‘Undebate’ on the Future of Music Tonight!

Tonight on SBS at 7.30pm (in Australia), Insight is airing a great discussion on the future of music. I was part of the briefing for the show and I think it will be a good one.

This debate is often masked in propaganda (from both sides) and I hoping that tonight’s show will bring some perspective. Shall we have an ‘undebate’?

Join me here tonight at 7.30pm.

Here’s the press release.

INSIGHT: MiTunes
Tuesday June 3
7.30pm

On tonight’s Insight, Jenny Brockie mediates a fascinating debate about music downloading and how the music industry will survive the digital age.

With so much music free online, thousands of Australians are downloading their favourite tracks without handing over a cent. Some call it stealing, others call it file sharing. Whatever your moral stance, the music industry has changed forever. So how are songwriters and artists making a living?

Insight tackles the issue head on , bringing together musicians, songwriters and the teenagers who download their music without paying. The Audreys, Tim Levinson from the Herd, Mahalia Barnes and Jenny Morris come face to face with fans and explain the impact of downloading on their careers.

Two teenagers admit to having over 2,000 illegally downloaded songs in their computer library. To which hip hop artist Phrase replies,

“One day I would like to buy a house and have a wife and have a kid but that’s not possible if I keep just giving to you guys all the time. I can’t just keep giving you music” .

Mikey Green, from The Audreys adds;

“I guess they’re not making that connection with what they’ve done which is stealing because it’s just a click of a mouse button. When we were younger if we wanted to steal a record we would have to walk into a shop with a big trench coat, put the wax under your jacket and run very fast.”

But most artists are aware the Internet is a fantastic promotional tool and remain in two minds about the issue. Mahalia Barnes adds,

” It really works to the advantage of an artist as everyone said, by spreading your music and getting it out there.”

Stephen Peach, head of ARIA, goes head to head with the Internet Industry Association’s Peter Coroneos over whether or not Internet services should play a role in solving the piracy issue. Says Peach,

“There are probably a billion songs a year just in Australia that are illegally downloaded. People are stealing from artists and song writers as well as labels and retailers.”

Scot Morris, from APRA, joins the debate from Europe where developments have seen ISPs and the music industry come together.

And Kevin Bermeister, formerly with the infamous pirate network Kazaa, reveals his new plan aimed at redirecting Internet users from illegal to legal music sites.

No one who loves music can afford to miss this debate.

Insight host Jenny Brockie is available for interviews. Contact Ksana Natalenko on 02 9430 3784, 0413 563 629 or ksana.natalenko@sbs.com.au

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Kevin Kelly’s Rules for Media Companies

Kevin Kelly has just written  some terrific rules for media companies to apply as they evolve their business models to the Internet: Better than Free.

The Internet is a copy machine, founded on principles of super-distribution. As Kelly says:

“Even a dog knows you can’t erase something once its flowed on the internet.”

Building a business model around scarcity and crontrol is plainly not going to work (DRM) in this new market-place. Kelly brings his big-brain, long-thought, impossible-to-express-in-a-twitter process to bear to suggest 8 generatives better than free.

• Immediacy
• Personalization
• Interpretation
• Authenticity
• Accessibility
• Embodiment
• Patronage
• Findability

If you work in media, this is your new framework.
Someone else that profoundly gets it is Gerd Leonhard, who says it’s no longer about ‘control’. Now we must think about ‘attention’.

Do media companies get this yet? What do you think?

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