Why the [traditional] music industry is f*cked!!

In case you missed it, here is a copy of my presentation at Ignite Phoenix #2 on October 29th.

You can find my original submission here.

Be sure to check out all the other great presentations on Ignite Phoenix’s at http://www.ignite-phoenix.org/.

Help Us Keep Music Education in Public Schools

October 15th is Blog Action Day 2008. The focus this year is Poverty. I decided today would be an AWESOME day to launch our 2008 Donors Choose campaign!

Donors Choose non-profit organization that helps public school teachers purchase the supplies and materials they need to do their job and provides an easy way for everyday people to make a tangible difference in public schools. Last year, they raised $420,000.

Please take a couple minutes and visit our DonorsChoose page where you’ll find a bunch of music education projects from around the country. Because our mission is to fight poverty through music, I specifically looked for projects that came from poverty stricken areas of the US. Pick a couple that you like and make a donation. Any amount helps! Really! Even $5 or $10! And its tax deductible too.

My goal this year is to raise $10,000 for music education in public schools! With your help, we’ll be able to make a huge impact on a whole bunch of kids who don’t have enough music in their life!

Presentation at Ignite Phoenix #2

Found the following email in my inbox this morning:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Ignite Phoenix <IgnitePhoenix@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, Oct 13, 2008 at 8:42 AM
Subject: Ignite Phoenix #2 final lineup selected
To:
Congratulations! Your idea submission was selected to be given at Ignite Phoenix #2! We had an incredible 31 submissions across a wide range of topics and deciding the final lineup was extremely difficult for our review board. By the way, our review board was made up of a diverse group of technical, entrepreneurial, and artistic individuals who reviewed all submissions with the goal of picking a great cross section of topics.

What we need now is the slideshow for your presentation. We’ve attached a file called SlideshowTemplates.zip which contains slideshow templates for PC and Mac as well as a guide to help you create your slideshow; we recommend reading the entire guide immediately since it contains lots of tips that should answer any questions you may have. This guide can also be found online at http://www.ignite-phoenix.org/submissions/tips/. If you have any questions, please let us know right away so we can help!

We will need your completed slideshow emailed to ignitephoenix@gmail.com by the end of day on Tuesday October 21st so we can prepare it for our master slide deck.

This year Ignite Phoenix is also doing a “mini-Ignite” in conjunction with PodcampAZ . It will be three Ignite presentations, exactly the same as we have done in the past, but at PodcampAZ on Saturday, November 1st. If you are able to attend PodcampAZ and are willing to present on that day rather than on the 29th please let us know!

We greatly appreciate your support in making our second Ignite Phoenix a success!

Sincerely,
Jeff Moriarty, Roger Williams, and the Ignite Phoenix Crew

Many thanks to the selection committee gods!! [YEAH!! I MADE THE CUT!!] Can’t wait! See you all on the 29th!

Submission for Ignite Phoenix #2

Turned in my submission for Ignite Phoenix #2 on October 29, 2008. Decided my topic should be:

“Why the [traditional] music industry is f*cked!!”

Lets face it, the [traditional] music industry is f*cked! For too many years, they’ve raped musicians, while screwing music consumers out of every last penny they could! I mean, $18 for a CD that cost 5 cents to make? C’mon!! WTF?!?! While the iTunes music store proven that digital music downloads could be turned into a viable business, even Apple is threatening that any change to the business model could force them to shut down the iTunes music store. The reality is, the traditional music industry just doesn’t work anymore. We need new solutions, and a new business model. We need a solution that helps musicians to earn a living from their music, whether they live in Nashville, or Nambia. We need a solution that helps fight global poverty in the process. This is “Social Entrepreneurship Applied to the Music Business.”

You can check out all the submissions for October 29th on Ignite Phoenix’s website. Many thanks to @MsHerr for the great feedback on my submission!

So what the heck is social entrepreneurship anyways??

Just to get everyone on the same page, here are a few definitions of social entrepreneurship used by others.

