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im alive and i have only one thing in my brain: two whumpees trying their best to be better for each other

Look! A new track from The Temper Trap FINALLY appears.

Enjoy the feeling.

~ The Correspondence

Warner Music Group's board of directors is said to be reviewing bids for the company this week. 10 investors have already put in bids prior to the review. Among the investors planning to buy all or part of WMG is ticketing agency Live Nation. Warner has been up for sale since January, and has yet find it's new ownership.

What is yet to be seen is how the different potential owners will affect the company and its ultimate fate and direction. Live Nation could do interesting things with the group, but some of the more private investors may be unable to cause any necessary changes to the company.

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Chris Holmes' has developed a new system called the "Privateer Manifesto," designed to change how we distribute and sell music today. Click on the picture to read the concept, and then read how Zack Weinstein and Michael Rodino felt about the idea.

Zack: Personally, I think this Chris Holmes' Privateer System is interesting and innovative, but is very idealistic, and a tad unorganized. 

He is certainly right when he says that the music industry needs to stop fighting the change it has been presented with. By continuing to actively put up a fight against piracy and file sharing, the music industry is making itself look like a stubborn old person. When a newly built brick wall (piracy and file-sharing) blocks the path to the prune juice, instead of working with the change and steering around the wall, this stubborn person jams their wheelchair headfirst into the wall, expecting to get through to the other side. Take a minute and picture that. You could argue that eventually the brick wall will crumble and fall to the ground. Unfortunately, this wall cannot be broken. Music piracy and file-sharing aren't going anywhere. Ever. And I'm glad that Chris recognizes this. I also agree with him in that I believe, in regards to record sales, the music industry will be more successful as a more personal, localized, and genre specific industry. Now, as for his business model, I am little skeptical. For it to work, he says that there needs to be an "artistic league of nations". Idealistic, but I think it is near impossible. There are too many artists, labels, genres, fans, tastemakers, bloggers, file-sharers, venues, promoters, manufacturers, clouds, services, and anything else you can imagine that involves music today to get everyone on board.  Regardless, hypothetically speaking, let's say enough people in the music industry are interested by the Privateer model, and it is put into operation. I don't think it can survive.  It's success relies on a few assumptions that have no guarantees:  1) People genuinely want to support the arts  2) So, they WILL pay for music  3) Then decide to re-sell that music on their blog/site, and hopefully make profit  As an artist, I do understand the fiscal woes of the arts, and I am more than willing to support them. However, I believe the majority of the public do not share my passion for music and its industry. Now that music can be completely free via the Internet, the money that most people would ordinarily use to spend on music goes elsewhere. And it will stay that way.  Everyone won't all of a sudden say, 'well they must have done a lot to get this music out, so I'll pay them for it.' No, that money is much better spent on a cheesesteak, or that new car, or maybe the gas bill. I may be willing to support the arts, but my neighbor, and his neighbor, and so on, most likely won't be willing to fork up the ten bucks it takes to download something that could be free. Again going into hypotheticals, let's assume that most people do genuinely want to give their money to the arts. And are incentivized by the possibility of making profit themselves. Whats stopping everyone from buying the music directly from the artist in attempt try to maximize their own profits by being a primary buyer? I think the intense competition and greed will be the downfall of this business model. Especially over the world wide web, where there are no rules or restrictions, this would prove to be overly competitive. So many people would be trying to re-sell the music for their own piece of the pie that no one would end up making any profit. So, in the mind of the people actually downloading music, why bother at all? There is no guarantee that there will be any profit anyway. Therefore, to the common music downloader, free music is much better, because, well, it's free. And it doesn't require the extra effort for something that is only has a small possibility of being beneficial to their own self-interest.  BASICALLY, in my opinion, the incentive for people to take part in the Privateer model is not good enough. For this to work, you need everyone on the same page. You need that "artistic league of nations". But I'm pretty sure most people won't be convinced.  In theory, The Privateer model could be very good for the music industry. But it relies too much on the consumer's participation. In the end, I don't think it would function for very long. Sorry, Chris Holmes, I think you are very bright, but you just got served. Or am I just crazy, and this is the remedy everyone is looking for?

Michael: I respect the Privateer system in one aspect, that it chooses to work with the new system rather than fight it. It's certainly the most adaptive set up someone has offered up to the industry to still be selling music. However, I think it's that one word that causes this system to cause me some duress. 

Please, don't let it be in vain.

Recommend The Correspondence, because I'd like the interview I just did to get read by a lot of people.

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