Why Musicians Can’t Thrive In TheModern EcosystemAnd What We Could Do To Change That

Tommy Darker

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Contents

About Tommy Darker 1

Intro 3

“Musicians around the world must be thriving. Exceptfor us.” 5

How do I makemoney? How do I find live shows? Howdo I manage my time? 8

Digital native musicians have always struggled withthe same problems. Actually it’s just one. 10

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 12MEDIUM — Where we turn to for Business 12MEDIUM — Where we turn to for Knowledge 14MESSAGE 18

What constitutes today’s success in the music business. 24The First Medium: Mediatization 24The Second Medium: Communities 29

CONTENTS

The new music world: innovative Messages demandinnovative Mediums. 341. Business understanding (business models, revenue

streams) 352. Obtaining knowledge (Darker Music Talks) 373. Productivity 394. Connection, disconnection, collaboration, reuse 425. Community gardens 456. Platforms with fans, tribe 467. Music ecosystem 49

The chicken and egg problem. What comes first: theMedium or the Message? 52

Conclusion 57

Further reading 60

What’s next 62

About Tommy Darker

Hello. My name is Tommy Darker. I’m a musician and musicindustry thinker. I’m a writer and lecturer about the culture ofthe Musicpreneur and founder of Darker Music Talks.

In August 2012 I quit my well-paid job to focus entirely onsolving a specific problem: Musicians and artists don’t makemoney to sustain their living and re-invest in their art. That leadsto frustration and hurts art creation itself.

I want to simplify things and make them work for independentmusicians. My weapons: Clear overview of the shape of themedia world, marketing research, human psychology, currenttrends and artistic integrity, implementing everything real timeto my own band, SideSteps, so I can prove it works.

On my way to build something extraordinary, I question every-thing and talk with everyone who has something interesting tosay. Today’s music industry landscape needs more experiments.

We’re in the early stage of the rise of the polymath andentrepreneurial musicians, but the Musicpreneur is not farfrom being the norm.

You can contact me anytime on Twitter, Facebook or email. I loveconversing and hearing people’s stories.

Use the hashtag #Musicpreneur to talk about your experiencesand connect with like-minded musicians.

1

About Tommy Darker 2

“A musician who is just a musician can never be-come a good musician” (paraphrasing the quote ofVernon L. Smith, Nobelist in 2002, Economics)

Intro

Travelling the world and chatting with fellow aspiring artistsreveals astounding insights about the future of music. Here’sthe deal: we think we all face different problems, but the realityreveals the opposite. I will share one of these insights today,explaining what it means for the way we work as musicians andhow to move in the future.

Note: all the links are placed in the ‘Further Reading’ section, atthe end of the essay.

The online, interactive version can be found here.

If you ask a musician in London what their main struggle is,they will tell you that venue promoters don’t treat them fairlyand they don’t pay much. Like in Los Angeles.

If you ask a musician in Argentina ‘how’s business?’, they willtell you that the main way to make money is still through sellingCDs and performing — probably because they’re not exposed tocreative ideas and because they’re not confident about tryingsomething new. However, they don’t know that the same appliesin Philippines.

In a conversation with a Ukrainian artist on why people attendto their free pub shows but do not attend or buy when there’s anentrance fee, she had no feasible answer. Musicians in Italy andGreece are baffled as well.

The list goes on. What’s happening here?

3

Intro 4

Let’s not cast our focus on the individual problems. Instead, let’sthink about the pattern of problems, which sketches a widerphenomenon.

“Musicians around the worldmust be thriving. Except forus.”

Humans love giving explanations.

We all want to explain why various phenomena occur, such asthe lack of financial success for individual musicians or a localmusic scene as a collective. At the same time, we often hear newsabout success stories and viral campaigns from all around theworld.

We urge to explain why this happens to them, but not us. Andit’s a reasonable thing to ask.

First things first, the urge to explain seems to be ingrained inour culture; wemake snap judgements of people’s appearance, sothat we can protect ourselves from potential harmful encounters.It works like some kind of survival mechanism. It seems thatgiving an explanation is helpful in these cases.

Once the snap explanation has been given, we proceed to therationalization process; we protect ourselves from any argumentwhich deviates us from our explanations. We seek signs ofconfirmation, while anything that opposes to our views is offthe radar.

After all, we’re humans. We love giving explanations for ev-erything, even when we don’t have enough data to make an

5

“Musicians around the world must be thriving. Except for us.” 6

informed decision. We’ve been doing this throughout our wholelives.

An explanation is nothing but a decision-making tool: it possiblyit helps us follow our dreams, keep track of our progress andsurvive dangerous strangers. But uninformed explanations keepus from objectively seeing reality — bringing all the consequencessuch self deception brings.

Why is this reference here?

Because I’ve noticed a common pattern in people’s perceptionaround the world, a stereotypical notion that is allegedly ac-cepted as true, even if it has not been researched so far. I’veexplored the online libraries for related research without merit.

It has long been thought that musicians faceproblems merely because of their flawed localmusic scene.

It is believed, in other words, that there’s something wrong withthe local musicians, audience and system, while other cities,countries and cultures must be doing alright. This would simplyexplain why there’s still so much music being recorded daily.

This belief is far from reality…

Because of my projects, I travel a lot and visit culturally diversemusic scenes. I also love discussing with musicians and hearingtheir stories. After numerous conversations with local musicians,it is undeniable to me that the majority faces the same problems.A local musician in Philippines is hit by the same problems asone in Los Angeles. Ukrainian and UK artists mostly strugglewith the same basic issues.

“Musicians around the world must be thriving. Except for us.” 7

We reckon we’re different, but in reality we’remore homogeneous than we think.

What do musicians actually believe that their main problemsare? I can tell you, because I asked them.

How do I make money? Howdo I find live shows? How do Imanage my time?

During June ‘14 I conducted a survey, asking three simplequestions to the musicpreneurs that follow my updates (you canjoin here):

• ‘Which are your 3main struggles as a musician today?’• ‘Why do you think these problems are unsolved?’• ‘Do you believe that other regions/countries face thesame problems?’

This is not an official academic piece of research. However,without wanting to influence the answers of this survey, I triedto articulate the questions in a neutral manner, for the sake ofobjectivity in the respective answers.

The responses confirmed my initial assumption: the predomi-nant problems of musicians today are more-or-less the same allover the globe.

The dominant problems are related to:

1. Making a viable business around their art.

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How do I make money? How do I find live shows? How do I manage mytime? 9

2. Live performances (finding performances and makingmoney from them).

3. Promotion of their music and building an audience.4. Time management & productivity.

A bit less popular — but still significant:

1. Building a team of quality professionals (bandmates,management, collaborations)

2. Funding their projects3. Staying motivated/focused/positive

Every other problem suggested was way behind the list, withmerely 5-6 answers out of 100+ answers. The full analysis of theanswers will come soon.

We are not alone facing these problems. And that single fact is soeye-opening, for those who can see the underlying opportunity.If what appeared to be a local problemwere actually global, therecould be a way to provide a collective and smart solution in alarge scale.

But first, let’s define the real problem.

Digital native musicians havealways struggled with the sameproblems. Actually it’s just one.

We have shaped the digital world and its tools according toour needs (a tool is created because it solves a real need for asizable amount of people). These tools have dominated cultureand shaped our behaviour, consistently, no matter where in theglobe we reside.

That is to say, our behaviour becomes incrementally homoge-nized. The more we progress in the digital world, the more inter-connected we become with one another, the more we influenceeach other and the less differentiated our behaviour happens tobe.

