I noticed an interesting trend at the MusicTech Summit in San Francisco this week: A lot of the talk over lunch and during hallway conversations wasn’t about the next big thing, about fancy Spotify apps or sexy mashups. Instead, people were busy talking about CRMs, CMS platforms and e-commerce…

…Of course, an audience alone doesn’t guarantee that you can make a living, and new research from the Future of Music Coalition that was unveiled at the event showed that the majority of artists never see any money from services like Spotify. So is it really sustainable if every singer with a few thousand fans on YouTube wants to be a working musician? Rogers countered my question by asking: “Has it ever been sustainable?”

That was the big thud from a presentation by the Future of Music Coalition, delivered Monday at SF MusicTech Summit.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Jan 30, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — On Monday, Feb. 13, 2012, at the Hotel Kabuki in San Francisco, more than 1,000 influential thought-leaders will gather at the 10th SF MusicTech Summit, the world’s leading business-to-business idea marketplace on the confluence of Internet, technology and music.

Currently, more than 75 high-profile speakers will share their thoughts on the quickly growing convergence of the music and technology industries, including: read more