DNA - It's a Blog Baby!!!

Million Download Campaign - Free As in Freedom, Part II

2012-02-06T19:02:46Z

Last week I wrote about the economics of the music industry, and why it's not necessarily such a radical idea for artists to give away their music for "free." But there are different definitions of the word. For the purposes of this argument, there's "free" as in no cost, and there's "free" as in music.

What do I mean by "free as in music?" Think about it for a moment - why does a person become a musician? Why become a poet, a painter, an actor, writer, filmmaker or any other form of artist? Have you ever spoken to a really serious artist about what they do and the motivations behind it? If you ask them why they do what they do, the first answer will rarely be "I do it for the money." This is not to say there aren't people in the creative industries who are more about the paper than the performance, but I'd argue they are in fact the outliers in the creative community.

Artists don't do their work for the sake of money, though I'd argue much of society does. How many people do you know who truly "love" what they do? Call your friends, call your folks, ask your peeps on Twitter & Facebook, how many of them love what they do and how many just do it for the money? Inevitably a number of them will claim they love their work and it's not about the $$. Then ask, how many of those would do that same work for free?

It's at this point you begin to get an important glimpse of the artists spirit. True artists do what they do, whether the world is watching or not. They create not simply because they want to, or get paid to, but because often they simply can't help it - the expression of their artistry is a fundamental aspect of their humanity.

This is where the issue of "free" comes in. Not because artists don't want or deserve to get paid. Rather, because they are hyper-motivated to do their art at almost any cost, they are prime targets for exploitation. Thus, in the case of music, an industry has arisen around artistry that is typically not beneficial to artists. I know, you think musicians do well, because you've seen some jumping around on your TV screen. But if you follow the links from last week's post you will see the economics that underpin that exploitation.

So why give away music? I'd argue it can be a simple, but important element of building a model for creation, dissemination & consumption of music that actually benefits artists rather than takes advantage of them. Next week we'll dig into why artists not only deserve to be compensated for their work, but how giving it away can help them achieve that.

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Big Gubment - The Bain of Our Existence

2012-01-31T19:35:44Z

Today voters in Florida hit the polls and all indicators show that Mitt "Don't-hate-the-playa-Hate-the-Tax-Code" Romney will win a decisive victory after being trounced by Newt Gingrich in South Carolina just a week-and-a-half ago. The see-saw of Republican primary politics this year hasn't yet removed the patina of inevitability from Mr 15%'s visage - a face rough-hewn from years of living in the "real economy" - but it has certainly dispatched the idea that anyone would get to enjoy the wonders of bean bag this time around.

In addition to summarily destroying the heretofore stellar reputation of a favorite childhood game, the GOP field has managed to maintain a unified position in one other key issue: Big Government. It's big, it's bad and it's coming to get you. And yet there's very little substantive argument on what exactly "Big Government" is, and how exactly it's going to hurt you. We hear the recycled mantra of "Repeal Obamacare" on a daily basis, and yet the arguments that the Affordable Care Act's mandate for citizens to buy private health insurance, is some sort of red-scare government-take-over of health care is...well, dumb.

I heard a dumb person being interviewed on TV earlier today saying that Romney would defend Medicare, unlike Obama who wants us to have "government-run-healthcare." The reporter didn't bother to inform the individual in question that he was dumb, since as most of us who can read have already noticed, Medicare "is" government run healthcare. He also didn't bother to point out that Mitt Romney early endorsed the Paul Ryan budget, which would effectively turn Medicare into a privatized voucher system - something that most Medicare advocates would argue is by definition no longer "Medicare." And finally neither did the reporter have the heart to inform this particular voter that Obamacare is the bouncing brawny baby of Romneycare - how proud is papa Mittens of that?

In the end there's a lot of rhetoric thrown around, designed to get people's waders in a winch about the dangers of "Big Government" in our lives, and frankly I don't know that I want "Big" anyone peering over my shoulder when I'm eating my evening Cheerios. But there's another important point that is oft overlooked. Lately the media has begun to take note that all of the Presidential candidates who rail incessantly against Big Government, are in fact rich people (one of them being much richer than the rest combined...and their ancestors...and their kids). The thing no one is bothering to point out is simple:

In the absence of Government, Rich people ARE the government.

I know it sounds simplistic but think about it historically: who ever heard of the King of France, the Queen of England or the Sultan of Brunei struggling to make their horse & carriage payments? No one. Why? Because they got PAPER son (or as Ron Paul prefers it, they got Gold for every rainy day in the almanac). If they were broke their kingdom would eventually be taken over by the army of some other rich person, and they would either be sent to meet their maker (as Mittens would love to do to Castro), or they'd be turned into some sort of sub-king or duchess in the interests of saving face. But the bottom line remains, historically, rich people have run things. Over time they became clever enough to say, "I run ish because God said so," rather than the proverbial "I run ish because I got guns n scimitars" which always frightened the children.

