case. Even less clear is what forces may be acting to exclude would-be professional musicians from the marketplace. Identifying these forces is one major focus of this study. In a different approach Brown (2001) examines the way in which five composers, “highly regarded in their area”, use computers in their practice of composition. He notes that: … each composer demonstrated a wide range of approaches to the computer, even in the composition of one piece. Its function changed as circumstances demanded – it’s not unlike a piano shifting function from a tool to test harmonic progressions to a performance instrument. Brown develops five “modes”, or ways in which the composer related to the musical material, and notes that they “are states with blurred boundaries, a particular type of compositional activity might show characteristics of two or more of the modes.

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Compositional activity usually oscillates between modes, at times frequently.” (Brown, 2001: 8). Others study musicians’ non-musical practice. Merkl (1997) examines the projection of a persona by Eddie Vedder and Madonna as marketing devices, noting the complexity and ambiguity of the relationship between their public image and their commercial success. By taking public stances on non-musical issues, like religion and abortion, they have (not necessarily deliberately) found extra ways to raise public awareness of their music. Baker (2004; 2006) preaches the need for Independent musicians to make marketing equally as important as musical practice; and the need for musical acts to find innovative marketing strategies to escape the “great indie music swamp in which everyone looks and sounds the same” (2004:7). A great deal of popular attention has been paid to musicians’ efforts to circumvent the major labels’ dominance and to market directly to a potential audience using New Media techniques (Hall, 1998; Hurley, 1998). These articles highlight social networking websites such as MySpace and Youtube (Gibson, 2007; Miller, 2006) as providing musicians with ways to present their music to potential fans; bypassing the monopolised route to radio airplay. They also show the benefits of webcasting (Kelbie, 2006) placement in TV advertising (LeBlanc, 2006), computer games (Garrity & Teitelman, 2005), and peer-to-peer file sharing (Gundersen, 2005; Miller, 2006) as a means to gain exposure. Andrews (2004) reports on “Guerilla gigs”, in which musicians use SMS, web forums, and e-mail communication to stage “secret, spontaneous concerts at unconventional venues” in London within hours. According to the literature, these methods have been used successfully by a range of musical acts from a range of genres in various contexts (Schwartz, 2005). However, none of these methods has been subjected to critical analysis nor detailed study so, despite the popular press coverage, 42

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the benefit of such methods to other Independent musicians remains unclear and untested. Certainly, there is some doubt about the veracity of the coverage (Eyre, 2006; Kelbie, 2006; Peoples, 2007) and more critical examination of the cases featured in the popular media is needed. The value of musicians’ relationships with fans has also been studied. Kauppila (2005) notes the importance of fan culture to the ongoing legacy of three 1960s San Francisco Bay bands: The Chocolate Watchband, the Count Five, and the Syndicate of Sound. The Chocolate Watchband, the one with no national hits, has the highest post-career profile, due mainly to their “cult” status obtained through an outstanding live performance and a more experimental sound that inspired others to try new things – as opposed to their recording sales volumes. This phenomenon is credited for the nomination of punk poet Patti Smith to the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame (Manson, 2004). Hochauser (1999) argues that the career of The Moody Blues has been extended and shaped by the musicians’ interaction with fans’ activities. These activities – musical, artistic, and extra-musical; sanctioned and unsanctioned – are part of a “symbiotic relationship” that differs significantly from the normal music/fan and producer/consumer relationships. More recently, Burke (2006) notes the way bands have harnessed the willingness of fans to help their favourite bands by remixing songs, creating merchandise or videos, and promoting new releases or concerts. In doing so fans have provided bands with creative guidance, by remixing songs or selecting their favourite mixes and arrangements, raw materials in the form of artwork, concert footage, and sound samples from which acts make merchandise, video clips or new recordings, and promotional labour when they advertise shows, releases or other initiatives on the acts’ behalf. This reduces acts’ production and promotion costs, and

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also cements relationships, since a personal stake in an act’s output gives fans incentive to continue their involvement beyond buying an album and a concert ticket. This kind of fan interaction depends upon musicians building esteem among their fans, colleagues and peers, as discussed by Brennan and Pettit, who posit esteem as the currency of the third of three ‘ruling passions in human life’ (2004:1): desire for property, desire for power; and desire for prestige. It is through the process of deriving esteem value from their creativity and then converting this into property or power that Indies are able to sustain a career. In order to sustain a music career, esteem must come from a variety of sources: fans, critics, business partners and peers, with these roles increasingly overlapping (Tapscott & Williams, 2007). Esteem value may attach, for example, to a musician’s creative corpus, songwriting or virtuosity, or to “non-musical” values such as political activism (Merkl, 1997), professionalism, or fashion sense. It may vary from song to song, performance to performance or recording to recording within a musician’s catalogue. It may apply to other creations, such as Nine Inch Nails’ multimedia marketing strategy for their Year Zero album (Cherryflava, 2007) or David Byrne’s artwork (Byrne, 2009). All of these sources of esteem can be, and usually are, inter-related. The concept of property, power, and prestige as motivators of human endeavor closely parallels Bourdieu's (1986) division of capital into economic, social and cultural capital. Others have expanded on (Siisiainen, 2000) and critiqued (Beasley-Murray, 2000) Bourdieu’s concept. Beasley-Murray points to Bourdieu’s lack of detail concerning the interchange between forms of capital and argues that “Bourdieu’s ‘capital’ is in practice closer to the economic category of ‘wealth’” (2000:101) than Marx’s capital – especially in that Bourdieu’s concept does not allow for an accumulation of “surplus” social or cultural capital, which creates profit and thus provides for an exchange between forms 44

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of capital. I argue that whereas Bourdieu based his ideas on the notion that capital takes time to accumulate and thus works to stabilise his “world without inertia” (1986:241), esteem is far more volatile; it can accumulate and dissipate in seconds. Certainly it is true that esteem is not necessarily the result of “accumulated labor” (Bourdieu, 1986:241) but can be bestowed as the result of an accident of birth (as in a title of nobility or a pretty face) or a fateful event (as a witness to or survivor of a tragedy). As such, the accumulation of esteem amounts to an increase in cultural or social capital. Despite Brennan and Pettit’s development of complex formula for the generation and maintenance of esteem, they also pay little attention to the exchange of esteem into the other economies; it seems better to posit esteem as the currency of social cultural capital, rather than as a substitute for Bourdieu's concept. Esteem cannot be traded (Brennan and Pettit, 2004) – you cannot buy and sell opinions. However, it can be increased or decreased. It can be converted, for example, into money through the sale of concert tickets, recordings, or merchandise; into labour through fansourced co-production or street-team promotion; or into power through the musician’s influence over fan opinions, peers, critics, and other industry people. Musicians who have attracted the esteem and thus support of a label are provided with access to resources that can assist them in business development. Upon signing they are usually granted resources for production, including professional quality recording (Boss, as in Francisco, 2005); resources for promotion through mass and online media channels; and resources for organizational development, such as databases, support staff, and the record label “machine”. All of this results from an infusion of esteem, and a recording or management contract can create the perception that the music and musicians will be held in high regard by consumers. Even so, each year thousands of new releases fail to cover the costs of production (Tripp, 2006).

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Independent musicians, who have not been granted these resources, must develop equivalent capacities in less efficient (though potentially more rewarding) ways from a wider diversity of sources. This tends to inhibit their access to the “esteem economy” (Brennan and Pettit, 2004) of the majors and can slow conversion of their fans’ esteem into the stuff of business. However, the esteem granted by fans that have been recruited over a longer period of direct interaction and authentic engagement, rather than peripheral, mass-mediated exposure, can have stronger benefits over the longer term, as shown by the careers of the Moody Blues (Hochhauser, 1999) and Grateful Dead. This relationship between musicians and fans is one area in which New Media technologies have undoubtedly helped (Baym, 2008). However, as with the popular coverage of acts’ efforts above, much of the available literature is steeped in hype and little of it is comprised of rigorous study. It would be useful to know exactly which of these methods works to the advantage of Indies and what combination of them works best under which circumstances and at what career stages. Upon this knowledge business plans can be built. Beginning to examine the complexity of these questions in a deep, rigorous way is another major focus of this research. Rogers (2008) studies the cultural and industrial environment in the “Indie” music scene in Brisbane. Interviewing musicians from 20 local Brisbane Indie bands, he encountered the “Brisbane Indie Mindset” (2008: 645), finding three motivations for Indie musicians: 1) fun (because of a resignation to the idea of low income) with “hobbyist tendencies” (2008: 646); 2) because the musicians feel a strong sense of community; and 3) to a lesser extent, to build the musicians’ social status and enhance their self-definition. However, these musicians are beset by group instability, with frequent changes of personnel, and limits imposed by the unprofitability of touring. Therefore their careers rarely develop beyond local performances in their home city.

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Rogers notes that the meaning of “Indie’ has changed with the increasing popularity of digitally distributed music, starting from a narrow genre-based definition referring to a simple, jangly-guitar rock sound in the early 1990s, and now encompassing a range of musical styles. It is also more definitive of an approach to the business of music than it is of any musical genre: With the scarcity of such albums severely diminished, the cultural capital provided by indie listening has shifted from those with an in-depth, scholarly knowledge of a select canon of indie bands to those in possession of an in-depth, scholarly knowledge of a much wider, more exotic selection of music. (Rogers, 2008: 640) For example, online Indie music publication Pitchfork (2010) has widened its music selection over the past decade to cover hip-hop, commercial pop, experimental music, and metal (Rogers, 2008). This leads to the view that the social status of being “Indie” has more to do with an attitude strongly favouring innovation and avoidance of the popular than it does with any particular musical style. Cool (2006) takes this even further, answering the question “What is Indie?” with a pastiche of sentiments, standards, and practices. Cool interviews musicians and “industry experts” in a bid to get a definition from people who define themselves as “Indie”, finding that many of them are unclear about it and often uncomfortable with some connotations of the term. Advantages of being Independent include control over musicians’ creative output and business practices, with a corresponding freedom from interference, and wide experience of all aspects of the industry leading to personal and professional development. Disadvantages include a lack of capital resulting in a shortage of labour and other resources; obscurity among “the mass of the thousands of other people doing something similar” (Sivers, in Cool, 2006); and limited access to 47

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supporting services such as radio airplay and distribution without the credibility of thirdparty representation. “The stigma that because you’re Independent, that means you were kind of rejected” (Wimble, in Cool, 2006). This leads to a philosophical definition of ‘Indie’: an “ethos” or “mentality” believing in the integrity of self-management. “It doesn’t matter where you’re at. It matters where your head’s at.” (Sivers, in Cool, 2006). By this definition, for example, Radiohead’s 2007 release In Rainbows constitutes an Independent release even though it was published by Warner Chappell and licensed to various labels around the world (Brandle, 2007) because Radiohead created the album on their own and negotiated the distribution on their own terms. They also became one of the first major acts to engage directly with their fans and give their new recording away via a website (Radiohead, 2007). The view that a band as hugely successful as Radiohead could be considered Indie raises the need for the definition of “Indie” to be addressed with more rigour. Some industry research (Hypebot, 2007; Sivers, 2007) points to a growing group of musicians taking advantage of these technologies to realise a living based on their musical activities. Their businesses are assisted by a rapidly-growing body of self-help literature that gives advice on every aspect of a musical career. This includes songwriting and production (Cluskey, 2006), marketing (Baker, 2004; Sivers, 2008), legal advice (Simpson, 2006), personal development (Hooper, 2005a), and more (Schwartz, 2005). Many of these are available globally from outlets such as Amazon.com, some are e-books, others podcasts, and some are given away free. The theme that consistently runs through all of these texts is the need for Indies to have confidence in themselves and their music and to be disciplined and enthusiastic in

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pursuit of their goals. As Canjoe John puts is: “It’s hard to prove that success starts with hard work and perseverance, and that the music business is business,” (Schwartz 2005: 34). This betrays a perception that many musicians are reluctant to embrace the nonmusical aspects of a music business and tend not to be very good at them – a view that is rarely stated explicitly. Other themes include the importance of regarding an Independent music business as a business rather than a hobby; the importance of building a team of support people; the importance of building a supporter base as a way to get help and feedback; the need to innovate when it comes to gaining exposure; and the need to diversify sources of revenue as much as possible. This points to the existence of necessary pre-conditions that musicians may need for Indie success: in addition to a pre-requisite musical competency, a certain attitude and core knowledge base is required. A lack of these non-musical pre-conditions may account for some musicians’ failure to achieve their career goals. However, the Indie music scene seems as diverse as the “mainstream” music market in terms of genre, and more so in terms of Indie demographics.

Indie Strategies

Whenever there are opportunities to make money there is no shortage of people willing to offer advice or assistance for a price, and digital music is no exception. Online marketers offer plenty of advice and assistance to Indies (Hooper, 2005b; Plowright, 2006; Wilson, 2005) and some are not afraid to break anti-spam laws to get business. Much of the commercial literature is concerned with strategies to bypass the major labels and empower Indies to run their own business (Schwartz, 2005). But some concerns ways to draw the attention of the major labels and enhance an act’s prospects of securing a record deal (Standring, 2010). Most of this advice is based on personal experience and/or anecdotal evidence, and the publications are used as a device to 49

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solicit customers for the authors’ consultancy or web hosting services. It would be easy to dismiss this material as unreliable and unacademic but it is the material most likely to be used for guidance by Independent musicians seeking to improve their practice, and hence must be considered in this study. A range of studies has considered the implications of New Media technologies for the music business model (for example, see Dubosson-Torbay et al., 2004; Shayo & Guthrie, 2006; Vaccaro & Cohn, 2004). Bockstedt et al (2005) identify four links in the new “digital” music business value chain: 1) Production; 2) Licensing, Marketing and Promotion; 3): Intellectual Property Right enforcement; and 4) Digital Distribution and Sales. The commercial literature is summarised into specific approaches to each of these links below. 1) Production. A large amount of literature exists to help the untrained songwriter (Cluskey, 2006; Webb, 1998) and producer (Cluskey, 2006; Huber & Runstein, 2001). Books, e-books, podcasts, blogs and many other resources have been published on these topics. Most of these focus on the process of writing and producing songs that are likely to become hits. They tend to emphasize simplicity, formula and repetition, though some (eg Webb, 1998) focus on more aesthetic approaches to creative process. They all, however, admit that creating a hit requires some tantalizingly indefinable aspect that makes the work stand out. This, by definition, requires that recordings have some element that cannot be introduced by formula and which is only recognised when it is present. Very little of this material is contentious. Significant debates concern the effect of two common forms of sound compression: compressing the dynamic range of a recording to make it sound louder (Tesler, 2008) – the so-called “loudness wars”; and compressing 50

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the digital file into a format such as MP3, which reduces the file size but also reduces the sound quality (Ruzanski, 2006). Of these, the most important for a group of teenage musicians is the quality of the MP3 files that are released, either as free downloads or for sale. The lower the MP3 bitrate, the easier the file is for fans to download and distribute, but the poorer the quality of the sound. However, Ruzanski (2006) found negligible listener dissatisfaction with recordings at bit rates of 196kbps or higher, and very little at 128kbps. Some online music distribution services will not allow music to be uploaded at bit rates lower than 128kbps (eg LastFm, 2009; Amie Street, 2009) and Amie Street recommends a minimum of 196kbps. ReverbNation.com recommends a bitrate of 160kbps but does not enforce it. In parallel with the increasing publicity and availability of home-studio technologies is a growing diversity of self-help resources – online and offline – aimed at helping to Make the bedroom artist sound pro (Notez, 2008) or encouraging Digital Music: DIY NOW! (Dean & Caulder, 2007). These provide advice on the best (or at least, the best-value) software and hardware available, tips for improving sub-standard sonic input, and techniques for mixing and mastering recordings in a home-studio environment. A beginner can learn the basics in a systematic way, or find the solution to just about any problem on a needs basis in online fora such as those at Studio Recording Engineer (Studio Recording Engineer, 2009), Pro Tools Forum (Pro Tools Forum, 2009), or KVR Audio (KVR Audio, 2009). The process of musicians forming these communities in response to the need for education and social support regarding the adoption of new technologies is at least as old as the evolution of digital instruments (Théberge, 1997) and these fora continue to grow and evolve alongside technology. Research indicates that better-produced sound is regarded by listeners as more valuable (Boss, as in Francisco, 2005) but while much is made of the potential for cheaper and 51

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more accessible technologies to advance the careers of independent artists, mere access to the technology does not necessarily equate to commercially valuable recordings because ‘Having tools doesn’t make you an engineer – not even close’ (Schwartz, 2005: 94). Producing ‘pretty good’ recordings using new technologies takes, by one estimate (Businessweek, 2006b), at least two years. Producing world-class material presumably takes considerably longer, which may explain why no home-produced recording has yet featured in the top 40 charts, iTunes top downloads, or in hit radio programs. Thus, although acquiring the technologies may be getting cheaper, the complexity of using them effectively and efficiently demands an education cost (Théberge, 1997) that must be met either by the manufacturer or the musician adopter. A recording studio is not just a place where recordings are made. It is also a workplace, a creative space, and a social space where musical and non-musical visitors can ‘come to the studio for networking opportunities, to talk music, football and politics, and to listen to and comment on albums in progress’ (Bates, 2006, p. 3). For a solo artist-asproducer, the lack of socialisation has the potential to inhibit the kind of collaborative creativity discussed by Toft (2005), in which the songwriting, arrangement and postproduction were all shaped by the collaborators’ long-term engagement and exposure to similar influences. The home-studio workspace creates a situation in which a selfrecording artist must not only simultaneously operate two sets of tools – the recording equipment and the instrument – but must also very rapidly switch between two mindsets: that of engineer/producer and that of performer (in Hajimichael’s (2006) view, these are often three separate roles). This mental separation reflects Williams’s (2007) Control Room/Performance Space divide and manifests where the control room and the performance space are the same room as the ‘bubble’ noted by Prior (2006)

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created by laptops. Each of these considerations impacts adversely on the decisionmaking of untrained or beginner recording engineers. 2) Licensing, Marketing and Promotion Significant literature is available from myriad sources to help those who wish to market their music using Internet technologies (for example, see Baker, 2003; 2004; Baker, 2006; Hooper, 2005b; Jay, 2005; Sivers, 2008). This literature also encompasses books, e-books, podcasts, blogs and articles. It emphasises: a) The benefits of placing recorded music in other media such as film, TV and advertisements. This is done in the hope that a placement in a high-profile show or campaign will expose music to a wider audience and therefore people will support the act (Jay, 2005). There have been several high-profile examples of this but for every Snow Patrol (Huhn, 2007), Jet, Feist (Pierce, 2007) or Daniel Powter (Farber, 2006) there are many such placements that make little or no difference to musicians’ fortunes. b) The uses of Web 2.0 sites such as MySpace (2010), ReverbNation (2009) and Facebook (2010) for promoting acts. This literature advises musicians to create a presence and build it by getting involved in the community (Baker, 2006). The logic argues that the more “friends” an act can collect in one of these communities, the more likely they are to sell recordings, merchandise and tickets to their shows. However, the example of the most popular person in MySpace, Tila Tequila, shows that this is not necessarily the case (Peoples, 2007). Tequila’s reality brought up the “1000 true fans” thesis (Kelly, 2008), which suggests that the strength of an act’s Web 2.0 relationships is more important than the number of them. There is also debate as to whether this presence should be distributed as widely as possible while keeping its identity integral (Baym, 2008) or whether it is better to focus an act’s limited resources on one or two 53

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such sites. (See the separate “Web 2.0” section below for a fuller review of online community literature.) c) The virtues and methods for building and managing a large fan base and enlisting those fans’ help with various aspects of the music business. This follows on from the previous point with the idea examined by Hochhauser (1999) that the support of the roles of the Moody Blues’ fan club, its (sanctioned and unsanctioned) subculture, and non-musical merchandise were be invaluable to that act’s livelihood. For example, fans can promote concerts, design merchandise, remix recordings, and provide footage for videos (Burke, 2006) on the act’s behalf. The key to harnessing this “fan labor” (Baym & Burnett, 2008) is regular contact via blogs and newsletters, as well as creating goodwill by giving away extras to those devoted enough to lend their help. d) ‘Guerrilla’ – or novel – approaches to marketing music using online and offline methods. In a world where a lot of people are doing similar things with similar goals in mind, it’s hard to get noticed. According to the guerrilla marketing theory (Baker, 2004), if you want media attention but have no budget you have to do something unexpected and different enough to be noticed but not arrested for anything serious. Prominent examples include Prince releasing his Planet Earth album as a giveaway in a UK newspaper (Farouky, 2007), and Radiohead’s release of their In Rainbows album as a “pay what you want” download (Hunt, 2007). The drawback of these techniques is that once they have been used they are no longer novel and will not work as well next time. Less dramatic but more reliable are techniques that bypass “mainstream” – especially offline – media and target potential fans more directly, such as community participation, giveaways, contests and street team activity.

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The task for the group of Indies is to devise a marketing plan that uses these strategies to best effect, while retaining the prospect of traditional offline promotions devices. None of the above strategies is designed to ignore or avoid magazine, newspaper, radio or TV coverage – in fact, most of them are designed to gain the attention of the dominant media institutions’ gatekeepers and thus a place in the broader public conscious. However, none of this literature provides a rigorous examination of the effectiveness or relative merits of these strategies, much less their suitability as a onesize-fits-all strategy for marketing Indie music. The more detailed expositions of this approach (Schwartz, 2005) emphasise the benefits tailoring each act’s marketing plan to their self-image, relative strengths and weaknesses and the dynamics with the act and/or its immediate network. Beginning to untangle this complexity is one of the aims of this research. 3) Intellectual Property Rights enforcement. The debate over the pros and cons of file sharing is well canvassed by Connolly & Krueger (2005). Research into whether illegal file sharing, most notably using peer-topeer networks such as Napster, Kazaa and Bittorrent, has any effect on recorded music sales is inconclusive and hotly debated. Some analysis has found that file-swapping may lead to more CD purchases (Bhattacharjee, S. et al., 2003), some has found it leads to less (Liebowitz, 2005; Zentner, 2003) and some has found no significant effect (Oberholzer & Strumpf, 2004). Some studies have even found different effects depending on the method of analysis applied to the data (Hong, 2004), while others sit on the fence and highlight factors that might be significant (Bhattacharjee et al., 2003). Liebowitz, (2005) examines some of the more prominent attempts and sensibly notes pitfalls in the various methods of assessment, given the complexity of the issue and the anarchic nature of the available data. Shy (2005) argues that, although Liebowitz may be 55

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quite technically correct, he ignores the possibility of a substitution effect: file swapping may be causing declining CD sales not because of piracy but by constituting a complementary medium. Perhaps the most commonsense position comes from Blackburn (2005) who found that for big-selling acts, file-sharing reduces sales but for unknown acts it can increase sales. Boorstin (2004) found that file-sharing reduced CD purchases among younger people but increased them among older people. In any case, the debate may be largely redundant as far as the major companies are concerned, since the combination of legal music-downloading services (Amoroso & Guo, 2006) and industry action against illegal downloaders (Rainie et al., 2004) seems to have significantly reduced the willingness of music consumers to swap files illegally. A growing body of research has begun to explore the benefits of “Copyleft” (Fitzgerald, 2005), or artists surrendering part of their copyrights in exchange for some indirect benefit, such as exposure for their act. Examples of copyleft include the Creative Commons licensing system (Creative Commons, 2007) and the GNU General Public Licence for software (GNU, 2010). Although plenty of anecdotal claims have been made of the benefits of free distribution of music (Musicweek, 2005) and businesses such as MP3.com (MP3, 2010) set up to facilitate it, insufficient empirical analysis has been applied to this approach to understand its costs and benefits. In fact, Creative Commons co-founder Lawrence Lessig is now concerned that the long-term effect of copyleft arrangements may be the opposite of that intended (Fitzgerald, 2005). The questions this literature raise for Independent musicians are whether or not to give their music away at no charge and, if so, how much (the whole song or just a short sample) and in what way (as a downloadable file or as a stream)? Industry advice is mixed, with some advising that it is best to give it all away at the best quality possible in exchange for recognition, exposure or an email address (Cameron, 2007). Others advise 56

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that it is a mistake to give any of it away, and most take the more complex view that an act needs to balance giving a sample away with surrendering all of an important revenue stream (Schwartz, 2005). What is rarely discussed is whether any of these solutions will work for all acts, and whether change is the needed as an act’s career develops. 4) Digital Distribution and Sales This is the one aspect of an independent music business that technology has unquestionably made easier. All literature agrees that music should be spread as far and wide as possible using the many distribution services available on the Internet, such as CDBaby (2010), Tunecore (2010); and IODA (2010). For a fee and slightly different set of conditions, these services will distribute recorded music to most of the online stores and account for resulting sales. Another set of services, such as Nimbit (2010), ReverbNation (2009) and OurStage (2010) will maintain an act’s presence on their website and sell recordings through their own store and “widgets” that can be encoded into an act’s other web sites. Further, an act can “seed” their recordings into peer-topeer networks, allowing them to be copied and distributed freely. Finally, a Podcast can be created to allow a series of recordings to be located easily and downloaded via an XML document and various podcast aggregator sites such as Podcast Alley (2010). The literature considers that all of these are sound strategies, as long as they agree with the act’s stance with regard to copyright protection, discussed in 3) above. The other theme that emerges through this literature is that musicians should – because they can – diversify their revenue streams as much as possible in the “post-CD era” (Glaser, 2007). This means using Internet services and technologies to sell merchandise, tickets and advertising space, as well as seeking revenue from brand alliances and licensing as soon as possible. Acts could also look to alternative capital-raising sources

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such as SellaBand (2010) or Slicethepie (2010) as a source of capital to finance their activities. Examining all of these possible activities and strategies is simply beyond that scope of this single project. This research will limit itself to testing two of these, as detailed in the following chapters.

Web 2.0

The most important difference that New Media technologies have made to the prospects of Indie musicians is the opportunity to promote their output and activities via global social networks. Without the Internet and associated technologies these would not exist, and they are collectively referred to as “Web 2.0” (O'Reilly, 2005) or, specifically with reference to their impact on the music industry, “Music 2.0” (Leonhard, 2008). What is not clear, and what this research seeks to find, is the best way for Independent musicians to harness Music 2.0 technologies to grow a fan community around their music. The industry literature and popular media discussed above universally praise the technologies and encourage their use as part of an Indie marketing plan but the details of how to build fan communities around a musical act are rarely discussed, much less laid out in a systematic fashion. However, a growing body of literature has investigated online communities more generally. The development of the Internet has led to many claims for and against the ‘democratisation’ of media (Beer & Burrows, 2005; Bodle, 2004: 12; Wilson, 2008) in the online environment. Although significant debate continues about the precise impact of the technological discontinuity that the Internet represents, there seems little doubt that the Internet has enabled significant grassroots participation and organisation in arenas that had previously been dominated by large corporations, for example journalism (Sambrook, 2005) and software development (Lee et al., 2009; Raymond, 58

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2001). The community-driven pursuit of what had been regarded as exclusively commercial activities has brought about (or been driven by) a movement for social change in response to perceived inadequacies in the standard of ‘commercial’ products and services. Music-making is another arena in which the dominance of a few multi-national corporations at the end of the 20th century has been challenged by the efforts of myriad smaller entrants to the market (Ebare, 2003) and by fans’ new-found capacity to locate music they like and express their appreciation directly to the musicians who make it. Long before the Internet, independent labels like Blue Note in 1940s (Clarke, 1995), Island Records in the 1960s (Island Records, 2010), or Stiff Records in the 1980s (Stiff Records, 2010) and the musicians they developed and promoted benefitted from grassroots support through a social movement seeking an alternative to over-produced and over-hyped music from the major labels (see Clarke, 1995; Malik, 2005). New technologies have allowed self-publishing musicians access to the music market and many of these have met with unprecedented support from fans whose activities have also been enabled by new technologies. Although the acts associated with major labels have used the same techniques and technologies to promote their efforts, they have been subject to a perceived lack of authenticity, stemming from the reputations of their backers (Dannen, 1991). The growth of this online “Indie” movement (Cool, 2006) has been anarchic, since few self-publishing musicians have the resources to find and engage the services they need to grow a sustainable music business (assuming that they are interested in doing so) and there are myriad competing interests within the industry. Even where this chaos has been clearly identified, the response to it has been similarly anarchic, with a multitude of small incomplete directories, for example The Indie Bible (Indiebible, 2010), and music 59

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communities – often with a commercial imperative – attempting to make sense of a segment of an increasingly global market. Even the advent of institutions like Merlin (2010), the peak body representing the interests of Independent music labels, has had minimal impact on the lives of the vast majority of music-makers (Garrahan, 2008). Each group of musicians and their supporters needs to build their own community within a network of like-minded communities – not just with fans, but also with other musicians and business associates. Phil Agre (2000) notes that online communities form around pre-existing human relations. Technology, he argues, can only enhance and facilitate these relationships; it cannot create them: Relationships that may have been episodic, their participants interacting only when jointly present or when talking on the phone, or through the arm’s length of paper records that might not be up to date, are now to be continuous, always-on, 24/7. We should not conceive the change as discontinuous, much less as a rewriting of an underlying institutional logic. Nonetheless, the development of a portfolio of always-on relationships – to people organizations, and things – does call us to revisit traditional concepts of the person. No longer, for example, are relationships tied to particular places. (2000: 71) This is especially true among music communities. New Media technologies have allowed musicians to form relationships across geographic boundaries that were previously impervious. Whereas for most of the 20th century music-making was limited to areas within earshot (notwithstanding events like Live Aid, in which the music was broadcast globally but each performance was limited to collaboration on a single stage (Westley, 1991) 21st century musicians can simultaneously perform in virtual spaces while 60

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physically residing on different continents, for example using eSession (2010) or jam2jam (2010). They can also do so asynchronously; recording parts at one place and time to be uploaded, downloaded and assimilated by other musicians in another place and time into other works (Brown & Graham, 2007; Nicolo, 2007 and, for example, The Track Shack, 2010; Théberge, 2004). Further, musicians’ sense of community is extended to global communities of interest and communities of practice (Anderson & Ellis, 2005; Théberge, 1997) revolving around their personal talents, preferences, interests and/or business needs (for example see Talentdatabase, 2009) and Gigswap, 2010). This necessarily includes relationships not just with other musicians, but also with other participants in the music industry: composers, lyricists, teachers, bookings agents, producers, venues, lawyers, etc, (for example see The Industry Yellow Pages, 2010) and The Indie Bible, 2010) and also with fans (Baker, 2003; Baym, 2008). These relationships occur at many levels: beginner, amateur, semi-professional and professional, and the communities are often most dynamic in places where people of various levels interact. This expansion of connections requires rethinking the notion of ‘community’ as it applies to music and musicians, Phil Agre (2000) explains how interlinked communities develop: Central to such a world are institutions and technologies that might be called switchboards: the practical means by which people establish, maintain, and evolve relationships. These might be market relationships of whatever structure, longer-term contractual relationships, professional ties, family relations, shared memberships in associations, hierarchical or lateral relationships in an organization, among others. (2000: 71)

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These ‘switchboard’ institutions sit at the centre of an ‘organised network’ (Lovink & Rossiter, 2005), facilitating the formation of loose relationships within and between preexisting communities. ‘What characterises networks is a shared sense of potentiality that does not have to be realised,’ Lovink and Rossiter argue, ‘At best they are seen as sources of inspiration amongst peers.’ This simultaneous inspiration, co-operation and competition generates significant value for participants – and some of this value carries financial consequences. Capturing this financial value is essential for communities to be sustainable where some form of business management, corporate, government or not-for-profit, is necessary. Hearn and Pace (2006) refer to this emerging view of business as a “value ecology” (Frederiksen and Lorenzen (2007) as a “value soup”) and argue that capturing this value and making an institution sustainable is best done by “e-form” business (Moore, 1998). The distinguishing feature of e-form business is its focus on the value that is generated by relationships with external agents and partners, rather than on the need to generate value from within. Thus, an e-form business sustains itself by providing services that facilitate the enterprise of a network of independent associates, rather than by seeking to conglomerate and manage all of those enterprises in a single structure. Bughin et al (2008) refer to productivity via such relationships as ‘distributed cocreation’ and hold up Wikipedia (2010) as a shining example of a highly valuable enterprise created by a network of volunteers:

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The example of Wikipedia suggests that companies can take even greater advantage of specialization by ceding more control over decisions about the content of products to networks of participants (suppliers, customers, or both) who interact with one another …Companies have three ways to win by adopting distributed cocreation. First, they can capture value from the cocreated product or service itself …by merchandising good ideas gleaned from the network … Second, companies can capture value by providing a complementary product or service … Third, they can benefit indirectly from the cocreation process – for example, through an enhanced brand or strategic position. Most of the literature concerning ways to build online communities has arisen from the field of online education. Parr and Ward’s (2006) experience of creating an online community of teachers found that it is best to ‘build communities within safe, known and supportive environments’; to reinforce existing communities; and to create communities around a viable solution to a need perceived by community members. Waters (2008) notes that online communities involve social networks that can be quite hierarchical, which points to the importance of leadership. His Social Network Analysis of an online learning environment showed that activities that did not involve one or more ‘thought leaders’ within the community did not develop but that ‘leadership here was not a matter of simple domination of discussion but was exhibited in the careful facilitation of discourse’ (Waters, 2008: 7). Lin et al (2007) found that the use of wiki software enabled them to create a learning environment with significant peer support, which improved educational outcomes for all students in their project as well as making for better group outcomes. They also created an environment with a hierarchical team structure involving ‘project leaders’, ‘trainers’, and ‘programmers’ in a software development project. 63

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Parr and Ward (2006) emphasised the benefits of ‘volunteerism’ in building online communities. Attracting and motivating cocreators is identified by Bughin et al (2008) as the first ‘hurdle’ for enterprises seeking to venture down this new pathway to prosperity. They suggest incentives ranging from financial reward to community recognition, while identifying other barriers to participation such as ease of facility use and time demands that must be addressed by project designers. Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006) asked what motivated people to contribute to ‘user innovation’ initiatives when the innovators knew their efforts would be used to increase a firm’s profits. They found that innovative users were likely to be ‘hobbyists’, meaning they were enthusiastic users of the products being tested or refined but had no financial stake in their production, and that these users were motivated by ‘reputation mechanisms’, meaning that they were given recognition either by the firm hosting the project or by peers. Firm-recognition mechanisms were found to be far more powerful than peer-recognition mechanisms, and the firm’s recognition was more likely to appeal to the users’ enthusiasm for the product and desire for recognition from its source than to the prospect of career advancement. Lin et al (2007), however, found that the deliberately constructed ‘commendation region’ within their wiki did encourage users to engage with and critically reflect on their peers’ efforts. Finally, Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006) found that innovative users demonstrated ‘lead user’ characteristics, meaning that they tended to be early adopters and thus likely to detect the need to innovate earlier. Interestingly, there was little suggestion of direct personal gain:

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We find no significant relationship between being an innovative user and expecting reciprocity for participating or giving to the community. Neither do we find any significant relationship between innovative users and drawing on the community for business purposes, and we do not find any relation between the wish to advance career opportunities and being an innovative user. (Jeppesen & Frederiksen, 2006: 56) The ‘peer production’ (Li & Lee, 2007) approach of building institutions using the labour of many volunteers captures value according to “Wikinomics” (Tapscott & Williams, 2007). This is essentially an extrapolation of the ‘open source’ approach to developing software, most clearly enunciated by Eric Raymond (2001), to the development of other goods, both public and private, using labour and expertise volunteered by enthusiasts. However, even with many willing and capable participants, making a useful website or institution where there was previously only a need is not easy. As Phil Agre (2000) puts it: If it is possible to outsource every possible aspect of a firm then it is easy to start a firm. Anyone with ideas and connections can get moving quickly because they can focus on the particular knowledge that provides them with a competitive advantage. Building a global network of sites for the exercise of that knowledge – whether through personal contact or the distribution of a product – is still a major undertaking. (2000: 75) If Wikipedia is accepted as the best exemplar of this method, then the importance of recruiting ‘thought leaders’ of the kind described by Waters (2008) above, preferably ‘hobbyists’ who demonstrate the kind of ‘lead user’ characteristics outlined by Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006), is confirmed by Chi’s (2007) finding that the distribution of labour in Wikipedia is far from egalitarian: 1 per cent of Wikipedia’s more than 65

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8,372,585 editors (at the time of writing - SMSO, 2008) are responsible for about half of the site’s edits and the editors who make most edits tend to be the same ones who contribute most of the content. This pattern is repeated across other ‘Web 2.0’ platforms (Wilson, 2008). The flip side of this is that a growing number of users contribute in a small way each (Chi, 2007), amounting to a significant labour force. It would be rather undemocratic, not to mention unhelpful, to prevent or discourage them from doing so. Bughin et al (2008) predict several ‘hurdles’ confronting people who wish to start a cocreation project: 1. Attracting and motivating cocreators. (Discussed above) 2. Structuring problems for participation. 3. Governance mechanisms to facilitate cocreation. 4. Maintaining quality. It would appear that leaping hurdles 1-3 makes leaping hurdle 4 easier. Wikipedia has been found to have an error rate comparable with that of Encyclopaedia Britannica (Giles, 2005), and is much easier to correct when an error is detected or an update needed. As “Linus’s Law” states with regard to software development, “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow” or, more formally, “given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix will be obvious to someone” (Raymond, 2001). Although this arrangement is fraught, it can nonetheless result in virtuous productivity if the necessary principles, as outlined by Benkler and Nissenbaum (2006) are evident in the project’s design and transparent to users.

