by Trichordist Editor

It’s about money. It’s about education of musicians and creators that the money is out there, it’s just not being “shared” with musicians.

Music Technology Policy

It’s been a pretty surprising SXSW so far–on the conference side it has become very similar to the Consumer Electronics Show.  Lots of panels about copyright and artist rights, but no artists.  Lots of suits–consultants, lawyers, some consultants who are lawyers, lawyers who are consultants and even journalists who are lawyers.  Lots of organizations on the Google Shill List–but no artists.  And don’t forget–every consultant has a client.  As one of these wanna-be shill listers said, “Sorry for the tirade, but my boss was in the audience.”

To the very great credit of the Recording Academy, today marked the first panel in a week that actually included artists.  Three of them, in fact: Nakia, David Lowery and East Bay Ray along with Daryl Friedman of the Academy.

A few observations–Nakia is of the generation of artists that came up in a post-Napster world.  He mentioned several times that he gave…

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3 thoughts on “”

  1. SXSWi has become a corporate-conformist, anti-artist, Wall Street-sponsored copyleft reeducation camp for artists and creators. Google-shill-list lawyers are paraded around like rock stars as they announce to the musicians who are relegated to the audience (as a form of revenge of the untalented against the talented) that if they wanted to make money off their music and be fairly compensated, they would break the internet. Billion-Dollar-Google shill Cory Doctorow or one of his clones (who are manufactured like Orcs by the billion-dollar content copiers) announces that the technology invented by physicists to share papers–the internet–supersedes and surpasses Natural Rights and Human Rights. Leftist Ivy-League lawyers, many of them born with silver spoons in their mouths and given every advantage while rubbing elbows with all of Goldman Sachs’ finest, announce to the indie artists and common creator that all their content–the very fruits of their blood, sweat, and tears–must be given freely for the good of all, “from each according to his abilities to lay down a track, to each according to his needs to hear said track.”

    So great is their cause (I.e. so much money is at stake in freely copying the creations of the artists of the world and profiting off them), that Derek Kahana is justified in lying about just who funded and encouraged his completely erroneous, mean-spirited, and wrong memo/jihad/attack against copyright, artist’s Natural Rights, and Human Rights in general.

  2. I completely agree with the lack of information sharing that happened at SXSW. As someone who spent time at both Interactive and Music, I noticed that SXSWi devoted entire classrooms to teaching people how to do specific things (prototype, program, etc), while there wasn’t a single hands-on workshop during music.

    Moreover, the information shared at Music panels was often treated as “top-secret” — all white-papers. When I asked the “Buyer and the Beats” panel about how musicians could employ some of their research strategies to figure out what might work best for them & their fans, I was told that survey research was “a real science” best left to these companies. I asked this at similar panels, with similar responses.

    Having a degree in this Real Science*, their responses troubled me. Of course we can’t leave this research up to the companies. That’s like saying everything you read in the news is 100% true. (Also, I learned that if you can’t replicate a study, it’s probably bad science.)

    Is it a matter of getting artists in the rooms when panels are happening? Or do they need to step up and start pitching sessions on their own? Would any of these things work?

    * I work in IT for a higher ed institution and also play in a band.

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