That is not to say that there are no local specialities (ie. veryspecialized needs that make sense only in a local environment),but the vast majority of today’s projects seem to spring from thesame global motives.

Refraining from generalizing the situation, I could state: withinthe context of the en-masse-spread culture of the digital world,musicians have faced the same problems.

The aforementioned problems of part 2 existed, exist and willkeep existing in the digital economy until musicians realize andaccept that the context and the economics of the Digital Era

10

Digital native musicians have always struggled with the same problems.Actually it’s just one. 11

(dominating medium: the Internet — main characteristic: interac-tivity) are different from the Electrical Era (dominating media:TV and radio — main characteristic: broadcasting).

The problem is one, and it roots back to thebelief that the way we obtain knowledge and dobusiness are still the same.

We still believe we belong to the old music industry. You know,labels, CD sales and stuff. What is the new industry, you ask?We’ll get back to this at the end of the essay.

I’m a fan of retrospection. At this point, I believe it will be helpfulto closely examine how the old world was moving and howwe’dbeen dealing with our issues so far, only to see more clearly thenew solutions that arise.

“The Medium Is The Message”in the Music Industry.

Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian philosopher of communicationtheory, rose in popularity with his thesis “the medium is themessage”, a quote from his book ‘Understanding Media’.

In short, the medium carrying the message and the message itselfare symbiotic, not separate. The phrase encapsulates the notionthat the perception of the message is influenced heavily by themedium that it’s communicated through.

It would be useful, in other words, to examine the context of to-day’s music world and list the most popular ways we use to dealwith problems. Said with brevity: what is the infrastructure wecan use (the Medium) to find solutions for musicians’ problemstoday (the Message)?

We’ll attempt to interpret today’s music world, through the eyesof an analytical musician who uses McLuhan’s suggestions.

MEDIUM — Where we turn to for Business

On one side of the table we have today’s musicians. On the otherside of the table we have labels (majors and indies) and techcorporations (YouTube, Spotify etc.). These are the main waysmusicians rely on to make some money with their music.

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“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 13

Musicians hate business. They love making art. So they look forbosses (or ‘friends’) when it comes to business.

What do they do?

Musicians provide their musical creations to corporate strangers,whom they trust, because the musicians believe that they ‘see’business better than them. They also convince themselves thatthey’re loved by these strangers (because ‘see part 1’). Trustinga stranger with the blind hope that they’ll make you money is aclear sign of desperation.

Obviously, these strangers will do what they do best: take some-thing and squeeze money out of it, by selling it to an audience.They do all the work, so they and their contractors (aka media-tors) take the biggest chunk of profit earned, leaving musicianswith the smallest bit of the pie. Labels see music as intellectualproperty and tech companies as content (both of which arehuman inventions and have nothing to do with the musicalexpression originally conceived).

The difference between those two (and why we say ‘Fuck TheGatekeepers’ while we ‘Love YouTube’) — labels are remnants ofthe Electrical Era, and more inelastic to change, while corpora-tions are natives of the Digital Era, and thus more customizableand musician-friendly. The old boss meets the new boss.

Quick recap: Labels and tech companies build agood business upon the massive amount of musicsubmitted voluntarily by desperate musicians. Theyhelp only a few to succeed, but feed the hopes anddreams of millions.

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 14

Things are quite straightforward with business. What aboutknowledge?

MEDIUM — Where we turn to for Knowledge

Musicians are always learning stuff. Now, before we assumesafely that they want to learn exclusively about making music,let’s ask questions.

The first question is: what do they want to learn about? But it’sdifficult to draw a straight line betweenwhatwewant personallyand what we’ve been conditioned to like.

A better question: what do they think they want to learn about?The strongest reason we do things is the idea that we follow thedefault — the pre-existing choice!

The most interesting question to explore, then, is: what did theyhave to learn about so far?

Where do they look for answer? Two prominent examples thatcome to mind are knowledge institutions (music colleges) andknowledge curators (bloggers).

Music colleges are official institutions (governmental or not)constructed to facilitate educational activities on topics that seemto be popular, practical and realistic for a musician’s career. Theirvalue (and relevance) lies in their ability to give you a crediblecertificate.

Their main value is the credibility of the paper they hand youat the end of the studies and the commitment to learning. Let’snot forget, music colleges are institutions with history, brandreputation and success rates to maintain. Their paper, however,

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 15

becomes irrelevant in a world where 1) quality knowledge isdemocratized and freely available, and 2) people care aboutresults or quality products more than simple assurances of one’sabilities (aka certificates).

In reality, music colleges teach musicians about the artistic sideof their career, excluding a vital part of today’s reality: thepractical and realistic issue of making yourself known…

Practically, the majority of the musicians graduating from acollege have no idea where to go next and how to kickstart theircareer. Yes, they know how to approach, compose, perform orproduce music (or some combination of these). But, what’s next?No clue.

Let’s return to the initial question: what have they learnt aboutso far? The answer: ‘how to make cool art that everyone willignore’.

This creates a foundational framework of thinking for musicstudents. ‘But… if the syllabus puts gravity on music, this isprobably what matters, right?’ Not exactly.

We all makewhat AndrewDubber calls ‘popular music’ (nothingto do with ‘pop’ music). In popular music, the context your musiclives in matters equally as much as your music does. It’s theaforementioned ‘The Medium (context) is The Message (music)’that Marshall McLuhan described.

Heck, even hardcore contemporary music practitioners (whoused to focus on the inherent value of the musical expression)are affected by the notion of context and have realized they needto adapt to the laws of the new world (or become irrelevant andobsolete).

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 16

Why have colleges missed that they need to teach their studentswhat to do next? Because they’re inelastic to change.

Meanwhile, there is another form of education formusicians, thistime related to business and promotion. The knowledge curators(bloggers) dominate in this area.

The great thing about blogs: diversity of opinions, they’re freefor everyone, you don’t have to commit to a 2-year schedule toread them and you can work on your own pace. Great stuff. Typeanything in the search bar, you’ll probably find a few hundredposts about it, examined from various angles.

The downsides of this blog-generated knowledge are conspicu-ous:

1. How credible is this knowledge and how do we filterthe signal (useful information) from all of this noise (theincremental vastness of posts)?

2. How do you stay accountable to someone, so you can putthings in practice after you’ve learnt them, and how doyou get support if you have questions?

From my experience, nothing read on the Internet should betaken for granted without investigation. When the entry barrierto publishing is having an Internet connection, quality of contentinevitably drops.

Just because someone can write about a topic (in an interestingway, most of the time), it doesn’t mean it’s true or you should payattention. Heck, not even the words you’re reading now shouldbe digested uncritically.

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 17

Everyone can be an expert today and analyze their experiences.This creates a comfortable echo chamber for today’s musicians:everything is possible, you can make a living as a DIY artist,knowledge is free, entry barriers are non-existent.

If all this is right, where does effort and investment come in?Who stands out?

Music blogs never explain, because they’re most of the times im-practical and reflect an idealistic reality impossible to implementin the real world.

Quick recap: Music colleges are institutions con-structed with the mindset ‘we have a lot of touristsin this area, let’s build a hotel’. They offer credibleknowledge but, as a natural result, they are slow tochange and can be easily disrupted by a more rele-vant AirBnB-type of solution — see blogs (less credi-ble, lack of knowledge filters, no accountability) andCoursera-type courses (not enough diversity in thetopics discussed — yet).

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 18

Music World’s Infrastructure

Now that we’ve sketched today’s Medium (context), it’s time tojump on the modern Messages (how musicians give solutions totheir problems).

