Bob Lefsetz says the darndest things

So my lovely girlfriend tipped me off to a newsletter - Bob Lefsetz is an industry veteran who seems to speak off the cuff on all matters music industry related, especially in regards to DRM and the business model of the Big 4.

Yesterday, he shot out this newsletter: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/03/09/cmw-1/

It had me nodding my head the entire read. I'll be sending him this response as well...

Open Response to Bob Lefsetz letter from 3/9/07

Bob, you hit so many nails on so many heads that you may need to create a new hammer for the job.

I am, to be completely bluntly honest, a square peg in a square hole in the music business: I'm a loner electronic musician working in relative obscurity in a glorified bedroom studio creating notoriously "niche" recordings. But my experiences over the past 5 years hit on alot of angles of the new machine that I felt I had to tell my story.

I grew up an avid music listener, spending lunch money on tapes and records, constantly re-listening to my favorite albums and songs to learn every note and every lyric, basically surrounding myself in the music I loved. That pushed me into college radio, as well as club DJ'ing, which then gave me the punk-rawk inspiration to go at it myself.

In 2000 I began writing music for the first time in my life, with my computer and a crappy little midi keyboard I had from an old Nintendo game. Time moved on and I had a couple of albums worth of recordings. I started to explore online communities, MP3.com in it's first incarnation, and started to get crazy ideas about turning it from a hobby to a public project.

I was welcomed into the Magnatune (http://www.magnatune.com) roster in January of 2004 - I signed to them on the strength of the idea of their business model: online distribution without DRM, released under a Creative Commons license, and they made full-quality WAV, AIFF, etc available to the purchaser, all with a user-definable scale for payment (minimum $5 per album, but pay more if you want). I was quite surprised that people on average were paying a minimum of $10.00 for the albums once sales started moving, in some cases going as high as $15.00 for an album download!

Over the next few years, I built a solid network of friends and collaborators. One customer of mine on Magnatune asked about remixing my material - he's now working with me both live and in the studio. One forumite I met while talking about equipment is now working with me as well. The internet as social networking and collaboration tool lives and breaths in my music - without it I'd still be alone, but now I'm moving in the direction I need to be: becoming a viable live act with a stable of truly talented band mates and a supportive label that embraces a very necessary new and open business model.

Last week I was interviewed for a documentary to be aired March 21st on NHK in Japan - they were put in touch with me by Magnatune. The piece is a 2 hour special on Creative Commons, online music sales and online collaboration. We talked about several things, most of which was the idea behind Creative Commons and the increased need for not only keeping Fair Use a viable concern, but EXPANDING the listeners rights over the art they buy and support. I spoke to it enthusiastically - sampling is important to a continually growing culture, it's going to happen regardless of the legality. By stamping a release with a CC license, you can extend more rights to the customer and allow your art to become a collaborative tool out of the gates.

I think that we're definitely seeing the end of corporate-based hype machines; appealing to the lowest common denominator with an art form only makes it invalid, with a short shelf life, and ultimately leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Your comment on each band becoming it's own system is perfect - each band knows what they're trying to accomplish, and if they do it right and with integrity the fans will follow and support them as long as they stay "real". The audience will gravitate to what they want, word of mouth and person-to-person relationships are tried and true methods to build hype and carpetbombing press kits has always been a waste of expense for anyone not in the top-40 demographic already.

I'm pretty sure I've rambled a bit here - alot of what you say has resonated very loudly to me as a musician getting ready to try and make a big push both with a live presence and a new album/single launching this year - your words have helped solidify what I already thought was true, so thanks for that.

Keep writing - I'll happily keep reading!

Michael Weeks
http://www.thewretch.com

endmusikmesse

So, I find myself on the eve of an adventure - March 24th I'll be flying in to beautiful Frankfurt, Germany for Musikmesse.

I'll be there as an emissary of Metasonix, showing the public the crazy stuff one can do with magical yellow boxes.

Not much more to say, save for I'm looking forward to seeing alot of people I haven't seen since NAMM '06!

Ok, now back to more posts....