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The questions for any cocreation project, then, are: how large a user base can be recruited; and managed at what cost; and how much of the necessary work will be shared among community members? The key to understanding the uneven distribution of labour that makes such communities work may lie in Giese’s (2004) discussion of James Carey’s (1989) two modes of communication as the “transmission” of information and the “ritual” of cultural bonding, as they relate to digital music. It may be that users bring a range of needs to Web 2.0 sites such as Wikipedia: some are content to simply find the information they require, others engage with the culture that has created the resource. Thus, the enthusiastic hobbyists who enjoy the ritual significance of social networking form the core of the community and provide the vast bulk of the labour needed to ensure the best possible experience for casual visitors. Others may contribute a small amount that advances their personal interests and, coincidentally, helps build the community in which they reside on the periphery. The contributions of these myriad users reflect a ‘Long Tail’ (Anderson, 2004) of labour: a small segment of the total user base does the vast bulk of the work and an enormous majority of the user base does very little work each. But when this work contributed by the many is added together, the benefit is significant. This Long Tail pattern repeats across many human relations, from recorded music sales to social networks to salaries. The most important aspect of this from the point of view of building communities is that every one of these small efforts can be significant if the cost of managing them can be contained. The corollary of this is that every page created by an independent user is an addition to the total value of the site. Hence, the challenge for management is to contain the cost of integrating each component of project designed to be built using “granular” modules (Benkler & Nissenbaum, 2006). This cost

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is best contained when the community is self-organising (Foell et al., 2007) and is the only one of its kind. Of course, all of the above simply reflects the wisdom of the centuries: communities flourish under strong leadership and on the back of a small dedicated group of workers, one of whose main roles is to recruit new members and delegate small roles to them. As long as the effort is driven by the needs, interests and capacities of the community, the labour will be freely given. Thus it can be deduced that the most effective way for a group of Indies to begin building a fan community is to seed their efforts in “switchboard” institutions (Agre, 2000) such as MySpace and ReverbNation and gather a following there. They should then seek to build relationships with the people who choose to follow them in order identify those most likely to become “thought leaders” within the group. These “thought leaders” (Waters, 2008), which ReverbNation.com identifies as a “Street Team”, might then provide labour to enhance the community that is built around the act separate from, but inclusive of, the original “switchboard” communities. It seems that recognition from the act may be all the reward the street team need, though much of the industry literature suggests that financial inducements such as free tickets and merchandise may work better than a simple autograph or reference in a CD’s liner notes.

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Sivers, Derek (2007), ‘Sales numbers at CD Baby’, Accessed 14 November 2007. ---- (2008), ‘How to Call Attention to Your Music’, http://sivers.org/pdf: Derek Sivers. Slicethepie (2010) ‘Welcome to Slicethepie’ http://www.slicethepie.com/. Accessed 5 March 2010. SMSO (2008), ‘Wikipedia: EDITORS, smso’, http://www.smso.net/Wikipedia: EDITORS. Accessed 25 November 2008. Standring, Chris (2010) ‘Discover how to get to know top record company A&R's and get them to sign you!’ A & R Online. http://www.aandronline.com/get_signed.html. Accessed 1 January 2010. Stiff Records. (2010) ‘Stiff Records Official Website’. http://www.stiff-records.com/ Accessed 10 May 2010. Studio Recording Engineer (2009), ‘Forums’, http://www.studiorecordingengineer.com/forums.html. Accessed 7 November 2009. Talentdatabase (2009) ‘Home’ http://www.talentdatabase.com/. Accessed 19 September 2009. Tapscott, Don & Williams, Anthony D (2007), Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything, New York: Penguin. Telco 2.0 (2008)’Exclusive Interview: The ‘Long Tail’ Interrogated (part 2)’ http://www.telco2.net/blog/2008/11/exclusive_interview_will_page.html Accessed 1 March 2009. Tesler, Pearl (2008), ‘Ear Ache’, Current Science, 94: 2, pp. 4-5. Théberge, Paul (1997) Any sound you can imagine: Making music/consuming technology. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press Théberge, Paul (2004) ‘The Network Studio: Historical and Technological Paths to a New Ideal in Music Making’ Social Studies of Science 34(5):759-781 Throsby, David & Hollister, Virginia (2003), Don't Give Up Your Day Job: An Economic Study of Professional Artists in Australia, Australia Council, Canberra. Toft, Robert (2005), ‘Rhetorical Criticism and the Creative Process: Invention and Arrangement in The Guess Who’s ‘Laughing’’, The Art of Record Production Conference, London, 8-10 September 2005. Track Shack, The (2010) ‘thetrackshack.com’ http://www.thetrackshack.com. Accessed 5 March 2010. Transdaahl, J O (1996), 'Rhythmic music education in Denmark', The ISME Commission for the Education of the Professional Musician 1996 seminar. The Musician's role: New Challenges, Lund. Universitetstrykriet, Lund University:

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Tripp, Phil (2006), ‘Lies, Damn Lies and Music Business Statistics’, In Music & Media Loose Cannon, http://www.themusic.com.au/im_m/display.php?s=phil&id=19. Accessed 04 April 2006. Tunecore (2010) ‘Tunecore: Digital Music Distribution’ http://www.tunecore.com Accessed 5 March 2010 Vaccaro, Valerie L & Cohn, Deborah Y (2004), 'The Evolution of Business Models and Marketing Strategies in the Music Industry', The International Journal on Media Management, 6: 1,2, p. 46 Vila, P (2002), ‘Debating the past: Music, memory, and identity in the Andes’, Choice, 39: 8, p. 1464. Waters, Jim (2008), ‘Social Network Behavior, Thought-Leaders and knowledge building In An Online Learning Community’. 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Webb, Jimmy (1998), Tunesmith: Inside the art of songwriting, New York: Hyperion. Westley, Frances. (1991), ‘Bob Geldof and Live Aid: The Affective Side of Global Social Innovation’, Human Relations, 44: 10, pp. 1011-36. What is Indie? (2006), MPEG-4, D Cool, USA. Distributed by FIBII Independent Media Production. Wikipedia (2010), ‘Wikipedia’, Wikipedia, http://www.wikipedia.org/. Accessed 5 March 2010. Wilhelms, Fred (2006), ‘What a Recording Contract Really Says’, Music Forum, http://www.mca.org.au/index.php?id=173. Accessed 04 January 2007. Williams, Alan (2007), ‘Divide and Conquer: Power, Role Formation, and Conflict in Recording Studio Architecture’, Journal of the Art of Record Production, 1: i. Wilson, Chris (2008), ‘The Wisdom of the Chaperones’, Slate, http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2184487. Accessed 28 February 2008. Wilson, Ralph F. (2005), The Web Marketing Checklist: 31 Ways to Promote Your Website, WilsonWeb, Rocklin, CA. YouTube (2010) ‘YouTube – Broadcast Yourself’ http://www.youtube.com Accessed 4 February 2010. Zentner, Alejandro (2003), ‘Measuring the Effect of Music Downloads on Music Sales’, http://home.uchicago.edu/~alezntn/musicindustrynew.pdf. Accessed 27 April 2006.

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CHAPTER 2: MUSIC 3.0: A TRAVELLERS’ GUIDE TO THE FUTURE OF ONLINE COMMERCIAL MUSIC

(Forthcoming) [MS under review for Popular Music and Society] Statement of Contribution of Co-Authors for Thesis by Published Papers The authors listed below have certified that: 1. they meet the criteria for authorship in that they have participated in the conception, execution, or interpretation, of at least that part of the publication in their field of expertise; 2. they take public responsibility for their part of the publication, except for the responsible author who accepts overall responsibility for the publication; 3. there are no other authors of the publication according to these criteria; 4. potential conflicts of interest have been disclosed to (a) granting bodies, (b) the editor or publisher of journals or other publications, and (c) the head of the responsible academic unit, and 5. they agree to the use of the publication in the student’s thesis and its publication on the Australasian Digital Thesis database consistent with any limitations set by publisher requirements. In the case of this chapter: Music 3.0 Contributor

Statement of contribution*

Hugh Brown

Wrote part of the manuscript, contributed and refined ideas and concepts

Signature Date Phil Graham

Wrote part of the manuscript, contributed and refined ideas and concepts

Julian Knowles

Wrote part of the manuscript, contributed and refined ideas and concepts

Principal Supervisor Confirmation I have sighted email or other correspondence from all Co-authors confirming their certifying authorship. _______________________ ____________________ ______________________

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Date 83

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CHAPTER 2: MUSIC 3.0: A TRAVELLER’S GUIDE TO THE FUTURE OF ONLINE COMMERCIAL MUSIC

Then I stepped upon a landmine And I saw my future arise Now I’m getting to know you Between the lies - Train “Landmine” from the album Alive at Last

Abstract In this paper we propose a set of four principles for understanding the future of commercial music in online environments. We draw these principles from qualitative and quantitative observations made during three years of ethnographic observations focused on the production, distribution, and promotion of independent music, framing them with theory from political economy of communication. We proceed by outlining the main changes that have affected the commercial recorded music industries over the last 30 years, the dominant business models currently afield in online environments, and then we link these to the future of online music environments. The four principles we identify are Propinquity, Synchrony, Novelty, and Personality. We argue that these four principles are a useful guide for strategising future moves into an incipient Music 3.0 environment.

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Introduction The commercial music field has been most obviously beset by problems related to new technologies over the past ten years. Issues around copyright, file sharing, illegal downloads, and so on have been well aired and have impacted widely upon businesses, music fans, and artists alike. But these high profile issues around distribution are merely the latest in a series of profound disruptions that have happened over the past three decades. They are of course entangled with broader trends in political economy. But the character of music as material form and social object places the industry in a somewhat heraldic position. As Attali (2009) puts it: ‘Music: herald of the future’. However, the history of commercial music remains somewhat clouded by misperceptions created during the massively successful period of commercialised music which began in the 1920s and lasted until the late 1990s. One of our foundational premises here is that there has never been a model for selling music and that the entire edifice of mass-mediated recorded music is an historical accident. This can be first seen in early discourse about the intended usefulness of recording technologies. Edison’s invention was never originally intended for music (Attali, c1985; Block, 1890a;1890b). It was invented as a business machine aimed at replacing stenographers and keeping records up with the pace of combined telegraphy and telephony (Beecher, 1889). And while there was mild success in selling the phonograph to businesses, the venture was for the most part a failure (Medico-Legal Society & Bleyer, 1890). But music turned the phonograph into a household object, generating a huge market for wax cylinders bearing impressions of music and the machines on which to play them. Interestingly, the earliest recording machines were equally capable of recording and reproducing (Hofmann, 1890). Very quickly the ‘reading’ and ‘writing’ of audio signal developed into separate technical and industrial

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realms. That separation would later underpin broadcast era political economy, more of which later. The point here is that the entire recording industry – at least as it is most widely experienced and played out – is the result of historical accident: an industry that was firstly concerned with selling recording technologies found that the best way to sell their machines was by recording famous musicians and making those recordings available to the purchasers of the machines. Music then became a primary promotional means for all its subsequent media commodities: wax cylinders, vinyl discs, cassette tapes, and so on. And in the system as a whole, music was rarely if ever sold in any technical sense. Rather, a complex system of rents and commissions between artists, composers, publishers, managers, broadcasters, venues, record companies, audiences, and collection agencies was established at law (Cvetkovski, 2005)i. And while the technical aspect of non-sellability remains a factor in our assumption that the industry has never had a model for selling music, this is not as important as making clear that the ‘music industry’ of broadcast era political economy was never about selling music. It was about things only music could sell. For those of us wishing to understand the changes in music business, that fact leaves us with even more complications in the current era. Not only are we left with a communications environment in which business models are wildly confusing and for the most part unestablished, we literally have no historical templates for the monetisation of music per se. If we were to ask the historical question that broadcast political economy has bequeathed us it would be this: ‘what does music sell most of?’ Today’s answer to that question is ‘bandwidth’ and implies a broad-based deal between composers, musicians, and ISPs, and perhaps even the establishment of new national ISPs owned and run by copyright owners. 86

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Fusing music directly with electricity, as digital technologies have done better than any previous technical regime, reveals the character of the fading broadcast-era political economy. The new environment has allowed music to become completely freeflowing and materially formless: no particular physical medium is required for its distribution and so those wishing to make a living from music, or to monetise music on a mass scale, must deeply analyse the connection between people and their music. The music business has ceased to be about the things only music can sell; it has instead become a question of how to monetise the direct relationships between people and their music. While the current array of problems confronting music professionals is mostly in the sphere of distribution, there is a clear history of changes and challenges across the value chain of commercial recorded music that is necessary to comprehend if the new space of exchange is to eventually provide a stable and sustainable platform for commercial music. The spheres of production, distribution, promotion, and exchange have all been radically altered by changes in technology, trade policy, broadcast media, broadcast law, the film and television industries, audience cohesion, and advertising markets. Each of these is worthy of full historical investigation, but we mention them here only in the context of our focus on the principles shaping the future of commercial music markets. In what follows, we present a brief characterisation of broadcast political economy, an account of the major changes that signal the end of that paradigm, and the main principles that appear to be at play in the development of new paradigms. We take an approach grounded in political economy because we seek to understand changes in the way values are created for music and the power struggles that continue to shape relationships between people, music, and technology.

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Music in broadcast political economy The features of broadcast political economy were organised around the principle of producing audiences to sell to advertisers (Smythe, 1981). Although many critical analysts claim that the large media corporations that emerged between 1929 and 1989 were monopolies, such a characterisation is consumption-sided and misses an essential fact: monopolies are arrangements characterised by one seller and many buyers. The mass media corporations are the inverse, at least in respect of music. They are more monosponies than monopolies (Graham, 2006). A monopsony is one buyer in a market of many sellers. It is well recognised that music (and the performing arts more generally) were once very much a part of everyday life for people up to the late 19th century (Graham, 2006; Mumford, 1934/1962). Music is especially the case: The workshop song, the street cries of the tinker, the dustman, the pedlar, the flower vendor, the chanties of the sailor hauling the ropes, the traditional songs of the field, the wine-press, the taproom were slowly dying out during this period. Labor was orchestrated by the number of revolutions per minute, rather than by the rhythm of song or chant or tattoo. … No one any longer thought of asking the servants to come to the living room to take part in a madrigal or ballad. What happened to poetry had happened likewise to pure music. (Mumford, 1934/1962, pp. 201-2). In broadcast political economy, music quickly became a specialised pursuit with (in many places) associated legislative hostility developing towards inexpert or ‘disorganised’ music (latterly expressed in noise regulations, busking laws, and so on).

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Popular music quickly became a corporate interest; access to increasingly expensive recording technologies was regulated through a system of contracts between musicians, publishers, and record companies; and broadcast media became integrated with large entertainment corporations (Bagdikian, 1997). An important effect of the monopsony is that the value of music depends on specific items being acquired by and processed through the system. A further consequence is that music outside the monopsony is seen to be worth nothing until ‘bought’ by some part of the system for corporate commercialisation (Graham, 2006). Other effects become apparent in hindsight: the value of specific pieces rises as they are used more. That is opposite to all material commodities (unless they are associated with some part of the monopsony). So as the value of the monopsony’s material gains general purchase, the value of music outside the monopsony tends towards zero. Another and more indirect effect of cultural monopsony is the large body of accepted marketing theory that posits pre-existing demographic categories which are assumed to indicate cohesive tastes, desires, and habits in common for its members (Wells et al., 1998). In the face of increasingly fragmented audiences and a clear inability to ‘reach’ and reorganise these into predictable and sustainable markets, the marketing theories that emerged during broadcast political economy have begun to show the flaws in their assumptions more clearly. Seen as media of mass instruction, the large broadcast organisations were literally in a position to propagate tastes and preferences on a societal- and generation-wide scale. As an historical pedagogic form, the media organisations of broadcast political economy are unlike anything else, except perhaps the large religious organisations of mediaeval Europe (Graham & Luke, 2003): people were taught – on a national and international scale – morals, tastes, values, and facts at enormous technical and geographic distances, shaping the whole experience of sociality

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over several generations (2003). The resultant consistency of tastes and habits across huge audiences has been mistaken by marketing theory for essential rather than constructed characteristics. Consequently, any approach to ‘selling’ en masse through digital media must fall back on earlier, pre-marketing principles aimed at the production of new audiences rather than operating on the assumption that coherent audiences are pre-existing entities waiting to be found. Broadcast political economy of communication is still a very dominant force for the manufacture of opinions, tastes, and values. Its symbiotic relationship with digital networks is evident in many recent phenomena such as the instant internet fame experienced by Susan Boyle (Osterhout, 2009), Prince’s sale of CDs to the London Times for ‘free’ giveaway (Farouky, 2007), and the ‘most viewed’ section of YouTube which is daily populated by offerings from broadcast media (Cashmore, 2009). We do not claim that broadcast political economy is finished. Far from it: it may be the case that broadcast political economy is here to stay for some extended time yet. However it is clearly under threat and undergoing massive changes. And while those changes appear to be connected with the rise of the internet as a media force, we argue that the trajectory is longer, especially when seen through the lens of commercial music practices over the past three decades. In the following section we outline the major changes that we see impacting upon music industry and which have become part of the latest changes affecting commercial music.

Under threat: music, society, technology 1980-2009 During the course of broadcast political economy’s development, commercial music erected technical and price barriers to production, distribution, promotion, and exchange that kept most people from outside the monopsony away from the business of producing commercially viable music. At the end of the 1970s, a number of changes 90

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in the legislative, technical, and commercial fields were gathering momentum and began to impact upon the structure of commercial music organisation. The first of these, and most apparent to professional musicians of the day, was the sudden drop in the cost of production technologies. Again we see the inverse logic of the music sector: unlike other fields, production barriers were the first to fall rather than the last. The first herald of things to come for music production was the cheap supply of multitrack recording (four-track on cassette tape) technologies aimed at consumer and semi-professional level users, with Tascam introducing the Portastudio 144 in 1979 (Alberts, 2004), quickly followed into the market by the Fostex X-15 in 1983 (Fostex, 2009) and the Yamaha MT1X. These devices included onboard mixing, routing, and track bouncing functionality, allowing skilled users to achieve results formerly only available using much higher end (and costly) recording facilities.ii At around the same time, in 1982, the MIDI standard was established, which provided the capacity for synthesizers, drum machines, music sequencers to be brought together within a common communications protocol, paving the way for powerful home studios based on a new wave of affordable synthesizers, drum machines and midi to tape synchronisation devices emerging from music equipment manafacturers. Such developments were accelerated by advances in low cost mass produced electronics. The wave of consumer level production technologies was accompanied by a proliferation of specialist magazines aimed at the home music production enthusiast. These publications contained instructional material and ‘how to’ articles, aimed at improving the skills of the home music producer. Combined, these technological developments facilitated the establishment of a large number of home music production facilities and an increasingly skilled body of music producers, which in turn radically changed the structures of entry into the monopsony. 91

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Suddenly, rather than having to rely on the good graces of publishing or recording corporations, the skilled musician or composer could develop ‘demo’ quality recordings at home. In fact a number of high profile artists (eg, Springsteen, Manson, Frusciante) produced releases using four-track cassette formats (Keller, 2004) and a long-standing and still influential lo-fi movement was provided additional momentum at a time when high fidelity dominated listening tastes and habits. By 1985 the technological push into cheaper production technologies brought the cost of broadcast quality recording to under $AU100,000. Developments in MIDI and its interaction with both SMPTE/EBU and proprietary time code synchronisation systems, the entrance of Teac/Tascam half-inch 8 track recorders, Fostex’s B series 16 track recorders, and the appearance of devices which could be used as cheap, high quality 2 track master recorders such as Hi Fi VHS decks (which gave 70+db of dynamic range and an almost digital level of reproduction quality via frequency modulated audio tracks embedded in the video signal) combined to give logarithmic improvements in the accessibility and quality of ‘home’ recording. Another disruption that became evident in 1987 was the supercession of vinyl LPs by cassette tape sales of recorded music. For the first time since the earliest days of recording technology, the dominant medium of dissemination was recordable in the home. It had taken cassette tape 24 years to reach its brief zenith. Those who remember the period will also recall a familiar set of ‘piracy’ concerns emanating from the core of the monopsony and resulting in a copying levy being applied to the retail price of recordable cassettes, the funds of which would be distributed to copyright holders. The decline of a major medium of dissemination – vinyl discs – coincides with the emergence of a new recordable medium. Quality of sound was quickly traded in for convenience of form and recordability. Audio quality would have one more brief 92

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triumph in the marketplace with the ascendance of compact discs (CDs) as the most popular medium of dissemination over cassettes in about 1990. As we write, LP vinyl is enjoying somewhat of a revival and the format battles are far from over. Around the same time as all the above disruptions were making themselves felt, sampling technologies also began to get far more inexpensive. In 1984, Ensoniq introduced the Mirage sampling keyboard, an eight-bit, multi-voiced, programmable digital sampler that was many times less expensive (around $AU2300) than the (also eight–bit) Fairlight CMI Series II, which retailed at over $AU60,000 and was the ‘industry standard’ sampler, heard on a plethora of high budget releases. Spurred on by sudden fall in the price of RAM in around 1988, samplers were within reach of most musicians wishing to experiment with composing music with small chunks of existing audio triggered by the notes of a keyboard. Of course the ‘sampling’ approach to popular music composition was well established by the time digital sampling became widely accessible, with artists such as the Beatles, Pink Floyd, and Brian Eno having made a compositions using tape loops in the 60s and 70s, alongside DJs such as Kool Herc, Grand Wizard Theodore, Afrika Bambaata and Grandmaster Flash from late 70s hip hop scenes who created tracks from turntable based collageiii. But digital sampling opened the entire recorded catalogue to the logic of ‘remix’, sparking new definitions of copyright (which had hitherto relied on identifying two bars of consecutive melody to be able to prosecute for IP infringement) and revealing many issues in the ownership and authorship of past recorded works that had gone largely unnoticed by legislation (O'Brien and Fitzgerald, 2006). Alongside these changes in the technical landscape, the developed world led a charge into free-market ideology, beginning in 1979 with Thatcher and followed closely by Reagan in 1981. In Australia this move had its fullest and most final effects for 93

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commercial music with the introduction of the Australian Broadcasting Act of 1992. Like other former British colonies such as Canada, Australia had in place until 1992 a cultural quota system that required overdubbing foreign-produced advertisements with Australian music and voice overs and other percentage-based broadcasting quota. These and other laws around what could and could not be aired in Australia changed in favour of free trade and anti-protectionist policy. This greatly affected the structure of the Australian music industry. Simultaneously, the ‘gentrification’ of inner cities and the rise of public insurance costs led to fire and noise regulations that had the effect of closing innumerable music venues (Johnson & Homan, 2003). Combined with legislation allowing poker machines into hotels and clubs throughout the country, these large and small policy movements had the effect of making an already difficult living practically unliveable, and many formerly full-time musicians who made their living from a combination of session work and live performances found that they had to find alternative employment (Johnson & Homan, 2003). Overall – and it remains to be seen how closely these trends in Australia were followed elsewhere – the effects on music industry and business in Australian capital cities were quite devastating. Just as the means to produce broadcast quality music came within reach of almost every professional musician, large parts of the profession disappeared. This is not the place to rehearse the well covered details (ABS, 1997; 2009; Johnson & Homan, 2003), but the decline of broadcast political economy’s musical periphery can be characterised as one of a diminishing full-time workforce, reduced budgets for soundtracks in film and television, increased use of library music in advertising, increasing competition and price pressure from new entrants (using the cheaper technologies), closure of venues, and the consequent general implausibility of professional musicianship in the patterns of broadcast political economy.

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Welcome to the revolution: internet Nineteen ninety-five marks the emergence of the first commercial search engines, Lycos and Yahoo (Battelle, 2005). The commercial emergence of these services indicates a massive reorganisation of public knowledge structures. It was in fact the single loudest herald of the total audience fragmentation to come. In Australia, there is an emerging generation of young adults whose media habits are almost entirely unpredictable and more complex than those of any previous generation (Neuborne and Kerwin, 1999:, Jones and Fox, 2009). The fact of a globally connected yet unpredictably fragmented audience has had deep and abiding effects on the structure of all entertainment industries, and music has again been harbinger. The next major technical fact to confront commercial music was the introduction of broadband networks, which happened in Australia between 1997 and 2001. All of a sudden it became widely feasible to exchange high-quality audio tracks on a global basis. Music sharing sites began to spring up, with each new service or platform pushing the boundaries of existing technical and legislative means to control copyright and its rents. A slew of lawsuits followed. The first legal salvos of any size were directed especially at the universities of North America, Canada, Europe, and Australia (Channel, 2004). Meanwhile, for musicians and composers wishing to record and play their music to the world, the long standing barriers to production, distribution, promotion, and exchange had all but disappeared with the introduction of broadband communications. Production costs continued to fall to the point at which many multi-track recorders for personal computers are now given away freely on the internet, lowering the cost of production technologies close to zero (Graham, 2005). The costs of distribution and promotion – literally: high quality access to fast internet – are fast falling towards the same level, with free internet in many forward-thinking urban areas. 95

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Prior to the emergence of Friendster (2002), and more particularly Myspace (2003), the static ‘billboard’ internet era did not evidently offer any clear means of effective or organised music promotion. Myspace changed that, stumbling on a profile-based formula that sat well with musicians and their fans, quickly gathering music fans in their millions (Boyd & Ellison, 2007). Suddenly there was the possibility of once again building an audience. The new ‘social networking’ sites at once became new, platformbased, audience building technologies. They are superbly suited to fragmentation: each of the popular platforms contains myriad and various audiences of wildly varying sizes. The array of offerings on Youtube, Myspace, and the many proliferating web 2.0 sites is unparalleled in history (Baym, 2010). Yet the platforms succeed by hosting something for every audience, holding diversity of content and purpose at bay as a business issue, attracting an enormous audience, and using content provided or generated by their audience to make the site successful. The genius of the model also contains its eventual undoing (or at least its radical future transformation). It is unlikely that large sites will in the future attract such willing contributors. Labour of any kind is such that it requires, desires, and respects reward for fruitful labour. It is only a matter of time before ‘amateur’ content developers (labour for the 2.0 platforms) becomes a paid concern, and indications are that working in socially networked media will become a lucrative profession. In any case, the so called ‘user generated content developers’ of today are the marketing and PR professionals of tomorrow. Following this brief history, we give examples of business models currently being trialled in massively expensive and expansive experiments being conducted by Internet corporations. Our last word on the state of the music industry following all the disruptions we have outlined is to summarise the fallout as it stands today. The core of the monopsony has set about criminalising large sections of their fan base by mistakenly

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seeing music usage as theft (Bates, 2004). Despite evidence to the contrary, and almost a century of giving away ‘free’ samples of its catalogue in the public broadcast, the monopsony misrecognises new music practices as criminal attacks that will lead to lower sales. This is an easy misrecognition given that musicians and music businesses of all types (except perhaps equipment retailers) have suffered serious cuts to traditional revenue streams over the past ten years (IFPI, 2007). Radical audience fragmentation continues apace. There remains significant and heated debate over whether an unpaid download equals a foregone purchase (Connolly & Krueger, 2005) and, more broadly, the relationship between illegal downloads, legal file sharing and music purchasing patterns is yet to be fully understood. And while people will clearly gather in their many millions around objects and events in online environments, this happens suddenly and without warning: there is no clear way to predict what types of objects and events will excite the need for people to share an event in their millions. Other structural and business issues have emerged to pose challenges. Old sectoral hostilities between publishers, recording companies, musicians, and audiences have reemerged, reinvigorated by new questions about rights, usage, and unfamiliar aspects thrown up by new technology. Meanwhile, the formerly standardised pricing system has been thrown into disarray, with pricing models becoming differentiated by platform (more of which in the following section). At the level of production, the unit size of broadcast political economy (album of about 45 minutes to an hour) is misaligned with the web impulse (Fisher, 2007): a common feature of all online platforms is that they respond to novelty, giving newly released albums a very short time in the spotlight. Yet the technologies of production, along with the social and professional pressure on musicians, are best suited to the production of album-length product. Yet all of these problems are eclipsed by the fact that music must sell ‘on its own’, so to speak. That is

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to say, the previous model of using music to sell audio media and equipment, or any other sort of merchandise, has rapidly diminished. ‘Selling’ now needs to be done in a market that is flooded at every point, with new and unheard of product, new platforms for promotion and sale, and new cultural influences that have emerged in the online environment. The interplay of these problems can be seen in the new business models emerging online. In the following section we outline the workings of a number of influential platforms

A description of new business models CD Baby: CD Baby is an online distribution and sales service for independent musicians. It offers musicians access to major online retailers and recommendation systems. It also provides an online ‘shopfront’ for musicians through which they can sell physical CDs and digital downloads; and provides access to offline retailers through a mail-order system. The model is fairly straightforward: For $35 US artists can place their CDs and digital tracks for distribution. For a further $20 CD Baby will give the artist a Unique Product Code (UPC) and corresponding barcode image, which is required for digital distribution to stores like iTunes. The service charges $4 per physical CD sale made through the site and keeps 9% of all digital earnings. According to the site at June, 2009, CD Baby has ‘paid $US100 million to artists’, ‘1.6 million customers’, ‘2 million digital tracks for sale’, and ‘over 250,000 independent albums in stock’ (CD Baby, 2009). CD Baby distributes to iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, E-music, and close to 40 other online distributors of music. The CD Baby website is very much a static html (web 1.0) site and artists who are managing catalogue have a different entry point (cdbaby.net) and a community bulletin board and resources (cdbaby.org). This fairly trivial distinction between artist and customer is something many other models neglect, but it has a direct bearing on how 98

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well the site works for artists, audiences, and distributors (more of which below). Australia has a similar service named Chaos (chaos.com), the back end of which is called the Chaos Artist Network (The CAN). However, Chaos also deals in major releases and syndicates independent releases through IODA. As in the physical world, using two such services (which we have tried for the Reunion album) creates difficulties for the artist because, as CD Baby puts it: if you sign two digital distribution deals with two companies that will both be sending the same album to iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, etc - this will hurt you, because the retailer will usually remove the album completely until you decide which distributor has the exclusive right to be selling that album through them. (CDBaby, 2009b) So even though the distribution deals of both distributors are ‘non-exclusive’, the broader system of online selling remains geared to exclusivity. In summary, the CD Baby model is very much like distribution deals of days gone by, mixed with a retail function: both retailer and distributor take a cut of traffic and supplies fairly minimal promotional efforts. Promotion of releases on CD Baby is through, in the first instance, a ‘what’s new’ part of the front page. This is common to almost all the sites we have experienced. A much higher rate of ‘hits’ correspond to front page advertisement. There is also a ‘staff picks’ section which generates a less dramatic rate of increased ‘hits’ (we know this because Al’s Casino was featured for a week on the ‘staff picks’ page). Otherwise metadata attached to the albums by the musician remains the clearest ongoing means of promotion and discovery on the site. And while there are ratings and review systems, these appear to have little impact due to the absence of sociality (web 2.0-ness) of the CD Baby site.

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Amie Street: Amie Street mirrors to a close extent the value structure of the broadcast monopsony. The site’s main point of difference is that its price structure works by recommendation and sale. Each person, whether a listener or artist, is asked to ‘rec’, or recommend, tracks and albums. Each album begins life on Amie Street as a free download. After 12 free downloads, the price of tracks begins to climb. Artists are charged a storage fee of $US5 per track, so few albums of slow-moving tracks generate a large storage ‘bill’ for the artist, with royalties from sales being counted against the storage fee while generating revenue for the site. Amie Street houses a mixture of mainstream back catalogue and independent new releases. Again, there is a ‘New Releases’ section and a ‘Top 25’ that can be browsed by genre. Patterns of uploads to the ‘new’ section indicate that copyright owners of well known back catalogue (Billie Holliday, Mos Def, Barenaked Ladies, Fats Waller, IceT, etc) regularly upload large numbers of older releases which compete with new and unknown independent releases. There is also appears to be a paid advertisement section on the front page, though it remains unclear how one might access this service. The “novelty” effect of Amie Street is very obvious, with ‘hits’ on new material dropping off within hours of the material being posted on the front page. This is linked to the most unique aspect of this site: listeners who ‘rec’ a successful act early get a cut of increased earnings as the prices rise, thereby monetising popular taste. Therefore it is in the ‘professional’ listener’s interests to quickly, assess, recommend, and then move on to the constant stream of new material. So to make a financial success of listening, there is no value in ‘following’ an act as such (especially since prices are capped at 98 cents per track).

