By: Phil N.

There’s a lot to be learned from Mashable’s Dave Allen.

He tackles key issues that musicians face in this new era of social networking and music becoming a commodity.

For those that have the time, read the article, it’s brilliant and very informative, however, for those that don’t I’ll try my best to summarize.

• Things are changing, adaptation is a necessity, otherwise failure is inevitable.
• There are virtually no entrepreneurs taking full advantage of what the technology has to offer, take advantage yourself, and make it your own.
• Record labels are no longer a necessity, however, hard work is.
• Just because record labels make your job easier, you’ll pay a hefty price for their services.
• Understand social media platform’s Terms of Service before submitting your music to them. If you don’t agree with them, find another way to showcase your music. (Pay attention to protecting your music and copyrights).
• The newest generation (Z) thinks differently due to technological immersion from birth. Embrace the web, and these technologies, and don’t let your oppurtunity pass you by.

I hope that many musicians have the oppurtunity to read this. It’s an exciting time for the industry, and with all the changes occuring, we need to start thinking differently.

I have written this essay as a prelude to the upcoming panels, both to outline my views on the subject in advance, and also as a way to organize my thoughts and past essays into one place. The debate surrounding online music distribution still evokes passion from critics and supporters alike, the most vocal being musicians who believe that I am working to make music free online and therefore deny them income from CD sales. Nothing could be further from the truth, I simply argue that musicians need to monetize everything around their musical output and stop dreaming that CD sales will one day return to previous levels; where the 2009 equation means 100k is the new 1mm, 10k is the new 100k etc. I should point out for the record that I am focusing almost exclusively on non-mainstream, independent musicians. [Although there is no reason at all that mainstream, commercial artists shouldn’t be doing the same thing.]

From Mashable

Technorati Tags: advice, Copyright, mashable, music, Social Media, Social Media & Marketing, web 2.0

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 8:56 am and is filed under Music Business, Music Promotion, Wisdom. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.