MESSAGE

Following up on theMedium-Message theory ofMarshallMcLuhan(Part 4), let’s examine how musicians have been solving theirfour biggest problems today, as seen on Part 2.

Live performances. Why do most musicians want so badly toperform live? Because that seems the best way today to expressyour passion, find a new audience and make some income. It is

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 19

one of the few remnants of the old music world that has survivedand still makes sense for musicians.

Most musicians look for gigs by approaching booking agentsor doing it themselves. They tap into a network of pubs andsmall festivals that is known to host similar live performances(Medium).

In short, if a musician wants to perform live, they have tobuild the business of the pub. This benefits everyone except themusician, since there’s no real exposure performing in front ofthe same people and the economics of pub gigging are made tofavour the business (pub). After all, people go to a bar to payfor beer and have fun. Music is complimentary — not the mainexperience.

Like the labels and tech companies mentioned before, real busi-nesses win again (the pub, in our case).

My point of view: no matter how broken the sys-tem, because of the scarce number of venues inthis network and the increasing number of aspiringmusicians, we all have contributed to creating anecho chamber that is difficult to satisfy our needs:to grow an audience and build a business. This isnot going away unless we look for alternatives.

What we ignore: online performances / personalized gigs in liv-ing rooms / crowdfunded or pre-sold performances on demand/ custom-made live experiences for die-hard, small audiences /performances in unexpected places.

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 20

Making a viable business. The notion that ‘business is bad’ isdominant and ingrained in the music world. It’s not a surprisewhy most artists hesitate to sell what they produce, let alonemake a consistent, scalable business.

The main way of attempting to sloppily make some moneycomes by tapping into the ecosystem (Medium) that the dom-inant tech companies have created. Looking at the ways thatFutureOfMusic.org suggests, we mainly see:

• Copyright-related revenues (royalties)• Time-for-money exchanging revenues (performing andteaching)

• Brand-related revenues (capitalizing on your brand)• Patronising (third-party funding)

In practice, most musicians attempt to make money through liveperformances, selling music and/or using the solutions of techcompanies (YouTube, Spotify etc.).

My point of view: there are big problems withthese solutions. Most of them are either not prac-tically sustainable (your brand or fanbase is notbig enough), not scalable or too time-consuming(how much time will you exchange teaching andperforming?), too dangerous to rely on (I would re-frain from building a business on a platform whichmight not exist in the future — see MySpace, Face-book, YouTube or Spotify) or probably irrelevant intoday’s world (this goes for this human invention of

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 21

artificial scarcity — copyright). In a fewwords: you’llnever build a real business this way.

How will musicians build a real business instead? By creatingtheir own Medium! It is analyzed in Part 5 and 6.

Promotingmusic/building an audience.Things are pretty straight-forward in this game. Promotion today is a constant fight againstnoise. Musicians respond by using social media or blogs topromote their work.

Although the way to ensure your music is heard by those wholike it still comes down to human-to-human communication, itseems that most artists simply exhaust their personal networkand cannot go past that.

My point of view: the noise in the digital world hasincreased exponentially. Everybody wants you topay attention to something incredible (which, mostof the times, is crap), so people choose to stop payingattention whatsoever. How do you convince somestranger to listen to you, then?

What we ignore: creating an exceptional product worth talkingabout / being where attention is already (riding the wave) /connecting with influencers / growth from within — fans as yourambassadors / existing fan royalty (community building) insteadof constant growth / complete music experiences instead of meremusical compositions / collaborations with other brands/estab-lished networks.

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 22

Time management. I was not surprised with the massive vol-ume of votes on time management as a huge problem. Nothingconfusing here. There seems to be no Medium where musicianstap into when it comes to organizing and prioritizing theirtasks/time. What comes close to the answer is probably theDIAY attitude (Do It All Yourself), which is everything but time-efficient.

This is rather sad, because spending time on everything — insteadof delegating and outsourcing — leads to frustration, lack of mo-tivation and, ultimately, lack of joy for what you do.

My point of view: I get it, artistic souls are dis-organized and all over the place. I’m one myself.However, commitment and resource management(time is included) are what makes things go forwardand creates a proper business.

What we ignore: outsourcing to third parties / help from fans — interns / allocating tasks to each band member / building a teamaround your brand / practical productivity system in place /experiments about what makes you productive / collaborationswith partners / clear goals.

Each of the aforementioned problems has a respective environ-ment it lives in and feeds from; its Medium. If the Medium isproblematic, then the solution will never be developed.

“The Medium Is The Message” in the Music Industry. 23

Today - Medium is the Message

In my humble opinion and with no desire to sound ominous ordramatic, the only Medium of the four that could bear fruit is theenvironment of business (with a few tweaks). The live venues,social media and DIAY attitude are the wrong starting point foran aspiring musician and need replacement. I will suggest somepossible solutions in the following parts.

There are many other problems highlighted in my research.However, once these four main problems get solved, everythingwill be much easier. Why spread our attention to every trivialfrustration, while we can focus on a few major pains and resolvethem?

Let’s start with those four and the others will follow.

What constitutes today’ssuccess in the music business.Ok, hopefully we see how poorly we currently behave andthe potential for a better future for musicians. Identifying andoutlining a problem is one part, suggesting a solution is another.This is what this Part 5 is all about.

Before we dive in, let’s articulate the main idea of this part, sowe can provide a framework of thinking along the way:

There are two main Mediums in the modernmusic world: Mediatization and Communities.Mediatization represents Storytelling and Com-munities represent Humans.

The First Medium: Mediatization

There is a fundamental premise about modern music (that sepa-rates it from classic/contemporary music). Except for the formal-istic idea of ‘the intrinsic value of music’ (that is, the exclusivevalue for what music IS on its own terms), the main valuetoday lies in the context around music (or, value for what mu-sic MEANS OR REPRESENTS), which strengthens the musicalexperience and listener comprehension.

In modern reality, musicians are connectors, not just songwrit-ers. They’re connecting people around stories and feelings. This

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What constitutes today’s success in the music business. 25

is the magic power of a song and what the most successful tunesdo: they connect. Humans. Around stories.

No surprise, then, that the main economic driver for the con-temporary music industry is based on the story built upon themusical expression. As the french economist, Olivier Bomsel [1],calls it: Mediatization.

Mediatization is storytelling upon the musicalexpression that adds meaningful value to themusic experience.

Without attempting to be conclusive on this, I love the idea ofMediatization as the first of the two Mediums upon which musi-cians can build success in the music industry. ‘Richer storytellingrewards you with success.’ Sounds like an ideal scenario.

And, in a way, it is. Think for a minute what prompts you to buysomething — concert ticket, music itself, merch, anything — fromyour favorite artist. Is it the fact that they wrote some music? Orthe fact that you’ve been reminded about their existence due toa new story that’s been published?

We buy music-related products because of the fusion of threefactors:

1. We have affection for the artist’s craft. That is, we lovetheir music.

2. Something triggers our affection towards them. That is, astory gets published.

3. They give us the opportunity to purchase something. Thatis, they have something available for sale.

What constitutes today’s success in the music business. 26

This is how the industry has been making money Direct-To-Fanso far.

In short, the business value of any musical activity, such as liveperformances, selling merch, getting sponsorships etc., is mainlybased on the Mediatization potential of the artist.

This is the grand picture of the Medium in the music industry.We don’t sell the music itself, we sell the story around music. AsTroy Carter, the ex-manager of Lady Gaga, said: “Music todaysells everything but music.”

“Interesting. Tell me more about Mediatization…”, you say. Letme explain, without going too much in depth, with the help ofOlivier Bomsel (who actually wrote a book on the subject).

