powderfinger

Here's what I'd go with:

Intro:
Music Industry: Recording, distirbuting, and performing as revenue generators for Producers and artists
History of the Traditional Music Production business model.
Rise of the Black Market and Bootlegging
The internet age: Piracy and Copyright infringement

Part 1: Music Industry Tradition VS Revolution
It used to be the case that intellectual property was protected by either being physically available in a CD or record or instantly 'consumed' in the form of live music. The music industry, however large in terms of revenue, was small by comparison to other industries regarding the legislative part because simply put... they never had to worry about it. Since the internet boom the music industry has been playing catch up and it could be argued that most musicians today are more up to date than the industry itself. In that light perhaps the insudtry lacks the tools and/or skills to 'encourage'. They don't know how to encourage that it is an industry when the sands of the industry are still shifting and the musicians are often way ahead of the producers.

Part 2: Marketing; Being Viral
The benefits for both producer and artist in the artist taking initiative over their intellectual property beyond the scope of Music Production. The artist today has to be a brand. This concept of 'branding' is well established in other industies but an elusive concept for Music because at the heart of it Music is a 'service' and these are always tricky to market. Its a challange for more simple industries to brand their goods and/or servicse over the net and many don't opt in to do it for that reason. The music industry has no choice at this point because music and the net go hand in hand. So ideally a musician will become a brand, being viral on the net and having their content and gigs being passed around by their fans rather than the Music industry is more powerful than all the billboard the Music Producers could possible afford to post in the streets.


Part 2: Redefining the Industy
So to redefine the industry, the fans are starting to feel greater 'ownership' over the bands they love because the net gets them close to it. Look at Nine Inch Nails fan site, its a mini social network like facebook, or indeed SG. With the walls between Industry and Fans falling we have to include the fans as Stakeholders in the industry and this is something long overdue for the Music industry but many Industyr heads don't like it. It means less control for them. So perhaps encouraging the TRUE nature of the Music industry, iis a conflict of interest for the industry heads/producers.

Part 3: Meeting the artist half way, at the fanbase level
You could argue that this is the future of the industry and so the most successful producers will make it their priority to encourage all the elements unique to the Music industry and take the traditional image as a given. Use Facebook ads and Google ads as a parallel. These services use details in your searches or in your profile info to present you with banners that are specifically tailored to you, its called Hyper-targeting, or more broadly narrowcasting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertargeting
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narrowcasting
In that light maybe the Producers should be tailoring their promotion and not have the musicians tailoring their music. Music is first and foremost an Art, the industry is indeed an industry. So its the responsibility of the industry to tailor their activities to suit the musicians music, not the other way around. They have incredible tools to do this now that traditionally they never had. In the past you could encourage an artist to tailor their music to an existing niche but today it simply would fail. The artist could do a better job alone on his myspace or even this:
www.youtube.com/musicianswanted
where they upload and get paid per view on youtube, how will producers compete with that when they are telling their artists to tailor their music to some existing market that they feel comfortable promoting to?
The days of Record labels as brand names is coming to an end and the dawn of the Band-Brand is coming... its been in the making sinc ethe super-bands of the 70's really. (Band-Brands... you like that? )

Conclusion:
Encouragement that producers should follow is indeed that the music industry is an Industry but their focus should be on educating musicians about
- Its ever changing nature
- The Technology involved
- The available tools at their disposal to take initiative and ownership over their fans

Encouraging Tailoring of the music to a pre-determined market is based on a marketing model that has been very successful historically with Services and is known as a 'push startegy' but is second best to creating a presence for the musician online and offline by integrating the two activities creatively, this is their main responsibility. So that the emergent 'brand image' of the musician is accessible to their 'ideal fans' this is more of a pull strategy but ultimately creates a better match between musician and fan.


Its all a bit messy and scattered but there are some good nuggets in there. I didn't do much research but used my marketing background to give it this scope. I hope its useful! Good Luck!

Take her to small claims court (or whatever the UK equivalent of it is)-- that's jacked up

I don't know how that will work though... I'm not trying to get the money off her, I'm trying to get the landlord/letting agency to get the money off her! Argh.

And yes.. I'm glad you told us what note it was.

That's one of the greatest stories ever told! Thanks for sharing

Haven't read it, but I'll take your word for it. The title promises more than could be delivered.

It's the new film. I'm no fan, but maybe that's because I don't buy into the whole "we're the alternative, the TRUE beauty!" To me, they're still mostly just beautiful pin-up models, only with tattoos and piercings... and that's fine! Just don't try and be something you're not.

Oh and,

This is not my beautiful wife?!

How did I get here?!

The thing is, the 2 minutes I took being a dick in Photo Booth, uploading the photo and adding that sentence is two minutes where I should have been making a cup of tea and getting back to my work. The end is in sight though!

Same as it ever was...