I can't even pretend to be a proponent of government largesse, as I think there are a world of sensible reasons to curtail the power of the State. That said, the next time some multi-millionaire candidate tells you he or she is here to protect you against the ravages of Big Government, take a moment and ask yourself: after Richie Rich has finished drowning "government" in his golden bidet, who will protect you from him?

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Million Download Campaign - Free As in Freedom, Part I

2012-01-30T17:31:38Z

Six months ago while in the final throes of completing this album, we did a show @ a punk Rock venue in Brooklyn (do we look punk? No, but we think that way). The jam was a blast & I got to connect with some old friends and fans as it was our first NY show of 2011. The first question that kept coming up? "When is the new record coming out??" I told them it would be done in a few months & we'd be releasing it online for "free." The next question? "Why the hell would you do that?"

Let me explain. Artists typically don't make much money selling recorded music. As you can see from this article, there are a number of reasons for this. The economics of the Recording Industry itself do not support artists getting paid for selling records. But, what about Jay-Z, you say...and Eminem and Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift? It's true that after a certain level of sales an artist will make a royalty on their albums sold. But for an artist like Jay-Z, for example, the amount of money he makes from his record royalties, likely pales in comparison to the money he makes from publishing, endorsements, touring, and perhaps most importantly his entrepreneurial ventures including, Roc-A-Fella, Rocawear, Armadale, the NJ Nets etc.

The greatest value for an artist like Jay-Z is not actually in his royalty rate, but rather in his "brand equity." He has a brand whose value was generated through the music industry, but whose influence extends far beyond it. The same can be said for Madonna, or the Beatles, or Prince, or Bono. At the upper echelons of music, the value created by an artist is much greater than what is reflected in their record royalties, even if you only measure it in a monetary sense (we all know there is a greater value in artistry than can be measured on a ledger).

This doesn't directly answer the question of why "give" music away, but it hopefully reinforces the point that doing so doesn't necessarily ruin an artist's enterprise, because most of their money likely won't come from record sales anyway. But what about this "free" music rubbish? After all, giving away music is not something these mainstream artists do. Or do they? As I've written previously, in the early days of radio the Recording Industry felt it would kill their business, because of all the music being given away "for free." When a song is played on a music video channel, at a club or on a TV show, it may generate revenue, but not necessarily revenue that counts towards a recording artist's royalties. So for example, if I'm a country singer out of Nashville there's a fair chance my music was written by someone else. When that song is played on a TV show in the USA, the songwriter & publisher will get paid, but I the singer won't (it works differently in Europe but that's another conversation).

So in reality artists actually do "give away" music all the time. They do so for the benefit of increased notoriety, which translates into "higher brand value." But this comes at a cost, particularly when you're dealing with major labels. For next week's Million Download Campaign post I'll explain some of the reasons why an artist would NOT want to sign a record deal. In the end, it all boils down to "free" as in freedom...

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

Wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Million Download Campaign - Open Source Music

2012-01-24T01:18:51Z

I got up this morning and spent some time writing about the idea of "Open Source Culture" which I'm going to be presenting at a few different talks over the course of the next few weeks. Then I show up at the studio and lo-and-behold one of the informants for today's episode of The Stream is referencing open source software in an argument against biopiracy and the application of proprietary patents to food crops.

I had already decided I wanted to blog today about the open source principles underpinning the Million Download Campaign, but this pretty much sealed it. Here then is an excerpt from a larger upcoming piece on Open Source Culture:

"...The power of open source software is it enables developers to collaboratively accomplish, not only something that they could not possibly do individually, but in some cases, things that couldn’t be accomplished even by the most successful software businesses. As I worked on my music business using open source tools I couldn’t help but wonder how open source principles might apply to music.

What I would discover in my time in grad school, is that open source principles were already at work in the music business, just not in the “mainstream” aspect of it. And the interesting thing was it wasn’t so much in the development process that you saw these principles at play, but rather in the distribution and promotion processes, where one would find alternate models for dissemination of music outside the traditional fee-for-service model. The traditional barriers to entry in the world of music have been the high costs of Production, Distribution & Promotion. The advance of technology has radically reduced the first two, but arguably raised the latter as the glut of music available to us has grown into an unmanageable wall of potential sound. The challenge for musicians today is not how to record or distribute their music, but rather how to make sure someone eventually hears it.