Mediatization shapes the music experience and perception of thevalue of the song. The economic value in the music industry isbased on the mediatization potential. As a natural consequence,mediatization contains the extended social functions of music:

1. People connect and communicate because of music, and2. The more people that connect because of this music, the

more valuable the music becomes, triggering networkeffects.

Once mediatization has been built upon the musical expression,it cannot be detached.

It’s obvious that mediatization is a meaningful complimentand cannot exist without the great music it’s built upon.

“I still cannot get my head around it. In practice, how doesMediatization manifest? Gimme examples”, you say.

What constitutes today’s success in the music business. 27

Sure. With the artist’s branding (it can be myths, symbols, story,persona, colours, logo etc.) and the context around the music(campaigns, triggers, discovery process, marketing, distributionetc.). The tongue logo of The Rolling Stones is contained in medi-atization. The numerous times David Bowie reinvented himself,the unconventional ways Trent Reznor releases his music, thepersonal touch Amanda Palmer brings to interactions with herfans.

The blatant truth is: for the music business, Mediatization ismore important than the musical expression itself, but theformer cannot exist without the latter.

That is to say, for the music businessman, it’s not enough thatyou’re a good songwriter. You need to be able to attach a nuancedand original story that can endure the course of time.

Needless to say, this story needs to be communicated prop-erly to the people that would enjoy it.

It would not be an exaggeration if I classified ‘Communication’as a separate Medium by itself. However, stories and musicnever communicated (or that don’t endure the course of time)maybe serve little practical purpose. That’s why Mediatizationand Communication are inextricably connected — and one couldsay that Communication is a sub-medium contained in Mediati-zation. As AndrewDubbermentions, ‘there are only two types ofcontent of any value online: conversations, and the things aboutwhich the conversation takes place.” [2] I’m with you, Andrew.

The last, but probably most important thing to jot down, isthat eachmusical expression deserves its ownMediatization.

As a consequence, in the past the mediatization of music was

What constitutes today’s success in the music business. 28

mainly delivered through CDs (and this was the main economicdriver, leading to a universal business model in the ‘recordindustry’). But now the means of music mediatization can be asdiverse as the musical compositions themselves (each artist canfind their own unique way to show the story of their songs — not just CD releases — leading to a plethora of business models touse).

In short, each artist’s success could be sought upon a uniquebusiness model for their musical expression, based on richerand authentic stories. In the digital world, everything can becopied and replicated digitally (even physical objects — see 3Dprinting), leading their market value to a race towards zero.What will survive, however, are the intangible experiences wecan create. Selling copies of music in plastic discs is not the onlyway anymore and we have to stop pretending we’re still in theMySpace era.

Hint: knowledge about business models and Mediatization isessential for modern Musicpreneurs. [3]

I repeat once again: each musical expression deserves its ownMediatization. This simple sentence is responsible for the hugemess in the current music industry. We don’t know whichbusiness model to follow, after a long period of capitalizingrelentlessly on a handful of established business models.

Anyway. No matter how necessary the first Medium might be,the full picture remains incomplete unless we go to the secondMedium that artists will have to build their business upon.

What constitutes today’s success in the music business. 29

The Second Medium: Communities

As we saw, musicians today are not just music creators, but alsoconnectors: they connect human beings with stories. Mediatiza-tion had something to do with stories. The second Medium hasto do with humans.

The second Medium is Communities.

Musicians attract people around the music. They evoke the audi-ence’s feelings and awaken their sentiments. This phenomenonhas better effects when the audience has gathered in a physicalspace to enjoy a shared experience (in a live performance or anyother experience around music, generated by an artist).

You’ve definitely been in a large-scale live concert, right? Re-member the feeling you get when 80.000 people scream theband’s name or dance to their music? Priceless. It’s the vibra-tion and exchange of energy with people tuned in the samefrequency. Something that doesn’t happen with other arts exceptfor music.

The power of live music as a shared experiencelies in the activation of network effects (themorepeople that use and/or enjoy an experience/mu-sic/product, the more valuable it becomes).

This partially justifies my previous argument that ‘music nevercommunicated maybe serves little practical purpose’.

While elaborating on the fact that network effects are an essential — and actually inherent — part of the Mediatization process, it re-minded me of another, obscure word connected to them. This

What constitutes today’s success in the music business. 30

word is not a buzzword or something everyone pays muchattention to. Yet, the biggest and most high-valued tech compa-nies today ARE this word. And, not many people seem to haverealized this idea’s worth.

What is the word? The word is Platforms.

iTunes is a platform. Facebook is a platform. YouTube is one aswell. Pinterest, Flickr, Twitter and — hell — even Uber and AirBnBare platforms.

They connect two (or more) parties around a main object. Face-book connects you with friends and interesting social objectsto talk about. Twitter connects around real-time news. iTunesconnects musicians with the audience directly. AirBnB connectsroom-seekers with room-owners. And so on.

Three of their common characteristics?

1. The owners of the platform don’t create any of the con-tent, they merely connect the content creators with thecontent consumers, incentivize/help both parties to keepdoing so and make the information of the platform easy tofind.

2. They let other people build businesses upon their plat-forms. YouTube gives you a share of their ad revenue.Facebook enables you to make money too, through storesand building an audience. Flickr lets you sell your photosandAirBnB lets you rent your room. Any platformwith anAPI allows you to plug your bit into the platform, givingthe opportunity for you, the user, to innovate. This is howApple’s AppStore or any marketplace works anyway.

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3. More common than ever, the platform will give awayone product or service in order to attract one audienceand make money from another (or, finally, both). Freein platforms is not a bad thing — it’s a prerequisite andit’s profitable. By doing so, platforms build their businessmodel upon other people’s activities and make money.They become the enablers. To simplify this nuanced mat-ter, the more people that use the platform and interact, themore valuable the platform becomes and the more profitit makes. Networks effects in action.

Which made me wonder.

If musicians…

1. Are connectors already, connecting human beings aroundstories and common feelings…

2. Give away their main product for free — that is music — and…

3. Already enjoy and incentivize user-generated (or fan-generated) content around their art…

…then what keeps them away from being their own success-ful platform?

The answer is: in practice — absolutely nothing. In theory — justthe absence of knowledge on how to build and approach aplatform.

Platforms are so powerful in the real world, that a BostonUniversity business professor who studies and speaks about

What constitutes today’s success in the music business. 32

Platform Economics, Marshall Van Alstyne, said that “there isa strong argument that platforms beat products every time.” [4]

Your music (and mine, too) has been a product so far. Created,promoted, sold. Like a shoe in a factory and game in a store.

Nike changed from a shoe manufacturer to an interactive plat-form for runners — and they won big. The same for Apple, whoallowed the game developers to create their own app games andconnected them with a global audience through their AppStore,taking advantage of their iPhone devices — Apple won big andwere ahead of their time, too.

Now it’s high time that the approach to music shifts: music is aplatform upon which a serious business can get built, connectingpeople around musical expressions and musical experiences.

As Andrew Dubber mentions in his ‘20 Things You Need ToKnow About Music Online’ essay, “we hear music, we like musicand then we buy music”. Since each platform has its own, uniquebusiness model, what if we ‘hear music, like music and join theplatform about music’, instead?

I’ve been studying and experimenting with these concepts for awhile now. I find them highly arousing and exciting. I even quitmy well-paid job to follow them and implement them in my art.But let me be clear: both Mediatization and Platforms have a lotof theoretical and practical points backing them, but they’re noteasy concepts to master.

Nevertheless, before ourmain focus was to impress a label’s A&Rand dowhatever they say — getting a cut for this ‘obedience’.Nowour main focus shifts to learning about making richer stories andbuilding communities.