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Amie Street treats artists as listeners, constantly sending out prompts to listen to other people’s music. Listening and recommending is the main activity rewarded on the site. Here is how they explain their ‘dynamic pricing’: This variable pricing system ensures that the public gets music at a fair, community-driven price point, and makes it easy for you to find the type of music you want. We then encourage you to talk about the music you like by putting money in your account for more downloads when you recommend songs that continue to rise in price. You can play the music you purchase from anywhere on the web and all Amie Street downloads are iPod compatible DRM-free mp3s. (Amie Street, 2009) There are no royalties paid to artists by Amie Street for its streaming service. Revenue is paid to listeners for picking ‘winners’ and recommending acts that later sell for more than when user recommendations are made – hence less incentive to ‘rec’ a song approaching full price. Artists are paid royalties on sales, less a cut to the service, from which payments to listeners must be made. While there is facility for web 2.0 interaction, as well as a number of communities, this is clearly less a concern for the site than encouraging recommendations (one could see how high sociality could facilitate collusion around recommendations for specific acts). Site robots treat the uploading musician as if they were a consumer (which may or may not be the case). Almost all messages from the site are advertisements for music being posted to the site. There is very little assistance for the artist and the site seems oriented to large turnover (at small margins) for the back catalogue of majors. MySpace: MySpace is perhaps the best-known web 2.0 platform for music promotion. Like the phonograph it was not originally associated with music yet received a massive 101

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increase in popularity by embracing it (Boyd and Ellison, 2007). As far as music goes, it is basically a promotional platform. Musicians may upload up to 10 songs, a profile, and video material. Interaction is through friend requests, blogs, and comment boards on the front page of profiles. Success of artists is widely judged by their number of ‘friends’ and the number of hits each of their songs receives. There is no site-wide revenue stream for content providers, though MySpace Music facilities selling tracks through Amazon.com and iTunes. ‘Friend requests’ for emerging acts increasingly come from other bands and artists rather than ‘fans’ as such, though there is clearly a high degree of interaction between broadcast media and MySpace profiles: that is, an act that has come to the attention of the mainstream media will have increased traffic on Myspace, often, vice versa. The position of MySpace is that they provide a high-profile platform for increasing the visibility of emerging musicians. MySpace is also an A&R platform for major labels, which use acts’ fans activity as an indicator of their popularity and thus prospects (Jason Nealon, MCA think tank 3). MySpace’s popularity has been in decline in recent years (Parr, 2009) as it struggles to maintain relevance. The business model for MySpace is the closest thing online to the old broadcast media model. It derives income by building a mass audience, most successfully by attracting people to music and musicians, and onselling the audiences to advertisers. Its great strength is that, unlike radio programming, it caters for all musical tastes, allowing subscribers to self-organise and thus capturing all of the demographic ranges that broadcasters target. The site is not designed around music, which is only one aspect of its activities. However, MySpace Music features three ‘What’s Hot’ lists and music highlighted by mainstream artists alongside the activities of Indies. MySpace also heavily promotes ‘exclusive’ releases and ‘Only on MySpace’ shows from high-profile acts, in which people who become ‘friends’ of the act are given details about shows that

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are not promoted by any other means. More recently, MySpace has become involved in promoting festivals and other offline events in the same way that broadcasters do. Musicians and fans have different account types and facilities in MySpace, which is central to the promotional aspects. Musicians can make their uploaded tracks available for play using an in-site player and choose to allow listeners access to their lyrics, to download tracks, or to post a track on the listener’s profile. Fans can also recommend tracks for a spot on broadcast partner Channel V’s ‘Mixtape’ program, with the promise of exposure to an even wider audience. This, however, requires that the act has produced a video clip that can be broadcast, which puts this possibility out of the reach of many lower-profile acts. MySpace features the world’s major music acts as well as thousands of indies. Last FM. Last.fm adopts a broadcast metaphor and bills itself as a music discovery venue. Its distinction is its unique process of ‘scrobbling’ data about what music members have listened to and recommending other music based on similarities to what has been played. To do this, members download a piece of software that plugs into their media player – iTunes or similar – and reports back to their account each time they play a track on their computer. Last.fm recommends other music based on the debatable assumption that ‘For example, people who like Stratovarius also like Kotipelto, Revolution Renaissance and Helloween’ (Last.fm, 2009). This powerfully normative assumption is offset by the availability of ‘Personalised Visual Radio’ – the ability to choose what is played on the member’s personalised radio/video station – with the usual popularity charts, search, and browse-by-genre functions. It also allows members to ‘tag’ tracks with their own descriptive keywords, which are a further source of compatibility data, and compile a library and playlists of their favourites and share them with their ‘friends’ which expands the sources of recommendation. Potential friends are 103

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rated by the compatibility of their listening histories. Members can discuss their favourite music in Last.fm’s forums and also disseminate their listening preferences via other web 2.0 properties such as Twitter and Facebook. Musicians are treated the same as listeners but can upload their tracks (audio or video) at no cost directly to Last.fm or have them distributed via a service such as CDBaby’s digital distribution service. The business model is primarily subscription based, with very unintrusive advertising to supplement income. The site also sells premium services to paying subscribers for US$3 a month and pays royalties to musicians based on the number of streams or downloads each track receives. These royalties can be paid, at the musician’s choice, directly to the musician, via the distribution service, or through collection societies. Uploaded tracks can be restricted to a 30 second streaming sample, a full streaming track, or a free download. Musicians can buy ‘Powerplay’ radio placements for between US$20 (100 plays) and US$400 (2000 plays), which guarantee their tracks will be played to someone. Musicians can also direct listeners to online stores to purchase their albums. Basic stream and download statistics are provided through Last.fm’s ‘Music Manager’, including links to musicians’ ‘top listeners’, and also on the number of appearances of their name in Last.fm’s community forums. Last.fm, like offline radio broadcasters and MySpace, is increasingly supporting livemusic events. At the time of writing, this mainly involved providing a feature in which artists can list their live performances, which it sorts by location and promoted to members who can then RSVP and leave feedback and photographs for the artist. It features many mainstream acts alongside the independents and provides a facility for labels to become members and thus to manage many artists from a single account.

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ReverbNation. ReverbNation is both a web 2.0 music discovery service for fans and a suite of tools for artists to distribute and promote their music. It is closest to a Web 3.0 model as we see it because of the facility with which it integrates with other large Web 2.0 sites, including Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, and Twitter; because its tools are oriented to ‘piggybacking’ on any site whatsoever; because it collates artist stats from all major web 2.0 sites, and because it directly integrates virtual and non-virtual elements of musical activity across multiple forms. A basic account is free for fans, self-managed artists, venues, and labels. ReverbNation’s features encourage fans to become involved directly with their favourite musicians by promoting music on their ReverbNation profile and other websites and/or volunteering to join a ‘street team’ and promote the musicians’ live performances offline as well as online. Doing so is rewarded by the fan being ‘noticed by the artist’ and possibly earning ‘tickets to shows, backstage passes, autographed merchandise, or music’ (ReverbNation, 2009). Fans and bands are clearly delineated in the functioning of the site. From a musician/music promoter perspective, that is a very helpful aspect. Fans are organised by what they like, so genre matching is easy. And while bands can easily interact with each other, the emphasis of the site is on engaging fans and building audience size and activity rather than passively collecting fans in the way MySpace encourages. ReverbNation adopts a radio/jukebox metaphor and allows members to embed a player in other sites to promote their favourite music, as well as a suite of ‘widgets’ that recruit more fans and promote and sell music and other merchandise. The widgets are designed to integrate with Facebook, MySpace, and standard html sites to collect fans and fan data, to promote music, and to update the member’s status across multiple platforms. Fans discover new music by listening to ReverbRadio (music chosen by someone else);

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browsing by genre; searching; via lists of charts including ‘latest’, ‘local’, ‘featured’ and ‘popular’; or by a recommendation from other like-minded fans. ReverbNation’s suite of promotion and distribution tools is the most comprehensive currently available. Artist tools include digital distribution to 10 online stores (6 of which are international versions of iTunes); email management; ‘Retail links’ to other online stores; a player that can be embedded in other websites; an electronic press kit; a website builder; marketing and promotion resources and a ‘street team’ manager. The ReverbStore, at the time of writing in private beta testing, is a direct-to-fan e-commerce solution for digital and print-on-demand physical products. In addition, ReverbNation has a partnership with SongVest that encourages artists to seek funding from fans. Except for the SongVest partnership, all of these tools feed income and data back to a central ‘Control Room’ in the back end of the ReverbNation website – propinquity at work. From here the artist can analyse incoming data and arrange promotion via any of their active tools. They can also spend, withdraw, or deposit into their ReverbNation bank balance. As a business model, ReverbNation mixes promotional service offerings with offers to artists for premium services for an additional, usually monthly, fee. These include Mega Song Storage: an increase in maximum download file size from 8Mb to 25Mb; Site Builder; Digital distribution; ReverbNation Press Kits; Fan Reach Pro and Fan 360, which are excellent promotional services that include a site-managed street team. As with CDBaby, distribution via ReverbNation is non-exclusive. Artists pay a fixed annual fee of US$34.95 per ‘release’ but, unlike CDBaby, ReverbNation takes no percentage of sales. This discourages very small acts because those who sell less than the equivalent of 52 iTunes tracks a year will lose money on the deal. Finally, ReverbNation distributes income from its advertisers to its musicians as ‘FairShare’ income. It concentrates on 106

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providing services to independent acts but is also used by many major artists like Madonna and Jason Mraz. It is undoubtedly the most sophisticated, comprehensive, and forward looking site we have encountered and is probably the model of the future for self-promoting musicians. Hook Line ‘n Sync. Hook line ‘n Sync is a publisher. It is one of a number of services offering to place musicians’ recordings with the producers of movies, TV shows, video games and advertisements. Based in Brisbane, Australia, it describes itself as a ‘boutique’ service and aims to provide the best possible service to music supervisors. Music is submitted by artists and, if accepted, listed in Hook, Line and Sync’s database, which can be searched by genre, mood, tempo, ‘in the style of’ and ‘lyric key word’. There is also a ‘send a brief’ feature, which allows music supervisors to ask Hook Line and Sync’s staff to suggest a suitable song. Hook Line and Sync state that their major point of difference is that their database contains only ‘well produced, well crafted, compelling tracks’ (Hook Line and Sync, 2009), which they make it easy to find and license. The business model is ‘old school’ publishing. Artists whose music is accepted by Hook Line and Sync are given a non-exclusive contract that promises to pay 70% of all licensing income to the artist. Hook, Line and Sync offers to place the music for a limited period, initially 2 years with an option to extend, and charges no up-front fees, instead living entirely off the 30% of the income it can generate. Artists are given login access to the site, but cannot do much therein except view their contract and entries. Web 2.0 interaction between musicians is not enabled and interaction between musicians and music supervisors is forbidden under the terms of Hook, Line and Sync’s contract.

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A variation on this model is that adopted by eg Taxi and Sonicbids, in which musicians sign up for an account in order to be presented with a list of ‘opportunities’ to submit their music to music supervisors looking for material. These services ask for an up-front annual membership fee; take a commission on the proceeds of an opportunity; or charge an application fee when the artist submits music to an opportunity. In Sonicbids’ case, opportunities include submission to festivals and other live performance venues. Taxi provides an online ‘community’ for members, but this is strictly separate from the site’s main activity. The closest Sonicbids comes to community is to let members know ‘Who’s getting gigs’ (Sonicbids, 2009). What these services have in common is that they bring together two distinct types of members: effectively buyers and sellers of music recordings, and enable transactions between them. In doing so, they operate as ‘filters’ (Anderson, 2006) in reducing search costs when connecting buyers and sellers. Service quality is judged on how little the members see of the middle man or each other – ie how convenient it is for buyers to find the right product – independent of the seller. Revenue is derived either by charging for access to the service or by taking a commission on the resulting transaction. ArtistData. ArtistData is a clear attempt at web 3.0 strategy. It allows musicians to simultaneously update many web presences, though at this stage with text entries only. By entering a status update, performance details, press clippings, news or a blog entry into ArtistData, musicians can simultaneously update up to 22 other Web 2.0 sites including MySpace, Facebook and Sonicbids which can significantly reduce the timecosts of promotion. Some geographic targeting, for example, of media local to each show while an act is on tour, is possible using the ‘local events calendars’ feature, though this is completely US-centric at the time of writing. Further, artists can update their official band websites or blogs via RSS feeds and a calendar widget. Artists must 108

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open an account with each of these target sites and then enter the login details for each into ArtistData. Unlike ReverbNation’s service, there is no facility to collect data from these sites, only to publish to them. ArtistData also provides a means to record feedback and store data on each performance, enabling organisation and management of a musician’s activities. An account for an artist or a ‘label, management company or agency that has a roster of more than one artist’ (ArtistaData, 2009) is free. ArtistData plans to open accounts for venues, promoters, or talent buyers in future, which will take them into the same space as the previous model. There are no premium services available at the time of writing and no obvious revenue source is mentioned on the site. However, ArtistData’s founder, Brenden Mulligan, has launched into artist consultancy at $25 for 15 minutes or $100 an hour. This leverages his status as a ‘digital media expert with a focus on helping musicians’ (Mulligan, 2009) to generate income from means other than by providing the service that gave him his credentials. In summary, ArtistData adds value to music businesses by reducing promotion and administration costs. However, it does not seek to monetise this value directly, instead using its reputation as an innovative and customer-focused service to enable revenue for its founder through consultancy and speaking engagements. This is exactly the same model that is advocated for independent musicians in the current technological environment: give the music away and derive income from the other sources that doing so enables (Anderson, 2008).

Extracting operating principles from Music 2.0 to Music 3.0 The four principles we outline in the following are derived from a long experiment that began with a single PhD study. The authors of this paper are jointly responsible for the

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online promotion of 12 albums across multiple genres. The works tested also range in age and purpose, from a 1980s album made for a surf movie, to three internationally successful late 1980s independent albums, to 8 recent albums that have been produced specifically for the study between 2007-2009. The most visible of these is the 1990s indie act (name removed for review purposes) that has 10,591 active listeners on last.fm. We varied the levels of promotion from zero promotion (merely posting the albums on sites without any further associated activity) to the complete promotion of one album that was touted through international and local live performances, podcasts, active solicitation of fans online, radio promotion, and press interviews. We have distilled the results of our efforts into the following four principles: Propinquity, Synchrony, Novelty, and Personality. The Propinquity principle is a feature of the internet more generally (c.f.Silverstone, 1999: 20). By propinquity we mean the tendency of the medium to favourably respond to identities and organisations that attract users to a single point of presence. Throughout the literature on web 2.0, the advice to ‘link back’ from all web presences to a single site (for example, see Baym, 2008:, Jennings, 2007) is a response to the medium’s propinquitous characteristics. This is fairly much common sense in some respects. However, it has a less obvious implication. The proliferation of Web 2.0 sites, along with the rise and fall of the many and various services we have experienced, implies that, sooner or later, a site will emerge that interacts with and organises material for all other sites. In our music promotion experiment, this direction is most clearly being taken by ReverbNation which is showing the way for all other such services. We have seen the propinquity principle at work in previous developments of the search engine economy, with Google becoming a global standard for the organisation of all types of information. The same has happened with news collection services (Graham,

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2005). The propinquity principle, which evidences the human urge to socialisation, personal intimacy, suggests that any proliferation in a given class of web media, such as social media sites, will prefigure an organisation of those media in a single metamedium. The time it takes to service a single release across multiple social media sites, and the fact that contemporary ‘indie’ musicians, managers, and labels spend ‘60-80 percent’ of their time dealing with Web 2.0 presences (Craig Spann, MCA think tank 2), heralds the emergence of a dominant service that manages and streamlines access to multiple sites and audiences. The Synchrony principle is also a feature of the internet more generally. Here we mean synchrony in the social semiotic sense (Halliday, 1987), which is a term opposed to diachrony. A diachronous study of meaning is the study of changes in meaning over time; a synchronous study is one focused on a particular point in time (Halliday, 1987). The web is in general a synchronic medium, which is to say it destroys - in many senses though not totally - the historical aspect of culture and information. It becomes evident when, for example, information about a person’s past is brought to the surface based on current events. The most media conscious president in history, Barack Obama, puts it like this: ‘be careful what you post on Facebook … Whatever you do … it will be pulled up later in your life.’ (Ortenzi, 2009). Again, there is a somewhat obvious aspect to the synchrony principle, in which everything that has happened may as well have happened at the same time. But in the context of music promotion, it speaks to the power and importance of back catalogue. The most visible period for a musical work on any of the large social networking site is when it is first released and thus promoted to the front or ‘new’ page of the site. All the sites we have reviewed follow this practice. What we have discovered, though, is that this promotion of new material – without any other promotion whatsoever – brings traffic not only to the work uploaded, but to the entire

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back catalogue of the artist. The lesson of the synchrony principle is that time moves very differently in the new media and when one part of a musician’s catalogue is promoted, all other parts of the catalogue are promoted by mere association and so historical becomes largely irrelevant. The Novelty principle simply means that new material, new strategies, and new forms attract the most attention in Web 2.0 sites. Any aspect of ‘newness’ in a thing feeds directly into its success and triggers synchrony and propinquity principles. Even at the very basic level of a fleeting appearance on a music community’s front page for a single musical work, the novelty principle goes to work, lighting up the back catalogue and driving traffic to the artist’s profile. Without any other form of promotion besides sheer novelty, we see hits on our unpromoted artist sites rise from zero to an average of 241 visits immediately following upload of the new work. New releases, new merchandise, new band members, remixes, shows, tours, contests, awards, demo versions, comments on current events, sponsorship deals, music business innovations, and so on all exemplify opportunities to engage the novelty principle. Each and every one of these can be harnessed in various new (and old) media to attract attention, and when this novelty is exploited using newsletters, press releases, status updates, blog posts, etc, it becomes a powerful promotional force. Maximising the exposure gained from each release requires strategising its novelty in terms of what is said in which forum when and by whom within an act’s business organisation. This is hardly an innovation of new media but the potential for new media to exploit novelty is far greater than that of traditional media, in which space and the attention of gatekeepers is far less. The Web 3.0 environment will offer far greater rewards for novelty than any previous media system.

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The Personality principle states that no matter how many people help an artist or act promote material, it is essential that any work done is perceived by audiences as an extension of the artist’s personality. In some senses, this principle is akin to a ‘brand attributes’ understanding of commerce (for example, see Aaker, 1997). But it goes further: most of the advice given to musical acts includes the need to identify and work on the aspects of themselves and their music that set them apart from other acts – those aspects amount to the act’s brand attributes – but in the Music 3.0 environment anything seen as endorsed by the act’s brand is perceived to be a part of the act’s personality and anyone who interacts with the act or its output can lay claim to having influenced it. This has several unexpected consequences. On the positive side, it provides incentive for fans to remix recordings, become members of street teams, curate fan websites, contribute live footage to a band’s video and so on (Leckart, 2007:, Burke, 2006) which provides labour and materials for the act’s production, and promotion. It is neither helpful nor wise to discourage this kind of fan activity. But allowing these external sources too much credit exposes the act to the possibility that unsanctioned activities or content will corrupt their identity. An act’s relationships with fans must be managed very carefully to ensure consistency of presentation. Careful application of the Propinquity principle helps by ensuring that the act’s sanctioned output can be propagated across many platforms yet collected at a single point. We know this from the almost immediate restoration of [band name removed for review purposes]’s Indie status when their back catalogue was released on last.fm to a public from which they had been absent for over 10 years. On the other side, a very clear delineation must be made between what is a sanctioned adaptation of the act’s image or sound, and what is not. This is not to say that the act’s personality cannot change over time – it will and must develop as the act matures – but in the music industry there is a fine line between “cashing in” and “selling out”. Great care must be exercised to ensure 113

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that all sanctioned material is authentic to the act. This is an extension of a phenomenon that has been known since at least the 1960s (Hochhauser, 1999). But the legal, social and technological changes wrought by the new media environment have brought it to prominence as never before.

Conclusion: Music 3.0 = meta Music 2.0 These four principles are fundamental and pervasive to a music business in the new environment. Although each principle is important, they act most powerfully when attended to in concert. Any material that complies with the Personality principal (including the gradual release of back catalogue or third-party remixes of an act’s recordings) can be used for its Novelty value to promote an act through new media devices. Combining those promotions to increase Propinquity across many Web 2.0 sites creates an entirely new proposition for maximising the benefit of each. According to the Synchrony principle, this benefit accrues to everything an act has released previously, no matter how long ago, that remains currently available. Thus, giving music away draws attention to the band’s other commercial offerings: concert tickets, merchandise, packaged recordings, endorsements, back-stage access and so on. In the 21st century this can be done without the need for a mass-mediated intermediary, though distribution of large amounts of physical materials still requires significant logistical prowess. This set of principles applies to music businesses in the current technological environment because of the history of changes to the economic of music production, distribution, promotion and exchange. What we refer to as Music 3.0 is the application of technological and social development across many Web 2.0 sites and applications. The temporary technical and politcal economic aberrations that supported the broadcast political economy between about 1920 and 2000 are gone. In their place is a nascent 114

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music industry that closely resembles the cottage industries of the pre-industrial era. Success in this 21st century industry is governed by the four principals we have outlined.

i

The prior existence of the printed music publishing industry is acknowledged, as is the establishment of performing rights regimes. However, the focus of this article is on the recorded music industry. It could be argued that similar systems of value creation and exchange apply to other music industry media but we are mainly concerned with the commercial exploitation of audiographic music.

ii

The Teac 2340 four track reel to reel ¼” machine was indeed popular and released much earlier (1973) but it was not a self-contained unit. The fact that it required outboard mixing and routing made the technology much more expensive and prohibitive, and far less convenient, for the majority of musicians to make any large impact on the industry.

iii

Musical composition based on recording and playback technologies has a long history stretching back to the musique concrete tradition of the 1940s and this tradition can be seen to have influenced popular music production, This article, however, focuses on the mainstream uptake of this methods and technologies.

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References Aaker, J. (1997) ‘Dimensions of brand personality’ JMR, Journal of Marketing Research, 34(3): 347. ABS (1997) Cultural Trends in Australia: A Statistical Overview, 4172.0, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra. ---- (2009) Cultural Trends in Australia: A Statistical Overview, 4172.0, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Canberra. Alberts, R. (2004) ‘The Little Multitracker That Could’, http://www.tascam.com/article;34,2036,366.html. Accessed 22 Dec. 2009 Anderson, C. (2006) The Long Tail: why the future of business is selling less of more, New York:Hyperion. ---- (2008) ‘Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business’, http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all. Accessed 5 Nov. 2009 ArtistaData (2009) ‘ArtistData - Open an account’, http://www.artistdata.com/us/signup. Accessed 22 Sep. 2009 Attali, J. (2009) A brief history of the future, New York:Arcade Publishing. Attali, J. (c1985) Noise: the political economy of music, Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press,. Bagdikian, B.H. (1997), The media monopoly, 5th edn, Boston, MA:Beacon Press. Bates, R. (2004) ‘Communication Breakdown: The Recording Industry's Pursuit of the Individual Music User, a Comparison of U.S. and E.U. Copyright Protections for Internet Music File Sharing’, Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business, 25(1): 229. Battelle, J. (2005) The Search: How Google and its rivals rewrote the rules of business and transformed our culture, New York:Penguin. Baym, N. (2008) ‘10 Best Practices of Online Music Promotion’, http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/10-best-practices-of-online-musicpromotion/ Accessed 17 Jul 2008 ---- (2010) 'Social Networks 2.0', in R Burnett, M Consalvo & C Ess (eds), The Handbook of Internet Studies, Oxford:Wiley-Blackwell. Beecher, J (1889) 'Beecher to Edison.' 1 Nov 1889. [D8955ADJ1; TAEM 127:480] Beer, D. & R. Burrows (2005) 'Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations.' Sociological Research Online, 5: 12, http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/17.html Accessed 26 Feb. 2009 Block, J. (1890a) 'Block to Batchelor.' 9 Jan 1890. [D9055AAB; TAEM 130:145] 116

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---- (1890b) 'Block to Edison.' 23 Jun 1890. [D9055AAW; TAEM 130:189] Boyd, D. & N. Ellison (2007) 'Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship', Journal of Computer Mediated Communication. Electronic Edition, 13(1): 210-30. Burke, A. (2006) ‘Barenaked Ladies Let Fans Do All the Work’. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6488480) Accessed 15/11/2006 Cashmore, P. (2009) ‘YouTube: Why do we watch?’, http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/17/cashmore.youtube/. Accessed 22 Dec 2009. Channel, C. (2004) ‘The Twisted Path of the Music File-Sharing Litigation: The Cases That Have Shaped the Litigation and the RIAA's Litigation Strategy.’ Intellectual Property & Technology Law Journal, 16(10):6. Connolly, M. and A. Krueger (2005) Rockonomics: the economics of popular music, National Bueau of Economic Research. Creative Commons (2009) ‘Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia’, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/au/. Accessed 6/11/2009. Cvetkovski, T. (2005) ‘The Political Economy of the Music Industry’ PhD Thesis. University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. EdgeX (2009), ‘EdgeX – About’, http://edgex.org.au/about/. Accessed 5 Nov 2009. Farouky, J. (2007), ‘Why Prince's Free CD Ploy Worked’, Time http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1644427,00.html. Accessed 11 January 2009. Fisher, K. (2007) ‘Digital music singles flex muscles, kick sand on antiquated album’. http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/07/growing-digital-music-singleskilling-the-album.ars. Accessed 22 Jul 2009 Fostex (2009) ‘Corporate History of the Fostex Company’, http://www.fostexinternational.com/docs/company/company_history_1.shtml Accessed 22 Dec 2009. Graham, P. and A. Luke (2003), 'Militarising the Body Politic: New media as weapons of mass instruction', Body & Society, 9: 4, pp. 149-68. Graham, P. (2006) ' Monopoly, Monopsony, and the Value of Culture in a Knowledge Economy: An axiology of two multimedia resource repositories', in C Kapitzke & A Luke (eds), Libraries and Arobase: Changing Information Space and Practice, Mahwah, NJ:Lawrence Erlbaum. Halliday, M. (1987) ‘Spoken and Written Modes of Meaning’ Horowitz, R. and Samuels, S. J. (eds) Comprehending Oral and Written Language Academic Press, San Diego, CA, pp. 55–87.

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Hochhauser, S.C. (1999) Interdependence between fans and musicians: A case study of The Moody Blues subculture. 9933062 PhD Thesis: Kent State University. Hofmann, J. (1890), 'Hoffman to Edison.' 22 Mar 1890. [D9055AAM; TAEM 130:159] Hook Line and Sync (2009) ‘hooklineandsync - Your One Stop Sync & Master Clearance’ Portal., http://hooklineandsync.com.au/. Accessed 22 Sep 2009. IFPI (2007) Digital Music Report 2007, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, London. Jennings, D. (2007) Net, Blogs and Rock 'N' Roll, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London. Johnson, B. and S. Homan (2003) Vanishing Acts: An inuiry into the state of live popular music opportunities in New South Wales, Australia Council and the NSW Ministry for the Arts, Sydney. Jones, S. and S. Fox (2009) Generations online in 2009. Pew Internet and American Life Project, Washington. Keller, D. (2004) ‘Bruce Springsteen's "Nebraska" - A PortaStudio, two SM57's, and Inspiration’, http://www.tascam.com/article;34,2036,330.html. Accessed 22 Dec 2009. Last.fm (2009) ‘Home - Last.fm’, http://www.last.fm/home. Accessed 22 Dec 2009. Leckart, S. (2007) ‘When the Shoot hits the Fans’. Wired http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/play.html?pg=3 Accessed 31/01/2007 Medico-Legal Society & J. Bleyer (1890) 'Medico-Legal Society and Bleyer to Edison.' 10 March 1890. [D9051AAT; TAEM 129:1182] Mulligan, B. (2009) ‘Brenden Mulligan Consulting’, http://bmull.com/. Accessed 5 Nov 2009. Mumford, L. (1934/1962) Technics and civilization. New York:Harcourt Brace & World. Neuborne, E. and K. Kerwin. (1999) ‘Generation Y’, Business Week: 46-50. O'Brien, D. and B. Fitzgerald (2006) ‘Mashups, remixes and copyright law.’ Internet Law Bulletin, 9, 17-19. Ortenzi, T.J. (2009) ‘Obama On Facebook: "Be Careful What You Post"’. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/08/obama-on-facebook-becare_n_279482.html. Accessed 26 Dec 2009 Osterhout, J. (2009) ‘Susan Boyle: Fame 'can flatten you,' says singer, leading up to 'Dancing With the Stars' appearance’, http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2009/11/09/2009-1109_susan_boyle_fame_can_flatten_you_says_singer_leading_up_to_dancing_wi th_the_star.html. Accessed 22 Dec 2009.

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Parr, B. (2009) ‘MySpace’s U.S. Traffic Falls Off a Cliff’. http://mashable.com/2009/10/12/myspace-traffic-plummets/. Accessed 28 Oct 2009. ReverbNation (2009) ‘ReverbNation – ReverbNation’, http://www.reverbnation.com/reverbnation. Accessed 22 Sep 2009. Silverstone, R. (1999) Why Study the Media? Sage, London. Smythe, D. (1981) Dependency Road: Communications, Capitalism, Consciousness, and Canada, New York:Ablex Publishing. Sonicbids (2009) ‘Build EPKs, Get Gigs, Find Success’, http://www.sonicbids.com/success/Default.aspx?f=a. Accessed 22 Sep 2009. Vintage Synth (2009) ‘Vintage Synh Explorer - Sequencer Controllers’, http://www.vintagesynth.com/misc/sequencers.php. Accessed 22 Dec 2009. Wells, W., J. Burnett and S. Moriarty (1998) Advertising: principles & practice, Upper Saddle River, NJ.:Prentice Hall.

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Awash in a Sea of Possibilities

CHAPTER 3: AWASH IN A SEA OF POSSIBLITIES: ANCHORING A 21ST CENTURY MUSIC BUSINESS

(2009) in Mackinlay, Elizabeth and Brydie-Leigh Bartleet (eds) Musical Islands Brisbane: Cambridge Scholars Press

Due to copyright restrictions, this chapter is not available here. Please consult the hardcopy thesis available from QUT Library

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CHAPTER 4: VALUING INDEPENDENCE: ESTEEM VALUE AND ITS ROLE IN THE INDEPENDENT MUSIC SCENE

(In Press) [MS accepted by Popular Music and Society 36(1)]

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CHAPTER 4: VALUING INDEPENDENCE: ESTEEM VALUE AND ITS ROLE IN THE INDEPENDENT MUSIC SCENE

He said: “I do what I can. I work for a living and that’s who I am. That’s who I am. And it’s good to be alive. These are the choices we make to survive. We do what we can.” - Sheryl Crow “We do what we can” from Tuesday Night Music Club

Abstract This paper reports on a qualitative study investigating the characteristics, motivations, and organization of a sample of self-identified “Indies”. It identifies three characteristic dimensions of life for the Independent musician in the digital age: the “intrinsic motivation for extrinsic value” dimension; the “independence as network” dimension; and the “artist as business” dimension. I argue that these dimensions are linked by their relevance to the esteem that musicians must generate in pursuit of a sustainable career. They also characterise levels of artistic control, network diversity, and business intimacy within a musician’s relationships. These dimensions are rarely occupied at their extremes; rather, a wide variety of positions are taken up between totally independent and totally “indentured” musicians. Seeing relative “independence” as a combination of these three dimensions helps us more clearly understand the dynamics of emergent new music industries.

Introduction On May 13 2007, New York Times Magazine ran an article called “Sex, Drugs and Updating Your Blog” featuring former computer-programmer-turned-Independentmusician Jonathan Coulton (Thompson). It was the first time such a high-profile print 151

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publication had detailed the successful approaches of some innovative musicians, including bands Arctic Monkeys, OK Go, and Hold Steady in finding music business success via the Internet and related technologies. Wired followed this up on October 12 2007 with “Pop Geek Jonathan Coulton Succeeds by Giving Music Away” (M Anderson), which claimed that “Coulton is part of a growing trend in which artists – like recent headline-grabbers Radiohead, Trent Reznor, Oasis and Jamiroquai – sidestep major labels' traditional marketing and distribution methods to get their music into fans' hands over the internet”. Since these two, many articles have described, praised, and decried the business activities of musicians who have been able to secure either a selfsustaining income or the support of a record company as a result of them building a following on the Internet. Unfortunately, these articles tend to conspicuously omit the numbers, instead relying on statements like “With MySpace and YouTube firmly established in music's promotional circus, anyone with a demo and a spare evening can potentially become a mini record-company mogul” (Gibson). They also tend to unquestioningly publish the claims of some of these acts, for example failing to do the math on Sandi Thom’s claim to have webcast to 70,000 simultaneous viewers during her rise from being a “poor starving artist” to fame (Kelbie). Most interesting is the uncritical grouping of a wide variety of bands, soloists and other combinations of musicians and songwriters under the heading “successful Independent artists”. This includes musical acts that currently have major-label affiliations, like Prince and Jamiroquai, and ones that have had such affiliations in the past, such as Radiohead (Radiohead) and Issa (Issa), along with ones who have never had such affiliations, such as Brad Sucks (Sucks) and Jonathan Coulton (Coulton). This raises the question of what, if anything, these acts and musicians have in common that makes them “Independent”. It cannot be their genre of music nor their business

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dealings with record labels, since these are many and varied. It might be that their activities are novel and/or unprecedented – but they are also various, and novelty is hardly a defining characteristic of independence. This study identifies three dimensions to the businesses of musicians; that each independent musician occupies a point along these dimensions at any time in his or her career; and that a musician’s degree of Independence reflects a position along these dimensions. Further, I argue that these dimensions cohere according to the esteem value that Independent musicians must generate to continue their careers. In this sense, “esteem value” takes the meaning discussed by Brennan and Pettit, who posit esteem as the currency of the third of three “ruling passions in human life” (1): desire for property, desire for power; and desire for prestige. It is through the process of deriving esteem value from their creativity and then converting this into property or power that Indies are able to sustain a career. In order to sustain a music career, esteem must come from a variety of sources: fans, critics, business partners and peers, with these roles increasingly overlapping (Tapscott and Williams). Esteem value may attach, for example, to a musician’s creative corpus, songwriting or virtuosity, or to “nonmusical” values such as political activism (Merkl), professionalism, or fashion sense. It may vary from song to song, performance to performance or recording to recording within a musician’s catalog. It may apply to other creations, such as Nine Inch Nails’ multimedia marketing strategy for their Year Zero album (Cherryflava) or David Byrne’s artwork (Byrne). All of these sources of esteem can be, and usually are, inter-related. The concept of property, power, and prestige as motivators of human endeavor closely parallels Bourdieu's division of capital into economic, social and cultural capital. However, I argue that whereas Bourdieu based his ideas on the notion that capital takes time to accumulate and thus works to stabilize his “world without inertia” (241), esteem 153

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is far more volatile; it can accumulate and dissipate in seconds. Certainly it is true that esteem is not necessarily the result of “accumulated labor” (Bourdieu 241) but can be bestowed as the result of an accident of birth (as in a title of nobility or a pretty face) or a fateful event (as a witness to or survivor of a tragedy). As such, the accumulation of esteem amounts to an increase in cultural or social capital. It seems better to posit esteem as the currency of cultural capital, rather than as a substitute for Bourdieu's concept. Exploring and formulating this relatedness requires a different paper. Esteem cannot be traded (Brennan and Pettit) – you cannot buy and sell opinions. However, it can be increased or decreased. It can be converted, for example, into money through the sale of concert tickets, recordings, or merchandise; into labour through fansourced co-production or street-team promotion; or into power through the musician’s influence over the opinions of fans, peers, critics, and other industry people. Musicians who have attracted the support of a label are provided with access to resources that can assist them in business development. Upon signing they are usually granted resources for production, including professional quality recording (Boss, as in Francisco); resources for promotion through mass and online media channels; and resources for organizational development, such as databases, support staff, and the record label “machine”. All of this amounts to an infusion of esteem, and a recording or management contract can create the perception that the music and musicians will be held in high regard by consumers. Even so, each year thousands of new releases fail to cover the costs of production (Tripp). Independent musicians who have not been granted these resources must develop them in less efficient (though potentially more rewarding) ways. The inefficiencies inhibit musicians' access to the “esteem economy” (Brennan and Pettit) that the majors dominate and can slow conversion of their esteem into the stuff of business.

