Music summit raises tough issues
ISSUE: 05/01/07 > A&E > Music summit raises tough issues
Terry McBride, CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, addresses the music industry’s direction to digital, and finds a conflict.
“Songs are for sharing, not owning,” the progressive keynote speaker said at the 2007 Digital Summit in the Curb Event Center.
The Summit’s purpose was to gather CEOs and other key people in the industry to discuss the new digital age and its effects on the music industry, and McBride’s message was directed to an audience chock full of veterans and newcomers.
McBride seemed to strike a chord with the younger attendees in the audience when he described, in very non-business-like words, his view of the essence of music.
“Songs are not shirts, they’re not pants, they’re emotions,” McBride said. “What’s great about a song is when the lyrics and the melody create an emotion that becomes a bookmark within your life. It’s that bookmark that has the value, and that value doesn’t go away. Those emotions don’t belong to us [the industry], they belong to the people who have made them their own.”
After several minutes, a striking contrast could be seen within the audience – most of the 45-and-under crowd nodding their heads in agreement while some of the older veterans showed irritation with some of his remarks.
“One of the biggest issues now in the digital world is all based on control,” McBride said.
“... for this business to grow, we must give up control. We must realize control belongs with the public...” Terry McBride |
That, he suggested, is “probably one of the hardest mental barriers to get past because we’ve created a system over the last 50-60 years where the industry is all based on control. It’s the artist trying to control their songs, it’s the label trying to control what the artists do, and it’s the manager trying to control what everybody does.”
McBride, whose company is Canada’s largest independent record label, said he and others in powerful positions in the music industry have to do things a different way.
“In order for this business to grow, we must give up control,” he said. “We must realize that control belongs with the public – it doesn’t belong to the artists, or the owner of the copyrights, or the publishers. The public consumes the music and as such we need to start looking at what their behavior is.”
He calls the current paradigm “legislation and litigation.”
“These two tools are trying to be used to change behavior, to stop peer-to-peer music exchanges,” he said. “If you look back in history, however, you will find … you cannot force or change behavior through litigation or legislation. Kings have lost their heads based upon that principle. We need to get rid of litigation and we need to start understanding the behavior of the consumer and move toward a paradigm where we monitor the behavior of the consumer.”
In addressing how the industry would sync into a new digital age, McBride was optimistic about an increasingly profitable music business, but only if the industry discovered new ways to make profit.
“We realized that 20 years ago, The Grateful Dead had it right. This whole thing about fan-to-fan, about super-serving your fans, about allowing them to do your marketing and promotion – that’s the direction the music industry must take in order to stay relevant and profitable in the coming age and even today.”
Photos&Videos
