Bringing Artists & Entrepreneurs Together To Help Each Other
from the solving-problems dept
As we mentioned, a week ago on Wednesday, October 10th, we spent the entire day in an "Artists & Entrepreneurs Working Group" brainstorming session. For me, personally, it was a truly fantastic experience: a chance to get together a bunch of people who don't normally talk -- and then to actually work together in an open fashion to listen to each other, to understand each other and to look together for actual solutions to challenges we all face. The day was basically a blank slate, with a very loose agenda: in the morning, we'd discuss challenges, in the afternoon brainstorm thoughts about how to deal with those challenges, and then conclude by seeing if there were any specific things that we could start doing now.The whole thing was very much an experiment. Unlike conferences that segment themselves down to one-hour increments of panels and interviews, here was a chance to spend a day together, without specific agendas, focused on really talking and brainstorming with the goal of doing something productive and helpful. In many ways, the experience was exhilarating. It's something you don't often get to experience: lots of really smart people, with very different experiences and perspectives, not giving prepared speeches or covering the same old ground but actually discussing things openly, making connections, brainstorming new ideas and actively thinking about big problems.
Part of the idea behind this event was that for too long the discussion has basically been the same: get a few people who disagree about something to sit opposite each other on TV, on a panel, on the web, or anywhere else, and argue with each other for a short period of time. In such events people too often come with lots of prepared points and then talk past each other, with nothing productive coming out of it. Panels and debates can be good, and they have their place -- but we thought that entrepreneurs and artists are a lot more similar than they are different. We're all running out own businesses in many ways. And we're all creating something new and wonderful. It seems like there's tremendous common ground in our shared situations.
And yet, at the same time, there are some very real differences. So we thought, if we looked at that as an opportunity and sought to better understand those differences, with a focus on looking for ways to help each other, could we create something that wasn't "the same old debate?" Could we, instead, focus on doing something productive?
That was an ambitious goal -- but it's one I think we accomplished. The event itself exceeded my own expectations (by a wide margin). Bringing together a large group of really smart people (many of whom have very strong opinions) for an entire day, without an agenda, and saying "hey, everyone, talk!" seemed like it had the potential to be a complete disaster -- but it was the exact opposite. It resulted in a beautiful, inspiring, thought-provoking discussion that is going to continue, and will hopefully lead to many more wonderful things.
In the morning we discussed challenges that people faced. That was the extent of the official agenda -- and after briefly introducing the event and highlighting some responses from the survey I'd asked people to fill out earlier, the group was off and running, bringing up a variety of different issues and challenges and discussing their own experiences openly.
It will be interesting to see some of the other attendees share their thoughts about the event, but the key challenges that I heard as the discussion went on were:
- Resources: It's tough to do what you want to do if you don't have the resources to do it. This is kind of a universal one, and not at all surprising. Obviously, this applies to both artists and entrepreneurs, but in different ways and to different degrees. A lack of resources can be not just a challenge, but something immensely stressful as well.
- A missing roadmap: It was interesting just how often this one came up. One of the biggest challenges everyone admitted to facing was the fact that there is no roadmap for what you should do these days, and no single definition of success. The path (especially on the artist side, but also to a degree on the entrepreneur side) is a lot less clear than it may have been in the past -- and that uncertainty can make life difficult. It's one thing to follow steps A, B and C and face different challenges at each. But it's something else entirely if you have no idea where to go next. And part of the discussion was that the roadmap is very different for everyone. There are successful "working class" musicians who make a living day in, day out, and there are big "rock stars." They define success differently. Similarly, there are entrepreneurs who want to build a good, profitable business (sometimes called "a lifestyle business") and there are those who look to be the equivalent of rockstars: raising tons of money, becoming the next big IPO, etc. Plus there are all sorts of personalized dreams that will be a bit different for every person. How you get from here to there changes depending on how you define success, and that makes it all the harder for people to plot out their "roadmap" by finding good advice and sharing strategies with each other.
- Education: Perhaps connected to the roadmap issue, this one was about learning what's out there, and what the possibilities are. The challenge here was somewhat different for entrepreneurs and artists, it seemed. Entrepreneurs wanted to figure out how to better educate people about what they themselves were doing, while artists wanted to better educate themselves (and others) about career strategies and the entrepreneurial side of being and artist. For entrepreneurs, some looked upon education as going hand in hand with marketing (which could potentially turn off some artists). For artists, there was a clear desire to better connect with other artists, and some concern that artists don't talk enough about these things among themselves.