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Literature and Context There is a dearth of literature exploring Independent musicians as a group. Instead, existing literature concentrates on music and musicians of particular sub-cultures or musical styles (for example Hayes; Hesmondhalgh) or geographic locations (for example Kong; Vila; Bennett and Peterson), or the social and cultural impact of individual acts or artists (for example Hochhauser; Kauppila). This study begins to fill that gap by naming some unifying characteristics of Independent musicians and examining the industrial context of their practice. Bennett argues that insufficient research has been conducted into the professional practice of musicians, with music-industry research being bundled in with generic studies of “creative industries clusters” (for example, see CIE; CIRAC; DCITA; Donovan et al.; Flew et al.). What is known, however, is that “far from making a living by making music, the majority of musicians finance music making by making a living” (CIE 205). Bennett cites a UK study (Metier) noting that 90% of classical musicians held a secondary occupation. Other such studies indicate similar statistics: 94% in the Netherlands (Transdaahl), and 92% in the US (Madden). Bennett paints a complex picture of musicians’ self-assessments of “success” in which most would prefer to be full-time performers but teach music “as a fall-back career” in “a very unstable industry” (Bennett 206-8). The “casualised” industrial context is of course not unique to musicians. Madden (iii) found that about “32 million Americans consider themselves artists” and “than three times as many … pursue some sort of artistic endeavors in their lives”. Of these, about 10 million “earn at least some money from their performances, songs, paintings, videos, sculptures, photos or creative writing”. The major focus of Madden’s study is the relationship between musicians and the Internet, with two-thirds of respondents saying 155

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it was “very important” in helping them create and/or distribute their music; another quarter saying it was “somewhat important” and just 11% saying it was not important (26). Also, the myriad ways in which respondents have “integrated the Internet deeply into their musical lives” (26) shows that it is significant. Cooper and Wills interviewed a range of working popular musicians to investigate the sources of stress in their lives. They found stress of two types: 1) stresses related to the work itself, for example concerning performance anxiety, job satisfaction, work relationships, and the work/life balance, and 2) stresses concerning the volume of work and career development. The issue of making income from music featured prominently, with both too much and too little income causing musicians stress (28-31). Musicians were found to experience periods of intense self-doubt (26-27) and tend towards higher levels of neuroticism than the average person, though it was not clear whether this was because people with increased neuroticism tend to become musicians or whether the increased neuroticism was the result of the stressful life of a working musician (34). A great deal of recent attention has been paid to musicians’ efforts to circumvent the ‘major label’ hegemony and market directly to a potential audience using New Media (Garrity and Teitelman; Gibson; Gundersen; Hall; Hurley; Kelbie; LeBlanc; Miller). Such studies highlight social networking websites such as MySpace, Youtube, and Last.fm as providing musicians with ways to present their music to potential fans and bypassing the monopolized route to radio airplay (Brown). They also show the benefits of placement in TV advertising, computer games, and peer-to-peer file sharing as a means to gain exposure. Andrews reports on musicians organizing “Guerilla gigs”, in which musicians use SMS, web forums, and e-mail communication to stage “secret, spontaneous concerts at unconventional venues” in London that are organised within hours of the performance. 156

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Others study musicians’ non-musical practice. Merkl examines the projection of persona by Eddie Vedder and Madonna as marketing devices, noting the complexity and ambiguity of the relationship between their public image and their commercial success. By taking public stances on non-musical issues like religion and abortion they have (not necessarily deliberately) found new devices that help raise public awareness of their music. Baker argues the need for Independent musicians to make marketing equally as important as musical practice, and the need for musical acts to find innovative marketing strategies to escape the “great indie music swamp in which everyone looks and sounds the same” (7). Kauppila notes the importance of fan culture to the ongoing legacy of three 1960s San Francisco Bay bands: The Chocolate Watchband, the Count Five, and the Syndicate of Sound. The Chocolate Watchband, the one with no national hits, has the highest postcareer profile, due mainly to their “cult” status obtained through an outstanding live performance and a more experimental sound that inspired others to try new things – as opposed to their recording sales volumes. This phenomenon is credited for the nomination of punk poet Patti Smith to the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame (Manson). Hochauser argues that the career of The Moody Blues has been extended and shaped by the musicians’ interaction with the “moodymaniacs” subculture via fan-created merchandise, drawings and paintings of band members and album artwork, mention of particular causes in official and unofficial newsletters, fund raising events for those causes, limited-edition photographs, details of the band members' personal beliefs and private activities, reviews and discussion of shows and releases, testimonials of the band's effect on fans' lives, band members' personal artifacts and other things that vary from the usual activities of a band's fan club. These activities – musical, artistic, and extra-musical; sanctioned and unsanctioned – are part of a “symbiotic relationship” that

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differs significantly from the normal music-fan and producer-consumer relationships and which altered “the usual business pattern” (28) of a rock and roll band of that period - mainly by the degree of the intimacy of the fans' relationships with the musicians. More recently, Burke notes the way bands can harness the willingness of fans to help raise profile by remixing songs, creating merchandise or videos, and promoting new releases or concerts. Baym and Burnett show how fans’ efforts as “publicists, promoters, archivists and curators”, and even as booking agents, have expanded and prolonged the careers of Swedish bands (434). They question whether the bands’ and/or labels’ willingness to harness this fan labour amounts to exploitation, noting that most fan labour is supplied altruistically or in return for a relationship with the musicians. Rogers studies the cultural and industrial environment in the “Indie” music scene in Brisbane. Interviewing musicians from 20 local Brisbane Indie bands, he encounters the “Brisbane Indie Mindset” (645), finding three motivations for Indie musicians: 1) fun with “hobbyist tendencies” (because of a resignation to the idea of low income); 2) because the musicians feel a strong sense of community; and 3) to a lesser extent, to build their social status and enhance their self-definition. Rogers notes that the meaning of “Indie” music has changed with the increasing popularity of digitally distributed music, starting from a narrow genre-based definition referring to a simple, jangly-guitar rock sound in the early 1990s and now encompassing a wide range of musical styles:

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… the cultural capital provided by indie listening has shifted from those with an in-depth, scholarly knowledge of a select canon of indie bands to those in possession of an in-depth, scholarly knowledge of a much wider, more exotic selection of music. (Rogers, 640) An examplar: online Indie music publication Pitchfork has widened its music selection over the past decade to cover hip-hop, commercial pop, experimental music and metal (Rogers). This leads to the view that the social status of being “Indie” has more to do with an attitude strongly favoring innovation and avoidant of the popular than it does with any particular musical style. This provides a useful understanding of the way music consumers (including critics and fans) view “Independent” music. Cool takes these definitional issues even further (What is Indie). Starting from the simple premise that “independent” status is a matter of the business relationship between a musician and a record label, he finds that artists and people who work with them define “Indie” with a pastiche of sentiments, standards, and practices. He interviewed musicians and “industry experts” to get a clear definition from people who define themselves as “Indie”, finding that many of them were unclear about it and often uncomfortable with some connotations of the term. Perceived advantages of being Independent include control over creative output and business practices; the corresponding freedom from artistic interference; and wide experience of all aspects of the industry leading to personal development. Disadvantages include a lack of capital; a consequent shortage of labor and other resources; obscurity among “the mass of the thousands of other people doing something similar” (Sivers, as in What is Indie); and limited access to supporting services such as radio airplay and distribution: “The stigma that because you’re Independent, that means you were kind of rejected” (Wimble, as in What is Indie). 159

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This leads to a philosophical definition of “Indie”: an “ethos” or “mentality” that believes in the integrity of self-management. “It doesn’t matter where you’re at; it matters where your head’s at” (Sivers, as in What is Indie). By this definition, for example, Radiohead’s 2007 release In Rainbows constitutes an Independent release even though it was published by Warner Chappell and licensed to various major labels around the world because the band created the album using their own resources and negotiated distribution on their own terms. In turn, this belief in the integrity of self-management causes tension with the idea of “cult” status bands (Kaupilla), for whom selfmanagement may be less important than creative control. Thus, a band such as Radiohead may have a massive fan base and major-label relationships but maintain creative control and thus preserve their “cult” status as long as their sound is not “mainstream”. Examining this issue and its implications for generating esteem any further, however, is a topic for another paper. Taken together, this literature presents two views of what it means to be independent. First, from the creators' side “Indie” concerns production, distribution, and promotion on the artists' own terms, free from the interference of other interests – particularly those of traditional record labels. Second, from the music consumers' side, comes a view of “independent” music as reflecting anti-establishment views in the tradition of the founders of rock and roll. This is based entirely on the perception of the audience, which may ignore or be unaware of the complex reality of relationships between artists and major record companies as long as the music reflects appropriate sentiments and does not sound manufactured. The two definitions are not necessarily opposed and both apply to many bands, facilitating the kind of fan relationships that sustain or degrade independent careers as noted above.

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Despite the widely-discussed fall in income from recordings sales since the turn of the century (IFPI), some industry voices point to a rising “musical middle class” of artists taking advantage of new media technologies to realize a living based on their musical activities (Sivers; Hypebot). Such businesses are assisted by a rapidly-growing body of self-help literature which gives advice on every aspect of a musical career. This includes songwriting and production (Cluskey), marketing (Baker; Sivers), legal advice (Simpson), personal development (Hooper), and other aspects of life as an Indie musician (Schwartz). Many of these are available globally from outlets such as Amazon.com, some are e-books, others are podcasts, and some are given away free. The theme that consistently runs through these texts is the need for Indies to have confidence in themselves and their music and to be disciplined and enthusiastic in pursuit of their goals. This betrays a perception that many musicians are reluctant to embrace the non-musical aspects of a music business and tend not to be very good at them. This view that is rarely stated explicitly, though one of Cooper and Wills' interviewees said he found “running myself as a small business … by far the most frightening” (25). Other dominant themes include the importance of seeing an Independent music business as a business, not a hobby; the importance of building a team of support people; the importance of building a supporter base as a way to get help and feedback; the need to innovate when it comes to gaining exposure; and the need to diversify sources of revenue as much as possible. The last decade has seen the rise of many new conferences and online communities designed to help Indies (Jennings). Such events and resources provide ways for Independent musicians to learn more about the next steps in their career and to meet people who can help them to take those steps: communities such as Just Plain Folks, Musowiki, and Free Terrain, and conferences such as the Independent Music 161

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Conference (IMC) and the Millennium Music Conference (MMC). And while these claim to be pitched at Independent musicians, there remains no clear or explicit definition of who or what defines Independent musicians as such.

Method This study started out by asking 3 broad research questions: 1. What are the common characteristics of people involved in Independent music? 2. What motivates them to continue their involvement? and 3. How to they organize their day-to-day activities? It answers these questions using a two-part approach. First, an online survey (Brown) was posted for self-defined “Independent artists” to complete regarding their background, musical career status, activities, and attitudes. The survey asked about three areas of respondents’ lives. Part 1 asked about their backgrounds and status as Independent musicians; part 2 about their business practices and part 3 about their attitudes to the music industry. The responses to this survey (n=83) were used to frame interviews with a broadly structured sample (aiming to reflect the apparent incoherence in the popular literature discussed above) of Independent artists and Independent music-industry professionals. Industry professionals were included in the hope that they might provide an overview of the ‘Independent’ characteristics of the musicians and others with whom they had worked, while the musicians themselves provided a more personal and intimate perspective. Interview questions were based on the findings of the survey, with one section of each interview aimed at a particular characteristic of the interviewee. The interviews aimed to identify commonalities across this diversity in the hope of finding

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some unifying indicators of Independence. The qualitative data were compared to the self-help literature (for example, see Gelfand; Goldstein; Schwartz) A purposive sample of four artists and four industry professionals was chosen for interview. Each has a different place in the music industry and each was chosen to discuss a particular aspect of their business. The artists chosen were:

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Brad – a Canadian rock/pop artist whose music and blog is available at www.bradsucks.net. Brad is a programmer when he is not making music and his website has a high level of technical sophistication.

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Janis Ian – most famous for her 1975 folk hit “At Seventeen”, she had a long and distinguished career with various major record labels before publishing a critique of the major label system and launching her own Independent label in 2006 (Ian). Janis blogged the process of creating her 2004 album Billy’s Bones at www.janisian.com.

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Tah Phrum Duh Bush – 2007’s New York MC of the year, Tah appears at music industry conferences presenting workshops expounding the virtues of being as personable with fans as possible and thereby building a fan base. Tah’s website is at www.tahonline.com.

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Tracey Saxby - born in Australia and now living and performing roots music mainly in Canada. Tracey has profound insight into the pros and cons of relocating and traveling and her music can be found at www.traceysaxby.com.

The industry professionals chosen were:

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David Hooper – a marketer whose blog and publications can be found at http://www.musicmarketing.com/. David writes about the music business in general as well as the importance of marketing and branding for musicians.

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Noel Ramos – a graphic designer whose passion for music and musicians led him to create the Independent Music Conference (http://www.indiemusicon.com/) which emphasizes how-to workshops for musicians as well as providing the usual trade displays, showcases, and conference panels.

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Kevin Arnold – founder and CEO of digital distribution company IODA (http://www.iodalliance.com/).

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Shannon Martin – an innovative Canadian band and label manager whose company has a website at http://www.fileundermusic.com/.

This sample was purposively selected to represent a range of Independent experience, from the part-time Tracey Saxby to full-time Janis Ian, and folk, roots, rock and Hip Hop. The industry professionals cover the four pillars of the music business: management, marketing, distribution, and networking. Interviews were conducted in various sites in the USA, Canada, and Australia in September and October 2007. The interviewees were happy to be identified in the reporting of this study and agreed that their interviews could be published as MP3 resources on the researcher’s blog (Huge). The online survey painted a picture of Independent musicians as tending to be male, with an average age of 36.1 years, more experienced than the pop artist average, and mainly performing their own compositions (Brown). The sample of musicians interviewed for this study is gender-balanced with an average age over 30, and all of 164

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them write and perform their own material for the most part. This sample is probably skewed from the great bulk of Indies responding to the survey in that none of the interviewees is early-career as such. To that extent, the findings of this study should not be generalized to everyone who may identify themselves as an Independent musician because, according to the survey, many of these reported having not toured and not released an album of recordings, whereas all of the interviewees have experience with those aspects.

The “intrinsic motivation for extrinsic value” dimension There is a deep conflict between the reasons musicians identify as “Independent” and the business context in which their ability to do so relies upon their work being valued by others. Indie Musicians state that they begin to create and perform largely to please their own needs. But in order to build a career they must make music that is esteemed by others, especially fans and allied business people. Resolving this dilemma often requires artistic compromise: ironic echoes of the many Indie complaints around record-executive interference in the creative process (see, for example, Gaar; Hahn). One thing that clearly sets the Independent musicians apart is their commitment to originality. Tah (Bush) explains that “A lot of people were like, you know, ‘why don’t you rhyme like everybody else?’ and I’m: ‘I don’t want to rhyme like everybody else. I wanna rhyme how I wanna rhyme’”. Or, as Janis Ian puts it: “I know when a song is good and I know when it’s bad and no amount of praise or success is going to change my feeling about it”. These are expressions of an intrinsic motivation to create music that that is authentic to its creator. This view is reflected in Cool’s finding (with which my interviewees agreed) that control of the creative process is one of the great advantages of being “Indie” (What is Indie). When Brad began making his CD,

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I had a certain faith that people paid for stuff that they liked. Ultimately, if they want more of what I make or any artist makes you would think that they would support it, but I pretty much went on as a leap of faith that I, well, I can do this and get my music right, and really that was all the reward I needed at the time. Brad does not explain what getting it “right” means, but the implication is that others will hold music that is “right” in esteem. Thus earning esteem for his music is his first goal. He assumes that there is a means for converting that esteem into income but is not clear on the extent to which his artistic integrity needs to waver in pursuit of that esteem. The esteem granted to an “Indie” artist purely because of the authenticity of their creative direction underpins the “cult” status of the acts discussed by Kaupilla and Hochauser. While that authenticity is of great value to the few fans who follow “cult” acts, it may not translate into a sustainable income. However, the nature of this kind of esteem is that it can be very quickly destroyed by any action or relationship that fans regard as disingenuous. The interviewees in this study consistently described an adolescent musical selfexploration that followed a youth of diverse exposure to music and an epiphany of musical competence; a point in the musician’s life at which “I thought: Oh, I can do that” (Ian) and decided that music was something they wanted to take seriously. Once the self-driven musical exploration was underway, the decision to claim “Independent musician” status and pursue music as at least a part-time career (as opposed to a hobby) followed an epiphany of career confidence. For computer programmer Brad this was not driven by a musical event but by a technology: “Essentially it was, you know, all I'll have to do is make a whole bunch of these MP3s and then I have to get enough people to share them and if that is all it is, well, I think I can do that”. Brad has clearly come to 166

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the realization that new technologies enable him to build a group of people who regard his music with esteem and to convert that esteem into a music business. He has done so without the esteem of a record company along the way. Consistent with Rogers’ findings, none of this study’s interviewees, and few less than 5% of the survey respondents were motivated by money. Income from music was almost seen as incidental, and Cooper and Wills note that too little and too much of it are both causes of stress for popular musicians (28-29). When he started publishing an online music magazine, Noel (Ramos) “was hoping to do both: you know, make some money and help the local musicians … Isn’t that always the way? You know, you hope to make the money”. Following their epiphany of musical competence, the careers of the non-performing music industry professionals diverge from those of the musicians. The non-performers described the same early multi-genre exposure to music and performance, especially in high school bands and choirs, but did not experience satisfaction from the creative experience. “After trying to play music plenty, tried to write some songs, never felt really good or confident enough about it, [so] I pretty quickly decided that my place in music was in the background” (Arnold). While the epiphany of competence had left the industry professionals with an appreciation of music and the creative process, their epiphany of confidence related to supporting other people’s activities. Shannon (Martin) says: “When I was fronting Organised Mayhem (her band), I did enjoy it but for me it just didn’t feel right. Now, being behind the music, being more of a line of thanks in the liner notes, that makes sense.” Thus, the shift from musician to business person who works with musicians is marked by a shift from a desire to make a living by generating personal esteem to a desire to

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help others capitalise on theirs – motivation is no longer intrinsic but is instead framed as altruistic. Signing an old-style record deal anoints musicians with enormous esteem from a single influential source. This is usually done on the basis that the musicians have shown that their music is likely to be esteemed by fans because they have gathered a solid following prior to “being discovered”. Michael Chugg frames an old industry adage that captures the essence of this: “When you enter a bar with a view to signing a band, don’t look at the band. Head for the middle of the room. Look to the left and look to the right. If you can’t see the walls, sign the band.” The record company’s esteem comes with a ready supply of capital and labour intended to help musicians produce commercially viable music, merchandise, and branding, and to reach out to extrinsic sources of esteem – fans, peers, and colleagues. But the esteem comes at a price: label-imposed deadlines, budgets, and quality control. This infusion of esteem from a single source provides a solution to the musician’s business problems but adds extrinsic motivations and, if the record company assumes a gatekeeping role over the music, may compromise the musician’s intrinsic motivation. The Moody Blues, Janis Ian, and Radiohead, all of whom enjoyed record company support and then embarked on Independent careers, demonstrate that entering relationships with parties whose efforts help a musician to gather mass esteem from other sources has long-term benefits. But many other musicians can testify that this is not always the case. The performers in this study all decided at their epiphany of competence that they wanted to make their music, not just play for or like other people. Thus, one measure of a musician’s Independence is the extent to which they retain freedom to create as they wish. At the other end of this dimension is a systematic 168

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compromising of artistic vision and/or self-identity to suit commercial or other corporate ends. More Independent musicians will therefore tend to have control over the music they make and an ability to generate esteem from many extrinsic sources. Less Independent musicians will have their creative control compromised, either by one major source of gate-keeper esteem (eg a record company – see below) or perhaps as self-censorship in the name of self-perceived “improvement” following feedback from fans and reviewers (Baym and Burnett). This is consistent with both Cool’s (What is Indie) and Rogers’ views of Independence.

The “independence as a network” dimension In the current technological climate, the greatest benefit of signing a record deal is the infrastructure record companies have in place for maximizing the revenues generated by musicians. Record companies have developed huge networks that produce, publish, distribute, and sell music very efficiently, with links to companies who book shows, sell merchandise, and make travel arrangements. An important 21st century development has been the “360 deal” (Sullivan), in which the musician signs a single contract regarding not only his or her recorded music and publishing catalog, but also every other aspect of their income potential, including live shows and merchandise. In return they are given support and resources to derive as much income from their creativity as the company can manage. Any Indie who wishes to make a living must also develop these capacities – independently. The Indies interviewed for this study all reported that their capacity to meet their business obligations is regularly stretched. The solution to this is to continuously work to build “as many relationships as possible” (Martin) to find reliable “partnerships” that can be called upon to extend capacity when it’s needed:

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I’m a big believer in outsourcing as much as possible … through the relationships. I hire publicists – there are one or two publicists I always go back to; we’ve become old friends – radio people, agents, all that kind of stuff. (Martin) The great strength in forming these many partnerships is that they can be relied on as part of an extended team (Hooper). This loose kind of team operates via myriad small, opportunistic interactions, rather than in a more formal business partnership. Tracey (Saxby) explains it thus: “If you have a support group or if there are organizations in your area that can help you, go for them. You need all the help you can get.” None of the musicians interviewed in this study had established significant sources of “street team” labor, though they all intended to do so having understood the advantages of fan labor. This is one area in which new media technologies provide clear benefits. “Everything I do is online in one way or another,” as Tah (Bush) says. One of the main reasons to associate with fans following a performance is to collect their e-mail addresses for the purposes of promoting future activities and releases. Similarly, online music-discovery facilities such as Facebook, MySpace and ReverbNation can be very effective at bringing casual music fans into the sphere of influence of a particular artist. However, the optimal method for doing so, and whether or not any particular method will work for all independent musicians, is far from clear. An examination of the circumstances under which each possible method is effective is needed. Building this network of industry contacts amounts to collecting the esteem of peers as well as fans. This is the opposite of the traditional record-deal approach because the record deal bestows upon the musician all the resources to fulfill these roles; and fans are viewed merely as consumers of the product(s). Instead of receiving a large cache of 170

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esteem from a single source, Indies must create a large network of contacts, associates, fans, collaborators and colleagues to build symbiotic relationships of the kind built up by the Moody Blues and identified by Hochhauser for which there is “no substitute” (Hooper). Building this network was seen as bringing personal satisfaction as much as business advantage: All the people that I’m lucky enough to consider industry colleagues and friends are people that I’ve forged distinct relationships with and we’ve stayed in touch and helped each other out over the years. (Martin) This esteem network is more readily converted into labour than money because the people in the network are happy to help Indies with advice, services, or contacts – but usually at a price. Myriad and often competing interests need to be managed and paid for with some form of consideration in return for esteem, even if consideration amounts only to peer acclaim in online fora (Jeppesen and Frederiksen). In the case of Independent musicians, this ethos is strong, since many of the fans who support the musicians’ activities will have similar “hobbyist” tendencies to the Independent musicians. Whereas the musicians’ tendencies revolve around creating music (Rogers), the fans’ tendencies may revolve around New Media skills involving, for example, administering a forum or band wiki (Jeppesen and Frederiksen), remixing the Indie’s music, or creating videos, artwork or other artifacts (Baym and Burnett; Burke) to celebrate the estimable aspects of the musician and their work. Maintaining a social caché that enables these skills and tendencies among these “thought leader” (Waters) fans may require that they be given privileged access to the musician – backstage passes, autographed merchandise, interviews. Often “lead fanship” comes with the expectation that lead fans will get to meet the musicians and build a personal relationship with them (Baym and Burnett) and/or gain personal endorsement for their 171

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work which they can use to advance their own standing (Jeppesen and Frederiksen). Providing such access - and realizing that the musician has minimal control over the activities of their fans - can compromise the musician’s independence because the pressure will always be present to appease fans. Even managing the relationships by email and through other tools comes at an opportunity cost to the musician’s business. Such burdens can be outsourced to an extent, but at the price of network control. However, ceding some control to enthusiastic fans or trusted colleagues almost certainly compromises independence less than having a contractual requirement to maintain a certain image, creative output, behavioural standards, or sound, or to communicate with audiences through remote mass media and outsourced corporate communicators. Thus, one measure of a musician’s independence is the extent to which they have entered single, high-esteem, high-stakes relationships as the basis of their business as opposed to building a network of broader, looser relationships. This is significantly more nuanced than the old major label/independent label duopoly and also accounts for the fact that many “independent” labels are merely branded as such by the major labels who are contracted to do their heavy lifting, as noted in What is Indie?. More independent musicians will have a more diverse network of ad hoc relationships – and gather the esteem on which those relationships are based – with people who can provide services in, say, a particular territory or on their own fan website, but have weaker mutual obligations to deal with. Less independent musicians will have fewer relationships with higher-stakes business partners, and compromise according to the obligations those relationships bring. It is, of course, expected that a musician’s relationship networks will evolve over time. The progression from relative independence to major-label signing is evident in acts like Sandi Thom (Kelbie) and My Chemical Romance (Anderson). Ironically, entering into one of those high-stakes

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relationships can cost musicians the “cult” esteem of their fans, as integrity and authenticity are “anchoring value in the Indie tradition” (Baym and Burnett). “Selling out” compromises that ethos. All of those interviewed for this study indicated a desire to avoid any suggestion of exploiting fans, as appeared after Radiohead announced that they would distribute In Rainbows with label support. This is underpinned by a desire to appear “real” (Bush; Saxby) and genuine in all dealings, unlike the untrustworthy reputation of mainstream rock stars and major labels.

The “artist as business” dimension Despite not being motivated by the financial rewards, or perhaps because of that, the musicians interviewed for this study reported a resignation to the necessary business and fan-management aspects of their chosen career. “Your artistry will suffer from this business”, as Tah (Bush) said. Each reported a wide variety of activities as part of their daily experience and said, as discussed in What is Indie, that this variety was rewarding but that their musical and creative practice could be “pretty overshadowed by the time I spend emailing and on the phone and all that other crap” (Brad). To make sure everything gets done, Independents tended to adopt a “little bit of everything each day” (Saxby) approach to managing their workload and, as noted above, get as much help as they can through their networks. This confirms the view found in Schwartz, among others, that Indies tend to view administrative business tasks as, at best, a necessary evil and quite stressful (Cooper and Wills 25). Their insecurity and lack of enthusiasm in the face of business dealings may relate to the lack of training in these areas during their musical education, as reported by Bennett. Had these musicians’ formal musical education covered the process of making a living from making music along with instruction on instrumental proficiency, they may have continued with it and may have been better prepared for their chosen vocation. 173

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That the necessity to perform business functions causes significant angst for musicians suggests obvious impediments to career development, and to the development of personal satisfaction and creative freedom. The solution to this seems to come through either a multi-creative approach or outsourcing the business functions through their networks as much as possible. “Creativity will take you a long way,” as David (Hooper) put it. Noel (Ramos) argues that all aspects of a music business need a creative solution: You can make the business stuff fun, too. It can be just as creative as the creative stuff if you’re smart about it. And if you find ways to make that a creative endeavor instead of just work, it changes everything. Then it makes the business stuff just as much or maybe more fun than the purely creative stuff. All of the interviewees in this study were multi-creatives, finding outlets in other forms of expression besides music: graphic design, poetry, computer programming and more. This reflects Janis Ian’s view that Art is art at the end of the day and artists are artists. You might be talking with a visual artist who doesn’t share the language that you do, your particular artistic lexicon, but if you start talking about philosophy and art you’ll find that it’s the same. Musicians who can find more creative solutions for their problems are quite likely to find greater esteem among their peers, fans, and business associates than those who allow the obstacles to impede their activities. The esteem in which Tah’s can-do attitude and creativity are held by associates has led to him being invited onto panels at music industry conferences, thereby opening up new avenues for exposure of his music and 174

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anointing him as a person to whom others should give their esteem for his opinion, if not for his music. At these conferences, he can build his network and form relationships that will, in turn, help him solve future business problems. Given that these interviewees are probably more successful than most people who would have identified themselves as “Indie”, this commitment to creativity reflects the views expressed by Baker that originality and distinctiveness are vital for effective promotion. This is reinforced by David Hooper, another marketer, who argues that Independent musicians “need to know who they are” and use their distinctiveness to full advantage. It may be difficult for Indies to use this to the same extent as Madonna and Eddie Vedder (Merkl) but it seems nonetheless true that a strong public identity makes the musician and their music more attractive to fans. In turn, fans will support the musicians by taking on tasks they know musicians struggle with – selling merchandise in shows, promoting shows to other fans, providing accommodation and even booking shows in other countries (Baym and Burnett). As an Indie career grows, this need for business support is best resolved via peer networks, which are a natural consequence of the process of building relationships and spring from the sense of community identified in Rogers’ study. Making new contacts within the industry is seen as desirable in part because the community can be relied upon to provide tips, tricks and further contacts when a musician has a particular need. I find that artists by nature are generous – with one another in particular. And very, very generous about sharing knowledge and experience, which is great because in so many industries people are not … But I think artists, of all people, understand that the more information we all share, the better it is for our business and for ourselves. (Ian)

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However, trusting someone to take on aspects of an Indie’s business such as accounting, travel and merchandise sales is a different matter to asking dedicated fans to make a few phone calls of put up posters. Shannon (Martin), Tracey (Saxby) and Tah (Bush), in particular, expressed that value of a “mentor” in all things business: someone in whom absolute trust can be placed to give advice and/or undertake business roles. For Shannon (Martin), an agreement for her to manage or advise a prospective act would not be forthcoming unless she was a fan, which Noel also considered “essential” (Ramos). Because the business partner was already a fan of the musician, the issue of creative control is minimized, unlike in a record deal, in which extreme business intimacy is accompanied by artistic quality control. Thus, a third measure of independence is a high level of control over business dealings characterized by a few strong, intimate, business-focused relationships amid the greater network of contacts, fans, and peers. More Independent musicians are likely to have very high levels of control over their businesses exercised through a few highly specialized relationships of great trust and artistic freedom. This business structure allows musicians to continue to make the same kind of music that gained them a “cult” status, since the people facilitating their business activities support their creative vision. Less Independent musicians will have little or no control over their business which is externally conducted through one or two tightly contractual relationships conditional on artistic censorship. Hence 360 deals (Sullivan) would act to reduce independence because of their total nature.

Conclusion This paper has reported on a study of the characteristics, motivations, and organization of a sample of Independent musicians and music industry professionals, and compared their data with that in the current literature to draw the following conclusions. 176

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First, the esteem in which musicians and/or their politics and creative output are held is the source of all value in music business. Converting esteem into money, power, and labor is the key to sustaining an Independent music business. The most satisfying aspect of the creative process, and thus the first priority for Independent musicians, must be generating the esteem of fans, peers, and allied music industry professionals. From this esteem, however expressed and captured, can be (if desired) derived the stuff of a sustainable music business. Artists whose creativity attains a “cult” status are better able to continue their creativity by harnessing the esteem of fans than by entering into a relationship with a business partner whose concern is expanding their potential market at the cost of artistic authenticity. Second, it is the nature of the relationships musicians adopt in the process of creation, not the nature of their music, that makes them Independent. This can be seen in the myriad musical styles that all lay claim to being made by Independent musicians and is reflected in the changes in coverage in Pitchfork observed by Rogers. While fans consider an anti-establishment stance and under-produced sound – regardless of genre – as the key elements of independence, the creators must support their vision with business structures that ensure creative and business control. This is consistent with the change of status of acts like Radiohead and Janis Ian who have enjoyed record-label endorsement and support but have claimed Independent status once their relationship with the majors ended. Third, three dimensions of relatedness define a musician’s level of Independence. They also characterize the levels of creative control, network diversity, and business intimacy enjoyed by each artist. Independent musicians will have higher levels of creative control as a result of working with a diverse network of mainly ad hoc relationships with a wide range of sources of esteem rather than a singular relationship with a corporate entity 177

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that has the right to censor creative output. And they will typically have close control over their business dealings which are conducted through an intimate, high-trust network. Seen along these lines, a blend of conditions bear upon the “independentness” of any given act at different times. It is through the nature of these relationships that the musicians can focus on their intrinsic motivation to create the music they want, free of controlling interests. By these standards, musicians who have entered into, for example, a “360-degree deal” should struggle to claim any Independent status whatsoever. Their business may be small-scale and their approach defiant and countercultural, but it can hardly be called Independent. These dimensions offer a glimpse of the cultural dynamics at work in the music industry more generally. At root the music industry is an enormous rights trading affair (Galway; Hsieh). The new media environment provides many new opportunities to generate new kinds of value around music, and these necessarily respond to new and emerging relationships around rights. As has been widely touted, the new environment comes as a disruptive shock for the mass industries of the late twentieth century. If the “Indie” music scene can be read as a wider relational shift rather than merely a shift in attitudes, we can expect to see a radical reorientation of the music industries around networks of trust, attitudes towards artistic control, and a rethinking of the place of business in music. It is most likely that the greatest change wrought by the advent of new media is to facilitate a groundswell of amateur and semi-professional musicians in the same way that the provision of public sporting facilities enables wider participation in amateur sport and an explosion of professional sports. This growing “Musical Middle Class” (Hypebot) will have similar musical gratifications to those of the wider sporting public: a

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range from part-time to full time, fully professional to strictly amateur. Success is, for each of these, an individual matter. When seen through the lens of this framework, the trend towards “Independence” can be seen as a re-organization of social relationships and a portent of further changes to come. The dimensions of Independence identified here may of course apply to other artistic forms and I would expect to see similar patterns in each of these. Esteem is central to the value of all art forms (as opposed to commodities), not just music (Perry). Exploring the nature of Independent musicianship provides us with a more coherent view of changes in music industry more generally. What remains for further research is to map the myriad particularities of the ways in which Indies convert esteem value into a sustainable living.

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Perry, Ralph Barton. General Theory of Value: Its Meaning and Basic Principles Construed in Terms of Interest, Cambriadge, MA:Harvard University Press. 1926. Print. Pitchfork. “Pitchfork: home”, Pitchfork, Web 12 Nov 2009. Radiohead. “http://www.radiohead.com/”, Web 11 Nov 2009. Ramos, Noel. Personal Interview. 3 September 2007. Rogers, Ian. "‘You’ve got to go to gigs to get gigs’: Indie musicians, eclecticism and the Brisbane scene", Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 22.5, (2008): 639– 49. Print. Saxby, Tracey. Personal interview. 8 September 2007. Schwartz, Dayle Deanna. I Don't Need a Record Deal!, New York:Billboard Books. 2005. Print. Simpson, Shane. Music Business: A musician's guide to the Australian music industry, 3rd edn, Sydney:Omnibus Press. 2006. Print. Sivers, Derek. “Sales numbers at CD Baby”, Email.14 Nov 2007. ---- How to Call Attention to Your Music, Web 15 Jul 2008 . Sucks, Brad. “Brad Sucks: a one man band with no fans”, Web 11 Nov 2009. . Sullivan, Caroline. “Robbie's £80m deal puts EMI on new path” Guardian Unlimited, Web 30 Apr 2006. . Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. Wikinomics: how mass collaboration changes everything, New York:Penguin. 2007. Print. Thompson, Clive. "Sex, Drugs and Updating your Blog." New York Times Magazine 13 May 2007. Print. Transdaahl, J O. "Rhythmic music education in Denmark", The ISME Commission for the Education of the Professional Musician 1996 seminar. The Musician's role: New Challenges, Lund. Universitetstrykriet, Lund Universit. 1996. Print. Tripp, Phil. “Lies, Damn Lies and Music Business Statistics” In Music & Media - Loose Cannon, Web 04 April 2006 .. Vila, P. "Debating the past: Music, memory, and identity in the Andes", Choice, 39.8, (2002): 1464.

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Waters, Jim. "Social Network Behavior, Thought-Leaders and knowledge building In An Online Learning Community." 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. 2008. Print. What is Indie? Dir D Cool. MPEG-4. FIBII Independent Media Production. 2006.

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CHAPTER 5: FROM GARAGE TO GREATNESS? REFLECTIONS ON HOMESTUDIO PRODUCTION EXPERIENCE

(Forthcoming) [MS under review for Journal of the Art of Record Production – submitted 25 March 2011] Statement of Contribution of Co-Authors for Thesis by Published Papers The authors listed below have certified that: 1. they meet the criteria for authorship in that they have participated in the conception, execution, or interpretation, of at least that part of the publication in their field of expertise; 2. they take public responsibility for their part of the publication, except for the responsible author who accepts overall responsibility for the publication; 3. there are no other authors of the publication according to these criteria; 4. potential conflicts of interest have been disclosed to (a) granting bodies, (b) the editor or publisher of journals or other publications, and (c) the head of the responsible academic unit, and 5. they agree to the use of the publication in the student’s thesis and its publication on the Australasian Digital Thesis database consistent with any limitations set by publisher requirements. In the case of this chapter: From Garage to Greatness? Contributor

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CHAPTER 5: FROM GARAGE TO GREATNESS? REFLECTIONS ON HOMESTUDIO PRODUCTION EXPERIENCE*

You say you want a revolution Well, you know We all want to change the world You tell me that it's evolution Well, you know We all want to change the world - John Lennon from The White Album

Abstract This paper argues that the rhetoric surrounding digital home studio production technologies - that they enable equal access to the recorded music market for novice music creators and professional production houses - is grossly overstated. It reports on two experiences of producing music albums in a home studio setting from two vastly different production backgrounds. The discussion explores common themes that emerge from these contrasting experiences and reflects on the academic, industry and popular literature surrounding home studio production. We argue that home studio recording represents an emergent genre that in some ways parallels commercial studio production rather than replacing it and note the resultant institutional instability driven by the economic, social, and technical impacts of cheaper production technologies. This autoethnographic research has implications for anyone involved in the future of recorded music: musicians, music educators, and institutions who seek to encourage home production as the future for musical careers, their students, and the industry that services their needs. *An earlier version of this paper was presented to the Art of Record Production Conference at QUT in December 2007. See Appendix 5.

