The Digital Music Forum East kicked off today (actually, I'm sitting in the auditorium right now) with a panel called The State of the Digital Union, moderated by EMI's TAG Strategic's Ted Cohen. The panel covered a lot of the usual ground ("is DRM ncessessary;" "are labels bullies?;" "why aren't users adopting digital music subscriptions?;" and so on), as well as some other topics I'll try to cover later.
During the short Q&A session at the end of the panel, a man in a bright green shirt, bald except for a long ponytail trailing from the back of his head, approached the microphone. He began bluntly, "Behind all of this bullsh*t is the actual music," and proceeded to address what was evidently on the minds of a large percentage of the audience:* *
Pointing at Thomas Gewecke, SVP, Digital Business Group, Sony/BMG, hesaid, "The major labels have run so counter to everything human exceptfor making money that… you [the major labels] are the California that'sgoing to drop into the sea." He predicted that music will split into a"two tiered system, where you [the major labels] can do Britney, andher hair, or her not hair, and everyone else can do the music."
Ted Cohen sprang down from the podium and gave the man a one-armedembrace, asking him to come along to his next speaking engagement inBoston. I tracked the audience commenter down after the panel; hisname is Polar Levine,
and he's a musician/columnist who writes a blog called Biting the FoodChain. Out of all the musicians I've seen storm stages full of suitsat digital music conferences, he was the best-spoken and mostconvincing.
Watching people talk about how to sell music on a mass scale, it's easyto forget that, as Levine said, musicians don't start out in theirbedrooms learning how to play guitar in order to make a ton of moneyand thinking about what their hair style will be. (Although he alsosaid that, maybe, now they do, as he again pointed at the guy fromSony/BMG).
(image of Polar Levine wearing a wire hat from polarity1.com)