- Discovery: This is obviously a big challenge on both sides. For entrepreneurs it's about finding new customers and users and for artists it's about finding new fans. Everyone was interested in ways to do more of this, but admitted that it's a very big challenge in a wide open digital world. Too often people think that if you do something great, the people just show up. That happens, but it's rare. You can be a great musician, but people still have to find out about you. You can build a great tool or service, but if no one uses it, what good is it? Having people learn about you and like you is a challenge that many people seem to underestimate.
- Policy: There were some concerns about where government policy might get in the way of certain things -- whether it's preventing artists from doing what they want, or making life challenging for entrepreneurs. We had some discussions about areas where artists and entrepreneurs could agree on policy issues. Also, there were significant concerns about who has the most influence on policy, and whose interests they really represented.
In fact, part of what was so encouraging was that the constant theme, throughout the entire event -- from basically everyone, no matter where they came from -- was "what can we do to help." Obviously, not everyone agreed with everything that was suggested -- but in the spirit of brainstorming, people seemed to consistently build on what others were saying, seeking the key insight that we could build on and focusing the conversation on those opportunities.
From my perspective, I learned a lot about where some of the misunderstandings between entrepreneurs and artists come from, where there are often misinterpreted expectations and objectives. As a group we mentally chewed on a variety of ideas, often recognizing that there were no "easy" solutions, but that there had to be something better. Could there be better material to educate each other? Would a unified source for information do that? There was a recognition that different artists have very different experiences.
We had discussions about how people defined success, and how priorities shifted over time. We discussed ways to get more people talking about these things. We discussed concerns about what others might do with things that we brought into the world -- whether it was content or tools and services.
Over time, we began to hit on a few key points, and areas where there were possibilities to actually make a difference. There was a fair bit of interest in the possibility of building a large copyright database, along the lines of what Ian Rogers has suggested in the past, that covers licensing terms for any work, as well as just general ownership info (since sometimes it's not at all clear who owns the rights to certain works for the purpose of licensing them). Some also suggested that such a database could include additional useful metadata as well (prior to the session, one musician pointed out how nice it would be to have a database that would make it easier to find out who did audio engineering on tracks you liked, to make it easier to seek them out for your own recordings).
There was some discussion over whether or not this was something the Copyright Office should do, along with some concerns that there was no way that it could do it without massive, massive changes. And, not to be left out, there were some discussions about US vs. international policy, since although we were mostly a US-based group, we did have at least one foreign-based artist in attendance, who had some different issues to deal with.
- Continue this conversation: There seemed to be agreement across the board that (1) the all day discussion had tremendous value in a lot of ways, both in generating ideas and getting people to think through possibilities, but that (2) a one day event, no matter how focused on being practical and productive, wasn't really enough time to come to any grand conclusions. But everyone agreed that we, as a group (with some additional folks) should be continuing the conversation in some way, whether it's online or through more in-person brainstorming sessions. That task was put on me, and I'm working on it.
- There's an opportunity to create & curate useful info: There's a lot of info out there, with no shortage of advice being offered to artists and entrepreneurs, which is potentially overwhelming and can make it difficult to zero in on what's actually useful. They suggested that the education component could be helped by having better curation of such content. Others suggested that perhaps specific events could serve this purpose, with the example of "filmmaker labs" being tossed out. One concern raised: none of this content will get consumed if it's not presented in a fun and interesting way that attracts people. If it's just piling together a bunch of content into a haystack, that won't help people as much. Figuring out how this could be done and who should be involved is an ongoing discussion, with one concern being how to ensure that such a source doesn't become myopic and start pushing one set of ideas when the landscape is truly open and still evolving.
- Getting data: This came up both for the purpose of better education through aggregate data, and also to drive towards a possible rights database. There was a suggestion that, if Apple could be convinced to share its data, that could be a starting point -- though that would cover mostly music (but some TV and movie stuff as well). There were mixed opinions on whether or not Apple could ever be convinced to open up this data.