It’s in that area of promotion that I began to see the applicability of the open source model. What if rather than hiring a PR company or a radio promoter or other business, a company would rather “open source” the idea of promotion?"

I don't know that Open Source music will necessarily supplant the music industry as it currently exists. Rather, I think these concepts will ultimately expand and help to redefine what we think the music industry "is." After giving away a million downloads, we'll be in a pretty good position to add some unique perspective to that conversation. Ultimately this is the beginning of something potentially much much bigger. Let's make some open source waves together...DOWNLOAD & SHARE!

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

You wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

The Net Strikes Back

2012-01-18T19:01:03Z

It's a proud day for the internet. After thousands of websites "blacked out" in protest of internet censorship as represented by the overreaching SOPA/PIPA legislation, Congress is being forced to take note, with one of the Senate sponsors of the legislation backing down today. For the past decade old media companies in the throes of the demise of traditional business models, have sought to bully the new web order into compliance with the needs of the few and the out-of-touch. From the RIAA's massive and disastrous effort to sue music lovers, to the film industry's fruitless efforts to ban the VCR, old media has a sad if storied history of resisting technological advance when it would appear to threaten established business models.

The crazy thing about this tendency is not only it's anti-competitive nature, but it's demonization of the very tools that have historically enabled these industries to fluorish. At the advent of radio, record labels claimed that broadcasting music over the airwaves would harm their ability to sell music - a charge they returned to in 2006 with a failed effort to declare broadcast radio a form of piracy. As many of you will already know radio would ultimately become the most crucial element of marketing/promotion in the history of the mainstream Recording Industry. Likewise videocassette & ultimately DVD sales, would turn into the primary locus of profit for film companies.

Today these same enterprises are out to cripple the internet as we know it with two ill-conceived pieces of legislation, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the US House of Representatives, and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) in the Senate. The purported intent of both bills, is to enhance the ability of copyright holders to pursue injunctive action against overseas enterprises engaging in counterfeiting and/or piracy.

I don't want to go into an exhaustive critique of SOPA/PIPA as that's been happening all over the web for months now. I just want to point out TWO key things to consider in order to understand what is happening here:

1) SOPA/PIPA passes the buck: the cardinal sin of these proposals in my mind, is that they for the first time outsource responsibility for the protection of copyright, from the copyright holder to other parties. So for example, YouTube could be held liable for a user uploading a piece of copyrighted content and could be shut down if unable to prevent such infringement from occurring. The irony here, is that YouTube is already responsible for responding to take down requests from copyright holders. The dastardly "innovation" of SOPA/PIPA is that it could theoretically require ISPs to block YouTube.

In other words, somebody uploads something they "shouldn't" to YouTube and Verizon/Comcast/AT&T prevent you from viewing YouTube.com at all. One of the fears here, is that given the litigious nature of the mainstream media conglomerates, ISPs would ultimately be forced to make a determination not to allow access to certain kinds of sites at all. Now companies the size of Google, Facebook and others might be able to afford the cost of litigation to protect their enterprises. But what about Wikipedia? How about Reddit? How about the next great startup-destined-to-be-a-giant? Answer: They'd be dead in the water before they were even born.

2) What is happening with SOPA/PIPA is a perfect example of the corrupting influence of big money on US politics. The revolving door between Congress and K-Street lobbying firms is one of the biggest problems facing American society. It's gone far beyond the appearance of corruption at this point. I'd argue there is a fundamental and accepted corruption at the heart of our political system. Whether it's an FCC commissioner leaving to take a job as a lobbyist for Comcast, four months after granting approval for the acquisition of NBC/Universal from GE, or former Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) leaving the Senate to run the MPAA (film industry lobby), there is an unholy alliance between deep-pocketed corporations and the people we entrust to protect the rights of citizens and enterprise alike.

The bottom line is, if the advance of technology is leaving your old-skool business model in the dust, don't worry about innovating, buy yourself some clout in Congress and happy days will be here again.

But not this time. Today the titans, the upstarts, the denizens and the scofflaws of the internet stood up to an unwarranted power grab by the powers that used-to-be, in defense of internet freedom for us all. This is hardly the end of this particular war. But it may possibly be a beginning to ending the corrupting influence of narrow interests on our public officers. As the five digital fingers said to the face of Big Media...

SLAAAAP!!