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More fun? I think so. And I’m looking forward to it for sure. Thefuture is now.

The new music world:innovative Messages demandinnovative Mediums.How ready are we to welcome the new music world, wheremusicians will be entrepreneurs and thrive? Once again, let’s notjump straight to the answer, but let’s go around it. Shall we?

Patrick Vlaskovits created a presentation worth reading aboutgrowth hacking [5]. He mentioned something that grabbed myattention and triggered thoughts:

“Innovative products demand innovative channels, contextand mediums.”

That is to say, for the new generation of Musicpreneurs toflourish and create innovative art, business models and solutionsto their problems (Message), along with the proper innovativecontext (Medium) need to be in place. And vice versa; as animportant and inevitable by-product, each innovative contextneeds innovative products (cultural and entrepreneurial) to keepmaking sense.

Alright, enough with the theory. I think I’ve stressed enoughthat existing Mediums provide wrong context for the era of theMusicpreneur to fully blossom.

Fundamentally, Musicpreneurship is not mas-tery of the existing system of infrastructure, it’s

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true innovation set to build a music business andpreparing the ground for a new ecosystem.

In my presentation in Midem [6], I mentioned that, despite beingin a transitional era, the current D2F is not strong enough toreplace the old system set up and maintained by labels. Hence,all the problems and insecurity for musicians that keep lettingpeople down.

What should we focus on, in order to build this innovativeenvironment and musical products? I’ve discovered seven areasimperative to the new music world.

Let’s discuss them.

1. Business understanding (business models,revenue streams)

Where do you turn to when the old music biz system is nothelping you anymore and there’s no-one to run your businessactivities effectively? I see only one solution: it’s high time musi-cians understand the fundamental business mindset themselves.

Where to start? The bullet-point method never fails:

• First and foremost, learn about Lean Thinking [7] andhow to build a startup [8]. I’d suggest that you start withSteve Blank and his free courses/blog. This will unlock theperspectives of what an enterprise is and how it drivesvalue to your audience and you. Hint: when musiciansdemystify what business is, they see clearly that it’s all

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about creating value for their audience, while enjoyingmaking a profit doing so.

• To get started, there’s no single more representative wayto approach the music business methodically than theBusiness Model Generation system [9]. Buy the book andread/watch the numerous free resources about the topic.

• Find out what other industries are doing. They’ve exper-imented far more than musicians have, so there are valu-able lessons to take away and rework. See examples andhow modern business models work for other companies.They will provide inspiration on how you could operateand think as a music business.

• Business is learned better in practice. Studying can helpbut, from my experience, nothing compares with actuallytrying to sell something and then trying to understandwhy you’ve failed to do so.

• Finally, if you’re a musician that loves stating ‘I’m a mu-sician, I only want to make music’, then here’s a personalconfession for you: I’m not a natural-born businessmaneither. Neither did I enjoy it in the beginning. It came outof necessity and desire for innovation and independence.The idea of demystifying the notion of business camefrom getting immersed and facing the real problems ofmy music ventures. And, guess what? I find myself morecomplete and creative now. Somehow, creating new dots,connecting and disconnecting them, as Steve Keller says[10], brings astounding and unpredictable results. Theendless possibilities keep me going.

I tend to document everything along the way and put it onlinepublicly. You can read it here.

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2. Obtaining knowledge (Darker Music Talks)

As I mentioned in Part 4, our current music education systemprogressively becomes more irrelevant and more unable to illus-trate the dynamic, modern environment. Our education needs tobe smarter and more practical. Knowledge has broken free fromthe certificate, which is not as useful as it once was.

Howwill we build a better educational environment that reflectstoday’s needs and mindset?

Innovative Mediums require innovative Messages, remember?Instead of courses made to stay static for the years to come (mu-sic colleges) or courses with no credibility and touch with reality(music blogs), we could focus on the power of crowdsourcing;learning from experts in our field of interest, and frommusiciansthat have already had success in building their audience andbusiness. All we need is a platform connecting these musicians(demand) with the experts/successful musicians (supply) — whichcan facilitate this curated knowledge in a platform.

This way, we ensure the relevance and practicality of the knowl-edge we receive. We won’t have static lessons anymore, butproven knowledge, delivered by themost relevant local resourcesin the most personalized way.

These resources will not have to come from the music industryitself. The gaming, diamond, casino, porn, and book industries(and so many others) have so many valuable lessons to teach us.I know, because this is how I discover fresh approaches to all ofmy projects — I see what ideas the other industries have to share.

In practice, how could that work? Don’t worry, I’ve started.

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My main venture, Darker Music Talks [11], whose mission is tospread entrepreneurial knowledge wherever musicians aroundthe world are, is a series of discussions that connect localknowledge keepers withmusicians, in a chance for a constructivedialogue. Each discussion is free of charge. These conversationsare educating more than 700 Musicpreneurs in 6 countries at themoment (as of June 2014), with a goal to reach 13 by September2014.

For those who want to go a bit deeper, there are limited slots forfull-day workshops, where musicians have to pay a small fee (inorder to cover expenses and create some budget for the venture’sexpansion) to get practical knowledge and actionable plans byaccredited educators on subjects such as business models, socialmedia, crowdfunding, project management and lean startupthinking.

Picture for a moment what AirBnB does. This is the mindsetDarker Music Talks follows too; AirBnB discovers available localresources, instead of building new hotels, turning local accom-modations into rooms-to-rent. Darker Music Talks discovers lo-cal knowledge keepers and practitioners, instead of building newmusic colleges/courses — and turns them into credible knowledgeresources.

In a world where Coursera-type online courses help thou-sands of students obtain information, Darker Music Talkscould be the platform to disrupt music education as we knowit.

It’s time to provide musicians with practical knowledge on whatto do next to build a sustainable business around their music. Ifyou want to organize one in your city, get in touch.

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3. Productivity

As we saw in Part 4, management is the Achilles heel formusicians. There seems to be some kind of problem that preventsmusicians from getting much productive work done.

I think the explanation is simple: too much information. Musi-cians today are overwhelmed with a vast amount of informationand tasks to undertake, making their artistic life less enjoyable.

It makes sense. And, to be bloody honest, a new ecosystem with-out musicians doing ‘the right work’ won’t really go anywhere.Nobody just wants to be ‘busy’. That’s a myth we artistic typesneed to get over.

The problem with information clutter could be easily tackledwith the aforementioned knowledge system. A filter that shows(and teaches) musicians what information is worth consumingcould be a great time saver.

However, it’s not enough to make an artistic person more pro-ductive. I’ve been there, trust me. A problematic area seems tobe the completion of admin tasks. We’re pretty good at beingcreative, but not in completing the work that ‘has to be done’.I can already picture in my head the last musician to complainabout having to update his social media profiles.

What I did, in order to put my life together and minimize thetime spent on workload, is pretty straightforward. Practicallyspeaking, it is not a method I read somewhere, but it’s helpedme loads and I’d like to share it with you. Since it’s my owncreation, let’s call it ‘The Darker Method’. Again, this list is to befollowed by order, otherwise it won’t be of much help.

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1. First of all, I focus on getting some pre-work done. Before Iundertake any kind of project, I make sure I understandwhatthe heck I’m putting myself through!

In German: I clarify my goals and set priorities. This is theabsolute number one step, which creates a structure of thinkingthroughout the whole project.

I won’t go in depth about goal-setting and prioritizing; there aremany resources out there. It’s worth mentioning that I wrote thisarticle, which mentions goal-setting (Why DoMusicians AlwaysFeel Disappointed About Their Careers? [12], and this bookabout decision-making and action taking [13], which includespractical tips about prioritizing.

