It's easy to bitch about Rethink Music. After all; despite the
promise to instigate discussion about where the industry is heading,
a great deal of the two-day conference – which went down in Boston
this week – consists of old guard industry blowhards denying that
music faces any problems whatsoever. It's actually quite maddening;
from their designer frames to unrelenting arrogance, the bigwigs live
up to virtually every cliché that the business has ever been branded
with.
With that said – there's an unbelievable amount to learn at
Rethink, in fact so much that I'd assign it as a requirement for
anyone who wants to thrive in the new music marketplace. Despite all
of the shitheads in attendance, it's also packed with the sort of
creative souls and benevolent young thinkers and musicians who –
while they might not yet control the capital – are certainly
directing us toward a new day. Watching somewhat closely, here's what
I walked away with:
1.
The guy from Muve Music has big brass balls that clank when he walks.
His name is Jeffrey Toig, and
it took about five seconds into his presentation for him to shit on
Spotify and anybody else who's in his way. Muve is working the broke
end of the digital divide, packaging music on hood phones for
companies like Cricket. While the higher echelons of music tech
developers and venture capitalists focus on device-savvy geeks,
yuppies, and middle class consumers, Muve is “focusing on the
segment on the market whose phone – not computer – is the center
of their life.” Furthermore, their product is specifically built
for cell networks. According to Toig, “this is a corner of
the business that Spotify isn't thinking about.” As I approach my
data usage limit for the month, I can't help but agree.
2.
Biz Markie can cut some motherfucking records. Huge
props to the Echo Nest for always tapping some sort of amazing talent
to perform at their parties. A few years ago, they brought El-P in to
rock a Music Hack Day. Last year, Ali Shaheed Muhammad touched the
Rethink after-bash, while Monday night featured a DJ set by none
other than the Biz. In a quick meeting outside of the rest room, I
told Biz that he – along with Technotronic and DJ Jazzy Jeff and
the Fresh Prince – was my first concert ever, at Westbury Music
Fair about 20 years ago. He told me that he has the tape, so if
there's anybody out there who wants to digitize some old rap show
gold, let me know and I'll get you in touch.
3.
Spotify is not the answer. At
least not yet, as I gathered from a Rethink interview with the
company's chief content officer Kenneth Parks. As my editor
noted in a tweet, Spotify is brilliant, though they've yet to capture
the hearts of artists. This public exchange didn't help matters, as
Parks boldly proclaimed that no artists have been hurt by Spotify,
and that their main problem is really just that they have to explain
it better. Sort of reminded me of the last president talking about
the Iraq and Afghanistan quagmires. Furthermore, Spotify isn't
profitable yet – their “margins aren't super fat” – while at
the same time it hasn't become any sort of savior for artists. All
together, the whole thing kind of puts a damper on prevailing logic
that there'd be more to go around once labels stopped printing albums
and shipping them around the world.
4.
Even the brilliant academics only half get it. One
of the best presentations came from Yochai Benkler, the renowned
professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies at Harvard's Berkman
Center for Internet & Society. Sporting black-on-black-on-black
threads like Steve Jobs in lecture mode, Benkler applauded the Muve
model – bundling music and cell service, embedding tunes into the
flow and fabric of digital life – and chided evil artists and
imprints for their litigiousness toward fans. Benkler also, however,
noted that there have been cloud-based music models for a decade, and
that – despite the likes of Spotify and Google Play just now
entering the mainstream ecosystem – there's no need to talk about
how those efforts can and should operate. It sounds like a good point
– like when people acknowledge that e-reader technology has been
available for more than 20 years. But what he's missing is that
consumers weren't ready for the cloud until now, which is why it's
absolutely critical to stop the bigs from taking full advantage
before it's too late.
5.
I loathe everyone at Fox. Of all the reprehensible scumbags who I
saw speak this week, Twentieth Century Fox VP of Music Publishing
Cathy Merenda was by far the most obnoxious. After introducing
herself as someone who “protects” and “exploits” artists, she
went on to say that it's hardly a top priority of hers to track
independent acts down, get their paperwork straight, and pay them
royalties. As if that wasn't bad enough, she soon after bragged that
Fox was accidentally paid for a Beatles song they didn't own, and
that they promptly returned the money. In other words – it's more
important to make two billionaires and two dead guys richer, but
working class artists should have to run through a gauntlet to get
money that they're rightfully owed.
6.
Some companies really do care about their audience (as opposed to
just saying that they do and keeping number one in mind).
Specifically I'm talking about
Slacker, whose Rethink delegate, SVP Jack Isquith, was easily one of
the most amenable speakers of the bunch. I'm not personally a Slacker
user, as I like to choose my own music down to the track (never cared
much for any sort of radio, or even live DJs, for that matter). But
their custom curation model is honorable, so much so that I just
downloaded the app for a spin. Isquith says that Slacker's “biggest
challenge is ignorance – getting people to try it.” Mission
accomplished in this case.
7.
Kids and young people don't say “cloud,” or “digital music.”
They just say “music.” Something that everyone should have
probably already realized, but nonetheless another great point by
Slacker Jack.
8.
The mainstream media doesn't just celebrate mediocre artists – they
eschew DIY indie acts more than I ever truly realized. This
is what I learned from Linda Chorney, a Massachusetts-based Americana
performer who got herself nominated for a Grammy despite never
clocking one sale on Soundscan. It's a long story – and you should
really hear it from her – but the moral as I interpret it is that
know-nothing music journos don't really support the underdog so much
as they shill for whatever acts their publicist friends push on them.
For that matter, the general public doesn't care much either. People
are okay with American
Idol launching countless
worthless careers, yet Chorney got death threats and a heap of hate
for steering her own destiny. Shameful stuff, really.
9.
Artists are still just slaves to a lot of these people. I don't
need to call anybody out specifically on this one, but during a panel
called “Team Building,” I realized just how brutal so many of
them actually are. Talking about musicians like they're children who
can't make decisions, one douche even claimed that attorneys and
imprints work hard to build careers that will last well into the
future. Yeah – either that or they sign them, feed them all sorts
of hopes and dreams, and then shelve their projects indefinitely and
deny them rights to their own creations.
10.
Elbow grease is still the best tool. I
learned this from the GZA, who I'd rank right up there as one of my
favorite speakers
along with David Viecelli of the Billionaire Corporation, who
demonized entertainment marketing machines like SXSW and reminded us
that “Doritos, Amex, and Budweiser have nothing at all to do with
music.” GZA didn't give the most technological
lecture, nor did he drop any arcane app knowledge on the crowd. But
his stories of the nonstop Wu-Tang hustle – their promo van guys
used to put in 1000 hours a week – and of how he's stayed relevant
through the years offered the most important lesson that there is for
artists, which is that hard work and plenty of it is the only answer,
both in the past and looking forward. As for all of the other
bullshit, GZA deposited his two
cents in that jar years ago, and I agree with him completely . . .
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