Smart Music

I've been in the music industry for a number of years now. As always, there' a whole heap of talented musicians getting their music out there trying to make it as the next big thing. And while the music industry has slowed down in some ways, the amount of people still wanting to make a career out of their music is as high as ever. I personally think this is a good thing, if you've got a dream keep working till you achieve it. What I don't think is a good things however, is the about of music business knowledge there is out there at the moment.

photo credit: Stichting Dollypop

There has been no one to really teach the average musician the ropes or how they can maximize their chances of being successful in the music industry. I've seen a lot of talented musicians fail because they have no idea of how to correctly market their music to their potential fans. The thing is, the music industry had got to reliant on letting the record labels take care of the business side of things. Now that the record labels can't be relied on as much, there's a lack of both knowledge and teachers that are willing to help the average musician. What people need is independent music advice.

What if some one wanted to know how to add music to facebook band page, who are they going to turn to to let them know that? Or how they would make a mixtape? Or what a sale or return deal is and how to get one? This type of advice should be made freely available to musicians from all backgrounds, and not just kept to the record label workers who only want their acts to succeed. In all honesty I'm surprised no one has stepped up and provided this information to the music industry before. If we as musicians gain the business knowledge, there's much more chance we'll succeed. To your success.

Downloadable music has been available for the past decade. Folks used to set-up FTP servers to trade digital downloadable music in the form of an mp3. FTP users would provide visitors a list of mp3’s that they were looking for and downloadable music that would be available in trade.

In the new millennium, peer to peer (P2P) networks began to gain popularity. Just like a Google search bar, P2P music services offered users the ability to gain access to downloadable music at the click of a mouse. Because P2P networks allowed all internet users (not excluding the less technological savvy users), the music industry and artists saw P2P as a threat. The ease at which internet users were able to download mp3’s and other downloadable music stemmed a series of lawsuits via the music industry.

Today, the history of lawsuits makes internet users think twice before downloading mp3’s or other digital forms of downloadable music. The user experience of the P2P networks had been so positive, that today’s legal methods for streaming or downloading music offer the same search and access functions. Today for a low price ranging from $10 to $15 a month, users can have unlimited access to streaming music and downloadable music.