David Byrne explores new business models for music

... and the choices are broader now.



More via Cory Doctorow here.

"Odyssey to create online community for Filipino music"

"Philippine music and video retailer Odyssey will soon "soft launch" an online music portal and social network for a community of Filipino music fans". Thus reports Erwin Oliva. (The landing page says 21 December).

Almost instinctively, I registered for an account which offered 2 choices, Listener or Artist. (shades of MySpace?) For some reason, I chose Artist.

Image below shows My Profile page.

Now the title above contains the operative words "to create", which makes me wonder: Does the "if you build it, they will come" mantra still hold true?

The Future of music industry

From an Asian perspective (ca. 2003)

Imagine Philippine bands touring Thailand and vice versa. The same things goes for respective bands of country A and country B.

"You believe that music should be free and it is the “performance” that should be charged for (you still have to figure out how your idea will work with movies or books). Piracy can never die. The music companies build a lock to protect their content, and all they do is provide a couple of days entertainment to some Russian hackers. You realize what would work well in Asia is the “Grateful Dead” model. Give away your music for free. Participate in more live concerts. The artists have to work hard but it is more fulfilling."

Could we then start forgetting about copyright, because what could matter more is the experience of band tours?

And so I quote Preetamrai's quote:

“I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way. The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing. Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.”
David Bowie (from an interview on NY times in 2002)

Again perhaps, we are moving steadily (?) from an economy of products/services to an economy of experiences. Ok, 5 years to go. I just hope education won't be far behind.