2. Once I’ve done the pre-work, I shift my mindset to high-value productivity. Woody Allen wrote, directed and pro-duced 44 movies in 44 years, half of which got awards! THISis high-value productivity. [14]

Work for the sake of work won’t take you any further than theperfect average.

Moreover, instead of working for the whole day, I found it superhelpful to focus on exactly 3 hours of work per day. 3 high-value-productivity hours, forcing myself to get everything done withinthis timely limit.

This helped me break my constraints and cut the fluff out ofthe game. In 3 hours, I don’t have much time to contemplate onunnecessary stuff. Instead, I follow what Woody Allen inspired:

“Be bold in conception, but pragmatic in execu-tion.”

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No brainstorming, creative stuff or day-dreaming. Just workloadthat HAS TO be done.

To break this even further, I use 30-min volumes of high-valuework, following the Pomodoro Technique [15] (it works great forme) and track my progress with the following principle.

3. “Just don’t break the chain!”, said Jerry Sainfeld about theway he becomes productive. He just gets hiswork done everyday, no matter what. He focuses on not breaking the chainof work he’s created. [16]

A great way to put that in perspective is the ‘NumberlessCalendars’ idea that Andrew Dubber suggested [17]. I’ve beenfollowing this method for a while now and, I got to confess, it isthe perfect drug to keep me doing.

4. Ok, let’s say we’ve managed to organize our shit andbecome productive, with only 3 hours of work per day (itneeds work, trust me).

Howmore awesome does our day look like now? If you wake upat 6am, like me, you’ll be done by 10am. The whole day for youto devour and do creative things.

To take this one step further, once you’ve got hold of theamount of work it takes to get specific tasks done, you can startoutsourcing them. You now know exactly what it takes to getthem done. Create a checklist and let other people get them doneon your behalf.

Some ideas that could be handy:

• Allocate tasks to your bandmembers. You’re a team, right?

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• Ask your fans/interns to get some work done for you. Theformer want to be part of the experience and the latterwant a better CV.

• If you have budget, find a virtual assistant and let them dospecific tasks per day. There are many services out there.Just Google ‘outsourcing’.

5. Last thing to keep in mind: once you’ve understood howto manage your time and tasks effectively, it’s high time youget a manager to take you to the next level.

‘A manager will not fund your career, but will help you leveragewhat you’ve already built,’ says Ian Titchener, a manager andsupervisor from London with more than 35 years of experiencein the industry, in his interview for my book [18].

I’ve never had a manager, but I have a feeling that they will playa vital role in the era of the Musicpreneur.

4. Connection, disconnection, collaboration,reuse

The biggest problem in the digital world is not creating the dots;creation was never a problem in the digital world. No, the bigchallenge is connecting the dots in a way that makes sense, andhaving the wisdom to know when and why to disconnect themfor new combinations to be made.

By ‘dots’, throughout the essay, I mean pieces of information,human connections, creations, products, everything that makessense in a self-contained way.

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In an ocean of abundance of ‘self-contained dots’, the questionis: why should we be connected with them and how?

Practically, in the past it was difficult — maybe impossible? — tobe connected and collaborate with other creators independently.Mediators had to be in place, and it was exclusive luxury for afew. Hence, the creations produced were usually a product ofa singular mind or a small team of people (usually the band orcollective). This group of people, in the best of circumstances,would be locally connected, with all the physical constraintsthis involved. My point is, the creative outcome could be asnuanced as the singular mind that produced it and the limitedtools involved in creating it.

Today, things are a little bit different. Distance is practicallynon-existent and we connect with people because of interest,rather than physical constraints. This changes how our brain iswired. A musician can now think about how to connect withall the creators around the world and create something richer interms of perspective, as a result of a group of connected minds.Collaboration and the co-creation of genius minds are steadilyreplacing the cloistered creation of one genius mind.

Of course, knowledge brings responsibilities regarding its use.Because we can connect and co-create, it doesn’t mean wenecessarily should. However, everything starts with the notionthat “I can connect with people from all over theworld and createin amazing ways that didn’t exist before,” rather than denyingthat this option is possible and persisting in the old paradigm.

Obviously, with connection also comes disconnection. A worldfull of stable clusters of information and fixed mindsets wouldbe very uninteresting. Disruption is a word that comes in mind

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when talking about disconnecting the dots, in order for a new,fresher solution to come in play and take over for a while. Untilthe next disruption.

The last notion that I’d like to highlight is the one of ‘reuse’. The‘sharing economy’ is blooming and we are, as a human race,directing our activities towards reusing, not throwing away.This is a wiring that affects all aspects of life, such as art andcreations. A hypey word that has come out of this culture is‘crowdsourcing’, as mentioned above.

“Everything is a Remix”, said Kirby Ferguson [19], and he findsme in line. There’s no parthenogenesis, no thing that comes fromnothing. It’s high time we accept this argument and shout it outloud for the world to hear, instead of silently accepting it butpublicly omitting its validity.

Feel free and remix. But, again, because you can, it doesn’t meanyou should. Still, let’s not deny that you can.

Why are we mentioning all these things in this space?

Because we need to understand that the maincharacteristic of the Internet is its interactivity.

Back to Andrew Dubber again, the Internet is conversationsabout social objects [20]. As the CluetrainManifesto stated yearsago [21], things on the Internet have a human voice. That means,the Internet is just the medium through which we communicateour human thoughts, predominantly using the language wewired our brains to communicate and think in for thousands ofyears.

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I love this quote and use it as a compass: “Write like you talk andthey’ll read like they listen”.

In the Electric Era, our main medium was broadcasting, one-directional and restrictive to the experience. Now interactiv-ity allows collaborations, creative solutions and experiences tospring in life.

In a few words: we don’t need to create things to fit a pre-established medium, like we used to (think of CDs, recording,publishing, marketing etc.). Collaborating, remixing, reusing,connecting and disconnecting is the dominant mindset of thenew (music) world.

5. Community gardens

A thought not to be forgotten in this overwhelming amount ofinformation is that “Art is a long-term game.”

The mission of art is to create questions. Thought-provokingcreations endure the test of time. Remembering this is paramountin an era of disposable art, ideas and personalities.

Tying this with the aforementioned idea of collaboration andopenness, I’ll stand by Steve Keller, who mentioned the term‘Community Gardens” in our interview for the full version ofmy last book [10]. It’s articulated so well that I need not explainany further:

“A metaphor I’ve found helpful is that of planting agarden. This, again, is a process — a cycle. Seeds areplanted, the garden is nurtured, there’s ultimately a

The new music world: innovative Messages demand innovative Mediums. 46

harvest, and on it goes. In business, as in life, somemoments I’m planting seeds, others I’m tending,and still others I’m benefiting from the harvest. I’verarely had a “jack in the beanstalk” moment whereI’ve planted a seed and overnight it grew into thismassive thing.

The interesting thing I’ve noticed is that, while I’mplanting seeds, I may not always the guy at theend getting the harvest. Sometimes I’m wateringsomeone else’s garden. By the same token, I some-times benefit from harvesting a garden that some-one before me had planted and tended. I understandthe benefits of “ownership” and the fact that we needto have regulations in place to protect content we’vecreated or innovations we’ve developed. Yet I alsothink we need to foster more “community gardens”where we incubate ideas, where we spin processes,but open up the progress make to others who cantake it further. Operating communally requires agreat deal of trust and a sense of fair play.”