- Standardization: An interesting point that was raised was that part of the reason for a cloudy roadmap and an abundance of choice for artists (that makes things difficult) may be the near-complete lack of standardization. That is, there are a number of startups that often seem to be reinventing the wheel or working on similar types of tools, and that there might be much more value created (for everyone) if there was some standardization at the platform level. Say, for example, a common format for storing and communicating all of the info about an artist and their catalogue between various sites and services. Then different service providers could seek to build tools and services above that, and let the competition occur at that level. This would provide a somewhat more defined setup and less confusion over what services can help in what ways. It might also lead to better integration between different services, allowing artists to do a lot more. This was left as an issue for some of the entrepreneurs to continue discussions over, to see if there was a way to make it happen.
- Policy Issues: Going back to the copyright / metadata database discussion, there were some thoughts on whether or not there were ways to get the policy world to recognize how useful and valuable such a database would be for almost everyone. There was some concern about the few players it might disrupt (publishers, for one) who value keeping some of that data proprietary, but a general sense that the overall benefit of such a database for artists and entrepreneurs would be tremendous.
This obviously is not the end of the discussion by any means, and one thing that is part of the plan is to continue to get more people involved to get more insights. On the whole, though, considering that this was completely a first-time experiment -- in which we had no clear format and no real agenda, and we mostly just let the conversation go wherever it went -- I think it was quite successful. We haven't changed the world, but perhaps we can start making good things happen.
Special thanks go out to everyone who attended, whether for the whole day or just a part. Extra special thanks to the smaller group of folks who helped me think through the event in the months and weeks leading up to it, letting me toss out ideas and giving me feedback on how the effort might be more productive and fun. Also, thanks to Hattery for providing us with the unique space (with slightly odd acoustics), and to Google for sponsoring, so that we could provide everyone with bagels and coffee in the morning, and sandwiches and chips at lunch.
On the whole, the event has me really excited about possibilities for the future -- including more gatherings like this one. We'll be continuing the discussion between artists and entrepreneurs, and are hoping to hold more events going forward, while also seeing if we can really take some of the ideas and suggestions and help make them a reality. One legitimate concern raised towards the end was that there were a lot of good ideas, but ideas without execution are meaningless, and execution without leadership is rare. I think a big next challenge will be finding people who will step up and take ownership of some of the suggestions to see if they can, with wider support, turn them into something real. That, of course, is the biggest challenge of them all -- but, given the excitement about the possibilities, it seems like a challenge worth tackling.
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Filed Under: artists, brainstorming, entrepreneurs, helping, understanding, working group
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Was it "truly fantastic", Mike?
"a chance to get together" -- Was it a mere "chance" or did it actually take place in reality?
"a bunch of people who don't normally talk" -- What are they, mimes?
Having come to a screeching halt at gibberish, I just skipped the rest, too long anyway.
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Re: Was it "truly fantastic", Mike?
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Re: Was it "truly fantastic", Mike?
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Re: Was it "truly fantastic", Mike?
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Re: Re: Was it "truly fantastic", Mike?
Likely the person is just bored.
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Re: Was it "truly fantastic", Mike?
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Re: Re: Was it "truly fantastic", Mike?
/ootb
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The idea was to put together musicians and "pirates" so that they can talk together and understand each others.
Until now, a few sessions were held in Lausanne hackerspace [1] and the last one was hosted by [2]. In that last session (at which a young entrepreneur was also present), we got ideas similar to yours, i.e. the need for more accessible informations (through a global database for information on creative works that can be created and maintained by all collecting agencies) and the need for an easy, standardized and automated way to manage access to creative works and fees processing.
Next session, the fifth, is to be held soon, again hosted by [2].
[1] First two cessions were annouced on the FIXME website:
https://fixme.ch/content/table-ronde-culture-1
https://fixme.ch/content/table-ronde-cultu re-2e-édition
Next sessions were announced on a dedicated mailing-list.
[2] Since it was not official, I might not be allowed to name it here. It is however an important player in the Swiss copyright panorama.
My point is:
If two groups have been independantly formed, more might also have, scattered through the world.
It could then be interresting and much productive to have a platform where all such groups could share their thoughts and conclusions in a federated way.
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Trying to focus on the article...
stupid adhd
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Rights database projects are already underway
International Music Registry
WIPOCOS
Global Repertoire Database
The only thing I've heard about how these projects are going is that the stakeholders in the WIPO's IMR meetings at one point got into a straight-up shouting match. Perhaps you could contact these groups and give us an update.
