You’re looking at it wrong...
This great data visualisation from the NY Times comes to us via a really fascinating website called Information is Beautiful. It represents the sales in billions of today’s dollars of the various music formats over time. They claim it represents the dwindling death knell of the music industry....
Getting into retail...
Bright Shining Star by Humphreys & Keen You could reasonably argue that there have been better times to get into music retail. All the same, I’ve taken a very small step towards that this week on behalf of some New Zealand friends of mine who have recorded my favourite album of the past five...
Un-Consultancy in Manchester...
Andy from Indielab tells me that the Manchester Un-Consultancy is all systems go. An un-consultancy is a bit like a normal consultancy, but more grass-rootsy. A while back, I wrote a blog post that explains the origins of un-consultancies and the idea behind them. Essentially, you get lots of good and...
Soundcloud celebrate...
I met up with Soundcloud’s UK manager, Dave Haynes earlier today. He was celebrating a venture capital investment of 2.5 million euros, announced today. I talked to him about how independent music can make the most of the service. ______________________________ Soundcloud celebrate
Like DRM, only sinister-er?...
I’ve been having conversations today about a ‘non-DRM solution’ to filesharing. This conversation comes up pretty regularly, actually. I’ve now been approached by no less than three companies that would like me to examine, and perhaps endorse their own system. Each time, it involves...
Best conference ever. Really. (Part 2)...
Olaf & Tak at Lappi Restaurant. Cool people. Of course, one of the conflicting things about conferences like Is This It is the fact that while cognitively you may be at odds with a lot of the information and opinions being spread around by some of the more conservative and old-school thinkers that...
Best conference ever. Really. (Part 1)...
I spent the past four days at a conference in Helsinki called Is This It. 150-odd music industry people charged with coming up with 100 or more new ideas to invigorate and reinterpret the business. A conference that put music back into the music industry. A place for learning, creativity, networking...
The Roy Ploy...
If you’ve never seen it, that’s Roy and Moss from The IT Crowd with what should actually be your first step in any computing problem: the unexpected reboot, AKA ‘Have you tried turning it off and on again?’. The Roy Ploy. I’ve been struggling with a computer issue all week....
On a lighter note…...
Irish artist and writer Tommie Kelly sent me a link to his wonderful web comic Road Crew, and I thought you might be interested. Clearly Tommie has spent time in the company of musicians, studio engineers, and roadies - because the observation is completely spot on. It’s been going for about...
Coalition for Culture...
I love the music business. I think musicians are great. I believe they do amazing things that are richly deserving of great rewards, the lot of them. I think it’s appropriate that everyone gets whatever they deserve. It’s a hard world, a hard way to make a living and times are tricky. As...

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