Music industry needs more than a silver bullet | Tune In Music City ...

After several weeks of chats with people in the music industry ? as loosely or tightly defined as you?d like to make it ? and tweeting and posting inquires and reading articles, I found exactly zero common takeaways about the state of Music City.

The question was this: What?s to be done about the music industry cookie that?s crumbled?

There are many new ideas or experiments, but not a lot of answers. There?s no magic revenue model and no silver bullet to be found.

Does it all come down to the money, silly? If so, then discussing what current net profits look like remains tricky stuff.

Though any mom and pop small-business owner can tell you that not knowing how much cash is left in the drawer after paying the bills can quickly become death by denial, the music revenue conversation can quickly get lost in the shuffle.

Rolling Stone?s Steve Knopper did an excellent piece last October, ?The New Economics of the Music Industry,? trying to break down where the money goes and to whom. He had to make use of phrases like ?ridiculously complicated? and ?impossible to track.?

Sometimes I forget the consumer education I?ve had, having spent more than a decade in Music City. I know now that buying a T-shirt from a band I love may put more money in their collective pockets than purchasing their album or a concert ticket.

I know of Nashville?s own ?Mad Men,? the song ?pluggers? who often pitch a publisher or songwriter?s wares to the glittery, established artist. I?ve also learned that bands like LCD Sound System, touted by The New York Times as the ?voice of a generation,? can offer a film at our Belcourt Theatre and an after party ? but without younger, hipper friends, it?s another music event among a Nashville plethora that flies under my radar.

There?s a lot to keep up with. A lot from which to choose.

I discovered the work that gives me the most hopeful, tenacious thoughts about Nashville?s future through local graphic facilitator Peter Durand of AlphaChimp Studios. He makes pretty pictures of complex ideas and conversations, and recently created a visual summary of presentations from a conference in Iceland based around the book ?Resilience, Why Things Bounce Back,? by Andrew Zolli and Anne Marie Healy.

His presentation focused on resilience ? how people, communities and systems maintain their core purpose and integrity amid unforeseen shocks and surprises, and how that aids in recovery after unexpected events.

In Music City USA, we?ve had a few of these events ourselves: a fairly recent natural disaster by way of flooding (May 2010), as well as economic woes via declines in several longstanding profitable sectors (not simply the music industry).

After reviewing Zolli?s work, I believe we have some of the raw traits of a resilient community: connectedness, collaboration and diversity.

Finding answers

The book doesn?t offer an oversimplified fix or formula. It points out, quite fairly, that the historical success of a community, industry or system to not just survive but thrive after otherwise potentially decimating changes requires specific solutions that fall within the context of that place.

So, how do we arrive at specific solutions? We experiment. We talk. We collaborate.

We can?t look to replicate the answers another city or industry may have built. ?Resilience? points out that while no single recipe for future recovery and success exists, one should work to identify fragile points (we need to openly discuss what hasn?t worked and what remains unstable), as well as where there are misleading paths.

To that end, in coming weeks, I?ll be featuring conversations with brave, bright local folks from iV Audio, Brite Revolution and FLO {Thinkery}, as well as a range of musicians, songwriters and performers. The idea is to highlight who and what is contributing to Music City?s resiliency and future. So, speak up.

Read more

Check out these resources online:

PopTech in Iceland: Resilience Conference

On My Mind: the State of the Music Business, John Cougar Mellencamp

All of the Arguments About Digital Music, Summarized

Bruce Springsteen?s SXSW Keynote

-Lora Stevenson

Lora Stevenson is a business strategist with local software development firm Firefly Logic and other firms nationwide. Her column on ideas will appear every other Sunday. Contact her at loras123@gmail.com.

Source: http://blogs.tennessean.com/tunein/2012/07/22/music-industry-needs-more-than-a-silver-bullet/

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