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

You wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

MLK Day in VA

2012-01-17T18:49:03Z

As I posted yesterday I spent MLK day giving a presentation at Emory & Henry College in Emory, VA. After I made the post I had an opportunity to hang out w/ the kids for a smaller workshop & we had a really inspiring conversation. The opening question was "what can we do to sustain the spirit of change that we've cultivated at school, when we leave & go out into the real world?" I think the only way to truly achieve what you want in life is to surround yourself with people who share a similar vision. That's not to say you ought to hang out only w/ people who agree with you - every prize-fighter learns to spar long before they become a champion. It is to say, though that the people around you will inevitably help to enhance or diminish you. As my mom always told me growing up "show me your friends, and I'll show you who you are."

Our culture has a tendency to lionize the successful, without necessarily acknowledging the full cast of characters it takes to make a leading man or leading lady. It can be daunting for anyone to aspire to the heights achieved by those you admire, without realising that they didn't make it alone - no one ever does.

We are all products of our community, and our success or failure is heavily influenced by the people we surround ourselves with. This doesn't mean, if you came up in a community where no one has done what you aspire to, that you need to lower your aspirations. The reality is, sometimes to transcend the constraints of the community we're in, we need to go out and build a new one. I'm blessed to be part of a community of artists, thinkers & change-makers who have something to say about the world we live in and are committed to making a positive impact. I'm happy to have found some kindred spirits down in Emory!

Check out the video of the event they put together above, plus a bonus excerpt below.

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

You wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Million Download Campaign - Voices of Change

2012-01-16T17:11:33Z

I'm spending this MLK Day at Emory & Henry College in Emory, VA giving a keynote & a workshop looking at the "power of music in times of social unrest." I love that I was asked to give a talk about artistry on a day when people are commemorating an icon of the Civil Rights Movement, because I think too often music and other forms of art are relegated to a kind of sideshow in discussions of societal change. Music is fun, it's cool to kick it with at the club, but when we're talking about serious economic, political and social challenges, there's no room for that sort of "frivolous" thing.

To that I say there's always room for Jell-O. And there's even more room for creatives to take a place at the table in any discussion of where society is going. I was asked today before I began my talk about what has happened to "real music" or "music with meaning" in our culture. I know artists who are making meaningful statements in beautiful and impactful fashion on a regular basis, but who are not necessarily the ones you hear. The reality is, the consolidation of the Recording Industry has arguably constricted the breadth of traditional outlets for development and promotion of talent - if the best Indie labels are gobbled up by majors, the economics of running a multinational corporation will more often than not trump the kind of risk required to develop, launch and ultimately "break" truly groundbreaking voices. The very risk that was historically taken by those Indies.

This is not to say that there isn't amazing music being made in the world today, even in the mainstream industry. But when you peer past the initial veneer of artistic success, you start to wonder how many of today's major acts are actually doing something new, and how many are revisiting and reinventing sounds & styles of the past?

In the end, it may indeed be true that there is nothing new under the sun; as artists we are all discovering, interpreting and building upon those who played before us. But if we truly want to reframe the kind of music we hear, we need to start by reforming or replacing the systems that deliver that music to us.

The voices of change may not be perceived as profitable by the Major labels, but they've never mattered more than in these times of global upheaval. I want to hear songs that speak to my heart & soul, as well as those that stimulate the swaying of savory hips. In the end, we will vote with our feet, our tweets, our pocketbooks and word on the street, for the music that ultimately matters most to us.

D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN

You wanna be down? DOWNLOAD!

Campaign Launch Day!

2012-01-09T21:46:57Z

Over the last few years, I've been super blessed to have my "voice" increasingly heard on a bunch of issues I really care about. Given that this is an election year for half the planet, I've decided to jump on the bandwagon & run my own 2012 campaign. Fortunately this one is not for elected office, so you won't need to see my birth certificate (FYI I was totally born in Africa).

Over the next 50 weeks, with a little help from my friends, I'm launching a campaign to give away a million downloads of music from my latest album AFropolitan. It will be the biggest Christmas present I've ever given & there's no way in heck I can do it alone. That's where YOU come in. So before we go any further, here are a few answers to some of the questions you might have:

Q: Why are you GIVING away music?

A: Because I wrote it to express my feelings about the state of the world we live in today, and I want you to hear it.

Q: But you're giving it away for free! Isn't that crraaazzy?!

A: Artists don't make money selling music. Record labels do. Musicians make money doing shows, licensing music, building endorsements & children's sneaker lines and all kinds of other cool things that tend to be more effective the more people are listening to the music you're making.

Q: But wouldn't you rather people BUY your music?

A: Mmmm, I'm not going to "prevent" you from buying it, that's certainly a nice vote of confidence. But I'd really much prefer you downloaded & SHARED it with someone you dig, because music is meant to be consumed together.

Q: Together? What are you some kind of communist?