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship says social entrepreneurship is:

about applying practical, innovative and sustainable approaches to benefit society in general, with an emphasis on those who are marginalized and poor.

a term that captures a unique approach to economic and social problems, an approach that cuts across sectors and disciplines.

grounded in certain values and processes that are common to each social entrepreneur, independent of whether his/ her area of focus has been education, health, welfare reform, human rights, workers’ rights, environment, economic development, agriculture, etc., or whether the organizations they set up are non-profit or for-profit entities.

Wikipedia says:

Social entrepreneurship is the work of a social entrepreneur. A social entrepreneur is someone who recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change. Whereas a business entrepreneur typically measures performance in profit and return, a social entrepreneur assesses success in terms of the impact s/he has on society. While social entrepreneurs often work through nonprofits and citizen groups, many work in the private and governmental sectors.

The Skoll Foundation says:

Entrepreneurs are essential drivers of innovation and progress. In the business world, they act as engines of growth, harnessing opportunity and innovation to fuel economic advancement. Social entrepreneurs act similarly, tapping inspiration and creativity, courage and fortitude, to seize opportunities that challenge and forever change established, but fundamentally inequitable systems.

and finally, Ashoka says:

Social entrepreneurs are individuals with innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems. They are ambitious and persistent, tackling major social issues and offering new ideas for wide-scale change.

At its most basic level, social entrepreneurship means empowering individuals with the tools they need to raise their own standard of living. For us, being a social enterprise means using traditional for-profit business principles to create lasting social change throughout the world, while still providing our investors with an excellent return!

It is my personal belief that as a for-profit business, it is our corporate responsibility to create lasting social change! Government has proven time and again, they just can’t move fast enough. Individual citizens usually can’t get organized and/or don’t have the funding. Which leaves the burden on business. While this concept isn’t new, especially given the recent focus on “Corporate Social Responsibility” most companies’ mission is not focused exclusively on creating lasting social change in the world.

From the very first day I started thinking about the concept that would eventually become PLAmusic, my goal as been to build a company that would help musicians throughout the world earn a living from their music, and to create a resource for the public at large that would come to be relied upon like Google and Wikipedia are today.

As a social entrepreneur, it is my job to use innovative and sustainable solutions to “challenge, and forever change, established but fundamentally inequitable systems!” As a lifelong musician and music fan, I am outraged at the complete disaster that has become the modern music industry! The world is filled with thousands, perhaps millions of amazing musicians, most of whom will never even have the opportunity to earn a living from their music solely because they don’t live in the right area, or don’t fit the perfect cookie cutter image that the record industry is looking for. Further, while every indigenous culture throughout the world has thousands of years of history embedded in their music, these musicians would never even consider their music the means by which they could earn their living.

Consider this, even in 2008 half the worlds population (nearly 3 billion people) is still living on less than $2 a day, but many of us in the developed world never give a second thought as we spend 99 cents to download the latest Britney Spears song. Obviously an Aboriginal didgeridoo player doesn’t have the stadium filling ability of a multi-platinum recording artist, but there is certainly a market for their music. As a music consumer, I would personally feel a lot better knowing that my 99 cents was actually going to directly benefit the artist, rather than padding the pockets of overpaid record industry executives.

Clearly it’s time for a new business model! One that doesn’t leave the artist with a few breadcrumbs off the floor! One that actually allows musicians to earn their living from their music! One that tells music fans exactly where, and to whom their hard earned 99 cents is going!

We call this new business model, “social entrepreneurship applied to the music business.”

Ever thought about where your 99 cents goes??

Preview of Whats to Come

Ok … So I know there isn’t much to look at right now … Everyone has to start somewhere, right? So I’ll keep this short and sweet. Here is a list of some of the upcoming posts I’m working on. If there are any specific topics you’d like to see me talk about, drop me a note and I’ll see what I can do.

• So what the heck is social entrepreneurship anyways??
• Why the “traditional” music industry is f*cked!!
• Web 2.0 … Web 3.0 … Who cares anyways!?!?
• Can 99 cents really have an impact?
• PLAmusic – The Rest of the Story
• Life as a Tech Start-up… In Arizona!
• CEO Space – Cult or Club
• CEO Space 101
• Is the true promise of the Internet finally coming to pass?
• The Place for “Local” Artists… Explained