Greg and Jim gave a very entertaining talk... they only had an hour, something about needing to write about the grammy nominations in time for their respective newspapers' deadlines. They didn't present themselves as experts... who the hell knows what the "Future of music" will be! And honestly, there won't be a single "future" any more than there is a single thing we can call music today. As Greg put it, "Questions are free, answers you pay for!"
Here are some tidbits I found noteworthy:
Industry Statistics from Greg
* Unpaid downloads outnumber paid downloads 40 to 1
* Major label revenue continues to fall
(Greg provided 1999 & 2008 figures... I used them to construct the graph below, 2005 datapoint is from Yankee Group, forecast is mine using simple linear regression, again, who the hell knows!)
I think that my key takeaway was Greg's comment that this shift represents a "staggering opportunity to reinvent the way things are done" in the industry. The revenue that majors will apparently continue to lose can be recovered by others... I dunno, by artists perhaps?
Jim talked a bit about the concept of the musical middle class and that the "future of music" might be the possibility for lots more artists to make a living with their music.
Funny question from the audience: How do I get noticed as an Artist
Answer (from Greg): Get good!
This elicited a laugh from the crowd, but Jim went on to discuss the necessary step of "being bad" before you "get good" (echoing something Chuck D said earlier in the year...)
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