Music Without "The Industry"

Its no secret that the music industry has been struggling over the past decade. Facing slumping sales at the hands of free downloads and digital distribution chains, people are clamoring to find a way to "save" the industry. I however have a different question, who needs it? Just to clarify, when I say music industry I'm not referring to artists and producers. I'm talking about publishers, distributors, etc. The people who increase the cost of music without increasing the value. In Clay Shriky's book "Here Comes Everybody" he talks about how the collapse of communication and publishing costs are changing the rules about the functions of "professionals" and "amateurs".

When was the last time you saw a squire? No, not the guitar. I'm talking about the squires of ye old times who's job it was to write and transcribe messages. Being a squire was a profession because most people were illiterate. Knowing how to read and write was rare enough to distinguish it as a profession. The invention of the printing press lead to the death of the squire profession. The printing press made language so cheap and easy to reproduce that not only were squires no longer needed to transcribe work, but literature was so available that literacy could be brought to the masses.



Today we are witnessing the slow and painful death of the print industry to digital media. Just as literacy scarcity made the squire profession profitable, the scarcity of publishing and distribution technologies made printing profitable. However today the average person (me) has the ability to publish and distribute their own media for absolutely nothing! I realize that just because A Delicious Blend is free and NY Times costs money people are not going to replace their New York Times subscription with A Delicious Blend. While this may be true, Shirky makes an interesting observation in that digital media is revolutionizing our definition of what news is. When traditional news outlets were our soul source of info "news" was whatever "they" decided was newsworthy. With so much information available to us today "news" now means whatever we want to hear about.

Just like publishers and squires are no longer necessities, neither, in my opinion, are music distributors and publishers. With the ferocious rate of downloading and music blogging we are discovering not only can we do "their" job but we can do it better! As I mentioned in my previous post The Long Tail, Making Your Life Awesome Since 2004 the lowered cost of distribution allows more obscure artists to better reach niche markets. Thanks to music blogs that offer promotional downloads such as ThisSongIsSick.com genres such as Dubstep which do not have much mass appeal but are wildly popular in certain niches can reach new audiences they otherwise never could have. Had such digital distribution channels never existed it is unlikely dubstep enthusiasts such as myself would have ever stumbled across it.

A major point I haven't acknowledged yet is the "free" aspect of distribution. This can be a sensitive subject among many and opinions tend to vary. I think distributing music for free is the best thing to happen to music since the cultural exile of K-Fed. Traditional forms of distribution create bottle necks that only allow for the distribution of artists that companies feel will be most profitable, aka have the most widespread appeal. I have nothing against Justin Timberlake but would prefer a few other options. Distributing music for free may cost Justin Timberlake a few bucks but in the long run enables more artists to make money by not being overshadowed by the bottle neck effect.

In order to both talk the talk and walk the walk, here are some artists I like that I feel deserve some exposure.

I Need A Dollar (Big Gigantic Remix) by md9

Of course I wouldn't leave you guys without some dubstep.
Download track here For the other two you just click the download arrow.
Fenech-Soler - Lies (Doctor P Remix) by MistaDubstep