"Which engineer worked on which songs" is the kind of thing that only obsessive music collectors keep track of. The music industry isn't going to start keeping track of that anytime soon; what's in it for them, unless they can put it behind a paywall? (...is their thinking, at least.) I mean, they might have financial records showing who they paid and when, but even that's going to be spotty going back more than a few years. The major labels barely even know what their own historical assets are. As I mentioned before, in 2006 I had someone from one of the Big 4 ask me for discographies for some of their own labels (and we're talking early '90s catalog, here... *boggle*). I could only point him to Discogs and MusicBrainz, the paragons of crowdsourced, centralized, transparent, openly licensed databases of commercial & promotional sound recording releases. That's the only place where that info exists. It's not sitting in a file cabinet at Universal.
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Re: Rights database projects are already underway
I should add, I'm not fond of bureaucracy; I'm more of a "show me the money" kind of person. So I think these meetings are important to have, but databases like Discogs and MusicBrainz got to where they are by just getting something going early on, very limited in scope, then expanding and talking through the thorny issues over time. If they had started out by holding meeting after meeting to spec out something on the scale of what they have now, there wouldn't be much to show for it today.
Likewise, on the closed, commercial side of things, I'm under the impression it took Apple just going ahead and setting up a digital marketplace system (which surely has a robust database behind it), then getting the record companies to sign on and license their content (and then to pressure them into doing it DRM-free), because clearly those stakeholders weren't going to do it themselves. Gracenote is another example, building on a foundation of crowdsourced data, monetizing it and essentially providing centralized metadata services to vendors and content owners alike; now they get all their data from official sources, but it took a company like that coming along and pushing the data owners to do it. It wasn't the result of years of meetings and white papers; they got something going that was immediately useful, albeit flawed, and built it up and improved it over time. IMHO this is the way forward.
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Re: Rights database projects are already underway
Indeed. Nor did I mean to imply that was the case. I'm intimately familiar with some of the existing efforts (including why they've been a mess). That doesn't mean it's not a good idea though.
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Re: Re: Rights database projects are already underway
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"Labels do that".
Resources, standardization, distribution, roadmaps, policies, education...
What's funny is to watch you guys think you are striving towards some holy grail, when in the end, you are striving towards opening a record label - without realizing it.
Congrats on your discoveries. Perhaps you will realize where the road is taking you, and stop fighting it.
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Re:
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/15-12/mf_morris?currentPage=all
Morris insists there wasn't a thing he or anyone else could have done differently. "There's no one in the record company that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"
Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me." Morris' almost willful cluelessness is telling. "He wasn't prepared for a business that was going to be so totally disrupted by technology," says a longtime industry insider who has worked with Morris. "He just doesn't have that kind of mind."
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Is that all you have?
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Record labels sure are forward looking.
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Go it.
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Real forward thinking, these record labels. Lead by real 21st century men of vision, yep.
It's not their fault, nope. It's those rascally pirates, and their little dog too.
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Re:
"Labels do that".
No. Labels *used* to do that. Some still do -- and, in fact, we had some label people at the event. But the big ones don't actually provide much of that.
Resources, standardization, distribution, roadmaps, policies, education...
Under a system that no longer works. Hence the problem that we were discussing. The old way was to go to a label, but now they don't provide much in the way of resources or standardization. They provide no additional benefits for distribution with a few small exceptions. Their policy focus does not help artists, and their roadmaps are terrible because they don't understand the market at all.
Congrats on your discoveries. Perhaps you will realize where the road is taking you, and stop fighting it.
What's really disgusting is that you think you're making a point here. We held a really open-ended event with all sorts of viewpoints, focused on really coming up with solutions. Some people there were fans of the way labels work, others weren't -- but *everyone* there agreed that the old way no longer worked. Who am I to trust? A group of folks who actually deal with this stuff everyday, or an anonymous internet commenter who has dedicated his life to posting on every one of our stories, and always, always, always arguing against whatever we write?
Yeah. I'll take the group.
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Last I looked they still do. Sadly, piracy has taken much of the money off the table, and made them less likely to invest. This is one way that piracy certainly hurts musicians.
"Under a system that no longer works. "
it may be extensively damaged by piracy, but the music industry still cranks up billions in sales. I haven't seen anything else on the table that even has the potential to come close.
"They provide no additional benefits for distribution with a few small exceptions."
