pampelmoose Dave Allen of Gang of Four’s Music and Media Blog

I’m in Seattle. The Pacific Northwest Grammy organization is hosting its second annual MusicTech 07 conference and yours truly is moderating a panel tomorrow called Social Networking, upon which I will muster up some intelligent thoughts and try to express them coherently to 200+ people [in England growing up, Social Networking was something you did down the pub, but I digress.] The session kicked off this morning with a few music biz luminaries that included Josh Rosenfeld of Barsuk Records, Randy Irwin formally of Sony Records and Michele Fleischli of SAM management who manages Beck, Sonic Youth and more. And the panel was called Look Of The New Label. How was it, you ask? Well, let’s not mince words, it was a train wreck…
Not that all of these fine minds were not able to process the question posed - “what does a new label look like today?’ it was just that no one had any answers. Tough times demand tough actions so it was worrisome to listen to their responses; basically every panelist was clutching at straws, but they tried, they did try.
I’d like to help. Here’s the list of questions I overheard and how I would have answered - Should music management companies become labels for their artists? Yes. Should artists sign to labels? Yes. Should artists do everything themselves? Yes. Should artists sell MP3s? Yes. Should artists give away free MP3s? Yes…..you get the drift…..there is no one answer so all available resources should be tested and the one’s that work should be expanded upon - test and expand, there it is. More shortly.