A: No, but seriously think about it - historically the only way you could hear music was to go out and listen to someone playing it live, because for the bulk of human history the technology didn't exist to record & replay music. As such if you went to hear music, at the very least there had to be you and the musician there...together. Furthermore, music is not something we could do "separately" prior to the advent of the Walkman. If I'm playing one song outloud, you realistically can't be playing another or we'll both quickly go crazy. So human beings evolved with music as a phenomenon that was fundamentally about togetherness. But we don't necessarily listen to it that way anymore.
I want to get back to the basics. And that means I want all my friends & fans listening to these songs together, sharing them with loved ones, talking about them with people who care about music, and hopefully thinking about the meaning in what they're hearing.

Q: Do you have a subversive socio-political agenda in doing this?

A: Yes

Q: What is it?

A: Download the music. You'll figure it out. (NB. Do NOT play it backwards. No seriously, it won't sound good)

Q: Can I join your Campaign to get you umm..."elected"?

A: Hell yes, young Paduwan. Just Sign Up here & we'll tell you how you can be down w/ the coolest kids in town as we raise a lil righteous hell. If you're picked to participate, it can take as little as 15mins/wk.

Q: Well is there anything else we should know?

A: Uh...probably, but I don't feel like typing anymore so I'm a' cut & paste. See below...

DOWNLOAD & SHARE!!!
D.N.A

THE MILLION DOWNLOAD CAMPAIGN.

You wanna be down? Download. www.derrickashong.com

Today is the day we launch the THE MILLION DOWNLOAD* CAMPAIGN to:

Connect the world through the electrifying, consciousness-raising sounds of Derrick N Ashong & Soulfège's new album, AFropolitan.
"Break a band" without a corporate label.
Change the music industry.

How: DOWNLOAD the album and then use Social Media, Email, www.derrickashong.com and Your Voice to get 10 of your closest friends to DOWNLOAD it and then get 10 of their closest friends to DOWNLOAD it, and then get 10 of their closest friends to DOWNLOAD it, and so on, until we reach 1,000,000 DOWNLOADS.

Occupy Nigeria

2012-01-05T21:31:33Z

What a way to kick off the year. Barely has 2012 reared it's youthful head, when the announcement of a fuel subsidy removal sends Nigerians out into the street calling for the figurative (or perhaps literal) "head" of President Goodluck Jonathan. If 2011 was the year of Revolution, 2012 may well be the year of Unfinished Business. I've always felt like the future of the African continent would be told in the streets, storefronts, board rooms & polling places of Nigeria. Africa's most populous nation is both an economic and cultural giant - one that has struggled with challenges across virtually every area of society, and overcome more than she is often given credit for.

In looking at the current tumult in the nation, I can't help but feel in some ways this has been a long time coming. I'm no Nigeria expert, but as a fellow West African I've long felt a vested interest in the success of our Easterly neighbor. I wrote during the BP Oil Spill about how the global community has largely ignored the ongoing destruction of the Niger Delta by the 11 million gallons of oil spilled there every year. I find it both sad & ironic that Africa's largest exporter of oil is beset by strife at the reduction of a petrol subsidy - a subsidy that represents a significant investment by the govt in importing refined petrol, while billions of barrels of crude swell in the nation's bosom. So typical an African story - we send our resources abroad, that they may be made palatable for us. Whether those resources are material or human, the re-importation of Africa's riches inevitably comes at a price...

I look at the situation of Nigeria and I can't help but ask "who has benefitted from the nation's oil wealth?" You can only sustain so much inefficiency and inequality before the proverbial "other shoe" tumbles from on high, in search of a head of state's cranium. Is Goodluck Jonathan entirely to blame for the current state of the nation? I don't know if anyone's shoulders are broad enough to carry that much blame. But I will be following this story not only for the sake of my own edification, but for a sign as to what it might augur for the rest of the continent. Other nation's around the globe would do well to pay attention as today's Unfinished Business across the waters may well be tomorrow's domestic Headline.

D.N.A

DNA on NPR

2011-12-12T18:03:56Z

So in keeping w/ my recent policy of irregularly posting old news (ahem), here's a link to an interview I did a few weeks ago with WBUR's Here & Now. Now having lived in Boston for 50 odd years (give or take a few decades) it was super cool to talk to the folks I used to listen to every day about what on earth I've been up to lately. In this case we were talking citizen-journalism & the way we roll w/ new-media at The Stream on Al Jazeera. It's definitely a new day in the relationship between those who report the news & those who "are" the news. Check it out & shout outs to all of you who tweeted me about hearing it live! ;)

D.N.A