I am guessing Trent Reznor is an exception.
"Their policy focus does not help artists, and their roadmaps are terrible because they don't understand the market at all."
They don't see it like you do, so they must be wrong. Got it. They don't understand the market and sell billions. You understand the market and sell advice. Got it!
"Yeah. I'll take the group."
That's your choice. But please, try to figure out a way to do things that actually works, and doesn't first require the existing business model to be decimated by piracy to make the playing field level.
"anonymous internet commenter who has dedicated his life to posting on every one of our stories, and always, always, always arguing against whatever we write?"
Actually, the same could be said for yourself. An internet commenter who has dedicated his life to arguing against everything IP, everything government, and everything establishment all the time. It's not hard. Nice attempt to pigeon hole me. Do you have the same opinion of a butt kisser like Ninja or PaulT who insist on supporting you in every story you write?
Sour grapes make it hard to write, I am not sure how you turn out so many stories each day.
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Keep up the good work!
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I've learned from your strawmen arguments (which are most of them) that you see what you want to see and often see the opposite of the truth. No surprise, then.
"If you do, it's certainly so softly that it can't be easily detected."
Possibly because there's so many trolling fools that make accusations so far out of reality that I have to defend those instead of being able to discuss the nuances of the issue at hand. If only, for example, I could discuss how I think that copyright could be altered for the better instead of having to defend against accusations of me wanting to abolish copyright so I can steal. Surely you can see how the nuances of my real position could get lost in such silliness?
"Keep up the good work!"
I'll keep stating my actual positions and discussing them where I can. If you come out of that with a fictional version of me that you have to attack, well that's your problem.
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Please then, show us all where you have called Mike out for being wrong. Not just "I'm not sure you are really perfect" but "You are wrong".
I doubt you will find any, unless you go out posting some now.
"Possibly because there's so many trolling fools that make accusations so far out of reality that I have to defend those instead of being able to discuss the nuances of the issue at hand."
Possibly you have a problem thinking everyone is out to get you. Paranoia must be horrible to live with, how do you do it?
"I'll keep stating Mike's actual positions"
FTFY. Good job!
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Well, seeing as how YOU specifically went out of your way to mention Ninja and PaulT, in an article they had yet to comment in, and you specifically go out of your way to call him out time and time again... I fail to see how he is incorrect in thinking people like you are directing your comments at him.
Now, since you choose the AC moniker, I can't tie your comments to you. But there's one AC who goes out of his way to mention PaulT every chance possible as a person who gives reasons for why he pirates (despite saying he doesn't), that being "it's not available in my country".
Perhaps YOU would do well to stop bringing up people in your comments. Because they then have to defend themselves from your made up beliefs about them, then you rail on them for defending themselves.
Put in much simpler terms, PaulT wasn't here commenting til YOU brought him into the conversation in an attempt to take a shot at Mike and in an attempt to insult PaulT.
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Yeah, that's the funny thing. I think I stopped being patient with him (them?) the second or third time I got attacked for pirating when I wrote a comment stating why I did/didn't buy a particular product. Even in the ones where I stated that I did buy the product and/or bought something else instead!
If these people can twist "here's why I bought product X instead of product Y" into "I pirated product Y!", there's really no hope in standard logical debate. That they have come to the decision that everyone who disagrees with this kind of lying must all be working together is a little silly, but that's where we have to put up with the sometimes I suppose.
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...and here comes the goalpost moving! Of course, you can't merely ask for an example, but you have to apply criteria to enable you to wriggle out of agreeing with me when I prove you wrong. Anything other than a direct unequivocal attack on Mike's positions (which I don't usually do, because I'm not an asshole) will be rejected.
There's plenty for you to read, but what's the point? You'll either say that what I cite wasn't critical enough, was written too long ago, complain that it didn't spew the idiotic bile you insist upon or you'll twist the words to pretend I was agreeing instead.
"FTFY. Good job!"
Got any tactics not taken from the playground? This is why people seem to agree with each other on this site - no matter what our disagreements on any given topic being discussed, we all agree you're a tool. Then you spam the thread and people respond...
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The first idea for what to do next...
Of course, we'd all have to stop what we're doing already int he artistic and entrepreneurial fields to do it. :-)
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Oh wait, you wanted smart people?
Sorry! As you were ;¬)
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