Thanks for keeping it real, Dave.

I think we all probably agree that the future looks bright for the entrepenuer and the visionaries, but the real deal is staying in the game long enough to play when digital marketing and promotion pay big dividends.

We run the risk as an industry of mistaking passion for viable economics. And it would seem that our “forefathers” - that being the ones who actually built many of the systems our artists currently enjoy and reap real money from, may not have that same vision or entrepenuership.

Case in point. Last Friday, the Copyright Royalty Board, appointed by the Library of Congress chose to adopt a highly restrictive internet streaming royalty system, that will surely affect every internet streaming radio station in America. The royalty rates are based, not only on the song heard, but also on the listenership of the station or organization. And the rates are ridiculous. Absolute minimum is $500 a month but any station who has been successful will have to pay commercial radio internet royalty prices. They are not cheap at all, and they are retroactive to 2006. Think about stations like KCRW and KEXP. You can probably say goodbye to some of the most creative, interesting and viable music outlets for consumer discovery. Boy, that was smart, huh?

And how come we haven’t figured out how to monetize peer to peer downloads. There have been several suggestions made in public forums, but, again, the archeticts of our industry have chosen to maintain the idea that they are “winning the war” on peer to peer downloading. That’s pure fantasy. Big Champagne, the industry monitoring service says over 1 billion downloads are freely traded monthly. Try to calculate just how much of your artists’ money is left on the table because others are controlling the conversation.

If those two things don’t encourage us to get active, I’m not sure what will. Great that we are all talking about futures, but what we really need is an active voice now that speaks for us, at the table of decision making. We need an organization that cares about our artists future to build a platform for all labels, artists, publishers and related business to grow.

Anyone with me on this?