When I think of the music industry, I think of 2 great works of literature: “El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha” written by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole. Like Ignatius and Don Quijote, I feel that many of the events, cultural phenomenon, human frailties and technological advances around the music industry are imagined windmills brought by what we are led to believe or just blindly accept as fact.

The truth is all of us have the capacity to change great things. I have witnessed the overthrow of a supposed invincible imperial and ruthless dictator by “mobs of nuns and priests, parents wheeling kids on strollers and university students”. I also remember quotes like: “Who would ever need a computer in their homes?”, “Why would we ever need more than 640K in RAM?” and “Illegal file sharing would never happen”.

The fact is we have the capacity to lead change. It does not take a Steve Jobs to tell us that DRM is wrong or that DRM never really prevented illegal file sharing. To focus on DRM as one of the fundamental problems of the music industry is short sighted. Jonathan Swift seemed to be talking about the music industry when he said: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” I believe that the true genius is in the wisdom of the masses and the dunces are those who continue to confederate to thwart the inevitable sea change in the music industry.

On a self promotion note, I am the CEO and founder of GoodStorm.com. Our tagline is: “Capitalism Done Right” . In the spirit of GoodStorm, we will be unveiling new business models that we hope will positively affect the future of the music industry. I invite all of you to watch our launch during SXSW music week. Because you’re all part of genius of the masses, you’ll be able read between the lines in our current website: http://goodstorm.com . I think the dunces will not be amused.

This will be a great discussion. Stay tuned.

Of course, I too am an idiot for not getting out when the golden parachute opened its doors to me. For not choosing my lifestyle above my passion. For ignoring the path of so many of my favorite associates,who now yearn to find a life in music that doesn’t exist anymore.

I stand in a pretty odd place - having had 14 years in independent label life, and another 14 in corporate label life. I am reminded daily to adjust my thinking to the events of today, not the past.

The future belongs to the youth, the adventurers, the innovators, the creators and the fools.

I run One Little Indian for North America – a label that defies definition and is fiercely independent. There, it’s all about the music.

I also write, produce and record a weekly radio show on KCRW (On The Beat). The radio show is about the record business.

I sit in the Idiot’s box with some pretty great talent.

Reading the Billboard headlines these days, for many of us, is like reading a pre-death industry obituary. Sales are down (hell, it looks like iTunes, the digital savior, is even taking a dip right now). We find out that it is harder for bands to tour, making it harder for bands to be written about and discovered. Rent and gas and everything else is going up up up and meanwhile marketing costs, if anything, are on the rise as well. The music industry seems like an elephant-sized monkey breaking the backs of those who it should be inspiring and accepting: those who work with music because of the LOVE of music, who care and respect both the idiom and the artists who create the goodness.

Needless to say, I…a compulsive record man…reared by the last wave of those behind the classic music industry renaissance…I many times feel like and IDIOT. Why bother even following up on the music heard and seen at the random club on that random night…even if it produced goosebemps in the shape of Mount Rushmore’s Presidents? What is the point of engaging in this constantly morphing and black-lunged industry?

But there are some facts: 1. Artists more than often, need to have an outsider helping with the creation and marketing of their art. They need a business plan. 2. Any economist will tell you that the best time to invest in an industry is at its darkest and most uncertain hour 3. With the ability to follow trends with agility and forwardthinkingnes, it has been shown that certain models work in the short term and might even have a potential for survival in the long term.

Last year there was a dark moment where I felt like a complete idiot. It was between releasing one record that I thought was genius and another record that was coming out shortly after. The label was getting more known and some of the bands were growing, but there was this voice…that same voice present in The Rocking Horse Winner…the one that breathed the words NEED MORE MONEY…and it sat on my shoulder and bit my ears. Those words can be damaging…almost heartbreaking. But they also can be ass kicking…in a good way…and some of the ideas and goals I came up with in that time changed the way I do business and reinvigorated my industry drive.

This is not some kind of bullshit self help seminar. There are no clear answers or formulas for success. But part of my thought process was that, now more than ever, all of us idiots who cut and scrape around this sick beast called the music industry should unite with our ideas, motivations and frustrations. Discuss the environment and seek to discover a way out of our dessert to find a land of milk and honey. My personal answer was to seriously diversify my business model, while maintaining a roster of musicians that I love. Other people I have talked to have different ideas.

This will be the forum for discussion, a discussion led by mavericks who have decided to re-invent the paradigm instead of giving up or selling out (unless a form of selling out permits buying in as well). Thanks to South By Southwest, which is admittedly one of the biggest meeting places of industry minds in the world (the biggest in America for sure), the energy of the conference can be fueled into maybe the most important discussion needed to be had today: how to survive, thrive, and be happy working with the universally loved art form called music.