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Introduction A great deal of publicity has been given to the idea that in the twenty-first century an independent musician can build a career based on producing, distributing and marketing recorded music from his or her living room or garage using digital home studio technologies (see, for example, Businessweek 2006; Butterfield 2004). Successful exemplars of this phenomenon include MC Lars (Miller 2006) and Jonathan Coulton (Thompson 2007). Even where this view comes with a caveat, the caveat tends to be preceded by the hype, for example: Today, it is entirely possible for musicians to write, arrange, record and master albums on CD in the comfort of their own home studios, at a cost often less than $5000 including all the equipment and software. That is not to say that the quality will be the same as if they had recorded a professionally produced CD in a $250,000 recording studio, but one thing is for sure: the threshold has been lowered, and just about anyone can produce their own CD. (Kusek and Leonhard 2005, p. 143) It has been observed, however, that increased access to production capacity does not equate to immediate success because ‘Having tools doesn’t make you an engineer – not even close’ (Schwartz 2005, p. 94). Producing ‘pretty good’ recordings using new technologies takes, by one estimate (Businessweek 2006), at least two years. Producing world-class material presumably takes considerably longer, which may explain why no home-produced recording has yet featured in the Top Forty charts, iTunes top downloads or in hit radio programmes. In parallel with the increasing publicity and availability of home studio technologies is a growing diversity of online and offline self-help resources aimed at helping to ‘Make the bedroom artist sound pro’ (Notez 2008) or encouraging ‘Digital Music: DIY NOW!’

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(Dean and Caulder 2007). These provide advice on the best (or at least, the best value) software and hardware available, tips for improving sub-standard sonic input and techniques for mixing and mastering recordings in a home studio environment. A beginner can learn the basics in a systematic way, or find the solution to just about any problem on a needs basis in online fora such as those at Studio Recording Engineer (Studio Recording Engineer 2009), Pro Tools Forum (Pro Tools Forum 2009), or KVR Audio (KVR Audio 2009). However, despite the hype, the benefits of these technologies and resources are not equally accessible to all. Making best use of new technologies requires learning, cooperation, and/or access to scarce resources that are not equally applicable in all settings. In this paper we argue that these aspects bestow upon some musical productions significant economic, social, and technical advantages over others, which implies a genre-bias within digital music production. These advantages (or limitations, depending on one’s perspective) bestow upon home studio recording, as a whole, a status as an emerging genre, whose development comes in parallel with, rather than as a replacement for, commercial-studio production – contrary to the popular mythology surrounding the new technologies. In this sense, we are not using the term ‘genre’ in its literary sense as, for example, in describing music as ‘pop’, ‘rock’, ‘country’, or ‘rap’. Rather we use the term to mean ‘action genre’: patterned sets of choices and actions, ‘the typical doings of community which are repeatable, repeated, and recognised as being of the same type from one instance or occurrence to another’ (Lemke 1995, p. 31). Certainly, the economic, social, and technical aspects of new media technologies may favour home studio production of, say, electronica, hip hop, or alternative pop, but to make that claim barely scratches the surface of the technology’s significance in relation to production affordances. The 190

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decline in the financial fortunes of major record labels and the rise of new institutions that commercialise the output of home studio production ventures (such as iTunes, CDBaby, taxi.com, and Nettwerk) indicate that the technological discontinuities that have emerged at the start of the twenty-first century underpin a significant shift in the cultural discourse of the music industry, and in other creative industries, as described by Graham (2001). The new DIY discourse of cultural production has given rise to genres of musical production defined by their unique combination of attitudes, processes, socialisations, and market niches. To put it simply, the new processes of production that we investigate here are not merely artefacts of effects of new technology. They are emblematic of changed attitudes to music, changed working conditions for musicians, changed working patterns in music performance, changed patterns of music consumption, and changed industrial patterns.

Approach We base this paper on autoethnographically derived experiences of record production over eighteen months during 2006-07. Arnold Pacey (1999) argues for the importance of exploring the ‘inherently subjective’ aspects of technology and its application. His view recognises the value of understanding the human dimensions of responses to technology: That may include reference to how people respond to social and political circumstances, of course, but it is also important to ask how human imagination deals with practical experience of the material world. (Pacey 1999, p. 4) Experience equips practitioners with expectations about technological functions and limitations that do not appear in any reference manual or book of instructions. It is particularly important in studies of sound production and performance to understand 191

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this because it is identical to the development of technique, which ‘within a cultural framework, is learnt and employed in order to respond to a determined environmental or internal situation and according to a goal’ (Nardi 2005, p. 2). Such understandings provide educators with a guide to likely student experience (and therefore reactions to curriculum) and also provide technology designers with pointers to problems with and possible solutions to issues of use and user motivation. In the early conversations that led to this paper, the theme that emerged most clearly was that, although the authors’ backgrounds and the equipment we use to record our music were very different, our reactions to the experience were surprisingly similar. We frame our reactions through an autoethnographic account of two very different processes that worked towards the same goal: making an album of music recordings using home studio technologies.

Summary narratives of the recording experience Phil Graham: I began my music career on the streets of Kings Cross as a busker. My first professional recording experience was as a session musician at Brisbane’s Suite 16 studios. Over the next decade, I went on to work as, variously, performer, engineer, and producer in some of the Brisbane and Sydney’s best studios: Paradise, Rich, Earth, Glebe, 301, Sunshine, Trafalgar, Grevillea, and many others, working on everything from radio hits to horse syndicate jingles. Alongside my experience working in professional studios on 2” tape, I began home recording by experimenting with twotrack ¼” tape, then a Fostex four track. In 1985 came the diabolically troublesome Akai 12:12, and then a year later its much more reliable big brother, the 12:14. The best results we got at this stage came from taking bed tracks recorded on the 12:14 at our Killara studio into Glebe Studios, then recording vocals and mixing on 2” tape. To this point, the recording experience was entirely tape-based for me. The work pattern was: 192

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rehearse, record the bed live, record vocals and overdubs, mix, then master. Master was always ¼”. It was an era when 2” tape was clearly superior to anything else, expensive to access, and the ‘only game in town’ when it came to recording broadcast-quality music. All that changed in 1987 when the Fostex E-16 arrived with the buzz that Joe Satriani had recorded his latest album using one. At the same time, MIDI had hit its straps with widely available, then relatively inexpensive, samplers like the S900 and S50 and, more importantly, relatively easy and cheap MIDI syncing with tape. Our band invested in a hybrid studio consisting of an E-16 and an extensive MIDI suite synced to tape using CLab Notator. We used this studio for years in Sydney and Brisbane, recording for everything and anything: RSL shows, a circus, soundtracks, pop demos and finals, advertising – anything. The point being that we could suddenly release from our ‘home’ studio by the mid-to-late 1980s. Years later it struck me that the masters were practically irretrievable. Replaying the mixed two-track tape is simple enough, but recreating the MIDI setup for remix is nearly impossible. Even finding the necessary computer and software in working order would not be a straightforward task. At the time, mixing was very much a hands-on performance for two or three people and had to be rehearsed. Flying faders were a luxury we did not have, and we appreciated the MIDI automation, wishing out loud that the whole system would work like that to give us ‘SSL’ levels of control over the mix. The work process was: MIDI arrangement of the song, sync tape, record guitars and vocals to tape, mix, then master. Master was sometimes ¼”, sometimes the FM band of Hi-Fi video, sometimes PCM, and slightly later on, Digital Audio Tape (DAT). In the early 1990s, we added a Windows machine and a Session 8 digital component to the system: a tape-MIDI-digital hybrid system. Again, these recordings are nearly 193

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impossible to reproduce. Again we were impressed by the flexibility of an all-in-the-box digital system for recording, mixing, and editing. The typical work process for songs was: stripe tape with SMPTE, record ‘demo’ arrangement with guitar and vocal on tape to MIDI click; then rhythm section (drums on Session 8; bass on tape); guitars, vocals, and anything else on tape; mix; master. Master was almost always DAT. ¼” machines were becoming very expensive. Millisecond-accurate digital editing became available to us for the first time. No more china graph pencils, razor blades, and sticky tape. In the very early 1990s, the 2” studios still held the high sonic ground as well as keeping hold of the high ground in commercial perceptions. But by the mid 1990s, the digital buzz began in earnest and agencies were starting to book completely digital studios (which sounded awful to me at the time). I effectively stopped being a full-time professional musician in 1997 for family reasons. I kept singing and playing on recordings for friends, fun, and the occasional money – but very infrequently. I have been fortunate to experience as a performer, and very occasional producer, the improvement in digital recording technologies, along with the strange transformations in studio communication that have happened once a screen becomes the focus for the people in the control room – production staff became more and more remote from the performer. Fast forward to 2006. Upon our return from two years in Canada, my wife and I had undertaken to record music. She bought a Tascam US-122 for $369, a cheap Alto desk for about $300, and some Shure 58s which were on special at the time. The US-122 came with a free copy of Cubase Lite. As an academic, I had been working on some large technical projects to make photographs, video, and sound available for people to use freely under Creative Commons Licenses (www.acro.edu.au). Having a theoretical interest in new media made me slightly less suspicious of the new ‘recording studio’ in 194

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our house than I might otherwise have been. To my surprise, the cheap gear all worked very well. As an experiment, I immediately undertook to record an album of material as cheaply as possible. The Alto desk proved to be too noisy. It had to go. I resurrected an old Tascam 36channel recording desk and plugged it in to the system. It still mostly worked. No cost except lifting. I note that although we paid $AU21,000 for the desk when we first bought it, today it could be sold for no more than $AU1,200. A basic commercial version of Cubase came next: AU$360. Plugins were all either freeware downloads or built in to the program. Next came some cheap very good Fostex monitors: $450. Total outlay at this point: $1650. The last studio I owned cost upwards of $100K. The new digital ‘bargain basement’ studio already sounded much better. I put my old band back together. My wife, Naomi, learned to engineer very quickly. We began recording drums with headphones to two ‘tracks’ of the computer – two tracks of simultaneous A/D conversion being the maximum capacity of the US-122. The sound of the US122 reminded me of working with two-track tape, right down to the lo-fi vibe of the sound, even though the sound quality of the digital signal was much higher than ¼” tape ever was. The rumpus takes on a more practical sonic and aesthetic shape with, first, foam mattresses then Sonex foam along with a decent desk for the computer. The digital recording process was strange to me, especially in the context of the changed work patterns of my colleagues. Most of the working musicians we used on the recordings work in multiple acts and had ‘day jobs’ because of diminished work opportunities in live performance. Due to the associated complex time constraints, it was therefore difficult and usually impractical to get people in to record more than one at a time, and so rehearsal was out of the question. We recorded ‘demos’ to a click and

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the songs were built around those ‘demo’ tracks. What came next depended on who was around. One guitarist was touring and recording for multiple projects. The drummer was working the night shift at Woolworths. The bass player worked 5 days at a university multimedia lab, worked in construction on weekends, and was playing in three different acts. Another guitarist was doing hard labour, lived fifty miles away on Bribie Island, and could only come down for weekends once a month. My wife and I were academics and had the most flexibility in time. My tracks (Reunion) took shape most quickly because most of the songs had been around for years and the band all knew them. The ‘demo’ stage recordings never went away; we just kept working with the same basic tracks, improving musicianship and sound quality with each new pass. Each track was iteratively refined, re-recording the drums the most times because the sound is so difficult to perfect recording live to two tracks. Every time we re-recorded the drums, the bass had to be re-recorded to accommodate slight changes in feel. My computer tells me there were some 8,000 takes for the twelve tracks on the Reunion album and a similar number for the twelve tracks on Naomi’s album, Red Dirt Road. Very quickly, the lap top chip started choking on our ambitions; two Gig of RAM and one processor were not enough for what we want to do. We got a PowerMac and paid about $AU5,000 for it. This was followed by more experiments in integrating the analogue outboard gear. It becomes far more trouble than it’s worth and so we got further into the box, mixing as we went. I noticed a number of peculiar things about the digital process: first, only one person could be in control of the box. No social, handson mixing processes – rather, complete automation operated by keyboard and mouse. Everyone was taking their cues visually from the big screen when they recorded, dropping in ‘after that lump there’ or some such. I have to face the screen to engineer. 196

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It makes communication difficult and seems to promote inadequate judgement in assessing the quality of takes. Our self-imposed release deadline was approaching. The drummer quit. Thankfully another drummer agreed to finish drums for my wife’s album (Red Dirt Road). I was annoyed at the limitations of recording drums with a two-track interface. We eventually invested in a Presonus Firepod (ten in ten out A-D-A firewire), a Rode 2000, two Rode condensers, a Focusrite Opto compressor preamp, and a Joe Meek channel strip at a total cost of $4000. I could record eight tracks of drums and have critical separation at the mix stage. Overheads were beautifully compressed and separated thanks to the new microphones and opto compressor strips. The vocal sound was lovely: the new equipment was a quantum leap for overall sound quality. Recording became faster because there were less takes to get an acceptable drum sound. The results were spectacularly better than the two-channel and SM58 rig. Reunion remained recorded on the US122 and 58s. Both albums were mixed and mastered inside the box without using any outboard equipment. The final mix was a relatively quick process because the architecture allowed us to mix as we go. CD pressing added a layer of something nice to the sound of both albums. A strange experience to do everything from tracking to mixing all at once and throughout the project – a synchronous and diachrononous project; to switch the machine on and have yesterday’s session instantly available, something only partly available on the most expensive desks I used as a younger man; to automate absolutely everything, including effects for each ‘track’; to not be familiar with the materiality of the digital ‘stuff’, or with how it responded to the qualities of music as a digitally interpreted analogue presentation. I was amazed at the final quality of both albums, even though it is easy to tell Red Dirt Road is technically a better recording than Reunion. There was a steep learning curve, 197

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even though the program was familiar (we ran an earlier version of Cubase alongside a Digidesign Session 8 and Fostex E16 in the nineties). It was not the interface or software that was strange, it was the nature of the process, the digital ‘stuff’ being dealt with, the fact that all the technology was in one box, that all elements of the recording process happen throughout the recording, that almost never was the whole group of musicians present at all times (the whole band was almost always all present during the days of 2” recording); that mixing was an isolated project even though it’s ongoing, with only me and one other person present for the final mix. At all times, the eye fought the ear. The software ‘controls’ were finicky and fussy. The automation struck me as spectacularly detailed. The asocial nature of the PC screen interface was ever-present throughout the process (perhaps too much media theory, but it appears to be an objective fact of digital recording). Recordings from Reunion and Red Dirt Road can be heard at Coffee Bean Records; MySpace; ReverbNation, Amie Street, and CD Baby. Hugh Brown: I have been a frustrated musician since I was a singing Christmas tree in Kindergarten. After my formal musical education ended in year ten, I continued to play drums and percussion in amateur theatre and in pub covers and originals bands as an extra-curricular activity during my years of electrical engineering study, through my public service career and through my return to university at twenty-six, when I taught myself to be a solo singer-guitarist. I tried several times to give up music and stick to a ‘real’ career but failed dismally each time. At my wife’s suggestion (she was sick of me being miserable) I joined Celtic folk band Bun’ Ber E in 1997 and made two CDs with them: one as a multi-instrumentalist in a commercial studio in 2001 and the other in a home studio in 2004.

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I had written all sorts of songs since my teens but had no joy keeping originals bands together to perform them, so I bought a Yahama MT120S four-track recorder to help with composition and preservation of the songs, playing everything myself. No effects, though; I had no idea about them except that the sound guys seemed to use them to make stuff sound good. I discovered MIDI via Logic 2.0 on my PC in the mid 1990s and used it to sequence drums out of the Alesis D4 module I sometimes used in live settings. Eventually I figured out how to use the PC’s onboard sound card for (awful!) brass, strings and bass. In 2003, towards the end of a quite successful few years as editor of an online politics and current affairs journal and after some success selling Bun’ Ber E’s first recordings online, I saw an opportunity in the Internet to make a go of this home studio thing by myself. I put Logic Platinum on a PC using an EMI 6/2 interface, built a plywood box in my garage and began to teach myself about digital sound recording with reference to a textbook (Huber and Runstein 2001) and Google. I used this setup to make a number of recordings, including Bun’ Ber E’s second CD, which are not specifically referred to in this paper, though they included experiments with some of the tracks used on the album referred to here. In 2005 I bought a Digi002 with Pro Tools LE 6.7 and an Acer laptop (total cost ~Aus$4300), which were used to record and mix the eleven tracks on The Genre Benders’ first CD, I am leaving! I am leaving!, to which this paper refers. The change from Logic to Pro Tools was an experience in itself, and the different MIDI interfaces alone caused considerable anguish at first. I started out with one Sure SM57 and one AKG C1000S, borrowed a friend’s matched pair of Mogami MXL 603S and eventually bought a Rode NT1-A, a Sure Beta52 and a couple more SM57s. I added a Roland XV5050 sound module, which brought my total fixed costs to about Aus$7000 (not including the Mogamis).

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My original intention was to perform, record, mix and master everything myself, but I am acutely aware of my own limitations and invited some friends to play bass on two tracks, lead guitar on three tracks, keyboards on two tracks, cello and violin on one track and sax on one track. To record myself playing drums I had another friend – a graduate of the School of Audio Engineering at Byron Bay – help me. When I began the project, two of the songs that ended up on it had not been written and it was interesting to apply the new processes I had used in digital editing to the songwriting process, pulling chunks around and transposing them at the click of a mouse. Most of the recordings began as guitar and vocal tracks played to a click, and the arrangements built part-by-part from there, usually through many iterations and reiterations. Some began as drum, keyboard and bass parts sequenced to me playing and singing along without recording the guitar and vocals – the advantage being that it’s then easier to find the right key before recording guitars and vocals. Parts came in and were removed; parts were brought forward and then moved back; parts changed instrument, changed key and changed sound – this was all a wonderful journey of discovery but took about two years. Eventually I vowed to limit the arrangements to what a five-piece band would be capable of playing live (and broke my vow). The approach was horribly piecemeal – I had no idea what I was doing, though I knew what I wanted, and no concept of efficient use of the equipment except that I knew I had to do the drums all at once to avoid annoying the neighbours and the lead guitars all at once because of the guitarist’s schedule. The rest just grew as interest took me – some tracks were ‘finished’ before others were started and often had to be redone to suit some other sounds I had discovered while working on other songs. The recording process was slow and frustrating. There was no time, knowledge nor understanding applied to improving the acoustic sound with foam or reflection surfaces. 200

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Rooms were used as-is, with only minor concessions to sound source and microphone location. The focus tended to be on performance quality with a few experiments in microphone placement – guided by textbooks but with little appreciation for any improvement that might have resulted from each refinement. I spent a whole day wondering why I could see the waveforms of the lovely stereo guitar part I had recorded with the matched Mogamis and could hear each side on its own but could not hear them in stereo – I resolved this by deleting it and starting again the next day. Playback equipment and/or my hearing were of such low standard that subtle differences in sonic texture were neither apparent nor important. Musicianship insecurity meant a frustrating quest for self-perceived technical perfection with little regard or understanding for aural qualities. The idea was just to get the performances in the box as best could be managed, then tweak them with Pro Tools (even though I had little idea what the effects did, either). The lack of third-party input meant a tendency towards negativity; if a take wasn’t clearly ‘good enough’ it was re-done. All too often good takes were thrown out and replaced with adequate ones as fatigue set in. Live drums were recorded in my living room with help from the engineer in one weekend – a process that so annoyed the neighbours that no more live drums were recorded and three tracks feature drums programmed into Reason with samples from the earlier live drum sounds (this was also partly the result of looming deadlines). The three lead guitar parts were recorded late in the process at a nearby school in a single session and it was a blessed relief to be able to concentrate on recording and let someone else perform – three takes each, done! The presence of several other people, in addition to the guitarist and me, made this a much more enjoyable experience.

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As time dragged on I began to realise that I simply was not capable of some of the things I wanted – at least, not to my own satisfaction – so I began to ask two friends who knew more about sound engineering than I do for help. I was basically driven to this because I hate the sound of my voice and was experiencing a great deal of frustration recording vocals. Had I known about pre-roll and playlists, this would have been much easier but it was not until I saw a sound guy friend swapping between playlists that I found out what they were. Similarly, it was not until he used pre-roll to drop me in on a new take that I asked him what he’d done. Apart from that, it was liberating to have someone else tell me that ‘that take was OK, let’s do the next bit’ when, left to my own devices, I would have deleted it and started again on my quest for poorly-defined perfection. Mixing took place initially via headphones until I realised that wasn’t getting me what I wanted. Despite my concern about the neighbours, I hooked up several old pairs of hi-fi speakers that I had collected from family and friends over the years, powered by an Akai stereo amp. Mixing in my garage only during the day was frustrating – especially on the days the neighbours had their lawns mowed – and I once again enlisted the help of my more knowledgeable friends when I realised that I was being horribly inconsistent depending on what aspect of the song was uppermost in my mind that day. I had a tendency to emphasise whatever part I had been re-writing in my head the night before, and another tendency to downplay the vocals – not sure whether because I hate my voice or because I knew the words so they seemed louder to me than they did to other people. I had never encountered the concept of using a reference track for mixing. After consulting more textbooks on the subject and checking my personal reality meter, I had the album mastered in a commercial studio, which was just as well as several sonic disasters, such as a 75hz spike in the kick on one track, were exposed in that process. It

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became very apparent to me that I cannot hear the subtle differences in sound in my home studio – perhaps because of the background noise or poor-quality equipment, perhaps because of cloth ears. Either way, I resolved not to take on this burden again but to use professionals in future. The Genre Benders’ album was intended to be the first commercial release by this band and thus the start of an ‘independent’ career. This project is part of a PhD study into the independent music business and the CD is meant to represent the best commercial product that could be produced under the circumstances. To my disappointment, it does not sound the way I imagined as I was unable to capture the sounds I wanted. In a few places, the achieved sound is better. The album can be heard in its entirety at www.genrebenders.com.

Observations Digital technologies have allowed unprecedented control over recorded sound for very little investment in historically comparative terms. Research indicates that betterproduced sound is regarded by listeners as more valuable (Francisco 2005). But while much is made of the potential for cheaper and more accessible technologies to advance the careers of independent artists, mere access to the technology does not automatically equate to commercially valuable or viable recordings. The following reflections on the home-production experiences described above point to some virtues of, and problems raised by, new digital technologies. We argue that these observed aspects of home production imply economic, social, and technological conditions that preference choices involving the use of on-board sounds and define home studio production as a new genre of recorded music.

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In producing our albums we both noted that, although new recording technologies are far cheaper to purchase than has historically been the case, and although they are capable of producing ‘broadcast-quality’ recordings, home digital recording technologies require a significant investment in learning. This mirrors Théberge’s (1997) finding that successful production and marketing of technologically advanced instruments requires an investment from manufacturers in training musicians in the instrument’s application. Analogue systems require an understanding of microphone placement, gain structure, basic signal processing and so on, but an all-digital studio requires all of this plus an understanding of the mathematics of sampling, the pros and cons of different sampling rates and depths, the subtleties of different application interoperability, the various ‘cans and cannots’ of combining analogue and digital worlds, the changing social dynamics of the studio, and the changing nature of musical creativity. There are also the nicer points of digital equipment, like pre- and post-roll, playlists, and the blessed ‘undo’ function, which engineers of the past would have often given something sacred for, especially after recording over that perfect vocal take with a bad lead guitar track. For a novice home studio producer, this represents a very steep and costly learning curve. Every hour spent learning about the subtleties of microphone placement, the advantages of sound-damping foam, or the optimal application of digital effects processors comes at the cost of an hour spent rehearsing, composing, or promoting music. The temptation to program drums with free-and-easy but clichéd samples, use virtual instruments and/or loops or comps rather than complete performances is an ever-present compromise. However, these choices can limit the variety and subtlety of the production, and can easily tend towards an homogenous ‘home studio’ sound.

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The increased complexity and availability of software, which requires increasing hardware power, also raises the issue of ‘upgrade fatigue’. A decision must be made as to what equipment – hardware and software – is adequate to the needs of each recording project and, once a project has been completed, whether that equipment remains adequate for the next project. Certainly, Hugh felt that his laptop/Digi002 setup was adequate for his home studio needs for the foreseeable future. Having made an album at home, he is happy to use the home studio for composition, arrangement and song development then record the version for release at a professional studio. However, the continual evolution of home-studio software, combined with the obsolescence of computers’ operating systems, makes upgrading inevitable. Théberge (1997) notes that this also occurred with regard to the evolution of sound patches and developing keyboard technologies, which led to a clear distinction between productions using the latest upgrades and those that did not. Finally, a home studio requires more than an A-D-A interface and a computer. Unless the intended music can be completely generated using virtual instruments and/or samples, making a satisfactory recording also requires consideration of the recording space, microphones and quality monitors. Phil’s recordings took a ‘quantum leap’ with the purchase of a better quality interface and microphones. Hugh’s could almost certainly have been improved had they been recorded in better rooms with damping surfaces. Even Hugh’s compromise to use programmed drums with recorded sounds added a kind of homogeneity to the sound, characteristic of many home studio productions. Acquiring technology means more than acquiring the hardware and software. Thus, novice producers experience a significant economic advantage in producing recordings using ‘all in the box’ production. This is, as Phil noticed, often a limitation of the entry205

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level technology quality, and has been has been used as a point of sub-cultural identification by artists such as Jack White (Jenkins 2003) and Nirvana (Gaar 2006), even in commercial studios.

New frontiers of collaboration

Historically, music has been the result of collaboration between performers in a fixed space and time but the advent of overdubbing (Williams 2007) and the decline of live performance and session work (ABS 1997; ABS 2009; Johnson and Homan 2003) has meant that simultaneous collaboration is a much rarer occurrence in contemporary studio settings. New technologies allow production by people who may never meet face-to-face, much less perform at the same time. Further, the notion of a single artistas-producer in a home studio removes the need for musical collaborators – at least in theory and mythology (Hajimichael 2006). However, this asynchronicity of social relations raises a number of issues for the novice digital producer. Asocial performance and asocial mixing are isolate processes. They require that a person be removed from other people for the purposes of that activity. For the solo artist-asproducer, this has the potential to inhibit the kind of collaborative creativity discussed by Toft (2005) in which songwriting, arrangement, and post-production were all shaped by the collaborators’ long-term engagement and exposure to similar influences. A recording studio is not just a place where recordings are made. It is also a workplace, a creative space, and a social space where musical and non-musical visitors can ‘come to the studio for networking opportunities, to talk music, football and politics, and to listen to and comment on albums in progress’ (Bates 2006, p. 3). A lack of synchronous collaborations, in turn, requires that the solo performer-producer makes all the decisions and produces all of the creative input – as well as maintaining their own positive attitude to the work at hand. Hugh worked for long periods of time alone in his garage and 206

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noticed a particularly acute lack of human interaction which manifested in high levels of insecurity around feedback about his efforts. Questions like ‘does the extra guitar part I just spent a day on actually add anything?’ and ‘that vocal take was in tune but it’s lacking something … what does it need?’ are matters that can be easily resolved in conversation with another, or in a formal producer-artist relationship, but they can exact a serious toll on a lone artist in terms of confusion and uncertainty. The missing social support can perhaps be in the online communities observed by Théberge with respect to the communities of musicians adopting new instrument technologies, which addressed “issues of ‘community’, access to information and participation in the process of innovation” (1997:159). There are limits to online community’s effectiveness, however. As Phil observes, an in-the-box mix allows only one hand on the mouse, no matter how many ears are in the room. This precludes collaborative experimentation in mixing, and focuses control and decision-making onto a single person who is ‘in charge of the box’. On the positive side, asynchronous production also allows for more flexibility in the recording process. Whereas the tradition has been to record an ensemble multi-track as a ‘bed’ and then overdub individual parts, totally asynchronous production allows this process to be reversed. We both developed a methodology in which the recording began as acoustic guitar and vocal tracks with the final version being the result of overdubs done in whatever order the performers were available. This has the effect of changing studio activity from focusing on the process of recording the ‘perfect take’ by an ensemble to focusing on the development of the song; for the artist/producer the digital recording technologies represent the range of ‘modes of compositional engagement’ (Brown, 2001) as much as they do tools for making a recording. Much of our home studio time was expended on refining melodies and arranging parts –

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activities that were previously considered ‘pre-production’ – in the knowledge that these parts will be faithfully and efficiently recorded by machines and/or people once the composition and arrangement settled to a satisfactory form. Digital ‘sessions’, MIDI files, samples, and soundbanks can be uploaded, downloaded and installed around the globe very quickly using new media technologies, expanding the scope for collaboration into “the network studio” (Théberge, 2004). However, these potential forms of collaboration also preference musical forms that require less recording of audio material and thus provide an advantage to music in which real-time co-located interactions are less important. In our experience, digital home studio technologies seem to favour music composed with virtual instruments, samples, and loops that can be used to make adjustments to key, tempo, structure, or instrumentation in a matter of minutes without the need for input from multiple people. Such elements can be distributed and deployed by collaborators in other parts of the world much more readily than can the ‘live takes’ that are characteristic of recorded analogue instruments and voices. Further, where such adjustments can be made quickly and efficiently, the scope for responding to fan feedback is greatly enhanced. Multiple versions, edits and remixes can be produced far more easily using virtual instrumentation than where the music has been recorded from analogue sources. This provides certain music with another significant social advantage – the development of relationships with fans. This factor is emerging as an increasingly important aspect of independent music business (Burke 2006; Kelly 2008) and one that new technologies play a vital role in facilitating. This becomes even more striking when it facilitates fans remixing or editing a project (Nine Inch Nails 2009).

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We observed some limitations with one-song-at-a-time production, mostly based on the need to make choices where many options exist. For the novice home studio producer, it is far easier to take the ‘default’ setting of a Pro Tools Plug-in and make a track using that than to try to improve the sound in unknown ways to make it ‘perfect’. Alternatively, it is highly probable that extensive experimentation based on ignorance will produce highly unconventional – but very distinctive – sounds. Either way, the results will have a certain sonic consistency as a result of the choices made. Because of the many changes noted thus far, the home studio producer faces the problem of ‘the ongoing demo’. The song becomes an ever-evolving work, starting from a recording of basic ideas. This is a down-side of the shift in the studio’s focus from the recording process to the song development process. The development of a song within a band imposes limitations on the number of parts that can be reproduced, though producers have been subverting those limitations in the recording process for decades. Further to this is the dilemma of which plug-ins and what effects to use on each track? In professional analogue studios of earlier eras, such decisions were almost always limited by available hardware. These decisions are of course easier for producers with the experience required to make sense of plug-ins. But the abundant possibilities available in today’s digital software can cause paralysis and take up a lot of the novice’s time. In the absence of a commercial deadline and budget, there remains the temptation to try out another part, substitute sounds, tweak EQ, and so on to an unprecedented level of detail and depth at the track level. Every hour that a band using analogue performance equipment spends on refining songs one-part-at-a-time in the studio rather than through the tradition of developing songs in the rehearsal room and refining them in front of a crowd is an hour they cannot spend rehearsing, marketing, touring, or composing. Especially where performances must be made by a group rather than an 209

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individual, these factors hand an advantage to home studio productions in which changes to key, tempo, and instrumentation can be made with a few clicks of a mouse rather than re-recording an entire take. The home studio workspace creates a situation in which a self-recording artist must not only simultaneously operate two sets of tools – the recording equipment and the instrument – but must also very rapidly switch between three mindsets: that of engineer, producer, and performer. This mental separation reflects Williams’ (2007) Control Room/Performance Space divide and manifests, where the control room and the performance space are the same room, as the laptop ‘bubble’ noted by Prior (2006). We argue that this applies to any situation in which the practitioner engages in an activity with both real and virtual or artificial aspects – including the necessary isolation of a recording studio from the outside world (Williams 2007). However, we observed a difference in the effect of the ‘bubble’ during engineering and mixing: the bubble acts as a barrier to a performer (in the real space) putting music into the digital recording device (the virtual space) but simultaneously acts as a shield against the rest of the world when the user is operating inside the mental bubble while engineering in virtual space. One key to this lies in the physical interface between analogue and digital technologies: we both found that pushing the big red record button to roll analogue tape and then playing guitar was much easier than activating a digital recording device with a mouse and then trying to play. Another factor is the result of the home studio performer trying simultaneously to perform and to critique his performance from the producer’s perspective. Williams constructed an image in which ‘[t]he solitary musician, alone on the performance space floor, nervously waiting for the tape to roll, imagines the critical comments being made in the control room’ (2007, p. 10). This is eerily accurate in our experience, as the temptation is always present during performance to ‘save time’ by 210

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monitoring the performance for reasons to start the take over, rather than getting to the end and asking the engineer how it went. We both observed that performing was much easier, and the imaginary critique less manifest, when a third party operated the recording equipment or where both the performance and the editing process took place in a virtual environment.

Conclusions The up-front cost of Hugh’s setup was about AU$8,500, Phil’s just under AU$7,000. There is no dispute that Phil’s albums sound better than Hugh’s, despite costing less, nor that Phil’s second recording sounds better than his first following extra equipment outlays. Either of these budgets would have bought a useful chunk of time at a commercial studio (between one to two weeks in Australian commercial studios) but not nearly as much time as making the albums took. As Gelfand (2005) points out, spending an Indie act’s start-up funds on a home studio looks like an unviable investment if it is regarded as being spent on only one product. But amortising the equipment cost on many recording over several years, and as an input into songwriting and development (especially when using fan-sourced co-creation processes (Burke 2006)), looks a much more attractive option than using commercial studios for recording a demo or possibly a first album. However, this presupposes that the act or someone in the band has the knowledge and interest to use the equipment in this way and that they have the knowledge to produce recordings that sound ‘good enough’ to cut it in a commercial environment. The social, technical, and economic aspects discussed above give home studio producers an advantage when much of the performance is virtual, looped, and/or sampled over those that are performed on analogue-only instruments. This advantage accrues to these musical forms because they feature production in which editing a 211

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performer’s input is more precise; problems arising from a human/instrument interface (such as string buzz or unintentional background noise) are negligible; the production requires less capital outlay as a smaller studio space without analogue instruments is viable; the performer and engineer/producer occupy the same space in relation to the interface’s ‘bubble’, and opportunities for collaboration are greatly enhanced. This amounts to significant savings of time and money for home studio operators working in genres in which the instruments and control space are both virtual. These same advantages preference a pattern of choices and actions that give these productions an identifiable sonic consistency. Given novice home studio producers’ access to technology (but not necessarily knowledge and aural development), their choices lead to common patterns of actions which might be described as the ‘genre’ of home studio recording. The prevalence of this technology has led to the development of new institutions that aim to facilitate home studio production and others that assist musicians to take advantage of recordings that would once have been regarded as worthless by the dominant industry institutions. As predicted by Graham (2001), new technologies have significantly disrupted the dominant music-industry discourse and created their own mythology and metaphors. This combination of sonic consistency, patterned behaviour, and discursive disruption affords home studio its status as a new genre. The hype surrounding the digital revolution and home recording technologies promises to enable single-person production from songwriting to distribution for ‘anyone’ (Kusek and Leonhard 2005, p. 143). While there are examples of artists who have successfully done this (see Carter 2005) they tend to be either vastly experienced artists or people producing music in which many of the sounds have already been honed for professional contexts, thereby simplifying the task of record production immensely. The new genres 212

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of home studio production may be a valuable stepping stone in the career path of a novice act, but it is very unlikely that people inexperienced in recording could produce a viable product without significant experience or expert help. They are more likely to progress through their novice recordings to either develop as users of the technology and produce better recordings, or develop as an act to the point that hiring commercial recording facilities becomes a viable option.

