Is the idea that musicians should be allowed to participate fully in our country’s economy unrealistic? I hope not; though—barring the introduction of a completely new economy that treats musicians as valuable members of society­—I believe it will require a sea change. We will need to demystify the music industry and the nitty gritty of what it means to be a professional musician. We need: read more

“This industry really has to get its shit together not only to generate revenue, but to get money to those people who actually need it and deserve it,” Casey Rae, CEO of the artist-forward nonprofit Future Of Music Coalition, said at the opening panel on transparency and its relation to money. He then noted that the music industry had three flavors of transparency to grapple with: Structural, or the understanding of how services generate and pay out royalties; deal and terms transparency, which examines how contracts lay down the terms for music’s use and compensation; and repertoire, which deals with the data and information management systems that track the consumption and usage of music.

The Data Journalism That Wasn’t – The New York Times story about print v. digital publishing yesterday reminded me of this piece from the Future of Music Coalition, disputing the article, “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t,” which ostensibly relied on data provided by FMC.

The story’s thesis and details have been well worked over since it was published. The Future of Music Coalition, an advocacy group for musicians, posted a long response on its site. The article’s author, Steven Johnson, responded in detail, and the group then answered him. The Times’s standards department considered a request for correction and decided against it.

You won’t find expert witnesses like that in “The Creative Apocalypse That Wasn’t.” In fact, exactly three people are quoted in Johnson’s piece: Lars Ulrich, Steve Albini, and, um, me. He doesn’t talk to people who are living and working in the film, music, and publishing industries; he tries to tell his story with only numbers, and numbers simply don’t tell the whole story.