Thinking of the music world as a one-shot game will sig-nificantly reduce your chances of harvesting the CommunityGardens that await.

6. Platforms with fans, tribe

Every era is excessively transformative for the people that hap-pen to inhabit it. Due to our tendency to look in the current era

The new music world: innovative Messages demand innovative Mediums. 47

with the previous era in mind, we have the “Rearview MirrorEffect”, as described by Marshall McLuhan.

The “horseless carriage” was the new invention, later to be calleda car. We listen to Web Radio and watch Internet TV. It’s no thatwe’re really watching TV or something. We just tend to describeit like this, in order to grasp the idea more easily. It would bepreferable, however, to name the new artefacts with a new namedrawing a line of separation with the old ones.

With the same way of thinking, we call modern musicians ‘In-die’, as if they’re supposed to be attached in a label by definition.My suggestion for the musicians who operate as entrepreneursin order to make a living is to be defined as ‘Musicpreneurs’.

Likewise, themainstream perception aboutmusicians has changed:from the untouchable stars of old to the community leaders oftoday.

Let’s dive into the community thing a bit.

Why should we take communities seriously?

It all comes down to attention.

As stated above (Part 5), music is the connector and musicians,the administrators of this connection. They connect humanswithemotions and stories, with their art being the focal point. Howprecious is that?

What’s more, success used to be counted in terms of sales. Themore the record sales, the more successful the artist. Well, theystill count it like this, in a way. But, in an era where access is moreimportant than ownership and information clutter pollutes everyindustry, attention becomes the main driver of the economy.

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Got attention? Great — now you probably youhave a good chance to get the money.

As an extension of this reality, short-term attention (viral hitsetc.) seem like short-term money, which doesn’t equal a real andscalable business. How can this attention be recycled, insteadof being scattered in a myriad of directions? This is wherecommunities come in, contributing to the long-term game ofmaintaining attention.

Coming back to the musician as a connector, I see music artiststurning into great platforms, where interactions around music-related social objects are held. As Seth Godin puts it in his book,Tribes [22], the musician will be the leader and fuel for thisinteraction, until they gain enough momentum to become a self-managed community.

How viable is this, then?

Platforms give tools for members to communicate with eachother and express themselves — creating content around the so-cial objects discussed (the art of the musician).

That’s not where it all ends, however. Platforms and movementsdon’t survive unless they can become self-sustaining.

Musicians will sooner or later be called to discover a businessmodel to monetize these connections and interactions. The goodnews is, each solid tribe will start developing needs and acommon mindset. This is where the commercial aspect lies.

“Got an example, Tommy?” Yes, sir.

Say, in collaboration with a headphone brand, a gothic bandcreates self-branded headphones for their community. Gothic

The new music world: innovative Messages demand innovative Mediums. 49

people don’t fancy wearing commercial crap with happy colours;they have the need to be unique and show their belonging to thegothic culture.

This is merely the idea that commercial experiences and productsthat can be designed to create a more personalized, customized,intimate, meaningful and rich experience for the audience.

The key-words that sum up themusic-fueled platforms: musicianas a leader, social objects around music, tools for user-generatedcontent, community-driver mindset, seamless connections andinteractions between members, and business models built uponthese interactions.

7. Music ecosystem

Eventually, the last thing that will change, as a consequence ofall the previous mental and practical transformations, will be theecosystem surrounding and embracing music and commerce. Bythat, I mean everything that is not an immediate need when itcomes to music creation and conducting commerce with music — but that can still be helpful — as in things that make activitiesfaster, easier and more efficient.

Examples include: time management methodologies and soft-ware, better tools to create websites, investors to give cash formusicians to supports their art, the proper mindset from theaudience to support music practically, the spirit of communityin artists’ tribes, workshops that teach musicians about businessand other practical stuff, mobile apps that keep you in connectionwith your business, collaborative projects and grants etc.

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In simple words: the ecosystem reduces the fric-tion and makes the connection of dots easier.Currently, we’re in an era with a lot of createddots, but with few connections between them.

Thewhole ecosystemwill change, gradually. This is for sure. Andit’s not the first time that this will happen; look at the tech startupworld for many live, unfolding examples of this in action.

Today, the tech world ecosystem has evolved in a way to cater tothe new needs that pop up regularly. In the past, it was impossibleto think that it would be that easy to approach an investor andpitch them your project. Now it’s very easy to find one; they eventeach you how to talk to them and make their job easier. That’sbecause there is a need for cash to move fast.

Well, I’m not saying that it’s equally easy to close a deal and getfunded, manage your time and build a product that the worldneeds, but — hey! — this is still a game that requires skills, abilitiesand hard work to win. Before, it wasn’t hard to be be able todo all that, it was impossible. On the other hand, nobody cantell you not to go for it today. You can. The barrier to entry isclose to nothing. If you don’t yet know how to, you can learn.Which means, more competition and more noise to overcome.Well, these are the modern challenges of the digital world thateveryone needs to face sooner or later.

The same shift will occur in the music world. The investorsand all the other devices that will shape the new ecosystem (toreplace the label hegemony) will come to cater new, real needs.The ecosystem’s behaviour towards musicians will change, oncethe mindset of musicians changes, and that will be reflected intheir actions, en masse. Noise will remain, but that’s inevitable.

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The immediate outcome of this transformation? There will benobody to tell you that you can’t make a living as a Mu-sicpreneur.

Hello, we live in the most exciting time in the music industry!Welcome.

The chicken and egg problem.What comes first: the Mediumor the Message?Sangeet Paul Choudary [23], expert in platform building, men-tions a term that is spot on to describe the main challenge in theupcoming music ecosystem: ‘the chicken and egg problem.’ (bythe way, read his blog, it might turn your head on the subject ofplatform thinking)

What will come first? The change of Medium(the music ecosystem) or theMessage (musicianssolving their problems)?

I have practical experience when it comes to platform and com-munity building, and I can confess that the underlying principlesare the same whether you build a music, tech or stitchingcommunity. We all obey the rules that dominate our nature — not merely as music lovers, but as human beings in general. Thisis my attempt to suggest something practical, hoping that myexpertise and guesswork will not fail to make sense.

Let’s put things in perspective and attempt to give a plausibleanswer.

A platform or ecosystem is powerful because of the networkeffects: themore people that use it or inhabit it, themore valuable

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The chicken and egg problem. What comes first: the Medium or the Message?53

it becomes. In other words, somehow a brave start needs to bemade.

For a platform like Facebook, the initial problem might go likethis: there’s no value in the platform without users inhabitingand interacting in it, and there’s no reason for the first users tocome in an empty network.

For a platform like Ebay, it would be: there’s no reason for peopleto put their products online if there’s no-one to buy them to andthere’s no reason for the first customers to show up unless thereare products to buy.

What comes first? How do you inhabit a promising platformor network, if there’s ambiguity in how to make a start? Howwill this music ecosystem arrive, if there’s no Musicpreneursinhabiting it and no services to cater the Musicpreneurs’ needs?

There are numerous ways to solve this problem, but the mostpractical, in our case, is to find an already existing structure andexploit it.

How will we find this structure?

First of all, we already have Musicpreneurs operating around us.I’ve met many of them during my trips. They build businessesaround their music and think like entrepreneurs when it comessolving problems, but switch to thinking like artists when itcomes to creating questions. They are the foundation, thestrong bones that embody the new ecosystem.

But they’re isolated. These aspiring Musicpreneurs are unawarethat others exist. If they did, it would be easier for them toconnect, collaborate and innovate. A community and an ecosys-tem starts gaining momentum when a few active leaders gather

The chicken and egg problem. What comes first: the Medium or the Message?54

together and show practically the way to others. These ‘others’are the musicians who want to and are willing to do the work,but need a kick in the butt to start. They are the smaller (butequally important) bones of the ecosystem.