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References ABS. 1997. Cultural Trends in Australia: A Statistical Overview. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Report No: 4172.0. ABS. 2009. Cultural Trends in Australia: A Statistical Overview. Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics. Report No: 4172.0 Bates, Elliot. 2006. “Studios, arrangement, and the distributed production system of contemporary Turkish music” Proceedings of the Art of Record Production Conference. Edinburgh. 8-10 September 2006. Brown, Andrew. 2001. “Modes of Compositional Engagement” Mikropolyphony, 6 http://farben.latrobe.edu.au/mikropol/volume6/brown_a/brown_a.html. Burke, Adam. 2006. “Barenaked Ladies Let Fans Do All the Work” NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6488480 (accessed 15/11/2006) Businessweek. 2006. “Your Very Own Hit Factory” Businessweek http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_09/b3973406.htm (accessed 27/02/2006) Butterfield, Eric. 2004. “Software simplifies becoming a rock star” PC World http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/9816/software_simplifies_becoming_r ock_star (accessed 22/07/2009) Carter, David. 2005. “Well Past Time: Notes on a Musicology of Audio Recording Production”. Proceedings of the Art of Record Production Conference. London. 17-18 September 2005. Dean, Michael W. and Chris Caulder. 2007. Digital Music - DIY NOW! http://www.diynow.org (accessed 01/11/2007) Francisco, Martha de. 2005. “Record Production and Advanced Recording Technology: A musical challenge” Proceedings of the Art of Record Production Conference. London. 17-18 September 2005 Gaar, Gillian C 2006. In Utero New York: Continuum Gelfand, Michael 2005. Strategies for Success: Self-Promotion Secrets for Musicians New York: Schirmer Trade Books Graham, Phil. 2001. ‘Contradictions and institutional convergences: Genre as method’ Journal of Futures Studies, 5: 1-30 Hajimichael, Mike. 2006. “The Desk, the Glass and the Mic: objects and players – ways of communication in different recording sessions” Proceedings of the Art of Record Production Conference. Edinburgh. 8-10 September 2006 Huber, David Miles and Robert E Runstein 2001. Modern Recording Techniques, 5th ed. Woburn, MA: Focal Press 214

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Jenkins, Mark. 2003. “White Lies.” Slate http://www.slate.com/id/2081808/ (accessed 14/09/09) Johnson, Bruce and Shane Homan. 2003. Vanishing Acts: An inquiry into the state of live popular music opportunities in New South Wales Sydney: Australia Council and the NSW Ministry for the Arts Kelly, Kevin. 2008. “1,000 True Fans” http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php (accessed 30/03/2008) Kusek, David and Gerd Leonhard. 2005. The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution Boston: Berklee Press KVR Audio. 2009. “Audio Plug-in News” http://www.kvraudio.com (accessed 7/11/2009,) Lemke, Jay. 1995. Textual Politics London: Taylor and Francis Miller, Nick. 2006. “Tuneful anarchist liberates music” Sydney Morning Herald http://www.smh.com.au/news/digital-music/tuneful-anarchist-liberatesmusic/2006/06/12/1149964442210.html (accessed 13/06/2006) Nardi, Carlo A. 2005. Zen in the art of sound engineering Proceedings of the Art of Record Production. London. 17-18 September 2005 Nine Inch Nails. 2009. “Remix - remix.nin.com” http://remix.nin.com (accessed 21/12/2009) Notez, Trill. 2008. How to make the bedroom artist sound pro http://www.HotBeatsandHooks.com (accessed 31/10/2008) Pacey, Arnold. 1999. Meaning in Technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Prior, Nick. 2006. “Ok Computer: Mobility, Software and the Laptop Musician” Proceedings of the Art of Record Production Conference. Edinburgh. 17-18 September 2006 Pro Tools Forum. 2009. “Pro Tools Forum” http://www.protoolsforum.com/ (accessed 7/11/2009) Schwartz, Dayle D. 2005. I Don't Need a Record Deal! New York: Billboard Books. Studio Recording Engineer. 2009. “Forum.” http://www.studiorecordingengineer.com/forums.html (accessed 7/11/2009) Théberge, Paul (1997) Any sound you can imagine: Making music/consuming technology. Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press Théberge, Paul (2004) “The Network Studio: Historical and Technological Paths to a New Ideal in Music Making” Social Studies of Science 34(5):759-781

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Thompson, Clive. 2007. “Sex, Drugs and Updating your Blog” New York Times Magazine, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/magazine/13audiencet.html?pagewanted=all (accessed 13/05/2007) Toft, Robert. 2005. “Rhetorical Criticism and the Creative Process: Invention and Arrangement in The Guess Who’s ‘Laughing’” Proceedings of the Art of Record Production Conference. London. 8-10 September 2005 Williams, Alan. 2007. ‘Divide and Conquer: Power, Role Formation, and Conflict in Recording Studio Architecture’ Journal of the Art of Record Production, 1 (i)

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CHAPTER 6: MUSOWIKI.NET: NOTES ON THE CREATION OF AN ONLINE COMMUNITY MUSIC FACILITY

(2010) International Journal of Community Music 3(2)

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MUSOWIKI.NET: NOTES ON THE CREATION OF AN ONLINE COMMUNITY MUSIC FACILITY.

Sing with me, sing for the years Sing for the laughter, sing for the tears Sing with me, just for today Maybe tomorrow the good Lord will take you away. - Steve Tyler “Dream On” from Aerosmith

Abstract This article describes the theoretical and practical justification for creating an online music community at www.musowiki.net. Through a discussion of the technological, industrial and social aspects of an online environment, it provides a grounding body of theory and describes the process of designing the project. Consideration of some of the project’s early outcomes reveals four principles for community building and offers examples of how they can be applied. In conclusion, the article suggests that community music bodies and practitioners can enhance their activities both by participating in the Musowiki community and by adopting the four principles of community development.

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What is all this about, then? The development of the Internet has led to claims for and against the ‘democratization’ of media (Beer and Burrows 2005; Bodle 2004; Wilson 2008) in the online environment. Although debate continues about the precise impact of this development, there seems little doubt that the Internet has enabled grassroots participation and organization in arenas previously dominated by large corporations, for example journalism (Sambrook 2005) and software development (Lee et al. 2009; Raymond 2001). The communitydriven pursuit of what had been regarded as exclusively commercial activities has brought about (or been driven by) a movement for social change in response to perceived inadequacies in the standard of ‘commercial’ products and services. Musicmaking is another arena wherein the dominance of a few multi-national corporations has been challenged by the efforts of smaller entrants to the market (Ebare 2003). The mood for change follows claims of bland and homogenous music produced by the ‘Major Labels’ (Malik 2005) – the four large corporations that dominated global music until the turn of the century – followed by the widespread availability of new technologies that allowed musicians to produce, collaborate in and promote musical performances and recordings without Major Label support (Anderson and Ellis 2005). Although amateur collaboration and music production has always been possible, the new technologies reduce the costs of doing so to the point where amateur and semiprofessional musicians and acts, independent of the Major Labels, have been able to access an audience they had previously been denied, and thus, derive a living from their work, bypassing the global media conglomerates’ stranglehold on the music market (Brown 2009). However, the growth of this ‘Indie’ movement (Anon 2007) has been anarchic, since few amateur musicians have the resources to find and engage the services they need to 219

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grow a sustainable music business (assuming that they are interested in doing so) and there are myriad competing interests within the industry. Even where this chaos has been clearly identified, the response has been similarly anarchic, with small, incomplete directories1 attempting to make sense of a segment of an increasingly global market. Even the advent of institutions such as Merlin (http://www.merlinnetwork.org), the peak body representing the interests of independent music labels, has had minimal impact on the lives of the vast majority of music-makers (Garrahan 2008). Therefore, an institution is needed that can make sense of the many threads by structuring connections between music-community members. This institution should be based on a bottom-up, user-led movement; a resource that facilitates networking between likeminded organizations – including community music bodies – and harnessing the same technologies and principles that have changed the distribution of recorded music. This article explains the rationale and methods employed to build such an online music community or ‘organized network’ (Lovink and Rossiter 2005) – rather than a centralized representative body like Merlin – based around a global directory of music services at www.musowiki.net. It goes on to describe the early results of these community-building efforts and to examine possible future developments within and additions to this music community. Further, it argues for four guiding principles that can help any music community to enhance their development by participating in the broader community that this resource enables.

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How is this community music? Veblen (2008) lists five issues that are useful for defining ‘community music’: 1. the kinds of music and music making; 2. the intentions of the leaders or participants in a programme; 3. the characteristics of the participants; 4. the interactions among teaching–learning aims, knowledge and strategies; and 5. interplays between informal and formal social–educational–cultural contexts. These issues, Veblen argues, are necessarily inclusive and diverse; allowing for a wide range of genres, participants, approaches and activities, united by their focus on the process of music making. Veblen accepts that ‘most people in the field of CM will inevitably grapple with many challenging details surrounding the meaning of ‘community’, whether these details concern community as geographically situated, culturally based, artistically concerned, recreated, virtual, imagined or otherwise’ (Veblen 2008: 8). This article extends this definition even further by reversing the term ‘Community Music’ and embracing the gamut of music, intentions, participation, interaction and formality that arise in the many ‘Music Communities’ that have formed online. Phil Agre (2000) notes that online communities form around pre-existing human relations. Technology, he argues, can only enhance and facilitate these relationships; it cannot create them:

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Relationships that may have been episodic, their participants interacting only when jointly present or when talking on the phone, or through the arm’s length of paper records that might not be up to date, are now to be continuous, always-on, 24/7. We should not conceive the change as discontinuous, much less as a rewriting of an underlying institutional logic. Nonetheless, the development of a portfolio of always-on relationships – to people organizations, and things – does call us to revisit traditional concepts of the person. No longer, for example, are relationships tied to particular places. (Agre 2000: 71) This is especially true among music communities. New media technologies have allowed musicians to form relationships across geographic boundaries that were previously impervious. Whereas for most of the twentieth century music-making was limited to areas within earshot,2 twenty-first century musicians can simultaneously perform in virtual spaces while physically residing on different continents.3 They can also do so asynchronously; recording parts at one place and time to be uploaded, downloaded and assimilated by other musicians in another place and time into other works (Brown and Graham 2007; Nicolo 2007 and, for example, http://www.thetrackshack.com and http://ww.digimix.com). Further, musicians’ sense of community is extended to global communities of interest and communities of practice (Anderson and Ellis 2005) revolving around their personal talents, preferences, interests and/or business needs.4 This necessarily includes relationships not just with other musicians, but also with other participants in the music industry: composers, lyricists, teachers, bookings agents, producers, venues, lawyers, etc.,5 and also with fans (Baker 2003, Baym 2008). These relationships occur at many levels: beginner, amateur, semi-professional and professional, and the communities are often most dynamic in places where people of various levels interact. 222

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This expansion of connections requires rethinking the notion of ‘community’ as it applies to music and musicians and Musowiki seeks to facilitate and enhance this last set of relationships. Phil Agre (2000) explains how a facility such as Musowiki can help: Central to such a world are institutions and technologies that might be called switchboards: the practical means by which people establish, maintain, and evolve relationships. These might be market relationships of whatever structure, longer-term contractual relationships, professional ties, family relations, shared memberships in associations, hierarchical or lateral relationships in an organization, among others. (Agre 2000: 71) These ‘switchboard’ institutions sit at the centre of an ‘organized network’ facilitating the formation of loose relationships within and between pre-existing communities. ‘What characterises networks is a shared sense of potentiality that does not have to be realised,’ Lovink and Rossiter argue, ‘At best they are seen as sources of inspiration amongst peers’ (Lovink and Rossiter 2005). This simultaneous inspiration, co-operation and competition generates significant value for participants – and some of this value carries financial consequences. Capturing this financial value is essential for communities to be sustainable where some form of business management – corporate, government or not-for-profit – is necessary. Hearn and Pace (2006) refer to this emerging view of business as a ‘value ecology’ and argue that capturing this value and making an institution sustainable is best done by ‘e-form’ business (Moore 1998). The distinguishing feature of e-form business is its focus on the value that is generated by relationships with external agents and partners, rather than on the need to generate value from within. Thus, an e-form business sustains itself by providing services that facilitate the enterprise of a network of independent associates,

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rather than by seeking to conglomerate and manage those enterprises in a single structure. Bughin et al. (2008) refer to productivity via such relationships as ‘distributed cocreation’ and hold up Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org) as a shining example of a highly valuable enterprise created by a network of volunteers: The example of Wikipedia suggests that companies can take even greater advantage of specialization by ceding more control over decisions about the content of products to networks of participants (suppliers, customers, or both) who interact with one another … Companies have three ways to win by adopting distributed cocreation. First, they can capture value from the cocreated product or service itself … by merchandising good ideas gleaned from the network … Second, companies can capture value by providing a complementary product or service … Third, they can benefit indirectly from the cocreation process – for example, through an enhanced brand or strategic position. (Bughin et al. 2008)

So how do you build it? Most of the literature around online communities has arisen from the field of online education. Parr and Ward’s (2006) experience of creating an online community of teachers found that it is best to ‘build communities within safe, known and supportive environments’; to reinforce existing communities; and to create communities around a viable solution to a need perceived by community members. Waters (2008) notes that online communities involve social networks that can be quite hierarchical, which points to the importance of leadership. His Social Network Analysis of an online learning

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environment showed that activities that did not involve one or more ‘thought leaders’ within the community did not develop but that ‘leadership here was not a matter of simple domination of discussion but was exhibited in the careful facilitation of discourse’ (Waters 2008: 7). Lin et al. (2007) found that the use of wiki software enabled them to create a learning environment with significant peer support, which improved educational outcomes for all students in their project as well as making for better group outcomes. They also created an environment with a hierarchical team structure involving ‘project leaders’, ‘trainers’ and ‘programmers’ in a software development project. Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006) asked what motivated people to contribute to ‘user innovation’ initiatives when the innovators knew their efforts would be used to increase firms’ profits. They found that innovative users were likely to be ‘hobbyists’, meaning they were enthusiastic users of the products being tested or refined but had no financial stake in their production, and that these users were motivated by ‘reputation mechanisms’, meaning that they were given recognition either by the firm hosting the project or by peers. Firm-recognition mechanisms were found to be far more powerful than peer-recognition mechanisms, and the firm’s recognition was more likely to appeal to the users’ enthusiasm for the product and desire for recognition from its source than to the prospect of career advancement. Lin et al. (2007), however, found that the deliberately constructed ‘commendation region’ within their wiki did encourage users to engage with and critically reflect on their peers’ efforts. Finally, Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006) found that innovative users demonstrated ‘lead user’ characteristics, meaning that they tended to be early adopters and thus likely to detect the need to innovate earlier. Interestingly, there was little suggestion of direct personal gain:

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We find no significant relationship between being an innovative user and expecting reciprocity for participating or giving to the community. Neither do we find any significant relationship between innovative users and drawing on the community for business purposes, and we do not find any relation between the wish to advance career opportunities and being an innovative user. (Jeppesen and Frederiksen 2006: 56) The ‘peer production’ (Li and Lee 2007) approach of building institutions using the labour of many volunteers captures value according to ‘Wikinomics’ (Tapscott and Williams 2007). This is essentially an extrapolation of the ‘open source’ approach to developing software, most clearly enunciated by Eric Raymond (2001), to the development of other goods, both public and private, using labour and expertise volunteered by enthusiasts. However, even with many willing and capable participants, making a useful website or institution where there was previously only a need is not easy. As Phil Agre (2000) puts it: If it is possible to outsource every possible aspect of a firm then it is easy to start a firm. Anyone with ideas and connections can get moving quickly because they can focus on the particular knowledge that provides them with a competitive advantage. Building a global network of sites for the exercise of that knowledge – whether through personal contact or the distribution of a product – is still a major undertaking. (Agre 2000: 75) If Wikipedia is accepted as the best exemplar of this method, then the importance of recruiting ‘thought leaders’ of the kind described by Waters (2008) above, preferably ‘hobbyists’ who demonstrate the kind of ‘lead user’ characteristics outlined by Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006), is confirmed by Chi’s (2007) finding that the distribution of labour in Wikipedia is far from egalitarian: one per cent of Wikipedia’s more than 226

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8,372,585 editors (at the time of writing – SMSO 2008) are responsible for about half of the site’s edits and the editors who make most edits tend to be the same ones who contribute most of the content. This pattern is repeated across other ‘Web 2.0’ platforms (Wilson, 2008). The flip side of this is that a growing number of users contribute in a small way each (Chi 2007), amounting to a significant labour force. It would be rather undemocratic, not to mention unhelpful, to prevent or discourage them from doing so.

So what is stopping you? Bughin et al. (2008) predict several ‘hurdles’ confronting people who wish to start a cocreation project: 1. Attracting and motivating cocreators, 2. Structuring problems for participation, 3. Governance mechanisms to facilitate cocreation, 4. Maintaining quality. Leaping hurdles 1–3 makes leaping hurdle 4 easier. Wikipedia has been found to have an error rate comparable with that of Encyclopaedia Britannica (Giles 2005), and is much easier to correct when an error is detected or an update needed. As ‘Linus’s Law’ states with regard to software development, ‘given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow’ or, more formally, ‘given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix will be obvious to someone’ (Raymond 2001). Although this arrangement is fraught, it can nonetheless result in virtuous productivity if the necessary principles, as outlined by Benkler and Nissenbaum (2006) are evident in the project’s design and transparent to users.

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The questions for any cocreation project, then, are: how large a user base can be recruited; and managed at what cost; and how much of the necessary work will be shared among community members? The key to understanding the uneven distribution of labour that makes such communities work may lie in Giese’s (2004) discussion of James Carey’s (1989) two modes of communication as the ‘transmission’ of information and the ‘ritual’ of cultural bonding, as they relate to digital music. It may be that users bring a range of needs to Web 2.0 sites such as Wikipedia: some are content to simply find the information they require, others engage with the culture that has created the resource. Thus, the enthusiastic hobbyists who enjoy the ritual significance of social networking form the core of the community and provide vast bulk of the labour needed to ensure the best possible experience for casual visitors. Others may contribute a small amount that advances their personal interests and, coincidentally, helps build the community in which they reside on the periphery. The contributions of these many users reflect a ‘Long Tail’ (Anderson 2004) of labour: a small segment of the total user base does the vast bulk of the work and an enormous majority of the user base does very little work each. Nevertheless, when the work contributed by the many is added together, the benefit is significant. This Long Tail pattern repeats across many human relations, from recorded music sales to social networks to CEO salaries. The most important aspect of this, from the point of view of building communities, is that every one of these small efforts can be significant if the cost of managing them can be contained. The corollary of this is that every page created by an independent user is an addition to the total value of the site. Hence, the challenge for management is to contain the cost of integrating each component of project designed to be built using ‘granular’ modules (Benkler and Nissenbaum 2006). This cost

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is best contained when the community is self-organizing (Foell et al. 2007) and is the only one of its kind. Of course, all of the above simply reflects the wisdom of the centuries: communities flourish under strong leadership and on the back of a small, dedicated group of workers – one of whose main roles is to recruit new members and delegate small roles to them. As long as the effort is driven by the needs of the community, the labour will be freely given.

So, what is this Musowiki thing, anyway? The website built at www.musowki.net is intended to form the ‘switchboard’ (Agre 2000) for an open, all-encompassing online community of musicians and music-industry service providers: at the professional, government and community-sector level. It is powered by the same open-source software that powers Wikipedia (available at no cost from www.mediawiki.org) and this initial website constitutes only Musowiki’s directory of services, with a bulletin/discussion board (probably with software from http://www.phpbb.com/) and collection of resources (initially based on this research, but subsequently coming from other sources) planned for when activity around the directory becomes self-sustaining. The Mediawiki software was chosen for three main reasons: (1) having been released on a GNU licence,6 it can be used for the cost of the installer’s time; (2) it has evolved, via Wikipedia, to be eminently user-friendly for this kind of task; and (3) it is familiar to the kind of people who may become ‘thought leaders’ within the community – making for a ‘known and supportive’ environment for the community, as outlined by Parr and Ward (2006). The Musowiki concept has been enthusiastically supported by CDBaby.com founder Derek Sivers,7 whose company, Hostbaby, provides web hosting and support for

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Musowiki in return for a sponsorship announcement on every page. The only other fixed development cost, a corporate logo, has been met by a friend of the author – who is a part-time graphic designer, for AUS$100 plus 50 per cent of any income from sales of merchandise featuring the logo. A range of such merchandise is available on demand from http://www.cafepress.com/musowiki, which is linked from Musowiki’s ‘Support this Project’ page. The Mediawiki software was originally installed to the author’s blog server at http://www.huge.id.au/Wiki on 10 June 2007. The URLs www.musowiki.net and www.musowiki.org were purchased from Yahoo! on 14 June 2007 and initially redirected to the blog server from Yahoo! Hosting was transferred to Hostbaby.com on 8 January 2008, which allowed for more accurate site visitation analysis at no extra cost. The first draft of the top-level architecture, with ten main categories, was set up on 15 June 20078 with the intention of using the software’s ‘Categories’ feature to automate the organization of sub-categories into category pages. However, it soon became apparent that this was too clumsy and led to poor page design, so a manual categorization was begun on 1 March 2008, which greatly increased the amount of work necessary to produce each sub-category page but led to a far more usable page layout. The sub-categorization has been refined since installation in consultation with listed service providers, colleagues and site visitors. This iterative design process continues. The first service’s entry, CDBaby, was added on 16 June 2007 and, using this as an example, instructions and a template for adding a service were drafted on 1 September 2007 and 6 September 2007, respectively. At the time of writing, the database contains about 800 entries and is growing at a rate of about twenty entries a week based mainly on the author’s labour. Site visitation analysis shows a slow but steady increase in traffic,

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with visits coming from search engines, external links and direct hits in roughly equal proportions. The 30 days to 27 November 2008 averaged 14.5 human visitors per day.

OK, but what is it for? Musowiki is designed to meet the need (as discussed in Parr and Ward 2006) most commonly reflected in the content of posts to online music-industry fora9: ‘Where can I get help with …?’ Such requests come from a range of community members: bands or musicians needing management, advice or training; agents or managers looking for venues; songwriters seeking legal advice or representation; and nearly everyone wanting to screen new services that have spammed them. These needs are fairly fundamental to the human condition in the contemporary online environment. As such, Musowiki has been designed from a usability point of view (Nielsen 2000; Pearrow 2000) to answer the question posed prominently on the Main Page: ‘What do you need help with?’ The services listed in response to this question are grouped into eleven categories on the Main Page to fit common needs experienced by musicians. Each of these contains subcategories that reflect more precise needs. In keeping with recommended design principals, there are only two levels in this ‘Information Architecture’ (Rosenfield and Morville 1998), amounting to 103 separate categories in total. More may be added as the technological environment evolves. Despite the above observations that the Internet has reduced barriers to community participation for many, services or needs (for example, venues and broadcast media) geography and musical genre remain important filters for some. Each of the bottomlevel sub-categories is defined along three lines, which allows people browsing the directory to approach from three directions. Access to the sub-categories is repeated on the Main Page and refined on each category page according to each of these directions.

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The syntax for coding these categories is Service_Location_Genre, and either of the last two remains optional. A secondary and related need expressed by members of the community is for guidance as to the track record of the many services that have either approached the member or have been found by them. This need is usually expressed in a question such as: ‘Does anyone know anything about [service]? I am considering using them but would like to know what experiences other people have had with them.’ To meet this need, the Mediawiki software associates a ‘discussion’ page with each entry, allowing members to describe their experiences and/or views of the service. Further, an ‘extension’ – a separate, optional piece of software designed to be added to the Mediawiki installation – has been developed that will allow visitors to give each service a ten-star rating.10 This extension would allow the ranking of the services in each category according to their rating score. However, at the time of writing, the extension has not been installed. The entry template11 is designed to provide the minimum information necessary for community members to decide whether or not a service meets their needs and, if it does, to immediately contact the service. Directory entries are not intended to substitute for the service’s website, they are intended to summarize it and facilitate discovery and connection. Each entry provides space for a service logo, which links to the service’s website (where one exists), followed by three questions: (1) Who or what are we? (2) What do we do for Musos? and (3) Where can Musos find us? This is intended to present information in the simplest and most direct way to meet the needs of the music community. The answers to these questions are to be provided by each service and this content is mainly copied from the service’s website with a notification of the entry being sent to the service by email. Subsequently (see discussion below), some service owners have elaborated greatly on this basic entry, while most have left it as is. 232

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What sets Musowiki apart? As a directory, Musowiki competes directly with a number of commercial directories.12 Some of these are compiled by an editorial team and sold to readers either as a hard copy or as access to an online database; others charge per listing and their content is given away free. However, Musowiki claims several advantages over them due to its open-source, distributed co-creation approach (Tapscott and Williams 2007):

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the barriers to entry for services wishing to promote their services are lower, since it is free to list and requires only a commitment of time;

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each entry gives the entered service a stake in its own presentation and incentive to promote Musowiki;

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expansion and maintenance are significantly cheaper, since services have incentive to create and update their own entry; and

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Musowiki taps into the ethos of the open-source/independent movement by being freely available and community-driven.

These advantages act primarily to keep Musowiki’s costs of development and operation down, though particularly the last one also generates a kind of value that can be harnessed to generate revenue to fund further development of the project. Hence, Musowiki’s ‘Support this Project’ page contains an appeal for donations and links to an online store from which merchandise such as t-shirts can be bought. It is hoped that people who believe in the ideals of the project will support it in the same way other movements for social change are supported. At the time of writing, no donations have been received and two t-shirts have been bought. Although the above advantages should act to keep development and maintenance costs down, this effect was not expected to materialize at first. The driver of this kind of value has to be a perception among potential community members that value already exists

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for them in the project, and thus, that their involvement will capture some of that value for themselves and simultaneously increase the value of the project. Hence, the project requires some initial input of labour (and/or capital) to ‘seed’ the initial value: the author’s labour to enter services. However, this is a long, slow process, and at the present rate, it will take more than 30 years to enter the listings currently contained in the Indie Venue Bible (http://www.indievenuebible.com/). For this reason, in early 2008, four wikinomic benchmarks were set to qualitatively gauge the probability that the project will prove sustainable: 1. That service owners or staff would edit their entries after entry into the database. 2. That volunteers would offer to help build the site. 3. That service owners or staff would spontaneously create the own entries in the database. 4. That service managers would offer to pay for ‘Featured Service’ placements. The first two benchmarks were met almost immediately. When a service is entered into Musowiki, an email is sent informing them of the listing, linking to it and inviting them to edit their entry and add any other services with which they may be associated. The response has been mixed: some reply with a thank you note; some immediately sign up and edit their entry; some sign up but do not edit their entry; and most do not respond at all. At the time of writing, 160 users have signed up for accounts to edit Musowiki out of more than 800 services listed. Doubtless, some of the non-response is due to the advice emails falling into spam traps but at least two of these users are volunteers who have no association with a listed service. These two offered to assist with the construction of the category pages. The first, Clark, is a US recording artist who found out about the project via the [Musicthoughts] email list and offered to add some

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category pages during his breaks from the recordings studio. The other, Ben, is a music fan and enthusiast whom the author met at a music festival. As recommended by Jeppesen and Frederiksen (2006), their efforts are acknowledged on Musowiki’s Acknowledgements page and it is hoped that such volunteers will become ‘thought leaders’ for the project. The third of these benchmarks was met on 3 September 2008, when the founder of Music Arsenal entered it into Musowiki. A few days later, in response to a thank you email, he inquired about buying a ‘featured service’ spot, meeting the fourth benchmark. Music Arsenal’s founder advised that he learned about Musowiki from a comment added to Andrew Dubber’s New Music Strategies blog (http://newmusicstrategies.com). Since then, other services have been spontaneously added by their management. Some have successfully followed the instructions and used the template, while others either did not know about the instructions or were unable to follow them. This led to an adjustment in the location of links to the instructions from the Main Page.

People will find out about this … how? Traffic to the Musowiki website is the most important indicator of its success. If people do not use the directory, it is pointless and can make no claim to community. In the online environment, however, zero-budget promotion is the most difficult aspect of business. A four-point strategy has been adopted to draw attention to the project. First, every email sent to a service advising them of their listing contains a request for crosspromotion. Some services have added links to Musowiki from their own sites and/or included notices in their newsletters. Traffic analysis shows that these are driving traffic to the directory. Second, each entry and category page is carefully loaded with keywords that capture the attention of search engines – most prominently Google. Thus, people 235

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searching for services by name or type have a very high probability of finding the directory when searching for other things. Traffic analysis indicates that this is succeeding, especially for services whose home page is primarily Flash™ or another technology that is not Google-friendly. Third, the project is mentioned strategically in every appearance the author makes in the music community: posts to e-mail discussion lists contain the project’s URL in their footer, comments posted to other musiccommunity publications (for example, Andrew Dubber’s blog) link to Musowiki’s URL; and so on (including this article). Traffic analysis on this measure cannot be precise, but indicates that this is probably effective. Finally, a list of music organizations has been drawn up with the intention to send them a request that they post a notice about Musowiki to their members. These are mainly industry bodies such as Q-Music13 and The North American Music Merchants’ Association.14 Traffic analysis shows that these efforts do not always produce a result and that their effect is usually short term.

Okay but what does it all mean, in a nutshell? This article has outlined the supporting theory and literature and described the process for building a global online music community based around a directory of music services at http://www.musowiki.net. The Musowiki project has been enabled by twenty-first century media, which facilitate connectivity between music communities on a scale unprecedented in human history. Musowiki is still in its infancy but aims to form a ‘switchboard’ for the music world in all its shades and shapes. Community music organizations around the globe can benefit from it by entering themselves in the directory, participating in the community of like-minded organizations surrounding it and building networks of capacity with other organization that are part of the Musowiki resource.

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Further, four principles emerge for groups wishing to harness the same technologies and techniques and grow their own community: 1. Each community is part of a co-creative whole. Sharing of resources, ideas and effort within and between communities enhances all parties and the co-creative whole greater than the sum of its members. 2. The value of participating in ‘switchboard’ institutions lies in the network and does not necessarily accrue directly to any single member. The value that accrues may not be directly financial but may be information that can reduce the costs of labour or other overheads within organizations. 3. Communities are strengthened by the activity of ‘thought leaders’ (Waters 2008), who may or may not be formally appointed to leadership positions. ‘Thought leaders’ should be actively recruited and encouraged to strengthen each community, and participants in the broader community should consider the benefits of taking on ‘thought leader’ roles. 4. Participation, peer production and leadership are enhanced where provision is made for ‘reputation mechanisms’ (Jeppesen and Frederiksen 2006) to reward members for their efforts. These mechanisms are most effective when they are directed from the institution, though peer recognition is also important. These principles apply equally to members of community music bodies and to community music organizations as members of the broader global community. For example, not-for-profit, social justice oriented record label Sweet Freedom15 has been producing CDs and selling them to raise funds for some years. However, in recent years, they have been wishing to expand their idea base for new projects and enter the digital distribution market. Creating an entry on Musowiki16 puts their aspirations and capacities before others seeking to do similar things in other parts of the world. Participating in that community allows them to tap ideas from like-minded organizations, and also to learn from the experiences of organizations that have already entered the digital marketplace; and perhaps become a point of reference for others

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seeking to do so. Further, adopting the principles above helps them to turn their newly redeveloped website into a community facility, gaining from the enthusiasm of the ideologically motivated supporter base and building a powerful promotional aspect for their ideas as well as their CDs. However, Musowiki is at an experimental stage and the real test of its success will be the extent to which it is embraced and enhanced by the vast array of musicians around the globe. If it proves as useful as the Wikipedia project whose software it shares, it may grow to make a difference but if it falls short on any one of a number of small but critical obstacles, it may prove instructive but ultimately useless. Time, and your response to this article, will tell.

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References Agre, Phil (2000), 'The Market Logic of Information', Knowledge, Technology, and Policy, 13: 3, pp. 67–77. Anderson, Alan and Ellis, Allan (2005), 'Music Production Communities of Practice on the World Wide Web', http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw05/papers/refereed/anderson/paper.html. Accessed 23 March 2006. Anderson, Chris (2004), 'The Long Tail', Wired, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html. Accessed 30 March 2005. Anon (2007), What is Indie? MPEG-4, D Cool, USA. Distributed by FIBII Independent Media Production. Baker, Bob (2003), 'Four Ways to Attract More Music Fans Faster', http://www.bobbaker.com/buzz/4fans.html. Accessed 12 February 2007. Baym, Nancy (2008), '10 Best Practices of Online Music Promotion', Online Fandom, http://www.onlinefandom.com/archives/10-best-practices-of-online-musicpromotion/. Accessed 17 July 2008. Beer, David and Burrows, Roger (2005), 'Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0: Some Initial Considerations', Sociological Research Online, 5: 12, http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/17.html. Accessed 26 February 2008. Benkler, Yochai and Nissenbaum, Helen (2006), 'Commons-based Peer Production and Virtue', The Journal of Political Philosophy, 14: 4, pp. 394–419. Bodle, Robert (2004), 'Radical Culture in the Digital Age: A Study of Critical New Media Practice', 3140440 thesis, Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California. Brown, Hugh (2009), 'Awash in a Sea of Possibilities: Anchoring a 21st century Music Business', in L. Mackinlay and K. Barney (eds), Musical Islands, Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press. Brown, Hugh and Graham, Phil (2007), 'From Garage to Greatness? Reflections on Home-Studio Production Experience', Paper presented to the Art of Record Production Conference, Brisbane, Australia. Bughin, Jacques, Chui, Michael and Johnson, Brad (2008), 'The Next Step in Open Innovation', The McKinsey Quarterly, http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/next_step_in_open_innovation_2155_abst ract. Accessed 5 July 2008. Carey, James. W. (1989), Communication as Culture, Boston: Unwin Hyman. Chi, E.H. (2007), 'Long Tail of User Participation in Wikipedia', Augmented Social Cognition, http://asc-parc.blogspot.com/2007/05/long-tail-and-power-lawgraphs-of-user.html. Accessed 19 July 2008. 239

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Ebare, Sean (2003), 'The computerization of practice in peripheral music communities', MQ81785 thesis, Canada: Simon Fraser University. Foell, Stefan, Boessling, Philippe, Linner, David, Radusch, Ilja and Steglich, Stephan (2007), 'Self-Organizing Pervasive Online Communities', in Eighth International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems, Sedona, Arizona, 21–23 March, IEEE: Los Alamitos, CA. Garrahan, Matthew (2008), 'Myspace Music Launches Without Merlin', Financial Times http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/387a6f28-8b64-11dd-b634-0000779fd18c.html. Accessed 26 September 2008. Giese, Mark (2004), 'Community Property: Digital Music and the Economic Modalities of Transmission and Ritual Modes of Communication', Journal of Communication Inquiry, 28: 4, pp. 342–62. Giles, Jim (2005), 'Internet encyclopaedias go head to head', Nature, 438: 7070, pp. 900– 1. Hearn, Greg and Pace, Cassandra (2006), 'Value-Creating ECOLOGIES: Understanding Next-Generation Business Systems', Foresight, 8: 1, pp. 55–56. Jeppesen, Lars Bo and Frederiksen, Lars (2006), 'Why Do Users Contribute to FirmHosted User Communities? The Case of Computer-Controlled Music Instruments', Organization Science, 17: 1, p. 45. Lee, Sang-Yong Tom, Kim, Hee-Woong and Gupta, Sumeet (2009), 'Measuring Open Source Software Success', Omega, 37: 2, pp. 426–38. Li, Yung-Ming and Lee, Yi-Lin (2007), 'Pricing Web 2.0 Related Services: Peer Production', in Ninth International Conference on Electronic Commerce, Minneapolis, MN, USA, 19–22 August, ACM: New York. Lin, Chien-Hui, Li, Liang-Yi, Hu, Wen-Chu, Chen, Gwo-Dong and Liu, Baw-Jhiune (2007), 'Constructing an Authentic Learning Community Through Wiki for Advanced Group Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing', in Seventh IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies, 18–20 July, IEEE: Los Alamitos, CA. Lovink, Geert and Rossiter, Ned (2005), 'Dawn of the Organised Networks', Fibreculture, 5, http://journal.fibreculture.org/issue5/lovink_rossiter_print.html. Accessed 31 March 2006. Malik, Alex (2005), 'How the Spin Doctors Spun a Tale about Peer to Peer File Sharing and Piracy', http://www.themusic.com.au/im_m/archive/2005/050111437_guests.php. Accessed 27 April 2006. Moore, James F. (1998), 'The Rise of a New Corporate Form', The Washington Quarterly, 21: 1, pp. 167–81. Nicolo, Phil (2007), Private Conversation, 10 September 2007, Philadelphia. Nielsen, Jakob (2000), Designing Web Usability, Indianapolis:New Riders Publishing. 240

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Parr, Judy and Ward, Lorrae (2006), 'Building on Foundations: Creating an Online Community', Journal of Technology and Teacher Education, 14: 4, pp. 775–93. Pearrow, Mark (2000), Web Site Usability Handbook, Rockland, MA: Charles River Media. Raymond, Eric S. (2001), The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidently Revolutionary, Revised edn, Sebastopol, CA:O'Reilly & Associates. Rosenfield, Louis and Morville, Peter (1998), Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly & Associates. Sambrook, Richard (2005), 'Citizen Journalism and the BBC', Nieman Reports, 59: 4, pp. 13–16. SMSO (2008), 'Wikipedia: EDITORS', smso, http://www.smso.net/Wikipedia:EDITORS. Accessed 25 November 2008. Tapscott, Don and Williams, Anthony D. (2007), Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, New York: Penguin. Veblen, Kari K. (2008), 'The Many Ways of Community Music', International Journal of Community Music, 1: 1, pp. 5–21. Waters, Jim (2008), 'Social Network Behavior, Thought-Leaders and Knowledge Building in an Online Learning Community', in 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Waikoloa, Big Island, Hawaii, January 7-10, 2008 Westley, Frances. (1991), 'Bob Geldof and Live Aid: The Affective Side of Global Social Innovation', Human Relations, 44: 10, pp. 1011–36. Wilson, Chris (2008), ‘The Wisdom of the Chaperones’, Slate, http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2184487. Accessed 28 February 2008.

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Notes 1. For example http://www.indiebible.com 2. Notwithstanding events like Live Aid, in which the music was broadcast globally but each performance was limited to collaboration on a single stage (Westley 1991). 3. For example see www.esession.com, http://www.explodingart.com/jam2jam.html 4. For example see www.talentdatabase.com and www.gigswap.com 5. For example see http://www.theindustryyellowpages.com and http://www.indiebible.com 6. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html 7. See http://sivers.org 8. The complete revision history for the site is retained in the database and can be viewed on the live site at any time by clicking on each page’s ‘history’ tab. This is a standard feature of the Mediawiki software. 9. See, for example, http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/musicthoughts/ and http://www.cdbaby.org/ 10. See http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:AjaxRatingScript 11. http://musowiki.net/index.php/Template:Service_Entry 12. For example see http://www.indiebible.com and http://www.entertainersrd.com 13. www.qmusic.com.au 14. www.namm.com 15. Of which the author is vice-president – see http://www.sweetfreedom.org 16. See http://musowiki.net/index.php/Sweet_Freedom

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Appendix 1 – Text of listing notification email Hi [Name if available]. I wanted to let you know that your [site] has been added to my wiki of services useful to musicians at [http://musowiki.net/index.php/Service_Name] It is a basic entry at this stage but you are welcome to sign up and edit it to suit your marketing approach, especially to make sure it is listed in all of the appropriate categories. You can also list other services or brands with which you are involved and tell your business partners and associates about it. Instructions are posted to http://musowiki.net/index.php/Category:Listing MusoWiki is FREE for services wanting to list themselves and FREE for musicians to use to find the services they need. Its goal is to facilitate independent music by helping artists to partner with the services they need. If you have any questions, please e-mail me. If you could spread the word that would help a lot too ... Cheers, Huge

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CHAPTER 7: DISCUSSION

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You don’t tell me anything You just go on and on And you don’t make no sense. - Jimmy Barnes “No Sense” from Twentieth Century

This thesis has made three contributions to knowledge and has developed these from the perspective of working musicians themselves. In doing so it has begun to demonstrate a systematic approach in which new technologies may be used to capture the value of musicians’ creativity to foster growth and sustain a self-publishing music business in the 21st century. Underpinned by the idea that the “music industry” has never actually sold the intangible experience that is music, it firstly argues that music has been used to sell ideology, power, technology, and commodities. Since the mid-19th century, broadcast political economy has developed via an historical aberration in which music was captured using scarce technology, around which an industry grew. This began with publishing the sheet music for minstrel songs, progressed through player pianos to plastic disks and the various machines used to extract music from them, and finally to the sale of bandwidth driven by the free distribution of electronic representations of music. However, beginning in the late 1970s, the scarcity of the technologies of music production and distribution eroded to the point at which the vast majority of 21st century music-makers can harness technologies that once required a corporate edifice to be viable. Removing the inefficiencies of technological scarcity has shown that the process of making music operates in an economy of esteem, which must be converted into labour and capital to become a sustainable music business. The concept of musical esteem strongly echos 245

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Bourdieu’s concept of social and cultural capital, and esteem is generated from relationships built around the music; with fans, peers, colleagues, and critics. The esteem can attach to a musician’s music, political stance, fashion sense or other defining attributes. For musicians, the source of value all along has been the relationships that music enables between music sources and music audiences. This is the value to which Independent musicians must devote their attention in order to grow a viable music business – especially at the self-publishing end of the Independent spectrum. This view of the value of music has important implications for many other spheres of cultural production in the Creative Industries. Second, this thesis shows that although the technological discontinuity that has occurred around the start of the 21st century has made many new technologies available and affordable to most musicians, the business prospects of self-publishing musicians remain stifled by issues concerning access to these technologies and application of them. These issues are primarily to do with human factors such as education and relationship management. Many Independent musicians are aware that new technologies exist but have not encountered many of them and have little conception of how they might be applied, much less how to apply them most effectively. Whereas the greatest asset of the music industry’s dominant institutions was once the capital needed to access expensive production and distribution technologies, it is now that they have developed a core expertise in these matters and networks of human capital to exploit it to ensure that their music remains the most prominent in the music marketplace. Self-publishing musicians who wish to build a sustainable business must each develop the same capabilities as the dominant institutions or else compromise on their independence along one or more dimensions in the name of gaining an esteemed partnership. When forming partnerships with other music businesses, such compromises take the

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responsibility for these aspects of the business off the shoulders of the Independents but can also cost some control, creative integrity, and authenticity – possibly as well as capital. Doing so on a short-term basis can buy the Independents the knowledge and networks they need but can also cost them their identity and thus their reason for making music. Technologies, therefore, have certainly made some tasks easier for Independent musicians but in turn require a greater investment in relationship building, training, and skills development or in a partnership with an institution that already possesses the required skills and networks. These are not technology-dependent capacities; they are part of the human condition. Third, this thesis argues for a new understanding of two means by which musicians can grow a business using production approaches that are only beginning to be more broadly understood: home studio recording and fan-sourced productivity. The first of these has been hyped to the extent that self-publishing musicians could easily enter the industry with the view that making a top-selling record is as simple as buying a laptop and a copy of Pro Tools™. This thesis argues that such an assumption would prove terminal to the aspirations of most Indies. In the absence of the production budget bestowed upon an act by a record label, Indies must either hire cheaper production facilities and expertise or else acquire the facilities and develop the expertise. Due to a combination of factors including the opportunity cost of adopting new technologies and the social isolation that using them requires, the practical application of home studio recording technologies is most likely to amount either to a stepping-stone on the career path to commercially produced music recordings or to a career in which the purely auditory quality of releases is less important than other aspects of the Independent business. As such, it is argued that home-studio productions involve choices and sounds that amount to a new genre of music separate from and in parallel to commercial music

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productions involving better acoustic facilities and more experienced operators of the facilities. Further, this is reflected in the development of new institutions designed to exploit the new genre and the musicians who participate in its evolution. These new institutions lack the entrenched biases that Negus (1998) noted in the major label system, though each has probably replaced them with their own set of entrenched biases. It is also noted that not all music is equal in the reality of home-studio production and that music involving primarily samples of other recordings or virtual instruments has a distinct economic advantage over that requiring capture and manipulation of acoustic sounds in a home-studio environment. The impact of this genre bias on the industry more broadly is yet to be examined. Finally, the virtues of “wikinomic” or “fan-sourced” productivity are found to be of enormous benefit to musicians across the Independent spectrum, should the optimal circumstances be factored into an Independent music community’s design. In the absence of an esteemed relationship with a partner of the scale that a record company can be, the myriad contributions of a multitude of supporters are a valuable substitute. If an Independent music business’s community-building efforts are authentically about building relationships with its supporters and the four principals identified are followed, then the community can become a valuable source of labour and capital. The community should be built so that its “thought leaders” are recognised (thereby allocating institutional esteem to the institution’s leaders) using “reputation mechanisms” as contributing to a “switchboard” institution that is part of a broader cocreative whole. The community then generates a great deal of esteem for the music and musicians, and this can be converted into sales, promotional labour and other forms of in-kind support. An act for which an association with a record label is anathema must develop this source of support if it is to prove viable and the new technologies,

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especially social media, have enabled just such a capacity for musicians with the right personal characteristics and motivations. These contributions to knowledge have been derived from the three research questions focusing on participation in the 21st century Independent music industry that were asked at the start of this thesis. Each of the papers that precede this chapter contains its own discussion, and what follows is a synthesis of those papers linking each back to the original research questions and objectives outlined in the Introduction. I also offer a self-critique and suggest directions for future research in the area.

Research Q 1: What are the factors affecting the sustainability of an independent music business? In analysing chapters three to six I identified four sets of factors that affect musicians’ prospects: personal factors, information factors, relational factors, and technological factors. Each of these is complex and will affect each musician and music business differently but some common themes emerge for each factor. In the following discussion I answer each of the research questions with reference to these sets of factors and show how the previous chapters have revealed the significance of each factor.

Personal

The first, and eternal, factor affecting participation in the Independent music industry is the personal characteristics of the would-be participants. Certain characteristics: talent, determination, and persistence, are self-evidently desirable as is supported by the literature, and need not be discussed here. However, the survey and interview data show that a range of less obvious personal characteristics are highly indicative of sustainable involvement in the music industry. The personal characteristics referred too here do not necessarily have any relation to the personality projected by the musician and thus the aspects guided by the Personality principle in Chapter 2 – that is to say, creative 249

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authenticity is not at issue. There is no reason why a clean-living, disciplined musician cannot portray a public image as a hard-living, nihilistic rebel (this apparent contradiction is intended) on stage. There are plenty of examples through the years of musicians with public personas of this kind. The personal characteristics referred to here are the ones that will enable a musician to grow and develop a music business in any style of music. While it is hard to maintain any kind of creative authenticity if the difference is too great, and the interviewees in Chapter 4 reflect a tendency towards their public and private personas being similar, there is no necessity for them to affect or reflect each other. The Personality principle refers simply to the consistency of representation of musicians’ adopted public persona – whether that correlates with the private persona or not. For example, musicians can maintain a Personality consistency by creating two separate Facebook profiles: one for the musician, to which access may be restricted to family members and personal friends and active topics include their health and emotional wellbeing, and another for their band or stage persona, to which access is available to fans and topics include fan relations, upcoming shows, new releases, and comments on recent events. Chief among necessary personal characteristics is a strong self-awareness. This particularly demands a commitment to originality in some aspect of a musician’s creative efforts: novel arrangements or parodies of cover songs, innovative use of sonic textures, a fantastic stage character, a unique perspective on the human condition, and so on. It is this aspect to which fans’ esteem accrues and successful musicians will be aware of that. Individuality and innovation are prized in the anti-establishment world of Independent music much more than they are by the cookie-cutter approach of the mass-mediated music industry in which subtle variations on a previously successful formula are regarded as most likely to sell. Although the term “Independent” has come to include all

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genres of music, it is well known that any act’s success is built around some appealing innovation in performance, production or lyrical content that sets an act apart from the others in the music market. However, this study found that to build esteem among fans, peers and colleagues, the distinctions do not have to be musical or theatrical, nor fixed for the duration of a career. They can be political, social, sonic or personal and can evolve over time. The careers of Madonna, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young are high-profile examples of this and the Synchrony principle works to capitalise on an act’s evolution by enabling an appreciation of career growth in parallel with the life of its fans. The act’s distinction does not even have to be deliberate. It may be some technique that is adopted to overcome a disability, like Jeff Healey’s laptop guitar playing, or a reputation for suggesting helpful management strategies to peers, like the advice Tah Phrum Duh Bush dispenses at conferences on how to approach fans after shows. The key thing is that musicians need to be aware of their strengths and take best advantage of them according to the Personality principle outlined in Chapter 2. Failure to do so leads to confusion and misguided effort. The ultimate extension of self-awareness is that would-be Indie musicians should not be afraid to change their ambitions should they realise that their epiphany of confidence leads them to a non-performing role in the Industry. Chapter 4 shows clearly that people whose epiphany of competence led them down a musical path can build a fulfilling career in the Independent music industry as a manager, promoter, entrepreneur or similar. Possessing a technical proficiency and an interest in music is not enough to sustain a career as a performer if the distinctive element discussed above is not present. According to Bennett (2005), technical musicianship proficiency has been seen as the raison d’être of institutional musical training to the detriment of training in music business skills and cultural awareness. Much of the self-help literature promotes

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awareness of this deficit and expounds ways to compensate for it. The survey respondents revealed a degree of awareness about their lack of business skills or focus, with responses ranging from resignation to frustration, and the interviewees also highlighted this as a central consideration in their experience. However, the literature’s advice plays to the dream of DIY musical success despite the frustration of a nonmusical deficit, while this study’s interviewees revealed that giving up the dream and seeking a career based on a person’s non-musical competencies can be personally, professionally, and creatively liberating when that person’s epiphany of competence is at odds with their experience. When their careers as performers stalled, Kevin and Shannon, in particular, did some soul-searching and realised that their musical distinctions were not adequate for a career as performers. They chose to pursue a career in the music industry based on their non-musical aptitudes and inspired by their love and knowledge of music. Indies need to know the nature of the business they are entering and choose to do so for the right reasons – there is more to the industry than the performers. Institutional training must emphasise critical self-awareness and facilitate these career choices. Further, musicians need to understand their personal strengths and weaknesses in all aspects of their business: creative, administrative and inter-personal, and use this to guide their efforts to solve the problems they confront. The principle of Propinquity applies to networked business operations offline as well as online – a team orientation is needed to manage the “organised network” at the point where business needs exceed a musician’s capacity. This is equally true within a band or in a studio as when booking shows, promoting releases or paying accounts. Musicians who seek to control every aspect of their business will find their resources rapidly depleted, whereas those who adopt a team approach will be able to tap additional distributed resources from fans,

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peers and colleagues. At the same time, these additional resources need to be managed and work quality maintained within an e-form business structure. As shown in Chapter 4, it is those with the strongest team orientation and people-management talents who are most likely to succeed. An aspect of the Independent music business that is identified in this thesis but requires much closer investigation is the effectiveness of the myriad approaches Indies can adopt to overcome the various challenges that arise in building a music career:

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finding material to play;

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finding and managing people to play with;

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booking shows;

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recording performances;

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promoting shows and releases;

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developing merchandise;

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licensing songs and/or recordings;

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deriving revenue from the above; and

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managing business accounting and reporting.

Methods for dealing with these issues are as varied as the people who become musicians and there is no simple recipe for success. Musicians who approach their career with a fixed view of how it should progress are less likely to build sustainable businesses than those who adopt a flexible approach to identifying and solving problems. This flexibility needs to be a pervasive aspect of their personalities – it applies to identifying their uniqueness, working with others, taking advice and resolving the complex issues they will encounter in their career. This aspect of Independent music business provides yet another benefit from building networks of relationships: peers, colleagues, and fans, can

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be great sources of suggestions, contacts and labour to help meet career challenges. All an Indie has to be is flexible enough to ask for help and open-minded enough to listen. Again, however, the Personality principle dictates that whatever measures are adopted, they need to be consistent with the musician’s public character, ethics, and social standing. The final personal characteristic that can strongly affect the prospects of an Independent musician is a commitment to creativity in all aspect of their business. This is as much about preserving the musician’s sanity and enthusiasm as it is about problemsolving. The survey respondents in Chapter 4 were all multi-creative people and looked for creative solutions to their problems. They also tended to resonate with and have greater respect for others who adopt creative approaches. As with the flexible approach, musicians for whom creativity is pervasive and fundamental will have a greater chance at succeeding in the business goals than those who stick to routine and numbing repetition. Creativity works to enhance application of the Novelty principle in music businesses by creating novel instances and artefacts: a new line of shirts or new recordings, by creating innovative reasons to promote the musician’s novelty: devising unexpected initiatives, and by creating interesting and attractive content for their communications – perhaps by listing their tour dates as a song and posting the video on YouTube.

Informational

Any novice or entrant to a new vocation requires training and access to learning materials to help them pursue their career goals. But formal training can date quickly and “self-made” is a mark of Indie credibility in a DIY age. In a time of information overload and rapidly-evolving technology, the need to efficiently find accurate and upto-date information is vital. Equally important to a musician operating independently of 254

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the mass media is the need to impart information to fans, colleagues, and peers. These needs were met by expertise within record company under the 20th century model but Independent musicians need to develop these capacities on their own. The piecemeal uses of distribution and promotion technologies by the survey respondents in Chapter 2 show that a lack of consistent, up-to-date information blinds musicians to business opportunities and prevents them from taking advantage of the ones they find. The experiences with home studio production in Chapter 5 show how an inability to access, interpret and apply information can impair product quality and production efficiency. My community-building efforts in Chapter 6 would have been more effective had I been able to propagate information direct to interested parties. Thus, poor information management can effectively cripple an Independent music business. Further, the queries that motivated this study and particularly the creation of Musowiki show that many Indies still struggle to meet their information needs. Independent musicians’ inbound information needs begin with lessons in how to play instruments, sing or write good songs and extend through production, touring and promotion to career coaching. As noted in Chapter 5, access to technology alone is not enough to meet the need for its effective application of that technology. For every need, it seems advice is abundant in this information era. Most obviously, Indies need help with specific technical issues or chord and/or lyric charts. In some cases, these will be well-defined and specific, presenting as a question such as “what’s the fourth chord in Green Day’s song ‘Good Riddance’?”. In other cases they may be vague and present as a poorly-understood problem such as: “why won’t my expensive (or illegally acquired) new software run on this PC?” In the specific cases, the need might be met in specific entries on a discussion forum or song repository; others will require that an entire manual of instruction be downloaded and searched; yet other may require both

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approaches. In any case, Indies with better access to information and a better understanding of how the answers they seek are likely to be found will have a distinct advantage. In addition to specific technical information needs is the need for Indies to find services that help with particular aspects of their business. The current music business environment is a movable feast of companies offering to help Indies to create, produce, organise, distribute, market, and sell their merchandise, recordings and performances, then perform the necessary administrative functions to meet the business compliance requirements. Keeping up to date with the latest online initiatives or music communities and screening them to find the best ones for a particular act is a full-time occupation in itself but is very necessary if Indies are to manage their time effectively. A variation of this is the need to find specific services at a certain point in a musician’s career – for example, in answer to the question: “I’d like to organise my first tour to the UK. Where can I find booking agents or promoters in England?” Musicians who can efficiently find and prioritise suitable services will have a distinct advantage, and the key to this is the musician’s information discovery skills. In addition to developing personal skills in information management, Independent musicians can meet their informational needs, at least in part, by tapping the expertise of fans, peers and other industry professionals. Building, developing and maintaining the relationships necessary to do so in a manner consistent with the Propinquity principle is discussed in the next section. Finally, musicians need to develop a capacity to propagate information to fans, colleagues and peers – and this cannot be seen by fans as marketing material or relationships will be lost. Although the new media have allowed Indies to bypass the stranglehold of the major media companies, as shown in Chapter 3, failure to do so effectively degrades or prevents the relationship networks that must be built to sustain 256

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the business. It is not as simple as opening a MySpace account and uploading some demonstration recordings. Music businesses need to develop a conscious strategy and an attitude that every communication is soft-selling their identity and has the potential to begin many new relationships. Many fail to do so because of a reluctance to be seen as hard-selling and because they cannot build sufficient relationships to sustain their business. Others fail because their communications are too transparently focused on plugging their latest show or release and are regarded as spam. Finding the balance is an aspiration of experienced copywriters and this is another skill set that must develop within an Independent music business. Getting it wrong can be the result of a failure to effectively address the need to communicate with their networks and is dealt with more fulsomely in the next section.

Relational

One of the most important recurring themes running through the literature, the interviews in Chapter 4, and through the experiences of Chapters 5 and 6 is the strategic importance to musicians of building a network of esteemed relationships with fans, peers and colleagues. This esteem is, perhaps, one source of the cultural and social capital an artist acquires during his or her career and the most valuable aspect of a music business is the esteem that underpins the relationships music makers develop with other people who value their concert tickets, merchandise, opinions, and so on. Applying the Novelty and Personality principles in a Propinquitous operation helps build and maintain these relationships. Through these relationships musicians can generate esteem, gain information and feedback, collaborate, make contact with potential business partners, and even outsource their production and promotion needs. These relationships need not all be built on the same values – fans of a metal guitarist’s speed technique or a pop singer’s fashion sense will not view their relationship with those musicians in the same way a concert promoter would – but the relationships 257

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nonetheless need to be reliable and mutual. Musicians who can form and maintain such relationships will have a business advantage, as well as enjoyable social experiences, when it comes to building their business. The careers of The Moody Blues and The Grateful Dead were built and sustained on their direct relationships with fans. For Independent musicians, the esteem generated by making, promoting, and distributing meaningful music and allowing fans to engage with its creator is valuable in many aspects of an Independent music business and can be converted into sales, labour and cost-saving benefits such as free accommodation. But, as described in the literature and by the interviewees in Chapter 4, building a fan base takes time, dedicated effort, and significant interpersonal skill – it does not happen by accident and is most effective in face-to-face settings. Maintaining relationships with fans can also become an onerous task that distracts musicians from their creativity. Nonetheless, building a fan base and developing the capacity to engage fans should be the first priority of an Independent musician and it must be done according to the four principles outlined in Chapter 2. Relationships with peers should also be built and maintained at every opportunity. As shown in Chapters 4 and 6, this is not limited to peers who share a musician’s musical taste, as musicians who perform totally different genres of music can also be useful where mutual respect and esteem are present. Sharing experiences, techniques and contacts is a personally and professionally mutually satisfying way to build esteem among peers. It can also lead to collaboration, co-creation and cross-promotion of the kind discussed by Théberge (2004) and noted as sorely missed during the my isolate production process detailed in Chapter 5. As with fan relationships, however, building a network of peer relationships takes time and effort. Every show is an opportunity to meet and network with peers, but musicians should be aware of the tendency to treat 258

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this as a chicken-and-egg issue by thinking “my peers can help me get gigs, but I meet them at gigs”. This issue is highlighted in the title of Rogers’ (2008) paper “You’ve got to go to gigs to get gigs”, which points out the complexity and inter-dependence of peer networks in Indie music scenes. Many roles must be filled if an Independent musician is to build a sustainable business and Chapter 4 clearly shows that being part of a network of other industry professionals, who often have a performing background, is a great advantage. The esteem of industry colleagues is generated by musicians being solution-focused and professional – and making music that appeals to the musicians’ colleagues also helps. As shown in Chapter 6, a colleague’s services can be obtained at a significant discount where reputation mechanisms are in place. Thus, one of the main goals for musicians has to be to build an organised network of supportive colleagues offering affordable services, advice and contacts. Where esteem has been generated between the musicians and colleagues who can help them, a deal can be cut to mutual advantage or the musicians may find support among their colleagues’ networks, thereby extending their own. As noted in Chapter 4, however, building more relationships of this category is not necessarily an advantage. Building the strength or intimacy of a few business relationships may work better for some Indies, depending on their circumstances and ambitions. The payoff from building these relationships is that the musicians get to play the music that they like without having to compromise on their creative integrity.

Technological

The past 30 years have seen a rapid development in the affordability of digital technologies. This has meant that devices to facilitate production and distribution of the stuff of an Independent musician’ business can be acquired at lower cost than ever before. The quality of these technologies has improved to the point that it is possible, as 259

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demonstrated in Chapters 5 and 6, to make broadcast-quality recordings in a musician’s home and to distribute and sell those recordings and other material using the Internet, and to build community facilities to enhance relationships, for a fraction of the cost that would have been incurred earlier.

But barriers remain and this study confirmed much of Théberge’s work – particularly relating to the application of new technologies rather than to the acquisition of them. For Independent musicians, the first of these barriers is the opportunity cost of new technology. Every hour spent learning to use a new technology or web service is an hour not spent writing music, rehearsing, marketing, or building relationships. Whereas this cost was once met by record company staff (usually subject to recovery from sales income), for an Independent musician this insidious distraction is often concealed amid enthusiasm for the possibilities offered by new gadgets. The experiences in Chapters 5 and 6 clearly show this, and the piecemeal adoption of technologies accompanied by confusion and frustration reported in Chapter 3 reflects the cost of failing to balance a musician’s musical efforts with clear technological and business strategies and information management. This cost can be defrayed in a band situation in which one member of the team takes responsibility for each aspect of the business. If one band member has an interest in home recording, another may take responsibility for building the band’s online facilities but for a solo musician to learn to effectively and efficiently apply new technologies to all of the business’s various tasks is an onerous burden. The Synchrony principle can be applied to help prioritise the musicians’ efforts and thereby amortise this cost over a range of productions. Second, any musician, no matter how talented and driven, who finds himself or herself on the wrong side of the ‘digital divide’ is effectively excluded from the marketplace just as they were last century. Similarly, musicians who do not regard themselves as 260

Discussion

competent or confident to learn how to use the new technologies have removed themselves from the current music marketplace. Musicians who choose to make their songwriting or musicianship the focus of their goals need to form working relationships with others who can provide technological help or resign themselves to a life of playing to themselves and their immediate supporters. Most self-publishing musicians cannot afford this luxury, especially early in their careers. Although the survey respondents in Chapter 3 did not reflect this – it was an online survey and therefore excluded respondent from the wrong side of the “digital divide” – the technological dependence of the interviewees in Chapter 4 supports it. This is the corollary of the technologyenabled changes in the music industry: the new business environment is technologydependent. Finally, as noted in Chapter 5, there is a tendency for technology to encourage asocial behaviours. While this might be amenable to business tasks, it does not facilitate musical endeavours, which, as noted in Chapters 4 and 5, tend to be motivated or enhanced by collaboration and co-creation. Nor does it help generate or capture the esteem of fans, peers or colleagues. While technology can be used to expand social and creative networks, this does not apply equally to all cases – resulting in the genre bias found in Chapter 5. Solo musicians who adopt a highly technology-driven approach to the music business my find themselves isolated and frustrated as reported in Chapter 5. This is the kind of unsatisfying musical experience that leads to abandonment of music businesses.

Research Q2: How many of these factors can be directly influenced by an independent musician in the day-to-day operations of their musical enterprise? Each of the issues that confront an Independent musician has at least one means of resolution and many of the issues are inter-linked. Possible solutions to a musician’s problems come from many sources from within fan, peer or collegiate networks and, as 261

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with all things, finding the best combination is a matter of compromise and will be particular to each individual case. Influencing the factors identified in the previous section is not necessarily about solving problems and there is no simple daily management strategy for these issues. Building a music business is about a systematic commitment to achieving goals and should more be focused on identifying and circumventing obstacles rather than overcoming them.

Personal

Personal characteristics are difficult to influence on a day-to-day basis – certainly within a business context. It is far more likely that a musician’s growing self-awareness might lead to a daily commitment to practices that inspire gradual change and growth, and that capture and manage the esteem of others. Improvement of this kind is made easier by the guidance of an experienced third party as coach, mentor or manager, as discussed below. The possibilities for this are as highly individual as the people who participate in the Independent music industry. The key to managing these aspects is a commitment to self-awareness. This part of managing any business or interpersonal relationship is dealt with in any number of texts, including some specifically aimed at musicians. The first and least manageable hurdle is the musicians themselves becoming aware of the need to commit to beneficial practices apart from musicianship. Musicians who adopt a team orientation early in their careers are most likely to find the resources to compensate for their deficiencies, but this may simply be an accident of birth rather than a strategy to be pursued. Flexibility and creativity also are either inherent tendencies or worked on for a period of time. This is the eternal issue of nature vs. nurture but according to the interviewees in Chapter 4, a daily commitment to developing these aspects of an Indie’s personality and/or business capability will help them grow their business. Better awareness of the requirements for 262

Discussion

non-musical practice, supplied by the kind of training Bennett (2005) identifies as lacking, would encourage would-be Indies into more beneficial attitudes and practices.

Informational

A musician’s information needs are likely to arise in one of three ways: most frequently, as ad hoc searches for a particular piece of information; secondly as the underlying skill set that allows people to find and make use of that information; and thirdly as the need to inform fans, peers and colleagues of the musician’s activities and needs. The first and third of these can be managed on a daily basis using new technologies but the second is a longer-term issue that needs to be addressed either as part of a musician’s training or as a personal skills development need, similar to the above. Plenty of such training is available, both as part of institutional training and as stand-alone courses. However, this need is somewhat counter to the “self-made” or “DIY” discourse that surrounds Independent musicianship and hence has tended to be overlooked by designers of music courses and/or by musicians undertaking them. The ad hoc information needs mentioned above need to be managed on a daily basis by systematic application of information technologies such as RSS, e-mail, and search engines, and the adoption of standard time-management practices. Information resources supporting the use of technology or musical specifications are freely available but effective use of these resources requires search skills and/or on-going involvement with organisations that support them to reduce the opportunity cost of searching for the information. Similarly, Chapter 3 identifies a lack of awareness or systematic engagement with the range of different web services that can help meet business needs, including the need to effectively propagate information about shows, recordings or merchandise releases, which the four principles in Chapter 2 require for effective business growth. This is a major issue for Independent musicians, who need to work 263

Discussion

daily on tapping information networks and subscribing to resources that identify and review such services and also on effectively using new technologies to communicate with fans, peers and colleagues on a daily basis. This requires careful and committed management on behalf of musicians to ensure that the opportunity cost of meeting these information needs does not exceed their benefits.

Relational

An Independent musician’s relationships can, and must, be managed on a daily basis if the benefits of esteem, which can fade quickly, are to be realised. Not every contact can, nor needs to be, made every day but a concerted effort is needed each day to contact fans, find new fans and reach out to peers and colleagues in the “networked studio” (Théberge, 2004). As with the other issues discussed above, an opportunity cost exists in doing so and this must be balanced against the benefits. But the literature, interview data and the case studies all make it clear that building and maintaining relationships in line with the Personality and Novelty principles in particular, is an essential task of any Independent music business. Neglecting to do so can cost a great deal of esteem and thus negatively affect other aspects of the business. Conversely, sending an inappropriate number of messages can result in being banned as a spammer, and sending mixed messages can lead to an erosion of authenticity or a conflict with the Personality principle. Any of these also costs esteem and thus a delicate balance is needed in using technology to manage relationships.

Technological

Other than very carefully choosing technologies with which to engage, Independent musicians cannot do much to affect their technological environment on a daily basis. However, a systematic and disciplined approach to engaging with technologies is vital. Reducing opportunity costs of technology while staying up to date with the latest

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developments, and maintaining social rather than asocial practices tend to result from daily attention to the informational and relational issues discussed above. Unless a musician intends to develop his or her own technological solutions to their business problems, as Brad did in developing and publishing his own online store software (see Chapter 4), a daily commitment to stay abreast with the latest technologies and/or to form relationships with people who can help meet technological needs is about all that can be done.

Research Q3: How can these factors be best manipulated to maximise the benefit generated from digital music assets? An underlying commitment to address the factors identified here is required from each would-be Indie and they need to be prioritised according to each individual’s strengths and weaknesses. These factors are inter-related to the extent that, for example, technological solutions to business problems may exist that can be accessed via a relationship with someone in a musician’s network who can provide the information about how to find and apply appropriate solutions. When prioritizing and strategising their efforts, an Independent musician needs to ensure that every effort is guided by at least one of the four principles outlined in Chapter 2: Propinquity, Synchrony, Personality or Novelty.

Personal

While it is tempting to suggest that a would-be Indie’s business prospects begin and end with their personal characteristics, doing so is unhelpful. The key is self-awareness and from this springs creative and administrative potential. Each musician’s understanding of themselves, their place in the world, and the sources of the esteem in which they are held must drive a commitment to make best use of their personal strengths and find ways to compensate for their deficiencies. This is hardly unique to the music industry. It

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is probably a bit much to expect musicians, especially young musicians, to understand what we articulated in Chapter 2: that their music is not what they are selling, but it is also not necessary for musicians to understand this. As long as they are guided by or in association with people who have this understanding, they should be allowed to work to their creative strengths. Fortunately, plenty of resources exist, subject to the informational and relational factors discussed above, that can help. Institutional and ad hoc personal development can be found in books and in New Media to develop any of the characteristics discussed above: team orientation, flexibility and creativity. Daily efforts to develop these characteristics can be implemented with the help of these resources but only where a fundamental commitment to their importance has been adopted by the musician. Similarly, a network of esteemed relationships must be developed that can be relied upon to identify and help meet the needs that arise – especially if that need is the painful, dream-ending realisation that perhaps one’s efforts would be more satisfyingly expended off the stage rather than on it. The Dimensions of Independence identified in Chapter 4 will challenge each musician’s personal characteristics as their business and career develops. Once a strong brand identity has been identified and developed according to the Personality principle, the forces that shape these dimensions will at various times and in various ways, test musicians’ strength and commitment to their business and their identity. The question will then need to be addressed: does a musician need to retain the same degree of Independence and what does it mean to do so? Each development in a career should aim to increase the esteem in which the musician is held. It should gain more esteem from new connections formed as a result of the change, especially if it costs the esteem of some former associates or fans. There is no inherent virtue in remaining a self266

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publishing Independent and considerable potential advantage in entering other business structures, so the choice to do so is as personal as the choice to pursue music rather than dentistry as a career. Ditto the prospect of a change from performer to nonperforming professional. Making these kinds of decisions is a matter of being aware of the possibilities and keeping an open mind as to their pros and cons.

Informational

Efforts can be taken at many levels to meet Indies’ information needs and maximise the benefits to Indies of information technologies. The first is to ensure that music training prepares Indies for the business aspects of their careers as well as for the technical proficiencies of their chosen role. Instrumental, music technology, and music business courses must include an information retrieval and dissemination component that address the meets ongoing information needs: staying up to date with the latest technologies, accessing ad hoc advice from peers about specific issues; keeping up to date with industry news and analysis, assessing the latest services that offer to help meet business needs, and designing effective communication strategies that disseminate information using a Music 3.0 approach. In many ways, the Synchrony and Novelty principles work against each other here; musicians need to be able to assess the reliability and veracity of the newest information against the collected wisdom of trust sources in an ever-changing technological environment. Meeting these needs means understanding the structure and filtering processes of information. The experience that inspired the development of Musowiki.net in Chapter 6 shows the demand for more effective filters of music-industry information. For an Independent musician or music-industry professional to efficiently access information requires that that information be contextualised and peer-reviewed. Musowiki.net is a primitive attempt to provide such a service and clearly shows the potential for such an institution 267

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in other creative industries as well as music. Such developments seem inevitable over the next few years but must also be widely accepted and adopted by current and future participant in their industries. It seems that the four principles outlined in Chapter 2 to guide the development of a music business would equally apply to the development of ‘switchboard institutions’ to filter and contextualise music industry information. Indies must adopt a curiosity about the resources available. This means plugging into daily industry news filters – actively investigating the services that arise, and staying attuned to peer reviews of those services via music community networks – applying the Propinquity principle to bring the latest and most valuable information to them. Similarly, musicians must draw on information contained in the fan, peer and collegial networks – online and offline – and build their esteem in those networks by contributing information to them, as is made clear in Chapter 4. If information technology has changed the music industry dramatically in the past 30 years, it seems set to continue to do so. Only music businesses with a grasp of the latest developments will remain viable. Finally, it is imperative that Indies understand the process of information dissemination in new media – especially using Web 2.0 technologies – and construct a presence in line with the four principles in Chapter 2. The survey results in Chapter 3 show that many Indies are frustrated at the lack of success they experience as a result of poorly understood and only partially developed online presences. The perils of an inconsistent Personality, irregular Novelty and facilities that are not Propinquitous or Synchronous may not be immediately evident but they are profound. Businesses whose inbound and outbound informational needs are met according to these principles will have a significant advantage over those that fail to observe any one of them.