In other words, the already existing Musicpreneurs need toconnect with each other, then start being active with innovativeMessages (or create dots, as you prefer) in order to lure andtrigger the curiosity of other musicians who would love to dothe same.

It might take a while until these Messages start creating momen-tum and media coverage, fuelling debates about new practicesfor musicians and business. I’m sure it will spark the audience’scuriosity — every novel activity does. I’ve been told “the moreyou talk about an idea, the more real you make it”. Theseconversations are the ligaments of the body, giving it theability to stand up strong.

This momentum will grab attention with successful case studiesto be examined and analyzed. Universities, institutes, musicmedia and already existing communities are a perfect ‘carriage’for these Messages to be transmitted to a broader, but targetedaudience. This official examination of Musicpreneurship isthe flesh and consciousness of the ecosystem, making it realfor people to see.

Once somemomentum is created, the participatingMusicpreneurswill start identifying themselves with the common characteris-tics, attributes and goals that unite them. Do you know whathappens when like-minded people walk towards a mutual di-rection? A movement is born. This means that the ecosystemstops being merely a body, it also shapes its own personality.

The chicken and egg problem. What comes first: the Medium or the Message?55

The bigger the movement, the more inelastic it will become,with more problems to solve, more motivation and belief tobe fuelled and, of course, more resources and time to expend.These ‘bad problems’, though, will essentially create and shapethe desirable ecosystem we all crave! Why? Because problemscreate the need for interaction with other, more-experiencedecosystems, in order to solve them.

An ecosystem is created to solve and cater to a community’sneeds, and that’s what will happen in our case too. Imagine fora moment. Investors capital will come when they see moneyalready being made by Musicpreneurs. Services will come whena significant amount of Musicpreneurs need a problem solved.The audience will start supporting artistic enterprises in a sus-tainable way, when the enterprises take themselves seriouslyand work with a small but loyal audience that will help themscale up. The government and music industry will recognize andsupport musicpreneurship when it becomes amovement that canbe recognized by the public.

What a new music ecosystem would potentially include:

1. Education system2. Service providers3. Governmental support4. Business partners5. Investors (angel- and venture-)6. Cultural accelerators7. Responsive audience

Most importantly? There will be the involvement of superstars,leading Musicpreneurs, middle class Musicpreneurs and ama-

The chicken and egg problem. What comes first: the Medium or the Message?56

teur/hobbyist musicians. Not just the former and latter classes,the big gap in musical ‘success’ we see today . Education willhelp the promising amateurs to become middle class, luck andwork will make them leading and labels/infrastructure/partner-s/investment will be used to scale up towards the head of theLong Tail.

Does it seem like a sci-fi scenario? It’s not. The foundations arebeing laid down this very moment. Musicians are thinking ofsolutions at this very moment. It will start to become powerfulwhen the innovative Musicpreneurs connect with each other,something which I’m working on myself.

Last thing to mention.

Talking about Musicpreneurship as somethingthat we expect to happen is like secretly await-ing our next boss to dominate our lives. Mu-sicpreneurship is something thatwe do, not some-thing that happens.

We are the brave new music world.

Conclusion

After this meticulous exploration of today’s musician’s problems,the current context that we operate within, feasible suggestionsto cure the problems and a sneak peek at the future musicalecosystem, I think it’s time to quickly recap.

(Part 1,2) The notion that musicians face problems that are localand specialized is wrong; the majority of musicians around theworld face the same problems. This creates the opportunity fora universal solution.

(Part 3) Actually, there is only one problem to be identified: thefalse belief that the ways we obtain knowledge and do businessare still the same like in the past. Things have changed and theproblem is our resistance to change.

(Part 4) ExploringMarshallMcLuhan’s ‘Medium is theMessage’,we currently use labels and technology companies as our mainMedium to solve business problems, while music academies andblogs serve the purpose of the Medium for obtaining knowledge.These Mediums offered a lot in the past, but they create anoutdated ecosystem for musicians today, failing to solve ourproblems efficiently.

The way musicians currently solve our problems when it comesto live performances, making an income, promoting our workand managing our time is not effective, despite the existenceof promising alternatives. The main reason why? The contextaround these problems is itself problematic and needs a change.

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Conclusion 58

(Part 5) Exploring the main Mediums that constitute successin the Musicpreneur era, Mediatization and Communities arethe two environments where modern musicians can prosper andcreate richer stories for their tribes.

(Part 6) “Innovative Mediums need innovative Messages”, andin order to build a flourishing environment, 7 focal areas havebeen identified:

• The way musicians understand and treat business• The educational system that providesmusicianswith knowl-edge

• The means for musicians to spend their time productively• The importance of collaboration, connection and discon-nection

• The notion that innovation comes through seeding Com-munity Gardens

• The insight that building communities creates long-termsustainability *The changes that will occur in the futuremusical ecosystem

(Part 7) There is a bright future ahead. Momentum will trulygrow with the connection of existing Musicpreneurs…

Then, through collaboration, success stories, and inspiring othersto be part of a tangible movement follows a new and betterecosystem for a new and better musical world. And you can bea part of it.

Join our community of #Musicpreneurs. We build the musicecosystem we want to live in.

Conclusion 59

Don’t forget to remember:

Tweet: Musicpreneurship is something that we do,not something that happens. #Musicpreneur

Further readingFurther investigation and resources are necessary to explore thepresent and future of music, so I reckoned it would be useful toprovide some links below. They are either already mentioned inthe essay or provide additional context to the issues discussed.

[1] Olivier Bomsel on Mediatization

[2] Andrew Dubber — Music In The Digital Age

[3] The Rise Of The Musicpreneur

[4] The Economics Of The Internet Of Things

[5] Patrick Vlaskovits on growth hacking

[6]Midem 2014 — A Musician As A Startup

[7] Steve Blank on Lean Startups

[8] How To Build A Startup

[9] Business Model Generation Canvas

[10] Steve Keller, founder of IV Audio Branding, featured in ‘TheIndecisive Musicpreneur’

[11] Learn how to be a Musicpreneur at Darker Music Talks

[12]Why Do Musicians Always Feel Disappointed About TheirCareer?

[13] Tommy Darker — The Indecisive Musicpreneur

[14]Woody Allen and the Art of Value Productivity

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Further reading 61

[15] The Pomodoro Technique

[16] Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret

[17] Andrew Dubber — Numberless Calendar

[18] Ian Titchener, experienced music manager, featured in ‘TheIndecisive Musicpreneur’

[19] Kirby Ferguson — Everything Is A Remix

[20]Why some social network services work and others don’t — Or: the case for object-centered sociality

[21] The Cluetrain Manifesto

[22] Seth Godin — Tribes

[23] Sangeet Paul Choudary

Bonus Statistics about music experiences

What’s next

This is part of a series of books and essays about the cul-ture of the Musicpreneur. The full book/essay portfolio is atwww.TommyDarker.com.

What can you do after reading the essay?

1. Pass it on to a friend that will benefit from it! I encouragethe culture of openness and sharing.

2. Join the Book Club and support my writing3. Use the hashtag #musicpreneur to share your experiences

with the community of readers. Other people will lookwhat you have to say and will interact with you. Inter-action around shared interests is beautiful, isn’t it?

After all:

‘You never actually own a piece of knowledge. Youmerely look after it for the next generation. It’s ourduty to pass it on.’

Positive energy and love,

// Tommy

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