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Discussion Relational

More than any other business, an Independent music business is built on the relationships that support it. This includes musicians’ relationships with fans, peers and colleagues; and Indies should make a commitment to build and maintain these every day. It is the esteem that underpins these relationships, managed according to the four principles in Chapter 2, that will enable an Independent music business to grow and the musician(s) to build up their social and cultural capital. According to the literature and interviewees in Chapter 4, fan emails and MySpace and Facebook messages can be expected to arrive daily and should be responded to on the same basis, lest the esteem of fans be lost. This is one aspect that technology undoubtedly enhances, since the means exist online to attract fans via many music websites that exist and manage them using services with a Propinquity-enhancing business structure as discussed in Chapter 2. However, the piecemeal adoption of these services in Chapter 3 shows that their role in bypassing dominant media to enhance Independent music businesses is poorly understood and implemented by Independent musicians – especially those at the self-publishing end of the spectrum. Indies must adopt the available new media in ways that facilitate a business structure that accords with the Chapter 2’s four principles so as to maximise the esteem value generated by relationships with fans. This adoption should conform to a long-term strategy and be built and maintained on a daily basis. Similarly, as the interviewees in Chapter 4 and most of the self-help literature attests, fan relationships must be built and developed in face-to-face settings at every opportunity. New technologies can then be used to increase the effect of face-to-face interactions by, for example, including photos with fans in an email newsletter or blog post.

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Similarly, relationships with peers should be maintained and extended at every opportunity. This can be done face-to-face at shows or in the rehearsal room, with both personal and professional benefits, but New Media can also be used to extend these relationships into peers’ online spaces. Involvement in peers’ communities has the advantages of reinforcing peers support and extending a musician’s reach across other groups of potential fans, allowing for some of their esteem to accrue. Similarly, taking a stance on political and social issues can extend a musician’s fan reach. If this is done with respect and genuine engagement, it works to build esteem using the Personality and Novelty principles but if it betrays even a trace of insincerity or exploitation it can backfire dramatically in an industry in which authenticity is everything. Managing relationships with colleagues, on the other hand, is about making business partnerships work. Contact with colleagues need not be as frequent as with fans and perhaps with peers but these diverse relationships must nonetheless be maintained carefully. As discussed in Chapter 4, the focus must be on generating esteem by being reliable and professional but also by demonstrating a capacity to impress fans. Like peers, colleagues can be an invaluable source of contacts and personal as well as professional support but they are primarily business-driven and expect reciprocity for their input. The best strategy is to make peers and colleagues into fans of a musician’s person and business as well as fans of their music.

Technological

A conscious and concerted effort is needed for musicians to reduce the opportunity costs of technology. This effort pervades all of the measures discussed above. First, musicians need to decide whether they are sufficiently interested and capable with technologies to make effective use of them or whether that is a role best outsourced to a band fellow, fan or colleague. Second, should they take on this role, they must stay up270

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to-date with the technological environment, including the latest developments and the latest services that might increase their productivity. Third, they must ensure that they do not fall into the trap of taking on technological solutions just because they can. There will always emerge a tempting new technology or service that promises to enhance an Independent music business but Indies should be wary of these and expend effort on them only when they are sure that a benefit will accrue from their adoption. As argued in Chapter 5, too much hype has surrounded new technologies. Thus, a critical view corroborated by musicians’ peer and informational networks should be sought lest the technology turn out to be a time-consuming distraction. An Independent musician’s technological endeavours should employ technology to capture the benefits of Propinquity and Synchrony: to make all of the business function focus around a single point of activity, and to capture the benefits of the musicians’ entire back-catalogue. Once a selection of technologies has been deployed in this way, activities guided by the Personality and Novelty principles can be used to build musicians’ esteem and thus the music business. This can be done, for example, by recording and releasing as many early demos as possible. If these are made available to online stores as a collection, and then “released” as new works to the public one at a time via a propinquitous network of Web 2.0 properties in a way that is consistent with the act’s personality, all four principles apply. Continued activity along these lines, especially if the element of co-creation is added, should result in steady growth. Finally, if home-studio production technologies have created a new genre, as argued in Chapter 5, it is quite probable that other distribution and promotion technologies have created new action genres in their respective creative industries. These also exist parallel with the more traditional commercial adoptions of technology. Blogging, e-mailing, posting to discussion boards, twittering and other novel means by which musicians can 271

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communicate with fans, peers and colleagues represent new processes and genres of communication and have led to the creation of new institutions to support them. Musicians should be formally trained in these technologies’ benefits and application and encouraged to experiment with them – such an effort may even become part of the act’s Personality. However, the rapid pace of change indicates that any particular technology of application may not remain prevalent or even important to the business of Independent music. The current technologies may simply be interim stages of communication as technology evolves and thus may represent developmental landmarks along an Independent musician’s career path. The choices Indies make with regard to adopting these technologies and/or services must be guided by the extent to which each effort enhances the Propinquity, Synchrony, Personality and Novelty of the business.

Self-critique Since the changes upon which this study focuses were wrought by new technologies and because they promised to do so much to undermine the technological limitations that led to the 20th century music industry structure, I thought at the beginning of this study that most of the remaining barriers for Independent musicians would be technological. I thought I would find that the barriers I sought to identify concerned issues such as inefficient provision of services, inadequate processing power, bandwidth limitations, or similar. I assumed that a major part of this research would be trying out different business strategies and assessing their efficacy by analysing the quantitative data I was able to compile: server statistics, sales figures, search terms prevalence and so on. I was very wrong. As noted when discussing Chapter 5 in the introduction, I found that my qualitative data provided far more insight than the numbers could and that the human aspects of business are still more important than the purely technological ones. There is still much scope for crunching the numbers in Appendix 14 from this and future

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experiments – and I intend to – but this thesis has turned out to be far more fruitful on the qualitative end than I expected. This is most likely because the research revealed that the real drivers of value in the music industry are the relationships musicians build with other people; inherently qualitative matters. Technologies are tools that make it easier to form and manage those relationships and to derive income from them but associating the changes in the economies of musical production, promotion, and distribution with changes in technology is misleading. The technological changes have simply revealed that building a business based on music was always about the esteem a musician could generate and that this operates in a fundamentally different economy to that of commodity production. This truth has been revealed since Napster despite 80 years of mass-media interests leading consumers to believe that music is just another commodity: make it high-quality, market it well and sales will follow. This research has confirmed what critics, fans, and even A&R people have always suspected: there is not necessarily any correlation between the amount of music produced and the amount of income generated without consideration of the qualities of the act. Second, attempting two cycles of an action research project like this in three years was always ambitious and proved beyond my means. This is personally as well as academically disappointing and I plan to continue with the second cycle after this dissertation is submitted – with a greater appreciation of the magnitude of the task. The Indies who contributed the data deserve to benefit from the results of this project and I hope that they will continue to contribute and will recruit and encourage their peers and associates to become involved as well. This would strengthen future findings and provide access to data from more guided experiments. As noted in the Introduction, this research is underpinned by Critical Theory and consciously aims to make a difference to its participants’ lives. Although the outcomes, including Musowiki, have

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made some difference, much more can emerge from this seeing this project through at least one more iteration of its Action Research cycle. Third, the data upon which this thesis rests are very thin. An online survey of n=83 in Chapter 3 is barely adequate and 8 interviews for Chapter 4 is only useful because of the amount of literature already available. When I began this study MySpace had just become pre-eminent and its significance has since faded as new companies have entered the social media space. Similarly, very few musicians had risen to prominence as Independents and been able to claim credit for building a sustainable business without major-label relationships. It will be revealing to see how much more reliable data can be obtained with the benefits of the networks and methods I have developed in the process of undertaking this research and with the greater depth of examples from which too draw data. I had intended that the results of this first action-research cycle would be preliminary and to build on them to attract new participants in a second cycle of the project, making the findings much more valid. Hopefully the project’s results will enable this to happen in future and something far greater will grow from this embryonic exploration of the field. Finally, I regret that my approach to this study has been so isolating. I had assumed that investigating a DIY phenomenon would require a DIY approach and hence deliberately locked myself away from academic as well as musical peers for large sections of the work. As this thesis shows, that was self-defeating because the reality of both musical and academic efforts is that they cannot be entirely DIY and are enhanced and simplified by conscientious construction of support networks. If I had my time over I would seek to build my networks first, then the creative works and then the academic works. Greater musical collaboration and wider academic discussion and engagement would have produced a better musical product as well as a stronger thesis. However, my 274

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first-hand experience of the DIY mentality and the outcomes it produced have provided valuable auto-ethnographic data.

Directions for further research There is a general need for further investigation of the effect of and prospects for technology on the emergent musical middle class. This involves all kinds of study into a wider range of modes of production, distribution and promotion than this thesis has been able to cover. This need is both theoretical and empirical, and the directions below nominate some areas in most pressing need.

Political economy of creative industries

Chapter 2 provides a new framework for understanding the nature and sources of value in the creative industries and their role in political economy. The differences between the nature of commodity value and musical value are stark and require mapping, and the drivers of this new value logic need a new understanding. Also, the idea that there has never been a model for selling music should be considered with respect to other art forms or creative industries such as journalism or film-making. If, for example, news content is as substitutable to an editor as music is to a radio programmer, it follows that the business of news publishing has always been about selling pieces of paper or advertising space, not news. News content, like music, is used to sell other things: ideology, power, audiences, and commodities. This has profound consequences for news gathering organisations, online news publications, and their offline counterparts. It could be that the value proposition of online publishing, in which the material is intangible, lies in its ability to form and maintain relationships between information providers and information seekers, just as the value of music lies in its ability to build relationships between music makers and music fans. What matters, then, is not the content as much as it is the reputation of the journalist/publication/blogger as a good 275

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source of appealing content with which the consumer can do as they please. Ownership of content is less important than provision of a valued filtering service. The beginning of an expansion of this thinking lies in the idea of Esteem as the currency of an economy in which the creative industries are best assessed. However, these concepts are yet primitive. The mechanics of the conversion of Esteem into other economic forces: power and money or Bourbieu’s economic social and culatural capital, needs to be investigated and a logic of exchange devised. Further, the relationship(s) between aesthetic value, Esteem value and commercial value requires exploration in light of the prior concepts of Social, Cultural and economic capital.

Industrial power of the media

The facility of New Media to allow Independent producers of cultural goods to bypass the media incumbency suggests the end of the Industrial stranglehold. But this does not imply the end of the dominance of large media organisations, who will to a greater or lesser extent adapt to the new environment, adopt practices developed by new entrants to the market, and acquire challengers who grow into innovative market niches just as dominant companies have always done across all industries. Further, larger organisations, even larger ‘Independent’ ones, will always have bigger budgets for production and promotion that new entrants cannot match. But the strategies and practices adopted by new entrants will be innovative and informative, as will their inevitable adoption by the larger players. Similarly, the success of Independent musicians relative to their goals prior to or instead of adopting a mainstream model will be important. Answering the question of whether an Independent act can achieve charttopping success and stadium tours (should they want to) and, if so, how that was achieved will say much about the efficacy of New Media in the developing media ecology.

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Discussion The nature of Independent musicianship

It is assumed in this thesis that all locations along the dimensions of Independence are equally capable of correlating with ‘success’ for Indies but this may not be the case. Each dimension represents a continuum of choices, strategies and practices that musicians can adopt but it seems likely that some combinations of these will facilitate certain music business goals better than others. A mapping of these choices, strategies and practices against along each dimension is needed and this should be plotted against case studies of Independent music careers. This may allow a career path (or range of career paths) to be developed for musicians in the same way these have been for lawyers, doctors, or teachers. Such a development would have huge implications for music education, as discussed in Chapter 4, and future technological developments will almost certainly throw up new possibilities. The mapping of career choices against the range of possibilities may even guide future technological development. Also, the development of home studio recording as a new genre raises the prospect that similar genres have developed inn other creative industries such as literature and art. It seems likely that cheap-and easy graphics technologies such as Corel Draw and Photoshop may have enabled home production of images that, although not competing with major production houses directly, amount to an alternative genre providing opportunities for career development for artists in parallel with them. Similarly, animation tools like Flash and film-making tools like Movie Maker, combined with new institutions like YouTube may enable an Independent film industry to grow in the same way as Independent music. A quantitative assessment of each of these should prove valuable in understanding the way these technologies affect Independnet practitioners of their respective media.

Effectiveness of business strategies

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The most obvious research need in this time of blossoming Independent music careers is an examination of the most effective business strategies adopted by the most successful acts. Amid significant institutional instability in the online environment, such case studies would point to common elements to a successful strategy, providing guidance to educators and industry bodies, and perhaps identifying areas in which technological or application development could further assist Independents. Conversely, they might identify a ceiling for Independent music business growth and, if so, the social or economic forces that set the limits. The varying economies of bands as opposed to soloists should also be examined, as should the economies of the different genres of music that Indies create. Should these not prove equal in this rapidly-changing environment, researchers should consider which approaches and services are most effective for each and, further, what developments might further level the playing field.

Effects of technology on music businesses

In addition to considering the efficacy of New Media from the musician’s perspective, consideration should be given to their role in the industry more generally. The relative effectiveness of blogging, social media, music communities, and podcasting, for example, must be rated against the various stages of Independent music careers in terms of their capacity to enable music discovery (for fans as well as acts) and in terms of their ability to provide or facilitate access to offline media, should that be a career goal. Similarly, their capacity to effectively accrue Esteem and/or social and cultural capital and the contributoin of these to an artist’s business model require examination. Such an examination should guide technology entrepreneurs into areas that may not be as effective as thought, or ones that promise greater rewards.

Conclusion – so what will a successful 21st century music business look like?

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Discussion

This research project was conceived in mid-2005 and began in early 2006. At that time, the benefits of digital music sales were only just being realised and optimism for the future was being restored following the industry’s post-Napster gloom. Two-year-old MySpace had just been bought by News Ltd for $580 million, Guitar Hero had launched and was being touted as a pathway to break bands, and, after less than three years in operation, iTunes had just sold its 1 billionth download. The Industry’s dominant institutions were having wins and losses: Grokster and Napster had been shut down by legal actions and a campaign of suing Internet users who engaged in substantial file-swapping was in full swing. But the major labels’ CD sales were still in rapid decline, their attempts at online music sales services, Musicnet and Pressplay, had failed and been sold, and their legal actions against music fans were attracting considerable negative publicity. And despite the optimism, no Independent act had been able to challenge the 20th century model’s dominance of the sales charts. As my research has progressed many business models have been tried in attempts to help Independent and major-label acts take advantage of the promises of digital media. Radiohead “gave away” In Rainbows to considerable financial and critical success while Trent Reznor and Saul Williams’ conceded that their attempt at the same approach, Niggy Tardust, was a commercial failure. Sellaband promised to help bands raise the capital to fund their recordings and tours to mixed success. Developments in social media sites including ReverbNation, Ourstage, and Twitter opened Music 2.0 up and introduced Music 3.0 but MySpace’s popularity declined despite (or perhaps because of) it trying to sell music to its members using two approaches: SnoCap and MySpace Music. Several attempts to support music with online advertising, most prominently QTrax, failed to deliver a sustainable business. Robbie Williams tried to get out of his “360 deal” with EMI while Madonna signed one with Livenation, a concert promotion

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company, rather than a record label. Finally, Independent record labels banded together to form the “fifth major”, Merlin, with an eight per cent market share in the US. Through all of this only one self-publishing act, The John Butler Trio, has topped the charts, albeit in a small market, but the number of Independent acts that have established viable, if not mega-selling, businesses has steadily increased. Musicians such as Jonathon Coulton, Corey Smith, Trans Siberian Orchestra and Jurassic have joined the “musical middle class” of acts whose business is sustainable without their music appearing on top-40 radio or music video programs. These acts come from all genres of music and have widely varying musical backgrounds. At the time of writing, iTunes has just sold its 10 billionth download and CDBaby, the world’s largest Independent CD retailer, has sold more than 5 million CDs and distributed more than $107 million to its acts – some of whom have formed relationships with record labels as a result of their sales as Independents. This indicates that following the technological anomaly that began in the mid 1800s with paper charts of popular songs, became dominant in the 1920s with music radio, began to decline with the democratisation of music production technology in the 1970s and ended with the almost unlimited exchange of digital recordings enabled by peer-to peer technologies like Napster, music is returning to being a cottage industry. The 21st century music industry will be typified by a few acts that achieve popularity on the scale currently enjoyed by U2, Pink, or Coldplay, and many acts like Sigur Ros, Yellowjacket or Jurassic that attract smaller international or regional followings and derive a sustainable living from them for a period of time. Many more music businesses will remain part-time, semi-professional, self-publishing activities that are enjoyed mainly by those involved and funded by day jobs. Even those that achieve large-scale success, however, will not experience the level of success that was enjoyed by the mega-sellers of

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the 1970s, 80s and 90s. And there will be many more acts in the second and third categories as the musical middle class grows and Music 3.0 technologies mature. There will also, of course, remain a great mass of acts that will amount to very little, just as there has always been. This thesis is concerned with self-publishing musicians, whose businesses are at the lower part of the musical middle class. They nonetheless represent a significant aspect of the value chain of commercial music. It would be unhelpful for such musicians to view their careers as the art/commerce dichotomy noted by Negus (2000) and some of these will probably be given a boost into the “upper class” by companies who recognise their commercial potential based on their Independent success. Some will no doubt fall short of that promise and have to negotiate a new location on the spectrum of Independence. In this regard, Music 3.0 technologies amount to the most advanced A&R filter yet devised but this thesis does not concern that path. Several common features of sustainable self-publishing music businesses have emerged from this study and it seems likely that these will be prerequisites for Independent success in future. These features will be found in all musical genres – rock, rap, country, folk, jazz, etc – and the methods for realising them may even amount to new action genres. For musicians, the greatest liberation experienced in the 21st century is the irrelevance of institutional expectations of market saturation. The market is now open to all and this thesis presents a strategy that enables any musician to create a place for their business based on their own creativity and ability to find their creative niche rather than on genre-based marketing. First, growth in 21st century music businesses will be organic and gradual rather than spectacular and sudden. New technologies encourage a process of growth and development and a strategy of acts gathering support one show, one release, or one blog post at a time. This stands in stark contrast to the high-risk investment that underscored 281

Discussion

the 20th century approach: release an album, go all out for as much publicity as possible, and hope that the album and consequent tour sell well. Independent growth is unlikely to be continuous and consistent – it will have ups and downs, steps forward and setbacks – but the strategy that is now enabled is one of gradual growth of catalogue, reputation, fan base, and hopefully fortune. Second, the emphasis for acts in this environment will be on using their performances to create a musical experience that builds their esteem among audience members. It is this experience, rather than any particular representation of a song, that will build the act’s relationships with fans. Musicians must realise that trying to control access to their recordings simply removes them from the potential audience’s view, while making a gift of the recordings is an act of good faith that builds relationships. For fans, knowing the words and the melodies is a precursor to participating in a performance, not the result of it. Hearing recordings of those words and melodies afterwards is a reminder of that experience, not a substitute for it. The experiences of Radiohead, Issa and many others indicate that fans will buy digital recordings even if they are given away. But they are more likely to do so if the recordings represent some other aspect of a relationship with the act: a souvenir, an addition to the value of other things, or an expression of support. Thus, successful Independent acts will make and distribute cheap early recordings and videos in their home studio or in live settings to gain attention – knowing that these will eventually be repaid with labour and revenue from recordings sales, merchandise, ticket sales, and donations. Third, self-publishing music businesses will be part of loosely aligned “Organised Networks” of like-minded institutions and individuals. This, too, stands in stark contrast to the 20th century model, in which a multi-national company worked with musicians to produce, distribute and market music around the globe while taking a large stake in the 282

Discussion

results and keeping in-house control over the process. These networks will likely feature “switchboard institutions” like ReverbNation and Musowiki that facilitate the activities of many businesses, and use distributed labour to achieve their goals. This labour will be provided by institutions with commercial goals but also from individuals and other organistions whose expectations are more concerned with their reputations. The key thing is that the musicians involved must understand that they are part of a network of value exchange, not at the end of a supply chain. Fourth, the activities of successful 21st century music businesses will conform to four principles: Propinquity, Synchrony, Personality and Novelty. These principles have been derived as a platform for understanding Music 3.0 but they should also pervade the business’s structure and offline activities. Distributed labour and exchange will be harnessed to capture value at a point that is central to the music business’s activities. The results of that labour must endure and provide value at a later point as a result of future activities. Each new activity or development will be consistent with the act’s personality and promoted widely through as many channels, online and offline, as possible. This approach is most easily implemented and observed using new technologies but its essence can also be evoked when organising tours, arranging merchandise, or considering licensing deals or product endorsements. Finally, underpinning each of the above features is the view that the value that musicians generate is determined by the esteem in which the act is held. This esteem does not come only from critical or commercial success of releases or performances. It is also concerns political activism, fashion sense, professionalism, or community development. It is enhanced and sustained by the 21st century technology’s unprecedented capacity for direct contact between musicians and their fans, peers, and colleagues. Revenue generation is only one outcome from this esteem and for the many 283

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self-publishing musicians whose musical activities will never amount to more than a supplement to their day jobs, it may not be the most important outcome. This thesis began with the premise of a hypothetical group of talented teenagers writing and rehearsing in their garage and it has only begun to investigate what is a very new, rapidly changing, and complex issue. These musicians would begin their careers at the self-publishing end of the Independent music spectrum and may, guided by the principles outlined in this thesis, begin a journey that could take them to Independent labels, or to major labels, or to the creation of their own self-publishing label, depending on their goals and abilities. Or their journey may take them out of performing roles and into other professional roles – or even out of the industry altogether. I asked myself what I could tell the teenagers that would help guide their music business adventure and, having come this far, I would outline five, somewhat counter-intuitive, messages to them: 1. It’s not about the money – you have to want a career in music for the right reasons and you have to find your place in the industry: performer, writer or allied professional; amateur, Indie or part-time professional. 2. It’s not about the music – the music is a means for you to build relationships with other people. It doesn’t matter what form your music takes or how “good” it is as long as it has the power to touch other people. 3. It’s not about you – the power lies in the network of people you will meet and build relationships with and of institutions that facilitate your business goals. Some of these will be central to the operation and most will contribute a small amount but every one is valuable.

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4. It’s not about the technology – no matter how good it may become, technology is just a tool for achieving human outcomes. Adopting it comes at a cost that might be better devoted to some other aspect of the business. 5. It IS about building networks of relationships with people and giving them reasons to support your efforts and recognising their efforts when they do. Everything else flows from those relationships. Of course, there is no guarantee that the teenagers would listen, or that they would have the necessary characteristics to follow this advice. The points above contain too many words for many teenagers to take in at once. There is also a long, slow process of goal setting, decision making, productivity and growth that must occur. Nonetheless, this advice is based on sound theory and some empirical study, which should give confidence that it is valid and will help the teenagers build a sustainable self-publishing music business.

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Appendices

APPENDIX 1 – I AM LEAVING! I AM LEAVING! BY THE GENRE BENDERS

Attached to this dissertation is a copy of the creative work I am leaving! I am leaving!, to which Chapters 2 and 5 of the thesis refer. It is a CD of recordings of musical works and data drawn from its creation, promotion, distribution and sales contribute to most of this thesis.

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APPENDIX 2 – LIST OF WEBSITES REFERRED TO IN THIS STUDY

1. http://www.musowiki.net – community music facility built in Chapter 6. 2. http://www.genrebenders.com – Official home page of the band created for Chapter 5. Provides data for Chapter 2. 3. http://www.bunbere.com – Official home page of my other band. Provides background for Chapter 5 and data for Chapter 2. 4. http://www.huge.id.au – the author’s blog. Used to promote the projects CDs, document the processes and collect data. 5. http://www.coffeebeanrecords.com – Record company web page of my supervisor and co-author, Professor Phil Graham. Provides data for Chapter 2 and Chapter 5. 6. http://www.evenaswespeak.com/ – Official home page of one of the bands of my co-author and head of school, Professor Julian Knowles. Provides data for Chapter 2. 7. http://www.last.fm/music/Social+Interiors – Last.fm page of one of the bands of my co-author and head of school, Professor Julian Knowles. Provides data for Chapter 2. 8. http://www.bradsucks.net – artist home page of interviewee Brad Sucks in Chapter 4. 9. http://www.tahonline.com – artist home page of interviewee Tah Phrum Duh Bush in Chapter 4. 10. http://www.janisian.com – artist home page of interviewee Janis Ian in Chapter 4. 11. http://www.traceysaxby.com – artist home page of interviewee Tracey Saxby in Chapter 4. 12. http://www.fileundermusic.com – company home page of interviewee Shannon Martin in Chapter 4. 13. http://www.intermixx.com – company home page of interviewee Noel Ramos in Chapter 4. 14. http://www.emusic.com – company home page of interviewee Kevin Arnold in Chapter 4. 15. http://www.musicmarketing.com – company home page of interviewee David Hooper in Chapter 4.

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APPENDIX 3 – SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE

Note: If you are involved in several musical activities, please answer these questions in relation to your most important activity.

Part 1 - background 1. For how long have you been an artist (in years)? (text box) 2. For how long have you regarded yourself as a professional or semi-professional artist? (text box) 3. Where do you live (state/region, country)? (text box) 4. Do you regularly perform live outside your home country (not including recording sales)? (yes/no radio button) 5. What genre(s) would you use to classify your music? (text box) 6. Whose compositions are involved? (Ignore sampled loops but a remix is a cover of someone else’s song) 1. I write my own (including co-writing) 2. Other people write it (excluding co-writing) or I play all covers. 3. I write some and other people write the rest (in whatever proportion). 7. What percentage of your total income do you make from musical activities? (text box) 8. What percentage of your musical income comes from (must add up to 100%) 1. Performances (text box) 2. Commissions (text box) 3. Royalties (text box) 4. Sales (text box) 5. Merchandise (text box) 6. Other activities (please specify) (text box)

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Appendices 9. Do you also gain income from (check boxes) 1. Teaching music 2. Working in music industry sales 3. Another music industry job 4. A non-musical day job. 5. Another source of income (investments/welfare/parents, etc). 6. None of the above.

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Appendices Part 2 –business practices Note: If you are involved in several musical activities, please answer these questions in relation to your most important activity.

10. Is your music available as (checkboxes) 1. CDs sold from my website(s). 2. CDs sold via online stores such as CDBaby.com [http://www.cdbaby.com] or Amazon.com [http://www.amazon.com]. Please list as many as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 3. CDs sold in offline stores? 4. CDs sold at your gigs? 5. Digital downloads in stores like iTunes [http://www.apple.com/itunes/], mp3tunes.com [http://www.mp3tunes.com] or Destra [http://www.destramusic.com/]? Please list as many places as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 6. Subscription-based services such as eMusic [http://www.emusic.com], Rhapsody [http://www.real.com/rhapsody/] or Musicnet [http://www.musicnet.com/]? Please list as many places as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 7. Creative Commons licenced distribution via Soundclick [http://www.soundclick.com], or ccMixter? [http://ccmixter.org]? Please list as many as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 8. Commercial licencing websites such as Tunetrader [http://www.tunetrader.com/]? Please list as many as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 9. Free MP3 (or similar formats) downloadable from your site(s)? 10. Swappable MP3s (or similar) that I put in P2P networks? 11. Swappable MP3s (or similar) that someone else put in P2P networks? 12. Ringtones? 13. Podcasts? 14. Other (text) 15. None of the above.

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Appendices 11. Which media have broadcast or reviewed your music – recordings and/or live performances? (checkboxes) 1. Terrestrial Radio 2. Internet Radio 3. Satellite Radio 4. Newspapers 5. Street press 6. Magazines 7. TV 8. Music-specialty websites such as Rollingstone.com [http://www.rollingstone.com] or Pichfork.com [http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/] 9. Music blogs such as Muchmusic.net [http://www.muchmusic.net/] or Soundroots.org [http://soundroots.org/] 10. E-newsletters 11. Other (please specify) 12. Have you produced band/act merchandise (T-shirts/hats/stickers, etc). Tick all that apply? (checkboxes) 1. No. 2. Yes, available at gigs 3. Yes, available online 4. Yes, available in offline stores 13. Do you have a web presence at (checkboxes) 1. your own URL? 2. music-specialty sites like webcds.com [http://www.webcds.com/], iSound.com [http://www.isound.com/]? Please list as many as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 3. social-networking site such as myspace.com [http://www.myspace.com], bebo.com [http://www.bebo.com], Youtube.com [http://www.youtube.com], Flikr.com [http://www.flickr.com], or last.fm [http://www.lastfm.com]? Please list as many as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 291

Appendices 4. A blogging site such as blogger.com [http://www.blogger.com]? Please list as many as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 14. From which of these online sources have you tried generating revenue (tick all that apply? (checkboxes) •

Advertising on my website (including Google Adsense or syndication programs)

•

Affiliate marketing of music products (other people’s music, instruments, sheet music, etc)

•

Affiliate marketing of non-musical products (books, electronics, etc)

•

Other (please specify)

15. Have you used press release services such as Musicsubmit [http://www.musicsubmit.com] or Beatwire [http://www.beatwire.com/]? (yes/no) Please list as many as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 16. Have you used music-related email lists or discussion boards to promote your music? (yes/no) Please list as many as you can separated by a comma) (text box) 17. Have you used advice offered by sites such as performingbiz.com [http://www.performingbiz.com/], indiebible.com [http://www.indiebible.com/], makehits.com [http://www.makehits.com/] or indiemuscian.com [http://www.indiemusician.com/]? (yes/no) Please list as many as you can separated by a comma. (text box) 18. On average over the past year (or less if you have started recently), how many hours a week would you devote to: 1. Writing music (text box) 2. Practice/Rehearsal (text box) 3. Performing (text box) 4. Your “day job” (text box) 5. Business administration, including accounting, booking, chasing payment and so on. (text box) 6. Promoting your music online (text box) 7. Promoting your music offline (text box) 8. Networking/seeing other bands/hanging out with other musos (text box)

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Appendices 19. What support does your business/band have? (checkboxes) 1. A manager 2. A booking agent 3. Administrative help 4. Legal representation 5. Professional image advice 6. Professional marketing advice 7. Other consultant (please specify) (text box) 20. Which business functions do you outsource to other people/companies? 1. Online hard copy CD sales 2. Offline hard copy CD 3. Online digital sales 4. Bookings 5. Administration 6. Promotion/marketing 7. Other (please specify) (text box)

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Appendices Part 3 – Motivations and attitudes 21. How would you define your personal artistic or cultural “success” as an artist? (Radio button) 1. I want to change the world with my creations 2. I want to make a lasting contribution to the world’s cultural heritage 3. I want to compose the perfect song/tune 4. I want to play the perfect gig 5. I want to have someone else record my song/tune 6. I want to be invited or commissioned to write or produce songs/tunes for other people. 7. I want to hear my song/tune played on the radio or TV 8. I want to make an album or two. 9. I want to have some crowds enjoy my music at occasional gigs 10. I want to play or jam on weekends with friends 11. Other (text field) 22. How would you define your personal financial “success” as an artist? (Radio button) 1. I want to make a mega-$million 2. I want to make enough to be able to retire young and comfortably. 3. I want to be able to make music for a living for the rest of my life 4. I want to make enough to be able to continue for as long as I enjoy it 5. I want to have some crowds enjoy my music at occasional gigs 6. I want to play or jam on weekends with friends. 7. Other (text field) 23. Which is more important to you? (radio button) •

Artistic/cultural success

•

Financial success

•

They are equally important

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Appendices 24. How badly do you want to “succeed” as an artist, as described above? (Radio button) 1. I have already “succeeded” and am happy to quit when I feel like it. 2. I have already “succeeded” but I still want more. 3. It’s the only thing I want 4. I feel empty and lost without it and will keep trying. 5. I’d like to “succeed”, but “failure” is not the end of the world 6. It really doesn’t matter. I have other goals too. 25. What would you NOT be prepared to do to “succeed” as an artist? (checkboxes) 1. Surrender copyright control of my music 2. Give away some of my recordings in exchange for publicity 3. Spam potential fans 4. Perform a non-musical stunt to get attention 5. Perform other people’s music 6. Undertake a strict image-management program involving your diet/wardrobe being dictated by someone else 7. Perform for free at exhibition shows 8. Leave my family/friends for a 6-month tour overseas 9. Give up my secure day job and take a chance 10. Other. Please specify. (text field) 26. In 100 words or less, please describe what you see as the biggest barrier to growing your career as an artist. (text field)

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Appendices Part 4 – personal details Note: The following questions are not compulsory but will help me make sense of the results. You need only answer them if you would like to receive a copy of this survey’s findings and/or would like to participate further in this project. Any personal details you provide will remain confidential.

27. What is your name? (text field) 28. What is your age? (text field) 29. What is your gender? (text field) 30. What is your e-mail address? (text field) 31. What is your band’s or act’s name? (text field) 32. Would you like a copy of the results of this survey? (yes/no) 33. Are you prepared to be involved in future research in this project? (yes/no)

Survey consent script. I understand that the information supplied in this form is to be used for research at the Queensland University of Technology [http://www.qut.edu.au]. I understand that any personal details supplied will be kept confidential and used only for the purposes of my involvement in the study. I realize that I can have my personal information removed at any time by contacting the researcher ([email protected]) and expressing that desire to him.

I agree to participate in this study by supplying this information.

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Appendices Thank You statement Your responses have been recorded - thank you for completing my survey. I hope it has already suggested things that might help you reach your goals and that you completed section 4 so I can send you the results and related resources, which should be even more helpful.

I’d like to thank the following artists, who were particularly helpful in drafting and refining this survey:

Jackie Marshall [http://www.jackiemarshall.com/] Tracey Saxby [http://www.traceysaxby.com] John Harley Weston [http://www.johnharleyweston.com/] Kathy Hirsche [http://www.amusica.com.au] Peter Townson [http://www.elevenpm.com] Adrian Herd [http://www.myspace.com/adrianherd] Craig Spann [http://www.brindle.com.au]

This survey should remain online until the end of December 2006. I will then collect the responses and it will take a month or so before I can make any reasonable claims based up on them. As soon as I can make sense of the results I will write up a report and send it to the email address you nominated in section 4. If you’d like to keep up to date with the project in the meantime, I am blogging the project at http://www.huge.id.au/phd. I value your feedback via that site but I must ask you not to post any links to it as it is very vulnerable to blogspam. If you have any questions or queries about this project, want to add to or remove any of your responses, or want to get in touch with me or any other reason, I can be contacted at [email protected]. Once again, thanks for helping make the world a better place for independent artists.

Hughie http://www.huge.id.au

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Appendices

APPENDIX 4 – PRESENTATION TO THE MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF QUEENSLAND CONFERENCE AT THE QUEENSLAND CONSERVATORIUM OF MUSIC IN NOVEMBER 2007.

Third legs, tentacles and trust: anatomy of a 21st century music business

by A wanna-be rock star.

Third legs, tentacles and trust: anatomy of a 21st century music business “far from making a living by making music, the majority of musicians finance music making by making a living” living” (Bennett, UWA) 90% UK classical musicians, 94% in Norway, 92% US, need “secondary employment” employment” - mostly teaching!
Most regard teaching as a “fallfall-back career” career” and would prefer to be fullfull-time performers
Don’ Don’t give up your day job report (2003):
81% of time spent on artistic work = 66% of income;
Half of “practicing professional artists” artists” earned